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Joined 5 years ago
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Cake day: October 17th, 2019

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  • Uncompressed WAV files, lol I’ll never get over that

    It doesn’t even make sense. Simple compression algorithms like in use by FLAC or AAC are pretty much free to decompress on CPUs from this century and the cpu cycles you save by not doing wasteful IO of huge files from storage easily makes up for that.

    I’m sure game devs can make some argument to not use ‘expensive’ compression, but not using any is just wasteful.



  • does it support foobar2000 plugins?

    probably not, since those are windows dlls. So here’s a short list of what I’d want from a fb2k replacement:

    • a UI plugin with the power and flexibility of Facets/Refacets
    • browse library by folder structure OR tags (most only do one or the other)
    • powerful query language to actually find what I’m looking for
    • binaural stereo for headphones plugin
    • convolver
    • convert to opus and replaygain scanning
    • DR Meter
    • handle my >100k tracks library without constantly crashing or being incredibly slow

    Most alternatives I’ve tried can’t even deliver on half of those.


  • Similarly moving on to a decent issue tracker, Jira’s support for Epic’s/stories/tasks/capabilities and its linking ability is a huge simplifier for long term planning.

    Modern ticket system or issue tracker? Yes, absolutely. But Jira? Certainly not, considering Atlassian’s business practices. A project like Linux deserves a system where they can maintain some control and it probably should be open source.

    Yeah email is ancient and certainly terrible from a usability perspective if you’re an outsider to the workflows, but at least it can’t be shut off or taken away on a whim. Also it’s universal and therefore accessible.




  • I’d recommend sway and waybar. Waybar offers some cool customizable templates. Currently I also use bemenu as a launcher and dunst/poweralertd for notifications. I make heavy use of stacked or tabbed layout during general use.

    sway has pretty decent mouse support, but for optimal productivity try to get used to the keyboard shortcuts. As soon as moving/resizing windows and changing desktops becomes muscle memory it’s a whole different ball game.






  • There are tools that are being used to attempt to detect if a piece of work is AI-generated. If those tools say something was, it’s then on you to prove that you hand-created it.

    They don’t work. It’s total bunk.

    Even some artists are already having issues because things “look” AI-generated.

    Exactly. See above. No one can (confidently) tell which is which. There’s just educated guessing.


  • What is your take on this particularly in relation to the SAG-AFTRA strike over streaming residuals? Even if you want to pay for a creator’s work, most ways to consume content now mostly does not get to the creators of a work.

    On general principal I always support workers rights to strike and applaud them for fighting for a higher wage.

    My personal opinion in this particular case: Many writers in this industry very much overvalue their worth, especially considering the low-brow content they create (10 years or more of capeshit), how replaceable they are (barely any original idea in sight), the low general quality of their work (I’m not even watching this shit for free, you’d have to pay me) and the encroaching power of AI. I’ve never seen such a long-string of garbage writing coming from Hollywood (or maybe I’m just lucky having observed a golden age of TV) and I’ve not seen a similar decline in quality from other craftsmen (cinematography, acting, sound and music…) in the industry. Maybe writers can make some short-term gains, but unless they hone their craft to bring it above the level of what ChatGPT can create right now, they are going to lose their power struggle in the long run.

    I’m not even sure how renting or buying a title through a digital service like amazon or google is distributed to creators vs how much goes to the platform and copyright holder.

    Often there are options. Speaking about music: A spotify subscription is most likely useless for supporting smaller artists, but buying their merch or stuff from bandcamp is a no-brainer if you have the money.



  • In what situations do you think is not OK to pirate something?

    Never pay money for pirated content or ask someone to pay money for pirated content. Donations to keep a site running are borderline and iffy, depending on the implementation and transparency. As soon as you earn any kind of revenue or treat it as your ‘job’ it crosses into the unethical IMO.

    Second point related to money: Pirating stuff you could easily pay for is probably bad, if the creator receives $0 from you. There might still be reasons to do so (not wanting to support DRM for example), but if you got the cash you better find a way to support the actual creators (merch, donations…). The smaller the author the heavier the moral responsibility to bring some money their way. This also weighs in the other direction: It’s probably accetpable or even good to not give more money to giant corporations that abuse intellectual property for their own gains and who shit on creators.



  • We can totally do it. Let’s work togheter and let’s work hard, there’s nothing more beautiful than to think of possible solutions that would make us all live better.

    Maybe we can. But climate preservation is clearly not working: Humanity is not disciplined enough, not capable of working together enough and too focused on short term gains.

    I think our only hope for optimism lies in climate engineering and full-on terraforming, it’s more our style. But of course, it’s about just as scary and can go totally wrong.