Wow, that’s some really invasive stuff. If a gym ever asked for my account and routing number I would just go somewhere else, but I understand not everybody has that option.

Then I just turn off my regular/real debit card and I’m no worse off than I would have been in the first place.

This is why I use a privacy.com card for just about everything. Anybody gets hacked or tries to pull some shady shit I can just turn off the card and it doesn’t affect anybody but them.

It’ll bounce back once they see all the money those government contracts generate. We had KBR driving shuttle buses and Taco Bell being ran out of trailers on the FOBs in 2008 Iraq.

VGA was originally a proprietary technology developed by IBM, though it was later built upon by VESA and is now publicly documented, so while it wasn’t developed by VESA as an open standard from the get-go, it is now considered an open standard that doesn’t require any licensing fees to implement. DVI was developed by the “Digital Display Working Group” and also does not require any licensing fees, though there are licensing terms you may have to abide by and there may be some costs associated with testing and validation to ensure you meet those terms and the spec.

H.265 is not a royalty free standard like AV1, VP9, Theora, etc. It’s covered by proprietary patents held by groups like MPEG LA so in order for manufacturers to build hardware level support for it into their devices they have to pay whatever the then current royalty fees are to those patent holders.

That’s reasonable, people deserve to get paid for their labor. In this situation however, the difference between them is that DisplayPort is a royalty free VESA standard. So while manufacturers have to pay for the materials and such to include it in their devices, they don’t have to pay any additional fees to license the standard. HDMI on the other-hand is a “brand” of proprietary connector/interface (kind of like how “Velcro” isn’t the actual name of a product, it’s a “brand” of hook and pile tape), so not only do manufacturers have to pay for the materials and labor related to physically acquiring and installing the connectors, but they have to pay both per-device and annual licensing fees for rights to use the HDMI product.

“Direct playing” just means the source file is entirely compatible with the client device and doesn’t require any transcoding/re-encoding by the server, it doesn’t really tell you whether the client is using software or hardware decoding to play it. I’m guessing it’s probable that a Jellyfin server could still report “direct playing” even if the client is using software decoding to play it. However, if the client device is something like a smart TV or something with a more locked down OS, and the maintainer/manufacturer removes support for a codec from that device, you may show more transcoding action on your server for things that previously just direct played because smart devices like that may not have support for software decoding, or may not have the horsepower to try even if they still have the codecs installed.

I just set it to downmix to mono in Handbrake and it’s been alright. I’ll definitely do some reading/comparing to see what this setting is all about though.

H.265 (HEVC) is not a free (as in freedom) codec, so yes. You as an individual consumer can use things like Handbrake to encode H.265 video for your personal use, probably using the free x265 software encoder, but in order for a device like your phone, camera, TV, laptop, etc. to have hardware accelerated encoding or decoding, the manufacturer has to pay a licensing fee.

This is true of lots of proprietary technologies. HDMI is another one. In order for a device to ship with an HDMI port (as opposed to Displayport), the manufacturer has to pay a per-device licensing fee.

Kinda makes me even more glad I’ve been migrating all my stuff over to AV1/OPUS.

The desire of intelligent, hardworking people to just live their lives and be left alone means we’re eternally condemned to be ruled by those who are absolutely unfit for the job. Anybody smart enough to be a good leader wouldn’t have the job.

They’re completely out of touch with how normal people use their computers. The only people who want AI in their OS are the AI tech bros.

They say it can run games at 4k60 “with FSR”, so it seems like it’s targeting 1080p native rendering, which is totally fine for me. I’ll be connecting it to the living room TV and sitting 6-8 feet away so I’ll probably keep it set to 1080p anyway just to keep the framerate high.

Definitely will be grabbing the Steam Machine when it releases.

There is a cost to convenience ratio. Each individual has to decide based on their own ethics and preferences whether they’re willing to sacrifice their own personal experience for the right of ownership. I personally chose to cancel my Spotify subscription some time ago and start buying digital downloads and CDs again.

That I don’t know. I mean you could always just use something to record the sound played by your PC, but at that point A) You’re not getting as good of quality as you would from an actual download of the source material and you’d have to manually assign metadata, make sure no notifications or other sounds played, make sure your recording settings were optimum, etc. It’s easier, right now at least, to just buy what you want on CD or from a store that sells digital downloads legitimately.

Blue usually indicates USB3 and the black are probably USB2. USB3 is “supposed” to be backwards compatible, and is most of the time, but I’ve ran into a few instances where USB2 devices don’t quite work as well or as reliably when connected to a USB3 port, so a lot of motherboard manufacturers still include a couple USB2 ports for things like keyboards and mice that don’t need the extra speed and may be finnicky on newer ports.

Buy and store your own music. HDTracks and 7Digital both sell high quality DRM free downloads, or you can just swing by your local Walmart or Dollar Store and grab some CDs to rip.

Or you could go sailing, that’s always an option…

Guess it helps differentiate the USB3 from the USB2.