It’s not just names in lists though. Using my mother’s grandparents as examples, I know where they were born and grew up, I know who they lived with at multiple points in their lives, and I know a few of the places where they lived.

I know where and when they got married, and some of the guests, and I know what children they had and when. As they were adults at the time, I know some of what my great grandfather was doing during the first World War and how he died.

I haven’t done a deep dive into their lives yet as I’ve been working backwards, but I’ve already got a decent idea about who they were and what they were like. I know a fair bit about his parents and family too, as I checked that side first.

The biggest issues are finding photos, and the cost and availability of records. There are not many photos due to them not being as pervasive at the time, and there are not many records because a lot of things either weren’t recorded or weren’t saved. Both of those can be solved with the technology we have now. Lots of people have their own information saved, separate to the official sources, and it’s easier to have multiple copies of everything, so they won’t get lost or destroyed as easily.

Hopefully this means that we’ll remember more of the past going forwards :)

While that’s true, we have much more extensive record keeping these days. I’ve been researching my family tree, and 100 years ago there were still a decent number of people who were mostly illiterate. Add to that documents like the census being handwritten in cursive on paper, and you get lots of errors being recorded, and the records themselves being damaged by age.

Unless something drastic happens, a lot of our records will still exist in the centuries to come. It will mostly be our official records, but they should still be there :)

I’ve tried ChatGPT a few times to see if it’s useful for me, and it’s worked surprisingly well in most cases.

I made a website that needed two modal images, one on the top and one on the bottom. I wanted them to be enlarged when they were clicked on. I found a load of guides for getting one to work, but I couldn’t get both to work. A few minutes with a prompt got it working. It didn’t help me to learn JavaScript, but did give me working code that I needed quickly.

I’ve used it to fluff up some text. I’m not very good at making things sound good in text, so it helped a lot.

The latest one I’ve tried is getting camera settings for a dark gig setup. I was able to give it an old photo that was under exposed but gave an accurate impression of the room, and ask for recommended settings with the same lens, a new lens, and a flash. It gave me a selection of settings with and without the flash, including settings for rear curtain sync, so when it leaves a ghost trail behind the subject. It’s nothing I couldn’t figure out, but would have taken a bit more trial and error in the room. I probably wouldn’t have thought of the ghost trails.

Be careful with Mediamonkey. I’ve got it on my phone and PC, and my music is getting quieter and quieter on the phone. I think it’s something to do with the volume leveling on the Android version, but haven’t had a chance to figure it out yet.

I can put a song on full volume, and it’s quiet enough that it’s difficult to hear. I’ve tried the same tracks through youtube, and the volume is fine, so it’s not the phone speakers.

Sorry for lashing out a little bit.

No worries, it’s good to know that some people are still passionate :)

Yeah, I get what you mean though. Some people assume that Linux should be able to do everything that Windows or Mac can do, and assume that if it can’t it must be the developer’s fault. You still see the same old bullshit about ‘Linux won’t run Photoshop / my proprietary software!’ without stopping to think that maybe it’s the developer of that software who’s at fault.

It’s been going on for years, and is still infuriating…

Do you want to call a few friends to help you move those goalposts?

It’s a 9 year old laptop that’s had problems due to software configuration issues. This isn’t cutting edge hardware that’s not supported, it’s an update that didn’t clean up after itself, and a working power setting where the software doesn’t show the available and working options. If I run the hibernate or hybrid sleep commands from the terminal, they work, but the options don’t persist in either the start menu or the power settings gui. That’s nothing to do with it being a Windows device originally.

I like using Linux, and I’m happy using the terminal - I started with DOS, many, many years ago, and the terminal brings back happy memories. Pretending that Linux doesn’t have any problems though is ridiculous.

I updated my laptop from Mint 21.3? to 22 and lost all sound. It’s when Mint switched from I think Pulse to Pipewire. The update left behind a random config file that stopped my sound device from being set up, and the only place I could find a fix was on an obscure forum post.

Hibernation and hybrid sleep are both supported by my laptop, and can be set up to work on Mint with a lot of configuration through the terminal. When I reboot though, they stop working again. The related options disappear from the power settings, but work from the terminal.

Pretending that Linux doesn’t have issues is an outright lie at this point

If you’re using Lemmy in a browser, opening a link will take you to the link’s instance, like opening a new website. This will mean that you need to log in to post etc.

If you use Lemmy through an app, that should handle the links and make it essentially work like one big website. You can open links from any part of Lemmy and be able to post and comment from your existing account.

The only issue may be the fact that you’re on .ml. Some instances have blocked .ml and a few other instances because of what are basically political differences. That will restrict where you can post, and could be part of your issue.

I wonder if the generic tablets with made up Asian sounding names that you see on the big marketplaces could work? They could have slightly larger or smaller screens if they’re cheaper than current phone screens, and could have Linux with something like Signal on them for calling.

They’d probably be lower quality to begin with, but could potentially get better if people start to buy them. They seem to have generic hardware, so might be able to offer the drivers and unlockable bootloaders too :)

Bad. Copyright needs to be reformed, but this would be more likely to put money into the hands of rich people and corporations.

Imagine that I’ve just released a book series that’s more popular than Harry Potter and LOTR combined, and I get hit by a bus. What’s then stopping Disney or Warner Brothers etc from producing a set of movies with all the associated merch, and making a shit load of money, with not a penny going to my family? Not even giving them the opportunity to make enough to live on, never mind getting rich?

In that situation, depending on the contract, the publisher could even pulp the existing books and release identical copies without paying me or my family.

That’s brilliant, thank you :)

I’d actually forgotten to try the other method (ADHD strikes again!), so I’ll try them both out this week :)

I’m gonna eat you little fishy!

I don’t know how to do it on Android, but look into variable bit rate (VBR) rather than 320 kb/s. 320 kb/s is a constant bit rate (CBR), and means that silence is given the same quality and detail as the busiest track, and takes up space for no reason.

The highest VBR setting, V0, is indistinguishable from 320, but saves space. Depending on your ears and the phone speakers, you might be able to drop the quality slightly and save more space 👍

That’s brilliant, thank you. I’ll try it tonight and see how it goes :)

To add to this, I’ve been looking for a cheap kid’s tablet recently, and checked Amazon. A significant number of products have the details listed incorrectly. Some are obvious, like mistaking storage and RAM, but some would have the details completely wrong, saying something like ‘purple’ for the screen, or ‘10 inches’ for the wifi capability.

An AI isn’t going to be able to figure out what should be where from that, so you’d have to manually check every product. If Amazon can’t get it right, what chance do you have?

Put your thumb over the mouth and nose and it looks an awful lot like a greyhound statue that’s been repurposed.

Your account is less than a week old, and you’ve made about half a dozen posts around the same topic. Maybe try reading the answers to your questions and think about them.

You set the whitelist in Minecraft, and it uses your ID. I can’t remember exactly what Minecraft calls it, your player ID maybe. It doesn’t matter where you connect from then, as long as you’re logged in. I think it works the same way with pirated accounts too, but I haven’t got any here to check.

For the firewall, I’ve just been checking through the Minecraft log every now and then and banning the obvious bots and scanners, so that shouldn’t affect you either :)

We connect directly via IP at my friend’s house and only we are on the server, so no worries of griefers or internet randos.

Just in case you haven’t already, set up a whitelist. I’ve got a server running the same way, and I regularly get people trying to connect. I’ve also set up the firewall and blocked known scanners, but still get a few attempts.