Yes, absolutely. And they can drag Canonical into it as well if they wish though it’s harder. Being UK based doesn’t protect them from the long arm of US law including arresting any US personnel, freezing and seizing their funds, putting out arrest warrants for and harassing those in the UK with the fear of arrest and rendition to the US if they go to a third country (for a conference, vacation, etc, most would buckle rather than live under that). Additionally the US could sanction them for non-cooperation by making it illegal for US companies to sell them products and services, for US citizens to work for or aid them, etc.

They can go after community led projects too, just send the feds over to the houses of some senior US developers and threaten and intimidate them, intimate their imminent arrest and prison sentence unless they stop contact and work with parties from whatever countries the US wishes to choose to name. Raid their houses, seize their electronics, detain them for hours in poor conditions. Lots of ways to apply pressure that doesn’t even have to stand up to extensive legal scrutiny (they can keep devices and things and the people would have to sue to get them back).

The code itself is likely to exist in multiple places so if someone wanted to fork from say next week’s builds for an EU build they could and there would be little the US could do to stop that but they could stop cooperation and force these developers to apply technical measures to attempt to prevent downloads from IP addresses known to belong to sanctioned countries of their choosing.

It’s not like the US can slam the door and take its Linux home and China and the EU and Russia are left with nothing, they’d still have old builds and code and could develop off of those though with broken international cooperation it would be a fragmented process prone to various teething issues.

Interesting project. Thanks for the link and I do appreciate it and could see some very good uses for that but it’s not quite what I meant.

Unfortunately as it notes it works as a companion for reverse proxies so it doesn’t solve the big hurdle there which is handling secure and working flow (specifically ingress) of Jellyfin traffic into a network as a turn-key solution. All this does is change the authorization mechanism but my users don’t have an issue with writing down passwords and emails. Still leaves the burden of:

• choosing and setting up the reverse proxy,
• certificates for that,
• paying for a domain so I can properly use certificates for encryption,
• making sure that works,
• chore of updating the reverse proxy, refreshing certs (and it breaking if we forget or the process fails), etc

Which is a hassle and a half for technically proficient users and the point that most other people would give up.

By contrast with Plex how many steps are there?

1. Install (going to skip media library setup as Jellyfin requires that too so it’s assumed)
2. Set up any port settings, open any relevant ports on firewall, enable remote access in setting with a tickbox
3. Set up users
4. Done, it now works and doesn’t need to be touched. It will handle connecting clients directly to the server. Users just need to install Plex client, login to their account and they have access.

By contrast this still requires the hoster set up a reverse proxy (major hassle if done securely with certificates as well as an expense for a domain which works out to probably $5 a year), to then have their users point their jellyfin at a domain-name (possibly a hard to remember one as majesticstuffbox[.]xyz is a lot cheaper than the dot com/org/net equivalents or a shorter domain that’s more to the point), auth and so on. It’s many, many, many more steps and software and configurations and chances for the hosting party to mess something up.

My point was I and many others would rather take the $5 we’d spend a year on a domain name and pay it for this kind of turn-key solution for ourselves and our users even if provided by a third party but that were Jellyfin to integrate this as an option it could provide some revenue for them and get the kinds of people who don’t want to mess with reverse proxies and certificates into their ecosystem and off Plex.

Simplewall.

There is AFAIK no way to do this.

Apple’s never open-sourced the APIs and interfaces and it only works on Macs and Windows. For this you will need to have either a Windows install (recommend separate drive so it doesn’t break Linux bootloader) or a persistent or not Windows VM with USB passthrough. I’m not even sure how well the VM situation works but it probably should. You don’t even have to have a license for Windows, you can just run it in the VM for this purpose alone but it does mean oh at least 40GB set aside on your drive for the VM image plus more if you want to do things like back-up the phone.

Jellyfin needs to partner with someone people can pay a very low and reasonable and/or one-time fee to enable remote streaming without the fuss of setting up either dangerous port-forwarding or the complexity of reverse proxies (paying for a domain-name, the set-up itself including certificates, keeping it updated for security purposes).

And no a VPN is not a solution, the difficulty for non-technical users in setting up a VPN (if it’s even possible, on smart-tvs it’s almost always not, and I don’t think devices like AppleTV and other streaming boxes often support them) is too high and it’s an unwanted annoyance even for technical users.

I’m not talking about streaming video’s through someone else’s servers or using their bandwidth. I’m talking about the connection phase of clients and servers where Plex acts like an enhanced dynamic DNS service with authentication. They have an agent on the local media server which sends to the remote web service of the third party the IP address, the port configured for use, the account or server name, etc. When a client tries to connect they go to this remote web service with the servername/username info, the web service authenticates them then gives them the current IP address and any other information necessary. It then sends some data to the local Jellyfin server about the connecting client to enable that connection and then the local media Jellyfin server and the client talk directly and stream directly.

Importantly the cost of running this authentication and IP address tracking scheme would be minimal per Jellyfin server. You could charge $5/year for up to 20 unique remote clients and come out ahead with a slight profit which could be put back into Jellyfin development and things like their own hosting costs for code, etc. Even better if they offer lifetime for this at $60-$80 they’d get a decent chunk of cash up-front to use for development (with reasonable use restrictions per account so someone hosting stuff in Hetzner or whatever and serving 300 people with 400 devices will need to pay more because they’re clearly doing this for profit and can afford to throw some more money at Jellyfin).

Until Jellyfin offers something that JUST WORKS like that it’s not going to be a replacement for Plex, whatever other improvements they offer to users it’s still a burden for the server runner to set up remote streaming in a way that isn’t either incredibly dangerous (port forwarding) OR either involves paying money to third parties AND/OR the trouble of running your own reverse proxy and/or involves walking users through complicated set-up process for each device that you have to repeat if you change anything major like your domain name when using a VPN.

Yeah GIMP is more than a decade behind Photoshop and a lot of other software in many respects.

It’s frustrating. Basic things like content-aware fill for small spaces, not even AI generating huge things for large missing pieces but removing some text over a person’s cheek or plaid shirt, something in total 100x100 pixels big or so. Just doesn’t exist. You can clone stuff but it’s not aware of things like the gradient of a shadow that it should match or a highlight or other basic things so you’re left doing extensive work using layers and then cleaning it up to be visually acceptable using multiple tools over 10 minutes of time whereas Photoshop does it with one tool in an instant.

Incredible. This is one of those hard to believe moments.

It’s been 21 years since the release of GIMP 2.0.

It’s been more than 10 years since work on a majorly overhauled GIMP 3.0 was announced and initiated.

And it’s been 7 years since the last major release (2.10).

I can’t wait for the non-destructive text effects. After all these years of dealing with the fact applying drop shadows meant the text couldn’t be edited, at last it’s no longer an issue.

De-telecine: default De-interlace detection: default De-interlace: decomb

Video encoding: x265 10bit (don’t use NVENC, Intel, or AMD hardware encode)

Preset: slow

Quality rate factor: 16

The above should be suitable for most DVDs and yields good results of 1/4 to 1/2 the size going from MPEG2 to HEVC.

Are you planning on re-encoding anyways? For DVDs Handbrake can read and re-encode them directly so there’s no need for an intermediate.

If you’re not planning on re-encoding or we’re talking BluRays then makemkv is the most used and allows creating disc images, file extraction to drive, or file extraction to drive in MKV container.

It just does more and more easily. It styles things better, makes them more professional looking with a click. It can do certain things like nested tables in Word that Writer cannot do. Excel is much more powerful than calc, it has more functions, more refined functions, it’s easier to work with, has more and prettier chart options. And oh you can create tables in Excel that are sortable. There are many other cases.

Now for the last two the die-hards will whine and whinge about how you should just use a software for creating charts and a database but sometimes you just want to make something quick, sometimes that’s overkill for what you need. Grandpa doesn’t need to learn how to deal with databases just to make a sortable list of books he’s read, he can just use excel and the Libreoffice people telling him to pound sand because they won’t add that feature to calc because it doesn’t belong there means he and many other people don’t use calc, they use MS office. Likewise the Libreoffice defense force saying of making graphs and charts to just use dedicated software, well many corporate types, business people, white collar workers don’t understand those things and may not be able to get them installed, what they understand, what they already have is MS office and it works and has lots of pretty, professional, very slick options which don’t make them look poorly in office meeting presentations.

Just on the sortable tables front, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run into hobby stuff that’s based on an excel file with tables that rely on being sortable. From stat sheet creators to mini-databases (<2000 rows) on some game created by fans.

It’s useful for those who need the very bare basics of being able to open and read basic MS word documents, csv files, excel files, and to write an occasional letter. But the moment you need to start doing beyond basic formatting or dealing with files that have that, you run into issues.

You have this gulf of usability, it’s useful for people at the very bottom of the basic needs pole, barely computer literate types who think facebook is the internet and it’s useful for highly technically competent people who can and do use other dedicated software, often without GUIs to solve problems, it’s a frustration for the middle 60% of the population who are more than basically computer literate but not scientifically trained, not CS or IT.

If by mainstream channels you mean major streaming services then there is no perfectly private option. But I would recommend an AppleTV as the closest thing (it also doesn’t have ads which I really appreciate).

Other than that your options are devices that can’t access major streaming services at greater than 720p and are hackily put together on multiple levels but are fine for streaming local media you host yourself or more expensive than ATV devices and modding them with alternative launchers.

I don’t care about Nazis switching to Linux and neither should you. Not a good look.

i haven’t yet encountered an AP that is capable of providing all of the features that i currently use. ie ad blocking; personal vpn;

Pfsense does both of these. pfblocker NG in particular is a very powerful network adblocker with lots of lists. Pfsense can also run VPNs, it supports openvpn and wireguard in both client and server mode and you can set up multiple so one client, one server.

web hosting; and cloud-like internet accessible storage via ssh tunnel (in addition to others).

If you just need personal services it would be best to run something local, setup a wireguard tunnel on pfsense that gives access to your network and VPN in to access things remotely. If you need to share with others I suppose this can become a problem.

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People got flack for saying Proton is the CIA, Proton is NSA, Proton is a joint five-eyes country intelligence operation despite the convenient timing of their formation and lots of other things.

Maybe they’re not, maybe their CEO is just acting this way.

But consider for a moment if they were. IF they were then all of this would make more sense. The CIA/NSA/etc have a vested interest in discrediting and attacking Chinese technology they have no ability to spy or gather data through. The CIA/NSA could also for example see a point to throwing in publicly with Trump as part of a larger agreed upon push with the tech companies towards reactionary politics, towards what many call fascism or fascism-ish.

My mind is not made up. It’s kind of unknowable. I think they’re suspicious enough to be wary of trusting them but there’s no smoking gun, yet there wasn’t a smoking gun that CryptoAG was a CIA cut-out until some unauthorized leaks nearly a half century after they gained control and use of it. We know they have an interest in subverting encryption, in going fishing among “interesting” targets who might seek to use privacy-conscious services and among dissidents outside the west they may wish to vet and recruit.

True privacy advocates should not be throwing in with the agenda of any regime or bloc, especially those who so trample human and privacy rights as that of the US and co. They should be roundly suspicious of all power.

Never been implemented. It doesn’t exist.

Cables support it but zero devices made it to the consumer market and both devices would need to support it for it to work. It’s a dead standard from another era at this point. WiFi speeds have become so significant that there’s just no reason for the additional costs that would be involved.

I admit if half of the people out there who bought smart TVs started refusing to connect them to the internet and bought streaming boxes instead there might be an incentive for TV makers to try it but no incentive for streaming devices to help them do it and at that point it’s just easier for TV makers to require an internet connection or the TV doesn’t work.

data such as host name,

Okay why do they need to know that? Why do they need to know if the computer is called “Melissa’s Laptop” or “Workstation 15, Internal security division”? Seems like this kind of data could if stolen be misused and it has minimal legitimate purpose IMO as anyone can put anything as host name and while in organizations it often corresponds to use it doesn’t have to for individuals. Someone could call their machine “Mack’s Porn Rig” and they only use it for doing banking and a little coding.

kernel version, desktop component versions, detailed information about hardware and drivers involved, screen size and resolution information,

This all seems legitimate enough, this would be helpful for understanding the hardware their users run on and targeting features or bug fixes.

network device MAC addresses,

Not great but there is an argument for it, they could just grab and send the first 3-4 octets which would give them the info they need on manufacturers without getting uniquely identifiable data that along with some of this other stuff is concerning for fingerprinting.

disk serial numbers,

Okay, what the fuck. Why do they need disk serial numbers? What possible use is there for that. Those are used for warranty claims and could be used as part of uniquely fingerprinting a computer and person. Not cool.

disk partition data,

This is vague enough. I guess one could choose to see this as just info about partitions in use say if there’s also an NTFS partition that looks like a Windows install that would be useful but on the other hand data encompassed within a partition could also nefariously be read as allowing them access to all your data. Partition layout, partition labels, and file systems used on disks available to the system would be a clearer way to put this and erase any doubt.

information about the number of running processes and installed packages, versions of basic packages such as systemd, gcc, bash and PipeWire.

All this is also fine just technical data stuff.

This isn’t the end of Linux but it may be the beginning of the end. Right now alarm bells are screaming in China, Russia, India, across the global south about this. They’ve seen the decades of US sanctions, often arbitrary and other punitive measures including cultural campaigns of exclusion and punishment (remember “freedom fries” after 9/11 because the French wouldn’t go along with US adventures in Iraq?) now reaching a fever-pitch. All pretensions of the US to stand for freedom and individual liberty and such have been pushed aside, shoved away by these acts and the blatant hypocrisy of their support of the genocidal zionist state which even now broadens the war of aggression and genocide against Palestinians and Lebanese with full US support and diplomatic cover at the UN.

They see that all that lofty talk from the US was after all a lie. A large number of lies.

Where do we go from here? I fear fragmentation and partition of the world may be inevitable, a new cold war, the internet, software, everything being divided by series of hard and not so hard walls and barriers impeding cooperation, business, trade, cultural exchange, and people to people relations and discussions at an organic grassroots level.

Those in the west will see the freedoms increasingly curtailed, lofty language rolled back behind a large series of ever more expansive “but…” clauses, corporatization of the internet will increase, surveillance, control all justified by the waved wand of hysteria over Russia, China, Iran, muslims, whoever necessitating giving up your privacy, your rights, your freedoms, and of course any right for a dissenting opinion against whoever the current US president is and their administration.

National security in the 90s was used to outlaw export of encryption, to embargo the idea of a secure internet, to push for backdoor chips via the clipper chip in all personal computers. Now it and the same kind of foreign boogeymen are being used to finish that task that they failed at and we are letting them because of jingoism.

Sure. Sure. They’ve been close or getting closer for 10 years now.

I’ll believe it when it actually releases and not a moment sooner. Otherwise I would be the opposite of shocked if July 2025 rolls around and it’s still not out but still “close”. As I would be if December 2025 rolls around and “there are only a few more issues, very soon!” is the statement. It’s become a joke at this point and likely will remain the butt of jokes and rightfully so for years, perhaps decades to come in the open source and graphics design communities.

The real answer is organize your library. There’s no reason to have it like that.

At least create two folders “Movies” and “TV Shows” or however you want to name them. Put movies in the movies sub-folder, ideally in named folders that match the name of the movie (so Movies/The Godfather (1972)/moviefile.mkv) and TV shows in the other folder again with a subfolder for each show with year included.

The best way to do this is to use a media manager when adding files. Something like mediaelch or tiny media manager and scrape your films and ideally tv shows as well and create local metadata for them that you save. Both can do renaming though tmm does it slightly better if you pay for the subscription version and it can automatically scrape and rename your library along with creating the relevant nfo files and things like posters so Kodi just works.

I guess you could try connecting Kodi to another service. If you’re okay running Plex on some other machine or Jellyfin you can connect Kodi to that if they scrape it all properly but most likely they’ll have issues as well because the only real solution is organizing your library. There are paid tools as I mention as well as free ones. Filebot is another paid tool that does organization and such.