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

[zompist]

This reminds me of when I play Leben Heißt Leben by Laibach on web Spotify on my work machine it always suddenly stops and switches to the next song at a certain point mid-song, whereas it never does that when I play the same song on the desktop Spotify client on my own Linux box.

I've long had a lot of sympathy for the Skeptic Movement, but stuff like this makes me wonder if there might actually be nefarious supernatural forces at work in the world.

Anyone who's worked with computers or other machines has probably had the same thought. On the other hand... some bugs can be incredibly hard to find, depending on contexts that are hard to duplicate.

I mean, it sounds impossible that playing a certain Janet Jackson video on a laptop should cause another laptop nearby to crash, but it happened. (This one was solved, without supernatural help.)

This, by the way, is that old code is studded with bizarre conditions that no one understands, and the new devs want to throw it out and rewrite it. Those bizarre conditions are fixes for obscure bugs, and probably not commented.

[Zju]

This reminds me of when I play Leben Heißt Leben by Laibach on web Spotify on my work machine it always suddenly stops and switches to the next song at a certain point mid-song, whereas it never does that when I play the same song on the desktop Spotify client on my own Linux box.

I've long had a lot of sympathy for the Skeptic Movement, but stuff like this makes me wonder if there might actually be nefarious supernatural forces at work in the world.

Anyone who's worked with computers or other machines has probably had the same thought. On the other hand... some bugs can be incredibly hard to find, depending on contexts that are hard to duplicate.

I mean, it sounds impossible that playing a certain Janet Jackson video on a laptop should cause another laptop nearby to crash, but it happened. (This one was solved, without supernatural help.)

This, by the way, is that old code is studded with bizarre conditions that no one understands, and the new devs want to throw it out and rewrite it. Those bizarre conditions are fixes for obscure bugs, and probably not commented.

Aaah... a worthy opponent to the bug by moon phases.

[Raphael]

Does anyone else have the impression that there were a lot of GIMP updates released in fairly quick succession over the last few days?

[Travis B.]

Does anyone else have the impression that there were a lot of GIMP updates released in fairly quick succession over the last few days?

To quote the GIMP website...

The current stable release of GIMP is 3.0.4 (2025-05-18).

I presume then you are looking at development updates.

[Raphael]

Does anyone else have the impression that there were a lot of GIMP updates released in fairly quick succession over the last few days?

To quote the GIMP website...

The current stable release of GIMP is 3.0.4 (2025-05-18).

I presume then you are looking at development updates.

Hm. Thank you.

[Raphael]

For a few hours yesterday evening, there was a pretty weird malfunction in the user interface of my bank's online banking website.

I have a debit card that I use mainly to pay for a few online subscriptions. Therefore, the amount of money in the account connected to that debit card usually moves back and forth between a few euros late in a month and a few dozen euros at the start of each month.

On Tuesday and Wednesday (yesterday), there were two small transaction in that account: one subtraction when I bought something online, and one (smaller) addition when I calculated that I needed to pay a little bit into the account to make this month's math work out.

And then, for a few hours on Wednesday evening, the website showed me the correct amount of money in the account, but it didn't show the two most recent transactions that had led to that amount. And because this apparently confused the server's software, in an apparent attempt to make the math work out, they showed me completely wrong amounts of money in the account for past days, weeks, and months.

Things were back to normal today morning, but it was weird while it lasted.

[Raphael]

My printer just started making strange noises while at work. It still works, and doesn't directly signal that anything is wrong, but I still wonder.

[Raphael]

Somewhat related to recent talk of weirdness involving computers, here's a Bluesky post by someone called Ian Boudreau:

https://bsky.app/profile/ianboudreau.co ... 6nw5sbjs25

Somehow my PC monitors turn off briefly when my cat comes close to my desk

I guess it's probably somehow related to static electricity.

[alice]

My printer just started making strange noises while at work. It still works, and doesn't directly signal that anything is wrong, but I still wonder.

It's trying to speak, but is hampered by a limited vocal tract.

[Raphael]

It's trying to speak, but is hampered by a limited vocal tract.

Which phonemes could it produce?

[zompist]

It's trying to speak, but is hampered by a limited vocal tract.

Which phonemes could it produce?

Y'all seem sadly unaware of the Floppotron 3.0.

[Travis B.]

It's trying to speak, but is hampered by a limited vocal tract.

Which phonemes could it produce?

Y'all seem sadly unaware of the Floppotron 3.0.

That's awesome.

[Raphael]

Which phonemes could it produce?

Y'all seem sadly unaware of the Floppotron 3.0.

That's awesome.

It is.

[Travis B.]

zeptoforth 1.14.1 is out. It now supports the TRNG in the RP2350, has a build script for building zeptoforth on the PicoCalc with zeptoIP and the CYW43439 driver included, has optional CH1116 and NTC thermistor drivers, updates the ANSI terminal support to cover some previously-missed functionality, and fixes some PicoCalc-related bugs.

[Travis B.]

zeptoforth 1.14.2 is out. This release changes i2c::i2c-pin to set the GPIO in question to have an internal pull-up per the RP2040 and RP2350 datasheets/refmans, adds an improved 5x8-pixel font, and improves the ergonomics of font usage on the PicoCalc.

[Raphael]

Since I'm one of those not-so-cool people who use Linux but do their software installations mostly through flatpak, I decided to write one of those bash scripts that can be useful for having the same flatpak apps installed on different machines, by saving lists of installed flatpaks and installing flatpaks from such lists.

This has probably been done many times by many people for their own personal use, but it still goes a bit farther than I usually go in my noob-ish scripting attempts. So I thought I'd share it. It's designed specifically for system-wide installations.

fabs.zip

(997 Bytes) Downloaded 273 times

This reminds me, if you're writing a bash script that, at some point, prompts the user to provide the name of a file or directory, is there any way to have the autocomplete function of Linux terminals works with the prompt?

[Raphael]

On Saturday, I decided to film some bumblebees collecting nectar with my cellphone. The resulting video is about two minutes long and 265 mb large. Now, I'm pretty sure that even relatively high-res videos don't need to have hundreds of mbs for two minutes. Any ideas for making it smaller? I already tried passing it through handbrake - that increased its size to 300 mb.

[bradrn]

On Saturday, I decided to film some bumblebees collecting nectar with my cellphone. The resulting video is about two minutes long and 265 mb large. Now, I'm pretty sure that even relatively high-res videos don't need to have hundreds of mbs for two minutes. Any ideas for making it smaller? I already tried passing it through handbrake - that increased its size to 300 mb.

I’m sure there must be something you can do with ffmpeg…

[Raphael]

I’m sure there must be something you can do with ffmpeg…

Thank you! Now I just have to find out what.

[Raphael]

I’m sure there must be something you can do with ffmpeg…

Thank you! Now I just have to find out what.

OK, by looking at the advice given here (https://unix.stackexchange.com/question ... ith-ffmpeg) and tweaking it a bit, a managed it to bring the size down to 41 mb. And I haven't noticed any significantly decreased quality. Does anyone else? The file is at https://drive.proton.me/urls/NP5Q34Q6XR#xyOllJMrpY90 .