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Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

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Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#51
post #38
post #16

Where are you paying 45$/month for power on a single computer. The moon?

If we assume the computer consumes 200 Watt in average, the electricity price would be something like 0,32 USD per kWh. So probably Germany, Denmark or Belgium.

200w idle is kind of insane though.

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#52

Piracy and data-hoarding are two different hobbies. One cost next to nothing, the cost of the other one you are quite familiar with.. Jokes aside, would you consider deleting your entire collection and then also cancel subscriptions and possibly give away or sell any tech equipment you do not use for work? And then find something else to do with the newly-freed time? Can you do it for 6 or 12 months? If not, why not?…

Piracy and such hoarding are inextricably intertwined. If you want a particularly uncommon variant of some pirate content (like an obscure movie in any quality, or a somewhat popular movie in original BD format), you better grab it when it's available, as further down the line getting the exact same such content may be more and more difficult. Streaming services have a similar issue (re-encoding, bad rereleases due t…

> If you want a particularly uncommon variant of some pirate content (like an obscure movie in any quality, or a somewhat popular movie in original BD format), you better grab it when it's available, as further down the line getting the exact same such content may be more and more difficult.

The constant availability of the pirated content is a big driver of the cost here. For some of the obscure stuff, this could be on a backup, or even on something like Amazon Glacier (I.e. no one is watching 30tb of video content regularly), and the resulting computer needed for pirating could be significantly less expensive, both to build/buy and for monthly electricity costs (like a laptop).

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#53

Welcome to Hacker News where everyone makes $500k/year and nobody pays for content. Or at least it feels that way sometimes. I don't make that much money but I also don't pay for content.

In college I pirated things when I was living off a few hundred bucks a month. But nowadays when I'm making good money I pay for everything. Its frankly absurd to steal content when you're that well paid.

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#55

Welcome to Hacker News where everyone makes $500k/year and nobody pays for content. Or at least it feels that way sometimes. I don't make that much money but I also don't pay for content.

Paying for things you don't have to pay for is a quick way to lose money, no matter how much you make.

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#56
post #38
post #16

Where are you paying 45$/month for power on a single computer. The moon?

If we assume the computer consumes 200 Watt in average, the electricity price would be something like 0,32 USD per kWh. So probably Germany, Denmark or Belgium.

In what world is a server that presumably sits most of the day doing nothing averaging 200W 24/7?

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#57

Piracy and data-hoarding are two different hobbies. One cost next to nothing, the cost of the other one you are quite familiar with.. Jokes aside, would you consider deleting your entire collection and then also cancel subscriptions and possibly give away or sell any tech equipment you do not use for work? And then find something else to do with the newly-freed time? Can you do it for 6 or 12 months? If not, why not?…

I remember getting together with a high school friend in the 90s and him talking about a similar setup (modulo 90s technology including dial-up internet access) for downloading pirated software. He never actually used the software, he just collected it. The plus side of digital hoarding is that the hoarder is less likely to die alone after being trapped by a falling pile of stuff.

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#58
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we assume the computer consumes 200 Watt in average, the electricity price would be something like 0,32 USD per kWh. So probably Germany, Denmark or Belgium.

In what world is a server that presumably sits most of the day doing nothing averaging 200W 24/7?

If that content is sourced from torrents you'll have a lot of disks spinning all the time just to seed tiny chunks so that's not unreasonable.

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#59

When Netflix first launched, it was great - they had a massive catalogue of older/pre-existing content, and were making a bunch of their own new, original content that likely wouldn't have been made elsewhere. Their UX was also pretty great - and made finding interesting content easy. They made it dead-easy to sign up, there was no pushy retention teams or hoops to jump through if you wanted to cancel. That's why I p…

I can't imagine anyone at 'Amazon Video' actually uses the service, else they'd realise that the UI is horrific...and whole service is terrible. I only have it as its "free" with my delivery options.

IMO, Amazon is awful at UI design across the board--including the core shopping experience.
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