Age verification is a great success I see. I feel so much safer now with this shit in place so kids can’t watch porn…
…on major/regulated sites only.
The worst was watching porn on spotify…
It has absolutely nothing to do with kids watching porn.
Of course.
*so that the government can say kids won’t watch porn.
Rule 1 of computers that everyone who has taught an ICT class learns - if little Timmy wants titties, he finds a way.
In Sweden pretty much anybody has Bank Id, an app which is connected to a bank account and which can function as a valid identification.
App belongs a private company, but it’s still trustworthy and everybody can sign government docs with that.
This is how you should do age verification, through a third party app, not like any site will get your id/picture to just end in their DBs ready to be stolen.
Every government should create an app for the online id, I don’t get why this seems so hard to achieve.
It’s super trustworthy bro I swear
Credit cards should roughly do the same, but both of those aren’t “great” for privacy and really exists to make profiles of adults while pretending to negate the need for parents to parent (the only real way to reduce/prevent harms of kids witnessing age inappropriate media). Your ability to do financial transactions shouldn’t be tied to your speech or content you view.
The thing is, UK has had age restrictions for years on its mobile platforms. So if you want to look at porn on your phone, you have to unlock it on your subscription. And to do this, they use youre credit card. The thing that they already have. Its easy and swift. And more to the point, only one company has your data. As it stands now, you are supposed to give your personal details to every single company in the world.
Over the past 20 years, how many massive hacks have we seen that leak email addresses and passwords? Are how about all those woman that get their iclouds hacked and their nude photos uploaded? I can think of at least 10 instances in the past 10 years. And now its going to be all of our driving licences, passports, other photo IDs? And the law also requires that they scan ALL private messages. Thats end to end encryption fucked. And god forbid your girlfriend calls you “Daddy” in a sext, you get the cops knocking on your door treating you like Jimmy Saville.
The shit is insane, and people arent anywhere near outraged enough. Its coming to Europe next, if reports are to be believed. So you lot should ALL start kicking up fuck about it now.
God forbid people teach their kids sex/getting off is a drug and can be abused.
Who taught you sex is a drug? As long as words mean their definitions, it’s categorically not. Plus it’s probably kinda harmful to pile on the stigma already surrounding sex by conflating it with drugs and all the stigma that comes with that.
Hopefully I’m wrong, but it’s kinda giving a nofap pseudoscience red flag to me.
Parents definitely should be teaching their kids about this stuff at the appropriate time, but they should stick to the facts.
First they came for the sex, then they came after the drugs. Now they’re trying to take my rock and roll
Did you know that rock and roll is actually a plate of spaghetti?
Spaghetti = Carbs = Sugar = Addictive Drug
yeah but I lost my poor meatball.
A fellow Bread Harrity super fan I see? I’d like to get all up in that beautiful man’s wet spaghetti 🍝
I’ve heard music is a drug, too. It was all drugs, all along. We probably should’ve known, honestly.
Life is a drug if you hit it right
I thought life was a highway?
Life is the highway you boof
Sex on drugs is awesome…
I mean… it is a rush of dopamine and can become addictive. Same as a videogame or gambling though. Not a drug but can get unhealthy if it leads to maladaptive daily functioning.
ah from shady porn sites, like spotify and wikipedia. definitely protect kids from porn there. /s
Is wikipedia on the list? I see reddit is, lol. We might see an influx soon.
not yet, but the wikimedia foundation has been fighting against it expecting that it would be a class 1 site and require it.
We have to protect wikipedia
Here’s one way to help: https://kiwix.org/en/about-us/#our-story
Download Wikipedia to your own device. If it’s ever blocked or taken down you still have access and can help share information with others.
You can download different versions (e.g. without images) and different languages based on your needs.
There’s other resources available via kiwix as well but I’ve not really explored them to be honest
Does it run a local web server or is it all static files? Is it searchable?
We turn various online educational contents (such as Wikipedia, for example) into ZIM files, and these can be opened by Kiwix even if you have no connectivity whatsoever.
https://flathub.org/apps/org.kiwix.desktop
The ZIM file format is an open file format that stores website content for offline usage.[1] The format is defined by the openZIM project, which also supports an open-source ZIM reader called Kiwix. The format is primarily used to store the contents of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, including articles, full-text search indices and auxiliary files.[2][3]
So I feel like I’m now hearing more successful pushes for censorship through this stuff.
Just last week I learned how Texas has a bill that makes it so if anyone ever invested in green technology that they wouldn’t be allowed
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/08/24/texas-boycott-companies-fossil-fuels/
I saw a post saying /r/period required an age check.
They’re gonna censor as much as they can with this.
Let this be a reminder to never turn away from piracy. It needs to constantly be in the background and if any company gets like they always do, then it comes back out. But if we let the knowledge fade away then it’s impossible to rebuild it.
Piracy preserves media.
Piracy preserves art.
Piracy makes sure, that future generations still have access to the creations of humanity.
Data hoarding is a service to the public.
“Keep circulating the tapes!”
It doesn’t take much for media though to parade out the “lil guy and change the opinion of people about how your basically attacking small indie creators”
Or you know you could punish parents for not parenting. Like if kids are watching porn and caught and if it’s actually against some law then go after the parents.
It’s not hard to teach parents how to implement a filtering DNS. But no, countries think they need to be the nanny.
“Protecting children” is just the pretext under which governments can sell increased surveillance. The fact that there are more effective ways they could act to protect children, yet governments everywhere continue to push for ID checks and monitoring online activity, shows that the aim isn’t what they say it is.
Don’t forget trying to kill e2e encryption like what the EU wants to do, both to “catch criminals” and “protect the children”
https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/news/article/the-end-of-encryption-as-we-know-it
Protect from what? I mean seriously. Most of us (guys at least) probably saw porn way before we were old enough and most of us probably didn’t end up as rapists or pedophiles. It’s not a good thing by any means, but it really feels like we’re trying harder to keep sexual material from entering their brains than we are trying to keep them fed, clothed, educated, housed, healthy, loved, and physically safe. Of all the things I mentioned the last seven have a monumentally greater affect on their success and well-being as an adult.
I’m convinced sex is used as a leveraging tool to control society.
🌏👨🚀🔫👨🚀
That’s just the pretext they give to justify it. The real reason is surveillance. Now they have a way to confidently tie your accounts to your individual identity. And most of these solutions use third parties which will then sell that data as well, so now anyone can tie your account to you without you ever knowing.
Even if the government is barred from surveilling citizens in these ways, third parties aren’t, and the government can just buy that information, no warrant needed anymore.
And these laws never stop at porn, it’s drugs, LGBTQ information, etc. and they can always easily add additional things later with little fanfare.
This is it. Theyve been going after encrypted messaging apps for a long time, ig they realized theyre not getting anywhere and figured to just hit it head on.
The internet has always circumvented this kind of shit, just look at TPB. The ones who are getting really beaten up by this is the older generations and the ones lacking technical know-how.
Yep. “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”
LOL, wrong on that last point! Gen X and Millennials are generally hot shit on tech. It’s the young folks who don’t have a clue if something doesn’t “just work”. Present company excluded of course. :)
It’s not about kids and never has been, it’s about surveillance of the internet and the death of anonymity.
Going against the parents is impopular and would make the parents vote against you in the next elections.
They could just offer a child protection browser where parents could set to child mode and require adult material offering sites to check if user has something like “attention not 18 year old user” in the headers.
Would be way cheaper, I think.
Back to Piracy! ✊🏴☠️
Really though? It isn’t necessary. Use Bandcamp, you probably have half your artists covered. The rest - one of those Spotify alternatives: Tidal? Qobuz?
Personally I do selfhost btw. Jellyfin, though I heard of a better alternative specifically for music recently - and forgot the name again 😥 Something lowercase,
like a verb… “normalize” or some such.Navidrome! Thanks @0konomiyaki@aussie.zoneNavidrome maybe? But I use jellyfin + symfonium myself. All my music is either bandcamp or used CDs. Started collecting music late last year and my entire collection is legally sourced now. No piracy required. Hardest part was starting very small and building the collection over time.
Yes! Navidrome!
used CDs
I get them dirt cheap or completely for free. It’s actually reverse piracy (no I’m not serious) since no doubt the previous owners ripped everything.
Yea, it literally makes no difference for the artist, if you pirate or if you buy a used CD.
Pirate it is just way more convenient.
Go to shows, buy the albums from the merch tables and use the events (to the best of your individual ability) as a means to connect with like minded anti-fascists.
Bandcamp is the best
Harmonize?
Spotify fans
“Fans”?
that’s like saying Amazon fans really lol
Well… …gestures to apple fans…
Apple fans. Spotify fans. Same shit.
Even if your not in the UK you should go back to piracy. Steal from corporations as frequently as possible
ngl, Spotify has become hot ass these days
My favorite part is when the AI DJ plays some dumb song it’s previously served up repeatedly, and then tells me how much I like it because I listen to it so often. I’d never choose to listen to it on my own, and the only reason I hear it is because Spotify keeps cramming it down my throat.
Spotify recommends based on your listening habits. You base your listening habits on Spotify recommendations. Ergo, Spotify recommends based on its own recommendation. Ourobouros achieved.
I used Spotify like 5 years ago and it was good. Tried to use it again this year and it’s recommendations and service were complete garbage.
Yeah, that was what finally pished me over the edge a few years back. Switched to Tidal and have been very content with with it. They pay artists better, the sound quality is better, and the dily discovery playlist throws some serious curve balls. I have wide ranging tastes so it blends a few genres for a few weeks before moving onto something else, and it has introduced me to some AWESOME music that i would have never encountered otherwise.
Not Spotify’s fault here, though. Shit legislation.
If something’s finally going to force the industry to curb its bullshit, this might just be it. Once you annoy normal people, it’s all over. They seriously underestimate how many people would just stop using Spotify, or Youtube, or whatever other platform it is
While I want to agree. I feel like normal people are still not gonna give a shit.
Every company has learned that any friction to using your site is a bleed of customers. There are a lot of people who will just not use your site if it requires a lengthy validation process. If there was some kind of identity system that sites would integrate with like login.gov, then people would ignore this, but I don’t think the UK has such a thing that every site can use, so a lot of people will not use the site and over time fall to piracy or illegitimate sites.
Imagine if Spotify just opened the camera on your phone once a month when you first open the app that day. Just for like a split second. Theoretically it would be legal, for age verification. 🤮
They won’t give a shit, but they’re also lazy and won’t bother setting up an account that requires ID and photo verification. Too much work. Maybe we’ll even see somewhat of a recurrence of brick and mortar stores that sells music, movies, porn, etc.
Ah the laziness to not even set up an account that needs it. I didn’t consider that. Was more thinking of current users meeting the resistance.
People underestimate that most “regular” people are a product and exist for something other than humanity.
“Normal” people would put in their child’s social security number if it meant $2.99 off their subscription.
It would have to get pretty bad before people would be willing to forgo convenience.
That stuff is a nasty drug, very addictive and people will sell everything they got to keep it. They’d rather pay and arm and a leg instead of learning a little technology so they could help themselves.
People will slave themselves to the company that lets them be the most ignorant person possible but still enjoy the fun of technology.
Could you imagine if all mobile devices stopped using face recognition to unlock phones? I’d be willing to bet that a big chunk of people wouldn’t be able to use them at all. I’m surprised that google and apple haven’t started charging extra for that.
I’m not convinced. Look at how Netflix made bank on killing off “sharing is caring.”
People are lazy, and if they want their easy Spotify fix, I fear they’ll hand over their information and move on with their day.
One more reason if you’re still buying music, to start buying physical albums again while you still can.
CDs aren’t age-gated and you can rip them to FLAC yourself. Vinyl also isn’t age-gated because it’s analog, and although it’s a longer and more drawn-out process than just ripping a CD which will only take a few minutes as because vinyl is an analog format, you gotta record it in real-time, and then manually split the raw waveform up into separate tracks, manually input metadata, and manually generate a cuesheet from the split-up tracks before finally exporting*, you can still needle-drop LPs to FLAC as well.
*This isn’t as big an issue with 78s, 45s, and EPs (which are 33-1/3rpm singles last time I thought) as it is with LPs as there isn’t as much playback time on them, and at least 45s and EPs are singles rather than a full album like with LPs so you only have one song per side, and I assume 78s are singles as well, as 78s max out at 5min per side.
+1 for vinyl. The album art, inserts, etc. really adds something to the experience that I had long forgotten over the years of downloading and streaming music.
CDs still do that to some extent, especially with indie releases, and also higher-end physical formats like SACD and DVD-Audio tend to have a lot of extras packed in with them as they’re typically considered to be special editions of a given album, but both SACD and DVD-Audio are DRM-encumbered unlike normal CDs and of course analog formats where DRM doesn’t apply, so trying to get them on a PC will be harder if not impossible especially as the DSD codec that SACD uses has particularly nasty DRM shipped with it IIRC.
There’s also true novelty formats like MD, DCC, or even in the case of Jeremy Heiden’s Blue Wicked, Elcaset of all things, and Blue Wicked was legit the first album to ever be released on that format, 40+ years after it faded from public consciousness.
I jerked it to the Hanson mmbop video back in the nineties.
Found out later the girl was a boy.
You can judge all you want, but the general thing is that horny teenagers will jerk it to almost anything.
…genuinely trying to figure out how this relates to the topic at hand.
It moreso relates to what’s in hand
Wait there’s a boy in that band? Stop trolling.
Thank you for letting us know. I’ll be sure to use this information to my best.
Just do it.
Flac > Spotify.
I keep getting advice of Flac > MP3 320 kbs.
I can’t tell the difference to tell you the truth. Is it really worth it for audiophiles considering how much more space Flac files takes up?
It is better, but it depends on the audio for the difference. Also, it would probably be hard to hear the difference playing over a phones speakers. The weakest link in the chain is always the problem you notice the most. Having a good setup for amp/speakers and you can hear the difference. Using Bluetooth earbuds to mow the lawn, it doesn’t matter. Sitting in my living room on my nice stereo, I notice.
Flac files contain orders of magnitude more data. As for the listening experience it’s only ever going to be as good as the speakers at the other end. You’ll also need a wired connection to said speakers in order to avoid some compression over Bluetooth. (Unless there’s some newfangled lossless BT protocol that I’m unaware of.)
yeh
The space it takes up is negligible in the modern era of cheap SSDs (and even cheaper hard drives).
The main benefit is not in being able to hear a difference from 320Kbps mp3 (I know I sure can’t), but knowing that you can re-encode the file as many times as you want, without any quality loss (assuming you’re going from lossless to lossless, of course). Or create an mp3 from the flac file at any time, with the same quality as a ripped CD.
So basically FLAC is great if you produce/edit/re-encode your music files often. If you don’t do any of that (and have no plans to future-proof your music collection), then 320Kbps MP3 is more than adequate for your needs.
They will be blown away by the quality increase they get🤭
(Pirate tend to share/prefere best quality content, while Spotify offers only 256kbit mp3 as far as I remember (or is it 320kbi now?))
Most people can’t tell the difference between 128 kbit MP3 and high quality recordings.
Idk man. Show someone some cymbals on a 128kbps track and it sounds like someone crumpling a plastic bag via a tin can connected to a string. In contrast flac is going to sound much more natural.
I’d agree with you regarding 320 and flac - most people are gonna have a hard time differentiating.
i didn’t care about just grabbing the 720p 600mb video file back when i was watching on a little laptop screen.
it does not hold up on the big stuff.
kinda same applies to audio?
crap sounds like crap on a phone speaker, but so does hi quality stuff.
noise and low dynamics are more noticeable on more powerful, louder gear.
just spitballing here, not an expert!
most people
Many people are ok with hearing music out of a phone speaker. Audiophiles don’t necessarily care about how “most people” perceive sound quality.
That was my point. The comment I was replying to was suggesting that people switching from Spotify will be blown away by better quality audio. Most wouldn’t notice a difference.
Does anyone have a good podcast app to replace Spotify that will keep track of progress across multiple devices? Bonus points if I can self host.
Antennapod with gPodderersync & Nextcloud? There are podcast apps for Nextcloud to play in the browser.
I always used podcast player. Never had any issues before.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.podcast.podcasts
I use audiobookshelf. Obviously for audiobooks mainly, but it does podcasts and it works well.
Ha! Fuck. That.
