A Chromecast is not full of ads, but are they all just Google TV now? Is Google TV full of ads? I haven’t used one.

Could be an option to reset your TV, disconnect it from the Internet, and buy & use a Google TV device instead. The streaming devices seem to have far fewer ads and shit than TV manufacturers cram into their devices nowadays.

The hoops we have to jump through to minimise surveillance capitalism… I see elsewhere in the thread you’ve had to use a PiHole to block most of the TVs traffic.

I’m guessing hes copying the Arc de Triomphe simply because he hasn’t seen the Brandenburger Tor.

I wonder when he’s gonna approach Hugo Boss for new uniforms for the Secret Service.

Spotify streams all music at 160kbps OGG for free users by default, so that’s what this archive is dumped at - the original Spotify content, no transcode. The only difference is they re-encoded all the songs with a ‘popularity’ of zero at a lower bitrate, because that saved an enormous amount of data for all the AI crap pumped into Spotify that nobody listens to.

Side note - it would probably not be possible to do a dump as a paid used (as they would notice a user account is being abused, and ban it), but paid accounts go up to 320kbps OGG and some content is also available lossless (as FLAC).

Anyway, 99%+ of people can’t consistently tell the difference between a 160kbps OGG and lossless, because of limitations in either their equipment, training, ears, or a combination thereof. This has been blind tested many times and the audiophiles that ‘swear they can tell’ are always proven wrong, they then usually blame the equipment or test. There’s tests you can run yourself too, eg here: https://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html

Biden and Obama pardoned a bunch of people (thousands iirc) who were doing long federal sentences for weed possession.

But you know, it’s theatre to justify having the pardon power. The heartwarming story at the end of the daily newsreel of corruption and conflict.

The better solution there is to fucking reschedule it. Treating the burns while the fire still rages is stupid.

Get rid of pardons, their abuse is more damaging than their utility.

I’m sure the paper trail showing what the lobbyists were paid is the mere tip of the iceberg.

There’s no way in hell the founder of a cryptocurrency exchange didn’t give Trump a massive payday of crypto off the books to secure his pardon.

For sure. IKEA is a great place to start (or stay), as it’s a cheap ecosystem and their app/implementation doesnt require permanent internet access - functions fine during an internet outrage, and quite privacy-respecting.

HomeAssistant is not anywhere near as hard to set up as it used to be. If you have an old mini-PC retired from work sitting around there are HA images for PCs now, and it’s pretty simple to set up to use your IKEA hub (or whatever you have already), while adding a huge swath of optional features.

I agree it’s still not something your average Joe will set up, but the continual lowering of barriers will get more people into running a self-hosted local config is a great thing for privacy and expanding the hobby.

There’s an xkcd for everything, isn’t there.

Its not wrong, but the major attraction to Matter is it must allow devices to operate locally (not tying them to cloud services that die every internet outrage, or permanently when the service retires), and it’s an application-layer protocol. Meaning it can operate over WiFi, Ethernet, or Thread.

Many existing smart home hubs have been able to program support for Matter and simply send out an OTA update to add certified Matter support.

The real issue with smart home adoption has been proprietary formats all vying for dominance and fragmenting the market. I don’t think AI has changed much.

Matter (and Thread) are a huge change to the SmartHome landscape because they’re open protocols and have well-documented standards - and they’ve finally begun appearing in big manufacturer’s line-ups such as IKEA.

Once their availability spreads I suspect a lot more people will get into running their own local (eg HomeAssistant) smart home because they won’t have to do the ‘ok do I need z-wave or ZigBee or HomeKit or IFTTT or Hue or Tuya or… you know what, fuck this’. It’ll all be the same protocol and communications and config & debug will be much easier.

Youtu.be is YouTube’s default short URL when clicking the ‘share’ function on videos on mobile iirc. I’ve seen it thousands of times.

Well, since this archive says it contains the original ogg @160kbps for all artists with a popularity >0, it’ll be in this collection. Your wait may be over soon.

So many commenters have short as fuck memories.

Biden administration never could have done it because it requires Congress to accept nominations and confirm them - the process is not controlled by the president, only initiated.

The senate was 48-50 split between Dems and Reps but with two independents generally caucusing/voting with Dems (Bernie and King) taking it to 50-50. However, two of those Democrats were Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin - who both commonly voted against the Democrats legislation and acted as key swing votes for their own benefit.

There is absolutely no way Biden could have convinced them to expand the court, Joe Manchin voted to confirm Brett Kavanagh for fucks sake - voting against his own party to side with the Republicans and allow a serial rapist into the supreme court.

I don’t like Newsom (and am not from the USA), but the context of this Tweet is very clearly a response to Trump and an attack on his behaviour (especially of late), re: insulting/mocking Rob Reiner’s death. His office/PR has regularly used Ronald Reagan’s quotes (as the former hero of the Republicans) to point out how completely embarrassing and perverse Trump’s presidency is to their former ‘ethics’ and values, and to ignore that context as tacit approval for Reagan is disingenuous.

This article (from a UK publisher) is really clutching at straws.

Having said all that, personally I think AOC or Bernie would be 100 times better candidates. Original Tweet below.

Well that sounds right… like I said, Ambien is counter-indicated for alcohol, combined they can cause euphoria which leads to abuse. Gotta chill on the alcohol, the meds work without it.

This is more and more sounding like alcoholism? Treat that first, your sleep will definitely improve.

“Antifa are the real fascists”

“Anti-hate crime is the real hate crime”

There is a regulated medication I have and success with called Belsomra that works well. Not cheap though, unfortunately (circa $1/tablet) - definitely cheaper than boozing it up every night though.

Whatever you try I’d recommend staying away from Ambien (zolpidem tartrate) as it can be abused with alcohol, and alcoholics often develop a tolerance and dependence on it. Docs would most likely recommend against it, but the internet / random people might.

I’m not advocating political assassination - but it does amaze me that there are ~400,000,000 guns in the USA and nobody has even taken a shot at Musk yet.

There are significant patterns with Israel’s government protecting those who abuse minors, and more widely in the US within the orthodox Jewish community - not unlike the Catholic Church abuse systemic protection. It’s all rarely reported on, however this article & video discusses how the institutions are so disinterested in helping that citizen-run foundations are resorting to travelling to Israel and performing citizens-arrests to get any kind of justice for the victims - and this is only successful if the accused have offended in Israel as well as abroad.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-jewish-american-pedophiles-hide-from-justice-in-israel/

Disagree, Wikipedia is a pretty reliable bastion of facts due to its editorial demands for citations and rigorous style guides etc.

Can you point out any of these personal fiefdoms so we can see what you’re referring to?

And the featured articles are usually quite large. As an example, today’s featured article is on a type of crab - the article is over 3,700 words with 129 references and 30-something books in the bibliography.

It’s not particularly unreasonable or unsurprising to be able to find a single error amongst articles that complex.