This post will talk about piracy. I won't provide any links or direct instructions. That said, if a mod or admin thinks there is something inappropriate about talking about that stuff, feel free to mention this in the comments and I will remove any inappropriate details as soon as I can.

Like many Latin Americans, I am a long-term pirate. I have pirated stuff with floppy disks, with CD-ROMs, through IRC, FTP, Kazaa, Napster, Soulseek, websites, and torrent. I have also purchased several illegal media from street vendors. The whole idea of traditional piracy is to get the files I want for me to own, which is why I made a Plex server for myself.

Stremio is a challenge to all of this. It is much easier to setup than Plex and basically requires no maintenance. It is a program that allows me to stream video content from a variety of sources, legal or illegal. It took less than 30 minutes to set it up on my computer, and I know that it exists for both of my TVs. I am using it with the Torrentio addon.

Stremio changed my viewing habits much in the same way paid streaming services did. I am more spontaneous in my choices. I have watched Doctor Who from 2005, ER, Tiny Toons Adventures, Animaniacs, The Twighlight Zone (original), The Magicians, Blackadder, and Falling Skies (alien TV show with Noah Wyle!). Playback sometimes takes a little while to start, but went it does it rarely stutters, even on old or less popular shows. A paid debrid service should improve on that. I am now considering removing most of our extremely expensive paid streaming services and replacing them with Stremio. Money is tight and, when added up, they make quite a dent on our budget!

One bad thing about Stremio is that it is basically a leech. It does not seed the torrents. I am considering getting Real Debrid as it seemingly reduces the strain on torrents via caching.

Right now, my only concern with changing everything to Stremio is that my wife will probably dislike choosing between multiple sources for an episode, and some episodes come with bad subtitles. That would require minimal effort to solve, but might still be too much for her.

Anyway, I am very impressed by Stremio. It is so good, in fact, that I am half-jokingly worried about the police knocking on my door.

Just kidding, that doesn't happen around here.

What you got:

Top 5 Artists

1. Billie Eillish
2. Lana Del Rey
3. Addison Rae
4. Sabrina Carpenter
5. Dua Lipa

Top 5 Songs:

1. Aquamarine - Addison Rae
2. CHIHIRO - Billie Eillish
3. LUNCH - Billie Eillish
4. Espresso - Sabrina Carpenter
5. National Anthem - Lana Del Rey

Minutes listened: 52,691

Here were my predictions from a month ago

One of my very favorite musicians of all time has apparently decided to not put any of his music on any streaming service other than one album from one side project that made it onto Apple music. I've even posted on his Facebook (a site I basically never use) and gotten likes from some of his best friends but he never uploaded anything :(

I'm tempted to just put his music on Spotify, possibly with fake names in case he doesn't want the attention lol

I'll be going to my parents' house this weekend and I'm hoping to grab my old CDs so I can at least rip his music...if I can find a CD drive! Hopefully I can grab my Sufjan Stevens Illinois vinyl for a friend who listens to vinyls but has never heard of him. ^{as an aside, I have no idea how it's possible to be such a hipster that you still listen to vinyl but also don't know who Sufjan Stevens is, but I digress}

So how do you do it? I just want the music to be on Spotify 😢