From the UK, the dark sky lasted longer than I thought.

I use a redirector extension for YouTube so PipedBot is useless and annoying for me. I’d rather someone just give me a YouTube URL and let the redirector extension do its work.

TL;DRbot is okay, I guess.

Getting 404 on that link. 😩

Quod Libet was one I tried. Doesn’t quite scratch the itch MusicBee gives me, but still solid nonetheless. Tauon Music Box is a gorgeous looking player that’s similar.

I tried LM Studio since AMD advertised it for their GPUs. Once ROCm was installed my GPU was detected and I could use LLMs on that rather than on the CPU. I struggled to get it to work on Windows even when LM Studio was trying to do everything to get it to work.

When I’ve used it, gapless playback being non-existent due to it basically being a frontend to the web client/MusicKit for web. I listen to a lot of albums in full nowadays, so that can really hurt the experience. It’s a shame because everything else about it is great. I am aware that the Cider devs are trying to find ways of handling that without reliance on the web client/API, which might enable gapless but also stuff like lossless if you got AM for that.

Edit: I should mention that Cider has a new client that’s paid but still supports Linux (specifically with AppImage, .deb and .rpm packages), and my experience was with Cider Classic.

Edit 2: I bought Cider 2 and so far it’s working well. You sacrifice lossless and maybe some gapless playback still, but it’s a mild loss vs. so far a huge gain in usability.

I think a lot of people have a few killer apps that just don’t work on Linux even with WINE. Hell, I’ve heard that VR is not worth it on Linux. There are edge cases like that, that need to be sorted some way. Hopefully whatever Valve is doing wrt their supposed standalone VR headset helps there.

MusicBee. Tried it on WINE. Not great. Linux players also don’t do a lot of what MusicBee does OOTB, and if they do it’s not as seamless as MusicBee. (tag hierarchies are the main thing, but the playlist functionality is also good.)

Thankfully it runs fine in a virtual machine.

Not to mention, Apple Music is so much better than Spotify for my needs and Cider isn’t cutting it for me right now. Once they’re not as reliant on MusicKit, I might give it a go again.

There’s still some stuff I’m tied to Windows for, namely music players (MusicBee and Apple Music but they can be used in a VM) and VR. But it’s nice to see Linux growing.

Sometimes it might be sold off. I know LTT sold their Steam Deck to DankPods because Valve still haven’t brought it into Australia.

I dunno about non-driver anti-cheats like EAC but Genshin Impact’s kernel-level anti-cheat has been used to aid ransomware. Driver-level anti-cheat is certainly malware, that has been settled since Sony-BMG.

I use an iPad, am subscribed to Apple Music and also use a Hackintosh setup (aiming to replace it with a MacBook of some kind in the future).

• The tablet market is pretty much “ignore everything else and just buy an iPad”. There is no tablet really worth your time on Android, most of it is due to Google and the Android ecosystem practically abandoning the tablet form factor. Meanwhile Apple still supports the iPad to this day and there are plenty of great apps that support the iPad form factor, such as Mona for Mastodon
• I used to use Spotify for streaming, but found that it was getting increasingly annoying to use. So many long-standing bugs including one where if I download even one song on my phone that’s in my Liked Songs list, the entire app takes like 30 seconds trying to load it. Apple Music handles large lists so much better. The library management is also so much better than on Spotify too, with it basically just being “iTunes but as a streaming service” and I can have smart playlists for whatever purpose I want. Their consistency with regards to UX across the different target platforms aren’t great (iOS and Android can’t create or update smart playlists, Windows and Mac don’t have word-for-word lyrics) but even with all that, it’s the least annoying streaming service for me right now. (and yes, I maintain a local music library with MusicBee - streaming is helpful for discovery)
• I’ve been recently using my Hackintosh more and it was really comfy using it. I have issues focusing on a single task (which might be ADHD, might not be, idk) and the full-screen mode allows me to focus on the tasks on my screen.

As for your point on bloatware, this happens on Android too. I can’t remove Facebook, OneDrive or YouTube from my phone, only “hide” it. (Samsung btw)

EmuDeck is already implementing replacements on Switch and is looking at other 3DS emulators. They won’t uninstall Yuzu from your Deck, but likely won’t default to using them if they’re installed. You might have to take a few extra steps with ES-DE or SRM.

There’s a theory going round that the PS5 is going to be that “breakout box” for a PC-based PSVR2 setup. I’m not sure if Sony wants to spend that much on getting people out of their ecosystem when it’d be better to have their own solution, or as Oculus had done, let Valve port Steam Link to their platform. This might be the most likely situation, as it gives access to SteamVR in a way that doesn’t require as much R&D from Sony.

That being said, I would love to have a native PCVR setup (even if it means piping a video through a wire as Oculus does to maintain compatibility with even NVIDIA) and if Sony goes that way somehow, I’ll be happy.

It might be “just USB-C” but it also does things outside of the standard. It asks for a set amount of power not part of the USB-C standard, actually it might have implemented VirtualLink which is considered a dead standard. Not to mention that NVIDIA GPUs also stopped having a USB-C port.

iVRy, who has hacked the PSVR1 to support PC, is in the process of hacking the PSVR2 and even they state that Sony’s solution might be just streaming to the headset because of the issues with implementing direct USB-C support. There might be wired streaming (similar to Oculus), though it’s still early days.

I get the hype (I have the headset myself) but I’m definitely going to temper my expectations until Sony releases more info on it.

I’d imagine it’ll work through something like Steam Link like the Quest line of headsets do. Which is still nice, but that means for me trying to invest in networking gear that may or may not work. 😩

(and I’ve tried powerline, I’ve gone through three of those things, they all have a habit of disconnecting unless I ping my router. Someone on Twitter suggested that I rewire my entire house as if I can afford to do that. 😐)

Taiko no Tatsujin

Jay Graber is the CEO, dunno about the investors but I don’t care tbh. If Bluesky does go to shit, the protocol lets me move away without losing my data.

Bluesky’s development has been pretty democratic, moreso than Mastodon where one guy basically leads the entire trajectory of the fediverse (at least from a mainstream perspective) from what I heard.

As for Jack, hasn’t been on Bluesky for a while now - he prefers Nostr. Even though he’s on the board, he’s not attended any meetings nor has he dictated how the platform should go. He just threw money at it and ran after the community didn’t take him seriously.