GnuLinuxDude

joined 2 years ago
[–] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 18 points 2 years ago (3 children)

When I was a child we had basic computer literacy classes in elementary school. They showed you how to get around Windows and use computers a bit. Somehow, I doubt that those kinds of classes ever taught Linux.

But the real problem I think is that Linux distros also never had Microsoft's budget to develop, assemble, test, and release the operating system + software suite. The fact that Linux is as good as it is in spite of that is really something special.

[–] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 years ago (5 children)

I really wish the Linux community would do a better job of separating the software updates from the core operating system and user space apps.

You can accomplish this with something like Debian stable and Flatpaks. OK, but now you have to explain these concepts to people, too 😆. It works great but it's not quite user friendly. Ubuntu gets dunked on a lot for Snaps but I think they are actually the one mainstream distro that is trying to make Snaps as transparent for users as possible, thereby achieving the goal of separating the core operating system from user applications. Though I still prefer Flatpaks.

[–] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 11 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I do this exact same setup but one thing to add to your answer and be aware of is that syncthing is not a backup solution. If you delete the files on one computer, those files will be deleted on the other synced devices. And accidents can happen.

So, as always, take backups.

[–] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 18 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Also take care to not get your democratically elected prime minister couped by monarchist-supporting western powers, where the monarch himself is so bad that he gets deposed by a popular multi-front revolution.

Unfortunately after the revolution the theocratic elements reigned supreme and destroyed or sidelined many of the other groups.

[–] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Honestly... yeah. Its origin makes it all the more surprising.

[–] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

I finally created my lemmy account specifically so that I could browse lemmy.ml again without seeing memes all over the home page!

[–] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

I use Kate for this, but I agree there is an even better simplicity and speed with Notepad++.

[–] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 31 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

I can't help but think of the climate activists who defaced the Van Gogh painting. Except they didn't -- because the painting is actually behind protective glass. I sincerely doubt most people got that fact from the outrage news cycle that followed that incident.

So who came out to be the villains of the story? The oil and gas industry, where Exxon had relatively accurate warming models decades ago and still funded climate change denialism? No, of course not. Because every major media's headline was about how expensive this painting is and didn't immediately explain the lack of actual damage, nor did they actually cover the climate travesty we are living through. The villains were the climate protestors, who are objectively correct and chose a non-destructive way to get attention that was immediately spun against them.

An example from fiction is in the film Armageddon. Yes, it's a dumb movie, but it was a hit nevertheless. At the start of the movie some Greenpeace protestors are on a ship protesting the offshore oil rig, which shows Bruce Willis's character cavalierly assaulting them with golf balls as he points out that they're hypocrites for being on an ocean-faring vessel which requires... drum roll OIL! To operate!! Wow, such an epic own! This kind of argumentation is used to this day. "You want to raise taxes? Why don't YOU pay more taxes on your own. You want to curb carbon emissions? Why don't YOU stop driving a car." Fuck off. Such a "Yet you participate in society" moment.

So what are people supposed to do? Roll over an accept it? Do we all just wait and see until civilization collapses? Because I cannot see functioning societies as we know them existing in 150-200 years. Maybe even 100 years. Personally, I don't think anything will change until some heads of some certain people actually start rolling. The COVID response taught me that even with full, modern medical knowledge the response from the people in charge will be too little, too late, if anything at all. Just a big fucking collective shrug. Like the emoji. "🤷‍♂️ we cannot close businesses for two months to nip this novel airborne virus in the bud. We cannot use emergency powers to produce masks and give them to people for free, we will instead just have random meaningless shortages as the price goes up during the critical early moments. We will suffer indefinitely, instead. We don't have the money to do it right once now, only to do it wrong into perpetuity."

The oil and gas industry and their funded allies hold the keys to the doors, they squat on every position of power, they have all the money, and they have a media engine designed to keep a full 30-40% of people on their side with flagrant misinformation or lack of coverage.

I'm not personally doomer about climate change. It doesn't stop me from sleeping at night. But I am realistic about it. We're fucked. Nothing's changing. The Joe Biden promise: Nothing will fundamentally change under his watch. He's keeping that one.

Edit: We are also flying more than ever before! Hooray! This certainly will help. https://nitter.1d4.us/flightradar24/status/1679865495112019968

[–] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Honestly I'm not sure about the frame rate part. Just my observation from my own encodes is that as long as you set the frame rate to same as source your result will have the same frame rate as the source, regardless of the radio options beneath it. I have never encountered a video with a variable frame rate, nor have I ever seen Handbrake produce one, regardless of setting choices.

[–] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I always set the output framerate as “Same as source”, and when I do that the only options change from CBR & this other one I can’t remember to CBR & VBR. When it does this, it defaults to VBR. Should I change it to CBR instead?

Do you mean Constant Framerate and Variable Framerate? Because CBR and VBR mean Constant/Variable Bitrate. Anyway, I always set my stuff to same as source as well, with a constant frame rate. I don't think this really matters because the video you are feeding to Handbrake is itself probably constant framerate, and therefore the result ends up being constant frame rate even with the variable frame rate option.

as far as I know MKVs tend to have smaller file sizes typically than MP4s for the same media

This is not correct. MKV and MP4 are just container formats. The stuff that actually makes up the size is what goes into those containers (the video stream, audio stream, and to a much lesser extent the subtitle files, chapter markers, and any other metadata).

I’ve read that mkv is more tuned for backups of TV shows & movies, and mp4 is more tuned for backups of web content (due to the streaming thing you mentioned)

MKV is an unbounded container. You can pretty much stuff anything into it, which is why it's used for archiving. MP4 technically isn't limited to its normal expected codecs through some clever use of metadata, but it is basically unexpected and mostly unsupported. It's certainly unconventional to use it like how you would use an MKV.

mkv is both an open format and libre, unlike mp4 which is only the former

This is true, but not realistically relevant. Mp4 is old. I don't know if it still has patents but judging by the date it was defined I would have to believe most if not all of its patents are expired. Though I am just guessing at that. But even then, that's not important because basically everything plays mp4s because its open format is implementable by anyone. Given everything you've said, though, I agree that MKV is probably the better format to use.

I mainly see my backups first and foremost in an archival light

Then you should not use Handbrake, unless you plan to keep two copies of your media. MakeMKV should remux the blu ray discs directly into MKVs (I've never used it to do blu rays, but I have used it with DVDs to do this job). If you do anything to your media with Handbrake, it's not really an archive anymore, it's just a good copy. For many people this tradeoff is worthwhile because if you encode it at high enough settings you won't get any visual loss but you will get a much smaller and more easily manageable file. But I would only call it an archive if it's untouched from the source. That's what the term "remux" implies: Taking the original video/audio stream contents and putting them into a new container such as MKV.

As an aside comment, I don't understand how the term remux came into use, since a multiplexer selects a single signal among multiple...

[–] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 years ago (3 children)

There's this program which supposedly will take a PDF and if it's unsafe make it safe. https://dangerzone.rocks/

I've only heard of it today, so I have no idea about its efficacy.

[–] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Do you have any recommendations for how to get into NetHack? I've tried playing it in the past but it seems a bit obscure and incomprehensible to me.

view more: ‹ prev next ›