Yep. And the streaming tech bros collusion with the industry mobsters took it to another level. The people making the art are a mere annoyance to the jerks profiting from it. And yet the ai which they think saves them from this annoyance requires the art be created in the first place. I guess the history of recorded music holds a fair amount to plunder . But art - and even pop music - is an expression and reflection of individuals and wider zeitgeist: actual humanity. I don’t see what value is added when a person creates something semi unique, and a supercomputer burns massive amounts of energy to mimic it. At this stage all of supposed AI is a marketing gimmic to sell things. Corporations once again showing their hostility to humanity.

Yeh a symptom of consumerism being (or pretending to be) the antidote to everything. A solution can always be purchased.

Hadn’t thought of this. I wonder how they would tread what you’d think would be a thin line. Or are lonely people that credulous? On the other hand being provided your perfect match during the trial period and falling in love with this corporate entity which you are then made to pay for access to? Dystopian.

Current NZ gov are certainly more cozy with the US. No idea how braggable it is though. He seems to have been forgotten about after the initial national embarassment the whole fiasco was at the time. Maybe these clowns want him to quietly go away . So yeh horse trading.

I guess you want the internet to be a place for finding useful information, and/or the entertainment you choose to access, over it being a long uninteruptable stream of infomercials for crap products you have no interest in? Then groogle is not for you. In fact groogle is not for humanity.

A small addition to the discussion - I pay in advance with cash for 10 coffees at a cafe I go to several times a week. Its an informal arrangement, and a very small independent cafe (these are common in my country). If you have a regular spend somewhere ask if they could do this. Obviously it doesn’t work for all things. I wouldn’t do it as a pay later type of tab though otherwise you’re back in credit land. It works for me as its the best coffee in my area, an indie outlet, and they threw in 1 free per 10 paid for. They get my loyalty I guess and money in their bank (or cash in the till)- also bypassing the 3 or so middle men orgs between my bank and their bank by way of visa etc. which is another big motivator for me - we are being reamed in our country with up to 3% charge for using a credit card. Maybe thats common globally?

Ditch touch screen and give it physical buttons and we’ll be on to something.

I liken using groogle for finding factual information to using the yellowpages for doing the same. YT isn’t much better but it suffers many of the conflicts of interest traditional media outlets also had, depending on the corporation. In this case the almighty algorithm is the conflict of interest, though there are clever content creators out there making some good stuff, they’ll always be beholden to the owners of the platform and the true customers - the advertisers. As an advertising platform which can direct punters to actual long form content directly supported by watchers via patreon or similar, I understand why it is used : the sheer numbers using it.

That’ll help with keeping a low profile. I personally go for a red flashing clown nose, and triggers in my shoes which set off a loud explosion sound with every step. The speaker is in my ridiculously tall top hat.

I haven’t travelled to either province mainly on principle - I don’t think I could stomach it - so I cant speak on that. Though, many other locations if not the whole country, have similar history, and treatment of local minorities, culture and language.

Stick close to her and trusted family and friends. Though cash must be accepted legally , its hardly used. Getting a simcard requires registering with your passport now. If you’re okay with that, a cheap burner phone with wechat for payments and comms and standard phone number yo get hold of your family back home. Needless to say you wont be anonymous so my attitude when visiting there was kind of just accept that, and don’t do/say anything stupid. i.e assimilate temporarily with that way of life. All of these concerns are only a small part of life and of course a billion or so people are living with it. You are totally right that the place is full of interesting and amazing history, culture, food and really friendly and hospitable people despite the bs they have to put up with.

Cool thing about this is they could assemble these bundles into parallel live streams we could simply flick between to find what we prefer to watch. If they run into a problem of people flicking away when ads run then just align the ads to run at the same time on each “channel” if I can call them that ?

That was a trope of real tv shows especially , and also a way to fill time with less filmed content i.e cost cutting. Often you’d see many shots 5-7 times throughout the show. Opening montage , before ad tease, after ad recap, thr event itself, end of show montage summary etc. Also drives me nuts. Even back when ads were between. “Yes I know what happened two minutes ago!”. And then there were so many shows you could tell the edit project file was a template and they just replaced the footage. Same exact structure every episode.

Technicalities probably, but much like computery things in general these tools don’t make all things easier necessarily. If pure making and playing of music is the goal, then just pickup an instrument. Record it with a nice preamp and microphone in an appropriate space. These tools allow many more and different options however. Of course I can approximate an orchestra good enough for low budget projects if not tv shows, without needing to hire an actual orchestra. And apply convolution reverb of the sistene chapel, or my bathroom. No complaints about the massive world of possibilities at our finger tips. But if I could hire a local school orchestra, the recording gear, and have an afternoon on such a project , it would be alot more fun than scrolling for hours for the right picollo flute sample, wrestling with licences (including cost) , upgrade hassles, and other tech headaches of this digital age. Back to my banjo. Saying all that I prefer when the tools mature into instruments and methods in their own right. e.g mpc sampling and performance, ableton live magic , and more. Plus its not all mutually exclusive. Do whats right for the art at the given time.

SAAS your shit up…

Great phraseology, and have experienced it with Arlo.

I was fretting over Doctor Specials, season numbers, eras and naming a few weeks back. In fairness it has been running since black and white times so not too bad considering. Whats a filebot by the way and whats a good one?

Great to hear! I’ve perservered despite this as it’s great for me in all other respects.

Yeh theres a danger in that I can see. The Machine is learning from our dissent.

My main prob with viewtube has been its flakey resolution auto or manual selection. The UI with it is weird and i basicially have to randomly click unclick autoselect , and switch between resolutions before it somehow lands on 1080 . Might be my browser and OS combo - macOS librewolf. Hosted on kde locally. Otherwise love it. But I dont use much other than search and watch. I use metube if I want to keep anything.

If your’e telling the deglazers to giveup because we will never stop glazing ourselves then I agree.