d00phy

On Sept. 11, Michigan representatives proposed an internet content ban bill unlike any of the others we've seen: This particularly far-reaching legislation would ban not only many types of online content, but also the ability to legally use any VPN.

The bill, called the Anticorruption of Public Morals Act and advanced by six Republican representatives, would ban a wide variety of adult content online, ranging from ASMR and adult manga to AI content and any depiction of transgender people. It also seeks to ban all use of VPNs, foreign or US-produced.

Main issue I have with this article, and a lot of articles on this topic, is it doesn't address the issue of youth access to porn. I think any semi-intelligent person knows this is a parenting issue, but unfortunately that cat's out of the bag, thanks to the right. "Proliferation of porn" is the '90s crime scare (that never really died) all over again. If a politician or industry expert is speaking against bills like this, their talking points have to include:

• Privacy-respecting alternatives that promise parents that their precious babies won't be able to access that horrible dangerous porn! (I don't argue that porn can't be dangerous, but this is yet another disingenuous right-wing culture (holy) war)
• Addressing that vagueness in the bill sets up the government as morality police (it's right there in the title of the bill, FFS), and NOBODY in a "free" country should ever want that.
• Stop saying it can be bypassed with technology. The VPN ban in this bill is a reaction to talking points like that.
• Recognize and call out that this has nothing to do with protecting children and everything to do with a religious minority imposing its will on the rest of the country (plenty of recent examples to pull from here).

Unfortunately this is becoming enough of "A Thing" that the left is going to have to, once again, be seen doing "something" about it. So they have to thread a needle of "protecting kids," while respecting the privacy of their parents who want their kids protected and want to look at porn, and protecting businesses that require secure communications.

It's just... ugly. It's kind of a retro-ish, but chunky design. It really shows it full ugliness in the Finder windows, especially when you column view (which I default to). It looks like a design by committee mishmash of stuff that all collides. I'm not normally one to hate on stylistic choices in an OS. I've never had much interest in "ricing" my environment, but I'm really just not a fan of this.

All the individual little "bubbles" of things instead of buttons, or even just borderless areas denoted by an icon. The way the left column looks like it's just plopped down on top of the rest of the content. Like it's a separate entity, but it's not. Especially noticeable in how the lower cookie crumb trail at the bottom of the window just abruptly ends at the border to the left column. Also, the color choice for the sliders is... bold. Almost the most noticeable thing in the screenshot! This looks like a Linux Enlighenment DE theme from the early `00s trying to emulate OS-X. The dark view looks slightly better.

About the only positive thing I can find is the tolerances around the edges of windows for resizing feels more forgiving than in the past & w/ other operating systems (ahem: Windows). On some OSs/desktop environments, it seems like there's a 1-2 pixel area where the cursor changes and you can resize a window. In contrast, this works pretty good in Tahoe.

Copying this from Reddit (I still get the daily emails). Since I no longer post there, I figured I would ask here, and include my prediction: Will be more popular, possibly in stable release. Still won't be able to rotate photos natively.

All the mention of me.com email addresses being badges of honor.... Me over here laughing in mac.com!

Waffle cut are a novelty. Crinkle cut are the best. Fight me.

I know it's CoM, who is basically Apple propaganda (forever living up to their name), but I've seen these iPhone 17 mock-ups before, and I really think they look like Pixels! Seriously, I have a Pixel 9 Pro that I use for work, and the design of the iPhone 17 is the definition of uninspired. Please, Tim, hire some good industrial designers. It's been a long boring stretch since Ive left.

I'm trying to boot some VMs using a script w/ a kickstart file. I'm using the following script that I found online and modified:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
#set -x
## Define variables
MEM_SIZE="8192"      # Memory setting in MiB
VCPUS="2"             # CPU Cores count
#OS_VARIANT="rocky9"   # List with osinfo-query  os
OS_VARIANT="rhel7.9"   # List with osinfo-query  os
ISO_FILE="~/Documents/software/os/RHEL-7.9-20200917.0-Server-x86_64-dvd1.iso" # Path to ISO file

case $OS_VARIANT in
        rhel7.9)
                KS=ks7.cfg;;
        rocky9)
                KS=ks9.cfg;;
esac

echo -en "Enter vm name: "
read VM_NAME
OS_TYPE="linux"
echo -en "Enter virtual disk size : "
read DISK_SIZE

DISK=~/.local/share/libvirt/images/${VM_NAME}.qcow2

echo "Creating disk"
sudo virt-install \
     --name ${VM_NAME} \
     --memory=${MEM_SIZE} \
     --vcpus=${VCPUS} \
     --location ${ISO_FILE} \
     --network network=default \
     --disk path=${DISK},size=${DISK_SIZE} \
     --graphics=none \
     --os-variant=${OS_VARIANT} \
     --console pty,target_type=serial \
     --initrd-inject ~/virt/${KS} --extra-args "inst.ks=file:/${KS} console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200n8"

I've obfuscated the directory paths, but they're all full paths and the script will build a VM. So basically just setting up a basic system, using the default network. Here's the config for that:

<network connections='3'>
  <name>default</name>
  <uuid>61afc7f1-9c5e-4cra-8d18-e3cf4f9358e9</uuid>
  <forward mode='nat'>
    <nat>
      <port start='1024' end='65535'/>
    </nat>
  </forward>
  <bridge name='virbr0' stp='on' delay='0'/>
  <mac address='52:54:00:7c:32:9b'/>
  <ip address='192.168.122.1' netmask='255.255.255.0'>
    <dhcp>
      <range start='192.168.122.2' end='192.168.122.254'/>
    </dhcp>
  </ip>
</network>

Looking at the XML for the VM, I see the following for the network:

<interface type='network'>
      <mac address='52:54:00:07:82:78'/>
      <source network='default' portid='800dfd67-d90a-42te-a0b7-c4c78cdae481' bridge='virbr0'/>
      <target dev='vnet7'/>
      <model type='virtio'/>
      <alias name='net0'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x01' slot='0x00' function='0x0'/>
    </interface>

When this VM is installing, and when it's booted, it does not have an IP. Meanwhile, if I go through virt-manager and select the default network, it gets an IP just fine. I've tried running the virt-install command w/ and w/o sudo (I run virt-manager as me - I'm in the libvirt group). Looking at the virt-manager built VM:

    <interface type='network'>
      <mac address='52:54:00:5e:f5:05'/>
      <source network='default' portid='d57dbc56-759e-40f9-856f-9623f4801a93' bridge='virbr0'/>
      <target dev='vnet8'/>
      <model type='virtio'/>
      <alias name='net0'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x01' slot='0x00' function='0x0'/>
    </interface>

Looking at virbr0:

$ ip link show master virbr0
11: vnet7: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue master virbr0 state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether fe:54:00:07:82:78 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
12: vnet8: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue master virbr0 state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether fe:54:00:5e:f5:05 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

Only difference I can see is one is created using virt-install and the other using virt-manager (which calls to virt-install, no?). I thought there was a way to see the actual virt-install command virt-manager was about to use when creating a VM, but I can't find it. Also can't find any logs to give me an idea why the VM isn't getting an IP. Running ethtool on the VM interface shows a link. I've wasted too much time getting this to work, and all the documentation suggests it should "just work!"

ETA: PEBKAC! Remember where I said I was using kickstart? Yeah, well it helps to actually include a network configuration, even if it is just DHCP! Feeling stupid, but it's working.

Current setup is PMS running on a Synology 5-bay, and another PMS running on a Shield Pro. The NAS server is primarily used for remote streaming, while the Shield serves to my home LAN (AppleTVs mainly).

I've been seeing stuttering on larger files, either using the Plex app or Infuse, and I'm fairly certain the Synology is the weak link. Network performance in the house has pretty solid, though admittedly I could stand to test it more thoroughly. I've been looking at moving my library to a standalone system. I've been looking at the Beelink ME Mini (which happens to be on sale!). What I don't know is the best way to build this out.

I don't want to have to buy all 6 SSDs (ar at least 6x4TB ones!) at once, so I'd be looking at either a stock Linux (Ubuntu or Rocky) install w/ I guess a BTRFS pool for the SSDs (I'm guessing I can use the eMMC for OS depending on how big the install is - that or use the SSD in slot 4). Alternatively, i could possibly set up TruNAS w/ the Plex pp to manage the storage.

As for populating the media, I plan to keep the Synology as the central repo of my data. I have it replicating to another NAS at my dad's house, with movies/music/tv replicating using Syncthing. I plan to also use Syncthing to populate the Beelink.

Anyway, please poke holes in this plan and/or suggest a better one. My main goals are to get the media I'm streaming off spinning disk w/ minimal power draw (didn't mention that above) in a way that I can expand storage as necessary to accommodate the media library. Nothing's purchased yet, so I'm not married to the hardware. I would ideally like to convert the library to h.265 or even AV1 if I can make it work.

ETA: For clarity: I'm not transcoding AFAIK. My Shield mounts the Synology over SMB and mostly works fine, until I try to play anything 4k - then I get stuttering. On the surface, this sounded like a network issue, but I can't find a problem w/ the LAN. My thought was to move the PMS to a single location w/ local storage, and use the Synology just as an archive.

ETA2: FWIW, I have not expanded the memory on the Synology or installed any cache drives.

There comes a point in the career of every contemporary Republican politician when they will be forced to do, say, or defend something that is broadly unconscionable. This mandatory inevitable heel turn is the price of conservative political ambition in the Donald Trump era. In exchange for the right to seek and attain national office in the party that he leads, Trump—in a curdled neofascist parody of the wedding scene from The Godfather—always eventually requires his supplicants to prove their loyalty to him by taking on his vendettas, bigotries, hatreds, and obsessions as their own. What’s more, he prefers that they do it with gusto.

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I got a P1S as a Christmas present for me and my wife. For now, my plan is to block its internet connection and stop using the Bambu app altogether. When/if it his stops working for me, what does the community recommend as a replacement for newbies like me, or future newbs who haven’t made this mistake?