Deebster

Deebster , 4 days ago

Spyware app driven out of business. Oh no!

Deebster , 7 days ago

[...] a lot of AI companies are “selling dreams” that this tech will go from 80 percent correct to 100 percent.

In fact, Marcus thinks that last 20 percent might be the hardest thing of all.

Yeah, it's well known, e.g. people say "the last 20% takes 80% of the effort". All the most tedious and difficult stuff gets postponed to the end, which is why so many side projects never get completed.

Deebster , 7 days ago

Absolutely, that's what I was thinking of when I wrote "tedious"; all the stuff you mentioned matters a lot to the user (or product owner) but isn't the interesting stuff for a programmer.

Deebster , 9 days ago

And PC Optimiser in other regions.

Deebster , 16 days ago (edited 16 days ago)

I've been building my music collection since I was ripping CDs by hitting play, recording in Win95 Sound Recorder and running the .wav through LAME (nowadays EAC to flac, of course). I see no need to pay a subscription to listen to my music, when I can just use that same money to buy and own the albums* and not worry about them disappearing.

* also means more money goes to the artist

Also Navidrome + Symfonium means I can still stream to my phone so the only benefit Spotify etc has is new music, but YouTube (+ uBlock) gives me that.

Deebster , 16 days ago

In Foobar2000, Shpeck allows you to run those old Winamp vis plugins - I have Milkdrop 2.2 with all those old classics. They still look great on modern tech!

Deebster , 28 days ago (edited 28 days ago)

Maybe his analysis considered this, but the article doesn't mention real-world factors like the climate crisis, the cost of living crisis, and what feels like the resurgence of fascism and the spectre of World War 3. It's noted that liberal families seem more susceptible - perhaps it's because right-wing families are more likely to believe these things aren't real, or aren't a problem?

Deebster , 29 days ago

It's a weird time to be alive.

Deebster , 30 days ago

You're missing Windows 2000, but I guess you can argue that's Windows NT not mainline Windows. That was definitely in the good camp, and I was not alone in sticking with it for many years (until XP got good).

Edit: I see @NickwithaC beat me to this point.

Deebster , 1 month ago

I'd assume it was something you'd typed once (maybe while searching or a typo). I always delete those words when they come up (for me that's dragging the word up and a bin appears).

Deebster , 1 month ago

I think all of the communities would rather have something more than just a bare link. I'm not sure why you're responding with such indignation, to be honest, it was a perfectly reasonable suggestion, politely made.

Deebster , 1 month ago

So you think it's too unreasonable for you to cope with?

Deebster , 1 month ago

Same, I had to ad-block some custom elements on YouTube ages ago because they kept covering the screen with "related videos" whenever I paused to read something.

Deebster , 1 month ago

How can I test if my phone uses hardware decoding for AV1?

Deebster , 1 month ago

I went with Fedora on my VPS because I was also planning to use rootless Podman. Quadlets and running everything through systemd with SELinux enabled is working pretty well for me.

Deebster , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

• email
• Nebula
• Kagi
• domains and VPSes
• VPN
• windyty

Deebster , 1 month ago

I'm still very happy with the experience, especially the UX and customisation options, and they're developing new features fast. Not always successfully at first, e.g. the recent integration of WolframAlpha isn't entirely a step forward (mostly because they're not displaying the extra context that WA shows that lets you know when it's answering the wrong question).

I think overall most people are very happy, as shown by the frequent recommendations on here (so much so that someone on Lemmy was telling everyone it must be astroturfing).

Deebster , 2 months ago

This is surprisingly hard!

Deebster , 2 months ago

The author has no idea how to get his audience on-side! He starts with bragging about his 6400% profit margin on domain he resold, in a market where there's no customer value for middlemen.

At least antique dealers will identify pieces as rare, clean/restore them and put them for sale in a more visible place. Whereas domain reselling is about as ethical as ticket touting.

Deebster , 2 months ago

Maybe if that site's also hosted on an old phone running Termux.

Deebster , 2 months ago

Clever work, well done to the researchers.

Deebster , 2 months ago

It's a somewhat similar story there, although the devs aren't as difficult. Mbin is a fork and seems to be the codebase with the brightest future.

Deebster , 2 months ago

That reminds me of Netflix's Chaos Monkey (basically in office hours this tool will randomly kill stuff).

Deebster , 2 months ago

A general tip on buying UPSes: look for second hand ones - people often don't realise you can just replace the battery in them (or can't be bothered) so you can get fancier/larger ones very cheap.

Deebster , 2 months ago

Longer means you're more likely to be able to ride out a power cut, and gives you more options if you want/need to complete something more involved than saving and shutting down.

Deebster , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

I thought another reason was to avoid blasting everyone* you pass with your phone's maximum power signal while trying to reconnect.

Edit: the problem being interference, not any health effects. I read that the effectively one-way signals from the sky worked somewhat like a jammer.

Deebster , 3 months ago

The article mentions that "Chrome [has a] more restrictive Manifest 3 plugin API", but doesn't go into any examples, when this one is the main one (and why Google brought in manifest v3 at all).

Deebster , 3 months ago

The widow of Alexei Navalny, Yulia Navalnaya, has had her X account restored after it was briefly suspended for unknown reasons.

This seems a misleading headline, unless what I've quoted was edited in. I'm no fan of Musk, but it could be something like a load of people (or bots) reported the account and an automated system put it into review.

Deebster , 3 months ago

... with features like local-only (i.e. privacy-respecting) language translation. Good.

Deebster , 3 months ago

I think most people share your confusion. It seems that F5 was following their responsibility as a CNA, but one guy disagreed enough to leave with all his toys.

Deebster , 3 months ago

Even ignoring privacy arguments, I think that voice control is a great use case for running services locally - lower latency due to not having up upload your sample and the option of having it learn your accent is very attractive.

That said, voice control is irritatingly error-prone and seems to be slower than just reaching for the remote control. I agree that automatic stuff would be best, but some stuff you can't have rules for.

Something that would be interesting is a more eye- and gesture-based system: I'm thinking something like you look at the camera and slice across your throat for stop or squeeze fingers together to reduce volume. This is definitely one to run locally, for privacy and performance reasons.

Deebster , 3 months ago

You're assuming that we can't have both. Why not have it as an complementary input?

I think looking at a device and talking is better than saying hey $brandname before everything, but having both would be better still.

Deebster , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

I think Google's the worst for this. Examples such as the browser Chrome, when browser chrome has been a thing for a long time. Go, a very common verb and keyword and also now a programming language. Not to be confused with their Go Links, which was a URL shortener. And then there's all the ones they either rebrand or retire and/or replace.

Perhaps they want confusing names because they think other search engines can't handle the ambiguity.

Deebster , 3 months ago

You mean "nuclear Gandhi" in the early Civilisation games? That apparently was just an urban legend, albeit one so popular it got actually added (as a joke) in Civ 5.

Deebster , 4 months ago

Yeah, I was thinking it's like the "Voyager Has Left the Solar System" story - we've heard that several times over the years, and probably will again.

Deebster , 4 months ago

So Tesla gets that $56 billion back? Kinda funny that that causes their share price to drop.

Deebster , 4 months ago

Dennis Muilenburg, the CEO during the 737 Max crashes, was an engineer by training:

He received a bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering from Iowa State University, followed by a master's degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the University of Washington.

-- Wikipedia

And, of course, even though he put profits ahead of safety and is therefore partially responsible for hundreds of deaths, he walked away with a $62.2 million golden parachute. The incentives are not aligned with safety, aside from how it affects their share price.

Deebster , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

I was responding to "the bean counters running the company need to be replaced with engineers" by pointing out that the man at the top is, at least by training, an engineer.

Let's look at the timeline:

• 1985 - Muilenburg joins Boeing
• Aug 2011 - 737 Max announced
• Dec 2013 - Muilenburg becomes president of Boeing
• July 2015 - Muilenburg becomes CEO of Boeing
• Jan 2016 - First 737 Max flight
• Mar 2017 - FAA certifies 737 Max
• May 2017 - First 737 Max commercial flight
• Oct 2018 - Lion Air Flight 610 crashes
• Mar 2019 - Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashes
• Dec 2019 - Muilenburg resigned

An aerospace analyst writes:

Dennis Muilenburg, whose strategy appears to be to maximize the share price for stockholders, and the executive team that holds stock and options. Having returned nearly $50 billion to shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks over the last five years, rather than invest in new products to better compete with Airbus, Boeing’s market share is falling and, given the aforementioned failures, is losing its reputation for quality and safety.

Are you seriously arguing that a man who is qualified to see the problems and dangers of the 737 Max and then chose to ignore them in favour of pressuring regulators and collecting profits shouldn't be held responsible? He was in a senior position while the development happened and was in the top spot when it was certified. If the head of the company shouldn't be held responsible, who should be?

Ignoring his time as president, four years is definitely enough time to see what kind of leader he was, and all of the internal messages coming out show no attempt to change the culture.

Deebster , 4 months ago

I'm confused since Firefox Sync has been letting you sync/backup your passwords, bookmarks and history for a decade or two at this point, and you can even self-host the sync server.

I don't know the complete FF password manager details (Bitwarden user here) but where does Firefox fall short for you?

Deebster , 4 months ago

The title is "Nose wheel falls off Boeing 757 airliner waiting for takeoff" and that's exactly what happened. That's not clickbait, since it's not deceptive, sensationalized, or otherwise misleading. It's just news.

Deebster , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

It's a very different kind of beast, but I'm very much enjoying it so far. Linking things is definitely Joplin's weak point whereas this is a core strength for logseq.

I often used bullet points in my Joplin notes, so having that as the default works for me too. However, since Op has said they want plain text notes Obsidian seems like a better fit (although logseq does save pages as text it's not what it feels like in use).

Deebster , 4 months ago

Huh, there's a lot of us calling software "beasts" in this thread.

Deebster , 4 months ago

This is very good advice. I've made a couple - far from beautiful or quiet, but very effective and very cheap.

This is a good page from an early DIY promoter: How to Make a DIY Air Purifier

Deebster , 4 months ago

You could be right, because of this bit:

FOAM3R filter technology, patented by the University

HEPA is patent-free so can be extremely cheap.

On the other hand, the fact that it can filter out VOCs without needing a separate carbon filter is good and if it reduces maintenance some companies could find them worthwhile.

Deebster , 4 months ago

I wonder what they found.

Deebster , 4 months ago

You're being unnecessarily pedantic. Apple was blocking interoperability and reverse engineering found a solution—and Apple is blocking that solution.

Deebster , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Apple reverse engineered a file format, Beeper reverse engineered a protocol.

Microsoft made several changes to try to keep Apple out, Apple's also made several changes to keep Beeper out, except now everyone's online so it's happening way faster.

It's not exactly the same kind of reverse engineering, but I never said it was. I think you've got a very narrow definition of reverse engineering in your head and you're quibbling over me using it more broadly than you would.

Deebster , 4 months ago

An 80 year old woman doesn't want to leave her home of over 35 years and this guy accuses her of "abusive occupation" (whatever that is).

Is there a fund to help with her legal defence?