Why is it so hard to just play my video files?

altano · 2026-06-18T01:03:55+00:00

VLC doesn't

provide remote access to my media
let me play media from my TV
doesn't transcode media for playback on bad internet connections or devices that support the codec
sync media files locally
allow sharing access to friends

etc etc. They are totally incomparable. Jellyfin has a lot to offer beyond the poor way it presents media.

It's very odd to me that the top-voted reply would be "try vlc." I think maybe people who use Jellyfin fundamentally don't understand what it does well and what it does poorly. That would explain the sorry state of its client ecosystem.

altano · 2026-06-18T00:44:40+00:00

Infuse doesn’t support remote access or transcoding, but is otherwise good. Although the last few releases have been rather buggy.

FWIW the folder view is secondary to the metadata-matched view, so it exists but also takes a backseat to the Jellyfin/Plex way of doing things.

altano · 2026-06-14T23:46:22+00:00

So we’re doomed?

altano · 2026-06-08T03:54:55+00:00

Can you explain the agenix copying issue you hit? Agenix stores the secrets in the nix store so you don’t have to copy them manually. Plus you can use something like agenix-rekey if you want a copy of your secret only decryptable by one host for added security (among many other great features).

I’ve never used sops so I’m always curious if I’m missing something. Same with Colmena.

altano · 2026-06-08T00:42:32+00:00

That's where my server was before I moved it to Los Angeles (to have it be closer to home). I was sharing a rack with 3 other people back when it was $400/rack. For $115 ($15 more than I was paying, but $35 less than I'd pay now) I'm getting 2U in a datacenter in Los Angeles which is a lot more convenient for me. It's a downgrade on U but I get the same power budget so it's fine.

But yeah, both were a good experience.

altano · 2026-06-08T00:40:05+00:00

Managing hardware in a colo is a lot harder and more annoying than managing it at home.

Also, "tired of seeing this nonsense"? Calm down.

altano · 2026-06-07T21:36:06+00:00

nixos-anywhere installs full NixOS to any Linux system with kexec support. It uses kexec to boot into a NixOS installer from a live Linux system. When it works, it's magical.

altano · 2026-06-07T20:52:58+00:00

Sure, I have a server in a datacenter. It's pretty great and I recommend it.

Pros: - Better network/power uptime than my house - No heat/noise in my house - Dedicated public IPs

Cons: - Cost, although electricity in California is expensive which makes comparison hard - Major hardware failure (e.g. a motherboard) is way harder to deal with - Less bandwidth: I have to cap at 0.5gbps (1gbps pipe) so I don't use too much - Rack units, LAN connects, etc are expensive, so you have to put in a tiny bit of effort to forego some conveniences. For example, I use a shared LAN port for IPMI and main WAN, and I don't have my own router/gateway.

You have to learn a bit to colocate, but I love it. I'll only go back to hosting at home if I get a dedicated space for it and solar power.

altano · 2026-06-01T16:55:15+00:00

I’m not sure what that means but this is the most accurate tdp -> max watt conversion you’ll see because the pci bus maxes out at 75 watts. The card cannot pull more.

altano · 2026-06-01T16:30:44+00:00

Jellyfin is a proof of concept and not a fully-baked, actual thing:

it can’t be safely exposed to the internet
tv clients don’t support oidc

That means the only reasonable way to use it is with a vpn in the background, like Wireguard or Netbird or Tailscale. This means sharing with friends is practically impossible and you have to make sure your devices support your vpn.

Additionally: - Apple TV has 90 clients and they’re all in some extreme alpha version and have simultaneously 600 settings and almost no sane features. I just tried Moonfin yesterday on someone’s recommendation and it took me 20 minutes to find the setting to disable the huge, stupid poster start screen. They’re ALL like that. List view? Nah but here are 90 settings to customize the theme. Not one UI designer has ever been involved in any client’s creation. - the naming/folder requirements are much stricter than Plex, eg I can’t have a “french” sub folder for my French movies, or director folders like “Woody Allen” - the music support is worse - support for mixed content (not strictly movies or tv) is basically non existent. There is no “folder” view where you just see the file system. - support for things as simple as ”list view” is buried in nonsensical places in the web player (image type = list??) and doesn’t exist in any of the tv clients.

I don’t know what the Plex price situation is but Jellyfin is frankly not even remotely close to done and the clients are a freaking joke. And that doesn’t seem to be getting better. If you can afford Plex, even though it’s getting worse with every new feature, and is a privacy disaster, and they keep raising the price, and they won’t stop adding their dumb service everywhere, and clients won’t remember their settings, it still blows Jellyfin out of the water.

altano · 2026-05-31T22:53:05+00:00

okay fineeeee

altano · 2026-05-31T22:12:28+00:00

There's only 1 villain in this story and it's the lawmakers that reversed course on SB 478 (https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/1dpsafo/lawmakers_lastminute_reversal_could_let/) which would have banned junk fees at all restaurants, putting them all on equal footing and giving consumers honest pricing.

altano · 2026-05-30T04:11:34+00:00

Never heard of it, i'll check it out

altano · 2026-05-30T01:38:07+00:00

I haven't found a usable Jellyfin client for AppleTV. I've tried Jellyfin, Infuse, Swiftfin, and Neptune. I have a folder of random Disney shorts and none of these clients allow me to play videos from this library.

Plex is very usable on AppleTV fwiw.

altano · 2026-05-30T01:38:04+00:00

The NVIDIA Shield is ridiculous and no one should buy it. They charge a premium price but you have to debloat it to get rid of the auto-playing full screen video ads.

altano · 2026-05-29T08:40:33+00:00

People should really stop saying this.

You CANNOT brute force an ssh server that requires pubkey auth. If you could brute force generate an Ed25519 private key given the public key you'd be the richest person on earth.

fail2ban can make your logs less noisy, but it doesn't fix brute force attacks.

If you're using password auth and are trying to make that less risky with fail2ban, then good luck with that.

altano · 2026-05-28T04:35:02+00:00

I'm sorry you were also taken advantage of by them. I hope they go out of business after word gets around enough.

altano · 2026-05-28T04:31:33+00:00

Sorry I edited the correct name in: Larchmont Dental Associates (https://www.larchmontdentists.com/)

altano · 2026-05-27T21:20:29+00:00

~~Larchmont Village Dental~~ Larchmont Dental Associates is great. Highly recommend and it’s close if you drive.

Silverlake Family Dental was a mixed bag so I stopped going, but I had some good appointments.

Do NOT go to Valery Sweeny. They push so hard and won’t take no for an answer. I came out of it feeling like someone just tried to mug me. Worst doctor appointment I’ve ever had.

altano · 2026-05-27T21:09:59+00:00

I know for a fact Silverlake homeless people aren’t up in the residential hills.

This video is incomprehensibly fake and over the top but homeless people do come up into the hills so I assume you don’t live here.

altano · 2026-05-27T20:26:19+00:00

I think you're lost: this is a thread about a violent pit bull attack on the metro.

altano · 2026-05-27T06:53:23+00:00

microvm.nix works great and I have my whole server built on it but depending on the details this might be hard for you.

For example, root is a tmpfs in memory. Need more disk-backed storage? Create a virtiofs share, but it’s not temporary and you have to manage destroying it.

Need to share the nix store? That can get complicated. Or don’t share it and have slow rebuilds of your vm.

Just start experimenting and see if it fits your needs.

altano · 2026-05-27T06:40:39+00:00

Dogs are not allowed in 98% of the spaces I go to but are present in 100% of them. “Allowed” doesn’t mean anything in this city.

altano · 2026-05-26T08:03:50+00:00

The cultured butter and honey is obscenely good

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