Hey genuine question what does everyone use for office apps these days? I’m extremely over being charged a yearly fee to use word and excel

Well that’s just silly. Most animals don’t even have bank accounts!

Murder sticks.

I’m a geologist and will save you some googling: it probably looks like a very large phallic obiect forcing itself into one phat rock formation.

Your first download should be a guide on punctuation my brother.

Okay yes that’s what I remember reading. I have Express VPN now, and while researching found it’s still surprisingly highly and doesn’t log. it’s on the more expensive side though, so I may still give proton or one of the other recs a try.

Same, I used to use PIA for about a decade, but I could’ve sworn I heard they were one of the ones that had gone way downhill. Otherwise I never had an issue with them. I’ll have to do some digging, see if it was founded or just a reddit rumor.

Oh nice thanks for that. So should I not worry as much about seeding the private trackers?

Yo! What exactly is different about private trackers? Like how does that help? Im lucky enough to have one but due to the seed ratio rules, I find myself downloading from my usual sites more frequently because I worry about seeding indefinitely.

Yo! What’s a proper VPN these days? It seems like all the ones I used to trust went to shit.

Seems weird to me in a day and age where switching apps is literally just a swipe of a finger. People will jump from Instagram to tik tok to texting to emailing to Whatsapp without thinking about it at all, but a podcast app is a hurdle they don’t want to deal with. Even more bizarre because until very recently it was always like that, for the entire history of podcasts. It’s a shame too because podcast apps are so intuitive these days. Listening to podcasts on Spotify feels clunky by comparison.

To each their own I guess, but I personally just don’t understand it.

Makes a lot more sense. I don’t listen to very many but when I do I use an app that isn’t Spotify. I don’t mind fast forwarding the commercials in the app. I have no desire to have Spotify try and algorithm my podcast tastes, especially not on top of injecting extra ads into them

Genuine question - why does anyone listen to podcasts on Spotify? There have been and still are a TON of quality podcast apps that are 100% free and don’t do this bullshit. Like, I’m aware Spotify has podcasts but in my mind Spotify is music, podcast app is podcasts. It was that way for more than a decade. I just don’t get it TBH.

Yeah, unfortunately could just be (probably is) good ol’ enshittification then. In this case at least.

No, this was not a baked in ad by the podcast hoster but literally inserted by Spotify.

Just FYI, those two things don’t need to be exclusive. In this case Spotify is probably the one sponsoring the podcast, and so they inserted ads themselves, as opposed to the content creators including their sponsor ads. Many more successful podcasts are doing this now, and it seems like the ads get shoved in when there sometimes aren’t even breaks.

Not saying it doesn’t suck, it absolutely does. Just pointing out that it’s a new trend. So it’ll probably get worse!

I haven’t commented anywhere in this thread, so I’m being objective. Look at it this way - I’m an American and our government is speed running towards facism and very much may re-elect a convicted felon who was caught stealing classified documents and sending them to our enemies. Similar to your problem, that is very much our problem, and the only real way to undo it is for other nations like yours to make us fuck off and deal with it.

That’s what people are getting at. It sucks for the people like you, like me, that are powerless in this situation, but from a macro level, it’s what needs to happen. Everyone sympathizes with you, the person, but very few sympathize with the country as a whole, as it’s viewed as self inflicted. Try not to take it personally, and recognize that it’s not coming from a place of racism, but objective rationality.

Seems to be invite only at the moment according to their sign up page. Any way for you to send an invite?

Hey man I have a question for you! Is this service download only or does it offer streaming too? Seems like a traditional torrent site to me, but just wanted to ask! Limited info on the site obvi.

Hey friend, I’m gonna PM you for some intel if you don’t mind!

I vaguely remember some people experimenting with replacing the head unit with aftermarket ones, but no idea how well that would actually go in practice

This varies wildly from manufacturer to manufacturer and even year to year. For example, GM cars used to route damn near everything through the entertainment unit, so that was your central computer. Cell antenna, on star control panel, every that phoned home. That was as recently as mid 2010s. It also led to hilarious problems where a relatively simple issue like an OnStar button not working well required a complete replacement of the stereo unit (which was $8k or so in parts and labor). Now that instrument clusters are doing more while also getting more diagnostic and digital, things are transitioning to a more centralized computing system somewhere else. This can make it easier OR more difficult to get around, depends on design.

For other brands it’s borderline impossible to even use an aftermarket system. Mazdas for example the entire infotainment system relies on itself. There’s nowhere to even put a traditional aftermarket. I’m sure it’s possible, but the design of the interior is completely based around the infotainment unit.