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Joined 1Y ago
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Cake day: Sep 13, 2023

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Huh, I am hearing this source for the first time. I mostly used Mobilism and most of the apps from there used to come clean on Virus Total as well.


I think these guys might be able to hack through the process and get stuff done and think getting other people to follow them will be trivial as well. But just because they didn’t mess up, doesn’t mean other people won’t. A large majority might end up hurting themselves if they follow in their route.


Isn’t medical tourism a thing in the US too; like you can fly to a developing country, get your treatment done by top specialists there and fly back to US and the cost would still be lower than what it would have taken to do in home country.


I just wrote it because it rhymed with the now memed 2004 anti piracy announcement You wouldn’t download a car that was rightfully criticized.



C++ was my second programming language after BASIC, if that still qualifies as a programming language these days.



Everything is a streaming service now. I like to think of even Peloton first as a content driven business and second as a hardware seller.


Don’t most music streaming services have all the major bases covered? Unlike for films or TV shows, there are hardly any music streaming exclusive versions of albums. Sure, Tidal tried to make it happen but still, at this day, most streaming services have most of the stuff one wants.


Use nicotine as the client instead. It’s arguably more user friendly and also stuffed with features. Most nix distros have it in their repos. You just need to share stuff on Soulseek(primarily music though some people share films as well).

Soulseek is filled to the brim with music, especially flac versions of songs.


I used it for one year(yes, I paid sigh) but ultimately didn’t see value in it. Subscription model doesn’t make sense for a podcast app and I mostly listened to on mobile eitherways, so I switched to Antennapod recently. I tried a couple of other alternatives including Podcast Republic but those seem a little too bloated in terms of features.


Yes, the free version doesn’t let you organize podcasts into folders for example. The paid version has a browser accessible version(so one can access from PC) , some gigs(10 GB?) of cloud storage and some extra theme able icons.

It used to be a one time purchase back in the day. Then they moved to a yearly subscription model. I think I used their paid variant for one year or so.

I recently moved to AntennaPod, which is available on F Droid. It is more or less at feature parity with the free version of Pocketcasts. It technically has gPodder integration to sync your podcasts online but honestly that service breaks down a lot and is unreliable multiple times.


Fallacies of Youtube
I had a Youtube Subscription mainly for using *Youtube Music* since last year. I used to be on *Newpipe* before that. However, the mobile app always made be feel uneasy. From not being able to choose system wide video quality for all Youtube videos at once[ seriously, there is like 'High' or 'Data Saver' only and explicit options are available per videos only ] to Youtube nudging me to purchase/join a Youtuber's membership channel really irked me [I just paid you, Youtube ; why are you constantly asking me to pay more for something I don't want? Why can't I disable those notifications ?] I have some time remaining on my subscription but converted to *Tubular* [Newpipe fork with Sponsorblock] simply because it doesn't treat it's end users like trash. Even for YTM, I switched to Revanced version which offered endless customization. I could hide useless stuff like cast, share buttons to even functions in the Account tab. The granular control was so much that I was able to get a simplistic neat looking UI setup. In the transition, I understand, I lose some of my playlists [under a throwaway Google account since I don't wish to risk my main one getting banned] but I understand that the only true way anyone controls their music[or any form of data is by truly owning them and streaming services don't allow that]. It might sound stupid, but I have been downloading music from Soulseek for some time and now just plan to transfer some of my favorites over to the SD card. It was never a money problem. It was an experience problem. I paid money to Google and all I got was *Shorts*, *Games* and other stuff I didn't wanted. I never got customization or fine grained controls. The open source community offers that. Sorry for the long rant.
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YouTube(compatible with other video sites as well) downloader. It’s a command line tool but highly versatile. Originally, youtube-dl used to be recommended but development nearly crawled to a halt on that.


Your original comment made couple of days ago is visible. It was just duplicated couple of times more in the thread and the mods deleted the duplicates.


Mobilism also has a huge case of magazines/newspapers updated on its site daily. Not every magazine is available, but most popular ones are.


I have Prime but mainly for delivery stuff rather than streaming. I did finally download their Prime Video on phone. I still pirate their original content and stuff that’s available on the high seas because honestly I would rather see it on my laptop than the smaller screen of my phone(and Amazon won’t let me see even in 720p on Linux legally).


Huh. I rented couple of old films and they previewed at full HD. Upon purchasing, they were viewable at 1080p. I was at the worst possible combination from these companies point of view(Firefox on Linux). I could be wrong but is it possible that it has something to do with the company renting out the movies themselves? YouTube Movies just acts as an intermediary, I think, and the main company providing the source is listed in the description.


DRM Hell
Amazon Prime, like many services, is a DRM hell. It won't go to over 480p on Firefox on Linux at my end. However, instead of a rant, I am interested in why this is happening. Say, I rented the same film from *YouTube Movies*(Yes, such a service exists) and the quality can toggle all the upto 1080p but the same title on Prime Video is stuck at 480p. Is it because both services use two DIFFERENT kinds of DRM?
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I actually checked Nebula and it’s the opposite of cheap in my country. It is THRICE as expensive as YouTube Premium on a yearly basis. I mean, even Netflix is cheaper than Nebula here, it’s so expensive.

I don’t think they have done localized pricing and have just converted dollar values to local currency. I doubt they even care if anyone signs up from India for their service.


I just checked Google support site and apparently the limit is 100,000 songs now, which is quite great. The problem is, they don’t tell if and how much, is the music compressed when uploading. Even flac is listed as a supported format but if Google starts storing bit perfect flac without compression, they are gonna give way way more than 15 GB before a power user can hit halfway their song limit.


How much exclusive content is there on Nebula? I was always under the assumption that it’s pricing would be higher than YouTube’s. If they have done localized pricing, maybe that might be better than giving stuff to Google once my YouTube subscription expires.

Also, off topic, but some companies just convert dollar values to local currencies. I think a year of Reddit Premium in my country is as expensive as YouTube, Google Play Pass and Netflix COMBINED.


Yes, I installed Sponserblock too on Desktop. Also, had to disable Shorts via uBlock Filters.


https://i.ibb.co/Y3YdvMN/Screenshot-20240512-132547.jpg

There is clearly merchandising on some videos which constitutes an advertisement in my opinion. Also, a useless Thanks button that only exists(on certain videos I think) to tip large creators more money. Sure, I can ignore it, but why not give the user the option to completely disable it from settings?

I opened the same video in NewPipe and both of these atrocities weren’t there.


You can still upload your own music files (50k is the limit, I think) via web interface.


Yes, the feed can be janky for some though I liked the new video recommendations it sometimes gave. It reminded me of another gripe on their mobile app. When you go to the Subscriptions page, it shows polls, comments and videos all in a bunch instead of just the latter by default. This behaviour can be toggled off but seems to revert back every few days in my case.

Either way, subscriptions page should be for videos only, not other forms of data.


I wouldn’t be renewing my subscription once it expires. I mainly used YouTube Music from it but Google still hasn’t managed feature parity with either Spotify or with it’s previous incarnation Google Play Music either. I mean, they shoved the cast button that few people use replacing the next button used to skip to other track.

Play Music had a much cleaner interface on both desktop and mobile.


Youtube Rant from a paying customer
I used to use NewPipe back in the days of yore. Then I got Youtube Premium since it bundled in Youtube Music as well which I used. But the former's app on mobile is a shit show. Even after paying, you are asked to tip random creators, purchase merchandise[ which are shown as actual ads below videos] and join channels to access exclusive videos for more money. Basically pay money once, and then pay more money for more content. Okay, one could argue atleast the above goes to a channel's creators and helps them. How would one say then that the Youtube app still doesn't have a systemwide option to choose video quality for all videos. New Pipe had that option long ago, but Youtube thinks it's user base are immature who need to be coddled with only two options like "High" and "Data Saver". Despite having a Premium thing, I finally crossed over to a Newpipe fork *Tubular* [available on F Droid] today simply because the paying experience on Youtube Mobile is so bad. I can't fathom how bad it would be for free customers using the official app.
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