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Actually, Winamp is not going Open Source
  • The new one is just a web UI with options for streaming music. There were talks of the old original Winamp going open source though, which bought nostalgic memories to many. Eithercase, with so many music players on both Windows and Linux, I doubt Winamp would a niche case to fill.

  • What's your favourite F-Droid app?
  • Simple suite of apps used to be good until the dev sold it to some company, I think. The versions on F Droid are still clean, but on Play Store, they are riddled with ads until you pay, I think.

  • What's your favourite F-Droid app?
  • I have used Termux, even have it installed right now but apart from the odd cron job, I never used it for something heavy. You, sir, are basically running full fledged Linux with it.

  • George Lucas Defends 'Star Wars' from Criticisms That 'It's All White Men': 'Most of the People Are Aliens!'
  • Gone with the Wind was backward looking even for it's time frame. It's depiction of the South as a happy place for everybody wasn't agreeable by many films even then. Meanwhile, Star Wars is just a science fiction film, set in a different universe with little direct connotations.

  • DRM Hell
  • I have Prime but mainly for delivery stuff rather than streaming. I did finally download their Prime Video on phone. I still pirate their original content and stuff that's available on the high seas because honestly I would rather see it on my laptop than the smaller screen of my phone(and Amazon won't let me see even in 720p on Linux legally).

  • /e/OS Is Better Than Android. You Should Try It
  • It officially supports 250 variants including many going over a decade back. If one were to include all smartphone models/variants released during the previous decade, it won't even hit the 10 % mark.

  • DRM Hell
  • Huh. I rented couple of old films and they previewed at full HD. Upon purchasing, they were viewable at 1080p. I was at the worst possible combination from these companies point of view(Firefox on Linux). I could be wrong but is it possible that it has something to do with the company renting out the movies themselves? YouTube Movies just acts as an intermediary, I think, and the main company providing the source is listed in the description.

  • DRM Hell

    Amazon Prime, like many services, is a DRM hell. It won't go to over 480p on Firefox on Linux at my end. However, instead of a rant, I am interested in why this is happening. Say, I rented the same film from YouTube Movies(Yes, such a service exists) and the quality can toggle all the upto 1080p but the same title on Prime Video is stuck at 480p. Is it because both services use two DIFFERENT kinds of DRM?

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    /e/OS Is Better Than Android. You Should Try It
  • I think the greatest hindrance to /e/ is the fact that so few devices are supported. The article lists Fairphone as a supported device but that doesn't retail in my country. Most Chinese OEMs (that form the bulk in my nation) won't be supported by it. I have had a Nokia and a Samsung but even those two models are nope. One would need to go with the express purpose of installing alternative OS's and then purchase supported phones like Pixel probably, if they wanna indulge in this. But normal people aren't gonna do this. They are going to purchase the phone that fits the price vs performance ratio for them rather than alternative OS criterion.

  • Mozilla is adding tab grouping, vertical tabs, profile management, and local AI features to Firefox
  • I do not know why browser makers like Opera or Brave(and now apparently Firefox) is going hey ho over AI. I don't see a proper benefit of integration of local AI for most people as of now.

    As for vertical tabs, Waterfox got it just now. It is basically a fork of Tree Style Tabs and very basically implemented. I am honestly happy with TST on Firefox and while a native integration might be a bit faster(my browser takes just that few extra seconds to load the right TST panel on my slow laptop), it'll likely be feature incomplete when compared to TST.

  • Google Play System Update

    What is exactly Google Play System Update buried deep in the settings that can be manually updated and usually has a date of say, eg, May 1. Is it part of Project Treble from Google to decouple parts of OS from full system upgrades and make more Modular updates possible?

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    Youtube Rant from a paying customer
  • I actually checked Nebula and it's the opposite of cheap in my country. It is THRICE as expensive as YouTube Premium on a yearly basis. I mean, even Netflix is cheaper than Nebula here, it's so expensive.

    I don't think they have done localized pricing and have just converted dollar values to local currency. I doubt they even care if anyone signs up from India for their service.

  • Youtube Rant from a paying customer
  • I just checked Google support site and apparently the limit is 100,000 songs now, which is quite great. The problem is, they don't tell if and how much, is the music compressed when uploading. Even flac is listed as a supported format but if Google starts storing bit perfect flac without compression, they are gonna give way way more than 15 GB before a power user can hit halfway their song limit.

  • Youtube Rant from a paying customer
  • How much exclusive content is there on Nebula? I was always under the assumption that it's pricing would be higher than YouTube's. If they have done localized pricing, maybe that might be better than giving stuff to Google once my YouTube subscription expires.

    Also, off topic, but some companies just convert dollar values to local currencies. I think a year of Reddit Premium in my country is as expensive as YouTube, Google Play Pass and Netflix COMBINED.

  • Youtube Rant from a paying customer
  • https://i.ibb.co/Y3YdvMN/Screenshot-20240512-132547.jpg

    There is clearly merchandising on some videos which constitutes an advertisement in my opinion. Also, a useless Thanks button that only exists(on certain videos I think) to tip large creators more money. Sure, I can ignore it, but why not give the user the option to completely disable it from settings?

    I opened the same video in NewPipe and both of these atrocities weren't there.

  • Youtube Rant from a paying customer
  • Yes, the feed can be janky for some though I liked the new video recommendations it sometimes gave. It reminded me of another gripe on their mobile app. When you go to the Subscriptions page, it shows polls, comments and videos all in a bunch instead of just the latter by default. This behaviour can be toggled off but seems to revert back every few days in my case.

    Either way, subscriptions page should be for videos only, not other forms of data.

  • Youtube Rant from a paying customer

    I used to use NewPipe back in the days of yore. Then I got Youtube Premium since it bundled in Youtube Music as well which I used. But the former's app on mobile is a shit show. Even after paying, you are asked to tip random creators, purchase merchandise[ which are shown as actual ads below videos] and join channels to access exclusive videos for more money. Basically pay money once, and then pay more money for more content.

    Okay, one could argue atleast the above goes to a channel's creators and helps them. How would one say then that the Youtube app still doesn't have a systemwide option to choose video quality for all videos. New Pipe had that option long ago, but Youtube thinks it's user base are immature who need to be coddled with only two options like "High" and "Data Saver".

    Despite having a Premium thing, I finally crossed over to a Newpipe fork Tubular [available on F Droid] today simply because the paying experience on Youtube Mobile is so bad. I can't fathom how bad it would be for free customers using the official app.

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    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)KI
    kirk781 @discuss.tchncs.de
    Posts 3
    Comments 26