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They are: justice.gov/…/four-additional-states-join-justice…

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I’ve been in similar situations while renting. I ran ethernet cables along skirting boards and around doorframes and hid them inside adhesive cable raceways.

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Apple lay out some details here: security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/

They control the cloud hardware. Information used for cloud requests is deleted as soon as the request is done. Everything end-to-end encrypted. Server builds are publicly available to inspect. And all of this is only used unless the on-device processing can’t handle a request.

If somebody wanted to actually create a private AI system, this is probably how they’d do it.

You can disagree with this or claim somehow that they are actually accessing and selling people’s data, but Apple are going out of their way to show (and cryptographically prove) how they’re not. It would also be incredible fraudulent and illegal for them to make these claims and not follow through.

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I have a 50 terabyte NAS for storing my movies and TV shows. And access it from any of the TVs in my house.

For music…I have a music streaming subscription for convenience, but also have some vinyl records for the small-ish number of albums I want to keep forever.

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My high end PC from 3 years ago won’t run Windows 11 because of TPM bullshit.

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What made me lose interest was bad writing. “Andor” is a great Star Wars TV series, and I’m looking forward to its second season, because it has…let’s see…good fucking writing!

All the ways streaming services are aggravating their subscribers this week (arstechnica.com)

Below is a look at the most exasperating news from streaming services from this week. The scale of this article demonstrates how fast and frequently disappointing streaming news arises. Coincidentally, as we wrote this article, another price hike was announced....

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It’s the tech business model. Slowly building up a sustainable business has been replaced with coasting on investment money while attempting to capture an entire global market. Because these products can scale so easily. Now they’re entering the “oh shit we need to make money now” phase of the business model.

It’s not evil capitalists. It’s people acting rationally. The incentive structure leads to this behaviour. Eventually these services will consolidate into 2 or 3 major ones, like they do in every global tech market. Everyone will complain about it. But they’ll keep paying for it, because what other (legal) choice is there?

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At a certain point, a company’s primary product becomes its stock. Share buybacks, short term gains, etc become the strategy. The goal is no longer to create value for customers, but to create value for shareholders.

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AppleTV with the Infuse app.

Blows everything else away. It will connect to Plex and Jellyfin servers. Or a standard SMB folder share if you prefer. No ads. It never lags. Has reliable frame rate matching. And you’re likely to get 5+ years of software update support.

The only thing it won’t do is Atmos from Bluray rips (it will do lossless 7.1 but not the atmos layer). If you need that, then get an Nvidia Shield Pro.

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I posted this elsewhere in the thread, but…AppleTV with the Infuse app.

I tried a bunch of different media boxes and HTPC options over the year. But this is by far the best setup in my experience.

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No need for other Apple devices. It can act as a standalone box. It may want an AppleID account during setup. I’m unsure about that part.

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Sideloading and customisation is a downside. Like other Apple devices, the App Store is the way they want you to install things.

There are ways to sideload things like Kodi through pre signed certificates but I don’t know much about it.

Dont need another Apple device.

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Better support for Dolby Vision. I also prefer the Infuse UI.

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I love my HA dashboard but it took seemingly far too much effort to get it sensible. I had to know how to ssh in and edit a locked YAML file and create new template sensors just so I could have some temperature sensors show as “50” instead of “50.0028472” or some shit.

I think they fixed that in an update though. But there’s always something that requires multiple extra layers of digging around.

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The realpolitik answer is that they’re the only country in the region with highly functioning western-style market economy. That is valuable to other functioning western style market economies. Its a system trying to help itself propagate.

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Last time I visit a wax museum while tripping on acid.

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I run an LG OLED TV (disconnected from network), AppleTV, and my own media server. I haven’t seen an ad in my TV for years.

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This is one area where Apple have actually done a decent job.

Even the article reluctantly admits the AppleTV is the best media box now. Because it’s the only one that doesn’t throw ads on the home screen.

HomeKit also enforces local network control so you don’t need the manufacturer app or third party cloud services.

But the industry as a whole really needs better standards and accountability. And people need to stop buying products from an ad company (Google).

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These threads always have comments like “I want a fast device that’s well built and has years of software update support and doesn’t have ads and respects my privacy…but I’m not an Apple customer”.

I mean, fine, fuck Apple. But stop buying the cheap alternatives and complaining about them.

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It’s sad how Apple’s strategy of “just use an actually fast CPU and make a Home Screen without ads” is a breakthrough in the industry. It shows what a fucking mess everyone else is in.

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There is a 16:9 “open matte” edition of blade runner 2049 floating around many torrent sites. Unfortunately it’s only 1080p SDR. But it does look great and is a neat way to rewatch the movie.

What's your opinion on using rw Blu-ray disks for storing movies, ect?

Well I thought about using them instead of buying a hdd, I looked for some comparisons and found a 50 pack of 25gb blu ray drives and a 2tb harddrive for 60, it can store 35 movies more (thinking the movie is 24 GB) than the pack of drives, and that isn’t accounting the disk drive to read the disks (Keep in mind these are just...

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The fun way to watch movies is to have a NAS with a Plex/Jellyfin server and browse them on your TV with a nice UI in the comfort of your living room.

Want to watch this movie in 4K Dolby Vision with atmos? Just browse or search for it and click on the poster art. Want to stop that half way through and watch a tv series instead? Go for it. It’ll take all of 5 seconds to navigate to it and have it playing.

After going through the effort to set that up, I can’t go back to anything else.

If a drive fails or other issue occurs with my NAS, it will send me an email and then shut itself down. Replace a dead drive and off I go again. No data loss due to RAID. (insert obligatory comment that RAID is not a backup solution and that you should have a separate backup for important files)

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The Android market sort of split into cheap streaming sticks vs more expensive but niche boxes (like the Zidoo or Dune players). The former are meant for streaming but lack power. The latter are more capable players but often can’t stream from legit services due to DRM.

The Shield sits in this weird middle ground where it’s actually good for a variety of use cases….but unlikely to get an update due to small market demand.

Although I’d argue that unless you need atmos audio passthrough for Bluray rips…the AppleTV 4K is the best option these days. Super fast processor, no ads or bullshit in the OS, reliable frame rate matching, good track record of software updates and vendor support, and apps like Infuse which is a superb Plex and Jellyfin client. It’ll do 4K REMUX playback with lossless 7.1 audio, and the UI never lags…ever. Just a shame about no audio passthrough which prevents it from being an enthusiast player.

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They’re extremely good for higher quality content such as 4K REMUX files. I have access to a private tracker that I use regularly. I only search public trackers if what I want isn’t available in the private one…which is rare.

To me it’s not about price or openness or anything. Piracy is a service issue. Private trackers have better service than public trackers. Better curated content, better seeders, and fewer (if any) shit quality re-encodes by people who don’t know what they’re doing.

Why aren't more releases x265?

Nearing the filling of my 14.5TB hard drive and wanting to wait a bit longer before shelling out for a 60TB raid array, I’ve been trying to replace as many x264 releases in my collection with x265 releases of equivalent quality. While popular movies are usually available in x265, less popular ones and TV shows usually have...

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Every 4K WEB-DL I see uses x265. It’s extremely popular by streaming services.

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I’ve gone through the effort to build a 50terabyte media center. And am slowly filling it with tv shows, movies, and documentaries I like. It’s expensive and inconvenient. But still a fun hobby.

But the reason I do it is because I can have everything in one spot. Easily accessible. I control it. Never going back.

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The miners are taking power from the same grid as everyone else. Miners don’t emit carbon. Electricity generation from fossil fuels does.

The focus should be on moving to a renewable and abundant energy grid. Then let people use it for whatever the fuck they want.

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Agreed. AppleTV with Infuse blows away everything else I’ve tried in terms of responsiveness and stability. I spend less time fucking with it and more time just…using it. It’s almost worth it for the screensavers alone.

Get an Nvidia Shield if you need atmos passthrough for Bluray rips, otherwise I recommend the AppleTV in every other way.

I can respect wanting to go with a custom built PC setup if you have the time and interest. But that’s not for me.

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It decodes everything to 5.1/7.1 LPCM. So apps like Infuse or Plex it will play back lossless TrueHD or DTS, but the height metadata is lost.

It only supports Atmos for Dolby Digital Plus, used for streaming WEB-DLs.

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For TMDB to end their stupid policy of setting broadcast episode order as the default. Any app that uses them for metadata to match files names ends up with wrong episodes because obviously nobody wants broadcast order.

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Haha. What I mean is that some TV series have a different episode order on DVD/bluray than what they were originally broadcast in. “Firefly” is the classic example. The TV networks broadcast them out of order and the DVD order is the “correct” one and the order in which pirate TV packs will use. But by default many tools (which use TMDB.com) have the wrong metadata for the episodes.

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Some of mine that suffer from this: Cowboy Bebop anime series, early seasons of Futurama. Many kids shows like Paw Patrol.

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The worst part is that even buying SG1 on Bluray gives a bad experience, because they fucked up the 5.1 audio.

So what did the pirates do? Combined the Bluray video with the better DVD 5.1 audio! Best of both worlds.

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AppleTV 4K + Infuse app.

Streaming from my local media server.

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It’s a shame that AppleTV doesnt support TrueHD atmos. That seems to be the one feature that the Shield stands apart on, although the new model Firestick now support it, too.

I tried Kodi on Firestick 4K and the whole experience is super clunky compared to the AppleTV.

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Are you using the Plex app or a third party app such as Infuse? Infuse can handle more codecs and things like image-based subtitles that I don’t think the Plex app can handle, which should reduce transcoding requirements.

I just deleted my entire library and redownloaded it.

A lot of my files were shitty 480p versions of movies from the Napster days. Now they’re all 1080p, with a few 720p exceptions (mainly tv series episodes). All in all 500 something files in total. Now just watching uTorrent slowly download them all. Hopefully my VPN keeps the eyes off of me…

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There are only 10 seasons of The Simpsons and I won’t have it any other way!

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Depends what you consider “long term”. My suggestion would be a NAS unit with dual drive redundancy. And additional backup device as well. For consumer level stuff, Synology units with hyper backup are a good solution.

Question regarding ripping dvds (yes DVDs)

I know the majority opinion is not to do it for various reasons, but basically I started to backup the majority of my dvd collection that I created over the years since I have the time and they were just collecting dust. Turns out though I guess I’m doing it “wrong” or at least not in the original quality since I used...

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The best way to compare is to re-rip one of your already ripped DVDs. Use MakeMKV and play both back and see if you can tell the difference.

But if we are talking popular movie DVDs, then I’d just grab the Bluray copies from a torrent site. The quality will be far superior.

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The film uses an intentionally wide aspect ratio. It also has a lot of added film grain, also intentional. But the grain messes with low bitrate rips. Grab the 20gb+ 4K Web-DL rip to get it in the best possible quality.

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Oh nice. Didn’t know about this. Seems like an interesting solution!

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I’ll be honest I’m not trying to preserve knowledge I just want high quality stuff for free. Private trackers weed out the low quality files and keep the system healthy by also weeding out people who just leech files without seeding anything back.

How to begin setting up a media center?

I have 16TB NAS dedicated to storing TV shows. It is just a cabinet with ryzen 2600 and no graphics card. I have installed openmediavault in it to access it via smb to other devices. I am an absolute noob in setting up a server. Please tell me how I should go on about turning it into a media consumption machine....

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If you want to play the files back on your TV…get an Nvidia Shield and run Kodi. Or an AppleTV and run Infuse. Both can connect directly to your network file share and build a nice looking library UI. No need for an intermediate server such as Plex or Jellyfin. But give those a try if you want.

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Nvidia Shield or AppleTV4K.

I use an AppleTV4K with the Infuse app to connect to my NAS. Works flawlessly.

Infuse also has support for Plex. I haven’t tried using it with Real Debrid but it does work apparently by adding it as a WebDAV source.

Disney is gouging customers with a near doubling of subscription costs. (sh.itjust.works)

Disney is raking its customers over the coals with a 75% price hike for their annual subscription (originally $80.) People wonder why piracy is on the rise.Multiple commenters are saying I’m off base about the 75% price increase. My payment less than a year ago was $79.99. Here’s the proof.

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Buy a NAS unit such as a Synology DS923+

Add 4 drives to it of equal size. One drive’s worth of space will be sacrificed for redundancy and they’ll all be combined into a single storage drive.

I have 4x 18TB drives giving me just under 50TB of usable storage. Any single drive can fail with no data loss, and I just replace it and keep going.

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Good point. I’m personally not doing any transcoding so it doesn’t affect me.

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I’m sure some are out there. But it’s far easier to find a 4K REMUX file which maintains the original video and audio (and usually commentary tracks as well). But you do lose the video extras, behind the scenes etc.

A good playback app like Plex, Kodi, or Infuse (AppleTV) will present the files in a nice looking way.

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Ok this is an idiot question but how does the global average temperature change so much over the course of a year. Is the northern hemisphere warmer overall during its summer compared to the southern hemisphere in its summer?

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