Pihole, if i understand correctly, works by blocking DNS requests and YouTube ads are not DNS based the way ads usually are. You’re stuck blocking them by uBO on each device or use Invidious.

Working minimum wage or struggling with money for any reason shall not mean you cannot have nice things in life, never. So I do the thing. Sometimes. Normalizing spending money into things you physically cannot touch is one thing i could get over with, like buying GOG (DRM free) games i’ll actually end up playing, but licenses to play a dang video game that is valid for god knows how long? This is where I draw the line.

Your friend is right: when them corpos suck us dry, we gotta suck em back. It is easy as that.

Furthermore: It’s not piracy when paying for it is not owning it.

I don’t have the disposable income for ordering or even takeaway anymore and the fees only get worse from here. Learn how to cook. Impress your visitors. Get nice things in life with the savings.

Ü

You’re right. Syncthing isn’t a backup tool per se and the devs even tell you that in the FAQ. But forgive me if I did preach about it anyway, because you can enable file versioning (keep old and deleted files on each host) which kind of makes it backup incase something bad happens? Anyway it is my set and forget solution for Linux, Android and Windows. If you could recommend me a alternative that ticks these boxes I’d appreciate that. :)

You all got a valid point… it’s just that mileage varies and x codec will sound better in y combination. If I remember right, AAC on Android is at times implemented differently than on it’s home Apple: The encoder would work with smaller bitrates to save battery. There must be a special synergy for max bitrate LDAC to sound worse than AAC, indeed. All in all my post is about being open minded and giving you the option to use a thing, rather than finding out what codec is universally the best: You virtually can’t, can you?

This is like asking why manual or automatic is frustrating. You mostly use the thing you have grown up with and that’s it, particularly when you got bills to pay and there isn’t much free time unfortunately. If you put it into perspective, a massive amount of users already hold Linux in their hands and everyday life: Android. Nah let’s get back to computers.

IT class back in college taught a wee bit of Linux. I was one of the few who were interested and did what the teacher said, the rest played Hearthstone. Linux Mint is what intrigued me since high school. A wonderful OS that brings life to laptops too slow for Windows 7. But I’m still the cozy and unbothered person who sticks to Windows on their main machine. I just want to relax after a good days work and play Forza Horizon 5. However I do enjoy my Linux laptops that won’t run red hot just because of Windows Update, Defender, telemetry and other garbage. My love&hate about Linux is that there are so many distros to choose from. There were times when x is better than y and it was(still is) the devils circle: distro hopping. Today I’m cool with Ubuntu derivatives like Mint and Pop, along with Fedora and Suse, since a decade of having at least one Linux PC I still don’t find joy in advanced stuff like Arch. Anyway use the thing you are comfy with and don’t let anyone judge you, live your life. <3

just yes. the sound and anc is day and night compared to my more compact redmi buds 3 pro. I used to diss TWS as a whole until I got these pairs. Had some issues after a firmware update but a factory reset did fix it for me. :)

This is true if you leave it at defaults but I make use of file versioning. When you flick that one on, files that are otherwise replaced or deleted will actually move to a offline .stversions folder. That is very vital I must say in case a host catches some encryptor malware eheh

I use foobar2k via wine. Yes, you may stone me. Tip: You will save heaps of space by not embedding the cover on each file, just put a cover.jpg in the albums folder, virtually any player will pick it up.

No. That would defeat the purpose of me installing Linux in (old) laptops. Windows feels sluggish enough with a sea of bad things wanting your minimum wage and have Windows Defender prevent it but not all of it, obviously.

I put all my attention to prevention and set strict rules on the router. It can be as simple as setting the DNS to stuff like dnsforge.de or DIY it with PiHole with hosts lists of your hearts content that update itself weekly, I do the latter. Nothing beats a cross platform solution that protects every device in the network, if you’re after 100% performance. Of course you can still catch bad things, such as social engineering by email that happened over at Linus Tech Tips. You better stay vigilant no matter what solution you use and don’t sleep on making backups, which can be as simple and automated when you use Syncthing for example.

Yes… I made double sure to mention ‘encoder’ between that.

Xiph really won the lossy codec scene with Opus and I transcoded all my junk to that format. Hitting (my personal) transparency on 128k vbr is flat out impressive and it warms my heart that corpos won’t have a reason to collect taxes for basic things like audio codec. However it’s a different story with bluetooth audio codec in which I hope will change.

I see, so Edifier and Soundcore shall do some homework as well: LDAC and multi point don’t work there either.

I feel you there. Personally I just use the earbuds as output and the integrated laptop mic as input. Bluetooth really just doesn’t shine in that regard. However if you’re on Desktop and want everything to happen on a headset, not earbuds x wired stand mic, you should look into things like HyperX Cloud 2 Wireless that employ a USB dongle instead.

Yes, LDAC and multipoint do not mix hence I’m looking forward to LC3plus that replaces it. To be fair it’s not a big issue to roll back to AAC or even SBC to use multipoint, because you probably aren’t gonna notice a difference when you don’t listen to high res apps like Tidal. It also should be known that a good codec does not fix mediocre drivers and/or chips. Regardless, Linux shines in letting you use a feature you did pony up for. :)

Yes but it is a automated backup solution if you want it to. I just put important stuff in the Syncthing folder and rest assured its also on the phone incase the computers SSD caughs fire.

Syncthing. I don’t want to invest into a NAS and put some load into my already greedy power bill, so I chose something decentralized. Syncthing really just works like Torrent but for your personal files: Whatever happens on the computer, also does on the phone, and on the laptop. Each have about 1TB of space and 3 times redundancy? Hell yea buddy dig in.

I tried quite a few of distros and I keep on going back to Fedora. A lot of things come out of the box such as Flatpak, it won’t pester you about the password when you just want to install a app and i barely find myself solving issues with command line.

My other two favorites are Mint and Pop, i can recommend these to beginners and I really just like a good out of the box experience, avoiding command line where possible. Are there others that tick these boxes?