deweydecibel
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All good stuff, but I should clarify, the friends and family in question are not tech literate people. They call the internet “the wifi”, get the shitty gateway from Spectrum and plug it in.
Assuming I can apply any sort of configuration to that device in the first place, the second something breaks, either I’m getting a call, or they’ll call Spectrum and their rep will reset the gateway to defaults.
I’d also be hesitant to employ a VPN to cloud solution, because I have no idea what that’s going to do to the speed.
Basically I was just asking if there was a free method of doing this securely and discreetly where the only thing they ever have to do is put an IP address into Jellyfin. I’m perfectly aware there may not be, I was just curious if there was a method I hadn’t heard of.
Something I’ve kind of thought about is maybe, at least for my parents and closest friend, buying a cheap local machine (or repurposing an old OptiPlex or something) for them to keep in the house that I would mirror my library to, or least be able to manage remotely. “Sure, mom, you wanna see this? I’ll tell your box to fetch it.”
It’s more the result of there not being much demand for the entire 20 year run of Pokemon, so they didn’t bother keeping them packaged together. Otherwise they’d have priced it accordingly, and the services may not have wanted it at that price.
It’s like how classic Doctor Who and current Doctor Who weren’t packaged together: the demand for one was diff than the other, so it made sense to let streaming services only pay for the one their customers wanted most.
Is there an easy, free method of doing this securely and privately (as in masked from the ISP) in a way that doesn’t involve me having to manage the network of the person I’m sharing with?
For example, I can use Tailscale for free, but then I have to make sure my friends know how to use that, and that’s a tall order. Not to mention the fact it won’t work on things like Roku.
I think a better example is just physical media sales. Retailers generally all carried the same physical stock. You would occasionally see special editions or something that might only be available at certain stores, but it was extremely rare to only be able to buy certain titles at certain retailers.
Or the prime example: movie theaters. We passed regulations to prevent movie theaters from being bought by studios and used as exclusive avenues for the distribution of certain media. You had a movie, you released it to all movie theaters that wanted it, you couldn’t just make a deal or buy out Regal or Cinemark, or make your own theater. It ensured a level playing field.
One of the biggest problems with streaming that we have simply refused to acknowledge is that the safeguards necessary to create a healthy market, the safeguards we’ve used previously with other distribution models, were never put in place. And we’re seeing the fallout of that now.
Little unfair to say they “missed” anything when they can’t control what studios do with their licenses.
I still see people occasionally complain that Netflix “got rid” of stuff, like the Office. There’s a lot of shitty things you can blame Netflix for, but that isn’t one of them.
It’s also not new. HBO, Showtime, Stars, etc all had rotating on-demand catalogs for years before Netflix, with content appearing briefly before being removed, and no one thought that was odd. I never once heard anyone suggest HBO was shit because Austin Powers or whatever was taken off it. It came with the understanding this content was not permanently available.
Part of it is that people had a bad understanding of what Netflix was, and assumed it would be a permanent replacement for a personal collection. That was always a foolish mindset.
How the fuck do you expect me to just jump into The Two Towers and not expect me to want to watch The Fellowship of the Ring first?! Oh you think I’m going to go buy/rent the first movie 😂 that’s cute.
How do people still not grasp that Netflix can’t just buy whatever they want to stream? Licenses are often being held by other services at the time. They also have no control over if a show gets pulled or not. I still see people complaining that Netflix “got rid” of the Office.
Like, I have no love for Netflix or any streaming service at this point, but at least shit on them for things that are actually in their control.
And frankly, this is how HBO, Showtime, Stars, etc have operated like this for decades before Netflix came along. It’s so weird people think “shows/movies being pulled because the license deal expired” is something unique to Netflix.
I don’t see anyone simping for corporations, just not rushing to celebrate or defend someone so obviously unhinged.
Also, the point is not to get caught, and he’s extremely brazen about it even when directly under police watch.
There are plenty of other black hats out there that don’t act like this. No one is shaking a finger at them. By all means, crack these corporations wide open.
But this guy in particular is not worth raising up.
That’s a strange read on Reddit. I’ve heard people say this before, and it’s baffling.
Reddit is, and always has been, a link aggregator first and foremost. Of course it’s reposts and screenshots of others sites. That’s kind of the point. To bring you Twitter so you don’t have to actually be on twitter.
Meta realized the same thing we all realized when we came here: userbase entrenchment is significantly more difficult to overcome nowadays than it was back in the 2000s when Facebook managed to pull everyone over from Myspace.
Legitimately, it seems like the average user nowadays is so hellbent against even a modicum of inconvenience or a slightly less populated environment that they will accept literally anything. The big tech and social media platforms couldn’t shake off users if they tried anymore. They can do every every shitty, anti-user, anti-consumer thing under the sun and users will bitch about it, but never, ever try an alternative.
And that’s why these companies and their devs don’t listen to feedback anymore. Why bother?
Plex, to it’s credit, does make streaming externally from the home network easier. Setting that up with Jellyfin is a little more involved, but it’s also free, whereas Plex will make you pay for that. But if you have no desire to stream outside the home, it’s not an issue.
Jellyfin apps on other platforms are a bit of crab shoot. Some are maintained very well, some (like the Android TV version) have fewer mainteners and go a long time without updates or fixes. For most users, they’re perfectly adequate, but it’s something to be aware of.
Plex’s app support on various platforms is better, but much less controllable and customizable. That goes for the main UI as well. It’s polished but you’re stuck with whatever Plex decides to put there. You can customize Jellyfin much more, strip out things you don’t want, etc. You can apply custom CSS, too.
Plex is a business, and therefore it has things it wants you to see whether you like it or not. The enshitification of its UI will get worse overtime, as happens to all for-profit tech company products, but for the time being it’s tolerable. Just don’t get too comfy.
Overall I’d suggest Jellyfin for most in-home use cases, and if you’re comfortable managing external connections (and the security of it). If don’t have the time or knowledge to manage this beyond powering it on, open the wallet and go with Plex. But there’s no reason to pay a subscription for something your home equipment and your Internet connection are all doing on their own if you can spare a little time to set it up.
Maintaining a web browser is an intensely cost and time prohibitive endeavor, especially nowadays. The FOSS community can maintain a lot of things but the sheer scale of Firefox, the need for expertise, the necessary labor, it just can’t be done by volunteers and donations, at least not without using Chromium. They have to get a cash infusion from somewhere.
I don’t like it anymore than you do but ultimately the issue isn’t Mozilla, it’s the state of the technology market. Silicon Valley is no place for a non-profit organization right now, no matter how much we need it.
What we need is regulations and anti-trust, but even that may not truly save us.
They need money. That’s it. That’s the long and short of it.
The bottom line is, they started something that’s bigger than them, and created more than enough tools to fork from them if they become a problem.
I always like to point to Emby/Jellyfin as a perfect example of how this is supposed to work. They created something excellent, the community joined in, and it got popular. Then the maintainers decided to try and cash in, and the community immediately responded by forking into what would become Jellyfin. And nowadays, the discussion is between Plex vs Jellyfin, you rarely ever hear people talk about Emby anymore.
After a certain point of user adoption, FOSS (and copy-left) software should be able to stand on it’s own without the creator’s direct involvement. The community can take the wheel if necessary. The Lemmy devs have provided enough tools to do exactly that, and I believe there are more than enough experienced devs in this community that we would not struggle to find the necessary talent.
That’s doesn’t mean there isn’t still a risk, though. This is social media, the technology is only half the story. The other half is getting people to move. I don’t think I need to explain to anyone here how hard it is to get an entrenched user base to abandon a platform whose mainteners have gone off the rails.
I will gladly accept my usual downvotes to remind people Sponsorblock is only hurting the content creators, not Google, and given there’s absolutely no threat of malware or tracking from a sponsored in-video ad, you have no need for it besides entitlement and a disrespect for the people that are already getting fucked over by Google in the first place.
People suggest this all the time, but it’s only useful if you’re the only one who is going to be accessing your library externally. Otherwise you have to get family or friends who you let access your server to use it anytime they want to stream, and that’s far easier said than done. They have to know what they’re doing.
It also means they can’t stream on their smart TVs or streaming boxes. You know, the things most people will want to watch this content on.
It’s not just popups, it’s the irrelevant bullshit that clutters up the UI.
It’s that they’re “pushing”. A lot of people have an inherent dislike of having shit pushed on them, regardless of how extreme or avoidable it is. Plex absolutely pushes their services in the way they design their UI.
It’s your library, afterall. It’s your computer doing the work, your Internet connection being streamed from, your network it’s running on. It’s not unreasonable to want your library to not be put next to garbage you didn’t put there.
Also, your kidding yourself if you don’t think Plex is going to get progressively worse and more pushy. They are on a very clear trajectory, it’s just a matter of time.
Sure, terms change meaning over time, but that’s not what happened.
It’s called AI because it’s a product being sold to us. They want us to believe it’s more advanced than it is.
Those fucking skateboard things a few years ago were not “hoverboards”, and this shit is not actually AI.
Because if it is, then the term AI has become meaningless.
That doesn’t track at all. Libraries are awesome, people talk about them frequently online, especially in academia-related spaces. You don’t think college students talk about libraries?
I know we have a lot of peg-legged folk around here, but for those that have no idea how to sail, libraries are a fantastic resource. In fact there’s some evidence to suggest Gen Z is pretty big on libraries.
Maybe the central problem is racing to put other people out of work period, regardless of who they are. Maybe putting people out of work is not a net benefit for society, it’s actually negative in the long run, and only truly a benefit for shareholders. They don’t need any more of those at the expense of the working class.