I used rhythmbox on a system running Mint to move music to and from an iPod nano 2. It was fairly straight forward. Save the transfers before closing the programme and you’re good to go.

Enough with your psyop, Bill. Go back to trying to cure malaria to atone for your past sins.

Have you been watching “Reefer Madness” and thinking it’s a documentary? Spoiler: it isn’t.

Paedo in a blender?

You may want to reply directly to Mr_Blott as I’m not sure they’ll see your explanation unless they check back in on this thread.

Fluid ounce.

Again, whilst your opinion is not without merit, I’d still prefer to encounter spun news stories than to not encounter them at all, and, if you want a global picture of what’s happening all over the world then there isn’t much choice but to read the wires (Reuters, AP etc) or visit a global broadcaster.

Here’s the thing, with media organisations such as the BBC, Al Jazeera etc the funding source is clear and obvious and you can factor in an appropriate degree of editorial spin where applicable. Now, if your evening news programme was “brought to you in association with Poca-Pola” the giant soft drink company… do you think they’d even run that story about the direct link between consumption of carbonated drinks and obesity? If your technology programme is sponsored by the tech giant Googosoft do you think they’d run that feature on how good Linux can be? No, they wouldn’t. When media exists only to make profit that is their only goal - profit.

Broke my dual boot iBook (Mac 9.1.2 and OSX) in about ‘06 and was too poor to replace it; and my still to this day used Psion 5mx was… limited to say the least. I bought a super cheap net book that didn’t have Windows installed. After a week I discovered I could remove the (acer?) oem os and replace it with something I could burn onto a thumb drive. It was called “Ubuntu”, and could apparently do more. Seemed interesting and worth a shot. Stuck with that until the desktop went all weird (unity?) and then migrated to Mint. I only use laptops as a tool, so as long as I had a word processor, browser and media player alongside a traditional file system I was quite happy.

I mean, yeah that’s mostly all true; but you’re kind of missing the point. Alphabet created the ad-soaked centralised monopoly you describe. They obviously shut down Google Video pretty quickly after buying YouTube. They bought-out or strangled competitors, leveraging their SE dominance, to get to where they are now, which is offering small pockets of content scattered about in an advertising platform. Alphabet knew what kind of monster they wanted to create and set about doing it. More adverts equals more profit. Profit must increase year on year. That’s how it works. I don’t begrudge Alphabet trying to fleece everybody - it’s how capitalism operates. I just don’t buy into the “good old Google letting me watch stuff for (almost) free” mantra.

I think one of the moral (?) objections to paying for YouTube versus paying for streaming services is that a streaming service actually creates (some) original content whereas YouTube merely hosts other people’s content. YouTube is only a facilitator and (ironically) not a creator. All of its content (both original and unoriginal) is produced by money that isn’t YouTube’s. They take zero risk and expect maximum returns.

It is - in the US, but it wouldn’t be in Liberia. I zoomed in on the receipt to get some much needed context on this price.