Seems like the best solution for my needs. Thank you!

Backups are definitely a task I have been sleeping on. I will set that up.

Universities all have programs that let you rent out computers.

Thank you! I have been looking at Fedora Silverblue and ran it for a couple weeks. My only issue is that sometimes I need programs that only got .deb files, and they are meant to run on Ubuntu not debian.

I have found happiness on Pop!_OS.

Hah. What the hell would upscaling a sedan even get me. My car car play CDs!!

… I think I am good.

I feel you misread. I mean what I spelled, county, the collection of cities that define the specific region I live in.

My library card gives me access to many libraries in that county, which yes, has works from people across the globe.

I know. It is not great. I ended up using FFMPEG to upscale to 4k using lanzcos filter.

Not the crispest, but vastly more watchable.

I will try AI upscaling when I can.

I have been rekindling my patronage to my county’s libraries and archive.org.

Sure, these are DVDs, but they can be upscaled and are easily backed up.

I buy a crap load of books like I have a spending problem, but I get them used from bookstores and thriftstores. Libraries will always have something I can’t find, with the added glory of browsing serendipity.

Sure, I like to pirate, but there is more treasure at your ports than you think.

Thank you for the advice. I know the data is my responsibility… so I need a better system.

Thank you! I will check those out.

I absolutely have old capbable computers I need to put to work.

Thank you for the reply! Nextcloud seems like the way to go, and it has a client for everything which is nice.

I need to learn how to host things. The pricing is reasonable though, but I am not a business, but I will see.

I like OneDrive, but I no doubt there is a FOSS solution. I just need to look into a hosting provider I guess.

Proxmox is awesome. Sort of the answer to most of my server wants.

In principle, anthropologically speaking, the depth and breadth of data that has been collected is at its face outstanding and valuable. The full range of human experience is documented. What can be learned if it were studied would perhaps help save the world.

Unfortunately, that “public” data is only available to the companies that harvest and buy it, not to the world at large. Not unless you are already in the shit that is collecting information on you

To echo what other people have said, any benefits of public data is immediately squashed by the heinous abuse of power that comes from not protecting privacy.

Information is freely given by those who care about the world and want to see it improve. No need to take away human rights for that.

Honestly, a terabyte can be filled up pretty quicky just with video games. High resolution films add up quicker than you think.

The library is good if you have the hardware to rip.

Not to mention stuff from the Internet Archive, which has all the things you definitely have never seen. It is nearly bizarre the gems one can find in the public domain.

Hm, I guess I haven’t paid attention to the ownership, I just skip past the ads to the content.

They will always be worth listening to.

Oh, great to know!! They are my favorite duo, and I often here them talk about How Stuff Works articles.

Thank you for the link.

Bizarre. Not even keep a few editors for… the editing??

I wonder how this will affect the Stuff You Should Know podcsst.

I have come to agree on you with this approach. Education is important, no matter what form it takes.

My only issue is something I have obsereved and lamented, which is that humor done excessively seemes to have an inoculating effect.

Think of all the crap president the U.S. has had and all lampooning that was done to denounce them. While we mocked them, they continued their reign and carried creating and enforcing bad policies, as getting away with atrocities while the few qualified people with any legal power struggled to take them down. It doesn’t work.

So, while I appreciate the satire, at this point I find it an exhausting medium. People really do enjoy the taste of onion.

Vote with action. Capitalism is the shit we are in, but everyone acts as if we are in a death march.

Maybe we are? Maybe nothing matters?

Or it does matter, and we need to be smarter about how we make changes in the world besides urging people to use technology that does not match half of what they are used to.

There is a concept called nudge that can work here. It is easier to change behavior by making the “right thing” the default. Make it easy for people to switch off the big corporate tech. Yelling never did anything.

In the meantime, yes, vote with your dollars. Don’t give money to the things you hate.

This impotent cynism changes nothing.

Use the technology you feel safe with, or try try to build if it does not exist.

The echo chamber is making everyone deaf.