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Comment Re: My TV is a monitor (Score 1) 79

I have tried it. It's not really a solution for me.
- good for watching local content

but

- netflix support is a kludge at best, unofficial and no 4k (is the plugin a web browser wrapper?)
- other streamers are in the same boat
- no F1TV support at all

I don't blame kodi, its the streaming services that are the root problem here. But I can't make them support open platforms and I understand why they don't.

The upshot is that picking up a dedicated streaming box seems to be the best solution to get official support from the streaming services. The boxes tend to generally work well with kodi/plex/jellyfin etc to give you a way to play your local content alongside the streamers own apps in a small remote-control friendly manner.

I like the roku and the shield pro -- although both have been adding ads to their home screens. I'll probably pickup an appleTV box next since its still pretty clean. Its bad enough the streaming services themselves are devolving into ad-ridden crap, but as long as the ads are limited to the app itself, and i can delete the app and cancel the service if it goes to far. So far netflix generally just pushes its own content which is fine, and F1 is ad-free unless you count all of f1 as just being a giant sponsor circus.

Comment Re:TypeScript? (Score 3, Informative) 39

That surprised me, too. TypeScript is a very poorly-congealed ("designed" seems a bit strong) language.

Of the two popular scripting languages - python and ruby - python probably makes more sense as you can compile into actual binaries if you want.

For speed and parallel processing, which I'd assume they'd want, they'd be better off with Tcl or Erlang, both of which are much much better suited to this sort of work.

Comment Re:Wozniak - the real reason for Apple (Score 5, Insightful) 55

It's too convenient to just write off Jobs. The truth is somewhere in the middle, as it always is. The idea that plenty of others could have done what he did is just too dismissive. When he died the company was worth a third of a trillion dollars. Not just any sociopath can pull that off.

Comment I don't disagree. But... (Score 3, Insightful) 95

For their money, large companies want the proverbial throat to choke - even when they've never successfully choked the throats they've paid for. The footprint of open source in these companies often grew through bottom up implementation. The moment that somebody has to pay an ongoing support contract, it will become a financial and strategic decision. That means vendor management, tech and vendor downselection, risk analysis... the best-effort maintainer isn't going to fly.

If I were a betting man, I think the result would be a decline in usage - and that might be fine. If the model isn't working, that definitely needs addressing. But the companies most able to afford licensing are probably the ones least likely to pay for it.

Comment Re:Psilocybin? (Score 1) 27

There's legitimacy to that. Taking a potentially dangerous drug under the supervision of a doctor who knows how things are supposed to work, what side effects look like, with drugs of consistent purity and dosage, has a lot of advantages over winging it with stuff made up random chinese chemicals and toilet bowl cleaner.

Unless you're talking about cocaine etc. brought to the penthouse by a personal assistant or something. Plenty of ultra-rich celebs have killed themselves that way.

Comment How is the lack of govt information relevant? (Score 3, Insightful) 82

Assuming it's remotely true (and there's good reason for thinking it isn't), it still means the FBI director was negligent in their choice of personal email provider, that the email provider had incompetent security, and that the government's failure to either have an Internet Czar (the post exists) or to enforce high standards on Internet services are a threat to the security of the nation (since we already know malware can cross airgaps through negligence, the DoD has been hit that way a few times). The FBI director could have copied unknown quantities of malware onto government machines through lax standards, any of which could have delivered classified information over the Internet (we know this because it has also happened to the DoD).

In short, the existence of the hack is a minor concern relative to every single implication that hack has.

Comment Re:My TV is a monitor (Score 4, Informative) 79

A little computer with Mint on it does a great job accessing streaming as well as my NAS. And it doesn't report my activities to anyone.

What are you using for the streaming services? Netflix etc? A web browser?

If so, that's a complete non-starter; it fails the ease of use expectations of watching TV of the wife using a remote control to turn it on and make it go. (and honestly it fails my own expectations for that matter too; having to reach for a keyboard or mouse to watch a movie or stream a show is just clunky). It also limits you from watching content in 4k.

At the moment, I've got a RokuHD of some sort on one TV, and an nvidia shield on another one. Plex, netflix, f1tv, and a couple other things on both of them. The TV remote can fairly seamlessly control the TV/soundbar and the attached box and it works well, and passes the usability test, but both devices are still more ad-laden than I want.

I've also got computers and consoles hooked up to TVs for gaming and what not, but i find them utterly miserable to use for streaming. Their is no app for linux that I'm aware of. And even the app for Windows is regularly just complete ass to use, and its a PITA to switch from plex to netflix and back etc, and using them with a remote control is pretty trashy. So I've been using the aforementioned boxes for streaming as the least awful way to run things for some years now.

But if there's a better way now, I'm listening.

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