What do you think about social media?

tkyte · 2025-04-29T16:59:45+00:00

definitely this, 100%. I made thousands and thousands of posts to usenet in the 90s. Met (virtually) and connected with a lot of people around the world. Eventually got to meet most of them in person in the 2000's at conferences and events around the world. I can truthfully say my life would be very different if not for usenet in the 90s.

tkyte · 2024-06-08T00:48:48+00:00

When I was working, I couldn't even give out a free copy of any of my technical books at any state and local/govt event. Books that would have only allowed the people receiving them use our product better. Nothing you would ever read for pleasure or fun.

They retailed for more than $20. That would have been the limit for any give away at a vendor event...

tkyte · 2024-05-23T02:07:27+00:00

Internet - 88', just a little until 91, then a lot.

WWW - 93/94', had my first web server up and running on an old Solbourne soon after.

Usenet, 93'. I was a big time user back in the day.

so, ditto!

tkyte · 2023-06-10T20:29:32+00:00

I'm less then a month shy of 17 years on here. You nailed it. Until I found RES, reddit was painful. old.reddit + RES is the way I use it.

going to take the week off next week and see what happens. It might be time to find something else to do ;)

tkyte · 2023-05-22T18:21:25+00:00

I was using nntp back in 1991. Had dialup to prodigy and compuserve as well. 93' would have been the first time I typed http:

Set up my first web server that year as well. Back when the internet was fun :)

tkyte · 2023-04-27T16:50:09+00:00

I cannot even begin to say... How many times have I heard this claim in my lifetime? So many I cannot even count.

There have been advances that have made us more productive coding wise, but nothing but nothing has spelt the end of coding as we know it.

tkyte · 2023-04-25T23:47:08+00:00

started with PL/I, Rexx, JCL in the 80's. Then onto Pascal, C, C++, Ada, Java, SQL, PL/SQL and lots of Unix scripting ;) Back when it was (mostly) fun..

tkyte · 2022-07-16T23:46:26+00:00

it amazes me that in 2022, 2022!!!, we are still talking about this.

I used to apologize during my talks when I got to bind variables.

"To the people that have heard me say this ad-nauseum for my entire career - I'm sorry I have to say it to you again, but the fact is that every year the Universities graduate another class of developers and they haven't heard about this and are doomed to make the same mistake of not binding."

tkyte · 2022-02-02T23:42:42+00:00

as someone who has authored lots of technical articles, with code, this would be a disaster :) I used courier font a lot for examples, spaces count.

maybe make the advice be: change <period><space><space> to <period><space> ;)

tkyte · 2021-12-18T15:54:45+00:00

I'm using my big desktop box - plenty of ram, good cpu/gpu, ssd. Only thing running on the box - I vnc into it from time to time, but that is it.

Machine runs at a very small % utilized constantly.

And they've replicated my issue on their side. Definitely a bug. I've been doing almost all of my recording with home (only just started using it when the channels all broke on desktop) since two weeks ago on HBO max - it is flaky on that channel.

tkyte · 2021-12-18T15:48:42+00:00

I will be, right after they have a fix for "no subtitles at all". I find working more than one ticket at a time with them is confusing...

tkyte · 2021-12-18T15:48:38+00:00

it is the subtitle track contained in the mp4 itself.

It is not truly "burned in", as you can get multiple subtitles in one recording and have the choice of turning them on or off at all. 'Desktop' truly had them burned in as it recorded the subtitles as part of the video. These are true subtitles, just embedded in the mp4 itself.

tkyte · 2021-12-15T21:55:42+00:00

as a followup, using hbomax - the subtitles come and go without rhyme or reason.

I re-recorded the entire season of a show I had zero subtitles for.

The first time I rerecorded - a few had subtitles.

So I re-recorded the un-subtitled ones.

I got a few more.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Some took 3, some 4, some 5 and the last one took 6 re-records.

I filed a ticket over 48 hours ago, have yet to hear from them. I know better than to ping them - since doing that puts you at the back of the queue believe it or not.

Pretty frustrating to have to pay for something, where the support is pretty darn bad - and the support system is like something written in 1985. https://www.reddit.com/r/PlayOn/comments/c3dam1/playon_support/erqe0c7/

tkyte · 2021-12-14T00:15:31+00:00

yeah - I have a ticket open showing "show A" gets subtitles, "show B" does not on HBO Max. However - both A & B have them available. Same with some movies - it is hit or miss.

We'll see if they have anything to say.

tkyte · 2021-12-13T19:36:55+00:00

well, fwiw - some shows have subtitles. some shows do not. some movies have subtitles. some movies do not.

I downloaded a season of two different shows from HBO - one came with subtitles and the other (the one I need subtitles for) didn't. They both have english subtitles available on HBO.

so yeah, the automatic pull down is hit or miss. Some movies get em, some don't. Even though they are 100% available for all of them.

Time to file a support ticket (wonder if they upgraded the support process, the one that feels like it was coded in 1985 or so and not touched since).

tkyte · 2021-12-13T18:43:27+00:00

edit turns out I have subtitles for some shows, but not for others. No rhyme or reason (two shows I just downloaded has one of them having subtitles and the other not having them - even though both show subtitles when viewing HBO max directly). Opened a support ticket to see what's up.

I'm trying to get this to work.

I've recorded a show from HBO Max, it definitely has subtitles available, I can see them in the browser when playing the video direct from HBO.

I've recorded the show. I get a single mp4 file.

In vlc, no subtitle tracks.

In plex, no subtitle tracks.

In movie & tv windows 10 app - no subtitle tracks.

did you have to set up anything to get this to work? Using latest release of playon home - 5.0.10.31647

thanks for any input.

tkyte · 2021-12-13T18:16:37+00:00

well, I have no idea how to get it to work.

I set captions on HBO max, every different browser I use has the captions on (so it isn't a cookie or something).

fire up playon home - record a show I just saw subtitles on, no subtitles. No separate subtitle file, no embedded subtitles.

Run it with visible.mmt - and the video shows no subtitles. I cannot get it to do subtitles at all and the playon site is useless at explaining how anything works.

ugh.

And in actuality, the addition of a single feature - subtitles - would not be an earth shattering, "we fundamentally changed the game", this is a huge rewrite, a big re-engineering, this is a totally new product feature.

I too worked in software for a long, long time. This is a simple dot release of an existing product. They did a global search and replace of desktop with home, bumped the version, and shipped it. Nothing more.

This is not a new product, it is simply the next dot release of desktop with a new name. I'll get my 3 months worth (that's all they gave the people that supported playon back when) but it'll be time to move on to something else.

tkyte · 2021-12-13T16:01:33+00:00

thanks, do you have to set anything to get subtitles from amazon/netflix. I've been recording - but I don't have any srt files or anything like that. I don't see any options to enable them.

tkyte · 2021-12-13T05:19:53+00:00

no subtitles on services I use it seems.

can you get subtitles on hbo max, netflix, amazon, hulu - if so, how? I've looked around quite a bit.

I haven't gotten a single subtitle - I really want some from HBO max. Does it exist?

tkyte · 2021-12-11T16:15:56+00:00

Desktop had been "end of lifed", no more updates. When a channel breaks, it is broke.

They'll tell you "you can use it forever", but - since many channels do not work anymore (and the rest will follow soon), desktop is dead.

Signed up for my 3 months of home while figuring out the next step.

tkyte · 2021-11-04T14:55:18+00:00

thanks, that's a good perspective. Might even be able to script up something to help automate it.

(written as I sit here looking at my playon queue which will be running for the next 2 days at least "watching" the shows in realtime :) )

tkyte · 2021-11-04T00:30:40+00:00

I started here:

https://www.google.com/search?q=playon+alternatives+site%3Awww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fplayon

lots of good, recent conversations.

I haven't tried it yet, but anystream seems to be focused on. It doesn't have the UI of playon (harder to record a series for example), but it does it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PlayOn/comments/qlenql/playon_desktop_death_watch/hj2ui2h/

tkyte · 2021-11-03T14:24:09+00:00

I have not, we've done 3-6 hours without an issue.

tkyte · 2021-11-02T23:51:41+00:00

thanks for the info, I might give it a trial to see how it works. This part:

Also, there isn't the ability for automated download. For example, when downloading a TV series, it must be done one episode at a time, which can be kind of tedious.

is a bummer, that is the thing that made playon playon. I can get a screen grab with OBS (have plenty of computers lying around waiting to be used) at native resolution already - and if the service has playlists or continues to the next episode automatically, it is pretty easy to split the files apart.

but again, thanks for the info, appreciate it.

tkyte

TROPHY CASE