I gave Brave a try back in the early days. The Brave wallet was useless and something I didn’t wanted. There wasn’t much to differentiate it from Chrome back then on desktop. On mobile, it has built in Adblock but that’s it. Vivaldi, IMO, bundles in more features for a Chromium based browser.

Either case, I have been on Firefox for multiple years now despite it’s own issues. uBlock Origin is properly supported on it (both desktop and mobile). I think FF(nightly version or Iceraven, a FF fork) is the only browser that allows sideloading of extensions on mobile. Chromium based browsers are way behind in this regard.

Whilst YT-dlp supports many sites, it’s primary function is still downloading from YouTube and that doesn’t have flac. Even YouTube Music Premium only streams at 256 kbps Aac when set at high, I think.

Using one of those deezer or qobuz bots might be better incase someone really wishes for flac. Or if one wants to invest time, then Soulseek is always there.

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I hate the official YouTube app. I have YouTube Premium but that’s because I use YT Music mostly (have been using on and off since GPM days). But shorts shoved in your face, subscription page jumbled with updates, comments and videos (I only want videos) ; no way to choose a system wide video quality (app only has High or Data Saver option; one needs to manually toggle for each video ; contrary, NewPipe has this basic feature).

There is also the donate button on multiple YouTube videos (Atleast give me the option to remove/customize that button/other buttons on that ribbon). Why are paying users subject to worse UI?

Oh, and these people throttle stuff on Firefox and have probably been doing since times immemorial.

I have been wondering if I should let YT Premium lapse and not renew it. I tried Spotify Premium once and whilst it’s 3rd party support is phenomenal, it has its own bugs (and they are similarly slow despite their forums being full with bug reports as well). Almost like I should hoard my own music from ahem, sources.

Listenbrainz is good. I scrobble to both there and Last.fm, there was librefm as well but it is in maintenance mode now practically with no new sign ups.

Indian newspapers have launched partially automated YouTube channels, some with AI avatar presenters. Nearly a fifth of Indian readers said they use chatbots like ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini (including AI Overviews) weekly to access news. In the U.K., that number was only 3%.

I knew YouTube channels were popular as a news source in my country (with their over the top hysterical style) but didn’t knew that Gemini/GPT was also getting big here.

I still read a digital version of a proper newspaper. I find it slightly more informative and factual. In the good old days, I used to get a physical newspaper because nothing beats the touch of paper.

Whatsapp is popular a lot in many parts of the world. In India, WhatsApp is almost the defacto standard messaging app with Telegram probably flying in a far second. I doubt I know anyone who even uses stuff like Signal or Threema or any of the alternatives.

Is there support for blocking individual elements of a page in v3 version of uBlock Origin? (I won’t be surprised if it lacked it). I usually block various other elements of page like useless headers/footers/comment sections on some sites I routinely visit on Firefox.

I have Prime too for shopping mainly. I also can’t use Prime Video because it refuses to go beyond 480p on Firefox for Linux (Atleast last time I tried).

Which Adblock are extension are you using ( Adblock Plus by any chance?)? I just tried on mobile Firefox with uBlock Origin and rendered fine.

Oddly, I did know some BASIC and I have vague memories of the numeric line starters like 10 with white text on a black background giving it a retro feel.

Lary Ellison is one of the richest men in the world right and owns some kind of private island or something that he bought basically after showing his shares of Oracle stock?

That makes more sense in context. Another Gang of Four (that I err, know more deeply for some reason) is(read:was) a political grouping in mid 70s in China.

Java was also my first introduction to programming as it was included in Computer Science in final year of school (at college, we did the trusty C).

I think they have replaced Java with Python now in schools because of the latter’s popularity and also because many would argue, Python is slightly easier to learn than Java.

Huh, didn’t realize that NYT was disliked from before only. I thought it was a decent American newspaper. The only other American newspaper I can think of is Washington Post, but that is so capitalist friendly to say the least.

Among overseas newspapers, I had decent idea of UK based ones (looks and judges Sun readers :p) but not otherwise.

Ah, NYT. Amongst all subscriptions that I have come across in my country, NYT is the most expensive. Since they haven’t heard of region specific pricing and just multiply by exchange rate; it’s only six times more expensive than YT Premium in India.

Atleast I was under the belief that they had decent editorial standards but looks like that ship has sailed away as well.

If one donates to Soulseek( on their official website a certain amount), they get privileges. If you have privileges, then your downloads will be queued ahead of other users (basically you side step a long queue for downloading).

I use Nicotine, and when I open the client, it shows for a couple of seconds at the bottom/tray No active Soulseek privileges before vanishing. That’s the only clue.

In practise, my downloads usually go through normally. The 5 days I had privileges I honestly didn’t notice much difference. Some users have an automated script that crawls one’s folder whenever you download from them, so as long as one has decent amount of shares, it’s alright. (I only have shared 40 odd gigs but it’s decent enough).

The chat is useless most of the times. The users troll each other and the unmoderated nature means racism is quite common as well. That being said, there are the odd decent folks as well. I had a decent conversation with a guy once there and he even donated 5 days of Soulseek privileges to me; sadly these type of conversations are forgotten in the cesspool that is the chatroom there.

When I was listening to obscure krautrock bands which were nowhere to be found on Spotify or YT Music, Soulseek came to rescue. Also, funnily, it is easier to get flac from there than 320kbps mp3 of various albums. The former is more ubiquitous there.