This post is inspired by my NAS HDD that has just spun its last spin. After 9.5y of 24/7 Service, the WD Red 4TB is off to the graveyard. It was clicking and whirring, the temperature 21c higher than the other three it shared a chassis with. It's done well, now rest in peace.

Then I looked at the 11yr old MacBook sitting underneath my 6yr old Lenovo laptop. Hmm, also aged but still working. A little bit of OpenCore Legacy Patcher and it's still grinding for test work, albeit a little slow even with a SSD. Then my home built PC running Debian. It is a 2018 built with a MSI motherboard and AM4 socket. The CPU was upgraded 6 months ago for the last time. No other changes though and it's still wicked fast. This box also runs a VM with all my sea sailing, Jellyfin, encodes all my media to AV1, and is also my daily driver. It's a wonderful box.

Hardware lasts a long time now in our world. There's no need for a 2 year bin off of phones, or a 3 year PC cycle that Dell would have believe. In heavy business, I understand the need for faster machines for business software, but for the average Joe, it's really not.

Anyway, what are your tech aged devices you still use, and why haven't you updated them?

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

$14 USD for new novels. $10 for novels from the 1970s, riddled with OCR errors.

Yes, I know you aren't paying for the "paper", you are paying for the content.

Yes, I know authors and people who work for publishers need to pay rent. I know servers cost money. Those costs and reasonable profits are more than covered several times over in eBook prices.

Problem:

I recently switched back to a desktop as my main computer, and was surprised to learn I couldn't use my speakers if my headphones were plugged in.

I don't use a desktop environment (just Sway), so I rely on pavucontrol as a GUI to control my audio.

I could use my headphones just fine while my speakers were plugged in, but when I switched to my speakers in pavucontrol's interface, they would not output audio. My headphones would stop playing (as expected), and pavucontrol's little "dancing bar" would indicate that the speaker's port was processing an audio signal (as expected), but no sound was actually being produced.

Solution:

The culprit ended up being something called "Auto-Mute" in ALSA. To disable auto-mute mode, you can either:

1. Run the command amixer sset "Auto-Mute" unmute in a terminal
2. Run the command alsamixer in a terminal
   2.1 Press F6 and select your sound card
   2.2 Ensure you're viewing playback settings by pressing F3
   2.3 Move the item selection over until you've selected auto-mute mode
   2.4 Press the down arrow key to switch it to "Disabled"

That fixed my issue.

For me, auto-mute mode stayed disabled after a reboot. You might need to run the command alsactl store to make the configuration persistent though. The Arch Linux Wiki article on ALSA has a "tips and tricks" section that goes into more detail:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Advanced_Linux_Sound_Architecture#Tips_and_tricks

I recently switched over my reading platform from Kobo to BookFusion. BookFusion lets you upload your own ebook files and sync them between devices, so I spent a lot of time de-DRMing my Kobo library and porting it over, as well as adding in some old de-DRMed books from my old Kindle.

For "traditional" titles I plan on still buying them on Kobo and then just stripping the DRM and transferring them over, but I also know there's an entire internet out there full of non-traditional publishing:

• Authors who sell their ebooks directly to consumers (e.g. Cory Doctorow)
• Publishers who sell ebooks directly to consumers (e.g. Boss Fight Books, Topatoco)
• Ebook bundle sites (e.g. StoryBundle)
• Public domain works (e.g. Project Gutenberg, Standard Ebooks)
• Assorted other stuff that doesn't really fit a simple category (e.g. this Planescape: Torment novelization)

I'm interested in adding some of these to my library, given that it feels like the "spirit" of BookFusion is to bring your own organic grassfed files, rather than glom them off of a DRMed service like I have been doing.

The hard part is that discoverability for stuff like this is really tough, since they're sort of just scattered across the internet. Furthermore, when I do tend to find stuff, I tend to find entire catalogs rather than individual titles. It's hard to know what's worth diving into from entire collections. That's why I'm hoping people can help me out by pointing me in the direction of specific stuff that they've loved!

With regards to recommendations, I want to leave the topic open to anything and everything. I don't want to limit this topic to just my tastes, in case other people find it useful.

If people do want to tailor some recommendations to me though, I tend to love sci-fi, nonfiction, LGBTQ stuff, videogame-related books, and comics/graphic novels (but only if the series are completed).

Important note: I am NOT looking for pirated books. I'm happy to pay for books I'm interested in, especially if they're supporting independent authors/publishers or online hobbyists.

Very similar to how the recipe book in the game "Potion Craft" is organized. I essentially want to be able to mark pages and assign an icon, letter, symbol, or whatever to the tab. Clicking the tab brings you to that page. I also want the freedom to arrange these tabs around the perimeter of the book.

I'm not even sure what search terms to use to find a software like this. I'm not looking for anything robust, just a simple reader app with minimal page marking with intuitive visual organization.

Does anything like this exist?

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Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle are most worth my attention?”

Rules:

• No grey market sales
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If posting a sale, it is strongly encouraged that you share why you think the available game/games are worthwhile.

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Find yourself watching tons of great videos on [insert chosen video sharing platform], but also find yourself reluctant to flood the Tildes front page with them? Then this thread is for you.

It could be one quirky video that you feel deserves some eyeballs on it, or perhaps you've got a curated list of videos that you'd love to talk us through...

Share some of the best video content you've watched this past week/fortnight with us!

I often tell myself that I'm "already dead". I lost my ego long ago and I often don't mind looking dumb or making mistakes, because at the end of the day, why does it matter? We're all going to die and my existence will not change the earth's future.

Thinking this way has GREATLY helped me look forward to the future and reach true happiness. It feels like whatever happens, I've already reached rock bottom so I can only go ahead.

Having said that, ever since 2016, every year has been better than the last. I now have a good fulfilling career, I have a very good group of friends, I'm good financially and I have all the freedom in the world.

Why do I live? I live for experiences, I live to create memories, I live to explore, I live to create, I live to better myself.

So, what are your reasons? I'm always curious about other people's life stories.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.