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dan

@ dan @upvote.au

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1076
Joined
3 yr. ago

Aussie living in the San Francisco Bay Area.Coding since 1998..NET Foundation member. C# fan https://d.sb/Mastodon: @dan@d.sb

  • Google’s dominance on search is declining – for the first time ever!

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  • I use it for document summarization and it works well. I use Paperless-ngx to manage documents, and have paperless-ai configured to instantly set the title and tags using Gemini as soon as a new document is added.

    I chose Gemini over OpenAI since Google's privacy policy is better. I'm using the paid version, and Google says data from paid users will never be used to train the model. Unfortunately I don't have good enough hardware to run a local model.

  • Google’s dominance on search is declining – for the first time ever!

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  • It's been common ever since magnet links were created, since you can post a magnet link anywhere (even in a plain text file) rather than having to upload a .torrent file somewhere like in the old days.

  • Google’s dominance on search is declining – for the first time ever!

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  • This is available in the UI too - there's a tab labeled "Web". Sometimes it's hiding under "More".

    Adding it to the search provider URL is a good idea though.

  • Google’s dominance on search is declining – for the first time ever!

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  • Ecosia still uses American services though - they use Google, Bing, Yahoo and Wikipedia for search results.

  • Backblaze responds to claims of “sham accounting,” customer backups at risk

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  • I'm talking specifically about companies that post a loss every quarter, like Backblaze does. Backblaze's net profit in Q4 2024 was -$14.38 million. Their net profit is going up year over year, but it's still negative.

  • Backblaze responds to claims of “sham accounting,” customer backups at risk

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  • Even if the report is inaccurate, Backblaze has never been profitable, which isn't great. Investors want to see a return on their investment. They'll keep pushing Backblaze to become profitable, likely eventually resulting in enshittification of some sort. We'll see if things have changed when they publish their Q1 2025 results on May 7.

    One of the harsh realities in Silicon Valley is there's a lot of companies that produce great products but end up failing after going public, either because they couldn't find a good product market fit, or because they couldn't figure out how to make their idea profitable.

  • Pico Pixel Player - Offline-first PWA Music player with transcoding & folder listing support

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  • It was missing a bunch of features last time I tried it - no crossfades, no automatic playlists (for things like liked songs, decades, etc), no artist radio (play an artist plus similar artists), no way to play sonically similar songs (based on server-side analysis), no loudness leveling, no Android Auto. Maybe it's improved now - I'll have to give it another shot.

    Unfortunately I'm not sure I know enough about audio processing and similarity analysis to be able to implement those features myself.

  • Pico Pixel Player - Offline-first PWA Music player with transcoding & folder listing support

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  • Yeah, unfortunately it's closed-source. It's a good app though! If you build something similar that's fully open source, with an Android app and Android Auto support, then I'd definitely be interested in trying it.

  • Pico Pixel Player - Offline-first PWA Music player with transcoding & folder listing support

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  • Have you tried Plexamp? It supports all the features in your list. You need a Plex Pass for most of its features though.

    I'm not mentioning it to suggest your project is bad or to discourage you; I'm mentioning it since it might give you some inspiration for features to implement in your one :)

  • Fully self-hosted password manager options

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  • Bitwarden and Vaultwarden are different products. Vaultwarden is API-compatible with the Bitwarden client apps, but it's a completely separate project.

    Both are self hostable. Bitwarden is designed for large deployments (like companies with tens of thousands of employees) so the design is very different to Vaultwarden which is designed for small deployments.

  • Fully self-hosted password manager options

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  • I used to self-host Bitwarden but switched to Vaultwarden a while back.

    In the Bitwarden Android app, make sure all the autofill settings are enabled, including accessibility (which helps with autofill in apps that don't officially support it). Sometimes, system updates seem to disable them.

    Also note that Android apps need to explicitly support autofill. Not all apps do. The "use accessibility" option is supposed to help with apps that don't officially support autofill.

  • Actually, Jaws

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  • "I'm having fish tonight!"

  • ‘TASTING TIRES’ [OC] (the marketing gimmick that got out of hand imo)

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  • A part of this was that they wanted people to drive far so they'd have to replace their tires more often.

  • Fintech founder charged with fraud after 'AI' shopping app found to be powered by humans in the Philippines | TechCrunch

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  • I think they're pretty different cases.

    Amazon's one was essentially a side project for them, likely fully funded in-house using their R&D (research and development) budget.

    In Nate's case, it was their entire product. They received funding from investors purely for the AI functionality that didn't actually exist or work. They specifically claimed that it did work, which is how they got the money. They spent all the investor money and had essentially nothing to show for it.

  • Trump cuts funding to FOSS projects.

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  • At least there's some competitors now, which could be used as drop-in replacements if Let's Encrypt were to disappear.

    I suspect the vast majority of certificate authorities will implement the ACME protocol eventually, since the industry as a whole is moving towards certificates with shorter expiry times, meaning that automation will essentially be mandatory unless you like manually updating certs every 90-180 days.

  • Nintendo delays Switch 2 preorders over tariff concerns

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  • They already factored in some amount of tariffs into the US price. It's not really that it's cheaper in Japan, but rather it's more expensive in the USA. It's also US$65 cheaper in Australia, for example, and even cheaper in the UK.

    (keep in mind that advertised prices in Australia and the UK include tax, so you need to subtract the tax to compare with US prices)

    The tariffs are just a lot higher than everyone expected. Nintendo were probably preparing for a 20% tariff, not a 54% one.

  • Nintendo delays Switch 2 preorders over tariff concerns

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  • Maybe! I'm sure there's loopholes of some sort.

  • Nintendo delays Switch 2 preorders over tariff concerns

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  • This is a rare case where a piece of consumer electronics is going to be quite a bit cheaper in Australia compared to the USA! Usually stuff costs more in Australia.

    The Switch is currently US$450 and will probably go up with tariffs. Meanwhile, it's listed as AU$700 in Australia, which is AU$630 before tax (all advertised prices include tax), which is US$385.

    I imagine this is going to happen for a lot of devices. I'm an Aussie living in the USA and I never thought I'd see the day when buying stuff in Australia would be cheaper. Australia has better consumer protection too, around things like repairs/refunds due to major issues even outside the warranty period.

  • Nintendo delays Switch 2 preorders over tariff concerns

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  • Do you not like reading the truth?

  • Nintendo delays Switch 2 preorders over tariff concerns

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  • Absolutely. The console is manufactured in Vietnam, which now has a 46% tariff. I really doubt that Nintendo's profit margin is high enough to allow them to just eat that cost.