Posts

This Is How It Ends - Plex Edition

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In case you missed it, Plex (the company that makes the media server software) is again raising their prices, by a drastic amount. Some time ago, they already raised their prices, from $80ish to $250, while simultaneously killing off remote streaming for free accounts. Which in and of itself is absurd because none of that streaming data is being passed through Plex servers, they're just handling discovery and authentication. ...but I digress. That was already a pretty big jump in price. Now? They're doing it again! Except this time, they're tripling the price a second time, going from $250 all the way to an absolutely asinine $750. Yes. You heard that right. The better part of a full grand. Anyone who can read between the lines here knows that, effectively, Plex Pass Lifetime dies on July 1st. It's a classic move. Technically, yes, they still offer it. But the pricing is so absurd that no one is going to buy in at that price. It also has the effect of goading people ...
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The Venn Diagram of Ai and Crypto boosters is damn near a perfect circle

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This is something I've held in the back of my head but didn't seriously give it a whole lot of thought until a close friend of mine brought it up, causing this to pop to the forefront of my brain. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it, and I'm sure a lot of people are going to nod along in unison.   As the title says:  It really does feel like the very same people who are pushing AI down our throats now and telling us we're gonna like it, are the very same people trying to shame us/invoke FOMO when crypto was huge some years ago.   The mannerisms feel the same, even more so today than ever. Back when crypto was taking off, those of us critical of it or who didn't want anything to do with it got tarred and feathered and told we're Not Gonna Make It (or, as they liked to say, NGMI), seemingly to invoke the feeling of FOMO so we'd give in to our impulses and buy into crypto so they could get that much richer (like the big MLM-shaped bullshit industr...
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Apple Finally Fixed The Music App

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A short one, because it's exactly as it says on the tin:  As of iOS 26.4, Apple has seemingly fixed the Music app's search function so that it no longer defaults to Apple Music. In fact, in my case, they've done more than fix it, they've  improved  it. Now if you have Apple Music shut off in settings (Settings > Apps > Music) there's only  one  search tab remaining: Your Library. Radio? Gone. I don't use Radio ever, so this is a net improvement for me. But because of this, Music now defaults to Your Library. Which for someone who doesn't really do streaming (and on the rare case that I do, YouTube Music is what I use), this is amazing. There are still little keyholes through which Apple Music pokes through (like the tiles in search, which are annoyingly still there without a subscription), but given this has been a problem since iOS 18.0?  A win's a win. Given Apple totally doesn't have to give a toss about the few of us still using Music for l...
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The Generative AI Offense Scale

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So, I am very much anti-AI. I hate it, I think it is no more than some techbro-fueled plagiarism machine that only exists because techbros don't want to pay people what their worth and think this wonderful black box of misinformation they created will replace everyone and do everything and will throw unfathomable amounts of money and natural resources at it to realize that goal.   It is peak enshittification, at least as the AI bros present it.    However,  the thing with being against something is being informed and not irrational about it, and yes, I  do  see some uses in AI tech (that don't align with what the AI bros and boosters are pushing on us without our consent). To try and be more nuanced in my opinion, I have a tier list in my brain that I use to classify generative AI stuff and whether it's something I'm going to give someone shit for, or if I'll let them pass and not think less of them.   This is that tier list, at least as best as I can ...
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The MacBook Neo

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Apple did a thing I never thought they'd do and they made a budget MacBook and called it the Neo. (Hey, AlphaSmart fans...)   Personally? I think it's pretty neat for the target market. It's $600 USD, $700 to double the storage and give you Touch ID. $100 less if you buy them via education discount.   It's a pretty cheap way to get a MacBook that gets the job done. People have been sneering at the use of an iPhone chip in these when I think people forget just how powerful the A-series processors have become. The A18 Pro in the Neo compares very favorably to the M1 in the MacBook Air just judging on Geekbench 6 scores:   A18 Pro (iPhone 16 Pro) 3445 Single/8624 Multi 32574 Metal Score   M1 (MacBook Air, 2020) 2347 Single/8342 Multi 33148 Metal Score   This is an A18 Pro  in an iPhone,  mind you. In a MacBook with greater thermal headroom? It'll probably perform even better. Going by these numbers the only thing the A18 really trails on is GPU performanc...
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How I reinstall Windows 98 on my old machines

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This is one of those things that might be useful to someone out there so: This is how I, personally, reinstall Windows 98 on my retro boxes. I should note a few things: I am doing this on machines with USB. Substitute accordingly to your machine's capabilities. I'm also doing this on machines that are pretty minmaxed, ones that probably shouldn't run 98 but do because I'm absolutely nuts (like running 98 on very much XP machines). I also have network cards in my machines. I also use SATA SSDs for this. Let's begin: 1. Prep the drive If you're using something small and not comically large like me, you can probably skip all this and  just  use fdisk and format. I usually run 128GB SSDs and fdisk tends to lose it on drives larger than 32GB, so I opt to prep the drive in another OS entirely. Do not, and I repeat,  DO NOT  use gparted for this; for some reason 98 does not like whatever gparted does to the drive. My weapon of choice here is a tool called guiformat by ...
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VCF SoCal 2026

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(Click the picture to go to the full photo album.) On this Valentine's Day weekend, I was actually able to exhibit at VCF SoCal 2026 with the help of a few good friends. Normally, I can't do events like these outside of my home turf because hotel and travel costs quickly add up and make it untenable. Even cheap hotel options have gotten expensive, and fuel costs are also plenty expensive. This year, though, two things lined up and the rest kinda fell into place. The first was an awesome person, RevisionY2K, stepping in to offer to cover the table fees for SoCal. While these weren't expensive and plenty reasonable, it was still money that couldn't be used for other costs. The second was longtime friend AK having moved to SoCal and offering up his living room for me to crash at for the duration of the weekend. He usually stays at my house for West so this was a fun turning of the tables. His house was roughly 30mi away from Anaheim, which is certainly closer than my house...
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