Literally no one on this green earth asked for this shit. In fact, we’ve been pretty direct about how much we don’t want it.

It’s exhausting.

Would be funny if the Wikimedia Foundation developed an AI that is trained on all the major AI models, and uses that to detect AI slop.

A VPN is a must if you wanna go down this route

Soulseek (and I recommend the Nicotine+ client over the official one) is a fantastic source for all music in all formats, and particularly obscure off-label shit you won’t get anywhere else. You’ll even have some success finding audiobooks there, although this is very hit-and-miss. I wish audiobook pirates would use it more heavily. It’s P2P, like Napster used to be. You’ll have to share something or you’ll get auto-ignored by most users.

RuTracker is a great non-private/non-ratio-monitoring torrent site for music (does require a free account though). I’ve never had a single torrent from there that wasn’t seemingly seeded by a Godzilla’s dick. Obviously it’s in Russian, but there’s really no difficulty navigating around. The only thing you might struggle with is signing up for an account, but just have your favourite translation tool open in another tab 👍

If you don’t mind slow download speeds (from the likes of RapidGator), I enjoy Exystence. It’s a blog that shares link to the latest albums and offers both lossy and lossless versions. Nice RSS subscription to have.

If you do find yourself using RapidGator a lot, don’t waste money buying a sub directly from them, it’s insanely pricey. Instead, get a reseller like Real Debrid, which costs like 10% as much and also covers you for about two-dozen other file hosters. I highly recommend putting as much distance between your credit card and the company as possible, just for safety reasons. Using PaySafeCard is fine, as Real Debrid will never see your details in that case. I don’t have any specific reason to be weary of them, I just don’t trust random/small/hitherto unheard of companies as a rule.

RedCandleGames watching this situation like:

Say what you will about Musk, but you gotta hand it to the man; for someone who has sired so many bastards with so many different women, he has somehow remained the world’s biggest virgin.

Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise loving the white race and wanting a secure future for white children makes me a BIGOT.

/s

I love that Linux exists, but I really don’t appreciate the bullshit PR speak about how regular users can switch from Windows with little-to-no friction. The second something doesn’t work as expected, even a minor thing, they’ll be at a complete loss about how to even investigate the issue, let alone correct it. Windows competency doesn’t transfer to Linux for even the most basic under-the-hood stuff. The less honest you are about that, the fewer people will try Linux a second time, and the more people will write off the entire endeavour as being the domain of computer experts/enthusiasts.

What I like about this moment is that the people who ought to be fearful are indeed the ones who are fearful. I mean shit, Elon is posting Tweets about how great CEOs are actually, health insurance companies are removing pages from their websites that identify leadership, it’s a lovely little pocket of schadenfreude where we can all take a breath and prepare for the next 4 years.

It’s the path of least resistance to achieve Musklessness. The second two of the positives you listed are actually negatives to the average Joe. Choice paralysis, overwhelming number of apps and servers, these are things that put people off even trying, especially if there are easier-to-use alternatives that are familiar and instant.

Mastodon is great, but it’s not quite there yet in terms of convenience. Too much copying and pasting and clicking through to different instances in order to read old posts etc. It needs to be more cohesive in a way that doesn’t require constantly leaving your timeline or going into the settings.

It’s also the case that the Twitter diaspora who are famous tend to choose BlueSky, and that brings a lot of people along with them.

And it’s also the case that Mastodon doesn’t have much of a marketing campaign outside of word-of-mouth, whereas BlueSky does.

AIMP ^{[Windows/Android]} has been my Winamp replacement for ~15 years. I’ve never found a player that comes close to rivalling it.

P.S. I have no idea what the licence is for AIMP, I just know it’s free and is excellent. You don’t need Winamp.