Wrench Wizard

According to the wiki article that you linked:

However, due to many legal, regulatory and technological obstacles, cable television in the United States in its first 24 years was used almost exclusively to relay terrestrial commercial television stations to remote and inaccessible areas. It also became popular in other areas in which mountainous terrain caused poor reception over the air. Original programming over cable came in 1972 with deregulation of the industry.[1]

So basically for that first 24 years - around '1948 -'72 it was primarily used to get broadcast television to people in areas with poor reception.

Then came cable companies, producing content… without as many commercials as OTA t.v. I wasn’t born early enough to know the 70’s, but did grow up with antenna television and remember being introduced to cable. First thing I noticed was that there weren’t any ads at all on some channels. When I was a kid the ad free channels on my setup were 09, 10, 19, 20, 21, and some others I’m likely forgetting. I didn’t actually have too many more than that, and a lot of that was filler. The ad free channels were the meat and potatoes of my experience!

So, maybe history doesn’t say it was marketed that way, maybe the cable companies didn’t either, I won’t claim to know, but I will tell you that seeing channels without ads was a pitch on its own back then, you noticed it when you visited others homes and talked about it, others noticed when they visited out home and thought about getting it themselves etc.

Maybe it wasn’t a pitch, and the whole deal, but it was damned sure a selling point.

We got reception just fine, somehow even in my rural area, what we didn’t get was relatively new, commercial free movies, or titties.

With everyone self hosting huge servers like this, my question is… how can I access some large ones like this? Kodi, Plex?

That’s actually great for the price, i7 12, 32Gb ram, 1Tb M2, etc? Not bad at all! Would even be a great little gaming setup

I miss back in the day. Used to be able to store all my stuff on CD-R’s, hell before that it was floppy’s. File sizes have grown exponentially, programs/apps all have huge sizes. Pictures and videos is my biggest issue, but I’d also like to backup games that I’ve downloaded so I don’t have to download again. I can backup old games no problem, but modern games? Many are 100+ GB now, and in time they all will be and 200GB will be the standard, then a terabyte and more.

Anyway, until I can afford and find a 20 tb sad I’m just using DVDs for everything but games and large programs. Quick to write, solid, tangeable etc. If I could afford a bunch of flash drives I’d probably do that instead.

If you can afford it and it’s important data I’d ofc recommend backing up to a large SSD, THEN to a cloud (or more) as a failsafe… then also using flash drives/DVD’s etc. For an additional failsafe for the super important stuff.

I mean, if it’s important backup all you can.

I’ve got priceless memories in my Google photos library but ofc Google removed being able to view them on my native photos app and download easily… so instead I either have to backup and save ALL of it in Google drive or download specific albums… idk so I wouldn’t personally recommend google as a true backup as you never know, personally I’d just use DVDs and flash drives for that stuff

I’m new to the party and am still experimenting, not super tech savvy but I’ve been doing a few things.

I have one SD set up for retro gaming via Lakka. Wish Lakka had an option to add a desktop like RetroPie but just really love the interface and ease of use. Tried recalbox and it’s nice as well! Can’t remember why I settled for Lakka.

Another SD is for experimenting at the moment. As mentioned I’m brand new to the pi community so I’ve installed Raspbian on it and have just been testing the waters. Set up iirc my first VNC network between it, my PC and my phone. Also have been using it to rip and burn DVDs via brasero. Don’t have wifi at home, I use a hotspot which complicates using my printer wirelessly so I’m considering using the pi as a network for that. There’s also a cool program I found where you learn musical coding? It’s pretty interesting though I still don’t really know what it’s for haha.

I’d really like to do more with it but as mentioned am just learning. Hell, I just got it running a few weeks ago after it had been down for a couple years so I’m sure I l’ll be doing more when I find the time.

I’d love to set it up in my vehicle and have Spotify, gps navigation, retro gaming etc through it but seems like a big project with my limited understanding ATM.

Hey where? I need that! Have a spare m2 and want to use it!

What’s that?

Wait hold on, I’m just now learning how to operate my raspberry pi, what is pi-hole?

I installed Rvnc on it last week, is pi-hole similar?

Iirc that requires Android 10 correct? When I initially read of the patch I had an old phone that wasn’t capable of android 10 but have recently upgraded. Do you happen to have the link with patch instructions?

I’m using liftoff ATM and haven’t had the confusion you’re mentioning (I don’t think) but haven’t browsed much. Maybe worth a try.

Waiting on Boost for Lemmy myself

Waiting on boost here too, Ruben or whoever needs to hurry up!

Same here! Was a reddit addict for years. Have been dropping my usage down for a while, to the point that I barely used it before the api changes. After the API changes I quit altogether bc I feel greasy every time I support them in any way. Then Boost my 3pa finally died and I haven’t logged in since bc the official app is absolute trash. Liftoff has been a decent replacement so far but I really wish the boost Dev would hurry up with releasing their Lemmy app!

Other than that yeah, I’ve spent much more time outdoors. Even before the API announcement I’d replaced reddit with writing bc I mostly made lengthy comments anyway. Writing skills are pretty solid now& I think I’ve put in at least, oh shit I write about 3 hours most days and it’s been a few years of writing, I’ve written around a thousand+ hours just in the past year or so! Very happy about that bc I enjoy it. Tbh if I’d scrolled Reddit mindlessly all that time well damn, I wouldn’t have learned anything but a few random facts. Wouldn’t have gotten better at anything except commenting… sheesh. I like Lemmy and support it but think we should all probably reduce our online time a bit, bc as much as I love it, we really could be doing more with our lives and mindlessly scrolling the web is almost always just wasted time. Can’t think of anything I’ve ever done online that’s actually bettered my life in anyway, much less bettered myself. Enrolling in classes and learning? Sure. Scrolling mindlessly? No… it’s not good for us.

Yep, they killed boost, I quit.

On the bright side I like it here and don’t feel ashamed of myself for supporting assholes every time I log in