Arghblarg

joined 2 years ago
[–] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago

They shouldn't cluster so closely together, it's a risk. Not that I'm suggesting anything.

[–] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago

I have trouble being too angry at this, since millionaires and billionaires sit on multiple corporate boards at the same time, and no one seems to complain about that.

[–] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They aren't putting up blocks to protect us. They just want their cut of the profits. I'm sure they will come to an arrangement that benefits Cloudflare and the AI behemoths, but still screws us all over somehow.

[–] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 27 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

The billionaires know they've already f*cked everything, so now they're funding authoritarians everywhere to release the legal and regulatory valves, allowing them to just suck up one last big bag of wealth to fund their bunkers for what is to come. That's why the masks have come off lately, they don't care to hide their motivations any more -- they think it's past the point of no return, and they just want to grab what they can as quickly and brutally as possible before things really go into the crapper.

https://theconversation.com/billionaires-are-building-bunkers-and-buying-islands-but-are-they-prepping-for-the-apocalypse-or-pioneering-a-new-feudalism-223987

https://nypost.com/2022/09/24/how-the-worlds-billionaires-are-paying-to-escape-global-disaster/

There should be a concerted effort to uncover and document where they've been building their bunkers and hidden underground paradises so we can throw potatoes into the ventilators and shit in the water intakes when the time comes. Let their retreats become their tombs.

[–] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Thank you.

If you've ensured your home network's firewall is sane first, there's no big issue.

If you dual-boot to Windows occasionally to run that one stupid program that can't run under Linux, and you aren't downloading stuff willy-nilly from the wild internet, and you haven't previously installed all sorts of dodgy call-home programs, you can still be safe running while you're in Windows. Hell, I have a Windows 7 box that runs just fine from my home network to the internet, thankyouverymuch. I even download stuff from there gasp, but I check the files first! Imagine that.

Most people aren't knowledgeable enough to maintain proper security however so I guess I should just stop commenting on posts like this, as I always get flak from people stating it's impossible to run an OS more than 2 weeks old on the Internet without being instantly hacked :p.

But still... as others say, I totally agree -- move to Linux if you can.

[–] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 51 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Does it weigh a ton and have mighty ClIcKs that wake up the dead? If so, good find!

[–] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago

This sounds really nice. I'm using Devuan currently, but MX looks very polished and worth a try...

[–] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 38 points 3 days ago

Big Bang Theory, and all 'reality' shows.

[–] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 9 points 5 days ago (2 children)

I was mad at first but on reflection I think you may be right, and hope this is subtle jiu-jitsu, so to speak. We'll see.

[–] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 12 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

AI for pattern recognition (statistical stuff) IMHO is fine, it's different than expecting original thought, reasoning or understanding, which the new 'AI' does not do, despite the constant hype.

[–] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 48 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Palantir, which the US gov is now (let's not kid ourselves, has been for some time illegally) contracting, probably already has your face either from street cams, security cams in various company buildings, or from social media at this point, so letting you 'opt out' is probably just theatre to avoid angering people at airports.

 

No comment other than the phrase in title is prominent on the hats intentionally shown behind the young man being interviewed here. I'll let everyone reading this decide for themselves whether this is a problem or not.


EDIT: For the record, perhaps my original commentary on this post was attempting to be too 'clever'. I was most definitely * not * trying to promote these chuckleheads. It was posted in order to ensure people know the enemy -- there are some scary forces working in Canada to instill the horrors we are seeing down south, right here, right now.

 

As most have predicted and feared, the US Administration appears to now be testing if they can push one step further towards enforcing an authoritarian ethno-state: threatening a full-on US citizen by-birth with detainment and deportation (to where, exactly, if they are a born US citizen?). Someone who, "coincidentally", is an immigration lawyer, someone who might defend other targets of their deportation agenda.

First they came for ...


EDIT: a thread indicating this has been a mass email to others https://bsky.app/profile/reichlinmelnick.bsky.social/post/3lmljpkrdj22h

 

In response to suggestions by a lunatic in the US Oval Office, Green Party Canada's leader Elizabeth May suggested Canada should invite western states Washington, Oregon and California join B.C and split from Canada to form the 'Cascadia' eco-state.

(Note this article is from Jan 8, 2025 and Elizabeth May has since become co-leader of the party alongside Jonathan Pedneault).

 

Would be a darn shame if tariffs applied to it for the US... oh wait

 

EDIT see my comment below which uses a much cleaner method that avoids the noisy multple udev events and doesn't require udev/eudev at all


This activates/de-activates the secondary display underneath the removeable keyboard properly. Note though that the keyboard is a composite unit and causes a whole train of udev events, rather than a single one, which means the desktop will flicker multiple times on each re-attachment of the keyboard :(. If anyone knows how to just run the scripts on the 'last' udev event, it would make for a cleaner experience. (XFCE sometimes crashes out on me due to the rapid xrandr reconfigs but it's mostly usable).

[/usr/local/bin/usb-0b05_1b2c-in]

#!/bin/bash

if [ "$(xrandr --listmonitors | wc -l)" -gt "2" ]; then

#logger -p user.info "=== KEYBOARD REPLACED ==="

xrandr --output eDP-2 --off

fi

[/usr/local/bin/usb-0b05_1b2c-in_udev]

#!/bin/bash

export PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin

/usr/local/bin/usb-0b05_1b2c-in &

[/usr/local/bin/usb-0b05_1b2c-out]

#!/bin/bash

if [ "$(xrandr --listmonitors | wc -l)" -lt "3" ]; then

#logger -p user.info "=== KEYBOARD REMOVED ==="

xrandr --auto && xrandr --output eDP-2 --below eDP-1

fi

[/usr/local/bin/usb-0b05_1b2c-out_udev]

#!/bin/bash

export PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin

/usr/local/bin/usb-0b05_1b2c-out &

[/etc/udev/rules.d/99-zbduo2024-kbd.rules]

ACTION=="add", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0b05", ATTRS{idProduct}=="1b2c", ENV{XAUTHORITY}="/home/username/.Xauthority", ENV{DISPLAY}=":0", OWNER="username", RUN+="/usr/local/bin/usb-0b05_1b2c-in_udev"

ACTION=="remove", ENV{ID_MODEL}="ASUS_Zenbook_Duo_Keyboard", RUN+="/usr/local/bin/usb-0b05_1b2c-out_udev"

Now, to get your laptop keyboard working when removed, in bluetooth mode, one must

  1. Ensure bluetooth-ctl is running and initiate 'pair' in Bluetooth by clicking 'Create pairing with this device' (key icon in the 'Blueman-Manager' window)
  2. Turn on bluetooth (switch on the left of the keyboard)
  3. Remove the keyboard
  4. Hold F10 for 4-5 seconds until its blue LED starts blinking rapidly (kbd in pairing mode)
  5. Watch your desktop notifications for the connection message with the BT challenge pin code (6 digits)
  6. type the challenge PIN code on the keyboard
  7. Now the keyboard should be paired.

... now if only I could get the sound device (Intel HD Audio) and brightness control working for both screens!

 

I was searching online for quite a while this evening, chasing a half-remembered bit of trivia, that trilobites were supposedly unique in their use of calcite for their lenses, composing the ommatidia of their compound eyes.

It must be so obvious to scientists in the field of studying insects that they never mention it in their papers...

So, what compound(s) do modern arthropods use in their compound eyes. If it isn't calcite, what do modern 'bugs' use?

 

If you haven't heard of it, this island has a population that the world has collectively decided to leave alone, mostly because they have proven, on multiple occasions, that they absolutely do not want visitors. Like, arrow-to-death anyone attempting to land or even visit near their shores.

This probably cannot go on forever... but maybe, it could. Essentially, we are already implementing a 'Prime Directive' of sorts here. Would the 23rd, 24th, ... centuries in Star Trek canon still have this little island on Earth, isolated from not just from Earth's own unified Federation society, but from the greater Federation races? What steps would the Federation and Earth take to maintain their isolation and the ecosystem on which they depend?

Would make for an interesting episode, or at least a cool side-note reference in one :)

23
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Arghblarg@lemmy.ca to c/synths@midwest.social
 

Best book for learning the ins and outs of MIDI I've ever encountered. Relatively obscure, but an invaluable reference book for anyone wanting to dig into the details of how MIDI works.

 

Nothing we apes don't already know (at least those of us who've been here for 84 years or so), but an interesting take from the MSM on it.

The system is rigged, this is one of the reasons why I Buy, HODL, DRS!

 

See linked posting. I've commented there with a link to a CLI tool in Python that allows downloading of IA collections. I've submitted a patch to enable specifying start and end points so that it's easier to resume downloading a huge collection, or to allow multiple people to split up the work.

https://archive.org/details/georgeblood

https://archive.org/details/78rpm_bowling_green

F*ck the RIAA and absurdly long copyright.


EDIT: There is more than one collection of 78s on IA, so I updated the title.


The issue with these collections are that they're absolutely HUGE. And yes, IA offers torrents for them, but as a separate torrent for every. single. album. And the torrents have all data in them -- FLAC, fixed-rate MP3, VBR MP3, PDF liner notes, etc. etc... there may be some extremely hardcore data-hoarders out there who want everything, but IMHO as these are scratchy old 78 records, FLAC is overkill to just save the audio in a listenable format. The George Blood collection, just the VBR MP3s, is looking to be about 6TB. With ALL data it might be over 40TB! I can't afford that many hard drives :)


So, my approach at the moment is to save just the VBR MP3s (they seem to be done at up to 320kbps VBR) and the JPEG album cover. If I have a chance and any storage left afterwards, I can make a separate pass to get the album liner PDFs...


Tool used: https://github.com/jjjake/internetarchive


Patch to allow setting start and end item indices for downloads: https://github.com/jjjake/internetarchive/pull/605


Example usage to grab just the VBR MP3 and record label JPG for each (note the --start-idx and --end-idx arguments):

#ia download --start-idx=4001 --end-idx=8000 -a -i --format="VBR MP3" --format="JPEG" --search collection:georgeblood

I'm going to concentrate on the George Blood collection for now.. I'm starting at item 1. It would be great if others started at index 50,000, 100,000, 150,000, ... and others started at the end and worked backwards in similarly-sized chunks, so that it's assured someone gets each of them.

 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/3589345

(Credit to rexxit user u/JackTheTranscoder)

Could this be the start of a big foreign ownership dump?

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