And it's extra shitty because Beehaw has the largest technology community in the fediverse, so if you want to access it you better make sure you're a member of one of their 'blessed' federated friends.

Until the instance you choose to set up on ends up in a feud with any, or all of those instances.

The whole fediverse experiment is going to end up with a number of small, highly segregated communities, and even more political polarization. I guess if you want to live in an echo chamber, a federated environment is the best way to go about it.

And this is why the fediverse will never work out - if I gamble wrong and set up shop on an instance that gets in a pissing match with other ones, I either have to make an account elsewhere (and then have to do it again later the next time two instances defederate each other) or live with only seeing some of my subscribed content.

He actually moderated jailbait? I always assumed he was the type of person to have an alt for it, but to actually use his real account? What a scumbag.

Speaking of open signups, is there any organized community on Lemmy that highlights when they're available (especially, in my case, for audiobooks)?

And double check to make sure it doesn't leak. On my Windows system using Eddie/AirVPN, I found my IP address was still leaking when seeding torrents - not that uncommon on Windows, apparently, especially if you have multiple network interfaces. I just ended up doing my torrenting from a Linux system instead.

I guess it depends on the tracker. The only private tracker I ever used was actually for arcade and video game ROMs (PleasureDome), and they structured things so that their most popular torrents (MAME sets) were free to leech but contributed to the upload side of ratio (so you could download the entire thing for 'free', but that download didn't count against your ratio requirement, and you could build ratio by seeding it). It generally worked - at least most of the time, but unless you had a seedbox, a VPN with port forwarding or exposed ports for BitTorrent, you weren't likely to build up much ratio on other torrents.

I don't use torrents much anymore (I'm pretty much in the Usenet camp these days), but I wouldn't really do it seriously unless I paid for a seedbox.

I'm not so picky - my movies are generally 720p or 1080p (I use 1080p x265 for things I rip myself), and my music is a combination of (mostly 320kbps) MP3 and FLAC.

I ended up building a new NAS (35TB current, 100TB eventual capacity) to replace my old 12TB unit, specifically because I wanted to start grabbing more 7th gen console stuff, and to start ripping/downloading more movies (specifically because streaming services are becoming a clusterfuck, where you never know which service - if any - will have the movies or shows you want on any given day).

If port forwarding is essential, then AirVPN is probably your best choice. I've been using them for years (including port forwarding) and I have no complaints.

For video games alone, a lifetime. I have essentially complete ROM sets for everything through sixth generation consoles, and a wide variety of newer stuff (a full Wii set minus the obvious shovelware, a selection of the better PS3/Xbox 360 exclusives).

For movies, not quite as much. I'm mainly an emulation hoarder (who had to buy a bigger NAS because my ROMs were crowding out my family's music and video files), but we have 10-15TB of movies, TV and music laying around.

I've been using AirVPN for many years (including port forwarding). I have zero complaints.

I have a Spotify (family) subscription, but it's mainly for the others in my household. I'm a big believer in having a local media library and local ownership (legally acquired or otherwise) - I don't like the idea of content you're paying for disappearing due to licensing issues or other BS (perhaps it's not as big of an issue with services like Spotify, but video streaming is a huge mess).

I've actually managed to keep my muscle memory in check for the last couple of days - no accidental visits to Reddit so far.

The platform is fine and being able to subscribe across Lemmy instances is nice (i.e. I'm not even on Beehaw but here I am anyway) - it just needs more users and content.

The main issue is going to be getting that critical mass of users, especially on a platform that isn't quite as straightforward as a centralized one. Trying to explain how Lemmy works to my wife just left her confused and wondering what the point was. Getting people like her to make the jump to a federated platform is going to take time, effort, and - most importantly - content.

File storage, mainly. I have 2 NAS devices (one Synology I picked up in 2014, and an Unraid device I just built a couple months ago) - the former holds 13TB and the latter currently holds 35TB with plans to bring it to 100TB as I get money for more drives.

The Unraid system has a Youtube-dl instance running to auto-pull videos from the channels I follow, and I also run my Plex server from it. The Synology only has a Git server on it that I use to keep local copies of repos that I store on GitHub, along with personal projects that I'd rather not publish (even as private repos) in the cloud.

I originally went with the AT LP60XBT when I started buying records a few months ago but replaced it pretty quickly with a Fluance RT82 (using the default Ortofon cartridge) and a ART DJPREII preamp (though as a long time user of Schiit Audio equipment, I'm thinking about picking up a Mani at some point). The AT sounded fine, but I like to tinker, and the idea of a non-replaceable cartridge started to eat at me a bit.

Sadly, all the time.

It works, at least. The only issue I'm seeing is that if I try to follow 'sublemmies' (or whatever the Lemmy equivalent for a subreddit is called) from certain other federated servers, they just sit in 'subscribe pending'. A fediverse that creates a lot of friction when spreading out beyond your local instance is a bit of a bummer.

I'm glad to see there's been more of a push for previously '48 hours only' subreddits to move to an indefinite blackout - but I wish that more of them had committed earlier. That leaked internal email shows exactly what I already expected; they just see the protesting Redditors as a bunch of whiny babies who they expect to give up after a couple days and forget the whole thing.