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Majestic

@ Majestic @lemmy.ml

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Joined
2 yr. ago

  • Hard drive prices have surged by an average of 46% since September — iconic 24TB Seagate BarraCuda now $500 as AI claims another victim

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  • I've watched hard drive prices go from $12-$13/TB to $18 over the past 9 months. Someone posted on datahoarder about a WD 24TB drive that's gone up $70 in the past 50 days.

    I just hope the new hard drive prices hold steady from manufacturers. Right now new datacenter drives are about $25.5/TB MSRP which kind of caps what refurbs can go for because no one is going to pay $23/TB when they can get new with a longer life and better warranty for a few dollars more. But if those go up enough no reason you couldn't see $22/TB this year for even the budget manufacturer recertified refurbs.

    I checked and I got a 14TB drive for $150 in January 2025, they're now $250 or more for the same. Really have to hope none of my drives fail in the next 2 years or possibly longer if this whole AI bubble is just a push to get people off personal computers and sell them cloud compute, cloud storage, etc. Rentier-ism because no other way to keep investors happy and profits high while keeping the proles obediently surveilled slaves in your panopticon.

  • Lemmings who enjoy eating buldak original or hotter noodles. Do you feel nothing when you eat hot buffalo wings? Do you just drown food in hot sauce on a regular basis?

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  • There's definitely something to be said for building up a tolerance to heat. I put peppers, especially ground hot peppers (various varieties) on a lot of my food. I'd say at least 5/7 dinners a week in an average week I try to find a way to work in some sort of spicy.

    The point though isn't just heat, it's about flavor too in combination with the heat sensation. I've eaten and enjoyed buldak noodles but they are kind of mild to my tastes. I tend to make mine by adding oil and stir frying them longer at the end as well as adding additional ground hot peppers while preparing to increase the heat level to something fun for me. I've tried 2x and it's fine but it has more heat than flavor, the other Samyang offer a better flavor and heat profile and I can doctor them up on my own. I do like the Samyang black sauce to add to protein like tofu before baking/frying it and it can produce an interesting flavor especially when used with a few other things like soy sauce and some spices.

    So I think it's just exposure and building tolerance. If you keep eating foods at that spiciness level you'll get used to them. You may still experience a little sweat but it'll be more tolerable and less intense as you acclimate.

  • Iran’s army pledges to defend national interests after US backs protesters

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  • It’s a very desperate statement. It’s the statement of a government fearing losing control and lashing out with maximum threats.

    If it’s true of course. It could be made up to give that exact impression.

  • Russia sends submarine to escort tanker the US tried to seize off Venezuela, WSJ reports

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  • Well that didn’t help considering the US just seized it in an act of illegal piracy. Putin is a coward who wouldn’t let them fire on Americans I have no doubt.

    What he should do at the least now is pirate 1 American ship and detain its crews pending the release of this Russian vessel and its crew.

    But expect him to placate the bully and throw away all the undermining of US/NATO invincibility Ukraine had done by sitting on his hands.

    Bullies are emboldened by no one pushing back meaningfully on their abuses.

  • Big Surprise: Legal Story Changes as Maduro Brought to Court

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  • Anonymous = FBI / CIA.

    Don't believe anything they say especially on foreign relations topics.

  • Stephen Miller Asserts U.S. Has Right to Take Greenland

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  • So you signed a piece of paper. A treaty with a nation that broke treaties (with native Americans) since the start of its existence and you expect a century old piece of paper with a country that has been breaking treaties for twice that long to be worth anything?

    Lol

  • Web hosting company deletes archive of 300+ murdered Gaza journalists' work

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  • Porkbun.

  • Cube me

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  • Resident Evil (2002)

  • Can anyone recommend a privacy respecting 4K streaming device?

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  • Not directly. There are some hacky work-arounds that may or may not work:

    https://redlib.catsarch.com/r/Stremio/comments/18s55cy/how_to_use_stremio_with_infuse_on_apple_tv/

    The only way I know of that’s possible is to use web.stremio.com on your iPhone and copy the movie link and paste it to the Infuse app on your phone and then if you have iCloud Sync enabled in Infuse on your iPhone and Apple TV it will show the movie available to play with metadata and everything when you refresh the Infuse app on the Apple TV :)

    https://redlib.catsarch.com/r/debridmediamanager/comments/12id1dj/streaming_movies_and_tv_shows_on_apple_tv_using/ This suggests adding it as a webdav source may work.

  • Can anyone recommend a privacy respecting 4K streaming device?

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  • You have 3 options:

    1. Android TV/Google: bad for privacy, some devices can be customized for slightly more with tweaks, ADB, etc
    2. Apple TV: pretty private compared to Google, no ads out of the box on Home Screen, nice hardware that lasts awhile.
    3. Wilderness of roll your own on a mini-PC, raspberry pi, etc: no ads, private. But pain in the ass, no 4k, no full HD (720p max), no HDR, no atmos sound because not locked down with DRM for streaming services so not approved. Choose this only if most of your content is self provided Blu-ray’s or yo ho type stuff and/or YouTube. Otherwise miserable experience.

    As far as 1) goes there are some better options like Dune-HD (make sure to get a Netflix certified model so you get 4k support from streaming services), and some customization via changing launchers and such for more privacy.

    However only options 2 and 3 are really more private IMO and “fixes” for Android TV devices mostly are in the form of blocking ads and allowing side loading of say a custom version of YouTube with ad blocking so don’t and can’t address the under the hood spying Google is more aggressive about.

    As to getting away from American. Good luck, both major platforms are American companies. Only other option is Chinese fork of Android and it’s no good for western streaming or use outside China. Otherwise roll your own but also provide your own content and that gets you away from them. A mini-pc is great for that with an air mouse but it’s not the same finely polished experience though can be decent with a little work.

  • Grok is spreading misinformation about the Bondi Beach shooting

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  • False slander (ironic considering what we’re discussing).

    Only slurs are auto removed including a very common one against women pertaining as well to female dogs. You can say fuck, shit, asshole, etc.

  • Berlin: Police can secretly enter homes for state trojan installation. Gestapo is back I guess.

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  • I predict that this is going to be backfire almost immediately because cops are going to be caught eagerly breaking into premises to do this.

    Eh. They're not that foolish if they're already going to the lengths of doing it this clandestinely. They'll just bring one of their robo-dogs with a WiFI jammer on it like DHS does these days. That or go in the back door. That or disconnect them from the internet by sending someone up a pole or to the utility cabinet down the street or a call to their ISP. It's really easy to get around most of those WiFI doorbells because they're reliant on 1) an active easily jammed wifi signal 2) internet.

    Some are fancy enough to have SD card back-up but how often do most people check that? And I admit one could for only a bit more money put in an installation that would force them to tamper with it in a way that would leave tells for you but most cases this won't be an issue and in those where it is they'll probably just dress up like non-cop thugs and smash or cover the camera and most people wouldn't suspect that that was done for the cops to plant malware. They could also just cut power to your house long enough to enter, turn it back on once inside to install their stuff on your machines, radio and turn off again, exit, turn back on and all most people would know is your house lost power.

    Thing is they've been allowed for a while to force ISPs to cooperate in doing man-in-the-middle to insert malware into software downloads on suspects in Germany.

    So for example you (or your computer on its own as part of auto-update) go to update your totally cool game, your ISP under police orders slips in an altered update executable and unless the game checksum validates (and with your ISP's help they can impersonate any IP they want to possibly give their own checksum back, though whether they can/can choose to undermine certificate system by issuing false certificates is likely a bigger problem and not one normal cops can overcome if good practices (certificate chain pinning, not accepting say one issued from Nazi-State-ISP#2 instead of the expected one) are followed which they often aren't) it executes malware which yes grabs and downloads a real update for you but also installs police backdoor.

    If you are in Germany or really paranoid anywhere you want to where possible check update files you download against the provided checksum or if more paranoid on virustotal to make sure they've been seen before and aren't totally new cop malware. Of course this can't protect you from auto-update mechanisms on a lot of software so if it's an active risk you need to ensure your computer while doing such things is connected to a VPN so your ISP cannot alter the transmitted data or even see it. A good firewall that controls connections can be used to prevent auto-updaters that aren't able to be configured not to auto-install from being vulnerable to this until such time you turn it off after connecting to a VPN. It's not generally a great idea to run out of date software though as it opens up more problems so you also have to be on top of regularly doing this.

    And obviously in cases like this the MitM protection won't help if they can just break in. At this point you need to fully encrypt your devices and have tamper-evident hardwired systems and automated alerts as well as investigate suspicious events like power or internet outages. And even that won't help you if they're resorting to implanting malware in firmware on your devices and have that ability which I'm soon the zionists will soon be selling if they aren't already. So basically start running TempleOS on an FPGA you keep locked in a safe in your basement under the watch of a hardwired camera system with back-up power and an unauthorized underground line to a cellular modem (with battery backup why not) you've installed in your neighbor's attic without their knowledge or permission which live-streams and records to two servers simultaneously located in Russia and Hong Kong.

  • My hard drive keeps clicking like files are being accessed but I'm not doing anything in that filesystem and the indicator light doesn't indicate any usage.

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  • If the drive previously wasn't making this noise (as in it had been filled with data, been in use for days-weeks and wasn't ever making this noise) and it doesn't happen in response to data writes (even hours after the fact) then it might be a cause for concern that the drive could be dying.

    In general it's a good idea to have back-ups of any important data but I'd really ensure that's the case here and assume it could imminently fail. In general the sound of hard drives changing (that is sounding different in either idle noises or active writing/reading noises) is a cause for concern for potential drive failure though it could be other things and as drives age they can sometimes change sound signatures as mechanical components age without necessarily failing (could go on working fine for years).

    That said there are normal processes in drives that can make noise:

    • Some sort of operation driven by your OS itself, I won't begin to get into all of them but there could be something accessing things in the background, doing file table or journaling operations, writes, checks, etc on the file system itself, just low level maintenance stuff.
    • SMR drives may continue to write and shuffle data for quite some time after being written to, especially if it was a large amount of data. Though this should still even in the case of multiple terabytes probably be resolved within 12 hours.
    • Many drives, especially high capacity enterprise drives do make a -soft- clicking sound as a result of the arms sweeping the surface when idle but not off to if I recall correctly spread around lubricant or some sort of basic mechanical maintenance. It's part of the normal drive operations. It's possible it occurs more frequently in response to a massive amount of writes previously like filling a drive or may not be activated until a certain amount of data is written, I'm not really sure how that works as that would probably be proprietary information to the manufacturer.

    Should I be worried about this? To my paranoid mind it feels like something is slowly reading my files with some exploit to bypass the indicator light to fly under the radar.

    How would it do this? Is it installing hacked firmware to your enclosure too? I doubt you're that valuable of a target.

    If you're worried about malware then back up your stuff, nuke the install and reinstall from scratch. I wouldn't worry about it if this is the only thing you're seeing and find it unlikely.

  • What's more dangerous nowadays: To not update Win11, or to update it?

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  • Your options if you wish to stick with Windows:

    • Windows 10 LTSC (massgrave activators and has a guide for getting an ISO for it) which means a reinstallation (best option with Windows, least enshittification, still keep security updates but have to back up your stuff and reinstall everything) though this may not be a long-term plan if you play video games as I expect many places may drop Windows 10 support by 2028-29 end of ESU rather than 2032 end of LTSC support.
    • Windows 11 but change to LTSC (massgrave can do this)
    • Windows 11 but change to Enterprise license (massgrave can do this) and use Windows Group Policy settings to set target for updates to the current OS build version number which will delay feature updates for I believe up to 6-12 months but allow you immediate security updates. Bad news is you still get the new "features" but good news is they're delayed significantly and maybe by the time you have to "upgrade" Microsoft has tweaked them to be moderately less bad and much less buggy.

  • You have complete control over your franchise of choice, what are you retconning?

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  • Star Trek.

    Everything after Voyager gets axed completely. 100% retconned. Doesn't exist. You can't even joke about happenings in it in any new works.

    Voyager and DS9 themselves get trimmed down. DS9 loses 75% of its episodes, Dominion war erased, mundane space station stuff instead, no religious weirdness validated. Voyager gets better ending but retains most of its episodes.

    ToS gets turned into legendary chronicles rather than full canon with the more absurd less science bits cut out or reduced to the fantasies of the chronicler. Main stories and characters retained with >=80% of it surviving. Movies from both ToS and TNG era retain full canon status.

    It is established that alternative dimensions are extremely limited in number, you cannot do Marvel universe #69 stuff with it, the main one is the nega-universe with evil everything and a few other isolated pocket universes that are short-lived and unstable (often as a result of warp core implosion weirdness and such).

    All existing writers and producers currently associated or associated since the end of the Voyager era are summarily fired with prejudice. New ones are hired and quizzed by me to ensure at least the main producers are communists like Roddenberry and do not want to turn my hopeful FALGSC property into grim-dark in space IP number 3. Prominent transgender characters are MANDATORY in the new series and other steps will be taken to drive every last reactionary out of what's left of the fan-base.

    It becomes studio policy to viciously copyright strike anyone uploading video of retconned parts of the IP to any platform as well as to bully journalist insiders with access into adopting the new line by excluding anyone who disagrees with it from access or favor.

    Section 31 as an organization is rewritten, it exists but is full of the most die-hard communists you'll ever encounter, they use a modified hammer and sickle with a third more spacey symbol as their crest and do NOT dress like Nazis but like communists in dress and battle uniforms inspired by real world communist movements. They are charged with neutralizing dangerous reactionaries within the federation admiralty and power structure as well as being foreign intelligence. Notes are given to the writers that they are shadowy but heroic, decent, and good as well as very dedicated and the organization screens for and staffs itself with selfless individuals. Several new episodes involving their members getting into time travel and holodeck shenanigans in 1930s, 1940s USSR where they are wowed and amazed at the heroes of old around them.

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

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  • Not sure.

    Apple TV devices do offer a similar app for collating together all your streaming services and their offerings and Apple tends to be a tad better on privacy but for something like this I really suspect your data is being collected by Apple though what they do with it may be a little bit better than Google though I don't really know.

    These apps tend to have some sort of built-in recommendation stuff and to do that they need to profile you and your habits to be useful. Now true they could do that and not make it available to advertisers but the very idea is pretty fraught. I can tell you the streamers themselves in many cases are selling your habits and preferences.

    Basically though when it comes to streaming you have only these choices of 'platforms':

    • Google / Android TV: Run by Google, you know the deal, comes with lots of smartvs, various devices exist running it from Walmart (Onn) to Google themselves, to Xiaomi, and so on.
    • Apple TV: By Apple, comes in two flavors, with and without ethernet, typical Apple experience in that it's locked down, so no side-loading but no ads on the homescreen either and less data collection than most other offerings by Apple themselves (note: the streaming company apps often do their own data collection and will do so on any platform). Very direct competitor to Google TV by a company wealthy enough to be able to stand toe to toe and not fret too much about profits from one small device line like this, also used to get people into their streaming service AppleTV+ as the devices come free with a few months of it.
    • Roku: Probably about the worst for privacy, very aggressive anti-privacy practices, data collection, profiling your local network devices and of course the service itself is ad supported.
    • Fire TV by Amazon: Not great, better than Roku probably, not a lot of hands on experience with this myself but it runs a modified version of Android and in future probably a modified version of Linux. Used to be sideloading friendly but they're now cracking down hard because of piracy.
    • Roll your own device, use a mini-PC, raspberry pi, old laptop, etc: Disadvantages include all commercial streaming services will not go above 1080p (no 4k), many are locked to 720p because it's not a certified device with lock-down against video capture, experience isn't as natively smooth as a dedicated streaming device designed with that in mind. Hack-y solutions like using air-mouses as remote controls that can be good or bad. Things can break and you're on your own to support yourself. Upsides include no homescreen ads, minimal data collection, complete control of the device, ability in some cases to do limited adblocking but at the cost as I said of no 4k, often no full 1080p with most streaming services. I wouldn't recommend this unless you do a lot of served from home media streaming via Jellyfin, Plex, directplay off your movie rips hard drive, etc as this is where it really shines.
    • Dune-HD: If you're looking for something with high-end support that allows 4k streaming from streaming services plus stuff like Plex there are Dune-HD devices. They run certified Android alongside a custom linux build inside a privacy container isolated from Android. They offer a lot of devices that are in the roll your own category but a bit more polished (though still often locked to 720 or 1080p by streaming services), but they also offer a few devices that are dual-os as mentioned so straddle the AndroidTV and roll your own divide kind of offering the best of both.

  • What are some of your favorite digital tools?

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  • MKVToolNix.

    An excellent tool for working with video files as long as you're okay with your files being in MKV containers (you should be they're superior to mp4). From within it you can add and remove tracks such as audio and subtitle, change flags (flag subs as forced, default, etc), rename tracks for clarity, adjust track timing with positive and negative delays to fix sync issues. You can do batch scripting against it to iterate through whole folders of video files. For anyone who has a home media server it's a must. For anyone who works with videos regularly it's at least useful.

  • Antiviruses?

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  • I would say there are not any worth recommending and that best practices are avoiding running random scripts you don't understand, keeping software up to date with package managers, and using virtualization tools. Also look into Portmaster perhaps which is an interactive firewall.

    What frustrates me about the answers these questions get is no one ever offers tools comparable to Windows tools, perhaps I think increasingly because they simply don't exist outside of very expensive subscription enterprise offerings that require plunking down no less than a thousand dollars a year. (Certainly none of the major AV vendors offers consumer Linux versions of their software though most offer enterprise endpoint Linux that comes with the caveat of minimum spends of several hundred dollars if not several thousand a year)

    ClamAV is primarily a definition AV, the very weakest and most useless kind. Sure it's kind of useful to make sure your file server isn't passing around year old malware but it's basically useless for real time prevention of emerging and unknown threats. For that you needs HIPS, behavior control, conditional/mandatory access control, heuristics, etc. ClamAV has one of the worst detection rates in the industry. It's just laughably bad (often under 60%) so it's really not a front line contender at all.

    Compare clam to consumer offerings with complex behavioral control like ESET, Kaspersky, etc that offered "suite" software that featured the aforementioned HIPS, behavioral control, complex heuristics to detect and in real time block malware-like behavior (for example accessing and then seeking to upload your keepass database files or starting to surreptitiously encrypt all your user files using RSA4096) and it just isn't in the same ballpark as anything competently done in the last 20 years.

    I haven't used or relied on a traditional AV for definition detections for years. They're worthless, it's impossible to keep up. The AV's I've deployed are for their heuristics, behavior control, HIPS, etc which actually stops new and emerging and unknown threats or at least puts real obstacles in their way. So what Linux needs, what users need is software like that, forget the traditional virus definitions, something with behavior control, HIPS, and some basic heuristics for "gee this sure looks like malware behavior, better ask the user whether they want and intend this".

    "Just be smart about what you run" isn't a realistic solution when people say Linux is for everyone including their tech illiterate relatives. Yes, Linux is a lot safer if you just install things from package managers but that isn't bulletproof either as we've seen a number of spectacular impact upstream malware insertions into build repos for huge software projects in recent years.

    Just maintain back-ups isn't helpful with smart cryptolocker software which may hide itself for weeks or months and encrypt your files as you back them up. Nor does it protect against account compromise from all your passwords being stolen or a keylogger. Nor does it defend you against persecution after being hit by mercenary/government police-ware and spyware from overreaching governments and makes the bar for them getting evidence you're an illegal gay person or whatever that much lower technically in terms of capabilities.

    Back-ups are disaster recovery. Everyone should have them but part of a layered defense is preventing the disaster and inconvenience and invasion of privacy and so on before it happens. Having your identity stolen or accounts taken over isn't as simple as reverting to a back-up, it can result in hours, days of phone calls, emails, stress, hassle, etc that can drag on for weeks or months.

    Portmaster is a start for this type of system control and protection as it's a very effective interactive firewall but as far as I know there aren't any consumer available comprehensive behavior control + HIPS type Linux desktop security solutions. There are several vendors of default deny mandatory access control with interactive mode for Windows but none offer solutions for Linux that aren't part of enterprise sized contracts beyond affordability and reason. If anyone knows otherwise I would love to know of these solutions as I want to implement them on my Linux machines as I am not comfortable with just my network IPS and firewall solutions by themselves without comprehensive end-point security.

  • Anybody have any experience pirating subs and dubs in less used languages? Specifically Norwegian.

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  • Audio is pretty tough.

    For bluray releases you'd want untouched disc images which generally means private trackers or paying for usenet.

    For streaming rips that's an even bigger problem as the scene, cabal, etc pretty much exclusively rip in English or whatever the show's original language is.

    Your best hope for streaming is probably finding some sort of specialized Norwegian or pan-European private tracker that specializes in ripping things with multiple audio track dubs available.

    Subtitles are a bit easier.

    For bluray releases some of the better p2p groups like QxR often include all the languages in their releases. Many remuxes even include all subtitles though some remuxers are worse at this and you still may have to go with full disc rips untouched.

    For streaming the better private tracker groups like TAoE, Hone, etc tend to always include all the subs available in their releases but on the public side of things it would be difficult.

    So basically you need to either pay for usenet or work your way into some good private trackers and keep an eye specifically out for anything specialized for that region.