Most of the episodes aired before at-home VHS was common, and TV stations weren’t in the habit of archiving their old footage for nightly broadcasts; The show was viewed as transient since it dealt with current events, and nobody expected people to want to re-watch old episodes. It’s likely that a lot of them aren’t available simply because nobody (including the tv station) has recordings.
If you already have a NAS, (since SMB was mentioned, I’m assuming there’s some sort of NAS setup going) then you may even be able to host Plex directly on the NAS. It likely won’t be powerful enough for things like video transcoding, but just audio should be fine.
Sure, but that feels a little bit like saying “We don’t need guards inside the prison, because we already have them patrolling around the perimeter.”
It’s important because it allows them to directly modify the CPU’s microcode. Basically, the CPU has its own set of instructions, called microcode, which controls how the chip functions on a physical level. If they manage to change your microcode, even a full system reformat won’t kill the virus; You’ll need to either re-flash the CPU (which is not something the standard user or even power user will know how to do) or replace the entire CPU.
Just an FYI, Windows likely just moved your files from users\[username] to users\[username]\OneDrive instead. When OneDrive sets itself up, it basically grabs all of the relevant folders and moves them into a single “OneDrive” folder. Not a huge issue if you’re setting up the PC for the first time. But if you’ve been using the PC for a while, it’ll break everything because now all of your local files have moved and none of your systems are pointing at the right location anymore. For instance, your desktop is likely black because your image file got moved into that OneDrive folder.
At one point, I found a complete set of ROMs for every single game on retroachievements.com. It’s almost assuredly out of date by now, and I’m not saying it would have every single Vimm ROM…. But there would be a lot of overlap. If any are already wiped from Vimm and nobody has a backup, let me know and I’ll do some digging to see if I have anything comparable.
You can hide all of that on your sidebar customization settings, but yeah it’s annoying that it’s turned on by default. The Discover is occasionally useful, but I honestly use Overseerr for discoverability more than I use Plex’s built-in search.
My biggest complaint with Plex is the lack of support for .m3u8 playlists. I want to be able to give it a list of livestreams, and then tune into those via Plex. Plex obviously already has live-streaming support built in via their Plex channels, but they have actively worked against custom livestream playlists, (it used to be supported via an extension, but they removed extension support.)
Nice try, NSA.
Imagine having pfps enabled while browsing Lemmy. Some people are wild.
LLM is great for writing code in small snippets. I’ve used it for quickly writing batch files, for instance. I couldn’t be bothered to look up how to format something obscure. So I use an LLM like ChatGPT to do the bulk work, then I just double check what it gave me.
I wouldn’t use it for anything over ~100 lines at a time. Just like with long conversations, it will have a tendency to “lose the plot” and start forgetting things that it said early on. Because as things get added to the conversation it has to parse more and more data. So it’ll start to drift off topic as conversations get longer.
It can also be handy for debugging sections of code. Because programming is just a form of language with strict grammar/diction/spelling rules. And a LLM will be really really good at spotting stupid grammar mistakes. It’ll instantly notice your missing semicolon and point it out to you, which can save you a ton of frustration.
Just like with any tool, how well it works is entirely up to the user. It will likely progress to the point of being able to manage longer code eventually. But right now it’s still incredibly useful as long as you accept its limitations and work within them.
The next generation of script kiddies is going to be iPad babies. It’ll be interesting to see, since the majority can’t use anything in tech unless it’s an app.
We built computer labs in schools, to teach kids how to use computers. Then we decided computers are ubiquitous enough that we didn’t need computer labs anymore. And now we have an entire generation that doesn’t know how to use computers, because they use their phones and tablets for everything instead.
You’re more at risk of damaging the power supply, tbh. If the volts match, you won’t damage the circuits on your device. But amp ratings on power supplies are primarily concerned with heat dissipation. Amps are pulled by the device, not pushed by the supply. So when the device pulls more amps than the supply is rated for, the supply will potentially overheat. Because you’re forcing the supply to provide more power than it is rated for, which is potentially generating more heat than it is rated to dissipate.
But most decent manufacturers will slightly under-rate their power supplies for safety purposes. So a 3A supply may be capable of dissipating 3.5A (or more) of heat. Best case scenario, the supply gets a little warm. But in the worst case scenario, you melt the supply start a fire.
Many modern charging solutions (like USB-C and electric vehicle chargers) require devices to perform a “handshake” before power is supplied. This handshake basically has the device and power supply trade business cards, so the device knows how much power the supply is capable of providing, and the charger knows how much power the device will potentially need. And if the handshake fails, then the devices simply fall back to lower amperage “slow” charging. But this is only true for more recent connectors like USB-C. Older connectors (like microUSB) don’t require this. The supply might have a current limiter, but it might not. If it doesn’t, it’ll overheat.
Worth noting that in some edge cases, the voltage may begin to drop if the supply isn’t able to keep up with the power demands. While it won’t break the device, it could lead to erratic behavior. CPUs don’t typically like being under voltaged, and it can cause errors or crashes if the voltage dips. Turning down your system clock could potentially help avoid these crashes, since a slower system clock will use less power. But this will obviously slow your device down. So it’s a trade-off that you’ll need to consider.
Reject modernity; Return to MS-DOS
Yup. I work in media, and there are a lot of media programs that are Mac exclusive. Even worse, Apple insists on breaking lots of them with every update. So at work, we always have to decline updates for a week or two until all of our programs have a chance to update and unfuck everything Apple did.
The worst case was when Apple came out with the M1 Mac’s. One of our programs took almost a year and a half to finally get updated to work on M1 processors. And of course, this was right around the time that we were looking into upgrading our Macs, because our existing ones were starting to show their age. So we just had to sit on our hands (and put the funding towards something else) until the mission-critical programs we needed all got their proper updates.
Because for 99% of users, it is. Most people don’t need to go digging in the settings for obscure changes, because most people aren’t making obscure changes.
Get a laser printer. Cheaper, more reliable, and they don’t have all the built in BS that laser printers have. A big reason so many Windows users have issues is because of the intentional DRM sabotage by the printer manufacturer, to make sure you’re only using approved ink cartridges. But toner is cheap and easy, and the printer manufacturers don’t bother trying to block users from printing.
But that same DRM sabotage is why Linux has so many issues with printers. And it’s also working from the disadvantage of having to reverse engineer the official drivers to figure out how they work, so they can then be ported over to Linux.
Yeah, anybody who says Linux is easy to use has never spent four hours troubleshooting a printer driver, only to discover that the open source driver doesn’t actually support your specific model of printer and you’re going to be forced to boot into Windows to print anything.
Cross-compatibility is improving, but the “Linux is easy” crowd is really just overcompensating for how unintuitive it actually is. The problem with telling everyone “it’s easy” to get them to try it is that if it’s not easy then people immediately give up and go back to Windows as soon as they can’t figure something out. It’s falsely representing the reality of the situation, which is only self-sabotaging in the long term because it means fewer people will be willing to adopt and actually stick with it.
That’s actually one of my biggest complaints about Linux users tbh. Sure, Linux is great. But half of the “windows doesn’t let you do [X]” complaints are really just “I couldn’t figure out how to do [X] and couldn’t be bothered to google it” in disguise.
You don’t need to run it on a pi. In fact, I’d actually argue against it; A pi will be underpowered if you’re ever needing to transcode anything. Transcoding is what Plex/Jellyfin does if your watching device can’t natively play the video. Maybe you have a 4k video, but you’re playing it on a 1080p screen. That video will need to be transcoded from 4k into 1080p for the screen to be able to display it. Or maybe the file is encoded using ACC (a fairly recent encoding method) which isn’t widely supported by older devices. This often happens with things like smart TVs (which often don’t support modern encoding and need to be transcoded even if the resolution is correct.)
Basically, if you’re 100% positive that every device you’re watching it on will never need transcoding, then a pi is acceptable. But for anything else, I’d recommend a small PC instead. You can even use an old PC if you have one laying around.
Or if you want to use a new machine, maybe something like an HP Elitedesk. They’re basically what you see in every single cubicle in every single office building. They’re extremely popular in corporate settings, which means there are a ton of used/refurbished systems available for cheap, because IT destroys the drives and sends the rest to refurb when they upgrade their fleet of PCs. So for the refurb you’re basically just paying the cost of an SSD they added in (to replace the one IT pulled out), plus whatever labor is associated with dusting it out and checking the connections to make sure they all work. You can pick up a modern one for like $250 on Amazon (or your preferred electronics store).
Worth noting that the elitedesk generations are marked by a G-number, so google the model (like an EliteDesk G9, G7, etc) to see what kind of processor it has; Avoid anything with an intel 13th or 14th generation CPU, (they have major reliability issues) and check with Plex/Jellyfin’s CPU requirements list to see if it supports hardware accelerated transcoding. For Intel chips, look for QuickSync support.
For storage, I’d recommend running a NAS with however many hard drives you can afford, and one that has extra ports for future expandability. Some NAS systems support Plex and/or Jellyfin directly, but the requirements for full support are tricky and you’ll almost always have better luck just running a dedicated PC for Plex. Then for playing, one of two things will happen. Either the device is capable of directly playing the file, or it will need to be transcoded. If it’s directly playing, the plex server basically just points the player to the NAS, and the player handles the rest. If it’s transcoding, the PC will access the NAS, then stream it to the player.
As for deciding on Plex vs Jellyfin, that’s really a matter of personal preference. If you’re using Plex, I’d highly suggest a PlexPass sub/lifetime purchase; Wait until Black Friday, because they historically do a (~25% off) discount on their lifetime pass. Plex is definitely easier to set up, especially if you plan on streaming outside of your LAN.
Jellyfin currently struggles from a lack of native app support; Lots of smart TVs don’t have a native Jellyfin app, for instance. But some people have issues and complaints (many of them justified!) with Plex, so if the FOSS sounds appealing, then consider Jellyfin instead. Jellyfin is also rapidly being developed, and many people expect it to have feature parity with Plex within a few years.
And if you’re having trouble deciding, you can actually set up both (they can run in tandem on the same machine) and then see which one you prefer.
And the nice part about using a mini PC is that you can also use it for more than just Plex/Jellyfin. I have the *arr suite running on mine, alongside a Factorio server, a Palworld server, and a few other things.