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Use Downloader by AFTVNews to download and install it, I guarantee it’s worth the ~5 minutes of effort it takes to do and AFTVNews Downloader is safe. I don’t know how anyone watches Youtube without ad block and sponsorblock these days, haha.

SmartTube for Android TV gives you adblock and sponsorblock

Yeah it’s awesome, you get to spend all of your time chasing stupid issues like it picking the dumbest artist name possible and using it for 30 albums because one artist was on two of those albums, or deciding that 50% of your artists should be Lastname, Firstname but the other 50% should be Firstname Lastname. Then half the time it will use its own metadata for cover art and the other half it’ll use metadata in the files. Doesn’t matter how meticulous you are with your music tags an whether or not you have musicbrainz’d all of them to be consistent, it still finds a way to screw things up pretty much reliably.

But it’s all worth it because PlexAmp is surprisingly good once you’ve done the legwork and fixed all the stupid shit and I would much rather buy music directly and self-host my own music streaming system than pay spotify monthly.

Using a Microsoft cloud account to log into my local computer means Microsoft owns credentials to a device in my house, and if they get hacked (which they do, all the fucking time), my device is less secure because of it and my data is less secure because of it.

There’s absolutely no need for my copy of Windows to require me to login using a cloud-based account.

You can use all manner of apps to disable the telemetry and privacy nonsense that people have issues with Windows about (and I similarly find Microsoft’s privacy-last approach to be tedious), but if your computer requires you to use a cloud account to log in, then your computer is susceptible to that cloud account being hijacked or hacked and Microsoft has given absolutely no good reason for this to be the case.

Logging in to a Microsoft account doesn’t provide any real benefit to the user at all, the best you can say is that you’re not prompted to log in again if you run the Microsoft Store or the Xbox app, and that’s not a compelling benefit.

As someone who stupidly spent the last 20 or so years chasing the bleeding edge of TVs and A/V equipment, GOOD.

High end A/V is an absolute shitshow. No matter how much you spend on a TV, receiver, or projector, it will always have some stupid gotcha, terrible software, ad-laden interface, HDMI handshaking issue, HDR color problem, HFR sync problem or CEC fight. Every new standard (HDR10 vs HDR10+, Dolby Vision vs Dolby Vision 2) inherently comes with its own set of problems and issues and its own set of “time to get a new HDMI cable that looks exactly like the old one but works differently, if it works as advertised at all”.

I miss the 90s when the answer was “buy big chonky square CRT, plug in with component cables, be happy”.

Now you can buy a $15,000 4k VRR/HFR HDR TV, an $8,000 4k VRR/HFR/HDR receiver, and still somehow have them fight with each other all the fucking time and never work.

8K was a solution in search of a problem. Even when I was 20 and still had good eyesight, sitting 6 inches from a 90 inch TV I’m certain the difference between 4k and 8k would be barely noticeable.

“Face backlash” = about 160,000 people signed a petition saying they disagreed with it, then went about their daily lives and totally, 100% without a doubt continued using their Visa or Mastercard credit cards.

They don’t care, there are no alternatives. They can do whatever they want.