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Synthead

@[email protected]

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

Synthead ,

Why are there “removed” words in your comment?

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/19359376-d99d-474b-923d-096d4aa7c1c7.jpeg

Synthead ,

You can’t be serious. I am using lemmy.ml.

Synthead ,

If you’re saying “the B word,” then no, I can’t.

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/39bd3711-862e-4591-8a9e-8cc3ff06b91f.jpeg

The lemmy.ml server even rejected a post I attempted that addressed this:

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/a37ac06a-8439-48c4-b7b1-8debc314487d.jpeg

I can’t upload another photo, because Connect says that the image service is “down,” but it rejects with “error: slurs”

Anyway, this is my last post here. It’s been fun, lemmy.ml.

Synthead ,

This message is displayed in the browser because Google asked your browser to do it, and your browser got the message and put it there.

When displaying ads, the end user experience is 100% client-side. You are using your screen and speakers to observe it. You can turn off your speakers and screen if you want, which will effectively “block” the ad.

But that is silly. Not only do you own your screen and speakers, but you have control of what you’re browser is doing, too (if you use a respectable browser). When HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other content is downloaded, just that happened: file downloads. After it has been downloaded, your browser then consumes it.

When it is consumed, a lot happens, but ultimately, the code in the browser displays content. Your (respectable) browser does all of this, and will change the look depending on local fonts, accessibility options, etc. With an ad block add-on, it will also remove these ads.

However, when ads are removed, the DOM is mutated with deleted or replaced content. It is possible for a website to then write ad block detection scripts to see if the ad contents have been removed or not. There are many ways to do this, and this screenshot is the result of one way of doing it.

However, enter the cat-and-mouse-chase of ad block block blocks. You can block your ads, then block the ad block block like this screenshot. These types of ad block rules are less common, but many public ones are available. Check the uBlock Origin lists in the setting page. By default, only about a third of the lists are enabled, and these extra blocks are in there.

Another avenue of determining that ads were not loaded is for the server to inspect if client-side (you) requests were made to fetch the ads. Even if this is in place, the server cannot determine if you have actually watched the ad or not. It could try to do more client-side attempts at validating that you somehow displayed it, but again, that’s client-side.

Imagine if you were sent a letter and a pamphlet in the mail. Imagine if the letter said that you could mail them back for a free sample of their product, but only if you read the pamphlet. They would have to trust that you read it, because you are reading your mail in the privacy of your own home. However, you could opt to toss the pamphlet (like an ad blocker) and never read it. It’s your mail, your home, and your choice.

The Linux experice

About a week ago I setup Ubuntu as my primary OS on an old machine. It is my first time trying a unix based OS (previously windows). It has been ok, but it seems like every time I try to install something I run into problems. The app has the wrong permissions or I don’t have the right packages or I need to change port settings...

Synthead ,

What did you download?

Synthead ,

If there is a dependency problem in the upstream packages, then there is a bug in Ubuntu. This doesn’t happen often, and isn’t a good reason to go to Flatpak by itself. A bug should be filed upstream and it’ll likely get fixed quickly.

Synthead ,

What happens when you try to start it?

Synthead ,

What directory is it trying to write to? Can you show us the full error, preferably as text and not a screenshot?

Synthead ,

Also, how are you starting it? I’m looking at the Arch package in the AUR (not your distro, but just looking), and I notice that it includes a .service file. This means that it would be started as a service, and not as a user, like you’re probably attempting to do.

Synthead ,

It looks like sonarr is not in the official Ubuntu mirrors. The website mentions adding a new repo to apt. Is this what you did, or something else?

sonarr.tv/-v3-linux

Synthead ,

You’re recommending Flatpak for users that are confused by packages?

Synthead ,

If the package manager leaves you with broken dependencies, a broken system, or a system that “doesn’t work,” then there are significant bugs in how the distro has packaged things. It happens, but seldomly.

Package managers aren’t “hard.” There are GUIs where you can search and install packages, even. In my opinion, if you have a Linux user that has avoided learning how package managers work, then they’re skipping a core foundation of how to use their operating system.

Synthead ,

I disagree. While in practice, this is often the same website, it is a different protocol and a different port. It just happens to use the same DNS address. You’re explicitly giving your browser a FQDN, and it is ignoring it and doing something else.

I hope this feature can be disabled. Google has been ignoring the W3C and has shipped proprietary, insecure features in their chromium engine for a while now, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they made it permanent 🤷

Synthead ,

I agree. That would be absurd.

However, I don’t like not having the option of using HTTP if I want to use it. It’s okay if the webserver redirects me, but I don’t like if my browser does it when I didn’t tell it to. I might want this when doing development, port tunneling, VPN stuff, etc. In most cases, it won’t matter, but when it does, it will be a pain in the ass.

Synthead ,

If this is expected and everything is peachy, then why does Instacart say to not give the receipt to the customer? You don’t see this as something to hide?

Synthead , (edited )

Some printers detect when cartridges have been refilled by the user and are programmed to stop working then.

This is absurd. I would like to hear how this benefits the consumer without attempting to talk about “quality” or something. This would be like my car not starting cause I didn’t use Shell gas.

What’s more upsetting is that printers are client side all the way. There is nothing about them that needs to reach out to the Internet to print pages. The printer itself handles the “letting you print.” So the thing sitting on your desk, that you own, is choosing this for you.

Synthead ,

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/93d3d1c8-94c3-42f2-8368-2af4b2753753.png

Synthead ,

If I need more space or more speed. Otherwise, it’s a waste.

Synthead ,

Oh hey, YouTube has a mechanism for that! Simply down-vote the video, and any future viewers will know that the video is likely ineffective because of the visible down-vote count that Google didn’t remove to make more money from advertisements. They didn’t remove it because they value the health of people suffering from cancer more than money. Good on them.

Synthead , (edited )

How time passes. This was not the case when down-votes were there. It used to be easy to identify when videos were full of shit, even with lots of views.

This might help others. It’s crowd-sourced and uses averages, but for what it “feels” like, it seems pretty accurate:

addons.mozilla.org/…/return-youtube-dislikes/

Synthead ,

You mean this one? With 3.8M up-votes?? www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbJOTdZBX1g

Synthead ,

From man systemd:


<span style="color:#323232;">DESCRIPTION
</span><span style="color:#323232;">       systemd is a system and service manager for Linux operating systems. When run as first process on boot
</span><span style="color:#323232;">       (as PID 1), it acts as init system that brings up and maintains userspace services. Separate instances
</span><span style="color:#323232;">       are started for logged-in users to start their services.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">       systemd is usually not invoked directly by the user, but is installed as the /sbin/init symlink and
</span><span style="color:#323232;">       started during early boot. The user manager instances are started automatically through the
</span><span style="color:#323232;">       [email protected](5) service.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">       For compatibility with SysV, if the binary is called as init and is not the first process on the
</span><span style="color:#323232;">       machine (PID is not 1), it will execute telinit and pass all command line arguments unmodified. That
</span><span style="color:#323232;">       means init and telinit are mostly equivalent when invoked from normal login sessions. See telinit(8)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">       for more information.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">       When run as a system instance, systemd interprets the configuration file system.conf and the files in
</span><span style="color:#323232;">       system.conf.d directories; when run as a user instance, systemd interprets the configuration file
</span><span style="color:#323232;">       user.conf and the files in user.conf.d directories. See systemd-system.conf(5) for more information.
</span>
Synthead ,

File a bug.

steamcommunity.com/app/1675200/discussions/1/

Recommended hardware for hostapd and 802.11ax?

I am looking to ditch some PoE Ubiquiti hardware in favor of a DIY approach with 802.11ax cards. What card would you recommend for long-range 802.11ax? Are there gotchas when hosting with hostapd with some cards, like binary blob drivers, incomplete support, etc. that I should know about? Is there any reason I should avoid doing...

Synthead OP ,

Yeah, Ubiquiti has the “great at most things with a point-and-click UI” market down pat. Although, personally, I don’t really care about webapp UIs and such for networking gear. Give me a man page and configuration file, and I’ll get down to it.

Here’s a small ad block list for your Unifi controller, if it helps: github.com/synthead/unifi-adfree

Synthead OP ,

On my Ubiquiti APs? I suppose I could. I’m also looking to upgrade the network capabilities to a modern 6E setup if I can swing it.

Synthead ,

This is what’s important. If you don’t enable power saving in some fashion, your hardware will always be “on” at full specs. Even if the machine isn’t actually being used, it’s still powering everything to be ready to jump at any opportunity to process something quickly without ramping down.

TLP has pretty excellent default settings. Simply turning it on will likely make your battery life go 2-3x longer than without it being on, and you will have about 80% of the performance from a UX perspective. And if you want to crunch numbers faster on battery, you can tune TLP or turn it off temporarily.

Synthead , (edited )

This is my opinion, too. Their “autopilot” feature is a glorified driving aid. It’s not self-driving. It’s supposed to help with driver fatigue, and you’re supposed to keep both hands on the wheel. If it makes a mistake, that’s okay, because you’re driving the car, right?

Traditional cruise control without radar will maintain the speed you asked and it won’t stop for emergency vehicles, but we don’t blame that. Even though the “autopilot” feature does more automation, you’re supposed to drive the car in an identical fashion with identical attention compared to traditional cruise control.

But safety is still what matters first. If you’re sending a freeway-speed land missile into motorcyclists and police cars, I don’t care if you were driving a 90s Civic or a car with automated driving features. The car hit someone. Fix that problem first, then figure out who to blame later.

In my option, until we have cars that are guaranteed to function as a completely autonomous experience, and the manufacturer of the car doesn’t tell you to keep your hands on the wheel, you’re still driving it. It’s your responsibility. You can still steer, brake, change lanes, evade, etc. That’s on you. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who thinks otherwise might as well blame their heated seats or radio station.

I understand that Tesla would be improving their software, and I agree with this, too. It’s not great that they are fudging things quite a bit by pushing the self-driving rhetoric. They should focus on this, and it should be improved. But I still think that negligent drivers are at fault.

Synthead ,

It’s analog. It always has.

Synthead ,

In general, what is the highest frequency that can be carried over a wire?

I know it can do these resolutions in practice because I have personally operated CRTs at 4000x3000 resolution in the early 2000s. This could be considered “the 4:3 of 4K.” It was not done on fancy equipment or high-end monitors. Analog stuff really could just go to really high resolutions and refresh rates with above-average, but typical stuff.

CRTs simply respond to waveforms for red, green, blue, vertical sync, and horizonal sync. That’s it. If you want more horizonal pixels, make your scan lines denser. If you want more vertical pixels, add more scan lines. Want a faster refresh rate? Simply run all the signals faster.

There is no hard upper limit to it. With digital signals, there are throughput limits per spec due to bit rates, but with analog, there are no bits. Resolutions like 40k x 30k are theoretically possible. The difficult parts are rendering the signal at these high frequencies, and being able to meaningfully display them. The VGA connection itself has no limits.

Synthead , (edited )

Otherwise monitors, cables and video cards would have compatibility issues.

You’re right, and this was absolutely a thing. Video cards could produce whatever they were capable of, and monitors could display whatever they were also capable of. You could also push resolutions and refresh rates to monitors that was beyond the monitors’ specs, and you would also risk damaging the monitor by doing this.

I don’t think you were pushing 4000x3000 resolution through VGA.

You don’t need to believe me. That’s your choice. I had friends that could do the same. This was with a Matrox card and a 21" Acer CRT. The display was nearly impossible to read, and the color mask broke up the individual pixels too much, anyway.

Just like today no one is pushing video streams to giant building sized screens over consumer HDMI or DVI.

Digital video has upper limits in its specs. This is the whole point of this conversation.

Another example is XLR VS 3.5mm jack. In theory you can push audio signal of any quality over both, but XLR by spec is balanced and shielded, while 3.5mm is not. This means that XLR is capable of pushing much better audio.

A bit of incorrect information here. There is no “unshielded 3.5mm spec.” Good cables have shields, but not all. XLR doesn’t have the ability to transport higher frequencies because it’s balanced, or “much better audio.” On paper, unbalanced audio is better for short runs because there is more opportunity for XLR signals to have extremely minute signal quality issues due to the hot and cold signal mirroring, but it’s so small that it doesn’t matter.

Synthead ,

Wow, what a horrible setup.

Synthead ,

For real. It’s so much better to think about using the screen space you already have. People can do what they want, but I am happy with one screen, a tiling window manager, and workspaces. I can have a dozen or more things going on, and have it packed on a workspace. Fullscreen a window of I need to, then pop it back.

It’s incredibly efficient. I see stuff like this, and I imagine what it’s like to have text several feet away, screens covered by other screens, lots of neck fatigue, all the monitor borders… like it’s truly bad. It feels like someone watched a lot of TV and “felt” that this was the best way to do it without trying it.

Butt I digress. It’s not my setup. If they’re efficient with it, more power to them.

Synthead ,

By driving it

Synthead ,

Right

Synthead ,

“Features” USB C 🤔

Synthead ,

The sad part is that inkjets aren’t inherently bad. They’re just a different way to print. They can make some fantastic, deep, high-resolution colors. It just so happens that this type of printing is being ran in such an anti-consumer way that it’s borderline unbelievable.

Ink is cheap. It’s INK. I can go to the art store and find thousands of different types of ink. It’s just water with coloring in it. It’s not special. However, HP sells their ink at a cost that is about 4x the cost of gold by weight. I can understand it being a little more expensive than just ink in a tube, but this is insane.

We should have inkjet printers that have caps on the top of the cartridges to let you add your own ink. No DRM. Buy common ink at the grocery store, and it’ll work with most vendors. Open the lid, add your ink. Dried up? Wash it under the sink. Really dried up? Buy an empty cartridge for $6.

Our society has advanced enough to where this is a solved problem. We have figured out INK of all things. We know what ink is, and we know how to put it on a sheet of paper. Civilization hasn’t been stumped on how to put ink on paper for decades, and it’s not like we’re in a position where only vendors like HP can save us. It’s 100% greed, all of it, and it’s so shameless that it reads like something out of Snow Crash or something.

Imagine if you bought a ketchup bottle from the grocery store, and refilled it with more ketchup when it was almost empty. Then, the ketchup bottle phoned home and figured out that you missed a ketchup subscription payment, so it refused to squirt ketchup. Ain’t it silly when I compare HP’s model to ketchup, yet both circumstances are literally dispensing a liquid?

Synthead ,

youtube.com/watch?v=dbbque0Y4FU

Synthead ,

From February 28th, 2023

Synthead ,

The reason you can’t host as port 80 on unmodified Android isn’t because “Google won’t let you.” Android is open source. You can do what you want with it. Android runs on Linux, and ports 0-1023 are privileged ports that can only be used as root.

Unmodified Android does not allow userland apps to run as root for very good reasons, so you don’t have access to these ports. That’s all there is to it. If you attempted to do the same thing on Ubuntu, you would also not be able to use port 80 without root.

However, this is a naive approach to hosting a website. Production web stacks, when hosted on a machine, typically use a least-privileged model where not only ports are banned, but most file access is, too.

Most dynamic web stacks won’t host on port 80 directly. Most will serve either a socket connection or host multiple ports on threads, i.e. ports 3000 to 3007. These connections would then be proxied via something like Nginx to serve as a load balancer, and Nginx can also manage SSL for you, too.

If Nginx is started as root, it can host on port 80. If not, serve on port 8080 and use NAT to redirect it to port 80 with your firewall. You are using a firewall for publicly-hosted content, right?

Synthead ,

I don’t think it’s a great idea to host a website on cellular data. If I had to serve something with a mobile device, I’d use USB networking, or a USB to Ethernet adapter.

Synthead ,

I wouldn’t want to reduce security by allowing privileged ports as any user, or running modified operating systems that have lessened security baked-in. This security principle is in place for good reasons, and they should remain in place.

If you are exposing your LAN to your Internet connection, you’re doing something wrong. If you are not, but are using a firewall that doesn’t support NAT, then I don’t trust your firewall. If your firewall supports NAT, and you’re attempting to subvert Linux security measures instead of using it, then you’re doing something wrong.

Synthead ,

FL Studio. I’ve been using it since the late 90s. I know it like the back of my hand.

Synthead ,

Too many places let you drive if you do the happy path stuff right: stopping at a stop sign, changing lanes safely, etc. But the most important time of your driving is when you’re about to hit a semitruck and you need to get your car out of the way, and there is no training material for this at all. People often panic and slam the brakes and aggressively turn the wheel, which is a perfect setup for understeer and losing control of your car. They are literally getting in a situation where they are about to die and they choose to greatly increase their risk due to negligence.

It’s cheaper to run simulators than purchase cars and hire trainers. Get em in nasty situations and teach them how to get out of it. For real, if mom and dad can’t evade sinking their freeway missile into a van full of kids, they shouldn’t be able to get behind the wheel and be presented with opportunities where this might happen any time they drive.

Synthead ,

The uptime on lemmy.world is terrible. lemmy-world.statuspage.io currently shows 95% uptime, but it has been “down” from a UX perspective more than half the time I attempted to use it. The uptime reporting is simply not picking up when something is off as much as it should. And they recently added an archive.org proxy for when it goes down… what the heck? I understand that it is run by volunteers and all, but what a buzzkill.

Synthead ,

Guinness World Records created copyright infringement reports for any video that that mentions “world record” or uses their logo in thumbnails.

Saved you a click.

Synthead ,

Ain’t it great how X is so confusing, that news articles have to remind you that it’s Twitter?

I heard that Google was going to rename their company to J next month. Oh and Amazon is going to take C.

Synthead ,

Just discovered this also. I’m out. What a disappointment.

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