I’m a developer and I hardly ever compile shit for my personal computer from source. I’d rather use a package manager, sure, but on Windows that’s by far the exception to the rule and if you want regular users to use your app, it needs to be a downloadable EXE.

Good to know! What’s the practical use for a L2 VPN?

Nowadays Wireguard is a more performant protocol, but it does the same thing.

It’s called honing and you can hone a blade on a piece of leather, like an old belt. It’s not sharpening per se, but it keeps the little burs on the blace’s edge lined up nicely so it stays sharp and if kept up, prevents the need to sharpen with something more aggressive like a sharpening stone (or the bottom of a coffee mug in a pinch).

My Level 8 solution after about an hour:

And an honorable mention to this clue:

My attempt which worked for Level 7:

Stuck on Level 8, though.

I’m talking about double-edge blades that fit into a handheld razor that looks a lot like a Gilette or Bic, except it’s all metal, and about 2% of the price per blade, not a straight “safety” razor that you might see a professional barber use.

They probably shaved about the same but mostly used double-edged (100% steel) blades that could easily fit in a slot, rather than the plastic-clad, quadruple-blade nonsense sold for $8/cartridge.

You can still buy double edged razors for about 10-15 cents apiece, by the way.

I think I understand how I ended up believing you were pirating even though you weren’t: @zaphod makes it seem like you’re doing something remotely unethical when you not only use a legitimate subscription service but also support the artists through other ways! I’m not sure what more an artist could ask from a patron such as yourself.

By your definition of harm, no artist creating non-material goods (books, movies, music, etc) could ever experience harm due to any one individual’s actions. “I was never going to pay, so taking it without paying is a victim less crime,” etc, etc.

False. I acknowledge that there could be harm if a consumer would otherwise be able to afford to pay for all of the music they listen to. The distinction here is that if a consumer is already spending as much as they can truly afford then artists aren’t going to get any more money out of this consumer, regardless of whether or not they pay for it.

In other words: if you pirate because you must = no harm; if you pirate because you can = some harm.

That’s an interesting thought experiment about the cheating spouse, though. Thank you for the interesting perspective! This makes me want to re-visit my philosophy notes.

For the record, I pay for Spotify and also support artists through Bandcamp, merch, vinyl, and live concerts. I also pirate music which isn’t otherwise available through Spotify and/or Bandcamp (e.g. The Grey Album by Danger Mouse, and up until recently The Flamingo Trigger by Foxy Shazam) and don’t feel guilty about those instances.

My mistake! I lost the thread when typing my response. Don’t worry, I’ll call the RIAA today and cancel the snitch report I made ;)

My argument isn’t simply utilitarian either. It would be utilitarian to say, “It’s moral to pirate music as long as your enjoyment exceeds the harm caused to the artist.” But I’m saying that there is no harm caused by OP pirating in this situation. Don’t most moral arguments involve some kind of measure of harm? (Honest and sincere question)

It’s been a while since I studied philosophy, but for my own knowledge, do you know if there is some distinction between this sort of argument (e.g. “no victim = no crime”) and plain old utilitarianism?

In other words, what ethical theory is your moral argument based on?

But maybe the answer is to value the effort of musicians and either pay them for their work or consume less?

What benefit would that decision have? Artists would still receive the same amount of royalties. @Plume would still spend the same amount of money. What benefit is there to artificially limit his music listening hobby because of copyright law?

There is no requirement to do so, although GMail’s adoption of this non-standard seems to have popularized the practice.