data1701d

joined 2 years ago
[–] data1701d@startrek.website 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

At least in the objective legal sense, it very much is in the eyes of the YouTube terms of service and the law of most jurisdictions with strong copyright protections.

There is a legal distinction between streaming on YouTube (normal TOS-compliant use) and downloading the video as a whole through a 3rd party tool (circumvention of copyright protection, and YouTube gets no ad revenue with the download), which is usage outside the TOS.

Now, I don’t really give a darn about following US* copyright law for a megacorporation’s sake^1^ and have gone ahead and downloaded from YouTube, but it’s still piracy in the legal sense. This is not intended as a criticism of your actions, just a legal nitpick.

*Obviously, not everyone here is American (good riddance); this is just my personal experience. 1: Especially considering Google’s breaking it all the time with their ML models in my opinion.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 2 points 2 weeks ago

I second this, but with a few things I wish I would have known:

  1. Before you hope on SoulSeek (with an application like Nicotine+), please study up on the etiquette - downloading someone's shared files without sharing any files that they can choose to download for their collection is called leeching, and while some people don't really care, a lot of SoulSeek users will get really angry if you do this because they're giving you their internet bandwidth for nothing in return.
  2. To share files, you have to port-forward; be sure to check your ISP's terms of service. I hear that as long as you're not using a huge amount of bandwidth, even stricter ISPs can be pretty lax on enforcing their anti-p2p rules, so you may be able to get away with the risk of breaking the terms of service. However, to truly reduce the risk, you should probably use a VPN.

Of course, there's a whole other ethics of piracy rant I have, but I'd rather not pull it out right now. The main time I used SoulSeek was to download a rip of a rare TMBG CD (like, not a single copy on Discogs and only 1 on eBay).

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Yes, but these are my two thoughts:

  1. That's basically just piracy, and my feelings are that while sometimes it's ethical*, a lot of musical artists have made a good faith attempt to allow you to acquire it in a legal, DRM-free format at a reasonable price, meaning in a lot of cases it's not ethical, especiallyf with streaming basically eliminating record sale revenue and tour profit margins getting thinner and thinner.^1^
  2. When I want to pirate, I would at least do it right; why extract lossy audio from YouTube with yt-dlp when you can easily get a lossless FLAC on SoulSeek or another peer-to-peer network?

*: if the media isn't easily legally accessible, if it's stuck under a bad corporation, and fair use like making an FMV. I think it's much more ethical to pirate film and television, as if you pay for a film (whether a subscription or a Blu-Ray), it's often just going to go to some ultra-rick executive who had nothing to do with the talented people who worked on the film. Also, DRM makes streaming an inferior experience to just opening a video file. Music is a completely different game, especially with the proliferation of indie labels and self-publishing.

1: Of course, if the artist is some multi-millionaire or billionaire artist, then go ahead.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 2 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Honestly, while I still use Apple Music for some things (I don't like Apple, but I'm unfortunately stuck on it right now), I'm a big fan of building up a collection of digital media files bought either directly from artists or ripped from the CD collection I'm building. I usually go for FLAC, though less for its compression and more for its superior metadata support compared to WAVs.

For discovering new music, Bandcamp allows you to check out some songs; otherwise, check it out on YouTube or something and buy it directly from the artist later.

Like others have said, Bandcamp might not have everyone, but they do have a lot of indie artists and even some bigger ones. Some artists that don't have everything on Bandcamp might have their own store you can buy from.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It for a fact uses CEF: https://www.spotify.com/us/opensource/

Chromium Embedded Framework literally describes itself as follows on its Git repos: "Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF). A simple framework for embedding Chromium-based browsers in other applications."

The Spotify "app" is mostly just web app code running on top of a single page Chromium instance, meaning for the most part, it isn't truly native.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 10 points 2 weeks ago

While we're at it, let's just pull in Chris Pine (multiverse crap) and William Shatner (Nexus crap) and have one of those nutty SNW episodes that sounds like a horrible idea but is surprisingly one of the better episodes that season:

Chris Pine Kirk, William Shatner Kirk, and Paul Wesley Kirk, in Spider Man suits are pointing to each other, except for Shatner, who is doing his gasp and jazz hands.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 1 points 2 weeks ago

True. I just think it's a few years too early; armel is dying, but I don't think it's 32-bit x86 level dead. I feel like 2030 would have been a better year. If they really found the user base was that small, though, then I guess that's less for Debian to maintain.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] data1701d@startrek.website 2 points 2 weeks ago

I like to imagine some weird historian who insisted on pen accidentally flipped the '9' in '2191', and that error just happened to end up in the Enterprise D's historical database; the holodeck just went along with the error, and Riker was none the wiser, having gotten a C- in Early Federation History at the Academy and having frequently gone to the bathroom "for legitimate reasons" during his high school Earth history class. It was only in mid-2380 that he finally discovered his misconception.

Although it'd still be a bit dismal that trip only lived to 70.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

MIPS I get, but armel feels a little weird; I’d wager there’s more production users of Debian on armel than RV64 - not a huge use case, but one that merits a bit more consideration.

I think ~2030 would have been a more realistic date, since most of the last devices with ARMv6 would be about 20 years old by then.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 10 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I love the Jake Nog shenanigans episodes.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Though I am a Debian fan, I don’t think trying another distro will help too much.

 

If life's going to be this crappy, at least cast Jeffrey Combs as Elon Musk, Mr. Universe.

 

cross-posted from: https://startrek.website/post/19819038

I'm ParticleMan. This is the #concert-chat channel on the tmbw (This Might Be a Wiki, the main fan wiki for They Might Be Giants) Discord.

 

I'm ParticleMan. This is the #concert-chat channel on the tmbw (This Might Be a Wiki, the main fan wiki for They Might Be Giants) Discord.

 

What is Las Vegas, Nevada like in the 24th century?

It seems to be implied that Vegas still exists (not just some legendary destination of the past like Vics) and is still associated with gambling - Chakotay's hallucination of Tom Paris in VOY:"The Fight" mentions Vegas along with Mars and Orion III when mentioning the odds in a fight.

I think the fact that this is a hallucination of Tom in Chakotay's mind, combined with the fact that it was mentioned with contemporarily active places, heavily suggests that Vegas is alive and still has some form of active gambling.

However, I would imagine that a lot would still change for Vegas. Modern-day Vegas has Nellis AFB in it and Creech nearby, so it would have probably been a major target during World War III and as a result been heavily damaged. For urban planning, this probably gave a largely blank slate during redevelopment, so in many ways, Earth probably ended up becoming a typical 24th century city or town with vastly improved public transportation.

It's also important to consider the potential impact of drought - has Vegas significantly downscaled as a result of its water issues, or did they get that sorted out in time and Vegas is still a moderately large Earth city in the 24th century?

Also, what does gambling look like in a post-scarcity society? What are the laws on the books for United Earth? I'm imagining people mostly do it for the thrill, like how Jadzia plays Tongo.

 

cross-posted from: https://startrek.website/post/14985611

"Boss of Me" might be my favorite Flans song... besides "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head"... and "Music Jail"... and "Let Me Tell You About My Operation"... and "If Day for Winnipeg". Nevermind. Please don't make me choose a favorite Flans song.

 

cross-posted from: https://startrek.website/post/14985611

"Boss of Me" might be my favorite Flans song... besides "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head"... and "Music Jail"... and "Let Me Tell You About My Operation"... and "If Day for Winnipeg". Nevermind. Please don't make me choose a favorite Flans song.

 

cross-posted from: https://startrek.website/post/19356345

I finally got around to watching some Discovery (though I'm only through the first few episodes of season 4). My thoughts:

  • First three are a moderately enjoyable sci-fi drama
  • I have to admit, season 3 just presented enough interesting ideas and mystery I was able to ignore most of its flaws
  • I've really started to notice death by subplots, though. It feels like they try to do 4 different plots in an episode, 2 which they do okay and 2 which are way weaker than they should be. I would have rather they done 2 subplots really well.
  • I felt season 4's conflict was really contrived. The plot could have almost written itself with what happened in season 3. Osyra died and we don't even talk about the aftermath in the Chain - the slavery isn't just going to magically disappear, and there's sure to be a power struggle. Also, killing Book's family was kind of idiotic - talking about grief and obsession again is like beating a dead horse. Heck, if you'd let his family live but still destroyed the planet, we could have had an interesting story on diasporas instead.
  • Also, background character development feels a bit weak. I spent half the first couple seasons wondering who the heck Ariam was, and just when I did, they killed her before the audience could develop much of an attachment. They could have at least thrown in a few more crew barbecue scenes.
  • I am now more impressed at what Lower Decks did with fewer, shorter episodes a season than Discovery. They really managed to create a sense that we'd been with these characters a long time and that they were growing despite the entire show being shorter than 1 TNG season. I do have a few gripes about season 5 (my main one being how does Ma'ah go from "Beckett is honorable" like, a few hours after meeting her to immediately distrusting her in the finale), but my respect for LD has only grown.
41
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by data1701d@startrek.website to c/risa@startrek.website
 

I finally got around to watching some Discovery (though I'm only through the first few episodes of season 4). My thoughts:

  • First three are a moderately enjoyable sci-fi drama
  • I have to admit, season 3 just presented enough interesting ideas and mystery I was able to ignore most of its flaws
  • I've really started to notice death by subplots, though. It feels like they try to do 4 different plots in an episode, 2 which they do okay and 2 which are way weaker than they should be. I would have rather they done 2 subplots really well.
  • I felt season 4's conflict was really contrived. The plot could have almost written itself with what happened in season 3. Osyra died and we don't even talk about the aftermath in the Chain - the slavery isn't just going to magically disappear, and there's sure to be a power struggle. Also, killing Book's family was kind of idiotic - talking about grief and obsession again is like beating a dead horse. Heck, if you'd let his family live but still destroyed the planet, we could have had an interesting story on diasporas instead.
  • Also, background character development feels a bit weak. I spent half the first couple seasons wondering who the heck Ariam was, and just when I did, they killed her before the audience could develop much of an attachment. They could have at least thrown in a few more crew barbecue scenes.
  • I am now more impressed at what Lower Decks did with fewer, shorter episodes a season than Discovery. They really managed to create a sense that we'd been with these characters a long time and that they were growing despite the entire show being shorter than 1 TNG season. I do have a few gripes about season 5 (my main one being how does Ma'ah go from "Beckett is honorable" like, a few hours after meeting her to immediately distrusting her in the finale), but my respect for LD has only grown.
 

cross-posted from: https://startrek.website/post/19150268

The Parliament just feels like a more beautiful version of the Nebula - it is rather elegant while keeping that Galaxy-class kitbash feel, combined with a bit of Miranda in the square edges of the saucer and a smidge of Sovereign in the nacelles. Nebula just looks derpy by comparison

True, Nebula and Parliament have a bit different purposes. However, other than nacelles, they actually seem to be about the same size interior-wise (based on some very Memory Beta info).

 

The Parliament just feels like a more beautiful version of the Nebula - it is rather elegant while keeping that Galaxy-class kitbash feel, combined with a bit of Miranda in the square edges of the saucer and a smidge of Sovereign in the nacelles. Nebula just looks derpy by comparison

True, Nebula and Parliament have a bit different purposes. However, other than nacelles, they actually seem to be about the same size interior-wise (based on some very Memory Beta info).

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