Recent submissions

Comment · 5 months ago
Plugging in an iPhone still works as well, I plug my iPhone into my Windows PC and it pops up with the filesystem automatically in Explorer, and the photos are right there in the DCIM folder.
Comment · 1 year ago
Unfortunately your Kindle needs to be registered to do this, and it's often a phenomenal pain in the ass to get old Kindles to register, if it's possible at all. I've got two old Paperwhites and I can't get either of them to register despite trying for hours and hours with every troubleshooting step I've found.
Comment · 2 years ago
The preferred AV1 encoder that ships with ffmpeg, SVT-AV1, is faster than any software H.265 encoder now. You can encode 1080p video in real time at preset 6 (the equivalent of 'medium' -- presets are on a scale from 0 to 13) on a $120 desktop CPU.
Comment · 4 years ago
It's not chip shortage related, the TV models being discussed are from 2015-16.
Comment · 4 years ago
You don't need to modify the clipboard to do that, news sites were doing it long before the clipboard API existed. It's usually done with CSS, abusing display properties, positioning, font size, etc to make attributions a non-visible but still copied part of the text.
Comment · 4 years ago
Check out an alternate web client, like https://github.com/spikecodes/libreddit. Even compared to the old design it's much more lightweight and clean, and compared to the redesign it makes 1/4 as many HTTP requests, uses 1/20th the CPU, 1/4 the memory, and 1/2 the bandwidth, doesn't require an account to subscribe to subs, can work as pure static HTML, and doesn't track anything. I have poor Internet and the difference is night and day.
Comment · 4 years ago
My father has insisted on doing this for over 20 years, but he doesn't know how to do it himself. I expect a password-reset phone call from him every 2 or 3 days and have done since 1998. Just recently he had someone from his bank's IT department call him directly about resetting his password over 500 times.
Comment · 4 years ago
Reddit and Medium are awful for this. I don't know what they're doing, but every page has a small chance of infinitely looping to max out a CPU core forever, unless you block their ads. I'll feel my laptop heating up and know that some Reddit thread somewhere is to blame.
Comment · 4 years ago
Valve's new Steam Deck device runs Linux. If it proves popular, that will be a big incentive for developers to improve Linux support for their games, and help jump that hurdle.
Comment · 4 years ago
How do you feel about the Windows official package manager, winget? I find it a lot more polished and usable than Chocolatey was, and didn't notice much difference compared to apt or dnf, but admittedly my experience is limited and I haven't done much complex with any of the four.
Comment · 4 years ago
> If you want to allow me to consult it offline, that's very kind and noble. Just put a zip file somewhere I can download.

To play devil's advocate: a majority of web traffic is on phones and tablets now, especially for long-form content where you will frequently see people request a page on a desktop, then request it two minutes later from a phone or tablet where they can read it more comfortably. 99% of mobile users will be happier when a text-heavy site is a PWA that caches itself, rather than a static HTML site that asks them to download a zip file, install an app to work with zip files on their device, unzip it to a folder of hopefully-relevantly-named HTML files, and then browse those, in the process breaking link sharing, link navigation (depending on OS), cross-device reading and referencing of highlights/notes, site search, and so on. Not to mention the limitations imposed on file:/// URIs, like browser extensions not working on them by default, which is a real problem for users relying on them for accessibility (e.g. dyslexia compensation, screen reader integration, stylesheet overrides). A lot of times that won't even be possible on a dedicated reading devices; my ereader will cache PWAs but will not download arbitrary files, if you make your site a PWA I can read it during my commute, if you make it static HTML with a zip file I can't. These are features most users appreciate a lot more than not having to load a 60k JS bundle (current size of React gzipped).

Comment · 5 years ago
> They're subsidised by the game prices. You still pay for it in the end.

Initial game prices can be higher, but you can sell the games. Here in Australia it's common for new games to be $100 on console and $80-90 on PC. A month after release I can still sell a console game for $80, and often do, since I prefer single-player adventure/RPG type games which I will take 5+ years to replay if I ever do. That effectively means that games cost me $20 to play on a console or $80-90 to play on a PC. I prefer playing on PC for all the other reasons but it's really hard to justify the extra cost now that used PC games are no longer a thing.

Comment · 5 years ago
Comment · 5 years ago
A few major factors, in roughly decreasing order of subjective importance:

1. Console games are initially more expensive, but you can sell them used when you're done, which isn't possible on PC. I regularly buy games for $100 (Australian pricing) and sell them a month or two months later for $80. (I'd rent them, but rentals don't exist anymore. I keep the ones I really really loved, but sell on most.) On PC, the same game might launch for $10-20 less, but that doesn't make up for not being able to get $80 back from every purchase.

2. Many games are unfortunately exclusive to a particular console, including many of the most popular franchises, e.g. Mario, Pokemon, Animal Crossing, and The Legend of Zelda are only on Nintendo consoles. If those are your favorite games, then none of the other factors really matter. And it's much more common for games to be exclusive to a console than exclusive to PC; there's virtually nothing these days that doesn't end up on the consoles, there are usually a couple of major blockbusters every year that don't make it to PC.

3. PC graphics card prices have absolutely skyrocketed due to cryptocurrency mining. I paid $130 for my graphics card seven years ago; the same model regularly sells for $150 on eBay now and when I look at replacing it, I can't find anything that significantly beats it for under $300. I looked at spending my tax return on a multi-part PC upgrade, but to match the performance of the new PlayStation I'd have to spend nearly double its price, and most graphics cards would require me to join a waiting list. (As it is, I went with neither and I'm waiting to see what happens next year.)

4. Formerly, playing games together with friends in the same room. Sadly, this is less and less well-supported on consoles with every year that goes by, but it used to be practically exclusive to them, and not something PC games ever implemented. This was especially important for kids (who make up a huge portion of the market and often have siblings to share the console with) and students (who would hold multiplayer game nights in dorms etc). It matters even for online multiplayer, though. You want the system your best friends have so you can all play together. And that's more likely to be one of the major consoles, and you'll rarely get your whole friend group to switch, especially if it's to a more expensive (at least upfront) option.

Comment · 5 years ago
> they wouldn't be able to do a restore anyway.

The Backblaze software doesn't handle restores, it just backs things up. To restore, you download zip files of selected folders from the website.

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