Refurbished Refurbisher

Mary?

Ugh. It feels like something is groping around my skull.

I don’t own a VR headset, but I thought SteamVR worked fine on Linux. Gamescope even has specific VR modes.

There’s Windows 11 IoT LTSC if you really need Windows, but Microsoft is going to continue to fuck its users, and I don’t know why people in the know would choose to continue to use an OS that’s actively working against them when non-corporate, open source alternatives exists (Linux, or for the more niche people, BSD, Haiku, Redox)

How Can Cameras Be Real If Our Eyes Aren’t Real?

virt-manager

If the punishment for a crime is a fine, then it’s only a crime for poor people and small businesses.

We need to see prison sentences for anyone involved in making the decisions to commit crimes and the platform needs to face banishment.

First you’d need to ban money from politics and change the voting system to better represent the people living there instead of wealthy elites, but that would just be the start.

Whenever wealthy elites have even a tiny bit of power (as they do in any capitalist system, including social democracies like what the Nordic countries have), they will seize as much control as possible. We saw this happen many times.

I’d recommend getting a Hisense Android (or Google) TV since they let you set it up without creating an account, then use “adb uninstall --user 0 …” to completely debloat it (including removing Google apps). Then you can use your router to block internet access to the TV’s MAC address, along with setting the TV’s DNS server to 0.0.0.0, which will redirect all DNS traffic to a black hole, effectively blocking internet access.

Also replace the launcher with LeanbackOnFire and the keyboard with LeanKey Keyboard while you’re at it. Note that replacing the launcher will block the Input button on the remote from working, but LeanbackOnFire will allow you to access the inputs from the homescreen. You can also use Button Mapper to remap whichever remote button you want to whichever HDMI input you want using an Android broadcast signal, but that’s a bit more advanced and requires reading adb logcat logs to figure out how to switch inputs using the proper command.

If you’re feeling super adventurous, you can dump the boot.img using UART in the Uboot bootloader and root the device after unlocking the bootloader. Note that you will need to enable UART in the service menu before unlocking the bootloader since unlocking the bootloader will make integrity checks fail (including certain DRM), which will also make the service menu inaccessible.

Additional note: disabling Google apps will make the stock launcher stop working, so you will need to install a replacement launcher before debloating.

Mountain Dew ® Dew it right! ™

I rooted my (Android TV based) smart TV, removed all the tracking (verified with PCAPDroid), and I use Stremio and SmartTube to stream everything. I also use AFWall as a firewall to whitelist only apps that I install to access the internet only through my VPN. I set my DNS to 0.0.0.0 to block all traffic outside of my DNS if my firewall ever fails because Android TV doesn’t have that option unlike regular Android.

I have a Hisense TV if you’re curious. You can also get a TV box that is supported by LineageOS and do the same thing on there.

Whenever Android 10 gets super outdated, I’m hoping that Plasma Bigscreen will be advanced enough to be able to replace it, then I will just use my laptop for TV activities instead. I also would need Linux to get better HDR support (currently it only supports HDR10 and not HDR10+ or Dolby Vision) and for AMD drivers to gain HDMI 2.1 support (which is being blocked by the HDMI forum for stupid reasons. The code has been ready for a while, but AMD isn’t allowed to release it)

Pedantic is my middle name

Not cake donuts

Valid argument

I already use Tubular, and I have been using NewPipe (or the fork Tubular) since the very first alpha.

Grayjay doesn’t work well for me since I’m subscribed to over 1000 creators and they force rate limiting over 200, which makes it completely unusable for my usecase.

It might starve the algorithm, but I still get good recommendations on Tubular for the most part, and I haven’t used a YT account ever since the first NewPipe alpha released.

I’m hoping storage will become cheap enough that something like PeerTube will be able to grow as much as Lemmy and Mastodon have over the past few years.

The recommendation algorithm (also using a third party app) recommends me tons of niche content. It’s how I found most of the creators that I follow.

I follow over 1000 creators on YouTube, many of them niche creators who don’t often upload content. There are a very small percentage who are on another platform.

The main app that I use (Tubular) also supports PeerTube, but PeerTube has a big issue when it comes to both content discovery and delivery. YouTube hosts not only the “full” quality video, but they also host many different versions of the same video at varying resolutions/bitrates. This is unfeasable for basically anyone but a big tech company. YouTube also has a very effective (albeit very flawed) recommendation algorithm that smaller platforms struggle to compete against.

I already use those things. My main way of watching YT is with Tubular.

The problem is that there is one, centralized hosting provider with an all-powerful, non-customizable (by the user) recommendation algorithm. That algorithm, like it or not, dictates the type of content that is made on the platform. If there is content that Google doesn’t like, they can (and have) very easilly shadowban the content, meaning only people who specifically search for it will see it, if not remove it altogether.

My one holdover is YouTube. There’s just no good replacement for it.