and my god the insults I received over the years about it.

Me too, me too. When I lost the internet for a mad long time and noticed my steamed games not working because the launcher was refusing to log in while offline (despite having a so-called offline mode) and questioning why a singleplayer game even requires all of this in the first place, I would then get told the problem was actually my internet provider and not the game’s or steam’s for creating this mess in the first place. Yeah, make it make sense. Incidentally I had to acquire a bunch of executables for those very same games like you did, and yep, they’d work offline as should be. Creator of service problem says piracy is a service problem, why is this not a headline already?

Then other DD platforms popped up, and people bought games there (myself included, fuck you direct2drive), and lost all the games and all the money when the platform died.

I’m getting Desura flashbacks. Lucky I downloaded everything I had when I felt the signs of it going down, but I know others weren’t as lucky. Silver lining is they’re still playable, DRM-free is nice, but like I established we’ve already moved on from that into bigger fish like “the credits reference a consulting company I don’t like.”

I’m so sick of this cyberpunk hellscape bullshit where you pay everything and own nothing.

And there’s not even any cyberware to show for it! But yeah at this point I’m focusing more on buying stuff other than games and playing my massive library of games from multiple decades. It’s just I really suck at that too.

Certainly if Gamers™ had half a spine, we wouldn’t get here. Instead it’s always been inch after inch being taken, Gamers™ either downplaying it or viciously complaining about it for a short while without anything tangible happening, and rinse and repeat. Miles have been taken, now Gamers™ argue about 30fps in a game that ships with super draconian DRM and no physical copies because we’re already cool with DRM now.

Also the bitter irony when I hear people upset by Sony’s steamification switching to PC, the most steamified platform of them all. I guess it beats waiting until 2028 when you can pull the trigger now?

I uninstalled all of flatpak and never looked back. I love wasting gigabytes on duplicate dependencies just to run the two flatpak apps.

Another good reminder of my desire to drop this browser. The question is whether it’s Ungoogled Chromium, or some Firefox forks available on Android and desktops.

If we put aside the environmental damage and the capitalist aspects of LLMs, I fail to see why I should change the way I use my devices to let some hallucinating algorithm do stuff. The only times I use it is when I’m really stumped coming up with relevant search results, and even then there’s more than 50% chance that it’s not gonna achieve some break through.

I don’t want Gemini. I want Google to Keep Android Open.

Brain: You know, she looks like Vi- Sees comment -cky. Yeah.

Or by Valve and their clones to drive sales on their DRM’d game platforms. Movies haven’t really died out on physical, not as much or as early as PC games. Combine that with the tactics of idiots who also used Starforce and its clones and they’ve also left an impression outlasting the few games that were infected with the stuff. Now the new normal is to buy stuff infected with online account DRM as if that’s somehow better.

Okay but also I heard bluray movies can be directly played only on Windows, for other OSes you have to rip the movie. Must be fun.

We’d better keep Google in the know that we still don’t accept this.

Meanwhile I still have a couple disc drives and the one that came with my laptop is still with me but has been replaced by a caddy to access my data from the old hard drive alongside my smol new SSD.

And I have so many discs too…

Do you have an issue with desktop Cromite where the browser just straight up freezes except for maybe the menu button? I’d chalk up to being a Debian Linux weirdo, but my work-provided Windows 11 laptop also has this particular issue in the flesh. I switched back to Ungoogled Chromium because of it, and also cause I want uBlock Origin and no less.

At least Cromite Android has extensions.

So you’ll accept Billionaire #927 slander from a PC player, right? Also goodness, that’s lame as fuck.

Here comes the Epstein class bootlicking committee again…

And I love my Vita! Still wish I got a PSP along with it though, always wanted one as a kid.

They’ll be shut down this year? Have you got a source I could look at, cause that’s news to me.

Same. Wouldn’t have even known it was Han Solo’s line myself.

The majority of people

Stop using such shit excuses. Keep Android Open!!

It only sounds like magic because all of you succeeded at speedrunning “you will own nothing and you’ll be happy” into coming true, music, videos, games, books and even OSes (reminder for keepandroidopen.org). But it’s not magic. If you can download cat photos and memes, you can save and play MP3s. I’ve taken this feature for granted, and so can you.

Bandcamp lets you download music in several formats. I think Apple Music and Amazon are still viable for MP3s (but eugh supporting US oligarchs, Bandcamp is also US). Some people graciously offer MP3s on SoundCloud. When all else fails, use NewPipe or an app to convert YouTube videos into local MP3 files - in fact you may find links to buy and/or free download music albums in the description. Nothing about this is magic, and shouldn’t be.

The author is unnecessarily making the rebellion against enshittification harder, and neglecting to mention you can start now with current hardware to achieve the same desired results. You don’t need an iPod.

I went ahead and read the rest. It’s like the author is pretending Android only has Spotify and clones, and nothing to do the iPod’s thing. If you don’t have a system music player, go find one on Google Play or F-Droid. I had PowerAmp and ditched it because of its online activation DRM scheme, and for a while I had Musicolet before it had a subscription tier attached to it, and jumped apps until I settled on Retro Music, for now. A better app might dethrone it. Come to think of it, that’s a pro over the iPod, it’s stuck with Apple’s idea of the music player back then, but Android lets you choose upcoming and past players.

The intentionality of putting gigabytes of tracks and curating them after the fact is definitely way easier with Android, too.

Okay. I read a bit of the article. By a bit I mean I made it to the part where the iPod HDD and battery have been modded. This dude is leaving out half his side of the story.

You need to get MP3s for the iPod. Did the dude even try to put those same MP3s on their phone? Who knows. They spent a lot whinging about streaming apps and their enshittification, really funny. Local music apps are set up and forget affairs, I use Retro Music from F-Droid - zero enshittification, no subscription fees, and that version is free. The author can use it too.

I’m certainly no iPod modder, but I’m pretty sure you needed to install iTunes to get it to play literally anything. Android lets me play whatever from the SD card root, phone memory root, Download folder, or even if it’s lost in my screenshot gallery for an absurd example.

Heck, you can’t watch videos unless they’re encoded/converted in a way that the Pod can play them. Any modern phone can play anything with the system video app or VLC or something.

Not a concern to me at all, but the pod doesn’t have Bluetooth, so you’re practically required to use something with the 3.5mm jack. A decent phone should have both.

If you don’t want to receive a LinkedIn notification, turn off LinkedIn notifications. Android’s notification system has matured tremendously, no app will send anything unless YOU have allowed it in the first place. Or turn on Do Not Disturb, which the author says they did, but I don’t believe them. Bedtime Mode is an even stronger option, as it can hide your notifications. For the nuclear option, just turn off WiFi/mobile data - of course streaming apps will be unable to do anything in this case, but… Local music players will keep trucking on.

TL;DR Just download and use a LOCAL music player you’re comfy with and play the MP3s you already put on your iPod.

The iPod isn’t something you’re gonna hold constantly in your hands, like a classic handheld console where you can argue that you prefer playing GBA, PSP or Vita games on their original hardware, screen, buttons and all. You will most likely pocket it and only interact with it using your wired earphones. Your phone is still the best option here.

And just manage to push it unilaterally too. This shit must be opposed.