[SOLVED] - I learned that this is a sure way to break your Debian, and no matter how you go about it, you'd wish you either waited or used a different distro altogether for this purpose. In my case, I got Nobara 41 working, which already has the latest mesa. Trying to install the latest from Debian unstable almost got me pretty turned around, and I'm glad I switched course when I did.

Original post: Apologies for my fairly low-level question. I spent all day yesterday spinning my wheels on this.

(I do fine using Debian Linux as my daily driver, but I'm not ashamed to admit that this (and things in this area) are beyond my experience. I've never compiled anything from source. I used to be a wiz with DOS 6.22 and Windows through 7, but my brain just stopped learning these things properly some time in the past.)

My distro (MXLinux 23.x) just announced they're almost ready to include Mesa 24.2.8. I purchased an AMD R

Two days ago, I became an unwitting victim of Amazon's lack of policing their 3rd party marketplace ecosystem. I hope I can get this in front of a few more eyeballs to save people from the experience I am now in. Here's how it went down.

Thursday, AMD dropped the Radeon RX 9070 and Radeon RX 9070 XT GPU. I won't bore you with the details, but I hoped to get one, by Friday I still hadn't and started shopping for a GPU from last generation. I setup a price alert on a few models and went to sleep. I woke at 3am to an alert (I forgot to silence my phone) that one of the models was on sale at a 27% discount from a 3rd party seller, and I groggily added to my cart. However, when added to my cart, the price jumped to 15% over MSRP. I removed and went back to the product page, refreshed, and saw the same discounted price. I copied the link and opened it in another mobile browser and the discounted price was there. I added it back to my cart and the price again increased by $150.

I contacted

The answer to "what is Firefox?" on Mozilla's FAQ page about its browser used to read:

The Firefox Browser is the only major browser backed by a not-for-profit that doesn’t sell your personal data to advertisers while helping you protect your personal information.

Now it just says:

The Firefox Browser, the only major browser backed by a not-for-profit, helps you protect your personal information.

In other words, Mozilla is no longer willing to commit to not selling your personal data to advertisers.

A related change was also highlighted by mozilla.org commenter jkaelin, who linked direct to the source code for that FAQ p

My GF is a ghost writer. The publisher has her write into files that are uploaded to a shared platform where editors and other creatives and execs tweak and move each chapter through several named states (represented by different folders), until it reaches "Final."

She gets paid per X words. Come the day before the deadline for payroll, they (sometimes, often its late) open up the payroll system, and she has to re-upload the Final chapter to a folder in that tracking system. Tonight (when they opened the system for her), she has to enter 130 chapters by 10am tomorrow.

It's not just moving a file. She has to download the Final chapter, select the text, copy/paste into the payroll tracking system, and then fix formatting that their silly system creates, like extra spaces, double quotes, etc. Each chapter can take minutes. These pasted chapters are then the final product. She has to stay up all night until its done, or she won't get paid on time.

I feel like she's being taken advantag

The Fortnite v30.20 patch has arrived, introducing a brand new mode called Reload. With a smaller map featuring classic locations and weapons, Reload is merging new and old to give players a fresh experience.

Below, you'll find everything you need to know about Fortnite's v30.20 update, including details of Reload mode and the unvaulted weapons returning to the loot pool.

Try a New Map in Fortnite Reload Mode

Starting with the v30.20 patch, a new experience called Fortnite Reload will be added to the game. This Squad-based mode features 40 players per match, with classic locations like Tilted Towers, and Retail Row returning on a new, smaller map.

Unlike regular Battle Royale matches, you'll automatically reboot when eliminated in Reload, as long as one of your teammates remains alive. Reboot timers start at 30 seconds, but this can be reduced if your remaining teammates eliminate other players.

There will also be a selection of classic weapons including t

I haven't run windows since 2019. However I need to boot my old drive to grab some data. I really need to make sure this system doesn't update any windows components, but I'll need it to have internet access for a portion of the time.

On a different system, I used to have two reg keys that I would run to disable or enable updates when I found that disabling the services only worked until the watchdog would re enable them. Those resulted in updates saying something was wrong, which is perfect by me.

Now that web searches for stuff like this are all AI-gen'd SEO BS, can anyone tell me or point me to a reliable resource for truly disabling updates on Win 10?

PS - Bonus points if Anyone can link me to the page I used a few years back that had all sorts of privacy enhancing and telemetry disabling option on the left side and would create a reg file for applying those changes on the right. It might have been a purple theme, I forget.

Edit: it may also have been a "services" command tha

Wasn't doing that a few days ago as far as I noticed...

When I use yt-dlp -x to grab audio only, the resulting opus files are often troublesome to play back in strawberry, stopping unexpectedly. They also sometimes don't index at all, and metadata including embedded cover art don't seem to stick.

So, since most of my library is already vorbis in OGG files, I have been converting the files, but my inexperience with audio codecs and YouTube audio formats in general is shining through. I use 320kbps, but the resulting files are typically about twice the size afterward. I'm thinking I'm probably wasting space for no reason.

What is a comparable bitrate for the OGG files for a given bitrate opus source file?

EDIT: Here is my conversion script find ./ -iname "*.opus" | parallel --load 0.9 ffmpeg -i {} -c:a libvorbis -b:a 320k "{.}.ogg"

EDIT2: Here is the updated version with a suggestion from @Supermariofan67@programming.dev find ./ -iname "*.opus" | parallel --load 0.9 ffmpeg -i {} -c:a libvorbis -q:a 6 "{.}.ogg" which results in only

Received notice of a change to the service in my inbox today. Seems icky to me.

Devices in the network use Bluetooth to scan for nearby items. If other devices detect your items, they’ll securely send the locations where the items were detected to Find My Device. Your Android devices will do the same to help others find their offline items when detected nearby

Your devices’ locations will be encrypted using the PIN, pattern, or password for your Android devices. They can only be seen by you and those you share your devices with in Find My Device. They will not be visible to Google or used for other purposes.

ETA: here's the link to opt out: opt out of the network

Stats
Age - ~10yrs
Weight - 10lbs
Claws - present and trimmed twice monthly
Disposition - Alpha male, but gets scared of his 7lbs sister when predator mode is activated
Favorite food - spicy chip crumbs
Intelligence on 1 to 10 - 6 (kind of derpy but knows about twenty words and does tricks for food)

History
Charlie was a wild feral trapped in 2017 by a shelter in Maine as part of a spay/neuter program (hence the missing ear tip). When they prepared to release him to the wild again, he had come down with a respiratory infection, and had to be treated for over a month. During that time, he became docile toward some people, so they decided to try to adopt him. They named him Banana. Prospective parents didn't like him because he was indifferent at best or hissing and growling at worst. He also didn't get along with other cats. We're suckers for cats with hard stories, so we scooped him up and brought him home as our only cat (for a time), where he quickly became my buddy

When using qBitTorrent to download Linux ISOs, I am seeing that the total size of the download is one thing, then the total downloaded when complete exceeds (sometimes by almost double) that size.

For example:

 undefined

    
Size           Downloaded  
900MB            1.56GB
1.6GB            1.91GB


  

Why is that thing?

Anyone have experience getting an HP EliteBook 840 G2 to boot from M.2? There's only one setting in BIOS to enable it, and it's enabled by default. Latest BIOS update. It's in the boot order. It's even seen when pressing F9 for boot options. I see MX23 but no grub (under legacy) or EFI files found in the ESP partition (under UEFI).

I've tried cloning my functional SSD install with dd and clonezilla with no errors, but both result in no boot disk found. Same with a fresh install to the drive from live USB.

I've moved through full legacy, to hybrid, full UEFI, but none see the device as bootable after install.

Loading GRUB or Syslinux and attempting to boot from HD also fails to boot from the M.2.

TIA

Edit: added clarification what was being cloned

::: spoiler spoiler I very limited as to what computer hardware I have access to in where I live (not the USA), but I managed to get my hands on a used HP Elitedesk 800 G3 SFF and waited months for an AMD FX 6400 Low Profile to arrive. Now I am having trouble with this card.

I know the reviews state that the card can't take advantage of my x16 slot bandwidth, but I expected to be able to use it in that slot, as the x4 slot is right against the power supply, and the card doesn't breathe well at all there, and thermal throttles.

However, when I slot the GPU in the x16 slot, the PC won't POST. I find no settings in the fairly limited BIOS options that would prevent this, and a test Nvidia GT 720 works in the x16 slot just fine.

I'm out of ideas to get th

I'm cleaning out my gmail folders this weekend, and went deep into the archive to 2011, when I got my invite to Google Music.

It's funny, because I just (November) moved all of my music out of cloud and back to local-only. Amazon was the last straw, when I tried to play purchased music, and was forced to listen to it on shuffle with other songs not of my choosing.

Anyway... there was a time when Google (ahem, Youtube) Music was set to be a game-changer. Imagine if enshittification wasn't a thing.

I wake up at 3am to 4am daily as a neighbor makes noise walking their dog. This cannot be helped. Once I am awake, my mind won't stop going over details about everything from the mundane to the critical. Often, I am able to fall asleep again after three or more hours of wakefulness, but only minutes before I have to wake for the day.

Does anyone have success with quieting the mind without substances so that they can fall back to sleep?

Edit: I want to thank you all for the helpful comments. I'm reading through them now and wioo be internalizing some of the suggestions.

To provide more context for those who asked:

I do have ADHD and OCD and Anxiety.
I sleep with a fan and a white noise track (10hrs of non-repeating noise I d/l'd with newpipe). My apartment building has a fire escape that the neighbor uses as their front door. This path means using a heavy steel door on a power hinge. (Slam!) The door is against the wall that my headboard is on. They have every right to use whichev

An empty community?! Not anymore! Here is a feature request I opened this morning.

Does anyone else dislike the current notification?

Edit: May be fixed by #1707

For the past two years, legitimate job postings on Indeed and Glassdoor have been replaced by scams. If you're tricked, the scammers aren't satisfied with your contact info in your CV, they reach out via email to request that you connect on an encrypted messenger app where they can privately scam you out of thousands in pre-hire "fees."

Applicants now have to add vetting job postings to their repertoire, which adds time and effort to an already stressful process. Things like researching the supposed company in need of labor, and digging into reports against them.

Protect yourself and assume any job posting is fake until proven otherwise. In the US, you should report any scams you became aware of.

Edit: add the following: @LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.dbzer0.com recommends reaching out via phone or email to

I use Privacy cards for the majority of online commerce. If you aren't familiar with them, they generate one-off card numbers that obfuscate your financial details and become locked to the merchant of first use. They also can create single-use cards that deactivate after the first charge.

The card I have tied to my Epic account generated two fraudulent charges on Dec 10 at Spanish-named locations. The charges were blocked, as they didn't originate from Epic. On top of blocking the charges, Privacy deactivated the card number as they suspected fraud.

I've reached out to Epic for details, but they're just sending scripted meaningless fluff, and its been almost forty days.

Am I right to assume this means Epic was themselves the victim of some breach? I don't see any press releases or coverage of anything.

In an effort to keep this short, I'll keep details light.

Years back, when Google opened up Google Music to invite-only, I got an invite and joined up, copying about 600 audio CD's into their care.

When they shut down Play Music (as it had become known), and transitioned to YouTube Music, I bailed and said fuck it. I didn't want to deal with whatever YT had in store for me.

Fast forward to last week, and I realized that my uploads were still visibly in YT Music. I thought they would have been disappeared, but as they weren't, I jumped over to Google Takeout and configured a 40GB download of my music.

This prompted two discoveries:

1. I hadn't realized just how much music I was missing that I used to play often. I have been rediscovering so much incredible music!
2. Despite my music being completely ID3 tagged when uploaded, and remaining that way when in the cloud, and still showing all that metadata in YTM, Google Takout gave me my music files in one big flat folder.

So becaus

First, a disclaimer: I'm no expert, and I only know what is on these documents I linked. I haven't read in-depth reporting by real investigative journalists, nor any reporting sourced or quoted from YT insiders (When I see articles about the ad-blocking, I knock wood that SmartTube is still working and keep scrolling, keen to avoid getting angry at another trillion-dollar company).

I've been doing some light research into Alphabet's YT ad revenue numbers today on my lunch hour. Here is where you find that info.

My curiousity was piqued by a few posts here and elsewhere regarding YouTube's new push to eliminate ad-blockers that indicate the push is because they've been losing money. Per my plebian understanding of these documents: Rather than a substantial decrease, YT had finally seen a 'leveling off' of ad revenue that had previously been enjoying explosive growth for the available history I can view. The historical (according to the data I have avai