yeah, you certainly can spend more and get better, but most media consumers don’t actually care about long term storage like that.

i only know the pricing on those drives because i just had to replace one in a nas device. i only spent money on a nas device because i work in media and need to keep large files for clients. i follow a 3-2-1 backup system because my job depends on it, but it’s not at all necessary to enjoy media.

lmao, buddy you can get a 10tb hard drive for like $200 and fit all the pirated media you want on it. that’s less money than two mainline subscriptions for a year.

the VAST majority of data hoarders are pirates. very very few actual spend fortunes on their media collections. that’s why everyone is dogpilling you. it felt like you were attacking a strawman of the average user here and they feel the need to correct you about their nature.

it’s not about pirates feeling moral or superior. it’s about you being wrong about data hoarders.

there’s nothing about negatively affecting others lives?

so successful sociopaths and narcissists don’t have a disorder?

i don’t think that’s quite right.

yeah, they are the lower level atronach. you basically blew past them.

if you go to the atronach forge at frostcrag spire you can still spawn one with some fire salts.

some additional relevant statistics

united states barely saw 1% growth year over year and are projecting that growth to continue to slow.

India has nearly 3x the users of the United States. the u.s. is still second because it’s the country it started in, but it’s not far ahead of the 3rd and 4th place countries. India is an extreme outlier.

unfortunately they don’t break down the age demographic by region, but I’d bet that if we specifically look at daily active users in the United States the age demo would skew much older.

so, it seems like it’s similar to what many fast food restaurants have been experiencing lately. the growth opportunities in the United States dried up so the decided to push like hell everywhere else. i bet the growth they saw in India over the last decade was explosive. probably bigger than anything they had ever seen before. bigger than when it was still growing in the u.s… meanwhile they project that over the next decade in the u.s. they’ll see maybe 8% user growth and that’s pretty optimistic.

so we probably won’t actually see much Facebook marketing in the u.s… the only way they can capture more u.s users is by buying more apps, like when they bought Instagram.

this does seem to imply that the part of the world where Facebook has become a fact of life is very specifically India. I’m sorry to hear that for them.

the only reason to write that book would be for when i would inevitably get to post the “don’t create the torment nexus” meme for tons of social media impressions.

though knowing what impressions are pegs me as a creative who won’t get to post on social media from the mines.

the robots won’t be equipped to fix it. there will be no one left to tell they got it wrong.

same reason harlan ellison wrote i have no mouth and i must scream i suppose…

nah, it’s going to be the opposite.

if other computer technology has been anything to go off of then only those who lived through is adaption and watched it progress will know how to spot it. those who grow up with hard to spot ai will just accept that they can’t see it and think we’re weird for trying so hard to prove things are ai. they’ll also think we’re weird for caring.

our boomer trait will be doing art instead of asking ai to generate images and video, or wanting things made by people when the ai generated thing is “good enough”.

we’ll be getting eyerolls for gifting a nice art set or a camera to our niblings. we’ll embarrass our grandkids when we get upset at the ai point of sale system that mcdonalds starts using. “back in my day they had big touch screens where you could manually select your toppings on the burger, now you just yell into a box and MAYBE gets it right”

actually, if social media tech is anything to go on we won’t even have that much control. your order will be algorithm based. chosen for you based on your recent ad footprint. the ai obviously knows what you want better than you do. the kids won’t see it as weird. they’ll transition straight from their parents deciding their meals to corporations doing the same, but we’re going to hate it. the corps will push it anyway because it’s so massively profitable with the demographics that like it and every restaurant will be owned by like 2 companies. they’ll just force it on everyone else. we’ll bitch about it, but most people will still keep going.

edit: had more thoughts on this in the shower.

we’ll get to the point where we barely even have to pick a place to eat. there will be 2 apps. one owned by disneycokemcdonsldsalibaba, one owned by pepsifoxraytheonamazon. we will all be either a coke person or a Pepsi person and will likely just follow whichever brand our parents did. they’ll be inherently political and each have a sponsored candidate in every election. it will define the entire world you live in. when it’s time to eat you get a notification and the app orders you your meal.

it’ll start as a service for when you can’t decide what to eat then after it gets a critical mass of users it will start to enshitify into forcing what you eat before selling to the disney megacorp who will then push it into everything they own.

this is only for the rich people that these brands cater towards of course. we who would have once been creatives will be working manual labor at the camps for the underemployed. afterall, we’re better off with the structure. it helps us be productive towards society. it’s what’s best for us…

ah yes, ignoring that it should actuality be a polygon, implying a closed shape with straight sides much like this ignores the “weapon” and “used for thrusting or striking” parts of the definition.

not hard to make strange things fit a definition when you just ignore parts of it.

they seem more common in places that are concerned about water usage. they’re basically the norm now in Colorado.

yeah that’s about it, but they call it as i spelled it, and they were huge.

https://www.jimmysgrotto.com/

i grew up near a place that had something they called a ponza rotta.

it was the pizza equivalent of a chimichanga. it was a deep fried calzone. my high school had a tradition of trying to run a ponza mile instead of a beer mile. last one to puke after eating a whole ponza and running a mile won. only ever knew one person to actually finish the mile.

hell, the entire anti-fap movement like 5 years ago basically seemed to believe that virginity and never cumming would give guys super powers.

maybe in urban areas, but rural hotels can easily still be $90 for a cheap one.

source: i drive cross country a lot.

there’s a handful of general directions you could go with both camera and mic then.

you could get a mic that plugs directly into the camera, but then you’ll be tethered. to it. you can get a mic that plugs into a little recorder, but you’ll need to sync your audio. you can get a wireless mic with a receiver that plugs into the camera, but that starts to get expensive. or a number of different options that can run things however you want. the most affordable option to start and remain convenient in my mind is a mic and a cheap recorder.

something like a used one of these with a cheap lav mic could be a good option.

as for camera, there’s two main paths. you could go mirrorless and get something more like the canon you already had, or you could get an actual camcorder.

a mirrorless camera will give you the option of different lenses and will have a larger sensor. it will also allow you to shoot nice stills and give you room to grow. it will generally have a higher potential for better quality video in the long run, but will be harder to learn and use. I think you’d be well served by a micro 4/3rds camera. a used Panasonic gh4 can be had for around $300. that would be able to provide some fantastic quality for the price. it’ll also be able to use any m4/3 lenses out there. they have a standard mount used by all such cameras. Panasonic is generally the more video focused brand in the space. a larger sensor with give you shallower depth of field, but that’s not as necessary as many like to think you the kinds of content you’re looking to produce.

the camcorder will be a much more streamlined out of the box solution. if you want something that will just work and be versatile without needing to spend money on additional hardware and learn all the ins and outs this will be a better option. it will likely have a highly versatile zoom lens and should still shoot plenty high enough quality for some simple explainer videos. it’s the less popular option these days, but I will think it has its place. I’m less familiar with these but I’m sure you can find a reasonable one with a little shopping around.

what kind of budget are you thinking?

the lens is likely incompatible with newer hardware.

I would recommend looking used. you can get a few generations old micro 4/3rds camera for very cheap. let me look through options tonight when i get home and I’ll probably be able to find you something for under $200 that will shoot modern looking decent quality video.

a mic to go with it would be very important. there’s so many ways to go about that.

-you can get a cheap on cameras shotgun that will sound decent, but pick up a good amount of room noise. this will be the easiest to use option.

-you could get a lavaliere of some kind, but that takes a second to set up and will require additional tools unless you want to tether yourself to the actual camera. there’s also options that plug in to a phone, but that would require a phone with a headphone jack…

-you could get a usb stick mic to record voiceover after the fact. this would give the highest fidelity Audio bang for the buck, but is the most cumbersome to use.

additionally, a light will go very far for making things look nicer. most homes are not set to to have good video lighting at all. you can totally get away with a cheap lamp that you bounce off the wall or something. as long as you don’t have a lightbulb directly shining on you creating hard shadows.

oh, i guess you’re right. they’re just a privately owned corporation. regardless of specific terminology the point stands. they aren’t publicly traded and certainly aren’t a megacorp. and i also don’t agree with evening they do. i generally like gog better.

people are just always painting things like this with way too broad of a stroke. there’s a serious problem with conglomeration. Sony is a megacorp in the gaming space. a true megacorp that makes and has a gigantic hand in almost everything. from tvs to music to books to weapons of war. they exist solely to absorb wealth from any and all spaces they can. I’m real bummed about them acquiring kadokawa recently… it will not be good for games, anime, manga, or light novels.

that is not valve. they are not part of that problem and this point is weakened by people saying that they are.

like… company or business. they’re not actually very big compared to true megacorporations. like Amazon and ge are megacorps. they make many many things across thousands of facilities with millions of employees. you cannot live in modern society without encountering them. be it amazon Web services or the light bulbs in the street lights outside. valve is just a company. they do one thing and do it well. there are alternatives that you can easily use. it is not hard to avoid them as a company and most people don’t actually use steam. sure, most Western pc gamers do, but that’s a small percentage of the global population.

valve is just a company. not even an especially large one. not every successful business is a megacorp. some aren’t even that bad. the world is shades of grey, some big businesses are much much less bad than others. valve doesn’t do much harm. megacorporations always do.