Ah, yes. Of course, in the wake of the fall of the United States, everywhere else on earth will immediately flourish. Just my 2 cents, but before you leave, you might want to talk to some immigrants about what brought them to the United States in the first place.
I assume you mean people who have immigrated from the Netherlands to the U.S. in the past year? It'd be interesting to hear their thoughts, for sure. I don't think the data is available yet, but I expect those numbers are sharply down, so it might not be easy to find anyone to talk to.
He has this tactic that I really dislike. After hearing a question he pauses a tremendously long time, as if deeply pondering it, but then spits out what is clearly just the company line, but he speaks haltingly as if he’s trying to get out something complex and important.
No one trusts Sam Altman. The trouble is that the media remains in it's neutral reporting mode that gives anyone that achieves a title the benefit of what that would normally entail and unwarranted benefit of the doubt on everything they have obviously done as if it were a criminal court but with no possibility of ever actually consulting its jury.
I have a Personal Theory(tm) that modern media in general has far too little value or accountability for something that has such a massive amount of leverage.
Code in whichever language suits your problem, whether you're vibing or not, the trade-offs are mostly the same. Yes, I could use C if I cared more about runtime than development time; it will take me longer to code review AI generated C code.
Lines of code written, in isolation, is a strange metric to determine if someone keeps their job or not. I simply don't think this was the only metric. People love jumping to conclusions about divisive characters.
People sure are quick to say, "I hope you get to work with better management". Man, me too, but I find that dismissive of a legitimate concern: There is A LOT of incompetent management, especially in enterprise. The sad truth is that it is often the blind leading the sighted. When I was growing up I thought that the manager was someone with experience doing the job of those they managed, but across jobs I've had, this is the case about 20% of the time.
> We run our k8s cluster in the “Cloud”. It’s a bunch of services that run on Linux, but we don’t run Linux ourselves, we run it on VMs that we rent by the hour for approximately the same cost as buying a computer outright every month. We do this because no one knows how to plug a computer in any more.
My mind struggles with this reality everyday... the "cloud" has to be the most successful rebrand of all time. In 2005: "Be very careful what data you share on the internet". In 2025: "Yeah, I just put all my shit in the cloud".
I don't understand Netflix's decision, but I'm long past caring about things like this. I've had PCs hooked up to all of my televisions for the past 15+ years because of how limiting and frustrating using any other device to play media from can be.
Even if we pay $100 dollars every month to streaming services they will never not be too dumb to know how to make a convenient player that isn't hostile to its users.
While traveling I was so pissed with the Apple TV player's performance on less-than-lightspeed internet connections, I ragecancelled my subscription and just yo ho ho'ed the last couple episodes of Severance
I have a server that runs a bunch of containers (bittorrent client on a VPN, Home Assistant, etc.) and hosts SMB shares. I acquire content that goes on the shares which then get consumed by various devices.
- Kodi on a TV that has been stripped of as much of Google as I could find, streams from the shares
- VLC on my PC, streams from the shares
- VLC on my phone which is always VPN'd to my local network and streams from the shares
- VLC on iPads on which I usually drag and drop some shows/movies ahead of time so I am not wifi-dependent
They aren't dumb. They've realized that a large section of people will not bother, and aren't capable of sailing the high seas. Hostile behaviors won't change until it hits their bottom line, and because they are an extremely profitable company, it won't happen for a very long time.
Same - I've been using an Intel NUC with Windows 10 for many years. It does everything I want:
- Netflix
- Youtube without ads via Firefox+uBlock Origin
- Ripping DVDs and converting to .mp4
Those Small Form Factor PCs have only gotten cheaper over time - the most powerful PC I've ever owned in 30+ years is a $300 Minisforum (16 Cores, 16GB RAM) that's doing similar duty in the garage.
I’ve run homebrew DVRs since the MythTV/Hauppauge era and it’s true
My family won’t adapt to anything in the living room with a keyboard and mouse, and getting a reliable remote on any PC based solution is often problematic.
The hands-down best DVR experience I had was a TiVo Slide remote (the top slid back to reveal a small but fully functional keyboard) paired to a PC running Windows 7 Media Center with a four-tuner InfiniTV Cablecard adapter. Obviously it's been a few years, but that was just smooth all around once I got it set up. Very high WAF.
But Windows 7 is gone, and so is the TiVo Slide remote.
Maybe they're not handing them out any more, but I've still got one and it still works in the TiVo (Edge?) that I have. It replaced that WMC DVR because WAF. Her genuine preference was for our old ReplayTV and its interface, but they didn't live long enough to make HD DVR's.
Turned out after I had already bought all that stuff due to flakiness that it was just some bad RAM that, really, was overkill - I could have just taken out the bad sticks and kept on rocking, in which case it probably would still be our DVR.
Not even those dirt cheap bluetooth devices with a trackpad and mini keyboard? Those are great and it just works.
Or what about the Steam Controller? It's UX is similar to some nicer smart TV interfaces.
The real solution is you build an app that is nice for your family to use and just tells the boxes what to play. Sure hope your family doesn't use iPhones!
Always assuming every single thing can be improved - and expecting huge corporate entities to do it - seems like a recipe for failed expectations.
Cable TV wasn't perfect, of course, but it was pretty damn good, especially in allowing everybody to have access to just about every show that was produced.
That the "replacement" model is disappointing and a worse experience, really shouldn't come as a surprise.
It's interesting to hear your perspective, but I totally disagree about Cable TV. It's the worst paid service I've ever seen. 100+ channels of almost pure garbage that insults my intelligence at every turn. 1/3 of the time was ads, and of the remaining 2/3, much was taken up by "when we return..." and "before the break...". Plus most of the content was targeted towards morons.
These days, you'd have to pay me $20+ per hour to watch cable TV.
I did have basic cable for a few years in the early 2000s, and I did enjoy watching Star Trek TNG reruns. Because there wasn't any good alternative back then in the dark ages.
Many of the most popular streaming shows were originally aired on broadcast TV (which most people watched via cable) - The Office, Friends, West Wing, Big Bang Theory, etc. Or originally for cable channels - Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, Suits, etc.
Netflix has produced a few decent shows but most of its stuff is "targeted towards morons" or "pure garbage that insults my intelligence" - Love is Blind, Is it Cake.
Commercials arent great but they are passive - easy to ignore. Much rather have a 3-minute commercials break where I can go to the bathroom or check my phone than having to actively scroll for 90 seconds switching from app to app and navigating their awful interfaces to get back to the show I was watching the other day.
But that's just me - glad you like our new television overlords, they certainly love anyone bashing cable tv!
That doesn't seem like an apples-to-apples comparison. There is a lot of junk on the broadcast and cable channels as well.
I expect there to be more aggregate junk on Netflix just because there is no floor: networks have only 168 hours a week to fill, while Netflix can throw anything at all on the pile.
But it doesn't matter, since unlike the networks, they're all available at once. If something insults your intelligence, you don't watch it.
His primary dislike for cable television was the amount of "garbage" it offered, while seemingly ignoring that Netflix also has plenty, if not more.
> But it doesn't matter... they're all available at once
I'm sorry but streaming everything is not a panacea. The spigot of worthwhile content is not endless. Ok great you binge-watched the entire season of Stranger Things over two nights. What will you watch tomorrow? And the day after? How much of the show do you actually remember? You lose out on the fun of discussing each individual episode with like-minded people, the wondering about how the next episode will resolve the last episodes drama, maybe watching an episode a second time and catching some additional detail.
I can assure you that watching great television - Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Larry Sanders Show, Homicide: Life on the Street - one episode per week is vastly superior to binge-watching it, even if it feels inconvenient in the moment. (Of course this is with the convenience of DVR so you can time-shift occasionally)
Wait, hold on, are you telling me that the Pirate Bay only existed on the American Internet back then, too? Man, I'm so glad we're not in those times anymore.
If it's going to be primarily a gaming device then that makes sense, but if not, what do you gain from SteamOS? And why do you want Steam to start on boot?
I use Fedora for this purpose, used to use Debian. You really just need a system with a web browser, file browser, media player and torrent client, and some way to remote control the computer from the couch (ideally from a phone).
Sadly, I don't know of any nice off the shelf solution for that last part. KDE Connect is an option but it kinda sucks. I've always had my own Remote Desktop web interface service type thing running on the machine (though Wayland has kinda thrown a wrench into that for now...)
You can add any applications to Steam's Big Picture mode and the UI is relatively couch friendly. Yes, you could install Steam on any distro and do this but SteamOS is pretty nice out of the box if you want a TV friendly solution.
Steam Big Picture is very couch friendly, if you're using a game pad and what you're launching supports a game pad. That's why it works for a couch gaming PC. Firefox has pretty bad gamepad support last I checked.
It's been a while since I've had to customize it much but I believe the Steam overlay allows you to map controller inputs to anything, uniquely for every given app you run through it.
That said, at some point I think yes, you just get a bluetooth mouse/keyboard to go with it.
> some way to remote control the computer from the couch (ideally from a phone)
If you use Kodi then you could try Kore (their remote app). I tried it once a long time ago and it was alright, but it's hard to beat a keyboard. I think similar apps exist for VLC and other media players, but I haven't looked into a solution that allows controlling the entire computer via a phone.
The huge problem with Kodi is that it requires playing media from within Kodi. The advantage of using a PC for this is that it works with anything you can play from a PC, regardless of whether someone has made an app for it for Apple TV or Samsung's smart TV stuff or Kodi.
You need to be able to provide keyboard and mouse input from a phone. Not just control Kodi or VLC.
I use a Logitech K400 BT keyboard+touchpad for remote control of a PC I have connected to my TV. But, it's not used as a streaming device - it's a file share + home automation hub, so the keyboard makes sense.
I used to use arch linux, but I've been using windows in recent times for simplicity and usability by non-technical people. Windows is starting to piss me off though, so I might move back to some linux distro in the near future.
I don't do any live TV / DVR stuff. Most of the time I just use the browser or VLC.
This is my sole reason for sticking with smart TVs or a streaming device. How is anyone getting proper 1080p+ streams from Netflix using a Linux device? 4K is not necessary, but 1080p at least it's what I need. Not even considering proper HDR support
> The change was first spotted by users on Reddit and confirmed in an updated Netflix support page (via Android Authority), which now states that the streaming service no longer supports casting from mobile devices to most TVs and TV-streaming devices. Users are instead directed to use the remote that came with their TV hardware and use its native Netflix app.
My guess is that adblock became too easy on smartphones, so by forcing people use the app on the TV it makes harder for people to bypass the ads.
That's pure speculation, as I don't have any subscription from netflix. But I've used this method with the HBO app and it works 90% of the time, so I'm assuming netflix has the same issue.
> My guess is that adblock became too easy on smartphones
Not within native apps. Your only option is essentially dns/hosts based on both platforms however this can also be done on the router. On Android there is ReVanced I guess. But these are almost as technical as a pihole. What is the percent of people who know of DNS based adblock but not pihole?
Edit: And DNS adblocking can be done on android tv.
Sure, but I've never had a 'standard router' with support dns blocking. I know you can do this with something like pfsense, but that's not that common.
You also have the option to put a piehole in your network. It is pretty easy if you have some technical knowledge but I would say that it is generally out of reach for the general population(non-tech folks).
But on android you just open the settings, search for 'private vpn' and paste an url. This is way easier to do for someone with no technical background. Even chatgpt should be able to correctly guide you through these steps.
Sounds probable to me... This is a great example of why I am by default anti-app unless there's a demonstrable benefit to the user (e.g. Offline mode or something). If the web version of Netflix goes away then I will never access it again. I will also never buy a "smart" TV. I leave the ball in Netflix's court.
At the end of the day, all I really care about is consistency. It's annoying to switch between projects which use different branch names to describe the same thing.
That being said, this is a dumb reason to introduce inconsistency.
I had this problem too until I forced myself to use the `gcm` alias from oh-my-zsh’s Git plugin. IIRC it checks out to master if it exists, else main. It has almost entirely removed this distinction from my life.
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