if I still downloaded directly to my local drive, I’d use utorrent BUT only the 2.2.1 version. it’s been at least 4 years since I’ve done that due to a lack of having a functional laptop so I’ve been out of downloading stuff that way for years, but even then I knew that modern utorrent was bad. I actually stopped using any new version once bittorrent bought it.

the offline gps app that I use and absolutely love I initially pirated for my iphone 3, then for my samsung galaxy vibrant and then actually bought and bought extras. I love this app.

then a few years ago they offered more features that I found useful but put them behind a subscription instead of buying them as a premium option as before and I don’t like that. I still get to keep the options I bought, but any future add-ons forces me to subscribe and I’m not doing that.

honestly it might push me to see if it’s possible to to pirate an app I already paid for to get any new features I may find useful.

my view on it lies in two seperate buckets:

1. if the thing being pirated is vastly overpriced for its function i don’t see it as immoral
2. if the thing being pirated is no longer available or was never made available for private ownership, ie only able to be streamed and only available on said service so long as the host streamer still has rights to do so, it isn’t immoral.

and just to be clear, i don’t see piracy as inherently evil or anticapitalistic. there have been several books and apps that i pirated that i liked and converted to an actual buyer to get more books in the series or get updates to the program.

voting is absolutely worth the squeeze when you do it. however voting also is heavily dependent on a voting base that is both highly engaged in the process and is knowledgeable about the issues.

so when you have elections where:

1. a third or more of all eligible voters do not vote
2. laws have been passed to make it harder to vote for some people
3. a majority of the people who do vote have only paid attention to campaign issues for at the most the two weeks directly before the end of voting and
4. voters are not given the facts about each candidate by a press that is more interested in manufacturing a close race for pure financial gain rather than accuracy in telling the truth about the candidates

voting completely defeats the purpose. because the end result is not one based on actual facts, it’s an outcome manufactured by vested interests with near infinite resources given the petina of legitimacy by playing on the fact that people were freely given a choice. more times than not there’s enough people who are paying attention to overcome that deficit in the ability to message. but the times when it does not it goes really wrong.

voting

i used the android app “reddit is fun”. i had stopped using reddit well before the api and public offering drama so i had absolutely no idea it was going on. i needed to get an answer to a question and the google search led to a reddit link. typically i normally chose web links, but this time i said, what the hell, and opened the link with rif. then i read the changelog of the app. that pointed to a lemmy instance for rif (which does not have a lemmy version btw) and that’s where i caught up on all the bullshit i missed during the intervening 3 years.

ps i also have a .ml account. it was the easiest one to create an account with at the time. if i could transfer all the stats and comments i made with this account and transfer it to one that allowed swearing (for instance you can’t use the word that describes selling one’s self for money or other favors that sounds similar to a garden tool called a hoe) i’d do it.

latin, a little bit. it was a required 7th grade class. it’s been 25(!!!) years and I’m neither a lawyer or a catholic clergy so my retention of it is almost non existent. the things I do still hang on to are from my exposure to spanish and french at work where I can remember a few base words.

any images I upload are either already found online or if they are images I took scrubbed of location information in the metadata plus I don’t put my face online. my face is on my fb page and a few pictures have my face in them but as far as I’m aware there’s less than 10 pictures of my face online.

my 2011 toyota camry.

it’s also the best car I’ve ever owned, probably because it’s the only car I’ve ever owned.

EVERYONE out pizzas the hut.

pizza hut is bad chain pizza.

this has been my opinion since the early 90s and nothing during that time has changed my opinion.

meanwhile domino’s has gotten markedly better since 2000. if I’m traveling and don’t want to think about what to eat, I’m getting domino’s because I know they’re everywhere. them or papa johns depending on what deal is going on at the time.