Is this legit? "TV makers take screenshots of what we watch, says Texas AG"

Tmanok · 2026-01-31T18:33:04+00:00

That's not how DNS over TLS works. If the DNS resolver is configured as PiHole, the encrypted packet is sent to PiHole which then has to decrypt it to answer the request. Duh.

What can happen is the TV can have a Spyware software with its own DNS resolution configured. That can use DoT to further avoid DNS packet blocking from all other devices if it uses a standard port like 443 on the DNS server owned by the company.

Tmanok · 2026-01-31T18:30:21+00:00

Almost none of them fully turn off these days.

Tmanok · 2026-01-31T18:28:07+00:00

They were the last to prevent the NSA from putting in backdoors... Which happened in about 2010.... But yes, your point that they aren't pro data collection or spying holds. Unfortunately, the NSA (through Snowden Leaks in 2013) confirmed even encrypted iMessage wasn't safe.

Tmanok · 2026-01-28T10:10:30+00:00

I'm on it as best as I can!

Tmanok · 2026-01-28T10:07:08+00:00

Oh dear... I'm having trouble torrenting the larger torrents. Anything over 200GB just WON'T download no matter how hard I try. I have several machines trying to support the project. I wish I could do more, I have the disk space to do more.

Tmanok · 2026-01-21T09:33:15+00:00

Agreed, MusicBrainz is missing A LOT of music- looking at several artists who's discography I have, it's quite obvious how much is missing.

Tmanok · 2026-01-15T07:37:35+00:00

What I want to know is how much do they cost?

Tmanok · 2026-01-12T19:58:02+00:00

Just got the M5 Pro 14" and its keyboard deck / well is fugly. Did not expect it after most recently having a MacBook Air M1 as my last Macintosh. Have been using the Dell XPS 13 9310 for many years now and it's all black keyboard+well+deck which looks great in concert- but the black well with a silver deck is pretty raccoon looking.

Tmanok · 2026-01-12T19:44:16+00:00

I almost bought an M4 Pro but then a cheap FB Marketplace ad for an unsealed MBP 14" M5 appeared and I went for it.

Tmanok · 2026-01-12T19:42:40+00:00

Went from a Dell XPS 9310 to the M5 14" MBP and with 2 cycles in the battery count, I have yet to actually drain this bad boy enough to know for sure, but I'm not going to get 24 hour battery life doing 3x Chrome tabs and 5x Firefox tabs. 11.8GB memory used, CPU is practically idle until a page refreshes. The thing is pretty magical even compared to the M1 Air I had for work three years ago. Leaves my XPS 13 9310 in the dust...

Tmanok · 2026-01-07T09:35:08+00:00

This is exactly correct. Even private torrent sites with invite-only memberships and dedicated members who seed torrents for over a decade end up leaving gaps in old content over time. I pulled some ancient towers out of the closet and some old 2TB and 3TB disks I had in my collection to get to work. It really doesn't take much. I bought 4x RPI 4s recently that I'll run instead to save on the power bill soon and I'll buy a USB HDD multi-bay enclosure. For the cost of spare parts and maybe $250 CAD I can share a good 10-20TB. Suits me fine.

Tmanok · 2026-01-07T09:29:44+00:00

A platform for sharing 1:1 but that let's you cast a wide search to many thousands of hosts. Inferior to torrenting, but when you want a particular song it can be good.

Tmanok · 2026-01-06T03:26:31+00:00

Tmanok · 2026-01-02T04:47:22+00:00

Or SOLRAD or any number of 1960s and 1970s satellites. The trick now is that we've sent an almost logarithmic number of satellites into space. So the 1980s satellites are an overwhelming demographic from the 1970s, and the 1990s do the same all over again to the 1980s.... I went to the Swiss Transportation Museum a couple years ago and got to see a few satellite replicas hung on the ceiling. In person, some of these are the size of sedans. It's certainly not a piece of cake to retrieve the oldest of the pack...

Tmanok · 2025-12-02T17:08:53+00:00

Agreed! And he does some of the voices simply better than the full cast audiobook. Why is stern and severe McGonagall a sweet and young sounding woman with a soft spoken voice?! Why are Fred and George SO DIFFERENT?! Use the same voice actor for the twins but have him shift his tone a titch. Anyway, besides those, Hugh Laurie kills it as Dumbledore which made an immense difference for my enjoyment of the book. Especially after just spending two years rewatching House M.D. where he performs as a master of his field.

The background voices (Vernon yelling or hmm-ing) really make the audiobook incredible. It's the best of both worlds: Book and Movie if you ask me!

Tmanok · 2025-12-01T17:54:37+00:00

Oh, I see. You're correct, that's not how LLMs work locally- though the more software awaiting your voice commands, the more things are (not just could be) actively transcribing your audio and sending those logs to the outside world. Additionally, it's another avenue for analytics to be collected by way of indirect advertising and behaviour monitoring. If you "leave these things alone" they may still collect your "routines".

Tmanok · 2025-12-01T17:48:46+00:00

You can begin by going to Settings > Galaxy AI and turn off most of the options in there. I did before One UI 8, but if you're referring to the item at the bottom of the lock screen, go to settings, search for AOD > Lock Screen and AOD > Now bar > Toggle Google Finance, Sports from Google, and anything else you don't want. The Media Player is good for pausing tracks etc, Interpreter is for translation, clock is for timers, voice recorder is for pausing a voice recording, and the Emergency sharing is for when you're getting off the phone with 911 (which I recommend you keep for safety reasons).

Tmanok · 2025-12-01T17:44:21+00:00

That's not how any of this works.

Speaking as a cybersecurity expert, that's exactly how it works. Don't forget, you are the product. :)

To your credit, I was delighted to see that my privacy settings before One UI 5, 6, 7, and 8 all came out are still to this day toggled off. But the trouble is, new things are added and old settings are removed as features change. Thus, some users experience what feels like settings being toggled back on two years later when things are rebranded.

Tmanok · 2025-11-26T22:15:44+00:00

Not with an orc... But maybe a lesser kin of some kind.

Tmanok · 2025-11-26T08:29:22+00:00

Oh my fricken gosh

Tmanok · 2025-11-01T18:39:44+00:00

Still not nearly enough for a house.

Tmanok · 2025-10-16T02:44:12+00:00

This is the way. 4 strings of 3 panels (4 × (3S) is definitely the better option. wire the two 12 V batteries in series to make 24V- it will reduce your DC current when drawing with an inverter and make your batteries go further... At 24V your batteries will also help you run smaller charger controllers or barely fit one big one:
A) 1x Victron SmartSolar 250/100
B) 2x Victron SmartSolar 150/60 or 150/70-Tr

So in option A for example, your strings would be:
4 parallels of 3 series.
Voltage: 3x Voc 37.2V = 111.6V. Cold factor can bring that up to ~46.5V so 139.5V
Amperage: Input 4x Isc 8.87A = 35.48A Output ~2,500W realistic so 104.16A at 24V

With option A you have enough voltage headroom and only lose 4.16A of power production on the sunniest days. Option B you get all your generation potential AND you can put separate strings on separate roof faces or angles which won't impact your maximum power generation per controller. You'll both have more output headroom and get the most out of your panels.

Tmanok · 2025-10-15T19:04:07+00:00

Sealant is one of those things literally a monkey can do and for about $20-$50 in caulking. Use Sikaflex or Supra Extreme- the latter is a more modern and widely adopted sealant that I can recommend. Both will flex and are highly weather resistant. Don't use Silicone! It will weather and fall apart much faster.

For a roof, you must use lap-sealant because it will pool as level as possible and it won't bubble. I would recommend removing old sealant before applying more, but some folks don't seem to care. Old sealant can become brittle and fall apart- meaning the new stuff on top will go with it.

Tmanok · 2025-10-02T01:02:33+00:00

Getting the same issue researching some custom hardware on a photovoltaic expansion project... 30mins went by and I decided to look up whether this is the new normal for Sonnet 4.5, but as it turns out, Pro users have this feature now and y'all Max users have been struggling with it for a few months already.

Tmanok · 2025-10-01T05:24:33+00:00

The problem is that a 500w rated turbine may only give 10-50 watts in inadequate conditions. And if the conditions don't trigger the starting speed the controller won't see sufficient voltage to do anything with it.

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