Frustrated by rising subscription costs and fragmented content availability, viewers worldwide are returning to piracy at unprecedented levels, reversing years of progress made by affordable streaming services. Recent data from London-based monitoring firm MUSO shows piracy visits skyrocketed from 130 billion in 2020 to 216 billion by 2024, with the industry facing projected losses exceeding $113 billion.
Subscription Fatigue Drives Digital Exodus
The streaming landscape has transformed from Netflix's early promise of "everything in one place" into what critics call "Cable 2.0"—a fractured ecosystem requiring multiple subscriptions. According to The Guardian, the average European household now spends close to €700 annually on three or more video-on-demand subscriptions. With Netflix's standard plan reaching $15.49 monthly and competitors following suit, consumers are increasingly viewing piracy as a rational alternative.
"Piracy is not a pricing issue, it's a service issue," Valve co-founder Gabe Newell observed in 2011—a prediction that appears prophetic as streaming platforms struggle with content fragmentation and rising prices. In Sweden, birthplace of both Spotify and The Pirate Bay, 25% of people surveyed admitted to pirating content in 2024, predominantly driven by those aged 15 to 24.
Content Wars Create Consumer Casualties
The fragmentation crisis has worsened as studios create exclusive content silos. Viewers face scenarios where favorite shows vanish from one platform only to appear on another, or require separate purchases despite existing subscriptions. Even purchased content can become unavailable due to licensing disputes, prompting consumer lawsuits against platforms like Amazon Prime Video.
MUSO data reveals that unlicensed streaming now accounts for 96% of all TV and film piracy, representing a fundamental shift in how content theft occurs. Modern pirates leverage sophisticated tools including AI-driven search engines and encrypted networks that adapt faster than anti-piracy measures can respond.
Industry Scrambles for Solutions
Streaming executives are experimenting with bundled offerings and cracking down on password sharing, but these measures often backfire by further alienating users. According to Antenna research, one-quarter of U.S. streamers are "chronic churners," frequently canceling subscriptions due to cost and frustration.
The resurgence marks a stark reversal from the mid-2010s when convenient, affordable streaming services nearly eliminated piracy. As one industry analyst noted, studios have created "artificial scarcity in a digital world that promised abundance", suggesting that without addressing core affordability and access issues, the piracy revival may continue reshaping entertainment consumption patterns.
Frustrated by rising subscription costs and fragmented content availability, viewers worldwide are returning to piracy at unprecedented levels, reversing years of progress made by affordable streaming services. Recent data from London-based monitoring firm MUSO shows piracy visits skyrocketed from 130 billion in 2020 to 216 billion by 2024, with the industry facing projected losses exceeding $113 billion.
Subscription Fatigue Drives Digital Exodus
The streaming landscape has transformed from Netflix's early promise of "everything in one place" into what critics call "Cable 2.0"—a fractured ecosystem requiring multiple subscriptions. According to The Guardian, the average European household now spends close to €700 annually on three or more video-on-demand subscriptions. With Netflix's standard plan reaching $15.49 monthly and competitors following suit, consumers are increasingly viewing piracy as a rational alternative.
"Piracy is not a pricing issue, it's a service issue," Valve co-founder Gabe Newell observed in 2011—a prediction that appears prophetic as streaming platforms struggle with content fragmentation and rising prices. In Sweden, birthplace of both Spotify and The Pirate Bay, 25% of people surveyed admitted to pirating content in 2024, predominantly driven by those aged 15 to 24.
Content Wars Create Consumer Casualties
The fragmentation crisis has worsened as studios create exclusive content silos. Viewers face scenarios where favorite shows vanish from one platform only to appear on another, or require separate purchases despite existing subscriptions. Even purchased content can become unavailable due to licensing disputes, prompting consumer lawsuits against platforms like Amazon Prime Video.
MUSO data reveals that unlicensed streaming now accounts for 96% of all TV and film piracy, representing a fundamental shift in how content theft occurs. Modern pirates leverage sophisticated tools including AI-driven search engines and encrypted networks that adapt faster than anti-piracy measures can respond.
Industry Scrambles for Solutions
Streaming executives are experimenting with bundled offerings and cracking down on password sharing, but these measures often backfire by further alienating users. According to Antenna research, one-quarter of U.S. streamers are "chronic churners," frequently canceling subscriptions due to cost and frustration.
The resurgence marks a stark reversal from the mid-2010s when convenient, affordable streaming services nearly eliminated piracy. As one industry analyst noted, studios have created "artificial scarcity in a digital world that promised abundance", suggesting that without addressing core affordability and access issues, the piracy revival may continue reshaping entertainment consumption patterns.
Anything but solve the main issue: pirate sites offer a better service, with no stupid licensing problems, having everything on a single app and without geolocking bullshit.
When the pirate alternative it's not just cheaper but also way more convenient, it's no wonder they are losing customers.
That was my reason for cancelling. I can afford the service, but it better let me stream at full resolution through LibreWolf or I’m just gonna download the movies and shows.
I absolutely love rubbing it in the face of people subscribing to streaming services that I get more content without even having to enter in my credit card info.
If three or four people did that and shared their library with friends then they would have a massive catalog between them.
Legally, you are allowed to make backups of the media you own (in the US). If a group of friends got together and shared their media libraries, proving that only one person was accessing the media at a time, then there would be no issue.
I can literally pay for every service available in my area and still not watch everything (not to mention anything) I want. Geo-blocking as well as expired rights made me never want to pay for one of those overpriced services again as there is one option that's way more convenient, and by chance much cheaper too.
There’s just too many shit shows packaged along a few gems to make subscribing to the whole lot worthwhile.
And as a Canadian right now it feels downright patriotic to divert money from US-owned streaming companies who region-lock my purchases so I have to buy terrestrial cable to view them.
No mention of advertising in streaming services now? That was a big factor in making me shut of my subscriptions. The price increases made me cut back but the ads have made me turn them off. I'm not paying to watch commercials.
Yeah I was watching a show recently on Prime and now they are injecting 1min plus long ads like every 10-20 minutes. It's worse than watching cable tv.
There’s an easy solution to this. I pay for Apple Music because I get access to pretty much all the music I want. I can sideload what they don’t have, which isn’t much. They have better audio quality, and aren’t stiffing artists to pay some right wing nutjob science denier like the other streaming platform of note. I pay because I love music and want to support what I love. Why isn’t there a similar service for TV and movies? That’s the solution. Let us pay for what we love and make it easy. Apple figured it out with music. Valve figured it out with games.
I think they don’t want to solve the problem. I think they want to solve a different problem. I think they’re making this a problem so they can push legislation to protect their profits.
Absolutely. But to clarify, Apple Music pays more per stream than Spotify and others. Spotify trends to cut bigger checks to popular musicians because they have more subscribers.
Also — someone feel free to fact check this — I’ve heard that if, say, you put an album out on BandCamp but not streaming, and I buy it and sideload it into both services, and you later add it to both services, Spotify won’t pay you for my streams because I’m streaming the sideloaded copy whereas Apple will match it. I keep the metadata if it’s different but you’d get paid for the streams because it matches it.
Why isn’t there a similar service for TV and movies?
Because the Artists involved don't see the royalties in those industries. They've already been paid and the rights holders want to extract every drop of profit possible. and the sad truth is that splintering streaming worked for a very long time to this end.
Why isn’t there a similar service for TV and movies?
Because Steve Jobs died before he could hypnotize the executives into do it.
Only half kidding, people forget that's how we got all the music labels together, it was Apple iTunes Store which later became streaming.
There were a few weird awkward music stores but Apple did it better and this was early 2000's when their brand was barely recovering from near bankruptcy.
Netflix streaming didn't launch until 2007 and didn't really take off until 2011, the same year Jobs died.
Netflix was the only one that was positioned to do it but they couldn't pull it together because they didn't have the reality distortion field that Jobs had. Netflix had to push into original programming instead to survive and the brand has long since enshittified.
Can't help but wonder if whatever pitch Jobs used to sell record labels couldn't have been reworked to convince the movie studios.
Here’s what’s wild though. At first with music streaming it was largely just American, Western, popular music. I left Spotify for Apple Music because the latter had Japanese music and I was tired of sideloading it into Spotify. Now Spotify has Japanese music too.
The Japanese music market is super weird. Anime is to Japanese music in the 2010s and 2020s what MTV was to western music in the ‘80s and ‘90s. It’s the international hit maker. So anime is bringing western eyes to all this music, not you go in YouTube and a lot of them have “YouTube edition” videos that are like half the video. Because they don’t fully trust us I guess? Sometimes the video is on Apple Music though.
I know Japanese music is more expensive than ours. I mean like the cost of a CD. So when bands would release a Japanese album, they’d add bonus tracks to help increase the value. Western bands do it too. Look up an album you know on Wikipedia and see if there’s a Japanese version with some bonus tracks.
I’m wondering how Apple Music and later Spotify more or less tamed the Japanese music market but TV and movies are so much harder.
“We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.”
GabenN
When what you're selling isn't appealing, then people won't buy it. It's not super complicated.
Realistically, if there was a service that had everything on it that was past the cinema/pay per view stage, and was a reasonable price (say £35 a month, the price of two current streaming services), then I would probably be on that instead of Jellyfin.
And I mean everything back to the dawn of time. Anything you want, TV series, movies, the lot. Original versions, directors cuts, etc. George fucking Lucas, I'm looking at you here.
But there isn't. There never will be. Because they're all in a race to grab as much money as they can, before literal heat death engulfs the whole planet.
They could make a Steam style store for movies to buy individual movies that then stay on your account. Deep deep discounts on some oldie movies intermittently. People would eat that shit up and buy whole movie libraries to keep. Way more movies than they could watch (like people do with a Steam library).
I've got my server more stable now so it works a lot more reliably for Jellyfin. Before now, my wife would wholeheartedly agree with this and insist on paying for Netflix
I recently upgraded my Jellyfin server from GTX 970 to GTX 1660 because I wanted to have HEVC 10bit support for transcoding on the fly (40 Mbps uplink is not ideal), it cost me $60 and I sold my old one for $20 to a buddy with GTX 600ish.
Maybe she doesn't know it, but how she reacts to this situation is my main test of her suitability as my partner. Nothing is more attractive to me than a woman who can just chill for 15 minutes without complaint while I exportfs -a and restart nfsd.
This is the Spotify/Apple Music/etc model and the reason why music piracy is practically dead (yes, I know there are a few sites still going).
These services are doing their best to find ways to push people back to piracy but for now they keep it at bay through competition to provide better service.
If there was a catchall video streaming service where all publishers released and got a cut of their plays it would be game over for piracy. Fortunately that'll never happen.
I don't think I've pirated a game since I started working and actually spending on Steam. Except Borderlands 3, because fuck Epic Games Store, their dumb fucking exclusivity deals, and their shitty launcher - they won't EVER see a penny from me.
I bought it on Steam a year later when it came out, on sale, with DLCs.
When the price was $9 a month I'd forget it even existed and go months without using a particular service I was paying for. But I didn't mind it because sometimes I'd get the urge to go watch some cult classic I hadn't seen in awhile, or guests could use it.
And I could eat that $9 each month because it was the equivalent of skipping one McDonald's burger a month.
Now? I use them one at a time and pirate anything not on that service. And if the cheapest option they have is ad-supported I skip paying entirely and head straight out to sea.
Of course they had it good. Studios didn't understand streaming and so sold long term rights to Netflix for pennies. Now, everyone is cutting out cable, making it impossible for those studios to fund new production on cable and broadcast alone.
New production is going to hit a cliff as streaming isn't going to be able to fund golden era of television any more.
As subscription costs rise and choice diminishes on legal sites, film and TV fans are turning to VPNs and illicit streamers, with Sweden – home of both Spotify and The Pirate Bay – leading the way
Hey, the Supreme Court said it’s cool for LLMs to pirate stuff for their bullshit so it’s free game. I’m not paying for shit. Just like that bullshit article that has been posted, which I won’t open
I am working on a prototype purely organic LLM called myself. In order to be able to interact with prompts that include popular media references I will train the model on TV shows and movies.
Training can be reinforced by opining on said media at work, with friends and online. Feedback from these other models in the form of their own wrong opinions about the media reinforces one’s own model to always be right.
I find this so ironic. For so many years the US has been sort of the anti-piracy centre of the world. Now their just blatantly allowing piracy for the sake of progress.
Hopefully this won't get me too much negative reaction: I'm not a proud pirate. I'd rather not pirate at all. I'm kind of ashamed that it's come to this.
There were a few solid years where I literally did not do it and felt no desire to, back when streaming was new, and there were only a few serious players. I'd love to return to that era, but I know it will never exist again.
So now, I and other members of my family, pay a ridiculous amount of money for a rotating suite of services, trying to do things the right way, and still, there are way too many times when we can't find anything we want to watch on any of those services and/or the thing we wanted to watch is not available on any of those services.
Finally broke down and just said fuck it. I tried to support this mess as best I could in hopes it would get better, but fully knowing it wouldn't. When it definitely did not get better I said no more.
you could account share? most services banned account sharing last year afaik.
and anyway; how is it a bad thing to reject predatory services?
piracy wad literally always a service problem. they solved it by netflix monopoly providing a great service people wanted and piracy was practically dead for an entire decade - then they all got greedy and we're all headed back to piracy.
the solution here seems pretty obvious, and i think even the execs are aware of it.
It literally is. They solved music piracy by adopting all in one licensing with services like Spotify. If they released a subscription platform that included all movies and tv shows for a reasonable price I'd instantly sub. Instead we get the current enshittification mess.
I was recently travelling and tried to sign up for Netflix and couldn't. Because I didn't have a phone number in the country I was in. And they block vpns.
You can see where this is headed. Mullvad needs the money more than Netflix anyway.
I received an email from them last week, telling me my current plan is no longer available and I either switch to a more premium one or a lower ad-driven tier.
That’s atrocious and will be the final nail in my subscription. I’m already running a jellyfin powered infrastructure and I will cancel my Netflix. Screw them, Black Mirror loving MFs.
I've been using this setup for a bit. Super simple and hassle free. I enjoy self hosting but in terms of simplicity, you really cannot beat Stremio combined with a debrid sub.
Better to use a general foss redirect extension than slowly accumulate various service-specific ones. Libredirect natively does xitter -> xcancel, bluesky -> skyview, fandom -> breeze, reddit -> redlib, and like 50 more. All with tons of prefilled mirrors and uptests ...
It's a great place to find those alternative frontends. If you're annoyed by some enshittified platform, good chance you can just enable a redirect in there.
Possibly with custom hardware. Cartridges are essentially glorified SD cards. However, they would need a dump of the decryption key, which is not possible to obtain yet. This is most likely fake.
Two ways: undisclosed software exploit, or decapping and using an electron microscope. The former would be a world first as AFAIK no hacking group has claimed to be able to do that yet, and the latter is very expensive and extremely hard.
As there is (prove me if I'm wrong) no current way to dump and decrypt Switch2 games this is a highly probable hoax. I wouldn't consider this to be true and be extermely careful.
Bullshit, this is a Scam. There is no know way to dump ROMs or get the decryption key. How are they archiving this without a Hack for the Switch 2? The only way would be if they had their own hack and their own emulator, both developed in 2 Month.
The United Nations Security Council began to debate on Monday a resolution drafted by France to extend the UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon for a year with the ultimate aim of withdrawing it.
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
::: spoiler Disable JavaScript to Access. 1. Open Chrome Settings: Click the three-dot menu (Customize and control Google Chrome) in the top-right corner and select "Settings". 2. Navigate to Site Settings: Go to "Privacy and security" and then click on "Site settings". 3. Find JavaScript Settings: Scroll down to the "Content" section and click on "JavaScript". 4. Disable JavaScript: Toggle the switch to "Don't allow sites to use JavaScript". :::
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
Israeli media has reported that a senior official in the Israel National Cyber Directorate was arrested in Las Vegas on suspicion of online paedophilia.
If you've read about the sudden appearance of age verification across the internet in the UK and thought it would never happen in the U.S., take note: many politicians want the same or even more strict laws.
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
David Crisafulli says LNP ‘not touching’ policy charging rates among world’s highest, as conservationists rubbish industry claims levy causing downturn
::: spoiler Disable JavaScript to Access. 1. Open Chrome Settings: Click the three-dot menu (Customize and control Google Chrome) in the top-right corner and select "Settings". 2. Navigate to Site Settings: Go to "Privacy and security" and then click on "Site settings". 3. Find JavaScript Settings: Scroll down to the "Content" section and click on "JavaScript". 4. Disable JavaScript: Toggle the switch to "Don't allow sites to use JavaScript". :::
With The Third Edict Content Update launching next Friday, you may be wondering what happens to the current Dawn of the Hunt leagues and your existing characters.
The Dawn of the Hunt leagues will end on August 26th at 3PM PDT. All your characters and their items will be migrated to the Standard or Hardcore Early Access league. There will not be any wipes, so once migration is complete, you can play your characters in the Standard/Hardcore Early Access league.
When The Third Edict releases on August 29th, you will be able to start playing in a new League with a fresh economy. Tune in to twitch.tv/pathofexile on August 20th PDT at 1PM to find out all the details about it!
Thanks to everyone for playing in the Dawn of the Hunt, we hope you will enjoy the next League and all the new content!
Watch the Third Edict live reveal on Wednesday, August 20th (PDT) and you'll be able to earn the Sun Priest's Incineration Rare Finisher Effect with Twitch Drops!
Simply link your Path of Exile account to Twitch (see below) and tune into GGG Live at www.twitch.tv/pathofexile, or any channel in the Path of Exile 2 Directory for 45 minutes. Drops will be enabled from 1PM PDT until 10PM PDT.
You will get the Sun Priest's Incineration Rare Finisher Effect after 45 minutes of accumulated watch time on any channel with drops enabled streaming Path of Exile 2 during the event. This means that the drop is guaranteed for everyone who has watched any Path of Exile 2 stream for this amount of time. This promotion is available for all accounts.
If you're planning to stream Path of Exile 2 during our livestream and want to enable Twitch Drops for your viewers, you can do it via your Twitch Creator Dashboard here.
Linking your Path of Exile Account to Twitch
Visit your Twitch Settings page while logged in. If your account isn't connected, click the "Connect" button for Twitch under "Other Connections". Complete the process on Twitch and you will be redirected back to your Twitch Settings page. If your account is already connected, this page should say "Your Path of Exile account is currently linked to your Twitch account."
After you've accumulated enough watch time to earn your Sun Priest's Incineration Rare Finisher Effect, you must redeem it from your Twitch Inventory before the promotional period ends. Then it will be immediately available in your microtransactions list in both Path of Exile 1 and Path of Exile 2. Sun Priest's Incineration Rare Finisher Effect will be available for purchase from the store at a later date.
We can't wait to explore the Third Edict with you! To stay up to date in the lead up to the livestream be sure to check out our Twitter, Facebook and Forums. We'll see you at GGG Live at www.twitch.tv/pathofexile!
Hackers have stolen the personal information of 1.1 million individuals in a Salesforce data theft attack, which impacted U.S. insurance giant Allianz Life in July.
Hackers leak Allianz Life data stolen in Salesforce attacks
Hackers have released stolen data belonging to US insurance giant Allianz Life, exposing 2.8 million records with sensitive information on business partners and customers in ongoing Salesforce data theft attacks.
Human resources giant Workday has disclosed a data breach after attackers gained access to a third-party customer relationship management (CRM) platform in a recent social engineering attack.
Not simply operating at a loss, absolutely dumping their prices giving away their products for almost nothing to gain market share. They are burning money at an impressive rate, just for some imaginary payoff in the future.
All MBAs and CEOs are like puppies chasing their own tails.
They want the growth because number go up good. They’ll do anything for number go up. And when number go up, they get the good and then they need to focus on next number go up.
They have no long term plan other than number go up. For the next few quarters, they can slap AI on anything and number go up. What happens if AI takes all the non manual labor jobs? Or if it turns out AI is useless and they wasted billions on snake oil? They don’t know, cause they were thinking about number go up right now, not number go up later.
It's fine, because even though the CEO eventually drives the company into the ground in pursuit of indefinite growth over long-term stability, that accomplishment is no deterrent to getting hired at another company to do it again. The idea of companies with a long-term vision and plan that provides employees with stability and a career is dead.
It’s hard to imagine that gaining market share is even meaningful right now. There’s such a profusion of stuff out there. How much does it actually mean if someone is using your product today, I wonder?
This is happening at my company. They gave us 6 months to build an AI-tool to replace a non-AI tool that has been very well built and tested for 6 years, and works perfectly well. The AI tool has some very amazing features, but it could never replace the good old tool.
The idiot in charge of the project has such a bad vision on the tool, yet likes to overhype it and oversell it so much.
The idiot in charge of the project has such a bad vision on the tool, yet likes to overhype it and oversell it so much.
AI in a nutshell.
A shame, because the underlying technology - with time and patience and less of an eye towards short term profits - could be very useful in sifting large amounts of disorganized information. But what we got was so far removed from what anyone asked for.
I can see AI as a tool in some contexts, doing some specific tasks better than an unassisted person.
But as a replacement for people, AI is a dud. I would rather be alone than have a gf AI. And yes I am taking trauma and personal+cultural baggage into account. LLM is also a product of our culture for the most part, so will have our baggage anyway. But at least in principle it could be trained to not have certain kinds of baggage, and still, I would rather deal with a person save for the simplest and lowest stake interactions.
If we want better people, we need to enfranchise them and remove most paywalls from the world. Right now the world instead of being inviting is bristling with physical, cultural, and virtual fences, saying to us, "you don't belong and aren't welcome in 99.99% of the space, and the other 0.01% will cost you." Housing for now is only a privelege. In a world like that it's a miracle the people are as decent as they are. If we want better people we have to delibarately, on purpose, choose broadbased human flourishing as a policy objective, and be ruthless to any enemies of said objective. No amnesty for the billionaires and wannabe billionaires. Instead they are trying to shove down our throats AI/LLMs and virtual worlds as replacements for an actually decent and inviting world.
I hate when they make these "holographic screen" images and the screen isn't mirrored. If the guy that's working on it is looking at it normally, then it should be mirrored for the camera.
It's actually a really good representation of how execs are viewing AI. It's a bunch of meaningless graphs and pictures of robots with the word 'AI' sprinkled over the place, the whole thing is backwards for the worker, and it's imaginary.
I can't help but laugh at the note about small start ups lead by 19-20 YOs succeeding with millions of dollars by 'partnering well' and so on.
The success or failure of these AI companies seems almost entirely driven by the amount of Venture Capital thrown at them. A company like Perplexity, with practically zero product, having been formed less than 5 years ago, but being able to put up $35 billion in an offer to buy google chrome... I can't help but suspect that a big part of it is google handing perplexity a pile of money via "Venture Capitalist" screens, to help offload Chrome to mitigate their regulatory monopoly problems. But whatever the details, them having that pile of money is sure as shit not a matter of having a good product / partnering with other industries well.
If you've read about the sudden appearance of age verification across the internet in the UK and thought it would never happen in the U.S., take note: many politicians want the same or even more strict laws.
Advances in imaging, text recognition and machine learning are transforming what can be done with collections of plants and fungi in herbaria and museums globally.
It was possible to bypass the corporate login on an internal business card ordering website and exploit it to download the details of more than 270k Intel employees/workers.
An internal “Product Hierarchy” website had easily decryptable hardcoded credentials that provided a second way to download the details of every Intel employee. More hardcoded credentials made it possible to gain admin access to the system.
An internal “Product Onboarding” website had easily decryptable hardcoded credentials that provided a third way to download the details of every Intel employee. More hardcoded credentials made it possible to gain admin access to the system.
It was possible to bypass the corporate login on Intel’s SEIMS Supplier Site and further exploit it to download the details of every Intel employee (the fourth way). Additional client-side modifications made it possible to gain full access to the system to view large amounts of confidential information about Intel’s suppliers.
It was possible to bypass the corporate login on an internal business card ordering website and exploit it to download the details of more than 270k Intel employees/workers.
An internal “Product Hierarchy” website had easily decryptable hardcoded credentials that provided a second way to download the details of every Intel employee. More hardcoded credentials made it possible to gain admin access to the system.
An internal “Product Onboarding” website had easily decryptable hardcoded credentials that provided a third way to download the details of every Intel employee. More hardcoded credentials made it possible to gain admin access to the system.
It was possible to bypass the corporate login on Intel’s SEIMS Supplier Site and further exploit it to download the details of every Intel employee (the fourth way). Additional client-side modifications made it possible to gain full access to the system to view large amounts of confidential information about Intel’s suppliers.
It was possible to bypass the corporate login on an internal business card ordering website and exploit it to download the details of more than 270k Intel employees/workers.
An internal “Product Hierarchy” website had easily decryptable hardcoded credentials that provided a second way to download the details of every Intel employee. More hardcoded credentials made it possible to gain admin access to the system.
An internal “Product Onboarding” website had easily decryptable hardcoded credentials that provided a third way to download the details of every Intel employee. More hardcoded credentials made it possible to gain admin access to the system.
It was possible to bypass the corporate login on Intel’s SEIMS Supplier Site and further exploit it to download the details of every Intel employee (the fourth way). Additional client-side modifications made it possible to gain full access to the system to view large amounts of confidential information about Intel’s suppliers.
It was possible to bypass the corporate login on an internal business card ordering website and exploit it to download the details of more than 270k Intel employees/workers.
An internal “Product Hierarchy” website had easily decryptable hardcoded credentials that provided a second way to download the details of every Intel employee. More hardcoded credentials made it possible to gain admin access to the system.
An internal “Product Onboarding” website had easily decryptable hardcoded credentials that provided a third way to download the details of every Intel employee. More hardcoded credentials made it possible to gain admin access to the system.
It was possible to bypass the corporate login on Intel’s SEIMS Supplier Site and further exploit it to download the details of every Intel employee (the fourth way). Additional client-side modifications made it possible to gain full access to the system to view large amounts of confidential information about Intel’s suppliers.
New machine learning framework bridges the embodiment gap between robots and humans and enables quadrupedal robots to perform versatile movements like pouring soda, organizing shoes, and even cleaning up cat litter.
Get a robot to ~~help around the house~~ observe your daily schedule, your habits, your every movement, and upload video, audio, sonar, lidar and radar recordings to ~~the cloud~~ probably just an unesecured S3 bucket. And then use all that to profile you, sell you stuff, and send automatic reports to law enforcement about anything that triggers the AI as a possible indicator of criminal behavior.
Oh yeah, sign me right up for the corporate-controlled self-propelled surveillance platform. Maybe I'll get two, so there's never a gap in surveillance while one is recharging.
And if you think any of that sounds paranoid, you should be aware it's already happening with robot vacuums:
Small price to pay. They can watch me do my daily physical therapy, eat, play video games and watch TV. I hate to disappoint but I am not some secret agent hiding a bunch of shit. I also wouldn’t give them access to my internet or cell phone.
It's highly unlikely that this thing would be able to operate without an Internet connection. There's no way it would have enough compute power on board to do a significant amount of image recognition (find the socks, pick up the socks, find the laundry hamper, deposit the socks in the laundry hamper) or voice command processing.
I hate to disappoint but I am not some secret agent hiding a bunch of shit.
This is a very bad attitude to take towards your personal security, and part of the point I was trying to make is that there's a very high chance that a device like this would have poorly secured software. When you look at incidents like the multiple Wyze security camera breaches, you have to expect that consumer security is always an afterthought for companies that make these kind of products. They will only start to care about it after something goes wrong and gets public attention (because it threatens sales), after which they will make a token effort to fix the problem (just enough to get a headline saying they did, so that it will stop hurting sales). So, don't just think about the manufacturer/distributor having access to the surveillance data this thing will collect. Think about random people on the internet, a criminal with an interest in blackmailing people, or some random van driving by with a bunch of network gear on the back.
Dum la ĵusa IJK en Indonezio multaj kongresanoj manifestaciis kontraŭ ”genocido en Palestino” kaj alvokis al TEJO aliĝi al la kondamno. Oni anoncis, ke la sekva IJK okazos en Katalunio. La eksigita prezidanto sensukcese provis refoje iĝi komitatano. La komitato eĉ ne donis al li parolrajton dum la kunsido. Multaj eŭropanoj spertis stomakproblemojn kaj oni ofte aŭdis la anglan, Tyron Surmon rakontas en sia raporto.
I'm away from my desk for the next few days and so I'll likely be posting more open ended discussion questions.
Recently I've been thinking more about the decline of forums of yesteryear and how hosting a forum has always been rather niche.
That got me
I'm away from my desk for the next few days and so I'll likely be posting more open ended discussion questions.
Recently I've been thinking more about the decline of forums of yesteryear and how hosting a forum has always been rather niche.
That got me thinking about how one of Reddit's "killer features" was that just anybody could create a subreddit. The same could be said about Facebook groups as well.
You don't get that with forums, only the admin can create categories/forums, and by extension that usually limited the rise of general interest boards, and more towards niche topic-focused boards. It also meant that basically every board had a "general discussion" board or "random" board.
Would there be interest in NodeBB supporting something like this... Basically, the ability for anyone to set up a category and instantly moderate it, and build your own sub community inside a community? Does this ruin the magic of forums?
Geez I gotta find a way to demo this to Fedi people.
So, Ravelry never meant to be a social site AFAIK. They had a handful of "Forums" that were to be online help oriented, dialogue with either the site's developers, or their contracted or volunteer knitting & yarn & pattern experts. Then they added "groups" which included a forum, and some Pages (static info for the Group), few other things AND IT WENT NUTS.
And it has somehow remained the most civilized social network ever.
There's no "main" vs. "sub", other than by default all users join (and can leave) the "Big 6" official Ravelry forums.
Groups are all subject to Ravelry's TOS but can be created by anyone, any topic. There are lots of abandoned or inactive ones, and they could probably do a clean up (but also probably ... don't need to bother?)
Ravelry users belong to as many groups as they want to bother with, under one ID.
It's a unique site. Even if there was no emulating it, it's a case study.
Years ago when i first looked at NodeBB, I was thinking about it for a discussion-focused social network (kind of like the old tribe.net, or Facebook/Myspace groups), and this was a key area where forum software in general didn't meet my needs -- and it wasn't obvious how to extend it. So I rolled my own as a prototype and it's stayed as a prototype for a dozen years because trying to do a full-fledged implementation that's maintainable and scalable requires implementing a forum system, decidedly non-trivial.
I'm away from my desk for the next few days and so I'll likely be posting more open ended discussion questions.
Recently I've been thinking more about the decline of forums of yesteryear and how hosting a forum has always been rather niche.
That got me
I mean sure, I would recommend that option be off by default with a way to turn on in the configuration file, but otherwise it sounds like a great idea. Btw, why does your post appear with a content warning which is identical to the post text?
One way around it is to send summary with the full text... but then some other software thinks it's an uber long content warning. There's no winning :sweat_smile:
### Describe the bug with a clear and concise description of what the bug is.
* Mastodon in the short-to-medium term is considering broader support for non-`Note` object types, as part of [FEP-b2b8](https://w3id.
esoteric_programmer@social.stealthy.club respectfully there is no other way to get an Article object ingested by Mastodon without being munged without shoving it all into summary.
Summary should contain a truncation probably, but other than that it's GtS that is "doing it wrong".
Re: General interest mega-boards and forum sustainability
if we weren't constrained by what mastodon does or it implemented the article activity type properly, would this still be done the same way? yeah, I suppose technically gts is wrong for not implementing the mastodon behaviour as well because it's nonstandard, same as they mandate authorised fetch like functionality for everything that federates with gts, but yet they support some other nonstandard things themselves, which exist only because mastodon does it this way, so they're kinda inconsistent there. I wish more servers would implement the client-server part of the activity pub protocol for example, but that too is blocked because everyone making clients for the fedi targets the mastodon API from what I know, so yeah, sad indeed. Btw, other threadiverse platforms, like lemmy and py-fed, don't have this issue on my end, where I could follow them because they support authorised fetch that is. I wonder how do they do it? or...hmm, maybe they don't work properly on mastodon while they do on gts?
Basically if Mastodon were not in the equation we would send an Article with a name and no summary at all. Threadiverse implementations handle that perfectly already.
GtS actually did implement the Mastodon behaviour! Content warnings were their thing (afaik), done by adopting summary as the CW. GtS followed suit but applied this to all objects, not just notes. So in this case GtS went a bit further is all.
Which I suppose is so fine insofar that sometimes long form content is best read on the originating site, but end users want their content read natively on Mastodon 🙂
@julian So in other words, if an Article-type object has a summary, Mastodon discards the title, shows the summary and links to the original, and if it doesn't have a summary, Mastodon shows the title and links to the original?
Its "traditional" behaviour since ca. 2017 was that it either showed the title and the link or, in the absence of a title, only the link with zero context, and when there was a summary, it used the summary as a content warning.
I'm still not sure whether Mastodon is limited by all interfaces available for it only being geared towards old-school plain-text microblogging and incapable of handling fully formatted HTML content, or rather by the devs' stubborn unwillingness to let anything in that's too much not old-school plain-text microblogging.
This is an excellent idea, as demonstrated by the fact that many self-created communities (≈categories) on Lemmy have achieved significant global success. However, Lemmy's implementation is unsatisfactory and needs to be adjusted. I am the administrator of a Lemmy instance as well as a NodeBB instance, and I must admit that at the height of Lemmy's development, we never allowed autonomous community creation. This was due to some issues that arose with mastodon when homonymous communities and users existed. It was also because it was impossible to implement an approval process or ensure that the quality of the communities met the instance's standards. For this reason, the process for creating communities by users consisted of a request from the registered user and a creation reserved for administrators.
What I would like to see in NodeBB is the ability to create communities, but keep them in a sort of "limbo," a "section" where new communities remain until they reach acceptable quality levels for the instance's standards.
This is in addition to the entire user credit system, which I imagine could also be set up to achieve a suitable score for building a community.
Perhaps I'm asking too much, but NodeBB's development has been so impressive so far that I wouldn't be surprised if you could implement a feature like this.
Pareidolia è l’umana condizione psicologica, presente in ogni singolo rappresentante della specie, che induce gli osservatori di uno spazio vuoto ad individuare in esso la forma riconoscibile di un volto.
I found an old iPhone in a drawer this morning with other old iPhones (some of which can be salvaged) and this one was so swollen that it popped the screen off. Definitely a fire hazard I hadn’t thought of as much.
Definitely recycle any lithium battery showing signs of swelling as they have a risk of exploding I think.
Explore the hidden dangers of lithium batteries, including thermal runaway, electrical and thermal overloads, and mechanical damage. Learn essential safety practices for storage and handling.
I’m on the train back to Montreal from New York, where I attended HOPE_16 over the weekend. I wanted to capture some thoughts while they were fresh, even though they might not be fully formed.
HOPE (Hackers On Planet Earth) is a technology and informatio
I’m on the train back to Montreal from New York, where I attended HOPE_16 over the weekend. I wanted to capture some thoughts while they were fresh, even though they might not be fully formed.
HOPE (Hackers On Planet Earth) is a technology and information security conference sponsored by 2600 Magazine. The SWF had two points of presence at the event this year: I gave an hour-long talk about the Fediverse which was streamed live. We also hosted the Fediverse Village, which turned out to be mostly a booth in the non-profits area of the vendors floor.
We had people streaming by all day long Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I had thought the Village was going to be more like a hang-out room, so I was caught off guard on prep, but I put out all the ActivityPub and Social Web Foundation stickers I had, covers for the ActivityPub book, and a stack of CoSocial.ca stickers to boot. But there was a definite stone soup aspect to the village area: people brought by schwag for Fediverse software like WriteFreely, instances like GardenState.social and Masto.nyc, and projects like DWeb.
I’d hoped to have more structured discussions, including a meetup for Fediverse governance and a hackathon. But it turned out to be a lot more loosey-goosey than I expected, and most of the weekend was spent talking to other Fediverse fans, and helping people who came up to the booth to ask about the Fediverse.
I think I expected because of the level of technical expertise that was shown at the event that we’d be speaking to only true believers. But there were many people there who hadn’t heard of the Fediverse, and who were excited to try it out. One thing that struck me that was an advantage for these people over commercial social networks was the option to get out from under the “real names” policies of many platforms. It’s hard to remember that the alternative to the Fediverse that most people are familiar with are services that require a real-looking legal name to be used, and force you to send a scan of a government ID if they’re at all suspicious.
The other thing that struck me was how many people came to the booth saying that they’d registered for a Mastodon account at some point, and were really excited to get it reactivated, but forgot which server it was on and didn’t want to register for another. I think that’s a real pain point for a lot of people — and one we should do better at solving.
I plan to come back to HOPE next year. I’d love to have more schwag for Fediverse software, services, and platforms. I’d like to have a way to get people signed up and onboarded for the Fediverse right at the table. And I’d like to have some more formal get-together events. There are spaces to meet at HOPE if you know how to set it up — I’m going to try to use them better next time.
Thanks to everyone who came to the Fediverse Village, my talk, or just talked to me around the HOPE event. I was energised by the people and the technology that was happening, and I look forward to engaging again.
One third of Americans say that social media has negatively impacted their mental health. Almost two thirds say that social media has been bad for democracy. But the majority of us still use social media on a daily basis.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
This is grounded in the assertion that a website’s HTML/CSS is a protected computer program that an ad blocker intervenes in the in-memory execution structures (DOM, CSSOM, rendering tree), this constituting unlawful reproduction and modification.
Dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard of.
Will they make Reader Mode in browsers illegal, too?
What about "dark mode" or "resize font" when the website doesn't offer those accessibility features?
Will they make the "mute" function on browser tabs illegal, since it modifies the website author's intention to play audio upon page load?
I will continue to block ads, spyware, trackers, unwanted elements, popups, and social media links, "illegal" or not.
This is exactly it. It has always been up to the browser to decide how to render a website. There have always been differences. The idea that a browser can honour or ignore parts of the content has always been part of it.
If anything should be illegal, it should be websites 's constant attempts to bypass user preferences. Some of that shit is plain malware.
I speak German legalese (don't ask) so I went to the actual source and read up on the decision.
The way I read it, the higher court simply stated that the Appeals court didn't consider the impact of source code to byte code transformation in their ruling, meaning they had not provided references justifying the fact they had ignored the transformation. Their contention is that there might be protected software in the byte code, and if the ad blocker modified the byte code (either directly or by modifying the source), then that would constitute a modification of code and hence run afoul of copyright protections as derivative work.
Sounds more like, "Appeals court has to do their homework" than "ad blockers illegal."
The ruling is a little painful to read, because as usual the courts are not particularly good at technical issues or controversies, so don't quote me on the exact details. In particular, they use the word Vervielfältigung a lot, which means (mass) copy, which is definitely not happening here. The way it reads, Springer simply made the case that a particular section of the ruling didn't have any reasoning or citations attached and demanded them, which I guess is fair. More billable hours for the lawyers!
[Edit: added "The way I read it, coz I am not 100% sure, as explained later.]
and if the ad blocker modified the byte code (either directly or by modifying the source), then that would constitute a modification of code and hence run afoul of copyright protections as derivative work.
Insanity - modifying code that runs on your machine in no way is even remotely related to copyright.
Cracking code/verification systems on your computer is also code running on your system, there are literally people in prison for running the code that cracks a program, BECAUSE of copyright laws.
So I'm not sure your setting how bad it already is for users.
(What should be, is not what we are talking about, for the record)
I know I'm gonna get a lot of hate for this because everyone here despises ads, but I can see an argument for it. I don't know if it is legaly sound, but morally, it boils down to the fact that you are literally using a service without paying for it. The website is offering you a product and the payment is ads. If you don't want to pay for it, don't use it, otherwise you really are just stealing it (even if that "stealing" costs very little to the site). I personally use an adblocker and agree that ads on most sites are obnoxious, but I also feel like people make adblockers out to be completely black and white, which they are not.
'using a service without paying for it' alright. do you want us to sign contractual agreements before visiting websites? Most companies want people to use mobile apps these days because of the legal implications of editing those apps. The ads are baked in.
it comes down to the philosophy of internet systems you ascribe to.
I'd like to see your reaction to that television patent that forces people to stand up and clap after the advertisement.
I'd like to see your reaction to me placing sticky notes on my physical screen over the advertisement's location such that I never perceive the content.
I'd like to see you kneel, subordinate human worker. Do my bidding. Watch my ads. It's the moral thing to do.
I'm not advocating for you being forced physically to watch ads, I'm saying that as it stands, ads are the payment method and you actively blocking them means you're not paying for what you're using. I'm not criticising people for that, I'm simply stating a fact. If everyone on the internet was to use adblockers, most of the web would die out, and first to die would be actually useful sites that provide helpful information that they invested time and money into making, such as news, review sites, etc. Perhaps the threat of adblockers itself is benefitial for the internet as it might force websites to find alternate, better payment methods, but I don't see what you could replace ads with since people won't be willing to pay a monthly subscription for every site they visit, and most people won't pay for donations if you try a donations based model.
If everyone on the internet was to use adblockers, most of the web would die out
Websites existed before internet ads came about, and while it may be true that most would die without ads I'd be happy to see them go because the vast majority of websites have no value and only exist to try and make a few bucks off ads.
Hosting for most websites these days is virtually free. For about 80% of mine I only have to pay for the domain names, and I have no desire to serve ads to my visitors under the guise of covering costs.
The alternatives are directly charging for access to a service, or providing it for free and relying on donations or payment just for extra/bonus features/content. These methods are very successful when something is actually worth paying for.
Hosting costs heavily depend on the type of service, YouTube's costs are very much not negligible, but it is true that for most sites it is very cheap. But hosting costs aren't the only cost, many sites provide useful reviews, news, or testing that costs them money to produce, which they pay for with ads. Yes, some sites survive using alternative payment methods, but I'm skeptical that this can scale to the rest of the internet. My fear is that we'll end up in a situation where 90% of the internet is just YouTube, Facebook, Reddit and other giants and people get all of their news, reviews and other information from those sites, which I think is worse than having ads.
Eh, next try (Nr. 7? 8?) of Axel Springer, a tabloid that wanted to declare their site as a protected piece of art you aren't allowed to modify (block stuff).
You can make ad blockers illegal, but you can't actually enforce it unless you have a dystopian totalitarian government with a secret police to track down anyone using one. Does Germany have that?
In that case, make sure the judge gets to watch 4x 10 minute ads for every 30 minutes of watching anything in 720p after having paid in full for the highest tier 4K subscription plan.
The wealthy people will just pay to have the ads removed.
As always, this law doesn't exist to benefit workers like you and me. It exists to benefit our rulers and should be another example of how government representatives do not represent their populace.
maybe in the future a service offers a flat monthly fee to not have any ads and distributes the money to all of the content platforms that would otherwise show ads. basically it's like a little government taxing users and giving the money to the capital owning class all over again
Another way to subsidize a very small handful of extremely large businesses that are already richer than some countries, and outright kill small actors? Sign me up.
Germany is the biggest economy in Europe and if this somehow passes it could spill over to the EU commission in no time. The Brussels effect could then take care of the rest. Laughing off fascist laws because they do not affect you right now is exactly the reaction fascists like them want you to have so they can corner you.
I agree, you're right. I'm kind of sick of this firehose of bullshit raining down from on high. Freedom is dying in so many different contexts all at the same time.
Stasera, per puro caso dell’espressione della consueta disperazione, il catgaming ha preso una piega inaspettata, ma graditissima. Infatti, mi era venuto un po’ a caso in mente di cercare se esistesse qualcosa tipo un server privato per VOEZ, che è quel giochino musicale che ho sul tablet per marcire con lo spirito mentre tengo tuttavia […]
Sonolus gioconlus musicante super figo ganzo clonante tutti gli altri e afancul!!!
Stasera, per puro caso dell’espressione della consueta disperazione, il catgaming ha preso una piega inaspettata, ma graditissima. Infatti, mi era venuto un po’ a caso in mente di cercare se esistesse qualcosa tipo un server privato per VOEZ, che è quel giochino musicale che ho sul tablet per marcire con lo spirito mentre tengo tuttavia la mente e le manine allenate… e ho trovato decisamente di molto meglio; classica “cercavo rame e ho trovato oro” situazione. 😳👍
Per chi non lo avesse presente, non c’è molto da dire… è di circa 10 anni fa, ed è bellino: tutta l’estetica è di quel pulito-sognante stile anime, le canzoni sono varie pazzerelle (niente roba normie che va dallo zzz al bleh, insomma), ed è in generale uno dei pochi che mi piace. Ha anche una versione per Switch che, a differenza di quella mobile, costa un tot di base ma poi non ha acquisti in-app, ha tutto già sbloccato di suo, e funziona offline… ma, ovviamente, se sono a casa voglio usare il tablet da 10 pollici anziché il merdoso di Nintendo, e se sono in giro non voglio portarmi un secondo rettangolo di 6 pollici + bordi enormi oltre al telefono, per cui lasciamo stare. 🥱
Non so se ho allora trovato davvero cosa cercavo, perché dalle pareti del web mi sono spuntati diversi APK MOD, che non ho (ancora?) provato… ma ho trovato 1 cosa più pazza: un giochino di ritmo chiamato Sonolus, fatto per essere modulare, avendo un motore di base che può essere esteso con delle API per ricreare virtualmente qualunque rhythm game al di sopra di questa singola infrastruttura comune… oh, tanta roba in teoria. E nella pratica, che consiste in un APK di appena ~100 MB, il miraggio si conferma realtà: questo pezzo di pseudo-software, aggiunto l’URL del server che fornisce i dati per far comportare il gioco come un clone di VOEZ, è effettivamente tanto gustoso quanto pareva da lontano!!! 😻
La cosa bella di questo, quindi, è che non solo ho a (quasi) tutti gli effetti VOEZ ma con tutte le sue canzoni aggratis (+ custom, credo, senza necessitare di APK strani)… ma ho praticamente VOEZ che funziona senza Google Play Services, anziché freezarsi all’avvio senza spiegazioni, quindi posso tornare ad averlo pure sullo Ximifonino… e questo è davvero l’inizio della megafine, cazzo che bello. La fregatura sta nel fatto che ad ogni fine canzone esce una pubblicità, e gli acquisti in-app in realtà ci sono sotto forma di abbonamenti per togliere le pubblicità, o personalizzazioni del profilo online… roba di cui se ne fa a meno (anche perché le pubblicità basta bloccarle a livello di OS, ma finché sono solo statiche e non video sono accettabili, non danno fastidio). 🤗
Non ho ancora provato i vari motori di gioco disponibili a parte il clone di VOEZ, perché sono una marea… e quello, a dire il vero, comunque non è una ricreazione perfetta: sul look ci siamo, e anche sull’hear, ma sul feel non tanto, visto che la gestione degli input è parecchio più severa, e il margine di errore è abbastanza più basso da far si che, una canzone che sul VOEZ originale riesco tranquillamente a fare a difficoltà massima, qui mi esce un mezzo schifo persino a livello intermedio (e il video qui fa ampia mostra dei miei problemi di skill, in questo senso)… però, visti i vantaggi, dovrò abituarmici; quantomeno, se non sul tablet, per giocarci sul telefono, dove l’alternativa sarebbe il niente. 🔥
Assurdo che NON lagghi sullo Xiaomi con tanto di registrazione schermo attiva, ma, purtroppo, ha anche dei difetti… tipo che il core non è open-source — ma tutto ciò che ci gira attorno, inclusi i plugin che clonano i vari giochini, pare proprio di si — e che l’APK ha librerie solo per ARMv7 e ARMv8, niente x86+64 — ma poteva andare molto peggio: poteva essere solo ARM 64 bit; e invece, con doppie lib + supporto ad Android Nougat, si installa anche sul telefono di un pesce palla (non ironicamente). C’è anche per iOS, ma di quello non ce ne fotte; dispiace non ci sia una build Windows e/o HTML5, piuttosto, ma il gioco è appena alla v1.0.0, quindi sarà questione di tempo. Per me, già il fatto che il gioco parta senza connessione Internet e faccia tranquillamente giocare i livelli salvati, è sufficiente a godere… 👾
Sonolus VOEZ: memos.octt.eu.org/m/ZUmx6p2trC… (devo ancora capire, per mia pace mentale, come hostare un mio clone del server con tutti i dati, che nella repo git non ci sono… però top.)
AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor
in reply to Pro • • •Anything but solve the main issue: pirate sites offer a better service, with no stupid licensing problems, having everything on a single app and without geolocking bullshit.
When the pirate alternative it's not just cheaper but also way more convenient, it's no wonder they are losing customers.
like this
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Rai
in reply to AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor • • •Netflix: Pay for 4k, max at 720p in Firefox or Librewolf
Trackers: Don’t pay, actual 4k
cmnybo
in reply to Rai • • •Rai
in reply to cmnybo • • •toad31
in reply to AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor • • •I absolutely love rubbing it in the face of people subscribing to streaming services that I get more content without even having to enter in my credit card info.
Brains > wallets, every time.
Zwiebel
in reply to Pro • • •SpikesOtherDog
in reply to Zwiebel • • •If three or four people did that and shared their library with friends then they would have a massive catalog between them.
Legally, you are allowed to make backups of the media you own (in the US). If a group of friends got together and shared their media libraries, proving that only one person was accessing the media at a time, then there would be no issue.
yoriaiko
in reply to Pro • • •like this
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GenosseFlosse
in reply to yoriaiko • • •like this
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mybuttnolie
in reply to GenosseFlosse • • •suswrkr
in reply to yoriaiko • • •underline960
in reply to Pro • • •like this
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frongt
in reply to underline960 • • •Mr. Tambourine Man
in reply to Pro • • •like this
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puppinstuff
in reply to Pro • • •There’s just too many shit shows packaged along a few gems to make subscribing to the whole lot worthwhile.
And as a Canadian right now it feels downright patriotic to divert money from US-owned streaming companies who region-lock my purchases so I have to buy terrestrial cable to view them.
Aviandelight
in reply to Pro • • •like this
Endymion_Mallorn, JowlesMcGee e metaStatic like this.
nullptr
in reply to Aviandelight • • •toad31
in reply to nullptr • • •And they only do it to maximize profit off of people's low standards.
It has never been about putting food on the table or keeping the lights on. It's always been about fleecing idiots with more money than sense.
cerebralhawks
in reply to Pro • • •There’s an easy solution to this. I pay for Apple Music because I get access to pretty much all the music I want. I can sideload what they don’t have, which isn’t much. They have better audio quality, and aren’t stiffing artists to pay some right wing nutjob science denier like the other streaming platform of note. I pay because I love music and want to support what I love. Why isn’t there a similar service for TV and movies? That’s the solution. Let us pay for what we love and make it easy. Apple figured it out with music. Valve figured it out with games.
I think they don’t want to solve the problem. I think they want to solve a different problem. I think they’re making this a problem so they can push legislation to protect their profits.
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Marshezezz
in reply to cerebralhawks • • •like this
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cerebralhawks
in reply to Marshezezz • • •Absolutely. But to clarify, Apple Music pays more per stream than Spotify and others. Spotify trends to cut bigger checks to popular musicians because they have more subscribers.
Also — someone feel free to fact check this — I’ve heard that if, say, you put an album out on BandCamp but not streaming, and I buy it and sideload it into both services, and you later add it to both services, Spotify won’t pay you for my streams because I’m streaming the sideloaded copy whereas Apple will match it. I keep the metadata if it’s different but you’d get paid for the streams because it matches it.
metaStatic
in reply to cerebralhawks • • •Because the Artists involved don't see the royalties in those industries. They've already been paid and the rights holders want to extract every drop of profit possible. and the sad truth is that splintering streaming worked for a very long time to this end.
Clent
in reply to cerebralhawks • • •Because Steve Jobs died before he could hypnotize the executives into do it.
Only half kidding, people forget that's how we got all the music labels together, it was Apple iTunes Store which later became streaming.
There were a few weird awkward music stores but Apple did it better and this was early 2000's when their brand was barely recovering from near bankruptcy.
Netflix streaming didn't launch until 2007 and didn't really take off until 2011, the same year Jobs died.
Netflix was the only one that was positioned to do it but they couldn't pull it together because they didn't have the reality distortion field that Jobs had. Netflix had to push into original programming instead to survive and the brand has long since enshittified.
Can't help but wonder if whatever pitch Jobs used to sell record labels couldn't have been reworked to convince the movie studios.
cerebralhawks
in reply to Clent • • •Here’s what’s wild though. At first with music streaming it was largely just American, Western, popular music. I left Spotify for Apple Music because the latter had Japanese music and I was tired of sideloading it into Spotify. Now Spotify has Japanese music too.
The Japanese music market is super weird. Anime is to Japanese music in the 2010s and 2020s what MTV was to western music in the ‘80s and ‘90s. It’s the international hit maker. So anime is bringing western eyes to all this music, not you go in YouTube and a lot of them have “YouTube edition” videos that are like half the video. Because they don’t fully trust us I guess? Sometimes the video is on Apple Music though.
I know Japanese music is more expensive than ours. I mean like the cost of a CD. So when bands would release a Japanese album, they’d add bonus tracks to help increase the value. Western bands do it too. Look up an album you know on Wikipedia and see if there’s a Japanese version with some bonus tracks.
I’m wondering how Apple Music and later Spotify more or less tamed the Japanese music market but TV and movies are so much harder.
cRazi_man
in reply to Pro • • •“We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.”
When what you're selling isn't appealing, then people won't buy it. It's not super complicated.
Blackmist
in reply to cRazi_man • • •Realistically, if there was a service that had everything on it that was past the cinema/pay per view stage, and was a reasonable price (say £35 a month, the price of two current streaming services), then I would probably be on that instead of Jellyfin.
And I mean everything back to the dawn of time. Anything you want, TV series, movies, the lot. Original versions, directors cuts, etc. George fucking Lucas, I'm looking at you here.
But there isn't. There never will be. Because they're all in a race to grab as much money as they can, before literal heat death engulfs the whole planet.
ryathal
in reply to Blackmist • • •cRazi_man
in reply to Blackmist • • •They could make a Steam style store for movies to buy individual movies that then stay on your account. Deep deep discounts on some oldie movies intermittently. People would eat that shit up and buy whole movie libraries to keep. Way more movies than they could watch (like people do with a Steam library).
I've got my server more stable now so it works a lot more reliably for Jellyfin. Before now, my wife would wholeheartedly agree with this and insist on paying for Netflix
Derpgon
in reply to cRazi_man • • •infinitesunrise
in reply to cRazi_man • • •RvTV95XBeo
in reply to Blackmist • • •This is the Spotify/Apple Music/etc model and the reason why music piracy is practically dead (yes, I know there are a few sites still going).
These services are doing their best to find ways to push people back to piracy but for now they
keep it at bay through competition to provide better service.
If there was a catchall video streaming service where all publishers released and got a cut of their plays it would be game over for piracy. Fortunately that'll never happen.
jatone
in reply to RvTV95XBeo • • •Derpgon
in reply to cRazi_man • • •I don't think I've pirated a game since I started working and actually spending on Steam. Except Borderlands 3, because fuck Epic Games Store, their dumb fucking exclusivity deals, and their shitty launcher - they won't EVER see a penny from me.
I bought it on Steam a year later when it came out, on sale, with DLCs.
toad31
in reply to cRazi_man • • •Stamets
in reply to Pro • • •frongt
in reply to Stamets • • •coyotino [he/him]
in reply to Stamets • • •like this
metaStatic likes this.
pH3ra
in reply to Pro • • •HobbitFoot
in reply to Pro • • •like this
clove likes this.
HakunaHafada
in reply to HobbitFoot • • •StocktonCrushed
in reply to HobbitFoot • • •Streaming services had it so fucking good, too.
When the price was $9 a month I'd forget it even existed and go months without using a particular service I was paying for. But I didn't mind it because sometimes I'd get the urge to go watch some cult classic I hadn't seen in awhile, or guests could use it.
And I could eat that $9 each month because it was the equivalent of skipping one McDonald's burger a month.
Now? I use them one at a time and pirate anything not on that service. And if the cheapest option they have is ad-supported I skip paying entirely and head straight out to sea.
HobbitFoot
in reply to StocktonCrushed • • •Of course they had it good. Studios didn't understand streaming and so sold long term rights to Netflix for pennies. Now, everyone is cutting out cable, making it impossible for those studios to fund new production on cable and broadcast alone.
New production is going to hit a cliff as streaming isn't going to be able to fund golden era of television any more.
Aggravationstation
in reply to Pro • • •That Weird Vegan
in reply to Aggravationstation • • •sp3ctr4l
in reply to Pro • • •Action?
Reaction.
Choice?
Consequence.
thedrizzle
in reply to Pro • • •Streaming issues aside, what is this?
Why the hell are we posting this crap instead of linking the original article?
theguardian.com/film/2025/aug/…
Can’t pay, won’t pay: impoverished streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy
Guardian staff reporter (The Guardian)Marshezezz
in reply to Pro • • •jonesey71
in reply to Marshezezz • • •like this
metaStatic likes this.
QuazarOmega
in reply to jonesey71 • • •porksnort
in reply to jonesey71 • • •jonesey71
in reply to porksnort • • •nullptr
in reply to Marshezezz • • •nonewanted
in reply to nullptr • • •“progress”? I think you mean “profit”.
There’s nothing really progressive about LLMs. But, some people are making a lot of money and others are pouring money in and hoping for a big payday.
InvalidName2
in reply to Pro • • •Hopefully this won't get me too much negative reaction: I'm not a proud pirate. I'd rather not pirate at all. I'm kind of ashamed that it's come to this.
There were a few solid years where I literally did not do it and felt no desire to, back when streaming was new, and there were only a few serious players. I'd love to return to that era, but I know it will never exist again.
So now, I and other members of my family, pay a ridiculous amount of money for a rotating suite of services, trying to do things the right way, and still, there are way too many times when we can't find anything we want to watch on any of those services and/or the thing we wanted to watch is not available on any of those services.
Finally broke down and just said fuck it. I tried to support this mess as best I could in hopes it would get better, but fully knowing it wouldn't. When it definitely did not get better I said no more.
sibachian
in reply to InvalidName2 • • •you could account share? most services banned account sharing last year afaik.
and anyway; how is it a bad thing to reject predatory services?
piracy wad literally always a service problem. they solved it by netflix monopoly providing a great service people wanted and piracy was practically dead for an entire decade - then they all got greedy and we're all headed back to piracy.
the solution here seems pretty obvious, and i think even the execs are aware of it.
nullptr
in reply to sibachian • • •bender223
in reply to Pro • • •Oh noes! Who could have seen this coming?
/s
like this
metaStatic likes this.
A_Chilean_Cyborg
in reply to bender223 • • •krunklom
in reply to Pro • • •I was recently travelling and tried to sign up for Netflix and couldn't. Because I didn't have a phone number in the country I was in. And they block vpns.
You can see where this is headed. Mullvad needs the money more than Netflix anyway.
toad31
in reply to krunklom • • •riseup.net/en/vpn
Here's a VPN that's available for free and funded by donations.
I'd say they are providing a better service and need money more than mullvad.
/home/pineapplelover
in reply to Pro • • •wooki
in reply to Pro • • •hornedfiend
in reply to Pro • • •I received an email from them last week, telling me my current plan is no longer available and I either switch to a more premium one or a lower ad-driven tier.
That’s atrocious and will be the final nail in my subscription. I’m already running a jellyfin powered infrastructure and I will cancel my Netflix. Screw them, Black Mirror loving MFs.
Edit: wording.
katy ✨
in reply to Pro • • •outhouseperilous
in reply to katy ✨ • • •iegod
in reply to Pro • • •NauticalNoodle
in reply to Pro • • •Eyedust
in reply to Pro • • •We may put up our hats for a while, but we never pull in the sails.
Translation: I'm more than happy to pay for a fair service, but I'm not stupid enough to believe it will last.
Garry
in reply to Pro • • •nullptr
in reply to Garry • • •Brunette6256
in reply to Pro • • •