The Computer And General Tech Thread - Software, Hardware, Questions, etc.

[alice]

Hey, does anyone else aside from me remember the oh-so-informative interactive multimedia CD-ROMs of the 1990s? Those were weird.

Oh yes; that was just about the time that PCs were becoming commonplace consumer items rather than somewhat expensive niche products. I remember seeing a "multimedia PC" which had speakers mounted on each side of the monitor, which of course was a proper hefty CRT thing and not the paper-thin¹

¹The Management regret to announce that the rest of this post has been removed, since it appeared that alice was about to go on a completely irrelevant boring-old-fart rant of no interest to the rest of the board.

[Raphael]

For what it's worth, I am old enough to have spend a lot of time looking at CRTs, and I do prefer modern screens. I mean, CRTs work by shooting honest-to-God beta radiation at you.

[Travis B.]

For what it's worth, I am old enough to have spend a lot of time looking at CRTs, and I do prefer modern screens. I mean, CRTs work by shooting honest-to-God beta radiation at you.

Those CRT's were heavy for a reason, namely that they were constructed of lead glass to block the Bremsstrahlung generated when the electrons would hit the glass or the internal anode.

[Ares Land]

Oh yes; that was just about the time that PCs were becoming commonplace consumer items rather than somewhat expensive niche products. I remember seeing a "multimedia PC" which had speakers mounted on each side of the monitor, which of course was a proper hefty CRT thing

Oh, we had one of these!

[Raphael]

A laptop for which I'm in charge of tech support is running Debian 13 Trixie, and ever since I switched the kernel to 6.12.101 during routine software upgrades, there've been frequent weird glitches when playing video or audio files. A bit as if an old physical record would have a small damage somewhere. Any idea what might be causing this, or what I might do about it?

[Raphael]

Unrelated: It is now 20 years and 2 days since the most recent modification of one of the oldest surviving files on my computer, a little graphic that I used as an avatar on a different forum back then:

avez.jpg (2.08 KiB) Viewed 11097 times

[Travis B.]

A laptop for which I'm in charge of tech support is running Debian 13 Trixie, and ever since I switched the kernel to 6.12.101 during routine software upgrades, there've been frequent weird glitches when playing video or audio files. A bit as if an old physical record would have a small damage somewhere. Any idea what might be causing this, or what I might do about it?

Sounds like a sound driver issue. I am not sure how you could downgrade your kernel packages' versions in general, even though with Debian I've found that it will still keep age-old kernels around so you can select them to boot off of with GRUB if you so desire. Maybe be on the lookout for a fix to this issue, and upgrade your kernel again once it becomes available, and in the meantime boot off an older kernel?

[Raphael]

A laptop for which I'm in charge of tech support is running Debian 13 Trixie, and ever since I switched the kernel to 6.12.101 during routine software upgrades, there've been frequent weird glitches when playing video or audio files. A bit as if an old physical record would have a small damage somewhere. Any idea what might be causing this, or what I might do about it?

Sounds like a sound driver issue. I am not sure how you could downgrade your kernel packages' versions in general, even though with Debian I've found that it will still keep age-old kernels around so you can select them to boot off of with GRUB if you so desire. Maybe be on the lookout for a fix to this issue, and upgrade your kernel again once it becomes available, and in the meantime boot off an older kernel?

What confuses me is that I just tried booting off an earlier kernel, and the issue persists.

[Travis B.]

A laptop for which I'm in charge of tech support is running Debian 13 Trixie, and ever since I switched the kernel to 6.12.101 during routine software upgrades, there've been frequent weird glitches when playing video or audio files. A bit as if an old physical record would have a small damage somewhere. Any idea what might be causing this, or what I might do about it?

Sounds like a sound driver issue. I am not sure how you could downgrade your kernel packages' versions in general, even though with Debian I've found that it will still keep age-old kernels around so you can select them to boot off of with GRUB if you so desire. Maybe be on the lookout for a fix to this issue, and upgrade your kernel again once it becomes available, and in the meantime boot off an older kernel?

What confuses me is that I just tried booting off an earlier kernel, and the issue persists.

Then maybe this isn't a kernel problem at all, but a problem with, say, video or audio playing outside the kernel? Did any codecs get updated at the same time as you updated your kernel?

[Raphael]

Then maybe this isn't a kernel problem at all, but a problem with, say, video or audio playing outside the kernel? Did any codecs get updated at the same time as you updated your kernel?

I don't remember.

[Raphael]

OK, I did a complete OS and software reinstall. Still a bit glitch-y, but a good deal less than it was before.

[MacAnDàil]

I would like to reduce GAFAM use. What good alternatives are there to iTunes that organise as well?

Considering that:
1° Megaupload was shut down and Kim Dotcom was arrested in a raid because of copyright infringement.
2° Sam Altman has admitted that genAI would not exist without copyright infringement. https://www.salon.com/2024/01/09/imposs ... hted-work/
Why are ChatGPT, Grok etc not shut down and Altman and Musk etc arrested?

Indeed, the NYT, George R.R. Martin and others are thankfully on the case: https://www.businessinsider.com/openai- ... challenges
https://ailawsuittracker.com/

[rotting bones]

I would like to reduce GAFAM use. What good alternatives are there to iTunes that organise as well?

I primarily use VLC and occasionally YouTube playlists (Google) when I want to share. I hear Spotify is better than YouTube, but I never got into it.

Considering that:
1° Megaupload was shut down and Kim Dotcom was arrested in a raid because of copyright infringement.
2° Sam Altman has admitted that genAI would not exist without copyright infringement. https://www.salon.com/2024/01/09/imposs ... hted-work/
Why are ChatGPT, Grok etc not shut down and Altman and Musk etc arrested?

Institutional integration into the capitalist structure. The AI bubble is the only thing keeping the market afloat. Megaupload only helped us little people while doing nothing for corporations.

Google says Gemini is only trained on appropriately licensed data.

[rotting bones]

A major problem is that the future most leftists are currently fighting for is not exciting to most people. I identified as a leftist (but not yet far-left) back when doing away with intellectual property rights was a mainstream opinion even in liberal circles. We thought artists should be supported by the government and donations from people who can afford it. If I were joining politics right now, I may never have identified as a leftist to begin with.

[MacAnDàil]

I would like to reduce GAFAM use. What good alternatives are there to iTunes that organise as well?

I primarily use VLC and occasionally YouTube playlists (Google) when I want to share. I hear Spotify is better than YouTube, but I never got into it.

I use VLC for DVDs but it does not appear have library organising features like iTunes.

Considering that:
1° Megaupload was shut down and Kim Dotcom was arrested in a raid because of copyright infringement.
2° Sam Altman has admitted that genAI would not exist without copyright infringement. https://www.salon.com/2024/01/09/imposs ... hted-work/
Why are ChatGPT, Grok etc not shut down and Altman and Musk etc arrested?

Institutional integration into the capitalist structure. The AI bubble is the only thing keeping the market afloat. Megaupload only helped us little people while doing nothing for corporations.

Google says Gemini is only trained on appropriately licensed data.

[/quote]I did consider the possibility of that explanation. I did not know that about Gemini.

A major problem is that the future most leftists are currently fighting for is not exciting to most people. I identified as a leftist (but not yet far-left) back when doing away with intellectual property rights was a mainstream opinion even in liberal circles. We thought artists should be supported by the government and donations from people who can afford it. If I were joining politics right now, I may never have identified as a leftist to begin with.

Intellectual property rights could be improved of course by artists/authors benefitting more than labels/publishers. Why would you prefer government support and donations?

[rotting bones]

I use VLC for DVDs but it does not appear have library organising features like iTunes.

I know a media library feature exists. See if this works for you: https://youtu.be/kjhXnCR7Mqk

Personally, I manually save playlists except on the phone. On Android, I use VLC to organize media.

I did consider the possibility of that explanation. I did not know that about Gemini.

Google could be lying. I vaguely remember there being a lawsuit.

Intellectual property rights could be improved of course by artists/authors benefitting more than labels/publishers. Why would you prefer government support and donations?

Paywalled content prevents poor people like me from accessing culture. This leaves us uneducated. It also makes us feel inferior.

The government support should be sufficient for all basic needs. Donations are for additional luxury.

[rotting bones]

I use VLC for DVDs but it does not appear have library organising features like iTunes.

I know a media library feature exists. See if this works for you: https://youtu.be/kjhXnCR7Mqk

Google says on a PC, this feature is available in VLC Player 4 beta.

[Ares Land]

Intellectual property rights could be improved of course by artists/authors benefitting more than labels/publishers. Why would you prefer government support and donations?

Paywalled content prevents poor people like me from accessing culture. This leaves us uneducated. It also makes us feel inferior.

The government support should be sufficient for all basic needs. Donations are for additional luxury.

Public libraries can and should fix the issue of paywalled content.

I do think artists should also be supported by the government (or other public entities.) Intellectual property could be reformed -- but not done away with.

[rotting bones]

Intellectual property rights could be improved of course by artists/authors benefitting more than labels/publishers. Why would you prefer government support and donations?

Paywalled content prevents poor people like me from accessing culture. This leaves us uneducated. It also makes us feel inferior.

The government support should be sufficient for all basic needs. Donations are for additional luxury.

Public libraries can and should fix the issue of paywalled content.

I do think artists should also be supported by the government (or other public entities.) Intellectual property could be reformed -- but not done away with.

If a public library gets created where I'm living, I fully expect it to be stuffed with Hindutva propaganda. Scientific works that contradict it will be behind paywalls for the eyes of the upper class. This is the contemporary equivalent of the medieval practice of writing scientific texts in Latin.

This is assuming a public library can be created close enough for most people to be able to reach it given that we're running out of space to live and the fact that people need to work for a living.

[Ares Land]

If a public library gets created where I'm living, I fully expect it to be stuffed with Hindutva propaganda. Scientific works that contradict it will be behind paywalls for the eyes of the upper class. This is the contemporary equivalent of the medieval practice of writing scientific texts in Latin.

This is assuming a public library can be created close enough for most people to be able to reach it given that we're running out of space to live and the fact that people need to work for a living.

The situation in India does sound terrible, and I'm sorry you have to go through that.

But again, good public libraries do exist in the world and there should be a lot more of them.

I used to work for a library that offered access to paywalled resources to its readers, for the price of a library card, so these things do exist.