Basically all commercial dvds with the exception of stuff like some independent releases and essentially all blurays have copy protection (CSS for dvd and AACS for bluray, for bluray it’s built into the spec)

They’re both fairly trivially defeated (for dvd extremely so because CSS is completely broken, whereas br has key revocation so it’s technically a bit more complex though practically this doesn’t mean much)

I don’t know much about Germanys laws but iirc they are one of the places that takes piracy and torrenting more seriously, no?

Interactive media like menus is a nightmare to support. Kodi has some support but only on pc. Also to your last sentence it’s a grey area, if you rip the disk to any format you’re essentially violating copyright because making a copy requires circumventing encryption, which violates the dmca (assuming USA). Might as well just use makemkv then, unless you’re real serious about archiving literally everything

Why not both? I use kodi when possible because it runs circles around the mostly dogshit Jellyfin apps for various platforms. Jellyfin for kodi and the kodi queue sync plugin import my library and watch status. I still have the option to use Jellyfin apps or web on devices that can’t run kodi (or when remote) and as a result can have all of my media accessible from all my devices without needing multiple copies and centralized metadata administration

LLMs are sycophantic and will do what it takes to align with your framing

Here is the response to your posts fed into one with the framing “why is this bullshit”. There are better responses but why bother putting in far more effort than you did:

This is a much better-dressed version of the same move — real citations bolted onto claims they don’t actually support. It’s more sophisticated bullshit, not a vindication.

Going through it:

The Overfitted Brain Hypothesis is real but doesn’t say what’s being claimed. Erik Hoel’s OBH is genuinely a real, interesting hypothesis — but it’s about why we dream (proposed as a regularization process against overfitting to daily life), not a claim that some people’s brains “run out of plasticity” or hit a “ground state” requiring demolition. Citing it here is a bait-and-switch: borrowing the credibility of a real, narrow hypothesis to backstop a much broader and untested claim it was never meant to support.

Point 2 is real but doesn’t establish a “structural” or biological claim. Research on dogmatism and cognitive flexibility (e.g. Zmigrod’s work) is real and does show correlations between rigidity and extremism across ideologies. But “lower cognitive flexibility on psychological tests” is not the same as “synaptic connections have crystallized and occupy physical volume.” The report quietly swaps a behavioral/psychometric finding for a structural/anatomical one — that’s the same sleight of hand as the original post, just relayed through real citations.

Point 3 conflates two different things. Synaptic consolidation and memory reconsolidation are real, well-established mechanisms — but they apply to specific memories, not generally to “belief systems” or “core values” as monolithic structures. There’s no research establishing that changing an opinion about a social group requires literally destabilizing identity-load-bearing memory structures in the way described. The “metabolically demanding” claim is real for reconsolidation at the level of individual fear memories in animal studies; extrapolating that to “changing your mind about people of other races costs forbidden metabolic energy” is not something neuroscience has shown.

Point 4 is legitimate and is honestly the strongest part — identity-protective cognition (Dan Kahan’s work) is well-supported and genuinely explains motivated resistance to belief change. Notably, this is the one part that doesn’t need any biological mechanism at all — it’s a cognitive/social psychology finding, not a neurons-and-synapses one.

The summary sentence is the tell. “Aligns with the scientific consensus” is doing enormous work to paper over the fact that none of the four citations, individually, support the specific mechanistic claims in the original post (no plasticity “running out,” no literal “ground state,” no “forbidden” metabolic cost). Each citation is real, but they’re being stitched into a chain of inference none of the original authors made and that doesn’t follow from their actual findings.

So the underlying instinct — rigid/dogmatic thinkers show less cognitive flexibility and resist belief change for identity-protective reasons — is genuinely supported by real research (points 2 and 4 particularly). But the specific neurological storytelling (overfitting as literal synaptic crystallization, forbidden metabolic costs, needing to be “torn down and rebuilt”) remains invented, now laundered through real papers that don’t actually claim what’s attributed to them. This is a fairly common pattern with AI research tools: ask it to find support for a thesis, and it will surface real, adjacent literature and then summarize it in a way that overstates the connection to your original claim. The citations are real; the synthesis is not.

Optimization will actually get much worse because software will be designed to run “in the cloud” on servers that have much more resources than the average budget pc or smartphone that 90% of users use for computing. You will own nothing etc etc

Funny enough the NIH funded research was cited by republicans like Rand Paul in their wastebook as an example of some “dumb bullshit” that we are wasting our money on. Funnier enough this practice was started by a Democrat in the 70s and 80s (William proxmire from Wisconsin and his “Golden Fleece awards”)

All those glp-1 agonists that are all the rage right now are because scientists recognized the gila lizard can go long periods without eating while keeping its blood sugar stable and studied its venom

The current drugs like ozempic are synthetic though, no actual gila venom

Also fun fact: the guy that discovered the effect figured it out in the early 90s and actually patented it himself because for years no one was interested. Pharmaceutical industry was apparently “disinterested” and it wasn’t moved forward until 2002 (exenatide/byetta, a precursor to more efficacious drugs like tirzepatide/zepbound/mounjaro, which coincidentally made Eli Lilly the most valuable drug company in the world. Another fun fact is that Lilly partnered with another smaller company to make exenatide then Lilly dissolved the partnership in 2011, allowing the smaller company to keep the rights, likely because they saw the opportunity for the next steps)

5 felt like they half wrote 3 different games, realized they were running out of time, and then smushed them all together. Finishing the campaign becomes a chore long before the ending. Speaking of the ending if you do manage to chug through your reward is an abrupt and extremely weak ending that again feels like they just ran out of time

It’s crazy because then they plopped out red dead 2 which was a tremendously excellent narrative by comparison. They clearly have the means to make something fantastic.

A lot will admit it’s real but then shift blame to China while overlooking the facts that chinas pollution is largely made by western countries outsourcing the dirtiest parts of their supply chain to China and that China is vastly outperforming and outspending literally every country in considerably bringing down their emissions

Coreelec on ugoos am6b+ is the best option if you want the broadest support for formats possible (though notably missing av1)

Htpc with streaming content or stuff like Dolby vision is a licensing nightmare. Some stuff works, some doesn’t, Linux support is trash, etc

Pod8, not Amazon related but a like 3-8000 dollar mattress topper that can heat or cool depending on a number of factors. The model that adjusts temp is server sided so it will work without a subscription (for now) but just in basic “set temp” mode, when it’s sold as this device that tracks heart rate and movement to dynamically adjust temp. Tech bros with no kids and too much cash love it

It also stops working if Amazon web services go down, which is hilarious (which is maybe why people link it to Amazon, but that’s a different and worse problem where Amazon controls like 50% of the internet through data hosting)

Risks of stem cell treatment for autism include site infection, meningitis, tumors in brain or at injection site, fever, seizure, anaphylaxis, and death

Documented harms (all of those side effects are documented in this context) and so far at best inconclusive evidence based on small studies of questionable quality

Obviously there is a need to explore novel treatments in some areas but don’t endorse using autistic children to play pincushion because you’re not aware of the very real, documented, and potentially dire risks

How could it in a dichotomy of progressivism vs conservatism? The suppressed side will always be the progressive side because progress will always threaten the elite that are propped up by the current system and the elites will almost always have unequal and overwhelming power relative to everyone else. The system is deeply flawed for you and I, but not for musk, gates, and Zuckerberg and as a result they will fight hard to keep things the same with their disproportionate amount of resources

Especially so when the flawed system is designed to create oligarchs, so even if all 900 or so billionaires died tonight they’d rapidly be replaced (and likely lead to even more wealth concentration once the dust settles)

Play a mobile game like candy crush or whatever, a sports game like 2k, etc and you’ll that op has a point.

It’s largely theoretical money based on obscene overvaluations of his companies. Thus the title “paper billionaire”

Teslas market cap, for example, was 1.46 trillion dollars in 2024. This is more than the valuation of the next thirty five largest automakers combined. One could possibly argue a slight increase in valuation based on the IP held and the future moving towards battery powered cars (and basically everything) but to argue that this makes them more valuable than Toyota, GM, Honda, ford, Hyundai, Kia, etc all combined? Asinine.

Basically the stock exploded years ago on hype that Tesla would be a pioneer in many key domains: battery storage, electric vehicles, autonomous driving, AI, etc and blew up based on the hype that in 10 years time at least some of that would come to fruition and result in a company with insane revenues. The future is here now though and we see the reality: significant competition in all those areas that almost always outshines teslas offerings. There are better players in AI and autonomous driving (Waymo simply works better and a number of Chinese options like Baidu are the same). There are better electric cars that are better built and more affordable (the Hyundai ioniq is a better bang for buck in America, BYD destroys Tesla across the spectrum from cheap to insane hyper car prices). Tesla does have an edge in battery technology in capacity but in manufacturing both China and Korea destroy them, and China is quickly catching up in terms of capacity (and leads exponentially in patents). On top of this, declining sales year after year now that musk is toxic and people realize teslas are built like shit

This is why the government steps in to protect tesla. If BYD was available domestically Tesla would eat shit assuming BYD priced aggressively. The BYD seal is beaten by the model 3 in key factors like range (quite a bit) and efficiency (barely) but overall has a significantly higher build quality, more amenities, and a better warranty. Tesla wins on the supercharger but BYD has actually implemented battery exchange stations in China, which Tesla had looked at much earlier on, and are significantly faster than charging stations. Pricing is the key metric and a weird one: in Europe the seal is actually a bit more than the model 3 (~6k euro more) but in Asia it is anywhere from 20-50% less than the model 3 depending on trim level (though the 50% comes with worsening specs).

But Teslas protectionism comes from idiotic institutional investors and its listing in the s&p 500. They know it’s grossly overvalued, yet they hold almost 50% of available shares. If you have a 401k, pension, or an index fund you almost certainly have exposure to Tesla stock. So the valuation is propped up because if comes crashing down suddenly everyone’s retirement is notably impacted and exposes the piss poor state of the nationalized pension.

This is repeating several times over as well. With musk specifically the upcoming spacex listing is already widely regarded as grossly overvalued and it hasn’t even occurred yet. OpenAI and Anthropic will likely be the same story. Even with existing stocks: Microsoft, palantir, nvidia, etc, the same story has played out over and over

Fake billionaires that will inevitably crash the entire economy in a way that hasn’t been seen in a century because of their hubris. They bank on China never catching up (even though they’re making strides every day) and even if China does catch up having the government bar them from entering the market. But this only works as long as the captive audience of the us population has money to pour into their valuations; as the world shifts away from US products and into Chinese ones the squeeze will only get worse and eventually it will pop

It will shift to streaming that can run on anything and things like mods, running older clients, and cheats will essentially be impossible. Unless of course you pay for them with in app purchases, which publishers love

Short sighted consumers will eat it up because “oh now I don’t need an expensive console, I can just run an app on my tv!”

Then comes the death of all the above, as well as a generation of kids having access to not just gaming, but 3d modeling and serious digital art, programming (as well as learning through modding and finding ways to cheat), music production, video editing, etc. how many of those things were only available to kids via piracy? Capitalists don’t give a shit about this. They’re salivating at everything become a streaming client which both essentially eliminates piracy as well as turning a one time software purchase into perpetual subscription hell.

The crazy part is everyone but the tiniest sliver of people will be fucked by this. You know how musicians have shifted to basically making dick from streaming, and view it essentially as advertisement to funnel people into physical merch and concert ticket purchases, their only remaining revenue streams? Developers will be in the same place. It’s arguably advantageous now to be on something like gamepass but that’s because Microsoft is purposefully taking a small percentage barely above costs (10.5%). Once it’s dominant do you think they won’t shift to 30% like apple, steam, and google? And probably even more once distribution outside of their platform is unfeasible?

And for the short sighted consumer saving $3-500 on a console once every 5-10 years becomes another $30 subscription, which outpaces the cost of a console in 2 years and also robs you of the shred of autonomy you did have

I don’t mean people actually being in space. Perhaps a better word choice would be place, eg “we could be in a place where…”

The frustrating part is that we could be on the precipice of an amazing time. We could be in a space where it makes sense to dump tons of resources into rapidly progressing automation because it would enable people to finally stop doing tedious labor.

But a combination of our inability to demand collective ownership of these systems and a similar disdain for social welfare means the prospect is instead terrifying. We need to continue to allow people to work cash registers for well below livable wages because otherwise they’ll starve.

There is an alternate reality where the end result of AI is that people are just free to live how they want, to socialize, to explore art and novel ideas within their passion, engage in social supports, etc. but instead we will continue to prop up the need for mind numbing and tedious labor out of a fear of homelessness because collectivism is scary and bad

The frustrating part is that getting around it sucks. I’m told Kagi has better support for this but from what I’ve read it relies on users downranking the domains, which is a fools errand given the flood of these sites. I’ve also seen people that maintain blocklists for this that work with things like adguard and uBlock but then you still get pages of slop, but all the links just 404 now

My conspiracy is that this is allowed and not dealt with to push people to use LLMs directly, which are quickly becoming the most effective way to search for information online (with the caveat that you either need to have the knowledge to identify errors or be willing to double check the information given for flaws. Also taking like 4-7x the energy to process queries)

I don’t even care about an ai overview at the top. Give me a search engine that ranks down the sea of blogs that launched a year ago and have 5,000+ articles that are just ai generated bullshit designed to capture as many search queries as possible

Ecosia, ddg, google, brave, etc are all laden with this shit and it clogs up the searches. “How do I do x” and an endless stream of “achieving x is possible. Here’s a bulleted list of the next 12 paragraphs, then a bunch of summarized info from Reddit posts that only answers your question in the most basic obvious way and has no accounting for any kind of edge case or even just non traditional but acceptable use case. And even if you just wanted the basic answer its useless because the LLM fluffed the sentence long answer with 12 pages of meandering nonsense”