CerebralHawks

Motorola hasn’t released a good phone in decades and I wouldn’t expect them to get this one right.

Google and their fans are a bit insane considering the new Pixels are giving iPhone 11 performance at iPhone 17 Pro pricing. And you still pay with your personal data. Make it make sense.

If you don’t trust Apple, I’m really not sure what to tell you. You could get s handheld Mac… or you could take your chances with something far less reputable and hope. Nothing and OnePlus seem promising, but they also seem to under-deliver. I’d also be looking into the “Linux phones,” though I think those are just Android in disguise since they run Android apps?

At some point, you’re gonna get a cheap smartphone and not care what it runs because you don’t put any personal data on it, you just use it as a hotspot for a laptop running Linux, and you make calls through some web service.

Same, but Windows. Same rationale.

At the very least, I wish games would stop requiring it.

Looked into this, it looks awesome. Plex is meeting my needs and I own a Plex Pass, but if I didn’t, I’d probably be running this. The server works on Macs, too. Not all of them do.

Unnecessary. It adds compatibility with another service. I looked into it a few weeks ago. I forget the details, but I looked into this and thought, oh I’ll never need that. The $5.99 gives you all the features you need for all devices.

Navidrome looks like good stuff. If I ever move off of Plex, I’ll absolutely be looking at it. I’m running macOS, but my goal is to buy a gently used Windows PC from a business or something (like they couldn’t upgrade it to Windows 11 or whatever’s after that) and replace Windows with Linux, and use it as a server. My Mac (M2 Pro, 16GB RAM) is more than enough machine to run multiple servers, but I’d rather do that with a dedicated machine running some *nix that I can terminal into from the Mac. Navidrome does run on macOS with minor tweaking that is not above my skill level, but when I set up the server I’ll be looking real hard at alternatives.

Definitely more advanced than what I do! I’ve also been collecting for a long time, and I’ve just been storing the media. I went from Windows/x86-64 to Mac/ARM64 a few years back, and I have kinda limited options that way. I would have just gone to Linux if my computers didn’t die, but at the time, Apple made sense.

I do Apple Music, but, that doesn’t answer the question. I also self-host my music via a Plex server. I got Plex Pass for well under $100 on sale years and years ago. Much harder to recommend now. Plexamp is awesome for music, and I also use Prologue (iOS app) for audiobooks hosted on Plex.

For tagging, I use Mp3Tag and tag manually. It was free on Windows, but the guy wants $30 for it on Mac. It’s a long story as to why, but after he was kind enough to explain it to me… I paid the man. (For my part, I’d used it for free for many years and I got a lot of miles out of it, and still do, and it’s a good, well maintained app from a solo developer.) There are free alternatives. Not so many good ones on Mac (part of why I paid). For album art, I get them from Apple using this handy site (not mine): https://bendodson.com/projects/itunes-artwork-finder/ — you can use 600px or you can use either 2000px or 3000px, I forget which. I’m good with 600px. I think Apple uses the smaller size for phones and the bigger one for TVs and Macs (especially as iMacs have 5K screens now).

My library might also not be as big as yours is. Plex says I have 14,462 tracks indexed. Maybe those are rookie numbers, I dunno. I pretty much have everything I want. All I’d really want now is to take my Apple Music playlists and download them to m4a 192k or similar. I have a few decade playlists that are like 500-600 songs each (80s, 90s, and 00s).

Putin gave his answer. Total surrender of the disputed territory. Just because it’s not the answer you want doesn’t mean he hasn’t made up his mind.

It sucks, but he’s not gonna take less than what he wants and what he thinks he can get. He’s also not gonna beat Putin in the press.

Cool. I don’t have a camera hooked up to my Mac desktop. I specify Mac because Macs have a cool feature where you can use your iPhone (if you have one) as a camera. So basically I just prop my iPhone up against the monitor, screen away from me, and I now have the best webcam. Except, you have to manually do it, some website isn’t just gonna initiate the connection. It’s gonna ask the computer for camera permission. The computer handles all that on the back end. It’s the same on Windows. If you’re using Firefox, specifically, and you deny a website camera access, it doesn’t see a computer with a camera. Then what? I guess it just falls back on the old one?

Same with my MacBook. It does have a camera, but I don’t have to give any website permission to access it.

Just say no to this kind of shit. You might not be able to with Android, though I’m fairly certain you can. You might not be able to with Chrome, though I know now you can. But the way Chrome killed ad blocking for the most part? Yeah, they can do that with other privacy protections. Don’t use Chrome.

I self-hosted Plex and Jellyfin on Windows. It’s fine. But as others have said, Windows machines tend to be too power-hungry. Honestly I think that’s more a symptom of x86-64. Changing the OS from Windows to Linux does not magically change the power needs of the hardware. (However, Linux tends to demand less of the hardware, especially if there’s no GUI.)

I now self-host Plex on a Mac mini (M2 Pro, 16GB RAM/512GB SSD). M2 Pro in Intel speak is like i5 as in, it’s the “next one up” and “good enough for most people” but not the low entry into the platform (M# base or i3), though I’d say M4/M5 base is better than M2 Pro. Just like going 2-3 generations newer, the i3 gets closer to and may surpass an older i5.

There’s a reason self-hosters prefer Linux, but I’d think it would be more about the hardware than the software. Windows is problematic because you’re opening ports and Windows is a target due to its massive market share. Mac is kinda (/sorta /not really) UNIX based, and Linux is, well, it’s Linux; neither is bulletproof, but both are better than Windows because they’re not really being targeted. That said, the MacBook Neo and Mac Mini going for $500 if you’re a student, $600 otherwise is getting a lot of people sick of Microslop’s BS to switch, and the Neo in particular is forcing the PC market to get competitive as macOS market share is rising — this also makes it more of a target. You’re always at some risk online and a little common sense goes a long way.

Pro: You own your computer.

Con: You own your computer (and you have to work on maintaining it).

I’m mostly joking. Generally if you have a problem with Linux, you can get help on it. The myth that there are more Windows users, so therefore it’s easier to get help with Windows is problematic for a few reasons. One, the number of Windows users who are actually passionate about it are comparable to the number of passionate Linux users, or Mac users. I’m not sure which one leads the others in power users who are happy to help, but I feel like it’s Linux. Nobody has Linux because of the computer they bought (or, almost nobody). Windows and Mac have a lot of users who just use the computer they bought with the software that came with it. Virtually no one has Linux who didn’t choose it, and they chose it for reason that are important to them, and it’s in their best interests to help you learn it, too.

The other myth is the command line. Windows, Mac, and Linux all have a command line/terminal. It’s not needed on any of them, but on all of them, there are a couple things you can do that are not easy to do in the GUI.

Honestly if you have Windows, get a live distro and run it. You can run it inside Windows. The performance won’t be the same as running it on bare metal, but you can see how it handles your hardware. For most distros you shouldn’t have a problem.

(Disclosure: I’m a happy Mac user. I’ve used Linux off and on (mostly off though) for over 20 years. My favourites have been Red Hat (when it was a home OS; it’s called Fedora now) and Ubuntu. I prefer the GNOME interface. I’m comfortable with the command line. I understand that macOS is UNIX, and I also understand that it’s not and why it’s not.)

As an Apple guy, thank you for contributing to the platform I use. A lot of advanced networking stuff tends to favour Linux and even Windows. The former I understand… the latter, I grudgingly understand (it sucks but everyone uses it). And no one’s really buying Apple for networking. It’s not like it’s the 90s and networking is stupid hard and AppleTalk makes things make sense. Now everyone’s as good as AppleTalk was. I still think Macs are the best for networking. Wintel desktop, Wintel laptop, same WiFi network, couldn’t see each other no matter what I do. Mac mini desktop, MacBook Air, both signed into the same iCloud, they show up in each other’s Finder (file manager). Even my iPhone can navigate to them. The 10.5TB I have connected to my desktop is available to all my Apple devices. And I basically suck at networking.

You may be aware everyone is pissed at Plex right now because their self hosted media centre software’s lifetime license just tripled from $250 to $750 just a year or two after doubling to $250. I got mine at $90, so I’m not affected, but a lot of people are mad. Rival Jellyfin announced they were quadrupling their price in response — four times zero is still zero, though. Jellyfin is free and will remain so, at least for now. However, Jellyfin isn’t available outside your network. People use a thing called Tailscale which I only know by name, to allow remote access. It seems that it’s a kind of VPN host that allows clients to act as though they’re on the network remotely, and thus access the content remotely. By any chance, does your app do similar?

Again, I suck at networking. I understand some of the terms. I read your post and I read the description on the App Store and I understand some of the thing, but not all. I’m not looking to switch media centres, I’m just saying, if that’s something your app offers, you might have a growing audience. Maybe your app is nothing like Tailscale and I’m way off, but I thought I’d mention it on the off chance.

What about girls? If you show an AI a little boy with a fake mustache, I get how that might trip up an AI age check. But what about a girl? Maybe if she ties her hair back or something (assuming she has a girlish hairstyle). But you’d have to have a pretty stupid AI to not see that’s a girl’s face. And we’re not getting into transgender issues, I just mean like in general. And kids.

What if a girl pads her chest? Preteen girls have been putting folded socks (maybe panties? I dunno, I didn’t have sisters growing up) in their training bra to look older since I was a kid and probably long before, so it might fool some AI, but I’m not sure. Breasts doesn’t mean adult. I’m just spitballing ideas a girl could try to achieve the same result.

Not sure how lid detection works on Linux because there are so few laptops that ship with Linux. So I’m not sure if there’s a set rule on that. But, Linux can run on like most, if not all, x86-64 Wintel laptops out there, so there’s gotta be a standard.

That said, I use Macs at home and Windows at work. It’s hard wired in my brain that when you get up, you ⌘+CTRL+Q on a Mac or Win+L on a Windows box to lock the machine when you get up. Every single time. I don’t care if it’s a laptop or a desktop. The exception is my MacBook because I know exactly what it’ll do, and it’ll do what I want it to. But sometimes I do the three finger salute.

So I imagine if I used Linux, I’d just use its 2/3 finger salute to lock workstation before walking away, because that’s my SOP for walking away from any computer. My main phone is an iPhone, but sometimes I use an old Android phone. My SOP for using it is much the same as the iPhone. So if I were using Linux, I wouldn’t treat it any differently. All that being said, I’d expect the lid action to be in the power options like it is in macOS and Windows. But I guess I’d see if it actually does what it says?

Jellyfin doesn’t work without complex setup on Apple stuff. For the Apple TV app, you’ll need to know the server’s IP address to get started. It can’t just detect it like Plex can.

I had it up and running at one point, but tried it again this year and it was a complete non starter.

Piracy is the forceful (often deadly) interruption of commerce through personal gain. I’m not talking about naval piracy. Naval piracy is the original definition. Media companies just use that term to make people who share digital media look bad. Never mind their moral faults.

Enjoying digital media without paying for it isn’t piracy. You can do that via the radio or TV and no one says anything. You’re not supposed to show friends your media, that’s considered a public performance, but nobody cares. I remember a circus 10-15 years ago telling us not to record because they were using Star Wars music. People still recorded. Nobody cared. (This was also in the pre-smartphone times. So maybe 20 years ago?)

iOS user here, and I have seven of those. Of course, on Android you can more easily build an app from source whereas on iOS, “open source” doesn’t mean as much since you can see the source code posted online, but you can’t see the source of the app you’re served from the App Store.

But if they count, then I’m sure I have others. Firefox, for instance.

What’s the one mistake? Telegram? Or Signal?

The way I see it, the goalposts keep moving because Telegram was the private alternative to FB Messenger and WhatsApp. Then Signal was the private alternative to those, and Telegram. Now people are saying Signal is a problem (I’m guessing because of the cock up the US government had last year?). The goalposts keep moving, but Telegram is still fine for what I need. I keep both as alternatives to texting for people who want to reach me however they’re comfortable doing. I also have one called Session. I don’t use Twitter/X, Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp, or Reddit. I have a Discord because I have a couple things that are only available up there, but it’s not a good way to reach me as I have notifications disabled on it.

It’s not logically sound, but at this point the burden of proof needs to be on Big Tech if they want to claim they’re not spying. Otherwise we’d have to prove it for each individual model, and that isn’t feasible, and only supports the opposition.

It’s always gonna be a moving target. Wife and I started using Telegram because it wasn’t monitored like Facebook Messenger (which I don’t have an account for) or WhatsApp. Now people are saying Telegram isn’t good enough, use Signal. It’s still good enough for us. I also have Signal. No one I know uses it, but I have it in case they wanna start using it.

Honestly though, iMessage is secure enough for most people. Basically texting through Apple servers.

But any security or privacy expert will tell you that you need to determine your own threat model. No one else can tell you what that is.

I’m guessing you formatted the drive? Most of them are NTFS by default.

When I switched to Mac, my Mac wouldn’t even read the drive, due to the enclosure being Windows-specific (to be fair, it said so on the box; they’ve since expanded). So I shucked the drive, put it in a custom enclosure… and paid $10 for a program that lets me R/W to NTFS on macOS.

I can’t remember if it had a light.

Oddly, the new enclosure also uses USB-B. Hate that damn port. I have a hub that uses it, too. Fun fact: that port is the reason for Lightning existing. Apple was (and is) on the USB committee or whatever it was, but when they saw USB-B, they (quite rightly) said hell no and went to Intel to develop Lightning. They wanted something that they could roll with for ten years. USB-B was used in a handful of phones for like one generation (Galaxy S5/Note 4) and then it was USB-C. If the USB committee had jumped straight to USB-C, Lightning never would have happened. In case you needed another reason to hate that connector.