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@bbbhltz@beehaw.org cover

Music lover and English teacher with an interest in slightly geeky things

mastodon / blog / listenbrainz

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bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

My scepticism is through the roof reading this. First, I find it hard to believe that he has two working units unless they are programmed to sit in front of a terminal and tap Y…

https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/0cf90fcb-f698-4c8d-9e1c-0052149a2f92.webm

The rest speaks for itself: Musk likes to BS.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Maybe just bad research. I haven’t tried, but I’m sure if you search for “how to protect yourself online” some of the SEO manipulating websites show up in the first results.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Ok. Makes sense. The video is geoblocked for me so I probably should’ve kept my mouth shut

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

If you are geoblocked you can stream it with …pbs-video.pbs.org/…/nova5107-AABR-AVC_793.m3u8 with mpv

See also: this thread on Mastodon octodon.social/

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Hi,

It it possible that Plank doesn’t work with Wayland, plain and simple.

bugs.launchpad.net/plank/+bug/1632841

The latest version dates back to 2019.

I think Dash to dock is used often.

For Guake the version in Bookworm is from 2022 and you may need to set an environmental variable or perhaps it isn’t built with Wayland support on Debian.

You could hit up the Debian forums for a better answer.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Also, for Plank at least, I have a feeling that development has stopped so waiting won’t help. You’ll need to find an alternative.

SSH login without user name? (docs.gitlab.com)

I was reading GitLab’s documentation (see link) on how to write to a repository from within the CI pipeline and noticed something: The described Docker executor is able to authenticate e.g. against the Git repository with only a private SSH key, being told absolutely nothing about the user’s name it is associated with....

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

If I’m correct, that would mean that technically, I could authenticate to an SSH server without supplying my name if I use a private key?

Yes.

The public key contains a user name/email address string, I’m aware, is the same information also encoded into the private key as well? If yes, I don’t see the need to hand that info to an SSH call. If no, how does the SSH server know which public key it’s supposed to use to challenge my private key ownership?

Most of this can be found reading through different Git docs, whether from GitHub, GitLab, Codeberg, Gitea, etc. When using Git you can use different keys for different repos/forges and each has a defined pair, similar to accessing different SSH servers that require specific key pairs. I do understand your questions, but I lack the finesse to explain it since I really only use SSH and Git for my blog and not for anything too complicated.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

There are some tips here that might help

github.com/…/arch-linux-font-improvement-guide

Important to note that restarting or running sudo fc-cache -fv is key when doing things with fonts.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

An old friend of mine that I’ve lost touch with is Chinese. They lived in Europe for a number of years. When they couldn’t get a new job their visa ran out and the went back home.

No problem getting a job. They had a place to live. Things were good.

But… When they left Europe they basically told their roommate, a student who was about 10 years their younger, that they were leaving and that’s it. They abandoned the apartment. This left not only rent up to the student, but also the €300 fee of changing the name on the rental contract.

If a police investigation is launched against someone in China, you can be damned sure they will turn up something. If this influencer ever saw a doobie they will find out, and if they never did drugs they will find an acquaintance who did.

I say this because one day when my friend left work there was a car waiting. It was the father of her roommate. Turns out he was a “special” police officer. He told them to get in and gave her a folder. The folder had photos of them, their friends, even me. There were notes on the friends, SMS and social media exchanges. This included references to drugs. He took them to a bank, told them to take out the equivalent of €900 (he had their bank statements already) or their family would hear about this…and then he left them there on the street.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Yup

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

I don’t feel like my system is bloated.

It probably isn’t bloated.

I guess it’s subjective, but when do you consider a system to be bloated?

If someone is testing out several different DEs or WMs and installing meta-packages, then I suppose I might say that things are bloated because they could end up having multiple apps to control the same preferences along with different libraries, etc., and then when they decide to update it takes ages. That would be bloated for me. I have tried the minimal stuff before. Like you said, hundreds of packages, not thousands. But, I didn’t install any manpages. So when I decided I wanted those manpages the number of packages ballooned. Nothing was really bloated, just a number on neofetch going up.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Strawberry Music Player has smart and dynamic playlist generators. I cannot say how well they work.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

The package manager for Alpine is…so fast. The community (IRC/Gitlab) is responsive and helpful.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Before you delete your comments and reviews change them to something very basic and neutral?

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

An animated series is also in the works, so there is also that to look forward to.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

My current personal laptop is a ThinkPad 13 2nd Gen. I believe it was released in 2017. It was my work laptop for 4 years and was gifted to me by the employer. During those 4 years as a work laptop it proved its worth—9 hours of teaching per day plugged into a projector. Once it was mine I slapped Linux on it. Today, the battery still lasts 10 hours.

So, definitely look into getting something used. You probably don’t need the best of the best. If I had to choose right now I would rank my needs and try to get something close enough.

An i3 or equivalent might be fine, and i7 might be overkill. Something with an i5, perhaps? Lots of people say 8GB is the minimum for RAM, my computer has 6GB and works. But, if I were going to buy today I might take 16GB just as future-proofing. I would also need that USB-C.

Browse around sites like linux-hardware.org before purchasing to make sure you don’t get any surprises.

Speaking of surprises, I would take anything with Nvidia just in case, and whatever model I take would need to be reparable or upgradable.

If you decide on buying new, you might as well take a look at the vendors mentioned by other users. System76, Slimbook, Framework, StarBook, and so on will hurt your wallet a bit, but at least you know the hardware won’t result in time lost troubleshooting.

is there a foss project to automatically sort files

do you know that minecraft mod that autosorts your inventory? is there are project that can autosort a messy file system and put all of your files of a similar nature into a well organised, well named order. obviously this would require ai that could do image, language, and audio recognition but is there anything in the works? i...

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Partitions.

Many distros will partition your disk as /, /home, and swap.

If you want to, when installing a different distro, you can manually format and install the system to / and not format /home but flag it to be mounted as home.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Oh it certainly can! I haven’t done it like this in a long time. My hopping days are all but over and the main things I need to backup are music, photos, and books. As long as I have them on some external drive I just wipe it all and start over. Still, though, the option is there.

(Constructively) What is your least favorite distro & why?

I’ve been distrohopping for a while now, and eventually I landed on Arch. Part of the reason I have stuck with it is I think I had a balanced introduction, since I was exposed to both praise and criticism. We often discuss our favorite distros, but I think it’s equally important to talk about the ones that didn’t quite hit...

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

The distro I came here to mention has been hated on already. My dislike goes to the distros that start off fine, and somehow screw it up.

Honestly, I remember using Manjaro ages ago. It had an official Openbox spin (not a community thing). I had already used Arch but I didn’t even check to see what it was based on when I tried. I thought, “green is nice” and it was. It very quickly became less nice. I didn’t use it after that, but I’ve heard plenty of hate since then.

I’m going to put another one out there just for fun.

Distrowatch’s n°1… MX Linux

Nothing wrong with it, but the fact that it is number 1 (I know their ranking is just for fun and based on page hits) and doesn’t deserve it is the issue. It works great, when I used it I didn’t like how there was a second application for installating certain software. I think I used the Xfce setup. Again, it’s fine, but if a first-time Linux desktop user sat down and installed that, it might not be the best initiation.

Popular and highly ranked distros give Desktop Linux a bad name sometimes is what I’m saying.

"Must Try" distros and DEs?

Hey folks! I’m getting a fresh laptop for the first time in about a decade (Framework 16) in a couple of months and am looking forward to doing some low-level tinkering both on the OS and hardware. I’m planning to convert into a “cyberdeck” with quick-release hinges for the screen since I usually use an HMD, built-in...

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Don’t know if it is a must-try, but LXQt has come a long way. The file browser is excellent. Everything is fast and snappy and very traditional (start button, system tray, etc.). Runner up I guess.

You can run Alpine as a desktop. The Edge branch. New software, got what you need, installs and updates fast.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

It’s easy. After running setup-alpine and rebooting with a bar install there is built-in script setup-desktop that lets you install Gnome, Plasma or Xfce.

You can find install scripts like Alpine Suck around the web git.sr.ht/~bt/alpine-suck

Or check out the wiki for other inspiration wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Category:Desktop

If you use Edge, I would recommend subscribing to the user mailing list though, just in case.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

This sounds like a privacy concern. Maybe one of the privacy communities will have a better answer.

You’re worried that the bios will ping hp and hand over info, is this something that you have info on?

Desktop icons not loading (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

I’ve had this issue for a while now, since I thought I could fix it myself. Almost all my programs have lost their icon image, which is not fixable by applying a different icon theme unfortunately. Just installed the Reversal icon pack to test that. My settings are attached here, sorry for the german:...

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Somehow it might be possible the adwaita-icon-theme package was removed and not reinstalled.

You could also try running dconf reset -f /org/gnome/ and rebooting to see if that helps.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Yikes. Something is missing. Is this Debian? You could swing by their forums or IRC and get sorted out fast. I’m sure there is a dpkg command that fixes this up. As for the icons, there is definitely a missing package related to adwaita or some lingering config file needs to be reset to defaults.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

For Gnome settings? I suppose you could backup everything. It isn’t removing all dconf settings, just gnome, which is broken in this case.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

No. You’re right. I should have added a bold warning that it will reset gnome back to defaults too.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Yep. I have never had to use Discord. Or, I suppose I should say I haven’t had to use it yet. But when I see that a project uses Discord and not a forum or even Discourse, Matrix or IRC, I just hope I never have to ask for help.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Which way is GNOME going? I’m out of the loop.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Went full Linux in the early 2000s. Never went back. Started with Debian and Ubuntu. Tried many distros for varying amounts of time. I always come back to Debian.

I’m just a regular desktop Linux user. It’s great.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Amazing that I can live in the country and hear nothing about this. I’ve just read the Guardian article and I guess not living in Paris or another major city might be one of the reasons.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

ah zdnet, a waste of CO2 if there ever was

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Strawberry if I had to have something visual with buttons.

cmus right now because it loads my rather large library in a split second. mpd works great as well.

More important than the player for me is sorting, though. Beets is my saviour. I could never sort the 5 or 6 albums I get by hand and tag them by hand.

I used to like deadbeef as well, quod libet is great. There really is something for everyone when it comes to something for music. If only there were as many great email clients.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

I am a professor as several different schools in France (business, notarial studies, agricultural engineers, communication). I would day 95% of my students are from well-to-do families. But, most of them are required to find paid internships. The notary students usually get unpaid internships.

As an internship advisor, I can confirm one thing: paid or not, they put in the hours and take the same crap as a paid employee. Sometimes it is worse. For example, if an intern is absent from work, the message gets to me, and I send it up the chain of command and sometimes parents get involved. It is stressful for the students. My business students get paid internships (about €1400/month) but still need help from their parents and many of them will be doing something they don’t really want to do (think finance instead of marketing).

Now, being a professor I am in contact with a rather large network of of profs spanning the private and public sector… My colleagues from the public sector are worried about this looming change to laws. It would lead to an overhaul of the system as the internship is counted as a credit. If it is decided that they should be paid, how many companies will want to pay when they can just hire a part-timer for the summer?

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

True! Guardian is British but still, they need a better analogy.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

This shocked me as well because my parents weren’t involved with my work or education after finishing high school.

In France, this is not the case. The majority of people are supported by their parents until the end of secondary education, especially when it comes to my students who are all in private institutions.

It is extremely rare for a student to have a job, for example.

Parents do get involved for even minor things, and will come stomping into the school flanked by a lawyer.

Why would they be involved?

Because they pay. That’s all.

Now, university is practically free and lots of students get a bursary (not a loan) to help them along. But, their parents will still pay rent sometimes because a full-time student with a job is seen as the most amazing thing here.

I will often bring up this stark contrast to how when I was a student I had 4 different jobs and still ended my studies 60k in debt and didn’t even see my parents during the school year, let alone get any money from them.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Probably a private school thing in that case. I haven’t taught at a public uni since 2008, but parents wouldn’t have tried to get involved back then.

I cannot contact parents, but administrators will without question.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

You can achieve this through graphical utilities.

Self-updating apps aren’t a big thing on Linux, so the Windows way isn’t an option…

The signing key is important for security reasons, so you definitely need to add that. After adding the repo you can just use Synaptic or whatever app store thingy Ubuntu uses.

Most of the time you shouldn’t need to fiddle with the command line and the apps you will need are available through the Software Centre and the entire process will work like on Windows.

For me, Linux was the first operating system I used that had an app store or software centre and I was pretty glad to not need to…

  • open a browser,
  • navigate to a site,
  • (hope it is the right site…)
  • download a binary executable,
  • open a file explorer,
  • launch the binary,
  • click through a list of options and agreements,
  • and finally delete the binary.
bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

On a bit of a side-scrolling trip these past few weeks: Mario Wonder, Metroid Dread, Yooka-Laylee, etc.

The two big(ger) games I’ve played this year are Street Fighter 6 and Mario Wonder which are both fantastic. I haven’t played BG3 or the latest Zelda or any other major releases, but my partner and I were all in on SF6 for weeks. Wonder, though, is a great throwback to what made us both start gaming: very easy to pick up and play, things to collect, and a tiny bit of grinding.

Today 4 years ago, Dr. Li Wenliang warned of a suspected SARS patient in a Wuhan WeChat group. Soon later, he was arrested for “making false comments on the Internet about unconfirmed SARS outbreak.” (harakahdaily.net)

Dr. Wenliang’s message went viral, becoming the earliest warning of what we now know today as Covid-19. He returned to work, but contracted Covid from a patient, and died on February 7, 2020....

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

I’ve told this tale 3 years running now:

I work at an international business school. I try to stay up to day on world news. There was a paragraph written about “infectious pneumonia” in Time magazine or The Economist the last week of 2019 (so the issue published the first week of 2020, I think).

Returning to work a week later I mentioned it in class, because that year I had about 6 students from different parts of China.

They said, “it’s nothing, just a flu.”

The next week, as numbers started to be published they said, “no, it’s an exaggeration.”

The week after they were the first students to start wearing masks.

Week 4, they told us they hadn’t heard from their families in several days. This would have been February 2020.

I felt so horrible for those students that year. They were only 18 or 19 years old. Sent to France in January 2019 (they are required to come several months before classes start in order to learn French and pass some tests). They were locked down March 16th 2020 and forced to take lessons on Zoom. Unable to return home for the summer. Took another semester on Zoom, etc., etc.…

I think they finally managed to head home in the spring of 2021.

how do i efficiently attach audio to an image

hi all, ive tried using shotcut and kdenlive but the outputted file ends up being huge. i have a single image and want to put audio on top (releasing a song) but these programs end up making video files where they render the same image on each frame and the files end up being huge. what is the best way to achieve my use case of...

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Recommended YT settings might be helpful here.

What command have you been using?

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

I’m a recent Switch convert. I had only Nintendo until the DS and then ended up with an Xbox 360…and then a PS4. With the exception of a handful of games, like Gears of War on the 360 and Street Fighter 6 on PS4, I have never spent as much time playing as I have during these past few weeks on the Switch.

I’m still trying to put my finger on why that is. I don’t even have a Zelda game yet on this machine, but I’ve already bought a few games to play when I’m through with what I’m playing now.

As an almost–40-year-old who had a Game Boy at age 4, the only thing I can come up with that has made sense to my friends is that Nintendo is for playing as opposed to gaming? I don’t know why that rings true.

I’ve also noticed that Switch-owners have very large libraries of games. While I have just a handful, the average among my friends and students is 80 games. Most of them bought the Switch at launch and again when the OLED dropped. Their machines are just chocked full of games ranging from AAA to indie games.

For me, that might explain the lack of Netflix or Discord. They use their space for games to play. And, also, if you have used the Switch eshop you’ll notice that it is pretty busted and slow. Perhaps the have tried to make other apps, but we’re just too janky or not in line with family values.

[…] Nintendo neglecting every expectation of a modern gaming platform while it instead tinkers away on new hits.

Tinker is the word here. Some of their big games are worked on without deadlines. Even Mario Wonder was made without a deadline, and the result is just great (albeit easy, except for that secret last level where I can’t get the f-cking flag). I would wager that Metroid Prime 4 is just tinkering along as well.

Fine with me.

I’m used to buying consoles long after release, so if Switch 2 comes next year I hope I can pick it up in 5 years.

Until then, it’s like being a kid again: playing Mario and Metroid until my thumbs cramp.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Thorgi’s most recent video on the Street Fighter movie is great, even for casual- or non-gamers.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=q63M0rmeAXU

I agree on the recency bias. We tend to forget about older series and films, or watch them without considering the context of their time. This article even mentions Castlevania: Nocturne, but not the other great Castlevania series.

Was MK a dud? Maybe. But I saw that in cinema and owned it on VHS and had the soundtrack on cassette. It was a little bit of a phenomenon, same goes for the SF movie.

What I think has changed is that now they have decided to throw a little more money at these productions (actors, sets, etc.) and do the right thing by hiring consultants that know the franchise. Give the audience a little more of what they expect. Like with the NieR séries. It is essentially a walkthrough of the game and it is lovely.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

I didn’t see it so nothing was spoiled. I’m trying not to read the guides but I do want to know when the last PNR is in case I need to explore a little.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

I was worried I would hate them. I find myself looking forward to them. It is always a great feeling to finish one of them off.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Is the info on www.justwatch.com incorrect? I’m in France and Season 1 is listed on several platforms.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

I don’t have Netflix but it look like it is on Canal+ as a VOD option… So not really streaming but it is there.

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