That depends. Are you looking at preserving the music without loss of information? Then you need to use a lossless format like flac. Formats like aac, mp3, opus can throw away information you’re less likely to hear to achieve better compression ratios. Flac can’t, so it needs more storage space to preserve the exact waveform.

You can use a lossy format if you want. On most consumer level equipment, you probably won’t notice a difference. However, if you start to notice artifacting in songs, you’ll need to go back to the originals to re-rip and encode.

Yeeeaaah, that makes more sense. 😅 That would be a giant gaping vulnerability if everything was in kernel space.

Bluetooth has one of the largest network stacks. It’s bigger than Wifi. This means some parts of the stack probably aren’t tested and may have bugs or vulnerabilities. It has duplicate functionality in it. This opens up the possibility that flaws in how different parts interact could lead to vulnerabilities or exploits.

A number of years ago some security researchers did an analysis of the Windows and Linux stacks. They found multiple exploitable vulnerabilities in both stacks. They called their attack blue borne, but it was really a series of attacks that could be used depending on which OS you wanted to target. Some what ironically, Linux was more vulnerable because the Linux kernel implemented more of the protocol than Windows.

There’s talk on the Linux kernel mailing list. The same person made recent contributions there.

Andrew (and anyone else), please do not take this code right now.

Until the backdooring of upstream xz[1] is fully understood, we should not accept any code from Jia Tan, Lasse Collin, or any other folks associated with tukaani.org. It appears the domain, or at least credentials associated with Jia Tan, have been used to create an obfuscated ssh server backdoor via the xz upstream releases since at least 5.6.0. Without extensive analysis, we should not take any associated code. It may be worth doing some retrospective analysis of past contributions as well…

Not sure if it’s related to your story, but a lot of people self indoctrinated through right-wing media. There was a documentary that came out in 2016: The Brainwashing of My Dad.

It’s online if you haven’t seen it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS52QdHNTh8

https://piped.video/watch?v=FS52QdHNTh8

We have a very large christian population, and they all don’t behave in a monolithic manner. For surveys it makes sense to ask which denomination or type of christian they are. Some will response Catholic, Baptist, Protestant. Some will respond christian, sometimes non-denominational christian. It improves the survey results. For example, you might find differences between Catholics and Baptists that wouldn’t show up if you grouped them all together under a christian category.

For reporting them, probably not. For trying to opt-out with a STOP reply, depends on them playing by the rules. Do you think they will play by the rules? I don’t. I would assume malice. That they would forward your number to a bunch of other lists. You might not get Nikki’s spam, but you’ll get spam from 3 other PACs that are only 2 months old.

Digging into the FCC’s website reveals that robotexts are illegal without prior consent. However, if they hand enter the message, that’s legal.

That lines up with my experience the one time I kept getting annoying political texts. There was a human at the other end. They happily removed my number from their list after I threatened to vote for the other team if they kept harassing me. But that was the Democrats.

You can try some of the FCC’s recommendations, but I would generally assume malice in this instance. The political entities will probably disappear before anything can be done.

Report Unwanted Calls and Texts

If you think you’ve received a political robocall or text that does not comply with the FCC’s rules, you can file an informal complaint with the FCC at fcc.gov/complaints. If you are receiving texts that you didn’t ask for, report the sender by forwarding the texts to 7726 (or “SPAM”). Campaigns should also honor opt-out requests if you reply “STOP.”

Something something antitrust. Something something browser choice. Microsoft is just asking to be fined €1 billion. Really, someone needs to make a big stink about it in Europe because they’ll act before the US does.

Mile marker 420 had that problem.

Reddit is only going to get worst over the next year. I came across this article a couple days ago while searching for early news coverage of the (then planned) blackout:

Reddit launches new ad products to boost conversions (archive.ph mirror)

Reddit has launched Contextual Keyword Targeting and Product Ads, to help advertisers reach new and valuable audiences.

The article reads like an ad, but what I got out of it was Reddit is going to have more tracking and intrusive advertising. Not a good experience.

You know he’s a narcissist. A narcissist needs to be the center of attention. Putting him in solitary would be a fate worst than death. It would be his own personal hell. 😂