It's entirely web-based (their desktop app uses electron). It is quite good, has no problems with editing Microsofts shitty formats and offers a feature set on the level of office 356 web.
Downside: made by a Russian company which has since re-incorporated in Singapore I think.
I think this situation is not so black and white. Before we had the current gazillion streaming services and Netflix had almost all content, most would-be pirates weren't even thinking about piracy since the service was good enough. In the current situation with atrocious monthly fees and content being split across 10+ streaming services, there probably are quite a few who legally stream what they can get with their subscriptions and pirate the rest.
True, it's always a combination of resolution and bitrate, though I personally haven't had the kind of artifacting you are describing. However I also never stream movies etc below 1080p, so I can't judge how bad the encoding at 480p is on Disney+. In any case, provided the bitrate / encoding is sufficient, you can never reach the level of visual fidelity of higher resolutions with DVDs.
And how would you get stuff onto your homeserver legally?
Buy and rip Blu-rays, in some rare cases you can actually download DRM-free content, depending on your jurisdiction you may also be able to remove DRM protection legally.
Well with your DVDs the "HD resolution" question is easily answered: you don't get HD resolution. Weird comparison there. Especially since you complain about Disney+ not going beyond 480p in your specific case - so why buy DVDs with the same shitty resolution?
I'm all for media ownership, but I don't see the point in buying optical discs (with rather limited lifetime) at 720x480px resolution. Blu rays at least offer HD / UHD, but the plastic / coating will still degrade with time.
I think the way to go is a Homeserver (could even be a raspberry pi) where you can somewhat secure your storage with appropriate redundancy.
Just use the newest driver and you'll be completely fine. Even with very recent hardware, everything works as expected for me.
People like to shit on Nvidia, which is deserved for their business practices and relationship with Linux in the past, however most who claim that there are issues clearly haven't used an Nvidia GPU under Linux in a long time.
In any case, the requirements for "pay or okay" being legal are: (translated with deepl)
Equivalent alternative
"In principle, the tracking of user behavior can be based on consent if a tracking-free model is offered as an alternative, even if this is subject to payment. However, the service that users receive in a paid model must firstly represent an equivalent alternative to the service that they obtain through consent. Secondly, the consent must meet all the conditions for effectiveness set out in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), i.e. in particular the requirements listed in Art. 4 No. 11 and Art. 7 GDPR. Whether the payment option - e.g. a monthly subscription - is to be regarded as an equivalent alternative to consent to tracking depends in particular on whether users are given equivalent access to the same service in return for a standard market fee. Equivalent access generally exists if the offers include the same service, at least in principle."
Data processing for ad-free use
If a user opts for the subscription option, only storage and readout processes that are technically absolutely necessary may take place (Section 25 (1) TTDSG). Furthermore, the permissions under Art. 6 para. 1 GDPR must be complied with.
Granularity/prohibition of general consent for non-subscribers
"If there are several processing purposes that differ significantly from one another, the requirements for voluntariness must be met to the effect that consent can be granted on a granular basis. This means, among other things, that users must be able to actively select the individual purposes for which consent is to be obtained (opt-in). Only if purposes are very closely related can a bundling of purposes be considered. A blanket overall consent for different purposes in this respect cannot be effectively granted."
Transparency, comprehensibility and information
In addition, the consents must meet the other requirements of the GDPR. This applies in particular to the principle of transparency, comprehensibility and compliance with information obligations.
As I see it, at the very least the granularity requirement is not fulfilled in these cases.
It's not a network file system. It's a regular file system for hard drives, SSDs and such, which is used by default on Windows since Windows NT (that's where the NT comes from - it doesn't stand for network but "new technology").
The implementation in Windows is closed source meaning the file system had to be reverse engineered to even work at all under Linux. Support nowadays is okay-ish, but as soon as you don't properly shutdown your computer or use the file system under Windows, you will run into weird problems.
Also it just straight up doesn't work for most games running under wine.
Couch distance and especially screen size can vary a lot. I can clearly see the difference between full HD and whatever resolution DVDs have at the 2~3 meter distance at my parents'. (43" full HD screen). Same goes for 4K vs full HD on my 60" screen.
In any case, my main point was that DVDs are no viable alternative to streaming services since all of them offer much better quality. If you really want to replace streaming services at similar or better quality, go for Blu rays.
Funnily enough, this is also my field, though I am not at uni anymore since I now work in this area. I agree that current literature rightfully makes no claims of AGI.
Calling transformer models (also definitely not the only type of LLM that is feasible - mamba, Llada, ... exist!) "fancy autocomplete" is very disingenuous in my view.
Also, the current boom of AI includes way more than the flashy language models that the general population directly interacts with, as you surely know. And whether a model is able to "generalize" depends on whether you mean within its objective boundaries or outside of them, I would say.
I agree that a training objective of predicting the next token in a sequence probably won't be enough to achieve generalized intelligence. However, modelling language is the first and most important step on that path since us humans use language to abstract and represent problems.
Looking at the current pace of development, I wouldn't be so pessimistic, though I won't make claims as to when we will reach AGI. While there may not be a complete theoretical framework for AGI, I believe it will be achieved in a similar way as current systems are, being developed first and explained after.
I mean yeah, it exists, but have you tried using calligra for anything productive? It is missing so many basic features and has lots of annoying bugs.