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encomon When did Google get so weird?

Web search is just broken right now. Today I was looking for documentation for a specific Lenovo motherboard. I gave both DDG and Google the exact model number and both returned irrelevant useless bullshit. DDG doesn't include all search words unless you quote it: "foomatic" "m900" "dingus". This scenario happens almost daily. DDG is awful, but all the alternatives are worse. It's all so tiresome.

encomon Video CDs Break Windows Explorer

>Wow, what a gross format.

It's about as gross as regular Red Book CD audio. Sacrifice error correction for capacity. Errors in either audio or video streams are non-critical (to a point) and can be masked on playback. That's what C1 and C2 error correction does. There used to be copy protections that played silly games with error correction to foil CD audio rippers while not affecting playback on normal players. Think it was called Cactus Data Shield. It was not very effective.

And similar to VCD disks, the *.cda files Windows shows on audio CDs also aren't real.

encomon Video CDs Break Windows Explorer

>I have reported the bug to Microsoft through the Feedback Hub at the end of 2025. Nothing has happened since — no feedback, no confirmation, no fix.

That's Feedback Hub working as intended. Think of it more as a black void to scream into, to relieve frustrations, than an avenue of communication with Microsoft.

encomon F-Droid 2.0

That hasn't been true since September 1993.

encomon F-Droid 2.0

You would fit right in at Mozilla.

encomon F-Droid 2.0

Long tap Play Store -> My apps -> Updates.

I also noticed that Google gets really offended if you turn off auto updates, and nags you hard to turn it back on.

encomon A restored PDP-11/83 serving this page on 211BSD Unix

>A restored PDP-11/83 serving this page on 211BSD Unix

No it isn't.

  ~$ whois $(dig +short pdp1173.com | head -n1) | grep netname
  netname:        CLOUDFLARENET-EU

encomon ZuckOff Know when a camera is in the room

There are just two makers of devices, Google and Apple, both proprietary and user hostile and they'll do anything the government tells them. Remember how quickly they implemented that covid tracking bullshit? Yeah.

encomon ChatGPT now knows what you do on other websites via ad collector

What a shitty hill to die on.

I don't know if this is a genetic thing, but as a scandinavian who wears shorts down to like 12C, I am unable to function in >30C humid weather. Anything more labour intensive than drinking sangria on ice is not getting done. This year we had up to 37C in Denmark. If you're able to tolerate heat well, I'm happy for you, but my sleep was ruined for months this summer. Not to mention the people who literally died.

I'm investigating my options for at least cooling down the bedroom at night, because I'm not going through this nonsense again. Plastic straws are banned now and we're sorting garbage in 42 different bins, so I'm thinking that about evens it out, environmentally.

encomon macOS 27 Golden Gate – Review

>OS excitement

Debian+KDE here. It's what I use to get away from OS excitement. I miss the 90's when nobody ever updated anything, and if they did it was on purpose and not something that happened behind your back.

For example, the other day Google "updated" the clock/alarm/timer app on Android with pointless and annoying changes. A clock app does not need an update, ever.

"But..." No! /usr/share/zoneinfo handles that. Stop it.

encomon iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27

It streams videos. It works. I'd rather they don't mess with it.

However, the guy who decided to put a useless button on the side of the remote that interrupts whatever you're watching, should get fired immediately. It's almost every day I grab the remote and press it by accident, and have to switch back to what I was watching, and resume playback, because Netflix exits out of the stream.

Sadly, Apple TV is the only Hollywood-approved streaming device that isn't a total trash heap.

encomon Jabber/XMPP: How Do We Gain Traction?

As long as the Signal desktop app is a 420 MB[1] pile of Electron, I refuse to install it. I may be a dinosaur, but a good desktop app is a requirement. I hate typing on a touch screen.

  [1] $ curl -s https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt/dists/xenial/main/binary-amd64/Packages |
    awk '/^Package: signal-desktop$/{p=1} p{print} /^$/{if(p) exit}'

encomon Don't Use a gmail.com Address

Quoting a dead comment:

>I wish we didn't have to use email at all.

Email has big problems, but contemplate the kind of lovecraftian horror the great minds of silicon valley would replace it with today. Imagine the worst parts of Facebook, Electron, Discord, Windows 11, CloudFlare and TikTok. Secured by Denuvo and the CIA and brought to you by Dollar Shave Club and the Chinese Communist Party.

You'd wish you had email back.

encomon Nitter has more working instances than before the takedowns

Elon Derangement Syndrome is real, like the Trump equivalent.

encomon Nitter has more working instances than before the takedowns

All of the WWW was better in 2008. Unironically. We've all been frog-boiled into this current hellscape.

encomon O&O ShutUp10 – The antispy tool for Windows 10 and 11

I know for sure NT4 didn't have defragging built in, because I was a Windows server admin back in the primordial soup that was sysadmin'ing in the 90's.

>OCD soothing experience

I've always felt it was a certain kind of person who found amusement in watching a defragger work. I'm absolutely sure that 3rd party tools made sure to incorporate the equivalent blinkenlights to give the impression that their tool did something useful.

encomon How Fairphone built the Fairphone Gen 6+

That's 5 years longer than Apple.

encomon O&O ShutUp10 – The antispy tool for Windows 10 and 11

>defragmentation

Windows has had built in defrag since at least WinXP. I can't remember if Win2000 had it - I think it did. It runs in the background and you don't have to worry about it. 3rd party defrag tools are snake oil, like registry cleaners and so on.

encomon Discovery of a new OpenAI agent message board

This truly is the clowniest timeline.

encomon Tell HN: PayPal blocks GrapheneOS

For that argument to hold, they'd also have to blacklist any phone not running the newest, most up to date Android version, because all older versions presumably have known exploits. So that basically leaves Pixel phones.

encomon Tell HN: PayPal blocks GrapheneOS

How does a rooted phone enable bank fraud? This smells like pointless policy checkboxing.

encomon Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

>Not what he did.

Maybe "antagonise" isn't the right word (ESL). By tricking the border agent into wiping the device, you have made him annoyed / angry / look foolish etc. No matter how much you are in the right, you have now given this person, with the power to create a lot of problems for you, the motivation to do so. You have to weigh that against coming home to your wife and children, in time for dinner. That's not fair, but that's reality.

Or maybe you crossed the border, with the intent to create this situation, to get it tried in court. More power to you.

About five years ago, here in Denmark, the government decided that freedom of assembly no longer applied. An activist decided to hold a party for about 10 people, including his lawyer, called the police on himself, and live streamed the whole thing. I can't find whatever became of that case, because search engines can no longer search. His name is Lars Andersen. He's been jailed a lot of times for petty bullshit.

encomon Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

>arbitrary

Border searches aren't arbitrary. Sure, in the sense you may or may not get searched, but not in the sense that cops come and turn over your house for no reason. Crossing the border, you know some fraction of travellers will get searched, and that the government does so lawfully. Antagonising law enforcement in this situation is not a smart move, no matter how righteous you feel it is, unless you're doing it as some form of protest.

With that said, I do think searching phones is absolute bullshit, and I'm not arguing in favour of it at all.

encomon Linux 7.2

“Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?”

-- Galatians 4:16

encomon Linux 7.2

Things that are unneeded, ie. unmaintained, eventually get purged. It happens quite regularly. For nearly every kconfig option, someone needs it enough to maintain it. But I agree, `make menuconfig' is overwhelming.

encomon HTML Can Do That

>popover

Why are we cool with popups again? Anything that interrupts and blocks content is annoying, and is nearly guaranteed to make me leave immediately. It can be used responsibly, but it almost never is.

encomon Devices with GrapheneOS support should be available in 2027

>deposit a cheque

That would be inconvenient if this was 1985.

encomon How to disable or avoid intrusive AI

I'm not saying it isn't, but I don't have a shred of sympathy for the developers manning the ovens. Pick a job that isn't actively harmful to society.

If you're responsible for the system at Facebook that serves endless brainrot to people, starvation is too good for you.

encomon How to disable or avoid intrusive AI

I don't want to Godwin this thread so early, but you know what analogy I'm thinking of. If you work as a developer for Google, Microsoft, Flock, CloudFlare, Facebook etc. etc. you are complicit in making the world a crappier place.

Did J. Random Hacker at Google decide to ruin Android app development[1] for everyone? No, but he made it happen. I hate that guy. (Also.)

[1] Edit: I'm referring to this nonsense: https://keepandroidopen.org/

encomon How to disable or avoid intrusive AI

This. Debian+KDE. No AI and nothing happens on my computer that I don't know about.