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BGZq7

69 karma · joined November 9, 2015

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BGZq7··on A month using XMPP (using Snikket) for every call and chat (2023)
Gajim is unrelated to Gaim. Gaim was renamed to Pidgin though, which still exists.
BGZq7··on Show HN: Typed-FFmpeg 3.0–Typed Interface to FFmpeg and Visual Filter Editor
I think the issue is those aren't integers, they are ffmpeg expressions evaluating to integers. See e.g. this example from the ffmpeg documentation:

  Draw a 2-pixel red 2.40:1 mask:
  drawbox=x=-t:y=0.5*(ih-iw/2.4)-t:w=iw+t*2:h=iw/2.4+t*2:t=2:c=red
Implementing type checking on this correctly would require something like a DSL.
BGZq7··on Show HN: Typed-FFmpeg 3.0–Typed Interface to FFmpeg and Visual Filter Editor
This is interesting, and it's good to see something that's actively developed, but it seems to have some of the same issues as ffmpeg-python:

- It doesn't appear to have any way of specifying filters that do not have inputs, such as "color"

- There is no way to provide flags to Popen, e.g. to specify subprocess.CREATE_NO_WINDOW to avoid CMD windows popping up in a GUI app on Windows. This isn't a big deal for running ffmpeg itself, because you can just ffmpeg.compile() then run it manually, but that can't be done for ffprobe with ffmpeg.probe().

Edit: OK, figured out the source filter thing, ffmpeg.sources.color. Is there a way to use arbitrary source filters, like vfilter/afilter can do for regular ones?

BGZq7··on YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers
> 2) there's typically no privacy-preserving way to pay

This is exactly my problem. I log into as few services as possible and clear my cookies on browser exit. Of course this is supplemented by ad-blocking and blocking most 3rd-party scripts and cookies to avoid cross-site tracking. I have no way to pay for a service while maintaining that level of privacy.

BGZq7··on PostgreSQL upgrades are hard
On Debian (and probably most of its derivatives), the package manager will not remove any running PostgreSQL versions and will let you have multiple versions side by side. It also has its own tool pg_upgradecluster, which can perform the upgrade using pg_dump+pg_restore or pg_upgrade (optionally with link or clone options).
BGZq7··on On the Decline of Perl – external factors
Yes, I definitely miss this in Ruby since it also has optional parens for method calls but lacks sigils. Even the most basic-looking expressions can have arbitrarily complicated meanings:

  foo.bar = 1
Is that just an attribute set on an object, is it calling a method foo that returns an object containing a bar attribute with a normal getter/setter, or is bar= a method that has arbitrary functionality?

I also like the more explicit operators in Perl that help show context:

  $foo + $bar
This is specifically numeric addition and those operands are probably at least somewhat number-like. Yes you can potentially overload it, but by convention, it will still be something like addition, so you don't have to wonder if you are adding, concatenating, appending a list, or something else, because they have different operators.
BGZq7··on Debian 10.6
dist-upgrade is more likely to break things because it can uninstall packages. So it's sometimes useful to run a plain upgrade first just so there will be fewer packages in the dist-upgrade. This lets you review the dist-upgrade output closer and perhaps decide to cancel it if you need to make some changes before it's safe to run. If you are going to ignore the output or just run with -y, there's no reason to split them.
BGZq7··on They're deleting my channel, but they don't know why? [video]
You can post to YouTube and also another platform, then on Patreon/Twitter/Facebook/etc always link the other platform instead of YouTube. That way you would still be discoverable on YouTube, but hopefully get some amount of traffic funneled over to the other platform in case YouTube kicks you off.
BGZq7··on Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
They're not really subdomains. If you try to do a whois against e.g. smith.name you'll see it's not a registerable domain. Only the second level can be registered, xxxx.smith.name. Similarly if you had xxxx.co.uk, you own a domain because co.uk isn't registerable. The only quirk about .name is that common names can't be registered at the top level, but uncommon ones can.
BGZq7··on Librem 5 Phone Dogwood Thermals and Battery Life
It is also used for group chats, even without images.
BGZq7··on Voting misinformation flourishes on Facebook
It's one thing to say that mail in voting could potentially have security issues. It's another to say that Democrats plan to light ballots on fire. In order to legitimately claim that with any certainty they would need actual proof of someone developing a plan or expressing an interest in doing so. They clearly don't have that. Maybe "false" or "misinformation" are not accurate enough terms but I think "unsubstantiated fear-mongering" is fair and would have the same effect.
BGZq7··on How does the Gmail unsubscribe button work?
> If they use a reputable bulk mailing service instead of using their first-party domain then they are indistinguishable from a phishing attack.

With most bulk mailing services, the message will come from the "first-party domain". They will have configured that service as a legitimate sender for the domain via SPF/DKIM DNS records.

BGZq7··on A list of all the great engineers laid off. Help them land on their feet
To me it looks like it's sorted by company (but not alphabetically), then by job function (also not alphabetically), then by first name alphabetically.
BGZq7··on Jitsi Meet features update
Not sure I completely understand it, but Jenkins is apparently auto-tagging things (maybe every commit that passes tests?). I think their actual releases have "stable" in the tag and release name, so "current" is "stable/jitsi-meet_4384".

4384 matches the latest versions I'm seeing for Ubuntu and Debian at https://jitsi.org/downloads/ under "Jitsi Desktop stable build line". For some reason other OSes seem to be much further behind.

BGZq7··on Jitsi Meet Security and Privacy
But you can host your own and audit the source code. That has to count for something, right?
BGZq7··on Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
An ova file is just a tarball containing an ovf file and a vmdk file. The ovf file is a text-based configuration format, so you can get a basic idea of the config you'd need for qemu. Then the vmdk can be converted with qemu-img.

I used the following qemu-img command:

    qemu-img convert -O qcow2 archiveteam-warrior-v3-20171013-disk001.vmdk archiveteam-warrior-v3-20171013-disk001.qcow2
I use the following to run the VM (I gave it some more memory because I have plenty to space):

    qemu-system-x86_64 -m 1024 archiveteam-warrior-v3-20171013-disk001.qcow2
I think they were doing some kind of port forwarding, but I didn't bother, and I just access the web interface using the VM's IP (you can hit alt-right arrow to go to a login prompt and log in as root then run "ip a" to see the IP).
BGZq7··on V100 Server On-Prem vs. AWS P3 Instance Cost Comparison
Keep in mind, the AWS cost is already for a reserved instance. On-demand would cost more.
BGZq7··on Bash 5.0 released
Not quite - that is run before your prompt is displayed.

  $ PROMPT_COMMAND='time=$(date +%T)'
  $ echo $time;date +%T
  12:19:07
  12:20:19
Thus it will show the time after your last command returned rather than the current time.
BGZq7··on A bootable CD image with a retro game in a single tweet
I can't say I entirely understand how the Elapsed Time Wait works, but testing in qemu, I was able to get it to a good speed by replacing the

  inc cl
with a

  nop
  inc dx
By opening in a hex editor, finding

  bf86 fec1
and replacing with

  bf86 9042
If you're on a very slow system, maybe just use 2 nops or a 2-byte nop.
BGZq7··on Amazon’s algorithm is hiding the best deal from many customers
> The first listing is indeed from Amazon.com as the seller. It has the cheapest price at $5.97 with "FREE Shipping" if you have Prime. So I assume that without Prime, there is a cost for shipping.

When I'm not logged in, it shows it has free Prime shipping. When I do log in to my account without Prime, it shows it has free shipping with an order of $49 or more. The only way I can find to see the shipping cost is to add it to my cart and proceed to checkout, which makes it a bit difficult to comparison shop.

> Assuming that that free shipping, unlike Prime, is unconditional, it is worth pointing out that TheHardwareCityCo offers a shipping date from "October 3-12". I'm assuming that you also don't get the return guarantees that you do from Amazon.com.

Amazon also seems to overstate these shipping dates to make Prime shipping look better. Almost every time I have ordered something via a 3rd party like that, it arrives before the earliest date Amazon says it could.

BGZq7··on It is time to unlink the “Backspace” – Browser Back shortcut (2012)
I think it depends on the reason for the change. If the reason is primarily to reduce complexity or remove a buggy feature, it would make sense to remove the feature entirely from the code.

In this case, the shortcut is being removed because it's often unintentionally triggered by people who are not familiar with it, however there are also a lot of people who intentionally use it frequently. It could be reasonably argued that something like that should be configurable.

BGZq7··on Moxie Marlinspike Makes Encryption for Everyone
When I try, I get a certificate that expired 5 months ago.

www.popsci.com uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate expired on 12/10/2015 05:59 PM. The current time is 05/11/2016 01:39 AM. Error code: SEC_ERROR_EXPIRED_CERTIFICATE

BGZq7··on On the Existential Beauty of Peanuts
It looks like the A record is correct, but the AAAA record is not, so those of us with IPv6 see the parking page.