I use it since I subscribe to Proton for email. It seems fine. I used to use Windscribe -- or rather still do since I have a lifetime subscription -- but I tend to alternate between the two services these days. Proton seems to have tons more servers though. I've torrented on both and have had no issues with either.

I thought alcoholism would be it. And someone would be at least making money off it (sans bootlegging).

We're being flippant, but god, what a waste of human potential. Absolutely pointless war.

The idea is that people will be willing to pay a recurring fee to use Alexa if it can do more advanced things, like perform multiple commands without the user having to say "Alexa" repeatedly, be more conversational, and manage smart homes more intuitively. Amazon is considering charging $5 to $10 per month for generative AI Alexa,

I don't know if that's worth $5-10/mo. I use Google Nest products at home, mainly to control lights. And yeah it sometimes annoying to be like, "Hey Google do this...Hey Google, do that...Hey Google, do whatever..." But at that point, I usually just use the Google Home app or a specific IoT app. And that's free.

I'm sure they do, but I feel like even on r/datahoarders, I only ever see people talk about masses of HDDs, tape drives, or cloud storage.

You could also add toxic glue. It’s edible! Probably only once though.

This is now going to be added to some LLM-generated answer in the probably near future.

My parents were the ones who pointed me to the high seas. I was a kid (12-13yo) when Napster came out. Being the family geek, they told me to look into it since they heard about it on the news and wanted free music (early case of the Streissand Effect before it was termed as such). So I did. And we got free music. Even asked them to get me a CD burner for my birthday after that and they did.

As a kid on the earlier days of the Internet, I came across all sorts of ways to get free stuff. Games and Music at first, especially game cracks/warez. Then once torrents came on the scene, movies and shows.

I actually don't pirate much anymore. Rarely pirate music since I've had Spotify for like 10+yrs now. Same with games since Steam and all the other digital storefronts have so many sales. I still pirate emulator ROMs once in a blue moon. Movies/shows would be where I pirate the most (though like once a month if that), even though I have Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, and Crunchyroll. Even between those 4, I can't find everything I want to watch.

But yeah, 99% of the time, I just don't want to pay for things. The other 1% is that I can't pay for something (mainly in the emulators/ROMs space). That's all.

I don't pirate very often anymore, but when I do, I use whatever computer I happen to be on. I just turn on a VPN and bind the torrenting client to the VPN only. This is how I've torrented for years, since the late 2000s. I've gotten a couple strikes from my ISP several years ago, but that was before I had a commercial VPN. Otherwise, I've no issues.

What are the potential security upsides of doing it on a VM/container or a dedicated machine? I can imagine some performance upsides, but that's about it.

That's a bot, right? That can't be real.

I've met plenty of idiots. Some days, I'm probably one of them. But I don't think I've ever come across someone who's pro anti-piracy. Usually people are just neutral about it. Even the most law-abiding people I know, when I've told them I can download movies for free, are like "Oh, are you able to get this movie for me? Thanks!"

I think it's worse here than on reddit when it comes to this. Redditors these days (*takes out the walker and cane*) are shitty, but I feel like I'm somewhat insulated from a lot of it due to where I lurk/participate on reddit. But on Lemmy, I see it pretty much everywhere. Smaller userbase compared to reddit, so maybe the rudeness is more visible.

Oof. Sorry to hear that happened. Vehicle repairs suck.

I do remember my parents talking about $800 for the windshield specifically, but maybe they were just simplifying out of anger. With the dealer, with me, whoever. It very well could've been the estimate for the total damage. I can certainly imagine some dents and scratched paint. And yeah labor is often the highest cost.

A motorcycle back in the late 90s when I was like 9 or 10?

We were at a dealership because my dad was thinking about buying a motorcycle. At one point, they put my younger brother on a motorcycle because it was cute or whatever. After they took him off the bike, and my parents and the salesguy moved onto another motorcycle, I wanted to try. So I did. And I tried to be careful, knowing it could fall over.

Getting on was no issue. And getting off was no problem either. Until I was like a few feet away from the bike..and it fell over. Shattered the windshield.

Even though it was an accident, the dealer tried to get my parent's to pay up. And I think my parents would've been willing to pay something...except the dealer wanted, I believe, $800. The bike was probably only a few thousand bucks -- I actually have no clue how much the bike was, but, as an adult, I know how much bikes are. No way a windshield was a third of the price of the bike. Not in the 90s, not today. So my dad and the dealer got into a shouting match. We left, and the dealer tried to get our license plate number as we drove off.

Nothing ever happened with that. No cops were called or anything, as far as we know. Besides, the dealer should have insurance for these situations. But since I wasn't supposed to be on the bike in the first place...I got in tons of trouble. Got my ass beat by my mom, got grounded, couldn't go to a sleepover I was supposed to go to...

Definitely the most expensive thing I broke. At least based on what the dealer was demanding.

So this morning, I had a dream where I was going to a coffee shop. After trying to figure out if I could order like a Frappuccino or other blended drink, I realized this coffee shop had really good bread. I guess it'd be more aptly called a bakery. So I ordered a loaf of their bread, and then they had some kinda really good honey butter. So my friend -- I was there with a friend apparently, one I hadn't talked to in several months -- and I tried some. And it was really good. Though I also remember it not tasting sweet or like anything. So Idk how that worked.

And then I woke up.