I just got an email stating that Stitcher, the podcast app that I use, "decided to discontinue operation of the Stitcher app and website effective August 29, 2023."

Any good recommendations for another podcast app? ETA: I listen on my Android phone.

Recently NordVPN rolled out an update which forced users to use an encrypted username and password combination when connecting through OpenVPN. I haven't seen any posts on this here, and it took me way longer than I want to admit troubleshooting this issue because I knew my original credentials were correct.

If you use a gluetun container for routing any of other containers traffic, you might have recently noticed a 500 Internal Service Error in your Health Status and when you check your logs you will find a AUTH_FAILED message.

Solution below:

1. Go to NordVPN website and log in (using your normal credentials)
2. Under accounts, services, click NordVPN
3. Click "Set up NordVPN Manually" at the bottom of the page
4. You will receive an email verification code, using whatever email you have set up for your NordVPN services. Type this code into the popup window.
5. Copy your new encrypted credentials for your Open VPN client settings.

This is my first post, please add tags as required.

Mixed feelings about it all.

I think Reddit suffers from the same ‘1 discussion keeps you coming back for ten years in hope of a repeat’ that most if not all social media struggles with. It also has excellent dogs in hilarious situations and because of the amount of users, a constant refresh of what should be a tired genre but which just dosnt seem to die.

I have enough respect for r/pics for the John Oliver death march, that I cant go back.

The recent PKM thread had me thinking about what folks are using as journaling app/portal. I do use Obsidian for my second brain right now and genuinely love it. But I find the mobile app on Android to be a bit clunky, if I'm honest. Seems slow to open even with very few plugins. For jounaling I've used DayOne for years. I started back when it was iOS/MacOS only, but then switched phone to Android and haven't been back. But now they have an app and web app for that. What I don't like is the somewhat goofy format it saves in and it's on their servers. They used to allow you to at least leverage your own Dropbox, but no longer.

For the past several months I've tried several FOSS options. Main criteria is that I could host it myself, supports offline entries stored in an open file format (preferably MarkDown), and had either multi platform app or a decent web app. That lead me to try these:

Memos
Pros:

• Great persistent web app
• Slick UI that is light and snappy
• markdown support
  Cons:
• Stuffs the .md inside a database file so can be a bit cumbersome to export data
• No offline support. There is a 3rd party app that hopes to implement it

Flatnotes
Pros:

• Incredibly simple
• Another easily deployed app
• Flat Markdown files
  Cons:
• Web app on mobile is almost unusable as in it doesn't scale well to smaller screens
• Very early development, but very likely to stay as minimalistic as it is now.
• No offline and very unlikely to ever have it

Joplin
Pros:

• Multi platform apps that perform well
• End-to-end encryption supported
• Could replace both DayOne and my To-do solution (Google Keep)
• Offline support
  Cons:
• More database stuff instead of flat markdown files

One solution I've been testing lately is using IAWriter to write to a 'Journal' folder within my Obsidian vault on Google drive Obsidian Vault > Journal > 2023.... for example. This works surprisingly well. Of course IAWriter is a bit spendy at $29 for Android and then more $ for other platforms as they're sold separately.

So I'm curious what other people are using for just simple daily journaling, random thoughts, etc. If there's an approach I've missed I'd love to hear it. Joplin is so dang close but not having the structure of plaintext files is a no go for me as I don't want to be trapped by any one product should something happen to the development down the road. Doesn't have to be free, but I want control of the entries either on my own server or cloud storage.

I have someone visiting the US from out of the country. They have a Google Pixel 6a, just need a temporary plan for a month or two. Mostly they're going to be home within wireless range, we're just looking for a little bit of data while going out. I imagine a few tens of MB/mo will suffice. Has anybody tried to do this recently? What should I expect to pay? I'm looking on Amazon, and the reviews seem filled with stories of being sold pre-expired SIMs.

I recently digitized some old home movies from my grandparents and looking through the film I realize I recognize almost no one. This got me thinking, I should go through this with my mother to help me identify family members as she's probably the last person who knows who anyone is.

Obviously I can just make a document with notes ex: 2:53 screen right, great uncle john"
But I'm hoping there's a more elegant solution in which I can keep info with the file and not some auxiliary document that dosent live in the same place.

I could just dump all that info into Metadata but that's maybe the lowest quality solution.
The xray function of Amazon prime video is the example of the best solution in a perfect world. (if you don't know, when you pause or bring up the context menu on prime video, there's a bar that identifies everyone one scene with a matching headshot)

I actually looked into it and there's an API that amazon uses for this called "RecognizeCelebrities" and uses images to train the program to recognize faces and populate it's menu. I'm not sure if it's open source but even if it was, it's over my level to use it practically I think.

The last option I can think of is using a video markup platform like frame.io but that's not really a long term solution.

Any ideas?

A lot of people want to talk about Reddit and that will likely continue. This is a place to post minor news updates, so that Reddit topics don't fill up the front page of ~tech.

(Up to you what counts as "minor.")

There was one which i found a long time ago via a post on r/nexpo or something similar about a subreddit which appeared to be some sort of cult, i dont really remember the details now though. Also, apologies if this isn't the right board.

Does anyone know of a good pair? or where I might find more info on the matter, like a comparison website with in-depth reviews?

My previous ones (Nokia BH 905i) are still fine although they are showing heavy signs of wear and don't support the latest features, like LE etc.

I might want to look into something potentially smaller, like in-ears with a flat surface on the outside so I might be able to use them in my motorcycle helmet. ANC is prefered and so is good sound quality. Price is about 250-300eu max.

I've been seeing some cool software in the church space lately with lots of fancy bells and whistles that handle many different aspects of running a church (social, presentation, tithing, etc.). However, not all churches, especially small ones, can afford them or have members savvy enough to set it all up and maintain/operate them. I thought this could be a cool thread for free and or open source software that churches can use can use (Does not necessarily need to be design specifically for churches).

EDIT
Here is a list of paid examples:

• Renewed Vision
  • ProPresenter
  • ProVideoPlayer
  • ProVideoServer
  • Scoreboard
  • ProContent
• Microsoft Office
  • PowerPoint
  • Excel
• Google
  • Slides
  • Sheets
  • Forms

Here is a short list of FOSS alternatives:

• Free Show
• Owncast
• Rock RMS
• Choyr
• OBS
• OpenLP
• WorshipTools

Some years ago, I bought the Philips OneBlade around the time it was announced. My beard grows very fast and covers a large portion of my face, so daily shaving with a razor blade is often a chore and can leave some pretty nasty rashes on my face sometimes.

The Philips OneBlade was perfect for my situation as it was a quick and painless solution to shaving. I even changed my style to something like a permanent stubble using the guards included in the package. However, after some time, I decided that I preferred my beard longer and ended up abandoning my electric razor.

Recently, though, I've decided to go back to the old stubble look and have been searching for a decent electric razor. I was pretty disappointed to see that the best product for me would still be the Philips OneBlade. It just seems that there is no other competitor in this type of electric razor (or maybe I just haven't looked enough), which I think is a bit strange considering it has been more than 5 years since the OneBlade was released. Even the OneBlade models from Philips still seem to be the same ones made back in 2016. Is the market for electric razors really so stagnant? Or is that Philips hold such a heavy monopoly on this kind of razor? I'm thinking of maybe buying the pro version this time, but even that seems to be only a fancy clipper attached to the same old product that I had.

I would like to hear your thoughts on this and know if you have any recommendations for electric razors that would be just as small and practical.

I’m creating a special video for my parents’ anniversary and want to share it privately. I don’t want anyone to see ads before, during or right after it. I’m not monetizing it and don’t care about viewer metrics.

Right now I’m trying to decide between subscribing to Vimeo or just placing the file in my Google Drive and sharing out the link.

The file won’t exceed 5GB.

Would paying for a service like Vimeo really be worth it when I could just share out the file for free?

Would appreciate any suggestions or recommendations from content creators.

I subscribed to NY Times for years mostly because of the OnTech email newsletter. I liked it for the critical analysis of the tech world with lots of references and perspectives. Shira has since moved to Washington Post and her work there is more on the side of consumer advice and less critical journalism. And NY Times so far haven't found a replacement.

Can anyone recommend another source worth following instead? Another newspaper, a substack, blog or whatever. The podcast Tech Won't Save Us is in the ballpark, though I find it sometimes overly critical and I prefer something to read. I do like the tech coverage done by The Atlantic but is not a consistent source.

javascript:window.location='[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=UU%27+ytInitialData.metadata.channelMetadataRenderer.externalId.substring(2)](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=UU%27+ytInitialData.metadata.channelMetadataRenderer.externalId.substring(2)

This puts every video of a channel into one playlist. Makes listening to music channels so much easier.

I also use Pilgrim.

P.S. https://tildes.net/~tech/10ko/little_12ft_io_bookmarklet

So I am a member of a social/hobby group that has been doing hybrid meetings with some people attending via zoom. We have picked up a troll who finds a way to join the meeting, waits about fifteen minutes then starts yelling expletives and insults until he is expelled. He doesn't rejoin until the next meeting.

We are not particularly tech oriented people, and I don't personally organize the zoom link so don't have much knowledge about what is currently being done re security.

Does anyone have tips or advice? I know I haven't given you a lot to work with. Thanks.

I'm talking about this 2 TB LaCie Portable SSD and this Samsung T7 2 TB SSD. They both have the same ~1 GB/s read-write speed, the same 3-year limited warranty, and the same USB 3.2 Gen2 connector. But the LaCie drive is $369, while the Samsung drive is $130.
Am I missing something? Or is it just luxury tax?

I recently had an SSD fail on me, less than a year old. Nothing important was on it and I'll be getting a warranty replacement, but this got me thinking - I still don't have a proper backup strategy. If my boot drive failed with most of my documents on it, that'd be lost or be expensive to recover.

What do you do to back up your data? What do you recommend others do? We have things like cloud backups, disks that act as a full backup and a whole lot more. Personally, I want to be able to set something up and not worry about it going wrong.

The Verge, Washington Post, CNET, Engadget reviews

RIP to my Pixel Fold: Dead after four days

Haven't had time to go through all the reviews but as it's a major new device from Google I thought there might be some interest here.

The theses I would like to discuss goes as follows (and I'm paraphrasing): during the last 15 years, low interest rates made billions of dollars easily available to startups. Unfortunately, this huge influx of venture capital has led to no perceivable innovation.

Put cynically, the innovation startups have brought us across the last 15 years can be summarized as (paraphrasing again):

• An illegal hotel chain destroying our cities
• An illegal taxi company exploiting the poor
• Fake money for criminals
• A plagiarism machine/fancy auto-complete

Everything else is either derivative or has failed.

I personally think spaceX has made phenomenal progress and would have probably failed somewhere along the way without cheap loans. There's also some biotech startups (like the mRNA vaccines that won the race to market during covid) doing great things, but often that's just the fruits of 20 years of research coming to fruition.

Every other recent innovation I can think of came from a big player that would have invested in the tech regardless, and almost all of it is "just" incremental improvements on several decades old ideas (I know, that's what progress looks like most of the time).

What do you think? Do you have any counterexamples? Can you think of any big tech disruptions after quantitative easing made money almost free in 2008?

And if you, like me, feel like we're stuck on a plateau - why do you think that is?

Would love to watch videos that are well designed edited, especially done so in an original manner but have a low subscriber count (less than 75k subscribers?). The content could be vlogs, video essays, travel, design!

I recently learned about the Wooting two HE, a keyboard with analog input. The interesting feature is something they call "rapid trigger", which defines the actuation point as when the key changes direction (up or down), rather than the key reaching a specific height.

I'm wondering how much faster this could let someone press or release a key. I tried searching online but I can't find anyone who has measured the average time for typists to reach the actuation point, or even the average velocity of a key-press.