Endymion_Mallorn

Well, I assume you played the first game.

So, good luck, Hacker. You’ll need it.

Does the early reveal hit as hard as it did the first time?

It means Multi User Dungeon. It’s a networked multiplayer game, usually focused on dungeon-crawling as the name suggests. Early ones were based heavily on BD&D and AD&D, but others got more creative.

Because a MUD that isn’t part of a BBS feels wrong to me.

We need to get MUDs more popular again. But that would require getting Telnet popular again.

Yeah, nope. No matter what OS, no matter what specs, I’m going to keep my PC.

Was an even longer one essential to the plot of Ghost in the Shell, then?

Weirdly, Evangelion and GitS.

I do love that James and Meowth let Jesse be the one not getting her head squished.

I mean, I did offer it as one of over a half-dozen reasons. And my opinion is just that you shouldn’t go halfway. If you’re going to pay a subscription, the artists and staff ought to get paid. Otherwise, go full pirate and if you want to support an artist, find a way to do so directly, without platforms or labels.

Discoverability is a difficult challenge in a pirate context, imo. Last.fm still exists, so do bandcamp and soundcloud. Pandora, Soma.FM, and both terrestrial and internet radio can still work if you find the right genre. The other options include going to your local library, and your local media store of choice.

Another one that works is finding out the songwriters, producers, and engineers on your favorite songs/albums and tracking down their discography. Often enough, you’ll find similar-sounding music by tracking the tech guys.

Fair enough. My whole life has basically been defined as “very niche” since about 2012. But then again, I basically only use music to shut out the world. And yes, I said use, not enjoy. It’s basically a source of predictable noise that acts as a filter to the more random noise around me so I don’t have more issues than usual. That’s why staying in-genre matters and Pandora helps - it matches based on the predictable traits.

I’ve honestly never understood people who feel the need to “replace” Spotify. I just download the music I like to my device and listen to it via VLC. If I want to discover new music in genres I like, I’ll go and listen either to a terrestrial radio station, Soma.FM, or Pandora (which has many of Spotify’s issues for me, but serves more as a platform for discovery of obscure music). The rare times I listen to music, I’m usually going somewhere on mass transit, or I’m on foot. And during those times, my phone is either fully turned off (so I’ll use an MP3 player), or it’s in Airplane Mode. Spotify has never made sense for my use-case.

1. Closed non-federated streaming platform; requires an Internet connection.
2. Requires a subscription for a lot of basic functionality.
3. Even though it requires a subscription, they barely pay artists - the only ongoing benefit to using a non-pirate setup.
4. The increasing amount of “Perfect Fit Content” & LLM-generated music in playlists to avoid said payments.
5. They provide a guaranteed platform to political podcasts.
6. Audio quality is not only dependent on the subscription, but even the top-tier is generally subpar and can vary based on how they throttle you that day.
7. As a platform for mass appeal, discoverability is, loosely speaking, crud.

Pick any of those you like.

Since at least the Queen Anne’s Revenge was afloat. Or since the pirates were selling poached meat cooked via boucain.

They fight pirates, pirates recreate their stuff. This is natural and how culture works. Let them squirm.

Never heard of that tool. Thank you for sharing it!

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

PipePipe has even more sources.

Brave.