I know Lemmy hates Apple, but if you want a Spotify alternative with good accessibility, then this is pretty cool:

https://www.apple.com/au/newsroom/2024/05/apple-announces-new-accessibility-features-including-eye-tracking/

Music Haptics is a new way for users who are deaf or hard of hearing to experience music on iPhone. With this accessibility feature turned on, the Taptic Engine in iPhone plays taps, textures and refined vibrations to the audio of the music. Music Haptics works across millions of songs in the Apple Music catalogue, and will be available as an API for developers to make music more accessible in their apps.

🏴‍☠️

Obligatory “just watch Andor” comment.

Seriously. Go and watch Andor. It proves that good Star Wars content can be made. It has a diverse cast. You just need good writing and a vision. That’s what’s missing from the new content.

They are: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/four-additional-states-join-justice-departments-suit-against-apple-monopolizing-smartphone

I’ve been in similar situations while renting. I ran ethernet cables along skirting boards and around doorframes and hid them inside adhesive cable raceways.

I dont understand why you want to keep a TV offline for privacy/ad reasons, but also say you’re using a Chromecast or Roku media devices anyway? Thats like wanting to keep your windows locked but leaving your front door wide open.

Anyway, LG and Sony OLED TVs offer the best image quality and will work just fine without an internet connection.

I have my LG TV offline and use an AppleTV for everything. I never see the LG OS or Home Screen or any ads or logos once it’s configured to boot straight into external HDMI device.

What made me lose interest was bad writing. “Andor” is a great Star Wars TV series, and I’m looking forward to its second season, because it has…let’s see…good fucking writing!

At a certain point, a company’s primary product becomes its stock. Share buybacks, short term gains, etc become the strategy. The goal is no longer to create value for customers, but to create value for shareholders.

The realpolitik answer is that they’re the only country in the region with highly functioning western-style market economy. That is valuable to other functioning western style market economies. Its a system trying to help itself propagate.

Last time I visit a wax museum while tripping on acid.

Who the fuck tips their landlord anyway?

It’s sad how Apple’s strategy of “just use an actually fast CPU and make a Home Screen without ads” is a breakthrough in the industry. It shows what a fucking mess everyone else is in.

There is a 16:9 “open matte” edition of blade runner 2049 floating around many torrent sites. Unfortunately it’s only 1080p SDR. But it does look great and is a neat way to rewatch the movie.

The Android market sort of split into cheap streaming sticks vs more expensive but niche boxes (like the Zidoo or Dune players). The former are meant for streaming but lack power. The latter are more capable players but often can’t stream from legit services due to DRM.

The Shield sits in this weird middle ground where it’s actually good for a variety of use cases….but unlikely to get an update due to small market demand.

Although I’d argue that unless you need atmos audio passthrough for Bluray rips…the AppleTV 4K is the best option these days. Super fast processor, no ads or bullshit in the OS, reliable frame rate matching, good track record of software updates and vendor support, and apps like Infuse which is a superb Plex and Jellyfin client. It’ll do 4K REMUX playback with lossless 7.1 audio, and the UI never lags…ever. Just a shame about no audio passthrough which prevents it from being an enthusiast player.

The miners are taking power from the same grid as everyone else. Miners don’t emit carbon. Electricity generation from fossil fuels does.

The focus should be on moving to a renewable and abundant energy grid. Then let people use it for whatever the fuck they want.

There are only 10 seasons of The Simpsons and I won’t have it any other way!

Depends what you consider “long term”. My suggestion would be a NAS unit with dual drive redundancy. And additional backup device as well. For consumer level stuff, Synology units with hyper backup are a good solution.

The best way to compare is to re-rip one of your already ripped DVDs. Use MakeMKV and play both back and see if you can tell the difference.

But if we are talking popular movie DVDs, then I’d just grab the Bluray copies from a torrent site. The quality will be far superior.

Oh nice. Didn’t know about this. Seems like an interesting solution!

The film uses an intentionally wide aspect ratio. It also has a lot of added film grain, also intentional. But the grain messes with low bitrate rips. Grab the 20gb+ 4K Web-DL rip to get it in the best possible quality.