Happy New Year fellow gopher and smolnet denizens! It's been a
sub-par winter here in the Great White North, with temps far above
seasonal and a decent share of wet snow, ice and even rain. Not that
those things are unheard of here, but they're more frequent now in
traditionally really cold months, and that is affecting outdoor
activities. Hopefully things improve soon, but for now it's an icy
mess.

                               ~
                            
I've been relying more on DVDs or piracy lately for my media
consumption. As the speed-run to the death of the many over-priced
and ad-laden streaming services continues, I'm happy with my DVD
collection and bittorent. I self-host a Jellyfin instance for my
family, which I'm finding far more usable than the paid
alternatives.

The video streaming services had a good run. Netflix in particular
had been refined over the years and was a decent service that many
(including myself) took advantage of. I had been a subscriber since
back in the DVD-in-the-mail days, but last year finally said 'fuck
off'. The last straw was the password sharing nonsense, I canceled
the day I got the email on the new policy from Netflix. And it's not
just Netflix, all of the large streaming services now have shitty,
overpriced interfaces that are just designed to maximize ad space,
with search nerfed to show you what they want, rather than what you
want. They're also hoarding their catalogs, forcing you to subscribe
to multiple services.

Music is the same - years ago when there was no decent way to get
legal digital music, I was using the various file-sharing clients
(remember Limewire and Napster?) to get what I wanted. Then, when
Amazon started offering DRM-free digital downloads for a buck a
song, I used them - for a short time, it was more convenient to do
so. I could could pick and choose songs I liked, then download the
mp3s and copy them to whatever device I wanted. Then the interface
went to hell, downloads got more difficult, the prices went up, and
Amazon started pushing people to their streaming music service. It's
now easier to rip songs from youtube with yt-dlp.

And don't even get me started on "owning" digital videos or ebooks,
and the push to make consumers rent everything, along with the
ability to take it all away at any time. "If buying isn't owning,
piracy isn't stealing" [0]. If the media companies go back to
sensible policies and ad-free, usable interfaces, for a fair price,
I'll happily go back.

[0]: https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-james-hill