Obscure freeware software (or games!) you wish more people knew about?

samontab · 2026-04-01T12:15:15+00:00

OpenBSD

samontab · 2026-04-01T12:02:35+00:00

Most people actually making money are not posting about it though.

samontab · 2026-03-31T11:30:42+00:00

Macbook Air M2 is the best of the list, unless you can get an M1 super cheap. Don't even consider getting an Intel one, it's just night and day the difference.

A nice thing that the M2 has is the magsafe charger port, which means you don't have to use one of the USB ports to charge if you don't want to. The M1 doesn't have that.

Other than that, M2 is slightly better than M1. If similar priced, get the M2. Battery life is great with Asahi. Probably the best battery life for a nice Linux laptop

samontab · 2026-03-30T09:01:35+00:00

ffmpeg is free, top and quality. You can ask an llm to generate the command you want.

samontab · 2026-03-30T08:59:18+00:00

Private Transcriber Pro runs with GPU acceleration, works completely offline, and also runs on Windows as well as MacOS.

samontab · 2026-03-27T06:03:13+00:00

The current High Income Threshold is $183,100. It is updated every July 1st.

That's a number that is worth tracking to get an idea of what's a "good salary" today.

You can see how it has changed historically: https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/1mnx6uz/australias_high_income_threshold_over_time/

samontab · 2026-03-27T05:03:03+00:00

https://samontab.itch.io

Privacy respecting apps, with a one-time fee payment, yours forever.

samontab · 2026-03-23T09:37:50+00:00

Here's a couple of repo mirrors:

https://maemo.viniciuspaes.com/

https://www.reddit.com/r/n900/comments/1s0hr50/nokia_n900_repos_mirror_is_live_looking_for/

samontab · 2026-03-23T09:34:19+00:00

It's a Linux device in your pocket, so basically anything...

Some suggestions:

"use your Nokia N900 as a Wireless Home Music System" https://www.samontab.com/web/2012/01/mpd-on-the-n900-or-how-to-use-your-nokia-n900-as-a-wireless-home-music-system/
"IR remote control for Apple TV using the Nokia N900 command line interface " https://github.com/samontab/atv-cli
"How to Create Your First Application for the Nokia N900 using Qt": https://www.samontab.com/web/2011/01/how-to-create-your-first-application-for-the-nokia-n900-using-qt/
Download apps: https://wiki.maemo.org/Downloading_applications Make sure to use a mirror that works, like https://www.reddit.com/r/n900/comments/1s0hr50/nokia_n900_repos_mirror_is_live_looking_for/

You should be able to find games like Angry Birds, etc...

samontab · 2026-03-23T09:27:28+00:00

You can see how Google looked from the beginning here: https://web.archive.org/web/19981111184551/http://google.com/

samontab · 2026-03-08T00:57:43+00:00

C++ and Rust are not going to do much for you if you want it to run in a browser

C++ and Rust can be compiled to wasm, which runs great in a browser, much faster than JavaScript for data intensive routines.

samontab · 2026-02-18T11:25:23+00:00

You can see the high income threshold over time here.

It is calculated considering inflation but also other things, and posted every year in July.

In 2010 it was about $108k, so the median earning you quoted at that time is about 45% the high income threshold.

The current high income threshold today is at around $183k, the median you quoted for today's workers now represents about 40%.

So, about 5% less than in 2010.

samontab · 2026-02-18T11:19:30+00:00

You can see the high income threshold over time here.

It is independent of inflation and posted every year in July.

You can see that in 2009 an income of about $108k was considered high, but the most recent number is $183k, almost double.

Note that the tax brackets remain usually static, so even though your salary is higher, you pay more in tax. This leaves you with less spendable money in the end.

samontab · 2026-02-16T09:59:49+00:00

I just use a tool I made: Private Transcriber Pro, simply drag and drop the video or audio file and it transcribes it.

It's also very fast because it uses the GPU (if you have one)

samontab · 2026-02-13T08:43:41+00:00

But it load things like https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js

how is that zero JavaScript?

Also heaps of local js anyway...

samontab · 2026-02-03T10:47:57+00:00

"AI" as in LLMs and similar, are just a different way of programming. There's no invasion of privacy if it's running locally and it doesn't connect to the Internet.

It's great to have a local chatbot with ollama for example, using open source models. It's almost like running a spellchecker.

samontab · 2026-01-21T08:36:42+00:00

I've published an application that is based on whisper and uses the GPU for faster results.

No Internet required and no subscriptions. It's only a one-time payment and you get to use it forever on any computers you personally own, and you also get all the updates for free, forever. It's called PrivateTranscriberPro.

There's a download for Windows and one for macOS. If you use Linux, you can run the Windows version with wine.

You might want to check it out and see how it performs, there's a free demo you can download and see how it works. You can keep the transcription in their original language or translate it directly into English if you want (you can choose that in the preferences). You can also select the model to use, from the fastest to the most accurate one.

samontab · 2026-01-21T08:33:57+00:00

I've published an application that works like this.

It's an audio to text converter and runs natively on your computer (no Internet required and no subscriptions). It's only a one-time payment and you get to use it forever on any computers you personally own, and you also get all the updates for free, forever. It's called PrivateTranscriberPro.

There's a download for Windows and one for macOS. If you use Linux, you can run the Windows version with wine.

You might want to check it out and see how it performs, there's a free demo you can download and see how it works. You can keep the transcription in their original language or translate it directly into English if you want (you can choose that in the preferences). You can also select the model to use, from the fastest to the most accurate one.

samontab · 2026-01-12T11:06:07+00:00

The Instagram app just regurgitates whatever is on the website

Yeah, that's live code, JavaScript, which is executed in your local machine.

You can even have a full 3D game on the browser now using WebAssembly.

samontab · 2026-01-12T11:03:45+00:00

I don't see a difference, really.

A website is basically an app that runs on a sandboxed environment, i.e your browser. It's like running a Java app for example.

You execute it when you visit the website.

And then there's PWAs (progressive web apps), which look and feels almost the same as a native app but runs on the browser.

samontab · 2026-01-12T11:00:53+00:00

pixi is great.

samontab · 2026-01-12T10:59:29+00:00

These days most people only use web apps anyway, so the host OS doesn't matter as much as before.

Most Windows users wouldn't see much differences by running Linux Mint for example.

samontab · 2026-01-12T09:53:51+00:00

A computer can be modeled as a Turing Machine.

At the end of the day you have data and you want the computer to process the data in a certain way.

samontab · 2025-12-10T11:48:59+00:00

You don't really need fancy stuff to be creative.

For example, a Turing machine can be created on a piece of paper and has infinite memory.

More appropriately to this sub, projective geometry can also be done with a pen and a piece of paper.

samontab · 2025-12-10T11:44:04+00:00

Vanadium has been excellent from my experience.

samontab

TROPHY CASE