That’s why I have it uploaded to a cloud service but I have the entire collection backed up on my phone, 3 computers and a few miscellaneous SD cards.

Having a collection of music in files that I own has been my go-to for years. Currently VLC says I have 701 hours of music in files on my phone. That’s only 29.2 days worth.

No that never happens /S

I used to work with a supplier that hired a former Monsanto executive as their CEO. When his first agenda came out I told their sales team he was an idiot and to have fun looking for a new job a few months.

The CEO bailed after 2 years to start his own “consulting business.”

1 year later the company lost 75% of their market share and was laying off people left and right. They are still afloat barely.

After a couple years “consulting”, the CEO went to another company in 2023. He didn’t bounce fast enough and got caught on this one. He was fired 2 weeks ago and the company shut their doors except for a handful of staff to facilitate the firesale of the companies assets.

The court’s decision also introduced the concept of systemic failure, which holds providers liable when they fail to adopt preventive measures or remove illegal content. Now, platforms will be expected to establish self-regulation policies, ensure transparency in their procedures, and adopt standardized practices.

Pretty sure this would cover Lemmy and most traditional forums as long as they have a written policy and standards that are consistently enforced.

My son fell into a bad group of mostly straight A kids in middle school.

They collected a large collection of webpage based games. They started out attempting to host them on the schools network through shared docs etc. The IT guys wised up to them and shut it down.

Then they turned into 14 year olds and took it up a notch.

Got together and paid for a hosting location overseas. Built a video hosting webpage with thousands of pirated educational videos. Made a secondary menu without any links on the homepage. They have to type in the index page in the URL. All of the games pages show up as educational videos in the history.

Most of the teachers in the school are using the free educational videos so the webpage is on the trusted site on the school districts content filter.

The IT teacher at highschool figured it out. Instead of ratting them out and banning the webpage. He started working on getting them scholarships to colleges. Now most of the ringleaders have full ride scholarships.

My son was invited in because he is extremely good at games (unusually fast reaction times). He holds the high score on most of the games. I don’t play against the little shit. It’s pointless to try to beat him.

If I recall correctly they linked a bunch of powermacs together with FireWire.

The one I see the most is:

“We avoided any semblance of rational experimental design and got significant results.”

“Due to the success of the program, vulnerabilities are harder to find. The amount we are paying is now insufficient to justify the time and effort for most researchers.”

One year later…

“The largest security breach ever has occured for Google…”

Media companies, “We are losing money because people don’t want to pay.”

Or just maybe, your product sucks and people are finding alternatives to avoid dealing with you.

Currently pirating or streaming from a secondary site is faster, better quality, and easier to use. It’s really not that hard to figure out.

The groups need an established core of well informed and experienced people to work together and shape the culture of the community. The moderation team also needs to be responsive and consistent.

I got pulled into being part of one of those teams years ago. It was a pretty simple formula to make the community healthy: The creeps/spammers got banned and reported. The ignorant got educated in a logical and coherent manner by a team approach. The trolls were played with for a while then banned when they eventually violated a rule.

A good group can save lives and help a lot of people. A bad one can further harm the already damaged and vulnerable. There are many of both groups out there.

They have proven many times over that pirating/accessibility have inverse relationship.

My most frustrating example was when I needed one song for a project my wife was working on a long time ago. I looked to try to purchase it online and could only find it on iTunes. In order to purchase from iTunes you had to download the application and install it. However I had an old machine running Linux… By the time I figured this all out I had spent 2 hours trying to pay $0.99 for one song. I could not find an approved way to do it. So I went the alternative route and had the song in under 5 minutes.

They keep pushing accessibility down recently. I am not playing their games again. When they want to be reasonable they will get paid.

I have been on a 3 year replacement cycle of unlocked phones for most of the last decade on my personal phones. I buy whatever lower mid-range android phone looks the best at the time.

My workphone is a flagship due to the insane business discounts they get ($320 for a S23 at launch).

I am currently carrying a Nokia G50 and the S23. I honestly don’t see much difference in daily performance. The G50 makes clearer phone calls. The S23 is a little bit faster.

I am debating going to a 4 year cycle now.