kirk781

joined 2 years ago
54
Rock Garden (discuss.tchncs.de)
 

Built from scrap/waste materials, this was the handiwork of one Nek Chand back in the 1970s; Chandigarh, India

 

A view from Shimla, India.

 

Located in Chandigarh, India ; it rotates on it's axis and is the official symbol of the city. The architect meant it as open to give and open to receive

 

Taken from a Narrow Gauge train, onboard a train on the Kalka Shimla Railway, India

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 1 week ago

It was designed to control the sunlight coming and was meant to remain cool even in harsh sunlight and vice-versa during winters.

 

Designed by Le Corbusier, it lies in the Indian city of Chandigarh

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I think he refers to the browser extension of the same name.

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 45 points 1 week ago

He is also one of the Co founders of Palantir, quite a notorious company.

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 53 points 1 week ago (17 children)

This was a 2021 comic, which I think was the time when companies had to comply with GDPR regulations. Cookies didn't go away, but companies had to explicitly ask the user for consent to use them [or atleast can't hide that they were using cookies]; usually in form of popups.

 
[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 19 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

When I used to be on Windows, I shifted to Process Explorer. It is developed by Microsoft only I guess as part of their Sysinternals suite. I think it retains an older style UI but is significantly more powerful (has/d virus total integration for one).

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

This isn't new. Just search for Glance. US/EU users may not have heard of this but entry level smartphones in India have long come bundled with this piece of spam, irrespective of OEM. From Chinese manufacturers to even Samsung/Motorola was guilty of bundling this.

Last I heard of Glance, they had embraced AI (because why not?). Either case, it was nothing more than an ad infested bloatware and whilst possible to toggle on/off (default state was on), removing it was usually tougher (if at all possible via adb, I am not sure of this part).

Glance walked so Nothing could run :p

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 month ago

The web is designed for humans to use, so if Atlas can monitor us - how we book train tickets for example - it can learn how to better navigate these kinds of processes.

That is called malware. Or at the very least, Open AI should be paying the users for basically getting their browsing data for free, not other way around.

Second, I object to it being called a Google killer in the article. It is based on Chromium whose future is basically in Google's hands right now for all Intents and purposes. The days of multiple Web browsers are gone. We have the same thing in new clothing. Opera ditched it's rendering engine for Chromium, MS ditched Trident for Chromium.

Currently, there are basically only three real browser engines : Chromium, Gecko which powers Firefox Derivatives and Safari(Blinkit? I am not sure of its exact name). Even if Open AI's new browser (or Perplexity 's for that matter) takes market by storm, they will remain dependent on Google because the underlying code is. They can't be truly independent unless they have their separate engine. And if the new Ladybird project shows one thing, it is that shipping a new browser might be easy, but a new rendering engine is very tough.

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 month ago

Feel free to DM.

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I wasn't expecting tommydan from YouTube to be mentioned here :p. Best of all he does, what companies themselves couldn't do, maintain the original aspect ratio. I remember that Shemaroo restored certain old Hindi films but the original aspect ratio for them was 4:3 whilst the restored ran into 16:9.

In fact, I have been seeing the odd old Hindi film from an unexpected source. The Russian site Ok. I am still not sure if it is a social media site or not since the English UI is not there for me but for all Intents and purposes, it is used to upload videos only. Some guy ended up uploading whole filmography of Rajesh Khanna on the site (much of it mirrored later to Archive.org). Whilst the irony remains that there is probably not a single legal hub to see the lesser known films.

Heck, I was hunting an out of print (like literally unavailable to stream or purchase anywhere short of anyone having the original CD/DVD) 1996 film and the only way was to pirate it (from a single source).

In some cases, piracy becomes an act of media preservation ( cues back to when BBC wiped some Doctor Who episodes in the late sixties and only way few were gotten back was because some folks had gotten audio transcribed or something at home).

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (6 children)

From Kinks to Camel to obscure Krautrock stuff like Dissidenten, Out of Focus, Embryo. Ironically I have < 50 Hindi songs in my collection because the era I like the most [50s - 60s], good quality stuff is hard to come by. Like the files even on Soulseek or torrents are so incredibly compressed that it is a pity. The vocals sound so tinny that one wonders that how did the original masters sounded like.

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 month ago

I didn't knew foobar2000 was available for mobile as well. I only knew it because it was so popular as a lightweight modular player for Windows. I used to be on Strawberry, a Clementine fork on Linux before moving to Deadbeef, which is like Foobar2000 but misses few features.

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It is law of diminishing marginal utility. There would be more sonic distinguishness between a 64 kbps and a 128 kbps file, than say when making the same upgrade to 256 kbps. It becomes less and less obvious as one approaches 44.1 kHz/16 bit flac (beyond which it is useless to hoard unless one is mastering the albums themselves).

I have a DAC paired with Sennheiser IE 600 which is not audiophile level, but ought to be decent enough.

Either case, my point was not about audio quality and whether or not a person can distinguish a flac from say, 320 kbps mp3. Countless threads are made on that and viewpoints presented. My argument was that YouTube Music does not present first, to stream music in high quality and second, even if the quality was indistinguishable, there is no way to manage a library since most of the desktop third party clients remain without login.

 

I am sure most of you might be aware that Google plans to bans the simple act of sideloading [though I presume adb driven sideloading remains] on it's platform in name of security. At the same time Play Store itself remains riddled with malware. However, here I wish to throw light on a different rising case of apps, a set that actually deserves to be pirated.

With the start of the so called subscription driven economy where one time purchases are becoming a thing of the past,everything needs to be a subscription. Some things like a newspaper make sense, a music tracking app does not. Let us turn our eyes to Stats.fm. It aims to link to Spotify/Apple Account and present data in good format. It was a one time purchase back in the day when I barely used Spotify, so I got the legit version. Spotify usually retails for INR [Indian National Rupee] 1200 per year but was retailing for 500 as an initial promotional scheme last week. Fed up with the mess that YT Music is [Yes, I do hoard music via Soulseek as well], I thought why not give Spotify a try. So, I installed both the streaming app and this fancy scrobbling service which as I repeat, was a one time purchase linked to a Google account.

As soon as I open the app, I am told I need to subscribe [bait and switch]. To put salt on wound, their cheapest plans were INR 750 for 6 months, which ironically is equivalent to YT Premium [when equating to per year]. So, what is basically a Last.fm clone with little third party support [Last.fm offers a largely working free tier and has open APIs that make it work with third party plugins/clients] and now did a classic bait; is it not ethical to pirate such kind of stuff?

I would go on a limb and say that Google actually has a case for asking money for YT Premium since they offer 2 services : music and video streaming [yes, the apps are shit, I know that] which incur server costs. But am I to truly believe that equivalent server costs are incurred by err,a music tracking app that ONLY tracks one music client?

As Cory Doctrow coined the term enshittification, we are heading down that route. I am sure many more apps would have done that bait and switch. [I even saw an Wear OS watch face as a yearly subscription option once].

 

The review may have waxed eloquent about the watch but Oneplus and Ticwatch still lasted way longer in terms of battery life (in fact, Samsung 's Tizen OS watches were hitting the 3 day mark).

Second, and this is purely from personal anecdote of wearing of Galaxy Watch 6, that one thing smartwatches suck at is displaying time. The AOD (unless raise to wrist is awake) is so dim as to be useless in my area due to the intense sunlight.

 

Most services ask for your email address and/or recovery key to recover your account. LinkedIn, on the other hand, goes full surveillance mode. It wants my actual government ID to give access to my account.

If this was critical banking service, I would have understood. But it is freakin LinkedIn, the most I have got out of that place is actual lunatics.

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