Yeah; that’s not much time, and I’m not a lawyer, but this seems a complicated legal question. I just assumed any tool that circumvents any sort of digital lock would be hosting in countries that DGAF about US laws. Even better if they have a .onion address to avoid any network blocking attempts, like z-library.

It works in Canada without a SIM. I know because my son did it on his “wifi-only” tablet.

Do you need a phone plan at all for emergency calling? It’s required for all carriers to take 911 calls in Canada.

I knew about the Debian > Ubuntu ordering, but I take it Debian is still often used as a desktop environment, which is what I thought.

Oh, that’s very good to know. That’s a big limitation. That might make moving to Linux at all DOA for me. I’d likely need to do everything for work in a VM, but then what’s the point?

Unfortunately, I’m tied to Excel 2024. I make heavy use of new functions, like SORT that aren’t available in any other desktop app, and the web client doesn’t allow for VBA scripting, so it’s not suitable, either.

oh, shit:

The main one I see is if you need to install some proprietary VPN client it gets annoyingf

You’re right. I have a crappy work-supplied Windows laptop that has exactly that installed. It would be nice not to need to boot into that when I need to work on the server from home, but it’s not a deal breaker.

No other specific non-web-based software is needed for work, aside from the aforementioned OneDrive and Excel 2024.

Edit: Your last paragraph is exactly what I’m asking about; I’m capable of doing slightly involved tinkering, but it would need to be something that I can Google Fu through each step of someone walking through most of the steps. I don’t know it at all well enough to go completely “off script” and just tinker with confidence.

It sounds like you’re suggesting that going for something mainstream and getting it to work for games is likely a better option, particularly for someone with limited Limits experience?

Good to know! I use it at work for a server; ngl, my non-Bazzite distro search hasn’t been extensive, except getting to the point that I think I don’t want anything Ubuntu-based.

Thanks for the reply!

A few thoughts:

I was thinking Win 10 EOL won’t matter if the VM has no Internet access. Linux would sync the files for me, so the Windows VM can just run Excel (and maybe Word, since I’m setting up Office 2024 anyway) using the files synced by abraunegg’s onedrive, so it doesn’t need internet access. (Assuming there’s a partition format that works well for both Windows and Linux that I can use for onedrive, which I assume is a “solved” problem by now—i remember this being hard 20 years ago.)

And his package apparently works in Fedora 42 with docker, which I assume should work fine.

But yeah; maybe what you’re suggesting makes more sense. And that VM definitely would need web access, then, so Win 10 is a non-starter. The database work I do is likely easier in Linux, but that’s likely easy enough to get data files out of the VM for just that work, I would expect.

Another question now comes to mind; I’m going to look this up now; how hard is it to copy/paste between Linux and a VM? Edit: As I’d hoped, this is also apparently a solved problem and sounds easy to configure.

If Firefox continues to work, does that mean that it can be used as a workaround, potentially? I guess it depends on how the DRM works, if something like running it in a Firefox tab would work.

And surely blocking Firefox would be a bad move for Google since that would clearly be using monopolistic power in one market to gain advantage in another, right?

Depends on the item and your goals.

If you’re a “car person” who always wants to have the latest model, then maybe leasing a car makes sense. Every 3 years, you get a new car.

Phones are similar; there are some plans where you are expected to return the phone every 1-2 years. If you really want the newest model all the time, then that might be a good plan for you.

But for a printer, that only makes sense if you’re a business with medium print volumes and no IT budget. For home use, that’s insane when a cheap last printer will last decades. We have a B&W laser from 2 decades ago and a used colour laser we got for free/very cheap (the power button is broken but it otherwise works great). I’m guessing we pay about 1-2% of an HP subsription.

MAM has, effectively, no ratio requirements at all since it’s so easy to get points. There’s some system to reward seeding low-seed torrents and large-file-size torrents, and to stay in good standing you only need to seed for 72h. Hell, they give out freeleech tokens like candy, too.

If you start by downloading some low-seed books to keep the swarm alive, you’ll have enough points to buy VIP status indefinitely. And because of that system, basically everything on the site is available and downloads in seconds. It takes me longer to transfer audiobook files to a phone than it takes to download.

Isn’t a cracked (old, I think?) Kindle the only way to pirate KU/DRM titles? At least, that’s what I recall from the last time I looked into it. There’s a book I really wanted to format shift from KU since Google TTS was fucking up all the proper nouns, but I gave up. (It was an obscure book that isn’t available anywhere pirated.)

Meanwhile, Steam is raking it in by continuing to offer a better product than piracy. The Steam Deck is making that even more true; it’s so much more convenient to have games in the Steam library than try to keep a repack updated with new patches/content.

Right, but pirating Disney-owned IP is more moral than paying for it. Disney is the number 1 company in the world for lobbying for copyright over-reach. Every dollar that goes to Disney pays for lobbyists who will continue to push for life-of-author + 90+ years, because life-of-author plus 70 years just isn’t enough time to control our shared cultural heritage.

Similarly for Nintendo and software piracy.

Paying for Disney/Nintendo media is immoral.

You can stream remux releases using Stremio + Torrential + a Debrid service, like Real Debrid. 30+GB 4K resolution.

I only have a 1080p screen, so I’ve never tried it, but I’ve tested the download speed from Real Debrid for regular file downloads and it caps out my gigabit line, so it can definitely handle streaming remuxes.

That’s over half a 100mbit line 24/7.

I have my upload capped at 6MiB/s since that’s ~half my 100mbit upload. (I can’t get symmetric gigabit internet here, at least not until fibre-to-the-door lines are run in the next couple of years.)

Impressive numbers for home internet.

It’s satire. The author is pointing out how morally reprehensible it is, using irony.

The text is only fucked the the way that The Onion sticks are fucked: this is only labeled satire because of the tone of the article. The content is as true as “real” news.

The actual “fucked” content is that the author was correct, and that the wealthy benefit from hunger and the threat of starvation to maintain access to abundant cheap labour.

Seriously… I’ve downloaded 2TB in a week before.

I get that it’s not about the bandwidth, though; it’s about needing to upgrade their security since they scraped the site without needing to log in, so obviously their site wasn’t secure. They’re claiming IT costs as damages.