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Most of the episodes aired before at-home VHS was common, and TV stations weren’t in the habit of archiving their old footage for nightly broadcasts; The show was viewed as transient since it dealt with current events, and nobody expected people to want to re-watch old episodes. It’s likely that a lot of them aren’t available simply because nobody (including the tv station) has recordings.
If you already have a NAS, (since SMB was mentioned, I’m assuming there’s some sort of NAS setup going) then you may even be able to host Plex directly on the NAS. It likely won’t be powerful enough for things like video transcoding, but just audio should be fine.
My buddy in Texas found a way to get an immediate police response when his car was stolen.
He had an AirTag under the seat, so he knew exactly where it was after it was stolen. He called police, and got the runaround. They’re too busy to respond, they’ll send an officer out to take a report when they have a chance, etc…
Then he mentioned his handgun was under the drivers seat. Police were on-site in less than 3 minutes, with multiple cruisers and guns drawn.
It’s important because it allows them to directly modify the CPU’s microcode. Basically, the CPU has its own set of instructions, called microcode, which controls how the chip functions on a physical level. If they manage to change your microcode, even a full system reformat won’t kill the virus; You’ll need to either re-flash the CPU (which is not something the standard user or even power user will know how to do) or replace the entire CPU.
I mean, cars can be demystified the same way computers can: By building and maintaining it yourself. Everyone is afraid to build their first computer, because it seems way too complicated and delicate. Then you actually build your first one, and go “oh hey this actually isn’t so bad after all.”
Yes, cars (especially modern cars) have a lot more difficult-to-build parts. But modern cars are also a lot like computers in the sense that you don’t need to know every single component on an GPU to be able to install one. You don’t need to be able to build a car part from scratch. The same way you can slot a GPU into a motherboard, you can just buy the entire car part preassembled and bolt it into place. The important part is learning what the different components do, so you can troubleshoot them.
You can hide all of that on your sidebar customization settings, but yeah it’s annoying that it’s turned on by default. The Discover is occasionally useful, but I honestly use Overseerr for discoverability more than I use Plex’s built-in search.
My biggest complaint with Plex is the lack of support for .m3u8 playlists. I want to be able to give it a list of livestreams, and then tune into those via Plex. Plex obviously already has live-streaming support built in via their Plex channels, but they have actively worked against custom livestream playlists, (it used to be supported via an extension, but they removed extension support.)
The full saying is “a few bad apples will spoil the bunch.” Because if you toss a rotting apple into a barrel of good apples, the off-gassing from the rotting apple will quickly rot the good ones. You’ll quickly end up with an entire barrel of bad apples, due to adding one bad apple to the barrel.
Even “good” cops will quickly turn rotten, because they’ll be forced into covering for the “bad” cops. Because if they don’t cover for the bad cops, they get forced out.
Thus, all cops are bastards. Because if someone is a cop, they’re either a bad cop or covering for bad cops (and are thus, a bad cop themselves.)
Well yeah, consignment stores and thrift stores are inherently different business models. A thrift store owns the donated items they’re selling. A consignment store offers a storefront for items that people want to sell. Sort of like Facebook marketplace or eBay. The consignment skims off the top for operating costs and service fees, and then sends the rest of the money to the actual seller.
Say you have an item that you know is worth $250 on the market, but you don’t have an easy way of selling it yourself. You take it to a consignment store, and they add it to their shelf listed at $250. It sells. The consignment store takes $25 from the sale, and sends you the remaining $225. You made less than if you would have sold it yourself, but you were willing to pay $25 for the convenience and foot traffic of a storefront. Because again, you didn’t have the means to list it yourself, so you found a place that was willing to list it for you.
It’s a base64 encoded URL. You can usually recognize base64 by the two equals signs at the end. Just do a google search for a base64 decoder, and paste that text into it. You’ll get a usable link. (Technically you can decode them directly on your computer, but I don’t feel like walking you through the console commands for that…)
The base64 encoding is mostly to prevent bots from automatically issuing takedowns on piracy-related discussions. Because there’s the plausible deniability of “well we weren’t posting links.”
Careful with this. My buddy started collecting library cards. He had cards for all the neighboring towns, local universities, some out-of-state universities, etc… After he collected like 30 or 40, Libby banned him.
Personally I have three cards; My local public library, the public library from the largest city in the area, and the library from my hometown. Between those three, I can usually find anything I want.
Yeah, you can technically extract your own keys from your own Switch, and (at least with current laws and court precedents) that would be legal. But extracting the keys requires hacking your Switch, which either requires an early generation Switch (early Switch models have an unpatchable exploit that allows them to be hacked via the USB-C and MicroSD ports,) or installing a modchip in newer/current Switch models. And that’s probably more involved than you’d like to be.
There’s also the whole issue with Lockpick (the homebrew utility used to actually extract the keys from a hacked Switch and dump them onto the MicroSD card,) being taken down by Nintendo months ago. So even if you tried to get the keys in a more legit way, you’d still need to visit some sketchy sites just to get the Lockpick homebrew. This is also how you could acquire the firmware files in a legit way. You can just extract the files directly from your Switch.
But that’s a lot of extra effort (and a lot of potential for bricking your Switch when trying to install a modchip) when you can just download all the necessary files.
Technically speaking, sharing the shader cache is illegal. Just like sharing the game files is illegal. You can 100% still find complete shader caches online, and it’s just a matter of dropping them into the correct folder. But again, it’s technically illegal to do, so you’ll likely need to visit some sketchy sites with your adblocker enabled.
The shaders are akin to the uncompressed game files, which are ready to use. It’s not a perfect comparison, but that’s the short version. So the shader cache will likely be just as large as the actual game.
It could be a config issue. If you’re using OpenGL, it could also be caused by shaders, which can cause the game to stutter the first time they’re generated. Once it’s generated, it’s cached and able to be recalled quickly. But the first time it’s used, it takes a moment to generate, which can lead to stuttering.
Basically, due to shaders being generated and stored, the game will tend to get smoother as you play it more, and will likely be stutter-free (or at least, nearly stutter-free) by your second playthrough.
PIA’s service is still decent and offers all the features that other VPNs do, but they got bought out by a company that has added spyware to programs in the past. So many users jumped ship when that buyout was finalized, because it’s hard to trust their application or their service when the owning company has a known history of intentionally infecting their users.
Private trackers are a false sense of security. If you’re able to get an invite to a private tracker, you really think a multi-billion dollar industry won’t also be able to get one?
At most, private trackers offer more consistent content and more accurate seed/leech counts. But they absolutely won’t protect you from the lawsuits from media companies. If anything, being on a private tracker increases your chances of getting fucked in court, because enforced seed ratios means every single user is liable. Remember that leeching isn’t a crime, but seeding is. Because distribution is what the media companies care about, and that’s only accomplished through seeding. Just like how cops won’t typically be interested in busting a drug buyer, when they can bust the dealer instead.
Your nice shiny 12.0 ratio means you’re getting fucked hard when the dildo of consequences finally arrives. And the dildo of consequences rarely arrives with lube.
Honestly, with services like Jellyfin/Plex and the Sonarr suite, pirating has never been more convenient.
I add something to my Plex watchlist, and it automatically appears on my Plex server in 1080p or 4K (whichever format I prefer, with subtitles and metadata ready to go,) in like 20 minutes. And I can stream that to as many devices as I want. Hell, I can even give friends access to my server, and I can access theirs too. All through a single UI, with no regional restrictions or “sorry you can’t watch that without signing into your home wifi, because we want to make sure you’re in the same household” BS.
Streaming services were supposed to save us from the hassle of physical media, and be better than cable TV…
I mean, you can do that with any image. Adding the exclamation point before the link tells Lemmy to embed the image instead. And anything you put in the brackets turns into alt text, which users can view by hovering over the image.
My point was mostly to be able to add it to my discord server (or anywhere that allows custom emoji’s, really.) Since they use a standardized 128x128 image size, it’s just a matter of scaling it down to that and trimming it so it’s transparent.
Yeah, paying for content streaming is different than simply paying for an app that runs locally. Spotify proved that people will be willing to pay for music, as long as it is easier than piracy. Netflix’s early days (when it was actually a one stop shop for all of the available content) proved the same with TV/movie streaming. They proved that piracy largely isn’t an issue with cost, but rather convenience and accessibility.
But with a local app, that all goes right out the window. There’s no reason you’d need to pay a subscription for an app that runs everything locally and only gets sporadic updates. There isn’t any licensing to worry about, or third party systems to pay off. The only reason to have the subscription in this instance is pure greed.
The issue is visibility. Just like self-publishing a book, you’re in an uphill battle to even get your work seen. If you ever want to be cited by future publications, your research needs to be easy for future researchers to find and access. And traditionally, that has been done by consolidating studies via scientific journals.
Sure, you could try to start your own FOSS version of a journal. But that will require web developers, hosting costs, and the enthusiastic support from (and adoption by) other researchers. Because if nobody uses your system, it’s worthless for it’s intended purpose.
Symlinks likely wouldn’t work for a torrent, because that’s more like a shortcut; The symlink doesn’t actually point to the file, it just points to another filepath. Hardlinks would potentially work, but the hardlink must be on the same drive as the linked file; You can’t have a hardlink for your C: drive on your D: drive, for instance. Hardlinks basically tell the drive that there are two (or more) file paths that will reach the same file on the disc.
For a comparison, symlinks are like taking a trip to two different locations. You arrive at the first location, and they tell you “oh, actually what you need is over at location B.” So then you need to travel all the way over to location B to get what you need. But a hardlink is like having two potential routes to get to the same location. It doesn’t matter which road you take, because they both lead to the same place. But a torrent client likely won’t be able to handle the “oh actually you need to go visit location B” instructions, and will just crash/freeze/refuse to seed.
Seconding hardlinks, but one (potentially important) note is that they won’t work on a NAS. A hardlink basically tells the drive there are two ways to navigate to the same file on the disc. But this doesn’t work over a networked drive, (at least, not in my experience) even if the two locations stay on the same drive.
Yup. Researchers will gladly send you the study for free, because they don’t make anything when you pay for it through a journal. For the unaware, the fee charged by research journals goes completely to the journal; The author/researchers don’t get anything for it. In fact, they have to pay the journal to get published. And that shit isn’t cheap! The more prestigious journals can charge upwards of $8-10k.
The research journal scheme is a giant scam, designed to double-dip and extract profit from both ends. And it only works because scientific communities tend to look at certain journals as prestigious. So they want to be published in those journals, even if they have to pay. But I can almost guarantee that the researchers resent the journals, because they’ve been roped into paying for research for their entire professional lives. And that’s why they’re usually happy to send you a free copy of their paper if you just email and ask nicely.
Journals are also bad because they frequently privatize research that public funds paid for. For instance, let’s say the government pays for a study to be done. Then the researchers need to get that published, so they pay the journal to publish it. Then the journal paywalls the study, even though it was already paid for with tax dollars. It’s shit that sounds like it should be illegal, but is commonly accepted for some reason.
You don’t need to run it on a pi. In fact, I’d actually argue against it; A pi will be underpowered if you’re ever needing to transcode anything. Transcoding is what Plex/Jellyfin does if your watching device can’t natively play the video. Maybe you have a 4k video, but you’re playing it on a 1080p screen. That video will need to be transcoded from 4k into 1080p for the screen to be able to display it. Or maybe the file is encoded using ACC (a fairly recent encoding method) which isn’t widely supported by older devices. This often happens with things like smart TVs (which often don’t support modern encoding and need to be transcoded even if the resolution is correct.)
Basically, if you’re 100% positive that every device you’re watching it on will never need transcoding, then a pi is acceptable. But for anything else, I’d recommend a small PC instead. You can even use an old PC if you have one laying around.
Or if you want to use a new machine, maybe something like an HP Elitedesk. They’re basically what you see in every single cubicle in every single office building. They’re extremely popular in corporate settings, which means there are a ton of used/refurbished systems available for cheap, because IT destroys the drives and sends the rest to refurb when they upgrade their fleet of PCs. So for the refurb you’re basically just paying the cost of an SSD they added in (to replace the one IT pulled out), plus whatever labor is associated with dusting it out and checking the connections to make sure they all work. You can pick up a modern one for like $250 on Amazon (or your preferred electronics store).
Worth noting that the elitedesk generations are marked by a G-number, so google the model (like an EliteDesk G9, G7, etc) to see what kind of processor it has; Avoid anything with an intel 13th or 14th generation CPU, (they have major reliability issues) and check with Plex/Jellyfin’s CPU requirements list to see if it supports hardware accelerated transcoding. For Intel chips, look for QuickSync support.
For storage, I’d recommend running a NAS with however many hard drives you can afford, and one that has extra ports for future expandability. Some NAS systems support Plex and/or Jellyfin directly, but the requirements for full support are tricky and you’ll almost always have better luck just running a dedicated PC for Plex. Then for playing, one of two things will happen. Either the device is capable of directly playing the file, or it will need to be transcoded. If it’s directly playing, the plex server basically just points the player to the NAS, and the player handles the rest. If it’s transcoding, the PC will access the NAS, then stream it to the player.
As for deciding on Plex vs Jellyfin, that’s really a matter of personal preference. If you’re using Plex, I’d highly suggest a PlexPass sub/lifetime purchase; Wait until Black Friday, because they historically do a (~25% off) discount on their lifetime pass. Plex is definitely easier to set up, especially if you plan on streaming outside of your LAN.
Jellyfin currently struggles from a lack of native app support; Lots of smart TVs don’t have a native Jellyfin app, for instance. But some people have issues and complaints (many of them justified!) with Plex, so if the FOSS sounds appealing, then consider Jellyfin instead. Jellyfin is also rapidly being developed, and many people expect it to have feature parity with Plex within a few years.
And if you’re having trouble deciding, you can actually set up both (they can run in tandem on the same machine) and then see which one you prefer.
And the nice part about using a mini PC is that you can also use it for more than just Plex/Jellyfin. I have the *arr suite running on mine, alongside a Factorio server, a Palworld server, and a few other things.