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Cake day: January 21st, 2025

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  • I remember when compression was popularized, like mp3 and jpg, people would run experiments where they would convert lossy to lossy to lossy to lossy over and over and then share the final image, which was this overcooked nightmare

    I wonder if a similar dynamic applies to the scenario presented in the comic with AI summarization and expansion of topics. Start with a few bullet points have it expand that to a paragraph or so, have it summarize it back down to bullet points, repeat 4-5 times, then see how far off you get from the original point.


  • Sure.

    I’m not sure what the rules are about recommendations of specific providers here as you’ve said but I can certainly write about my experiences with providers

    Emu streams is my current provider and they’re decent. The EPG is complete for us channels but not for some of the foreign stuff or for 4k. They have a pretty extensive vod library but the quality ranges, sometimes it’s 4k but sometimes it’s 480p, mostly 1080p, almost none of it has subtitles (but the channels do). I think they just grabbed shows as they came out and never updated them. Buffering is uncommon but does happen sometimes. I don’t watch sports but my partner does; the Super Bowl 4k stream had lots of buffering but the 1080 stream was perfect and basketball games work fine. Pricing was about 70cad for 7 months when I got it and they accepted paypal and crypto

    I also tried earl hickeys iptv, very similar experience but more issues with buffering and not as many channels. However pricing was extremely attractive, 35gbp for 12mo

    And not via that forum but another provider I found via a private tracker called media solutions that is similar to emu. Less issues with buffering but pricing and most responsive to support via telegram but priciest. I don’t remember the pricing offhand but like $140usd a year or so?




  • I’ve tried 4 iptv providers for long term subs and evaluated a ton more. They’ve all been okay but none were amazing so I keep trying new ones when my sub runs out

    My basic thing is this: if they don’t offer a trial I don’t fuck with them. If the epg is totally fucked or the buffering on channels I watch is atrocious during the trial I don’t bother. If that’s all good I buy a month and see how it goes. I do this because I’m pretty sure some have better servers for trials, or maybe I just got lucky during the trial period, because during the month service goes to shit sometimes. If the month is good I’ll extend it longer

    I’ve never found one with a complete EPG. I’ve found ones with complete epgs for us channels (my current one has this) but international channels, raw 4k streams, etc? They always have no EPG

    https://forum.iptvinsider.org/ is the best forum I’ve found for this but as you’ve said it’s a nightmare to browse and absolute garbage. It does at least have some user reviews but I ultimately don’t trust them too much and go with the above







  • Another space where they avoid offending advertisers, who are the real thing that ruined google search (along with seo bullshit).

    Like if the only change to google search was the ai blurb I don’t think people would care nearly as much. They care because the actual results are heavily weighted to be sponsored results above all else for the entire first page, and the second page is designed to redirect you to images or other things that push you to start a new search (thus seeing new sponsored results). What you wanted to find is meaningless, it’s solely about shoveling products and services down your fucking throat



  • That’s silly. A motherboard with a free pci slot (I think x8? Been awhile), a cheap hba with the associated sas cables, and literally any case that will hold the drives. You could strap them all to a board if you wanted

    Obviously you’ll need cpu and ram. Make sure the power supply is beefy enough to cover the amount of drives you plan to use and preferably get a good quality one if you plan to run it 24/7. I do think it’s worthwhile to get server grade hardware as it holds up better to long term 24/7 use but it’s not necessary. It’s also absolutely fine to go entirely used; my whole build was all ewaste and was maybe $300 minus the drives (which added much more). And my build was frankly overkill for a nas but I also run VMs and do some local llm stuff. If you just want to serve files for like Jellyfin/plex you really don’t need much, an ewaste pc from like 2015 will probably do the job spec wise (though increasing ram a lot can help significantly especially if you do zfs)

    I have a 15 drive nas. My drives are sata but my hba is compatible with sas drives. I use an lsi 9300-16i and I have read of people using it with sas arrays just fine. If you shop around you can get it with cables for like $40-50 used (maybe more now since inflation fucked everything and you need the less common cables). Be careful because there are lots of counterfeits.

    Also be mindful of cooling, the card runs HOT. I added active cooling to mine with a 3d printed bracket. If you’re only running 3-4 drives you could also get the 9300-8i which is cheaper and runs cooler, but has half the drive lanes so you’re limited in terms of future expansion.



  • Improves data tracking and increases the odds they can sell you services, which is money they love because it’s consistent and predictable income.

    Also means you get drawn into their “ecosystem” and the deeper you get into it the harder it is to move to a competitors. If you have $4,000 worth of iphone apps and in app purchases it’s much harder to switch to android. You can migrate bookmarks, password databases, calendars, message histories (not imessage lmao), etc but you can’t migrate proprietary apps and services

    big tech has been anti consumer for decades and while apple is a big issue now 90s and early 2000s microsoft was the driving force in making sure open standards and interoperability was quashed at every opportunity. US government had endless chances to regulate the industry but incompetent politicians did nothing because they were completely ignorant and corrupt (shocker)




  • While others have pointed out it definitely can it also contains lecithin so it can technically create emulsions like mayonnaise and hollandaise

    Eggs contain far more so I don’t know how well this would work but it should? It also contains albumin and globulins but in the white, which is traditionally not used for these. However they can further stabilize the emulsion. But blood also as fibrinogen which is part of what makes it gel when heated as part of coagulation and this would impact texture

    Essentially like:

    1 part blood 3-4 parts neutral oil Tsp vinegar or lemon juice Tsp Dijon Season to taste

    Prepare the same as mayo

    You could also boost lecithin content with additional lecithin from soy or sunflowers but that’s kind of against the spirit

    I personally am vegan but find the food science of this interesting. I think eating animals is cruel but at the same time I would be interested to know if this actually could work or if you ended up with blood vinaigrette.