d-RLY?

It really depends on the media and my level of interest in it. I was only bothering to try and get 1080p copies of stuff I liked due to only having a 1080p TV for so long. But I did make efforts to get 1080 where possible (and based on my drives at the time) even before I had a HD TV and the only thing I had to actually watch that resolution on was my laptop. And that was because I wanted to make sure I had (at the time) the best copies of torrented encodes of stuff I really loved and would want to look good later. But I got a 4K HDR TV a few months ago as my 13yo 1080p TV started just giving black screens on all inputs. And while a lot of things are fine, the limitations of the encodes are showing much more.

If I am just checking out something that I have heard about or was told to check out by a friend. I might just grab a 1080 or even 720 copy since they are often the top seeded results. Then go back and find 4k copies if I really get into it. Though my main issue today is similar to back when I was using my laptop. Storage space. I started ripping my Blu-rays and I am the worst about dealing with compression stuff. So I really really need to get on making that media server I have been “meaning to build” for years. Get some 18TB or 20TB drives and RAID the shit out of them for redundancy. lol.

I tend to notice the drop in quality in more slow scenes since there is more time to notice it. Though very action heavy scenes do suffer if the encode is bad. It would be really nice if we did see more shit in 60fps though. I understand what lots of “but 24fps is more ‘cinematic’” mean for some kinds of shots/movies. But after being so adjusted to 60fps and higher (even if shit is interpolated due to having had a “120Hrz” TV since like 09), shit is much much cleaner. The “soap opera effect” is a real thing, but it kind of just stops being an issue after you get used to it and see the benefits of clarity and smoothness. And it is much more like how seeing shit in real life.

I have been having a real hard time going back to watch movies and especially animated media. Like a panning shot in an anime just looks so damn jittery. It completely takes me out of the thing I am watching as it can make me feel a weird kind of nauseous. Lots of regular movies and shows also do this. Some of it might be due to some stuff that was shot in early digital making it worse. But it does happen with stuff shot on film too.

Just really sucks that the industries seem to go out of their way to make it hard for studios/film makers to try weird shit now that we have it. Like I would love to have the 44fps version of The Hobbit since I missed being able to see it in theatres. But the home releases are all set to traditional speeds. It isn’t a limitation of the Blu-rays themselves from what I understand. But the players tend to only allow 24/30fps for playback. Though I would love to be wrong about that. But still just artificial shit stopping potential advancements (or at least fun efforts to try shit). Those Spiderverse movies being done in layers of different fps rates is an example of trying some weird shit that was dope.

I was going to also say that OP might be wanting something like Recall (which might be one of the few instances where it constantly saving shit would be perfect). But they would need like the most extreme version that isn’t just saving searchable screenshots.

I also think that one major issue for OP is more about how the actual sites are coded these days. As even if a single tab is being used, the shit can just decide to force it to update the contents at any time (like how just having Gmail open you will see new messages just show up even without refreshing your browser).

It seems like the perfect situation for OP would be if the web still worked like it did pre-web 2.0, but with using the current version of FF. Outside of that, it really seems like they need to just start having sites be auto-completely downloaded for full offline use.

I am still shocked that the main issues being had seems to be that it taking 10s of mins to allow FF to process that much stuff is the frustration. Which does seem to mean FF is holding up pretty well given the situation. Their complaint about tab isolation being too much overhead seems odd though. As it would seem that going back to not having that would mean a much higher chance of just everything just being yeet-ed out of nowhere.

I am not sure how their headspace of using virtual machines approach would be much better as shit would still have the issues of sites still self-updating and loading up in the first place. Though given they seem to have dramatically more coding experience, I am much more ignorant of this shit.

At least it should still work with the hard coded sponsor spots that are actually part of the videos (like the “brought to you by Manscaped” or whatever).

Not surprised, I think a lot of sites tend to start removing things as they are posting about being made to do so. As I imagine that having them still up after posting about the removals would likely cause a surge in downloads. Not sure what kinds of things the sites might have to (or be compelled to if formally sued) provide to lawyers/courts. Would (at least to my non-understanding of processes) be that many more “infractions” to add to a “damages” total. Even if none of my assumptions are an issue. It is just like any other data issue. The worst time to try and get copies for a backup is after shit happens/fails. Though I imagine that at least for 8-bit and 16-bit games, there are plenty of copies on plenty of sites and torrents.

For indi-devs having a “donate” option on their page might be good for both people that maybe pirated but liked it enough to send some amount (even if not the full price). And could be a random source of money to off-set some of the pirated copies from people that just decide they wanted to show additional support for the efforts of the devs.

Lots of fans are willing to leave donations especially if the devs are at risk of shutting down or some other hardships. So long as the donation options only go to the devs/creators or their specific studio/company and not to some larger entity/publisher. Store fronts like itch.io allowing devs to have both an official front to allow safe free copies along with the normal price and “pay what you want” stuff is also nice.

Stuff like YouTube’s system (and will keep getting much worse as every company trips over themselves with AI in everything) is so fucking rigged with major companies getting shit auto-claimed. And then relies on more auto-rejecting the channel’s disputes. And they get to claim that shit must work because most creators can’t afford to risk fighting further. The only times shit gets really reviewed by people is when shit happens to a mega channel. Since those channels/companies have both special tools that 99% of creators don’t have (or maybe know about), AND more crucially they have connections at YT.

I really want to move as much of the stuff I watch to other sites (made sure to add extensions to let me know if a channel/vid is also on Odysee/Lbry). If more services are able to get apps onto devices like Roku/consoles and/or the other boxes/TV OSes then it would be easier. I personally watch most YT stuff on my TV and not my phone or PC. Normies of course default to YT since it has been around so long and because it has apps on everything. Would be dope if services with P2P shared delivery to help reduce server loads (like PeerTube and Lbry) could work on stuff like Roku/consoles but would be more or less impossible due to lack of space and the locked-down nature.

Aside from options like PeerTube being much more complicated given both making accounts and learning curve in how federated instances work. The alts to YT also seem to fall victim to so much of the main page content (currently) being far-right and crypto scam/hype channels. If the services get the label of being “for” that stuff, then it is hard to get more mainstream users/creators. But we really really need something that isn’t YT. The class divide of strikes and bans is beyond fucked.

It isn’t a science vs pseudoscience, it is using an easy to understand set of symbolic numbers and words that are meant to be taken together as a point. The point being that we are assholes if we don’t stop to take a moment to see that we at some point were those same “10,000” and experienced shit for the first time. And that jumping on others for now being those “10,000” instead of sharing their excitement is dumb. Humans tend to like lessons and reminders that are clear to understand. We as a species have learned and taught via parables basically ever since we could speak.

Focusing on complicated but very precise data removes the whole point of the meaning being presented. Now if this were being understood to be a real study or some other situation where the numbers and science were the focus then it would very much matter. It is just a super basic lesson in social interactions presented in a nerdy way.

Glad to see someone mention OO. I was going to, and saw your comment. I will always be down for LibreOffice, but OnlyOffice might be the “best” option for lots of people that are easily intimidated with change (or more specifically how something looks different). Even if it is lacking on some features, it just matters how the person it is recommended to uses MS Office. Being fair using MS Office or any of the similar suites is overkill for what they do. If smaller programs like Wordpad (RIP) or opensource Rich Text Format editors could handle so many general purpose documents.

I wonder if they were using FF back when they had the Panorama feature back in the day. That many tabs seems like it would be great for organizing everything. It is almost hilarious to think that FF was so far ahead of the game that it just didn’t make sense. Now all the other major browsers are adding some kind of tab groups feature.

The way FF did it was cool and was like having virtual desktops but groups of tabs. Aside from proper vertical tabs that keeps theme and doesn’t require hacking settings to get rid of the horizontal row (Edge and Brave are good examples as their hover to expand titles and collapse when using the pages are smooth). Bringing back grouping tabs like Panorama had them would be really cool to have again.

Though I would love to see a blend of nice vertical tabs and groups like what I see in screenshots of browsers like Arc. Very different looking but in a good way. If FF could make their own spin of that UI work with both vertical and horizontal tabs. It would be dope af.

For real! The only thing that matches this frustration of trying to find out wtf something is and not just “feel good” BS statements about whatever it might be is surveys. Fuck me am I going to snap one day over fucking surveys on big companies. I hate going to support pages for getting like drivers to install for a PC I am working on and knowing that before I can even press “search” I get a box in the middle of the fucking screen already asking “How’d We Do?” or “Got three minutes to let us know how well we helped you today???” I would try to just start filling them out, but I don’t want to have the very fed-posting-ish words I have for them to be tied to a customer’s PC.

Ignore this unless you (the persons reading this) either don’t understand how fucked so many surveys are as a worker. Just thinking about how much I hate them means I needed a therapeutic rant to get it out. And I am not just going to delete it after typing it at this point. lol

And the surveys that all big companies have are rigged to begin with. They all have either numbers or stars and comment boxes. But depending on the company and situation the rating part might be tied to a specific worker that may have even been the only good part of the interaction. So giving a real “rating” only means that worker is raked over the coals and can be written up. Even if the comments part easily shows this to be the case. The big box chain I fix PCs for does this and my co-workers and myself are constantly fucked over by customers that we were told point-blank that we helped them more than anyone else. But since those customers are fuming about all the other stuff (that was completely out of our control), they give whatever the lowest rating is and the comments about us specifically being good are ignored. All because those comments parts don’t really matter to high-er level managers and corporate. Can’t be removed from our metrics as being clearly about something else. So it just becomes about “well it means you will need to get more positive ratings to cancel it out”.

And as a customer, they use the whole “concern about wanting feedback” as 100% go ahead to just spam the ever living shit out of your txts, email, and even start harassing via calls that they force workers to make. FUCK SURVEYS so much from both a worker and customer standpoint! I volunteer to be the executioner of the people that make this shit a policy of a company (and of course the CEO, other C level folks, and every single member of their boards once the revolution comes.

I can’t remember the last time I ever got that message before I installed the DDG extension a couple years ago. I think the extension overrides it, so I can’t say for the past two years on my actual personal browser. However the only times I remember it offering to change it since I started using it in 03~04 has been when they really tried making sure people knew that the default could be changed (which might have been in some way tied to stuff like the EU making even OSes show options for browsers to install when first setting up). And the others were when they first changed to Yahoo and after the contract with Yahoo ended.

That all being said, I think it is good to maybe once a year to have like the first update of the year or first major update ask. As never being shown other options just keeps smaller or newer competition from even being seen. DDG is a bit of a weird one since I both heard of it from being a “tech” person and because they went hard in advertising. But when I found out about the “Bangs”, it was fucking over. Being able to change search engines from the one I am using was game changing to me. And seeing that it is becoming a thing for other ones is very nice to see (Brave being the main one I also use).

That all being said. I think there has to be some bug if it is making you fix your settings that often.

Do you have the DDG extension installed? Because I haven’t had any issues with FF changing it or even asking to change it after updates (minor or major). So if you don’t have it installed, and you have no plans to change away from DDG. It would be a worthwhile extension to add, and it adds some additional tracker blocking while not on a search.

Agreed. Seems that if someone is truly wanting to be a part of the fix to something they helped create. Then they should be the first person to call themselves out for it. Hiding a fact that can already be found by the people you are trying to get the support of is foolish. Even if you are faking the whole “changed as a person” thing, it is the worst optics for “re-branding” yourself. The “villain to hero arc” is a freaking core element of so many genres of fiction. And for non-fiction, people love seeing people seek redemption and self-improvement. Fucking amateur time over here.

Gintama has some of the funnier versions of those notes. Can be annoying if you don’t care as they take it to 11 covering most of the screen to explain a reference to a bank scandal in the 90s or other very specific stuff. Cracks me up with the level of care about making sure you are aware of something used in a quick joke that might not really matter. Such a nice way to see and know random info on Japanese slang words and phrases in the context of a moment.

Very hard to convince people to buy things “legitimately” and have any trust in any of the “legit” options when they just go away so fucking easily. Stuff like anime has been a real weird example of both how horrible the corps on the Japanese side just squeeze every single fraction of a penny from stuff (fucking like two eps of a show on a modern DVD or even Blu-ray). But also feel zero reason to expand options in the first place. They were so fucking slow to get digital or streaming options. Same goes for the foreign outlets that get rights outside of J-land, but I am sure they were more likely to want to combat piracy via stuff like streaming. Funny thing about anime piracy is that it is literally the reason so many shows and movies were even seen and is the main reason so many people got into all of it. Back in the early 00’s when I made friends with people that had cable internet and ready to burn as many eps as they could fit on a CD-R and later DVD-/+R.

It was just so amazing to see all these shows that weren’t just completely altered by lazy US companies or ever likely to be translated. No US companies thought that Americans would ever understand or get into this weird Japanese stuff and not put money into it. But they sure started caring when torrents got going and the numbers were growing. One thing that has really pissed me off with legal digital copies of anime comes down to how it is still behind on basic shit. We have had multi-audio/subtitles on pirate copies and even on legitimate physical discs. But the legal versions of digital copies still have to be either bought in sub or dub. It is a slap in the face of fans to have to buy two different copies just to have multi-audio in Japanese and English. I thought that shit would have been left behind with VHS.

All of these companies demand our money and often charge prices that are just too high for their target audiences (especially teens that don’t have jobs like so many of us have lived through). And yet they seem to do everything possible to make the options for purchase so much less usable compared to pirate versions. I would take a fansub that might be a bit off but has actual passion for community and accessibility over legit copies every single time. But I am also more than happy to pay for things if I don’t keep being treated like I already stole it and should be grateful for being “allowed” to pay for it. I would love to pay for these things and know that the actual workers are able to live, and not just so overworked and not able to afford rent. But the entire media industry treats both the workers and the customers so fucking bad. They are making things worse for themselves by showing how we can’t trust our purchases to even be around from one day to another. So why shouldn’t we just take it and know that we will have it?

Given how lots of smaller shows and other things will never get re-prints or re-masters on modern media. It is also our jobs to preserve these things that the companies feel aren’t worth the money to do so if they aren’t. If I ever have kids, I would like to be able to know I can show them my favorites. Looks like I will also need to show them how to sail the digital seas and that “legit” options should always be treated as liars that steal your money AND take away what you paid for.

🏴‍☠️

Does the iPod Classic support variable playback speeds and open audiobook formats? I genuinely don’t know much of anything about them aside from how to play regular music whenever my friend that had different Nanos over a few years back in the day. Also can stuff be loaded without iTunes? If so, then I would certainly look into them again!

Will be needing to check-in on this over time to see if anything is changed or default functions expand just a bit. I have been looking for a good media device for loading my archived podcast episodes/seasons and audiobooks without having all the extra bloat and/or possible malware that can be on lots of similar and cheaper Android players (or the overkill of using an old phone that doesn’t have a aux port). Main thing for podcasts and audiobooks is variable playback speed settings and stuff like understanding audiobook formats with chapters.

Sadly I (for now) have settled on a sketchy Android device that I would love to root so I can remove a specific flagged app that the Play Store always pops a notification about that is not uninstallable like so many companies do. But since it is a no name brand without firmware images to download from their site. I just I only ever put it online long enough for my favorite podcast app to pull new eps or Audible. Though I am planning to eventually just download and strip DRM from my library for having backups.

So if this thing can get variable speed for podcasts and support open/free formats that are specific to books. Then I am sold. I never got to have an iPod back in the day, so I very much like the throwback look of this thing! I do wish it had more RAM though, as I would imagine that it could limit some higher quality formats/codecs (but I am not a dev so maybe it wouldn’t matter). The price seems fair given it isn’t from just another global mega-corp. I hope they pay their devs well to make sure their official firmware updates stay active, and/or put some profits into future revisions and whatnot.

They really went hard on VCRs before all of that for the same reasons. Fortunately the time shifting argument was able to be backed by the courts. Otherwise TiVo and so many other formats would’ve basically been banned from the general public being able to have anything nice. Was especially important rulings for forcing most content providers and/or studios into using new ideas and technologies. They are the ones that hold back on everything that could actually make it easier to legally enjoy content.

They make things require so many hoops to go through and like a punishment for wanting to enjoy anything legally. While also making it cost more on their end overall. If these companies were to embrace stuff like torrenting tech, then it would mean less overall costs needed to always be running. We have so many ways of getting stuff from here to there and making sure media is not lost. Copyrights should at best last like 10 years imo. These companies still can’t even be bothered to allow me to buy movies and shows digitally that maybe got a DVD release. So if they won’t give options, then they forfeit the right to claim any “damages” or “lost sales.”

I did fail to mention it is US only (my bad in that). Though it could get expanded if it is popular enough and it can be pointed to as “reducing piracy.” But international laws being complicated from nation to nation is also an issue, or at least something they might say. I haven’t been out of the country since setting it up, so I am curious if I would need a VPN to access my licensed stuff. Maybe would work for folks that have made accounts in the past with VPN? Idk.

It does work with some very limited sets of shows. But like I said, they aren’t really about that and the shows tend to be from studios like HBO. But not helpful for most anything other than movies.

It is a unified interface, but if I buy a MA labeled movie from say Vudu. It will also show-up in my iTunes, Microsoft, YouTube/Google Movies, Amazon, and of course MA. They have some additional connected services via Direct TV and Verizon, but I don’t use those. But the point is that if I get it on one of the services I connected, they become available on all of them. Even when the UltraViolet service went down, I didn’t lose the things I had bought. Though I think that Disney must have bought their connections and the UV stuff was migrated. Though I am not sure of those details. Either way it didn’t lead to me losing anything.

It also does require that you periodically sign back into their site to re-connect each provider similar to how you have to sign back into other sites. But again, I at no point have lost access to what was in my account if I haven’t signed in to re-verify. It isn’t as cut and dry as having the physical discs or a torrented copy on a NAS. But it is still worth knowing about if you have “legit” copies. I really wish that there were a way to link my Plex account and be able to watch them in the same front-end as my local stuff though. But no way that is going to happen unless Plex completely stops supporting the Plex Server and works out deals to use APIs of stuff like Vudu, Amazon, iTunes, etc…