1. This hasn’t been a notable issue in a while. That’s why Plex’s https-by-default was such a big deal. With https, even your ISP can’t see what you’re streaming. They can see that something is being streamed, but not what specifically.

Also, you totally glossed over the fact that Plex is simply easier for non-savvy people to set up. Plex provides a unified login experience similar to major streaming services, which Jellyfin simply can’t provide; If your mother-in-law can figure out how to log into Netflix on her TV, she can figure out how to log into Plex too.

And the unfortunate truth is that Plex’s remote access is much easier for 90% of users to figure out. It doesn’t require VPNs or reverse proxies at all. You just forward a port and anyone with access can easily see your server. But my MIL’s TV doesn’t even have access to a Jellyfin app without sideloading. Not to mention the fact that I’d need to walk her through actually setting the app up once it is installed, because there is no unified system for logging in. And if I’m not using a reverse proxy for my Jellyfin server, then I also need to walk her through setting up Tailscale, assuming her TV is even capable of using it at all.

Any single one of those hurdles would make Jellyfin a non-starter if I want to walk my MIL through the setup over the phone, and they’re all currently present. And some of them will never be fixed, by design. For instance, the lack of a unified login page is by design, because a unified login would require a centralized server for the app to phone home too. That centralization is exactly what Jellyfin was made to rebel against, so it’s a problem that will never be “solved”; It is seen by the devs and FOSS enthusiasts as a feature, not an issue.

From a FOSS perspective, Jellyfin is a modern marvel. But it’s definitely not at the same level as Plex when you compare ease of setup or remote access. Jellyfin is fine if you’re just using it locally, or are willing to run Tailscale to connect back to your home network. But if you’re looking for true seamless remote access and need to consider the mother-in-law factor, then Plex is hard to beat.

In America, the reason is basically “religion”. There are architectural standards which designers refer to for guidance, and the dude who did the architectural standard for restrooms was super hardcore religious. His standard called for big gaps in all the seams, to prevent people from masturbating in the stalls. Basically, he wanted people to be able to peek into stalls, as a sort of modesty check. And eventually, it just became accepted as normal, even though everyone (including Americans who were born and raised with them as the standard) hates the huge gaps.

In modern day, they’re mostly done to deter drug use. I guess the reasoning is similar, with the large gaps intended to allow people to peek into the stalls and see if someone is doing drugs.

Yeah, newer generations have been raised on tech that “just worked” consistently. They never had to do any deep troubleshooting, because they never encountered any major issues. They grew up in a world where the hard problems were already figured out, so they were insulated from a lot of the issues that allowed millennials to learn.

They never got a BSOD from a faulty USB driver. They never had to reinstall an OS after using Limewire to download “Linkin_Park-Numb.mp3.exe” on the family computer. Or hell, even if they did get tricked by a malicious download, the computer’s anti-virus automatically killed it before they were even able to open it. They never had to manually install OS updates. They never had to figure out how to get their sound card working with a new game. They never had to manually configure their network settings.

All of these things were chances for millennials to learn. But since the younger generations never encountered any issues, they never had to figure their own shit out.

If you do, I’d love to seed it. I’ve been looking for good copies of this for a while.

I have struggled to find good downloads for a lot of the older stuff. Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry both come to mind; I’d love to have them on my server, but haven’t had the time to drive all the way to my parents’ place to get my old DVDs to rip. And even if I did get the DVDs, there’s a non-zero chance that they’re rotted. So I tried downloading them, but finding properly seeded torrents for content that old has been a struggle.

Basically, Trump’s war team accidentally added the lead editor for The Atlantic to a Signal group chat where they were discussing detailed war plans.

It immediately raised a lot of questions with uncomfortable answers. Why are they using Signal, which doesn’t comply with federal records keeping requirements? Why didn’t anyone notice the massive security breach immediately? What was discussed, and how would it impact national security? Did anyone besides the editor have access to the chat? Was Pete Hegseth (current Secretary of Defense, and a known alcoholic who has been caught drunk at work numerous times) drunk when he added the editor to the chat? Why does one of the chat members’ flight logs show them in Russia during the time that all of the sensitive messages were being sent? Along with a lot of other questions, that are honestly too numerous to list…

The issue is that Disney’s army of lawyers will claim that any Snow White is based on theirs, not the original fairy tale. And they’ll be able to win it in court, purely by turning the legal fight into a battle of attrition for the defense.

Imagine I make a Mickey Mouse cartoon, based on the original Steamboat Willie character, which is in the public domain. Disney will sue me and claim it is actually based on the modern character. And now it’s up to me to prove in court that it is not infringing on their modern character. And that becomes difficult when the line between the old character and the modern one is so blurred.

Mozilla could remain funded if they stopped doing things like paying the CEO seven million dollars per year while laying off employees. If Mozilla dies, it will 100% be because of corporate greed.

Yeah, downvotes 100% aren’t private on Lemmy, because federation requires the ability to track votes in order to prevent a user from voting multiple times. There are even some mobile apps that allow you to view who has up/downvoted something. Off the top of my head, I think Sync For Lemmy and Friendica both allow you to inspect votes.

Oracle bought (and quickly killed) it. It’s not under active development, and anything that claims otherwise is likely malicious. LibreOffice is a lot of the original OpenOffice devs who got fed up with the way things were going, and jumped ship.

Welcome to the biggest rabbit hole of your life. Syncthing itself isn’t huge, but the capacity to divest from the big cloud providers is. I say it’s a rabbit hole because you’ll quickly be finding new ways to use it.

This is the answer. It’s freely accessible, and duplicated across servers all over the world so it’s difficult for copyright claims to take down.

Calibre doesn’t natively support reading DRMed files, but there are anti-DRM plugins which are trivial to install. You need to provide a legitimate Kindle serial number for Amazon DRM, as it uses that to de-encrypt the files. When you add the file(s) to your library, the plugin automatically runs as a file conversion. It basically converts it from a DRM-locked .epub/.azw3 to a DRM-free .epub/.azw3 instead. Since Calibre already has file conversions built in, the plugin simply uses that existing system to spit out a DRM-free version of the same file, then it adds that to your library instead.

Even better, wear loose generic clothes like a long black skirt and a baggy long sleeve shirt.

Investigators can narrow down suspects by using security footage to measure things like femur or forearm length. Baggy clothes make this much harder to do, because you can’t see exactly where the joints are. It introduces a lot of reasonable doubt that your defense lawyer can use to tear apart any video evidence they present.

Yup, that’s also why it’s so blurry; As the pressure moves through each sheet of paper, it gets more and more spread out. You could technically dial up the tension on your typewriter to make more copies, but they would still end up blurry as the paper spread out the force of the impact.

You can disable the streaming completely if you really want to. It’s in your preferences, under the “Online Media Sources” section. You can disable it for only managed users, or disable it completely if you don’t even want access to it via the admin profile. Or just move it farther down the list, or hide it completely by unpinning it as a source.

Because running it on your router gives you access to the entire network of devices, not just the Jellyfin server.

Not in the way you’re probably thinking, no. The VPN (like Proton) will be isolating devices from each other. This is by design, so you don’t end up in situations like different customers seeing each other on the network.

Your router might be able to act as a VPN host. This would allow you to connect to your home network from anywhere, and use it just like you would use a service like Proton. And if your home network is set to allow devices to see each other, then you could see your Jellyfin server. See if your router can run Tailscale or can act as a WireGuard (or OpenVPN) host. Tailscale will be the most straightforward approach, but not everything can run it. Worst case scenario, you could just run Tailscale directly on your Jellyfin server.

The big issue with requiring a VPN is that it makes remote access on some devices difficult or damned near impossible. For instance, good luck getting a smart TV to run Tailscale. Tailscale will be fine for things like phones, laptops, or tablets. But if you have a smart TV you want to remote view things on, you may need to consider a reverse proxy instead. And a reverse proxy is such a rabbit hole that it would deserve its own post.

Yeah, this is the unfortunate truth. Jellyfin’s setup will never be as simple as Plex, purely because the simple setup requires a centralized server to coordinate things. And Jellyfin is built specifically to rebel against centralization. Plex is easy because the company has servers set up specifically to handle the remote access handshake.

Because of the Wife Factor. Getting people to convert requires getting past a lot of social inertia. It requires you to first convince them that the convenience of streaming services isn’t actually worth paying for. Then it requires an elegant onboarding experience. Lastly, Plex simply makes remote access easy. Sure, you could fiddle with reverse proxies for Jellyfin. But that’s easy to mess up. Instead, it’s much smoother to simply sign into Plex.

I can talk my tech-illiterate “My google chrome desktop icon got moved, and now I don’t know how to check my email” mother-in-law through Plex’s sign-up process over the phone. In fact, I did. It’s familiar enough that anyone who has signed up for a streaming service can figure it out. I can’t do that with Jellyfin, because their eyes glaze over as soon as you start talking about custom server URLs or IP addresses. Hell, my MIL’s TV doesn’t even have a native Jellyfin app available on the App Store. If I wanted to install it for her, I would need to sideload it.

Jellyfin does a lot of things right. But by design, the setup process will never be as elegant as Plex’s, because that elegant system requires a centralized server to actually handle it. And centralized servers are exactly what Jellyfin was built to rebel against.

To be clear, I run both concurrently; Jellyfin for myself, and Plex for friends/family. I got the lifetime Plex Pass license a decade ago, and it has more than paid for itself since then. But it sounds like a bunch of my friends and family may end up switching to Jellyfin if they don’t want to deal with the PlexPass subscription.