Usenet. Plenty of music in lossless (FLAC) format. Use NZBGeek and DrunkenSlug as indexers. Sabnzbd to download. Lidarr and Prowlarr to automate everything. Add an artist, click to download an album, and it’ll search for the album, download the NZB file, send it to Sabnzbd to download, then tag and organize the files once it’s done downloading.

For music I’d just get a block account: https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/wiki/providerdeals/. Essentially, you pay for some amount of data (can usually get 1TB for US$5-15), and they usually don’t have an expiry date, so it could last you for years. Some providers have monthly plans with unlimited data, but a block account will end up way cheaper if you just want music.

For rarer music, Soulseek is very good. It’s a peer-to-peer service from the KaZaA and Napster era, but somehow it’s survived until now. Since it’s peer to peer, downloads are quite a bit slower (you’re relying on the upload speed of individual users - each download comes from only one user) but it’s a great community.

If you have a home server, slskd is very good. Modern web UI and there’s plugins to integrate it into Lidarr (Tubifarry)

I have the opposite problem. It tells me to return the item to the bagging area even though I didn’t remove anything. I end up throwing my keys or shopping bag or something into the bagging area to make it happy

Oops. Fixed!

Ah I see. I understand now! I thought you may have been one of the people that is still saying X11 is superior, even though Wayland is very usable now.

Ive been hitting weird issues in Chrome too, and had to disable GPU compositing to fix them. Unfortunately I have to use Chrome at work - we’re not allowed to use other browsers, as only Chrome has the endpoint security functionality they require (provided by Chrome Enterprise Premium). No other browsers have or can provide the same features.

The US has freedom of speech, so having the government vet every poster is kind of a problem

That’s true, but it could be the platforms doing the vetting rather than the government.

Is it any different to requiring an ID in order to use a service, like what Discord is doing (as required for legal compliance)?

I guess I’m just annoyed at how much bad health advice is on social media.

I want more of these thanks.

Just like with electric cars, the US takes forever to do anything, while China just gets things done with a better approach:

Late last year, the Cyberspace Administration of China issued a sweeping regulation: any content creator discussing medicine, health, law, finance, or education must prove verified professional credentials before posting or going live. In essence: no degree, no license, no post.

[…]

In all, China’s approach is preemptive: One has to prove their credentials before they post. The FTC’s approach is reactive, allowing American creators to post health tips or investment opinions without a diploma. The FTC only steps in after the harm is documented—but for both, if the creator lies, they pay up

Does the VPN use Cisco AnyConnect? We use it at work and it works fine via NetworkManager in both KDE and GNOME, including two factor auth (pops up a web page to authenticate). I’m not sure of the exact config, since it’s automatically configured using Chef.

It’s not embarrassing to still be using any Meta product?

I mean, they’re some of the most used tech products in the world, so they clearly do have people that like using them. The only sites/apps that are used more are Google and YouTube.

I guess it’s like Nestlé. There’s some people that avoid their products and might be embarrassed to use them, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re still the largest food company in the world, and the vast majority of customers like their products and aren’t embarrassed to consume them.

Wayland isn’t the problem. Chrome just doesn’t behave well with it. I haven’t had any Wayland-related issues with Firefox.

It’s worth noting that Proxmox uses Debian. It’s essentially a collection of Debian packages, and you can install Proxmox on top of an existing Debian system: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Install_Proxmox_VE_on_Debian_13_Trixie

Proxmox lacks a Docker UI though, which is annoying. One of the reasons I’m using Unraid at home is because it supports KVM, LXC, and Docker, all in the same UI. (LXC is a plugin rather than being available out-of-the-box, but it works very well)

(and no, Proxmox’s new OCI container support isn’t it - that just converts the container to LXC and doesn’t handle upgrades)

Can books be transfered via USB even on the 2013-era Paperwhite? I’ve always used the email feature in Calibre-web to send books to my Kindle (even for books I’ve paid for) - I didn’t realise it was doable over USB!

to shut down its servers, so now it’s dumb as a rock and next to useless.

I hate this so much. There’s no reason a robot vacuum should require internet access to function. Companies only do it for tighter control of their products, to track your usage, to have the ability to paywall features, and to have the ability to disable it so you have to buy a new one.

Unraid is pretty beginner-friendly, so it’s what I’d recommend too.

I use it too. I have over 20 years experience running Debian servers and can write a docker-compose.yml file and Nginx config from scratch, but sometimes it’s nice to have a decent web UI that mostly “just works”.

Can still be messed with by the Isp

Not as easily though. It’s like regular HTTPS - if anyone, including the ISP, tries a MitM (man in the middle) attack, you’ll get a security error because the certificate won’t be trusted. The only real way for a MitM attack to be successful is installing a custom root certificate on the client system.

Like you mentioned, IP blocking is harder to bypass, but that’s unrelated to DNS blocking. IP blocking is harder to do if the site uses a CDN like CloudFront, BunnyCDN, Cloudflare, etc though, since a large number of sites use the same IPs.

If you set it to update your compose automatically it will notify you and create a log, it something goes wrong you can easily revert it from the dashboard. Did I get your question right? Let me know if you meant something else.

What I meant was does it handle multiple docker-compose files? I have a bunch of them - one for Immich, one for Lemmy, etc.

I still don’t understand the three month discounts lol. Seems like a bunch of insurance plans have it. With my insurance, you can either get one month, or three months’ worth for the exact same price as one month, so I’m not sure why anyone would ever get refills monthly.

I’m very thankful that my employers covers almost all the cost of my (and my wife’s) insurance. My wife is self-employed so it’d be pretty expensive if she needed to get her own health insurance.

Wow, nice! Keep it up.

Ah that sucks. I didn’t know that. My wife uses a similar medication and thankfully our insurance covers it so it’s only $10/month. We’re Aussies living in the USA, and GLP-1 meds aren’t covered by Australia’s public health care system yet, so right now it’s actually cheaper in the USA than in Australia.

In Australia, medications covered by the public health care system (Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme) are a maximum of $25 for most people, and $7.70 for low-income families. It currently covers 930 different medications, and 7/10 people in Australia use at least one covered medication. However, uncovered medications cost the full retail price, which is still almost always cheaper than the USA.