Buying in to the corporate notion that piracy is ethically wrong is ignoring the full scope of the issue. Would it be wrong for a slave to sneak a peek at the luxurious entertainment at the masters party? Would it be wrong to read a book in a library? No. In both scenarios, the company has already been paid, and the only change is in your own memory. Absolutely nothing has changed other than their perception that you might have submitted to their scheme of exploiting you for money if you hadn’t pirated their art.

But that is not really the case. Most people pirate things that they have either already purchased for another platform before, or that are beyond their ability to afford. That is not losing a customer, that is widening an audience base into populations that wouldn’t have consumed it otherwise.

Of course, it’s fair to say you should exercise some judgment. If there is a small creator who made something you like, maybe you should pick it up during a steam sale to give the creator some encouragement. But, overall, that does not represent the majority of the industry. Most cases are fat cats exploiting employees and consumers to pay exorbitant prices for a program that they don’t get to actually own. That is not selling anything, that is gatekeeping artistic creation on a level that most other art forms completely reject.

If these companies were actually interested in selling something, they could easily give us disks with real ownership, additional art and promotional items, and other physical goods that allow people to more fully engage with the product. They could focus on preservation of the experience, creating media that would last a lifetime. But they don’t—they’d rather create false moral equivalencies to guilt you into spending money on the same experience multiple times at no cost to themselves.

Don’t submit. Don’t feel guilty for experiencing art. Don’t let them tell you that you owe them money for something that doesn’t really exist. You purchased the hardware, they can’t tell you you’re a bad person because you magnetized your disk into their proprietary pattern. If they want to sell you something, it should be able to be held in your hand, just like a book, painting, or blu-ray. It should be something that represents an energy expenditure on their end like a live performance.

Pirating a game uses the electricity of the seeder and the leecher, but none from the company. It uses the disk space of the seeder and the leecher, but not the company. It runs on the hardware purchased by the seeder and the leecher, but not the company.

So, when you really take a close look at it, you’ve stolen nothing at all. The only change created is the magnetic pattern on a drive you own and the biochemical pattern of your own memory. Furthermore, the insane prices they are charging for an infinitely reproducible product that you don’t even own are creating the conditions that promote piracy in the first place. That isn’t the players fault. If they want to get rid of piracy, all they have to do is charge a fair price for what you receive, or actually provide a real product that is worth that level of cost.

Never surrender to their manipulation of your emotions and self esteem to convince you that you are a bad person for pirating. They set the rules of this world, we’re just living in it.

Thank you! This is dope!

Can you teach me this wizardry?

I would if I could but I can’t.

Pretty sure they meant Iran.

I could, but it’s more convenient for me to have it served up by an LXC container on the server. I’m usually interacting with things on a laptop or a phone, so it’s just easy being able to have a tab open with my wiki served through Tailscale, and ProxMox makes sure it stays backed up to an external drive and the cloud so I don’t lose anything.

The few times I’ve had a critical error with ProxMox, it’s been super simple to do a fresh install and just restore my daily backup.

There are many ways it could be done, but this way has been mine, and it’s worked for me.

I used to be bare metal Debian, but I moved to ProxMox for a few reasons.

1. Backup and restore is a breeze, and the UI makes things human friendly.
2. It makes it easier to separate my wiki notes in an LXC so that I can still see them if I’m doing maintenance on my main server VM that requires restarts.
3. There is essentially no noticeable performance reduction.

It works, it’s easy, and the simplicity has saved my butt a few times. I don’t think I’ll be switching, and I’d recommend it to anyone running a homelab. I still use docker to manage most of my services inside a VM.

I hear you, I went through the same journey. After getting Immich set up, I haven’t had to do a single thing to it. There are scripts that can turn your folders into Immich albums, so I just set up the docker containers, ran the script, and watched as everything was created for me without more labor on my part.

I hope somebody else has the solution you’re looking for, but if you don’t find it, I really think you should give it a whirl because it turned out to be way easier than I expected it to be.

Immich works really well. Don’t fear the database. Docker makes it all super easy too.

Alternatively, Plex manages photos ok-ish.

I want that to be true.

But history has shown that they’d shoehorn the centrist and lose, then wring their hands in despair and wonder how it happened while the answer is obvious to everyone who isn’t part of the DNC.

“Thanks, we’ll paso.”

I am a Debian man, and I will hear no words about it being non-awesome.

They really need to fix the Nvidia compatibility though…🤔

But it’s just so…clean in there. An empty canvas on which I can paint. So empty, in fact, that it doesn’t have Nvidia drivers. Just as Murdock intended!

Don’t forget to account for Nvidia.

I use Tailscale, and it has been flawless for me. I use Nginx on a VPS to expose some services, and then keep the rest behind the Tailscale network so only I can access them.

It’s been so perfect that I can’t imagine doing it any other way for my needs.

https://hub.docker.com/r/tessypowder/backblaze-personal-wine

Pro tip—there is a docker container that simulates windows with Backblaze in it so you can use the unlimited plan in Linux.

I use Backblaze personal backup for $9 per month with unlimited storage. I’ve backed up many terabytes without an issue.

When you say explode…elaborate.

You like the feeling of getting screwed enough that you don’t resent it. Noted.

And you call yourself anti-corporate and follow it up with I just want to have fun while the world ends and all the richies do it, so it isn’t that bad. What does anti-corporate mean to you?

And lastly, your Apple comparison is nonsensical. They sell a physical product and their digital products can essentially only run on their physical ones. They don’t lose sales from a leak in the same way a playable PC version of GTA VI could.

That said, of course rockstar will still release it, especially since a functioning playable version hasn’t leaked to the public at this point.

ME!