Why not just use Brave, which blocks ads and allows for picture-in-picture and background play? Do you need to download for offline play or similar?

Define AGI, because recently the definition is shifting down to match LLM. In fact we can say we achieved AGI now because we have machine that answers questions. The problem will be when the number of questions will start shrinking not because of number of problems but number of people that understand those problems. That is what is happening now. Don't believe me, read the statistics about age and workforce. Now put it into urgent need to something to replace those people. After that think what will happen when all those attempts fail.

They're like "Wahhh we need to hit 3.5% and then the fascist dictator will totally resign!" and then Trump is like "Oooo my delicate little feefees, oh well, here comes my Gestapo!" while the 50501 protest marshalls chant "We did it! We don't need crushing violence to make a change!" while completely ignoring that the NKD protests accomplished literally nothing.

Same, especially when searching technical or niche topics. Since there aren't a ton of results specific to the topic, mostly semi-related results will appear in the first page or two of a regular (non-Gemini) Google search, just due to the higher popularity of those webpages compared to the relevant webpages. Even the relevant webpages will have lots of non-relevant or semi-relevant information surrounding the answer I'm looking for. I don't know enough about it to be sure, but Gemini is probably just scraping a handful of websites on the first page, and since most of those are only semi-related, the resulting summary is a classic example of garbage in, garbage out. I also think there's probably something in the code that looks for information that is shared across multiple sources and prioritizing that over something that's only on one particular page (possibly the sole result with the information you need). Then, it phrases the summary as a direct answer to your query, misrepresenting the actual information on the pages they scraped. At least Gemini gives sources, I guess. The thing that gets on my nerves the most is how often I see people quote the summary as proof of something without checking the sources. It was bad before the rollout of Gemini, but at least back then Google was mostly scraping text and presenting it with little modification, along with a direct link to the webpage. Now, it's an LLM generating text phrased as a direct answer to a question (that was also AI-generated from your search query) using AI-summarized data points scraped from multiple webpages. It's obfuscating the source material further, but I also can't help but feel like it exposes a little of the behind-the-scenes fuckery Google has been doing for years before Gemini. How it bastardizes your query by interpreting it into a question, and then prioritizes homogeneous results that agree on the "answer" to your "question". For years they've been doing this to a certain extent, they just didn't share how they interpreted your query.

The main difference being the consequences that might result from the surveillance.

If you're after text, there are a number of options. If you're after group voice, there are a number of options. You could mix and match both, but "where everyone else is" will also likely be a factor in that kind of decision. If you want both together, then there's probably just Element (Matrix + voice)? Not sure of other options that aren't centralised, where you're the product, or otherwise at obvious risk of enshittifying. (And Element has the smell of the latter to me, but that's another topic). I've prepared for Discord's inevitable "final straw" moment by setting up a Matrix room and maintaining a self-hosted Mumble server in Docker for my gaming buddies. It's worked when Discord has been down, so I know it works. Yet to convince them to test Element...

You could look into automatic local caching for diles you're planning to seed, and stick that on an SSD. That way you don't hammer the HDDs in the NAS and still get the good feels of seeding. Then automatically delete files once they get to a certain seed rate or something and you're golden. How aggressive you go with this depends on your actual use case. Are you actually editing raw footage over the network while multiple other clients are streaming other stuff? Or are you just interested in having it be capable? What's the budget? But that sounds complicated. I'd personally rather just DIY it, that way you can put an SSD in there for cache and you get most of the benefits with a lot less cost, and you should be able to respond to issues with minimal changes (i.e. add more RAM or another caching drive).