The web is designed for humans to use, so if Atlas can monitor us - how we book train tickets for example - it can learn how to better navigate these kinds of processes.

That is called malware. Or at the very least, Open AI should be paying the users for basically getting their browsing data for free, not other way around.

Second, I object to it being called a Google killer in the article. It is based on Chromium whose future is basically in Google’s hands right now for all Intents and purposes. The days of multiple Web browsers are gone. We have the same thing in new clothing. Opera ditched it’s rendering engine for Chromium, MS ditched Trident for Chromium.

Currently, there are basically only three real browser engines : Chromium, Gecko which powers Firefox Derivatives and Safari(Blinkit? I am not sure of its exact name). Even if Open AI’s new browser (or Perplexity 's for that matter) takes market by storm, they will remain dependent on Google because the underlying code is. They can’t be truly independent unless they have their separate engine. And if the new Ladybird project shows one thing, it is that shipping a new browser might be easy, but a new rendering engine is very tough.

I wasn’t expecting tommydan from YouTube to be mentioned here :p. Best of all he does, what companies themselves couldn’t do, maintain the original aspect ratio. I remember that Shemaroo restored certain old Hindi films but the original aspect ratio for them was 4:3 whilst the restored ran into 16:9.

In fact, I have been seeing the odd old Hindi film from an unexpected source. The Russian site Ok. I am still not sure if it is a social media site or not since the English UI is not there for me but for all Intents and purposes, it is used to upload videos only. Some guy ended up uploading whole filmography of Rajesh Khanna on the site (much of it mirrored later to Archive.org). Whilst the irony remains that there is probably not a single legal hub to see the lesser known films.

Heck, I was hunting an out of print (like literally unavailable to stream or purchase anywhere short of anyone having the original CD/DVD) 1996 film and the only way was to pirate it (from a single source).

In some cases, piracy becomes an act of media preservation ( cues back to when BBC wiped some Doctor Who episodes in the late sixties and only way few were gotten back was because some folks had gotten audio transcribed or something at home).

From Kinks to Camel to obscure Krautrock stuff like Dissidenten, Out of Focus, Embryo. Ironically I have < 50 Hindi songs in my collection because the era I like the most [50s - 60s], good quality stuff is hard to come by. Like the files even on Soulseek or torrents are so incredibly compressed that it is a pity. The vocals sound so tinny that one wonders that how did the original masters sounded like.

I didn’t knew foobar2000 was available for mobile as well. I only knew it because it was so popular as a lightweight modular player for Windows. I used to be on Strawberry, a Clementine fork on Linux before moving to Deadbeef, which is like Foobar2000 but misses few features.

Once can stream audio from YouTube via terminal on Linux but problem is all of that is limited to 128 kbps AAC. There is no way to stream proper 256 kbps AAC that YouTube Music Premium provides. One can download such streams via yt-dlp (it needs to be given authorization cookies) but there is currently no way to stream high quality audio from YouTube without using the webpage.

Could you tell me an alternative that allows for third party clients? On Spotify, I can configure a terminal client even on Linux and stream music with very low overhead [contrast with YTMusic with required a permanent browser tab opened]. Yes, local media streaming can do that but there is only so much space at one time on my HDD.

I heard of it. It is shipping in two variants, right? I just hope it makes general availability worldwide and not just a handful of countries (looks at Fairphone).

I moved to weechat. It is terminal only. I had setup some keybindings either ways on hexchat to navigate faster via keyboard between channels / servers and weechat can replicate them (albeit it takes a little time to read documentation in this case). Many folks also are hard on users of irssi but weechat met my simplistic needs.

Not to mention almost any distro will have a packaged version of weechat in its repos.

I don’t understand why Mozilla is so smitten with this extension. They already removed it from AMO, why are policing it now. A tiny minority of folks use Firefox(as a percentage of market share) worldwide and only some part of it use this extension. Why go after it so hard?

They are policing it today, tomorrow they may say uBlock Origin violates our policies as well. Sure, technically one might be able to install via changing about:config toggle but that’s a bridge too far for most users.

It might seem I am making a huge mental jump for equating a paywall bypass extension to an adblocker extension, but in the eyes of corporations, both kind of users are equally loathed by them.

If you have a YTM subscription, it does not make sense to play in Outer tune. Any YTM Streaming client streams in 128 kbps whilst YTM Premium streams at 256 kbps when set at High.

One can download songs at 256 kbps though if they have YTM Premium via yt-dlp using setcookiesoption. This is useful if someone has large custom playlists where searching via Soulseek is a chore.

Of course, it made a mockery of everything you know of Windows because it’s not like Windows. Neither is it meant to be used like one nor is it heading in that direction (not to mention that Windows is one monotonous thing, like if you know your hands across one install of Windows, you know it all. The same is not true about Linux. A Void Linux user might still not be as adept at a Gentoo install).

You are contradicting yourself. First you call it magic and then you call it not very deep. If it’s the latter, why do so many production servers run on Linux?

Some Linux distros like Debian have a fantastic reputation for stability. Sure, bugs still exist. I personally struggle with a distro agnostic bug that breaks workflows often on my current setup. But things have come a long way. And it’s better than Windows non customizable privacy invading approach any day.

The twin advantages Windows has is wrt games (though that is slowly being covered) and more importantly, specialized software. I know folks IRL who have to use Windows just because their work requires it.

Yes, Sony is one of the last holdouts to make a flagship that still has both. They used to be really bad at software updates but have somewhat upped their ante on that. The price is still somewhat expensive and charging significantly slow (peak of 27 W is ironically slower than my budget Android phone).

3.5mm jack and SD card slot make a significant difference. I have a cheap phone but have a 256 gigs latter slotted in inside to give some storage. And former is even more important because there are lots of times when I am just listening to say, music or podcast in a still situation where true wireless buds don’t make sense. Why waste battery of expensive wireless buds when one can put decent IEMs in?

Fairphone does make wireless earbuds with replaceable batteries. That being said, does the Fairphone 6 not come with a 3.5mm jack? Sony still ships it’s Xperia series with both the jack and microsD slot, so that is certainly possible.

I know Fairphone would probably be quite expensive even for the price it offers if it ever came to my country, but for the update cycle they offer and repairable build (looks at my broken screen of old Nokia), it actually makes sense. I don’t particularly need the highest end specs, I just need a mid ranger phone that’s sufficiently fluid and Fairphone fits the bill.

In fact, I was more intrigued by their earbuds. IIRC, they are the only one with a replaceable battery. For a set of wireless ones, that is a huge step. I don’t think their sound profile was/is as good as Sony’s or Sennheiser’s but the simple fact that they don’t have to end up as e waste makes them way more value for money in the long run.

How is the battery holding up (after how many years?). Correct me if I am wrong, it was based on homegrown Tizen OS right.

Yes, I hope Pebble launches internationally (availability in most countries). I hope to daily drive my Galaxy Watch until it’s battery gives away and then looking for another alternative.

Nothing’s original phones and it’s sub brand CMF was not focused on US market at all and could only be bought via developer programmer there. It was more geared towards India and the prices matched the specifications there.

IIRC, Nothing’s original phones were made in southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu and it’s previous top tier phone was less than half this price here in India. But with this one, they jumped the gun and made a harrowing decision.

They still have a good array of products in form of Cmf phones (I was close to buying one until I saw it lacked a 3.5mm jack) and earbuds for lower end of the market but they really are being over optimistic here.

Not necessarily. Pixel phones are still very good at photography and crucially, will get 7 years of software upgrades. I would be surprised if this phone hits anywhere close. 165Hz IMO is overkill (heck, many argue 144 Hz on Motorola models is high enough as well).

That being said, the 80 W fast charging does blow away the Pixel (but then many entry level phones as well. The Pixel Pro has 27 W still right?) and raw benchmarks would be higher as well.

Huh, that shouldn’t happen. Whilst Samsung gatekeep certain features for its models only (like ECG for instance though one can bypass it by sideloading the SHM Monitor app from XDA), basic features do work fine with most models. I have a non Samsung device as well.

The watch getting too hot is a problem. I have seen it slowing down it’s charging speed (if not outright refusing to charge) in summers here.

It seems like you updated your webpage in the wake of the meme incident. But it has made it unbearable to read. Whilst I was able to read the article in reader mode, the ~ page is virtually an eye sore to browse right now.