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I'm mostly very happy with my LG C4 as a home theatre centerpiece, and I did have it online so that I could use the apps for YouTube and Jellyfin. However, the lack of support for modern 4k rips (HEVC+DTS) ended up being a dealbreaker and I finally ditched the built in software for a fire stick instead.

No transcoding, no weird codec issues, just the raw files direct streamed from the underpowered Unraid box, into the back of the AVR where the audio is handled correctly and the video is sent to the screen.


I've never heard of any of them; I guess it's geared toward build-it-yourself or kit-type devices? I can't imagine a serious aftermarket FW not supporting a single Kindle or Kobo device.

Ask amazon and Kobo to open their system if it's so important for you. The devs have probably more interesting things to do than playing wack-a-mole with a multi-billion organisation

I'm not knocking the devs for the choice to target open hardware, only remarking that that choice signals the project is for hackers, not regular consumers.

I would say that there is no such thing as firmware targeted for regular consumers. Regular consumers do not know what firmware is.

I am still disappointed that there is no kindle sized hardware that this can run on, but I think that has to do with manufacturers rather than firmware developers.


I mean, a) regular consumers are just gonna buy a Kindle, do nothing with its software, and only buy books from Amazon. But also b) the way a lot of these hobby things expand is that if they get some market traction, someone starts making and selling pre-assembled, retail-friendly versions of the thing. Look at wacky keyboards, for instance: Used to be that you had to solder your own weird ergo split, now there are companies like ZSA and Keebio that'll make really nice versions as finished products.

Wide angle lenses have been a thing in real estate photography since forever, but you would always have the reference of the furniture to ground your perception. Having furniture be slightly downsized is diabolical.

I've started to see this on Etsy and Wayfair too, where there will be a listing that is clearly just MDF flatpack being resold from China, but the AI-generated images wildly exaggerate the proportions of it.

Here's a recent example: https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/4509158065/corner-wall-shelf...

Ironically, ChatGPT is decently good at ferreting these out. Like I sent it a screenshot of that listing and it not only helped me find where the original item was for sale, but also pointed out how the dimensioned diagram shows it as being just 49" tall, whereas the "in real life" image looks like it's at least six feet, based on it coming up over the top of the picture frame.

I ended up engaging a local woodworker to make me a piece like it instead. Obviously an order of magnitude difference in price, but it will actually be real solid walnut and finished to match my dining table.


Even funnier is that first picture shows the bottom panel overlapping the baseboard in a way that is impossible in real life.

The merchant is even called “VibesPlante”

I run the crafty controller Docker container on my unraid machine and it's easy and pretty hands off.

Earth is 12700 km in diameter, so such an image would be 688 pixels across.

Basically you won't be reading license plates but you'd see enough to identify evidence of very large scale construction, and with multiple images over time I bet you could draw even more conclusions.


We could make a license plate big enough that aliens could see it and know we are sophisticated.

Nah, let's just put a big sign "Kilroy was here", so they don't bother with the "mostly harmless" planet.

If four out of seven digits were blurred out, then they would really see how sophisticated we are: we have the concept of privacy!

Even without the rebar rusting, I think you can still have issues with the steel and concrete having difference thermal expansion properties, particularly for outdoor strucutures where a freeze/thaw cycle is in play.

Basically the rebar works itself loose over time and creates micro-fractures in the concrete that then get moisture in them and can cause expansion damage— all without the rebar itself ever rusting or "failing".


Maybe so, OP mentioned they were very similar and that still seems to hold for stainless. How about the aggregates within? The composite makeup can result in different CoTE than the individual aggregates, I think that's one part of concrete sidewalks cracking though, sometimes near shaded/unshaded boundaries. Roman concrete supposedly had some self healing properties before the cracks grew, from the lime inclusions.

To build without tension you have to build structures that basically look like Roman structures [1]: a bunch of tightly spaces arches so that the entire thing is in compression, with no meaningful tension anywhere.

But it turns out that's pretty inconvenient; we really like doing dozens of feet of span for highway overpasses, building floors, and everything else. So we put rebar in all the concrete and just acknowledge that that means it has an absolute maximum lifespan of a century or two, and will certainly not last for millennia the way pure concrete in pure compression can.

[1]: https://www.theartnewbie.com/blog/rome/roman-arch


The “it’s built so everything is under compression” is great thing to bring up, but fyi your link is AI generated, filled with senseless repetition and “it’s not just x, it’s y”.

Looking it up on archive.org shows it was generated this year.


Blah, so you're right. I was just looking for a link with some representative reference pictures, but I should have done more diligence. Thanks for pointing it out.


> To build without tension you have to build structures that basically look like Roman structures [1]: a bunch of tightly spaces arches so that the entire thing is in compression, with no meaningful tension anywhere.

Until an earthquake occurs, and then all of those mostly-down forces turn into side-to-side forces.


or go and revive Gothic architecture

While that's true, editions are more about leaving legacy decisions behind while keeping the backward compatibility promise.

Even if you're in one of those unconventional settings (say, a bare-metal microcontroller or something), you'd probably still start from edition 2026 and mutate your settings accordingly, rather than using the defaults that are 26 years old.


Yeah, that's important. Rust's 2015 edition is worse, not just different from what you'd write today with 2024 edition. There's a clear direction of travel.

Key phrases make sense to put in place, but another easy safeguard is:

"Before you send anything to anyone, ever, call them back. Doesn't matter if it's me, the bank, a lawyer, whatever... tell them 'hang on I have another call coming in, let me just call you back in a few minutes, okay?'"


I overheard a cab driver being scammed by someone claiming to be HMRC (UK version of the IRS), and when he asked to call them back they managed to convince him to call them back on Viber, and he was about to when I intervened and pointed out to him that 1) what I'd overheard was blatantly a scam, 2) if he was unsure, to go to their official website and find their number...

If you're going to get people to call you back, it has the problem of ensuring that they call you back on your real number - giving reasons why they have to call you back on some other number is way too easy ("I've lost my phone", "my phone is at home", and so on)


Also, make sure to use official website, not just Google search, or any chat agent question, the SEO are sometimes poisoned with scam phone numbers.

I consider myself always to be wary of scams and my trust-level is zero when they call me, but I recently almost got myself hooked on an airline support call. I google searched the support number and trusted the AI summary on top and called it, they asked me my reservation number and I happily provided. With the reservation number they have public access to the entire reservation details, they knew my name, my flight, my co-passenger details everything. I called to do a reservation for my pet which is normally not done online. their problem, they got greedy and asked me more than pet travel, iirc they said there was a problem with one of my flights, it wasn't paid and I had to repay on the call. If they just followed along instead of going by the script I would have paid the pet travel amount.


you need to be able to call them back on your own accord. not by them giving you a number to call or calling the same nr back again

Not a thorough safeguard, if scammers have half a brain cell they can provision a VOIP number for such a request. They’re nothing if not accommodating.

You're supposed to call them back on a number you know is really that person/company. This ensures the person you're talking to is actually from your bank and not just calling from a random number and saying "I'm from your bank," or even spoofing a real number of your bank or a family member, because when you call back it will go to the real person and not the impostor.

This is a very useful precaution for banks, and for or calls that come from a family member's real phone number.

But scammers will just open with "I'm in trouble and my phone died" or "I'm in jail calling from a pay phone" and calling back won't do anything to help with that.


Yes, that's my point. There will be a "reason" why the callback needs to be another number.

Also, given at least in America, our cell phone providers STILL haven't fully blocked caller ID spoofing (last I checked, they just add some tiny icon in the rare case that the CID is trustable, and I'd bet 99.9% of people don't even know that exists!) they can spoof the initial call as your number and many targets will probably mistakenly think the CID match is good enough to just skip it, especially in this "very urgent situation" with you being held at knifepoint by the corrupt third-world cops or whatever.


You call them back on the actual number - e.g. the official number of the bank, or the contact number of your friend, or the phone of your kid, etc, that you know or can find independently.

Not any old random number they give you.


"They say they're going to cut a finger off every time you hang up."

"I guess we'll start calling you Pinky"

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