My old LG SmartTV seems most reliable at playing mkv files but I think mp4 is pretty standard.

It’s very unlikely you are infected by anything unless you were using some crazy settings or addons, or unless you were hit by some extreme 0-day exploit that hasn’t become widespread yet. Firefox does not and normally cannot execute files it downloads automatically nor are videos a likely risk for remote code execution now that we have technologies like data execution prevention built into processors, if you’re attacked by malware it will rely on some other vector or trickery to get you to execute the file. I would expect that your performance issues are unrelated, but you should also check Firefox’s addons and extensions as well as your task manager startup tab to make sure nothing has obviously been installed without your knowledge.

One thing that sticks out at me is the fact that you only mention the file’s “title” and if you haven’t already you should make sure Windows Explorer is set up to ALWAYS show full file extensions, that’s like a basic safety measure that really should be on by default but isn’t, and it’s really mandatory if you’re messing around on the darker parts of the web. You have to know what kind of file extension it is because that affects what Windows is going to do with it, and when it’s supposed to be one thing and Windows is going to do something different with it that’s a huge red flag that it’s malware trying to trick you into running it.

You can upload the file to virustotal if you want to scan it but it doesn’t sound likely that it even ran unless you did something bad by accident.

Sounds great, I’ll plan on waiting a year or so until I’m convinced they’ve got the bugs worked out, and then buy it just before they announce a new and upgraded version, as is tradition.

It was, and still is. It hasn’t moved to the US, it just also opened a nonprofit there, so the US donations they receive from US people are tax deductible in the US. If I remember correctly they have also opened a non-profit in Belgium which is I think where they are intending to actually move their assets and do most of their work going forward as I think they’ve had various issues with the German organization also.

It’s definitely not burn-in, it’s likely some kind of defect in the backlighting system. For most LCDs the “backlight” is essentially a big thin white/mirrored panel reflecting or diffusing light in a very carefully consistent way from a very bright light source, typically either a fluorescent tube at the bottom or more commonly nowadays evenly spaced strips of LEDs. Some higher end models use more elaborate designs but they’re the minority. Defects in the backlight panel, the back of the LCD panel, or stuff like dust or even insects getting inside that reflective/diffuser chamber will affect the consistency of the backlight as it both blocks a bit of the light from reaching some places and reflects it to other places it shouldn’t be. That’s what it looks like is happening here. It could be some kind of delamination of some of the surfaces inside the TV, or it could be some puff of dust that somehow got inside, or even something like a spider decided that was a great place for a cobweb. Without opening the panel it’s hard to say what’s going on exactly, it might just need a very delicate cleaning or it might need replacement parts.

If you’re afraid of spiders, I’m sorry, you just have to burn the house down now, it’s the only way to be sure.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. This is what they’ve done and are continuing to do to phones. We talk about the Apple and Google’s “walled gardens” but it’s even more than that. It’s about only allowing “trusted” applications to run, on “trusted” operating systems, with “trusted” drivers and “trusted” hardware, for “your security”, to “protect you” (from yourself). But it’s really about control, complete control, not just of our devices but of us as people.

That is what they intend to do to all computing devices. Over time, gradually. They know they can’t do it overnight and force it down people’s throats, because it’s fundamentally anti-freedom, people will resist, rebel, start to switch to devices and systems that allow them to take back their personal and computing autonomy, using technology to enable their own goals instead of what the manufacturers and services “allow”. So they have to slowly creep it in. People still resist and rebel, but they keep pushing ever so subtly towards more control for them and less control for you. One step back is followed by two steps forward, then another step back when people resist, then another two steps forward. Progress keeps being made, despite the resistance. They will keep normalizing it until people say “well of course they have to protect <x>” and we forget that the freedom to decide what we ourselves are willing to trust so we can do what we want with the hardware and software we own is a fundamental and necessary human right.

It means you can basically run even more Windows programs on Linux than you already can, and that’s wonderful. At the rate it’s going, soon Wine and Linux will be more compatible with Windows software than Windows itself is. Especially older stuff.

When the antichrists leading the formerly-free-world attempt to crucify Gaming Jesus we’ll know the end times have truly arrived.

Eventually people might learn why they should not just prefer to have, but actually require open systems for all the computers in their lives, even the ones hidden inside of their appliances, instead of buying these locked down, pre-programmed, remote-updated internet-of-shit devices.

If you can’t get root and boot access on your device, decide what you’re updating it with and when, you don’t own it or control it in the first place. You’re just letting some shitty company (and maybe anyone at all with the amount of security flaws these devices have) directly into your home and network to decide what you can or can’t do with your product (and when and how much it’s going to cost), while they take advantage of every opportunity they can think of to spy on you and extract money from you. Any device with microchips in it isn’t just an appliance anymore, it’s a trojan horse full of gross and creepy salesmen and they’re going to be there forever, watching you and figuring out ways to get more of your money.

Even more strangely, I think a lot of fully-grown people actually do want exactly that from most or all of their companionship, human and otherwise. It’s not healthy but it’s very very real, and being deeply and desperately unhealthy isn’t going to stop it from being very very profitable.

Some people have very little emotional maturity, some are narcissists, some are both, some have other issues. Regardless of the reason, plenty of people simply don’t respect many or any other people’s opinions or autonomy. There are a lot of people in dysfunctional families and relationships that predate AI that could attest to this. They can’t handle being challenged at all by anyone. They don’t react well when they are, they can even quickly escalate to violence. They sometimes conspicuously lean on religion to justify their attitude but it’s far from being exclusive to any religion nor exclusive to religion at all. Even the AI will quickly learn not to challenge these sort of people if it can help it, just like how abused partners quickly either learn how to avoid triggering their partner’s wrath or accept that it’s coming.

AI is an almost perfect friend for people like this, and it will be their faithful companion and enabler leading them into any dark rabbithole they attempt to dig into that isn’t explicitly limited by guardrails and even some that are, with a dangerous combination of verifiable factual truths and cheerfully unverifiable nonsense that are almost impossible to distinguish from each other, without doing extra work that nobody reasonable will ever bother to do before adding the next layer to the conversation that reinforces it further and digs the rabbithole deeper.

I was afraid these would burn more fossil fuels and pollute more carbon dioxide and other toxic combustion byproducts into the atmosphere, so I was pleased to learn they actually burn sunlight and emit rainbows. At least that’s what ChatGPT told me. /s

It’s better than closed source, for sure. But I’m curious, Is the NordVPN app actually conceivably useful for anything other than the NordVPN service? Or is this simply the uni-directional kind of open-source where their software gives nothing useful back to the community and they are just hoping for the part where the community identifies and fixes their bugs for them.

I suppose we’ll have to wait and see if someone will be able to hack it to add other providers, it would be neat if I could use it to manage my own self-hosted VPN endpoints too.

It’s called a seedbox. Most of the ones I’ve seen support wireguard in some way, but sometimes it’s not part of the basic package.

Last I checked, it does not work well at all and I don’t think much progress has been made on that issue yet

You might be able to figure out how to get something to sort of work on your own, but you’re certainly not going to be able to follow a Minecraft guide block-for-block. It does not work the same way. There are some details in those threads that may help you, but again I don’t know if anything has changed in the meantime.

They won’t stop there. AAA game developers and the awful productivity software giants like Adobe, Oracle and Microsoft themselves have already gotten everybody used to live service, cloud software, and subscription models where they have all the control and you’re just renting. They will destroy indie software and games next too, if we let them, Microsoft’s TPM requirement on Windows 11 is likely just the first step in putting up unbreakable walls around their garden, which they would build even faster if Linux weren’t providing real competition they can’t just buy to suppress.

This is why I don’t trust mandatory 2FA/MFA. When I am forced to use it, I am very careful about how it is implemented and ensure that alternatives are available if possible. Most people won’t be so cautious, as the article describes. So many people have allowed verification their identity to be inextricably attached to their phones and phone numbers – devices and services which, in almost all cases, they do not actually fully control. This is by design on the part of the companies doing this. They say it’s about trust, but trust is a two-way street, and I do not trust these companies, these devices, or their motives.

These security companies are hilarious, truly. They have to know they’re literally just posting a free advertisement for this guy, right? But the stupid CEOs and CTOs they’re shilling their security-theater-ware to obviously don’t, and I guess that’s the important part for them.

Steam machines was a better name to be honest. I’m sad that effort withered and died.

Well you see after being shot, the man decided to stop breathing, which as we all know is required to continue living, therefore his death is not sufficiently attributable to your single bullet.

Lemming nerdy loser, reporting for duty. Personally I’m struggling with a Bluetooth controller on my Asrock B850 Riptide that used to work perfectly in Linux at first, then one day decided it was no longer detected and has never worked since. Fortunately it’s not critical, and if it doesn’t fix itself eventually I’ll probably just buy a cheap USB one and use that.