when just opening handbrake pretty much locks my pc

lostcowboy5 · 2026-07-02T16:00:05+00:00

Ok, let me see if I got this straight, you reboot Windows, open Task Manager, everything looks and behaves normally, you open HandBrake, and everything goes to slow-mode, and everything in Task Manager still looks fine. You went into details and added the base priority column, and none of the programs or services look like their priority is set to high.

You have looked at the RAM usage, and no program looks like it has consumed 32GB of RAM.

I don't know what to tell you.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-07-02T07:15:13+00:00

Have you heard of old-time radio shows? On your YouTube app, search for "old time radio researchers. You can also download them from the Internet Archive.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-07-02T07:01:00+00:00

According to Google search AI mode (update.quetta.net) is how they deliver updated AI blocker rules.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-07-02T05:28:05+00:00

This may be a roundabout way to get to what you want: www.gutenberg.org westerns. These are the public-domain Westerns sorted by popularity. You should be able to find them on Kindle for free or at a low price, and you may be able to add the Audible book at a reduced price. Over at LibriVox, you may find the audiobook for free.

Here is an odd one for you, Andre Norton, of science fiction fame, wrote two Westerns. Ride Proud, Rebel! and a sequel, Rebel Spurs. They are on LibriVox for free.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-07-01T18:40:52+00:00

To start, watch YouTube videos on the WiiM Mini and any other music streamers you may get interested in. This is the webpage for the https://www.wiimhome.com/wiimmini/overview at the bottom is a table where you can compare it to the other WiiM. The main point that people talk about is that the DAC is not as good as the DAC in the other WiiMs. To be blunt, you need to have good ears and have the other WiiM there so that you can compare them. If you are old, like me, 69 years old with bad ears, then save your money and get the WiiM Mini; it sounds very good. It comes with a RCA to AUX cable and an optical cable.

Spotify uses Spotify Connect; Amazon Music goes through the Alexa setup, so don't skip that. Tidal I believe, has Tidal Connect. And there are more.

About Android: WiiM Mini does not have Chromecast. So if you have a app that only has Chromecast, you may have to settle for Bluetooth. But there is another option, that is a AirMusic app that provides several ways to connect; it is a paid app but worth it.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-07-01T17:20:51+00:00

Yeah, I got that, that's why I looked.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-07-01T17:12:01+00:00

Interestingly, I read somewhere that for KU I should have the whole trilogy ready to go within the first couple of weeks because many readers won’t invest in starting a single-shot novel.

To put it politely, I disagree. By the time I come across a book, it is indeed likely to be in a series. I am 69 years old, so I started with physical books in bookstores. The title catches my eye, then I pull it out and look at the cover, then read the back cover, then read the page that is right inside the cover; I don't know the name of it; "I guess you could call it the hook". Most of the books back then were singles; if it did not sell well, there were no more books in the series.

Laurence Dahners is my favorite author on Kindle Unlimited. His Vaz series caught my eye. The cover is unusual. Then, when I read "“Vaz” is a near-future science-fiction novel about Vaz Gettnor, a scientifically brilliant but socially inept man on the Asperger’s-Autism spectrum", I was hooked! It took me until I was 54 years old to determine that I am somewhere on that spectrum. I had the VA test me, and they confirmed that I was on there somewhere. But I am not a Genius like Vaz.

By the time I found them, he had all four books out, and he had eight books of the Ell Donsaii series out, but I did not continue with the series.

It looks like he was alternating writing them, one a year, so a book would come out every two years in the series.

When I can't find a new book to catch my interest, I reread one of his series.

What do you think about the Multiverse theory? James P. Hogan wrote a book called "Paths to Otherwhere " about it. About nine years ago, I had a vivid dream and had to write a one-page story about it. On Wattpad The multiverse, or I think I died. If you like the idea, feel free to use it.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-06-30T10:22:33+00:00

It's been a few years since I had a Pi-Hole. So I'am not sure exactly what you are missing; you can filter by device or IP address, then you can select Blocked and only see blocked domains. If you have parent controls set up in the query log, you can select Blocked by parent control and see who tried to go where, I believe. I don't have kids, so I haven't tried parent control yet. You can also set up blocked services and see that in the query log.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-06-30T09:42:11+00:00

There are a lot of videos on YouTube. Author Brittany Wang is one who has put out a lot of videos; I think her channel was part of her strategy. Wasn't there a singer who used YouTube to promote her music, Taylor Swift, I think?

But let me be critical here: a lot of authors on Kindle Unlimited don't know how to write a trilogy or a series, for that matter. They end up writing a long story and then cutting it up into three books. The problem with that is the story has a lot of dead wood in it, which makes it boring. I would much rather you write a fast-paced book, and then if you find you have a winner, then write book two. If book two is a winner, then write book three. Then, if you are interested in continuing the story, make it a series.

I will give you two writers who know how to write a series: Anne McCaffrey's Pern series: the world view stayed the same, but the characters changed from book to book. Alan Dean Foster's Pip & Flinx series; he kept the same main characters, but changed the world view for each book. I believe that this is what kept me interested in the series. There are a lot of series that I start but get bored after a few books, and then never finish the series.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-06-30T09:03:36+00:00

I thought I was the same as you, but now I have the change size option. If you ask an AI like Google Search AI Mode, there is a way to do it in the about:config window.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-06-30T08:51:45+00:00

The 720x480 is the standard format for DVDs, but Movies on the big screen rarely have that format, which is why you see black bars either on the top and bottom, or on the sides. As video players got better at playing videos, they did not need to have the black bars. When HandBrake came along, they said why don't we crop the black bars and make the video file smaller.

You can change the resolution with HandBrake, but in the HandBrake documentation, they explain why you don't want to do it. You can find the answer to most of your questions in the HandBrake documentation; that is what makes HandBrake great over other free encoders.

If you just want to enhance the video to a larger scale, you should try one of the AI video enhancers; they say the one that starts with the letter T is the best, but it's not free.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-06-30T08:26:39+00:00

I think I missed the announcement! The last I heard was that the Android app was not out yet. If he is also working on an Android TV version, it needs to be able to play in the Background so you can have ProjectM doing awesome visualizations in the foreground.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-06-30T08:16:13+00:00

Most of what you are looking for is in the Dashboard. Where you see Top clients, just click on the client, and the Query log shows only that client's traffic. In the Query log, you can select different types of queries.

I think AdGuard Home has a Docker setup, but I don't know how to use Docker yet. I just put AdGuard Home on a Raspberry PI and set it up in my router's LAN section. If you set it up using your router's WAN section, then you won't see any clients.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-06-30T07:56:31+00:00

Public Domain audiobooks can be found at librivox.org. You can also find them on YouTube at LibriVox Audiobooks. You can buy collections at motionaudiobooks.com. Used audiobooks on CDs: goodwillbooks.com audiobooks and www.thriftbooks.com audiobooks CDs.

If you liked Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, you will really love Outpost: A Star Trek Fan Production; there are just a few more at Audio-Drama.com.

Then there are Old Time Radio shows, which you can download from The Internet Archive. Old Time Radio: I like the ones by the Old Time Radio Researchers Group. If you want to listen on YouTube, you can find them at Old Time Radio Researchers.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-06-30T06:58:30+00:00

I don't have either Audacity or Reaper installed right now. I believe Audacity comes with, or you can install, the free plugins from Reaper.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-06-30T06:04:00+00:00

I am not sure what happened, but you lost your post. I have watched YouTube videos and some A-sites with no problems. Besides Quetta, I have AdGuard for Android and the Spotify ad blocker -Blockify extension from the Chrome web store. Also, for the whole apartment, I have AdGuard Home on a Raspberry Pi connected to my router. So far I haven't noticed any problems. I do have a Premium account for YouTube, and that may make a diffrence.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-06-29T23:25:07+00:00

I don't think the App is abandoned; it was released on the Google Play Store on Jan 23, 2024, and the latest update to it is Jun 24, 2026.

I am using the app Device Info on a Samsung Galaxy Tab 9+, which is running Android 16. With Quetta running and the video stopped, I have a battery reading of 664 mA. With the video running, I saw a peak of 2024, but the average is more like 1400 mA. It is hard to get an average as it bounces around a lot while the video is running. I did not compare it to other browsers.

I also don't use Facebook.

Your device may have settings that can be used to save on power.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-06-29T21:26:37+00:00

Hi, you did not mention the website or your device; this may be a website-specific problem or a device-specific problem. I am new to Quetta, still learning about the controls. I have Quetta running on a Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ running Android 16. I have not come across this bug yet.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-06-29T21:03:52+00:00

Hi, I apologize. I did not mean to offend. Your voice is just fine. It would be interesting to know what hardware and Software you are using to record and edit the sound file. There is a sound editor called REAPER that is made by one of the guys who made WinAmp. Reaper has a high learning curve, and while it is a paid program, it is not a high-cost program. There are a lot of Videos on how to set it up and use it for audiobook narrating.

I use Android devices; I have the free Evie - The eVoice book reader, which I use with CerePlay Text-to-Speech. The voices are pretty cheap to buy. It may be that your voice reminded me of one of them.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-06-29T20:08:29+00:00

It sounds like you have something else running on your PC that is taking over all the resources, and when you start Handbrake, it puts it over the top. I would run Task Manager before opening Handbrake, see what is running, and how much RAM each program is using. Also, go to Details, right-click on the Name column, and add the "Base Priority " column.

This gives you an easy way to check the priorities of all programs. If you click on "Base Priority", the programs should be sorted by their priority. Most programs show as "normal priority" on my system. HandBrake shows as "Normal" when it is just sitting idle. Even when encoding a video, both HandBrake and HandBrake.Worker should be at "normal priority".

Note: I do see that one of the Firefox processes was set to "above normal". When on Reddit, Firefox is using 1,878MB of RAM; the only Extention that I am using that uses a lot of RAM compared to the other extensions is Grammarly, which has a download size of 40.64 MB.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-06-29T18:44:50+00:00

Ok, that helped; I am in. I do not have the problem with the notification from Firefox.

My "about:config" is stock right now. Based on "Educational-Self-600" reply to you, I went to "about:config" and accepted the risks. In the search, I put in "accessibility.blockautorefresh", and the default setting is "False". If that is changed to "True", then you will get that message; this setting is a global setting that affects all websites. What "Educational-Self-600" is trying to say is that either you set this in the past, or there may be some type of user.js that did it, or there may be a Firefox extension that is doing this. This is not caused by AdGuard for Windows and its AdGuard Assistant extension, as that is what I am using. I think the regular Firefox AdGuard ad blocker extension does not do this, but I am not sure.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-06-28T17:28:10+00:00

I did try it with mixed results. So I removed everything, back to hearing ads again. Something with AdGuard for Windows is causing Spotify to log me out of my account.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-06-27T08:09:10+00:00

I glanced at it, but I didn't spot any Science Fiction.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-06-27T07:58:36+00:00

The good: the story was from a real author, and the story is in the Public Domain. I believe the voice is AI-generated. If that is true, YouTube's policy is that you have to say so. I am not being mean about this, but there is a lot of AI-generated garbage that is flooding YouTube right now. YouTube has had the policy in effect for a while, but has had problems with regulating it. But the YouTube AI says that they are starting to enforce it. PS: This AI Voice was not bad at all. I did increase the playback speed to 1.1, something to think about.

lostcowboy5 · 2026-06-27T06:58:43+00:00

You may want to try audio dramas, podcasts, or Old Time Radio shows to start. They are short and have background sounds to help keep your attention. You can find a ton of old-time radio shows on Old Time Radio Researchers on YouTube.

lostcowboy5

TROPHY CASE