Comment on It’s Surprisingly Easy to Live Without an Amazon Prime Subscription
abraxas@sh.itjust.works 9 months agoI’ve used playnite a few times. I always forget about it for some reason or another. Gog has a built-in tool like playnite and I fail to use that, too.
Still do that. For over 25yrs I nourish my library. Just the MP3s made room for FLACs.
I still have it somewhere I’m sure, but I really gave up on it, for the convenience of youtube music of all things. Literally every song I ever had including a couple super-obscure albums I’d lost. And it’s SO convenient. It just works for me everywhere I want it.
Yeah ok, I get that. I’ve got 2 servers running 24/7 with proxmox/hyper-v, so those tools all run in seperate VMs. But especially in this case, it’s practically no maintenance
Every time I mean to start setting up servers, some reason (or my wife) talk me out of it. I’m jealous. It’s on my bucket list. I’m the only guy I know who has run server clusters professionally who has never had his own.
I must say that i’m in the warez-scene since the early 90s and I never had a virus-problem.
I have had a couple over the years; usually use the “nuke and restart” solution. Only one was REALLY major and I was never sure whether it was software or a dumb family member. My password-protected screenshare app went live one day and started buying Chinese gift cards with a clearly automated script. Thank god someone was in the office when it happened and they only got through a couple hundred dollars before we pulled the plug and called our bank.
You won’t see that elsewhere here. No way. First you gotta prove it wasn’t YOU that broke it at home. I could on for hours…
I know resellers hate Amazon returns, but they agree to them. I will literally make buying decisions based on the presence or lack of the “Free Returns” flag. I would literally pay for “return insurance” if AllState started to do that, too. I hate return hassles.
Dyskolos@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
Can’t complain about convenience. I use MediaMonkey since v0.1. It actually replaced my self-made music-archiver because it was simply superior and I couldn’t match it. And for mobile we just sync our favourite playlists and be completely mobile even when there’s no net. It’s the only serious tool for serious collectors :-)
lol. Sorry :) My wife actually talks me into it while I try to talk myself out of it (i’m a horrible cheap fuck). I actually managed to hook her on the smart-home, as she runs into walls now when the system is down because there is no light. We forgot how to use switches :-) Seriously though: You should. If you have some kind of passion for it, just do it. I don’t need it professionally anymore (long retired) but just love to keep up and tinker. And nothing beats a working self-hosted something.
Oucchhh. That could’ve gone bad. Ok, granted, with family members working on the same machine/network, danger rises. We have a global firewall and a global ad-/tracker/malware-blocker. Wifey often nags that some sites won’t work, and then it’s manual-fix-time for me, but so she can surf freely without fear. I don’t even have any virus-/malware-scanner-crap installed anymore for decades. I occasionally check manually if something’s hooked somewhere and that’s it. And when I’m really really really suspicious of something, there’s a sandbox. Honestly more “normal” software phone home and do shit i don’t want than warez ever did. Every effing software wants to phone home, install 3 services no-one needs and what not.
And don’t get me started on the “purchase software and own it” to “rent it for extortionate prices and never have anything”. It so became the standard everywhere. Wait…what were we originally even talking about? :-)
abraxas@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
I think that’s one of the ones I tried. It’s just more convenient to have unlimited access to music, whether I own it or not.
What do you do for lights? Like motion/position detection into each room? Or voice control?
I’ve wanted to get into automation several times, and I’m never settled enough in a house to spend the money. There’s always some reason we want to move and I don’t want to do all that permanent work to move. I even worked at an IoT company for a few years on backend and embedded code, so I have literally no excuse…
Not sure where that is. That would be nice (except that they could reduce the cashback anyway). Consumer Protections these days have been eroding in the US. Even our so-called consumer protection laws have landmines to protect the businesses.
Dyskolos@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
Yeah sure, I get it. I actually use Tidal Hifi. But not really for streaming but for downloading and discovering new music. Has its benefits for sure.
It’s mostly based on motion. If it’s dark enough in a room and you enter it, light goes into a - we call it motion-light - cyan. So it’s clear to us it’s automatic. If no motion after 2 minutes is detected it slowly fades out for like 20s so you got a chance to “renew” the light by moving. Unless you switch a scene on, then it just stays on. If you switch it off, the automatic mode is on again. Took a good while to fool-proof it :-)
Voice control too, yes. But also homebrew. No Alexa-shit or similar. Also control by watch, or even outside over telegram.
Oh dude, we moved like 5 times in the last 5 years :-) Good thing is, we take the stuff with us. I use zigbee, not wiring. Wiring is superior, but also very fixed. So yeah, I regularly have to place everything again and adapt the scripts a little bit. But nothing much changes actually. Just a lil more extra-work after moving. Awesome, for an IoT-company I would even consider working again :-)
Lol, excuses…It’s a time- and money-sink, there you have great excuses. Also at least once a month I have to tinker here and there, or change a battery. Since Star Trek i wanted a home that reacts to voice and does things automatically. And tablets which give a great overview. Or, as mentioned, our watches. Automatic doors would be awesome now! And they gotta do the WOOOSH-sound!