Thank you for your work!
I was in a panic when Snips was bought up. After some research I landed on Rhasspy as my new local-first digital assistant, and it's been fantastic. Been using it for a few years now with satellites around the house with the 'brain' running on a VM. Even have a Siri shortcut which transcripts my speech input then makes an HTTP request to 'brain' instance so that I can use Rhasspy even if not around a satellite instance. This even works over my VPN!
It would be much nicer if I can just backup my iPhone to my nas (which I use for my Mac's Time Machine target) which is always online and available over a vpn rather than have to pull out my mbp to do a backup.
You’re welcome. I found it fascinating at the time of the change, and still do, that email is sacred, but all other activity is open for manipation-based-advertising.
Nobody said the emails aren't scanned; they're just not used as context for ads. Obviously they're scanned, otherwise spam filtering wouldn't be possible.
I think there’s a difference between scanning all incoming mail for spam and keeping a details list of my purchase history by scanning my inbox for receipts somehow... If they aren’t using this data for context ads it must be being used for something else otherwise why would they do it?
The critical words in the statement are not "We will not scan or read your Gmail messages"; they are "to show you ads."
In other words, they reserve the right to scan or read your Gmail for any purpose other than showing you ads. So they can still read your email for things like creating that purchases list, as well as a myriad of other tasks. As long as that task doesn't involve showing you an ad, your Gmail is wide open to them.
This comment spooked me so I went back to my emails and checked what Linode said:
> The $50 credit can give you up to 10 months of hosting on our 1GB plan. You can also use the credit towards our add-on services such as backups, Block Storage, or NodeBalancers. Use the promo code today!
So they mentioned 10 months in the email, and I searched a bit further and didn't see anything about service credit expiration. You can also get service credits using referrals, coupon sites, and even blog posts:
Linode's credits don't expire once they're applied to an account. Promo codes themselves can expire, though, so you'll miss certain promotions if you don't sign up in time. Open up a Support ticket if you think credits haven't been applied or disappeared without being used up by services. (Linode employee here.)
I don't know if this will be helpful to you but an open source media player, Kodi, recently added support for Netflix in the latest version of the app (by implementing a DRM engine for people to use).
On a related note here's an arch linux package that rips Widewvine out of chrome and adds it to chromium - download the source files by clicking the "Download snapshot" button on the right, or just view the main script by clicking "View PKGBUILD" also on the right.
Yeah they didn't make Chrome in order to "build a better world" or whatever. They saw what Microsoft did with IE, and how it enabled the pushing of products, data collection, platform tie-in, etc. And Google thought they could do even better and make people feel good during the process, unlike how they felt using IE.
I hope Kodi makes some decent progress. I installed it a few weeks back and it is a rough experience. The docs on how to do simple things seem to be nonexistant because they don't want to be sued and shutdown entirely.
Kodi's been around for like 15 years now so if you're hoping for it to become something else, I would stop holding your breath. I'm not thrilled that it's non-free nor about some of the changes they're making, but I've found Plex to be pretty pleasant to set up.
I think Kodi has made amazing progress. I've not had issues getting it installed on different devices since the 15.x days. Currently run it on 4 different dedicated devices in my apartment as well as some mobile and media devices.
> The docs on how to do simple things seem to be nonexistant because they don't want to be sued and shutdown entirely.
What docs are you looking for? They have a very extensive wiki as well as an active community on their own forum.
I’ve been running it since the earliest beta versions when it was literally Xbox Media Center - a media center for modded Xboxes (original).
I’ve ran it on all kinds of hardware from laptops, Android phones and tablets, Raspberry Pis (version 1 through to 3), Intel NUCs, etc. And obviously not forgetting the Xbox. Until very recently it was my go to media center.
I even went as far as to write some plugins for it. But they were for version 8 or something. It was probably 10 years ago and hasn’t been maintained.
I’ve never used a media center - free or non-free - that was as easy to set up nor ran as flawlessly as XBMC / Kodi did
As a (former) plugin developer and long-time user and community member, I don't think you're exactly the best person to evaluate today's install usability for a non- or even somewhat-technical new-ish user.
I'm really not sure what the point of your post is but what I can tell is you've completely misunderstood my post (and possibly Kodi too?) because several of the conditions you highlighted (eg "todays", "non-technical") wasn't even in the scope of my monologue.
Besides, non-technical users wouldn't be ripping DVDs to a NFS / SMB share in the first place (or using a home server / NAS for bittorrent / usenet / etc if that's how one prefers to accumulate their video archive). So why would they want a Media Centre that's designed for playing local or networked content?
Maybe what you're referring to is the stuff that has been in press a lot in recent years; the stuff incorrectly named (imo) as "Kodi-boxes" (or similar). I say "incorrectly named" because they used 3rd party plugins for illegal streams but those really have naff all to do with the Kodi media centre itself. It's like calling illegal downloading "Windows-boxes" because someone uses a bittorrent client on Windows 10.
I guess you could argue that Kodi now fills a niche that is dying out - that's certainly the case for me as I tend to use Netflix et al on my smart TV. But for playing local / mountable files, Kodi still leads the pack in terms of ease. Which is hardly surprising when you consider that's what the media centre was built to do.
I didn't know it existed and it wasn't for lack of trying. I landed in the forum a few times which didn't help. Bing or Google a simple query where you would expect the official Kodi website or Wiki to show in the results. For example: "How to stream Netflix on Kodi".
As a long time Kodi user, I'll just say that the combination of Kodi on my PC hooked up to a big screen and the Yatse app on my phone was a total game changer. A WiFi remote control on the device I basically already had in my hands anyway changed the way I interact with media at home.
Interesting... I mostly use Kodi for NAS media and run it under NVidia Shield TV because running it on an HTPC was so limiting of an experience for Netflix, etc. Almost ironically also have a Fire stick, because Hulu won't port the updated interface (for live tv) to the Android TV version despite working on Fire devices.
That's not what HTC were going for with the Pro, it's geared towards commercial use. Hobbyists are still buying it (naturally) but what we're really waiting for is whatever Valve are up to.
Yeah, looks like they're pivoting their non-Steam/game related dev strategies more towards linux gaming and better streaming support than anything else
> Microsoft's plan to invade cuba and overthrow the government has succeeded. One Microsoft official said "It's a win-win situation. The US Government is happy and shuts up the DOJ while Microsoft institutes a monopoly within Cuba for everything from computer software to toilet paper. One more step closer to world domination. Heck, we could feed a whole development department for the cost of one developer's salary in the US. They may not know how to create an Operating System very well, but neither do our US developers."
Oh my. I wasn't sure what I was looking at and then I read that to the right of the link.
