True, especially the part about your mom and others that had to use PCs in the 90s and 80s. I suck with a lot of CMD/PowerShell/Terminal stuff and get really in my head about whatever I am doing. Though a lot of it is due to things like switches and formatting order. Can be very very frustrating if there are a lot of them and having to constantly look at what they mean since they aren’t just regular words (which would obviously make the amount of typing get out of hand). The other main issue for me is dealing with moving or copying things around. GUI is much easier to get due to being able to see it in the same way I would move/copy things IRL. Especially frustrating if using USB drives, since they don’t just auto-mount/assign a letter if only using something without a DE. That part is (for me) a headache to have to deal with since the same OS will just do that if a DE is used. But also not something I do every day (or very often as I mostly use Linux when messing with my Pi).

But your core point of just doing it is very true. The reason that folks in offices in the 90s and 80s were able to get used to it was because they had to, and that there was a reason to at least know the things to do what they needed. They didn’t have to get bogged down with all of it (or even need most commands). So it would be best to focus on the things that are needed to get daily things done. Then it makes a lot of other bits easier to handle later on. And a lot of common things can be printed/written on cheat sheets or getting stickers with common commands to put on the side of the case or stuck to a desk in easily glanced at locations.

It is more leeching than sharing, but if it is actually torrenting then it should also be uploading while the “stream” is playing. So kind of like PeerTube. Just really depends on both how it is setup, and how popular the video is at any time. Though it sucks that there isn’t a good way to make sure connections happen.

There are lots of times that I get torrents the regular way that I would like to have uploading to other peers at the same time. But will notice that I get few to zero peers for uploading with popular files. There are times that I will leave it seeding for weeks without any uploading. So I end up deleting the torrent so I can move files or free up space because I already made a second copy to sort. Not always the case, but frustrating to not even see a few MB go to anyone. With PeerTube I see my upload working more consistently, but main issue there is just not often that I am watching something that a lot of others (or any others) are also watching.

That would be awesome to see. OEM bootloaders (and their fuses) and dealing with the proprietary drivers/blobs are the things that really need to be tackled with resources to be on as many devices as possible. I doubt those companies will want to play nice depending on whatever Google demands to be allowed Google Play Services. It is so hard to actually break into the OS market for mobile at all, but it is dedication that LineageOS has had that has kept it alive and updating. I hope that all the custom ROMs and the Linux Mobile OSes help each other out to the benefit of everyone on all levels of phone/tablet tiers.

Good to hear that dd did the trick for you, and I will keep that one in mind the next time I need to re-install an OS on a drive that might be having the issues. SpinRite works by going sector by sector reading and copying the data, erases the sector, and then writes the data back. Not like something you would want to do all the time for sure. The creator of the program also said he will have the code go FOSS when he dies (pretty old but in good health). I am hoping that he is able to complete the full re-build he has in the works to have it work with how modern motherboards and controllers work (the current code-base is extremely old and requires turning off both Secure Boot and UEFI (or at least enable CSM) in order to boot the live USB (I think it still uses FreeDOS as the environment). There are ways to run it in a VM correctly, but I haven’t messed with trying that yet.

I also agree that it seems that really old cards and drives tend to not have the same issues as newer ones. Hell, I have even found that my floppies that are from the mid to late 90s and very early 00s tend to have a better chance of me still getting data off them. More of my mid to late 00s disks have issues with corrupted data. Found that out when going through a bunch of disks I had forgotten about, to get whatever I could last year.

Mostly just a small-ish info dump in the event it helps anyone. All flash and nand media can self-wipe if not used for a couple of years (though nand can last longer but may start to slow down to SATA and slower). Even if in an active PC, the parts that are only read but not written this can happen. Learned that from some episodes of “Security Now” podcast and personally saw it happen with a PC I was trying to fix for someone. On the show one of the hosts has a commercal program called “SpinRite” that was made to help with HDDs that have non-moter/actuator issues revive sectors.

Some testers using it found that it also helps with nand that has drastically slowed down from reading spots that never really get writes come back to normal speeds. In my case, I tried it on the PC I was working on and it really did help (the OS was already borked so it wasn’t going to hurt trying it out) with it loading much faster. Obviously the cheaper the flash/nand the faster issues will happen.

I have seen some random motherboards offer basically a pre-erase on SSDs that are acting slow before you re-install the OS to make sure a more complete flipping of cells happens and not just a basic formatting that just zeros the first parts of data and leaves the other cells alone. In that case the data/OS isn’t the focus and wouldn’t need a special paid software (I am only aware of SpinRite just because of the podcast and bought it to support the host that makes it). I am not sure of any free/FOSS software that does the same full drive cell flips, but I imagine there are some (or will be as flash/nand is used more and more).

Main take away is that it is important to make sure to not just let flash drives/SD/nand drives sit without at least hooking up to a PC every now and then. My PS Vita fell victim to just sitting around dead for a few years along with the Vita card I had in it. Fortunately the ROM with the OS is still working and I was able to at least set it up again.

The “dumb TV” options are few (there are some but doubt their panels are as good), so the only “real” options are to go with the second option you gave. Depending on the size needed, PC OLED/AMOLED monitors are probably the best option pared with a HTPC or whatever other box. Sucks that a lot of the larger ones are also becoming “smart.”

GrayJay is pretty good option, it does have YT but also has plug-ins for other services. So it could be good for getting results if searching for something that will show up in YT that the creator also uploaded to other sites, while still having the option to watch if not. Also has built-in support for SponsorBlock and DeArrow for the things that are only on YT (and can opt to sign into or stay signed out of YT account). PeerTube is still a mess though. Not able (or at least I don’t know how) to pick your instance to sign into and doesn’t seem to allow for adding to the pool of peers to help upload while watching. But I don’t think even the phone apps that specifically are for PT do that/have the option. Would be nice to be able to do that if on WiFi at least.

True, but if the option to start using it isn’t there. Then it also won’t have data to even get started. I remember when I first started using Waze back on my Galaxy S3, it wasn’t super helpful (for both the traffic and in some cases the map data). This was mostly due to it not being used by many people in my state at the time (the friend that told me about it used it in a much larger city with more “tech” people around). So even if it doesn’t help me directly right away, I am more than happy to start using it daily to report what I can.

I haven’t heard of that one. Will look into it just to have options.

Good to see devs willing to do the work needed in order to draw hard lines on the capitalist leeches that divert money away from the project. I am looking forward to the traffic system that they mentioned as a future option. Would allow users that are okay with turning on those features for adding crowdsourced traffic data and stuff like marking cops posting up to get their quotas.

Literally the only thing that keeps me on Waze is that stuff. I have to deal with a lot of interstate travel to and from work and knowing that a big crash happened so I can re-route before getting stuck is crucial. I will still make sure to have this installed just like I had Organic Maps as a good option. And to see what stuff I go to that needs to be updated on OSM and StreetComplete. Had to add all of the addresses on my street on OSM a while ago just to be able to correctly enter my address. One of those addresses that is listed as one town for mailing and is technically within the borders of a smaller one with regards to utilities and plots of land.

Do you have DOCP/XMP/Expo (whichever your board may call it) turned on? If so, you might want to try turning it off and see if the crashes stop (or at least get reduced). RAM could be fine but just not stable, which a BIOS update might help. Also might help in the event that your board is one of those that have had issues recently with the X3D CPUs. There is always a chance that the GPU might be faulty. Which I don’t know how to best test for that short of just trying an old one (or a friend’s if they have their old one).

One thing that infuriates me with job interviews is how they will write you off the second you are late. But they sure as hell can be late by as much as they want. And will treat you like shit if they are in a rush, or if they forgot about your scheduled time slot (had this happen with a phone interview that I even proved to the receptionist that I had in fact followed the instructions). They should be required to pay the person being interviewed for each hour (rounded up even if just 15min) wasted or their own lateness.

No problem!

Does it have support for the P2P part of playing the videos? I know it can cause issues for data caps if it does. But if it doesn’t have that part, would love to see it show up in the settings to turn on and off to help share if on WiFi or if not on a cap. Would be great at least if running it on an Android based TV box to be able to not be a complete leech.

You can add the instance URL on the Play Store version.

SuperFile looks cool, just installed it!

The Thunderbird team is actually looking to bring it back as part of their new (paid I believe) services along with Thundermail.

And I may or may not have used a cracked Photoshop

Installing cracked Photoshop is basically a rite of passage for many. My first cracked program was Photoshop 6 that my photography friend gave me back in high-school when I was stuck on dial-up and they had cable.

Good to know that you actually give options a try (every now and then I try Photoshop to see how it works and new things). So many people will just hate on things just because they just hear that they are bad. One of my friends does photography and hates how Photoshop being a subscription costs so much. But refuses to bother checking-in on GIMP or other options. Even Lightroom alts are deemed not worth it just from muscle memory it seems. Which I do at least understand, but even just checking on options can mean having fall-backs if suddenly needing them. I doubt Adobe will just go away, but they can always make costs higher and higher which price people out.

It would be good if more UI/UX minded folks that actually use Photoshop/Lightroom but hate Adobe’s sub models were to help out. Even just giving good input and follow-up with why or how those things could work is a starting point. Devs and creatives need each other for making projects/products like GIMP into options that more people would use for real.

I don’t do much editing (certainly not fancy stuff with heavy use of all the tools), but there is a pretty good mod/patch PhotoGIMP that makes it present similar to Photoshop. It isn’t that old GIMP-shop one that might have malware. Doesn’t fix the missing stuff that power-users need, so no go for many of them. But the UI is much better than the main version of GIMP. Just have to apply the mod/patch after installing GIMP.