cobysev

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR CURRENT PLEX PASS HOLDERS:
For users who have an active Plex Pass subscription, remote playback will continue to be available to you without interruption from any Plex Media Server, after these changes go into effect. When running your own Plex Media Server as a subscriber, other users to whom you have granted access can also stream from the server (whether local or remote), without ANY additional charge—not even a mobile activation fee. More on that later in this update.

I was worrying about this change because my Plex server provides free streaming for several of my friends and family and I didn’t want them to have to start paying for it. The whole point was to get them away from Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, etc.

But this sounds like, since I’m already a Plex Pass subscriber, my remote viewers will still be able to access my stuff for free. Do I have that right? Because if so, this change is just business as usual for me.

For some reason, this just sparked an ancient memory of the Geek Code, which was a sort of signature block you could append to your emails and online bios to show off how much of a geek you were in the geekiest fashion possible.

Goddamn I’m old.

“They Live!” A guy finds some strange sunglasses that lets him see the subliminal messages hidden in all our print and media and advertisements. He can also see aliens walking amongst the population, disguised as regular humans!

Turns out, Earth had been invaded by aliens long ago and they’ve been keeping us under their control with subliminal messages for decades.

I think it was paid… But it’s been years so I couldn’t tell you.

It’s currently $3.99 in the Play Store for me, with a crossed-out list price of $6.49. Not a bad deal.

?:)

I thought it was referring to “standup meetings,” which is what we called weekly meetings with the commander in the military.

Everyone stands for the commander when he enters a room, then each person presenting needs to be standing while briefing the commander.

It’s military protocol for a high-ranking officer, although the cool officers would tell everyone to buck protocol, remain seated, and just give them the bullet points so we can get back to work.

The US owns a bunch of Caribbean “territories” that they still won’t make into US states. Their citizens are US citizens, but can’t vote.

EDIT: The current US itself was carved out of territories owned by Mexico, France, and England (which took them from Native American tribes). Back in the day, we conquered and stole a bunch of land, both from natives and from other invading countries.

But we’ve been more interested in foreign politics since WWII and less about expanding our own land. Besides, why own a bunch of foreign soil when we can just set up outposts around the globe and have a military frontline anywhere? I served in the US military and we have so many bases scattered around every region of the globe. We can literally involve ourselves in any global conflict we want to within a day or two. Meanwhile, our actual homeland is isolated on the other side of the planet, where it’s difficult for foreign invaders to touch us.

Oh damn, I’m starting on the Boomer habit of complaining about Zoomer culture when it’s actually Alpha culture.

It feels like yesterday, Boomers were complaining about how annoying millennial kids were, when we were actually adults in our 20s/30s at the time. I’m just realizing that was over a decade ago, and now I’m doing the same thing to Zoomers. Someone please stop time before I get any older; I want to get off.

Had to guess on the boomerang. I’ve seen boomerangs but didn’t know that’s what they’re called nor have I ever posted one.

I’ve never heard of a “boomerang” that wasn’t referring to the Australian tool/toy. I totally guessed on that one too. I don’t post videos to any social media platform, so I was totally out of the loop on that one.

Skibidi toilet? As a 39-yr old millennial, I’m aware that was a thing like a year ago, but I assumed it was a Zoomer meme or something. I can’t get past that captcha.

EDIT: Upon looking at it again, I see it just wants me to type in “what is skibidi toilet” into Google, not answer what it is. Ugh, I’m turning into my Silent Generation/Boomer parents.

I was referring to PlexAmp. It’s decent, works well, but I just liked the interface for Symfonium better. It seemed more functional than PlexAmp when I switched over to it.

I actually haven’t used PlexAmp in a few years, so maybe it’s gotten better lately. I guess I’ll have to compare apps.

I’ve been maintaining a self-hosted music library for so long (30+ years now), there used to not be any tools for editing metadata. I used to have to go into file properties and manually edit the data for each individual MP3 file. Nowadays, I use Mp3tag to manually edit entire albums at a time. I have ADHD though (the hyperfixation kind), so I’ve literally dedicated thousands of hours to manually fixing metadata.

I guess I never bothered to look for more advanced tools to auto-update metadata. I had to go in and manually fix stuff that updated automatically from the Internet in the past, so I guess I stopped trusting online databases. But they’ve really advanced since the last time I went searching for tools, and their databases are a lot more complete in this day and age. I’m gonna play around with some of these programs and see how well they work.

I host my music library through Plex, then use Symfonium on my phone if I want to stream my Plex music remotely, just because I like their interface a little better than Plex’s.

I use Win+Pause as a shortcut to bring up the system menu in Windows. I’ve used it so much over the years, it takes me a minute to figure out how to find that menu when I’m using a keyboard that doesn’t have a Windows key.

I also use Home and End about equally. Quick way to scroll back and forth across text or files/folders.

I bought the pro version of Relay a few years ago. Didn’t even have to spend my own pocket money for it; I downloaded the Google Opinion Rewards app, filled out a few surveys, and Google gave me a few bucks to spend in the Play store, which I used to purchase Relay Pro.

Still, the creator of Relay claimed the whole app was moving to a subscription service, so I’ve now abandoned it. It’s not their fault. Reddit is making third party apps unsustainable without a constant income source. But I don’t want to get handed a bill one day while I’m browsing, so I’m here on Sync for Lemmy now.

I had been using Relay for Reddit for years, and they didn’t shut down like other third party apps, so I made a Lemmy account as a backup plan and then continued using both Lemmy and Reddit for a while.

Then the creator of Relay announced that they couldn’t afford to continue service as it was and would be migrating toward a monthly subscription-based service to stay alive. That day, I moved to Lemmy and never went back. As much as I’d love to pay someone else just to stick it to Reddit’s CEO, I felt that getting financially invested in a failing website just wasn’t worth it in the long run. Besides, Sync for Lemmy had just been released and it was a familiar experience. I had used Sync for Reddit before I discovered Relay for Reddit.

Lemmy (and the fediverse as a whole) is much better than Reddit anyway. There are enough people here to have fresh content every day and I’m still discovering interesting niche subs (magazines? I’m still not sure what they call the categories here). There’s also not too many people here, so when I find an interesting topic to comment on (like this one), it’s not already 5,000+ comments deep. Nothing more demoralizing than commenting on a popular topic and getting absolutely no reaction from the community. No comments, no upvotes or downvotes. Makes me feel like I wasted my time trying to add my two cents to a conversation, and I tend to delete those comments later.

And if I run out of things to browse on Lemmy… oh well. It keeps me from being stuck on my phone all day. A smaller community means the feed isn’t endless, so it keeps me from doom-scrolling all day and night. I much prefer it here, and I’m officially done with Reddit.