mastodon - Link to source
We have a new Code of Ethics and Fiduciary Duties for our Board of Directors: blog.documentfoundation.org/bl…

Code of Ethics and Fiduciary Duties for TDF's Board of Directors - The Document Foundation Blog

The Document Foundation (TDF) is the non-profit entity behind the LibreOffice project. It collects donations from users, and employs a small team to support and coordinate the worldwide community that makes the software.
Mike Saunders (The Document Foundation)

lemmy - Link to source

GrapheneOS Experimental Releases For Pixel 10 Devices Now Available

We now have experimental support for the Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, Pixel 10 Pro XL and Pixel 10 Pro Fold.

Our initial 2025112500 release for these is available through our web installer or releases page on our staging site:

staging.grapheneos.org/install…staging.grapheneos.org/release…


GrapheneOS web installer

Web-based installer for GrapheneOS, a security and privacy focused mobile OS with Android app compatibility.
GrapheneOS
#grapheneos

lemmy - Link to source

GrapheneOS Foundation Explains Why GrapheneOS Has Left France

A false narrative is being pushed about GrapheneOS claiming we're ending operations in France due to the actions of 2 newspapers. That's completely wrong. If both newspapers and the overall French media had taken our side instead of extreme bias against us, we'd still be leaving.

We're ending operations in France and ending our use of French companies (mainly OVH) to provide services because of direct quotes by law enforcement in dozens of French news publications. Their inaccurate claims about GrapheneOS and thinly veiled threats were our sign to leave.

French law enforcement hijacked the servers of companies selling secure phones multiple times and is comparing us with those companies. They've made it clear they expect access to phones and will go after us if we do not cooperate. Cooperating with that means adding a backdoor.

We were already moving away from OVH over time. We didn't have authoritative DNS or update mirrors on it anymore prior to this. We were only going to be using it for our website/network service instances which are tiny servers with only static content and reverse proxies.

We couldn't see any of the specific claims from French law enforcement until the news stories were published. French law enforcement are wrongly conflating GrapheneOS with products using portions of our code. Claims about our features, distribution and marketing are inaccurate.

French law enforcement brought up SkyECC and Encrochat, two companies they went after with arrests and server seizures. They made it very clear they'll go after us similarly if they're able to conjure a good enough justification and we don't cooperate by providing device access.

Thinly veiled threats from law enforcement are quoted in several of the news article including archive.is/UrlvK. We don't store user data and cannot bypass brute force protection for encryption. Cooperating to provide device access means one thing: encryption backdoors.

GrapheneOS (@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social)

Thinly veiled threats from law enforcement are quoted in several of the news article including https://archive.is/UrlvK. We don't store user data and cannot bypass brute force protection for encryption.
GrapheneOS (GrapheneOS Mastodon)
#grapheneos
in reply to KindnessInfinity

lemmy - Link to source

vas

They’ve made it clear [they expect access to phones and ...]


How did they make it clear? Can you provide the full quote or reference to the message?

Thinly veiled threats from law enforcement are quoted in several of the news article


Which ones exactly? Unfortunately I don't speak French, but here's what I get with a translator on the reference link:

With this new tool, for some users there is a genuine legitimacy in wanting to protect their communications. The approach is therefore different. But this will not stop us from prosecuting the developers if links are found between them and a criminal organization and they do not cooperate with justice.


Is it a thinly veiled threat, or it could be something else as well, such as simply news coverage and a warning? They clearly acknowledge that "some users ~have a genuine legitimacy in wanting to protect their communications".

I mean I get it if you want to leave France due to *fears*. If and only if you say you're afraid, not that you know for a fact about "thinly veiled threats", "they make it clear", "no open-source privacy project can exist in France" etc. Or if you do know some of it as a fact, then provide proofs, not "we have information that......".

This entry was edited (3 weeks ago)
in reply to Andre Louis

mastodon - Link to source

Tamas G

@FreakyFwoof makes me wonder how much an underground used-RAM marked will develop. Of course biggest issue is you cannot trust reliability, but some sysinfo tools can tell you the manufacturing date of the stick and that way at least you have a gauge of how old it is. I think a huge market will flurrish over it, I've considered putting up my 4 16-gig desktop ram sticks but don't have their original packaging anymore, just in an anti-static bag to keep it safe. So I'm sure they'd work for someone, and maybe with this desperate market finding a seller for it won't be hard.
@Andre Louis

mastodon - Link to source
Anyone noticing that NVDA doesn't read terminal output automatically the first time a new window is opened? I almost always have to alt+tab away and back again. Sometimes I have to do it multiple times.
Still trying and failing to reproduce a massive memory leak too. The process sometimes balloons to hundreds of MB and the entire interface lags. Actual reading of the output seems to be great once the window is properly focused, but the initial launch is very unnecessarily frustrating. I've also noticed that sometimes NVDA lands in the terminal window and allows me to review terminal output with the review cursor, but other times it does not. Even when focus seems to be in the right place, I still get no automatic output.
I just switched NVDA to speak new events using UIA notifications instead of diffing, which seems to fix automatic reading, but introduces some strange choppy output. For instance, when I log into my homeserver, the first letter of the MOTD gets cut off, so I hear "inux" instead of "linux".
NVDA is also randomly deciding not to read the content of text fields in Thunderbird and various Electron apps, and occasionally I lose the ability to get character feedback when arrowing left and right through *any* text field. So maybe I'm just very unlucky or there's some background process trolling me.
Either way, I with Mac terminal support somehow *still* being terrible after all this time, I'm starting to feel like I need to run a Linux VM just to get a working terminal. (Yes, I know I could probably also run TDSR in WSL. That's also on my list.)

gotosocial - Link to source

I love how steadily Linux ecosystem gets better and better over the years. I am at an event where I have some spare time in the back of our booth, so I'm slowly installing my new homelab minipc and I needed to provide connectivity to it. I have two network interfaces on my laptop, so I started remembering how to set up routing and dhcp server on the command line, then I remembered it's a workstation, so I need to take care of NetworkManager to not cause any issues, only to find out that there's actually an option called "Shared to other computers" on the interface in NetworkManager GUI, so I ticked it and ... it just works. It started dhcp server and started masquerading the subnet via default route.

Oh, and you can find the leases in "/var/lib/NetworkManager/dnsmasq-<interface name>.leases"

#linux #linuxtips #networking

#linux #networking #linuxtips

mastodon - Link to source
Oh hey it's December. Time to pull out this silly little Christmas MIDI again. I still know basically nothing about it.
The earliest I can trace it back to is a file called RXMAS93.ZIP with a timestamp of November 15, 1993, which appeared on several 90s shareware CDs, though none of them seem to indicate the source.
MIDI: drive.google.com/uc?id=1-8tW2P….
Thanks to @datajake1999 the album is also now on YouTube. youtube.com/watch?v=9RXWKpGZmC…


Roland Christmas 93

A collection of Christmas MIDI files sequenced for the Roland SC-55 has been floating around since at least 1993, and the author of these files is unknown. T...
YouTube
@Jake Gross
This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

Matt Campbell reshared this.

glitchsoc - Link to source

Trans musicians of fedi, I come to you with a plea for help!

Do you have any footage of yourself playing gigs that you 1) have the rights to and 2) would permit the use of?

Can be as short as ten seconds. Big stage, small pub, camera phone or professional cam, doesn't matter, just as long as it it's from a gig and looks the part. Audio not required.

I'm working on a trans-themed music video for a cover song and I'd love to cut a little montage of performances in the last chorus.

If that call speaks to you, I'd be delighted if you replied or DM'd me!

#AskFedi #TransMusicians

#askfedi #transmusicians
This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

mastodon - Link to source
When was the last time you took a flight to anywhere for any reason? #poll #pleaseBoost (and don't get picky on the time descriptions because you know full well what I mean in the limited characters)

  • In the last 24 hours (1%, 23 votes)
  • In the last week (2%, 42 votes)
  • In the last month (8%, 128 votes)
  • In the last year (31%, 492 votes)
  • Over a year ago (35%, 566 votes)
  • So long ago I don't remember (17%, 276 votes)
  • I've never flown (3%, 62 votes)
1589 voters. Poll end: 3 weeks ago

#poll #pleaseboost

mastodon - Link to source

putain on croyait être tranquille un moment, mais il est repassé par la fenêtre et on est bien baisés :
Chat Control, le retour !

euroweeklynews.com/2025/11/29/…

(en passant donnez à @LaQuadrature on va avoir besoin de se défendre, là)

#UnionEuropéenne
#UnionFasciste
#Tech
#Chat
#Controle
#Messagerie
#Surveillance
#ViePrivée
#Chiffrement
#BackDoorPourLesGentilsBienSûrMonCul
#TousSuspects
#DeltaChat


Chat Control approved: Certain EU countries will see your private messages. Is yours on the list?

EU governments have finally agreed on a controversial new law that gives a backdoor to reading text messages and viewing photo messages
Adam Woodward (Euro Weekly News)
#chat #tech #surveillance #deltachat #vieprivee #messagerie #unioneuropeenne #unionfasciste #controle #chiffrement #backdoorpourlesgentilsbiensurmoncul #TousSuspects @La Quadrature du Net

mastodon - Link to source
Seems like #GTK 4 really discourages using drag and drop as a method of sorting lists. My implementation is reaching 200+ lines. I get that it's not very accessible, and maybe impossible on devices without a mouse. But I'm struggling to think of an alternative for large lists of items such as music playlists. Using Up/Down buttons to move an item from position 1 to position 100 seems like a lot of presses... #gnome
#gnome #gtk

gotosocial - Link to source

#Vaguetooting: equating* objecting to systemd to MAGA is a level of bullshirt I've never seen before, nor thought possible.

*Disclaimer: This equating is an interpretation of a person's statement. That interpretation may be incorrect. Also, some people who object to systemd are indeed horrible people with horrible ideas/ideals/ideologies.

P.S. Using "don't divide us" as a dialectical hammer to quash debate is pretty forking awful. For the millionth time, what the fork is systemd, really?!? Because if you say "it's an init system," I'm going to put you in the same category as people who way "lol linux is just a kernel" and "I asked ChatGPT..."

#vaguetooting
This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)
in reply to ToTheStone

mastodon - Link to source

Eugene

But XLibre was started not because of developer's anti-vaxer views.

Why some forks and new programs created by left/right radicals — is another question. I think this "happens" because mass-media always ready to promote some hot content which will start flamewars and give a lot of views for these media. I suppose, in reality a lot of OpenSource projects still started by a usual people, who don't have radical views and just love to code. But these projects are not visible, because today :drgn_sigh: looks like popular to "change the world", "make actions", "fight with something" or "for something" and other loud words instead of silent, small and consecutive actions.

"Better to seem than to be"

mastodon - Link to source

#TLDR: Quad9 will be discontinuing support within DNS-over-HTTPS (DOH) using HTTP/1.1 on December 15, 2025.

Mark your calendar 🗓️ and please share, especially if you know someone who will be affected!

Full story here 👉 quad9.net/news/blog/doh-http-1…

#DOH #DNS #infosec

Quad9 logo centered in bold white and pink against a circuit-themed purple and blue background.

Quad9 | A public and free DNS service for a better security and privacy

A public and free DNS service for a better security and privacy
Quad9
#infosec #dns #DoH #tldr

mastodon - Link to source

Some #PeerTube video accounts to follow on assorted topics:

EXERCISE
@3morereps_workouts - Fitness instructor doing exercise & yoga videos

HISTORY
@premodernist - Univ. lecturer on history, from ancient to modern
@athenaproductions - Irreverent/sweary videos about bits of history, philosophy
@historical - Assorted public domain films from history

LANGUAGES
@moosesconlangs - Videos on constructed languages including Esperanto
@robert_riley - Educational videos about basics of English language

#peertube @Athena Productions @Premodernist @3MoreReps Workouts @NLS Learn @Historical Shorts @Moose's Conlang Channel
This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

sharkey - Link to source

Die Distanz hinter den großen Begriffen

Man begegnet in diesen digitalen Räumen Menschen, die reden, als wären sie ständig auf einer Bühne.
Sie werfen mit Begriffen um sich wie Selbstbestimmung, Systemkritik, Dekonstruktion, Freiheit ..
ein ganzes Arsenal an Haltungen.
Alles klingt groß, reflektiert, fast so, als könnte man damit jedes Versäumnis übertünchen.
Und hinter dieser Kulisse liegt etwas Seltsames: Eine Unfähigkeit, Nähe auszuhalten.
Nicht aus Bosheit, sondern aus einer Mischung aus Unsicherheit, Eitelkeit und der Angst, dass echte Begegnung die eigene Rolle zerkratzt.
Also wird jede Annäherung sofort in einen Diskurs verwandelt.
Anstatt „Ja, lass uns mal treffen“, kommt ein Vortrag darüber, wie wichtig Freiheit ist, wie vorsichtig man mit sozialen Energien umgehen müsse, wie anspruchsvoll das eigene Innenleben sei.
Alles klingt nach Tiefe, doch es dient nur dazu, nicht in Berührung zu kommen.
Man selbst kommt schlicht herüber,
nicht mit einem Manifest, sondern mit einem offenen Blick. Nicht weil man besonders tugendhaft wäre, sondern weil das der Normalzustand ist.
Gerade, wenn man aus einer Gegend stammt, in der Nähe nicht als Bedrohung galt, sondern als Teil des Überlebens.
Wo man sich nicht mit Fremdwörtern schützen musste, sondern einfach da war.
Und dann prallt dieses einfache Dasein
auf ein Milieu, das sich in Selbstinszenierung eingerichtet hat.
In dem hat man sich angewöhnt,
Verbindlichkeit als Risiko zu sehen
und Distanz als Reife. Der Ton ist glatt, die Miene souverän, doch in Wahrheit ist da eine enorme Brüchigkeit.
Völlig absurd wird es,
wenn man diese Oberflächenkritik ausspricht und sofort Zuspruch bekommt, von denselben Menschen,
die exakt so leben.
Sie stimmen begeistert zu, als hätten sie nie im Leben die eigene Rolle im Spiegel betrachtet.
Wie ein Chor, der seine eigene Partitur nicht kennt.
Sie reden über Ausbeutung,
über den Kapitalismus,
über Sklaverei in der Arbeitswelt,
als hätten sie das Monopol auf moralische Sensibilität.
Doch wenn es darum geht, einem Menschen einfach respektvoll zu begegnen, ohne Maskottchen-Rolle,
ohne taktische Distanz, ohne Selbstdarstellung, ist plötzlich nichts mehr da.
Keine Verbindlichkeit, keine Wärme, keine Bereitschaft zur Realität.
Nur Begriffe, die wie Schutzwälle stehen
zwischen ihnen und jedem Moment,
der nicht kontrollierbar ist.
Und man bleibt zurück, nicht erschüttert,
sondern irritiert darüber, wie sehr manche Freiheit predigen und doch vor jeder Form von Begegnung zurückschrecken.
Wie sehr sie Weltanalysen liefern
und gleichzeitig die einfachste Form menschlicher Nähe nicht ertragen.
Es ist ein Muster, das überall auftauchen kann, Menschen, die sich selbst für kritisch halten, aber nie merken,
dass sie kritische Distanz mit menschlicher Abwesenheit verwechseln.

#Bruchzone #Zwischenwelten #Innensichten #friedisinniert #Theoriefassade

#bruchzone #zwischenwelten #innensichten #friedisinniert #theoriefassade

mastodon - Link to source

Federal Appeals Court disqualifies Alina Habba from serving as US Attorney for NJ

abc7ny.com/post/federal-appeal…
via ABC7NY App


Federal Appeals Court disqualifies Alina Habba from serving as US Attorney for NJ

The 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court decision that found her appointment violated the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.
Peter Charalambous and Aaron Katersky (ABC7 New York)

wordpress - Link to source

Social and Organizational Talks at FOSDEM 2026


 Hey, all. One thing that's different this year about the Social Web Devroom at FOSDEM 2026 is that we're going to include talks about the organizational and social aspects of rolling out Open Source Fediverse software for individuals and communities. Last

Hey, all. One thing that’s different this year about the Social Web Devroom at FOSDEM 2026 is that we’re going to include talks about the organizational and social aspects of rolling out Open Source Fediverse software for individuals and communities. Last year, we focused pretty heavily on technical talks from the principle developers of FLOSS packages. This year, we want to make sure the other aspects of Fediverse growth and improvement are covered, too.

Consequently, the guidance for last year’s event, which was focused on how to make a great technical presentation, might seem a little outdated. But on reviewing it, I’ve found that it still has good advice for social and organizational talks. Just like software developers, community builders see problems and construct solutions for them. The solutions aren’t just about writing code, though; more often they involve bringing people together, assembling off-the-shelf tools, and making processes and rules for interaction.

Talks about Open Source software to implement ActivityPub and build the social web are still welcome, of course. We’re just expanding a bit to cover the human aspects of the Fediverse as well.

I’m looking forward to having the interesting discussions about bringing people together to make the Social Web. If you haven’t already, please consider submitting a talk to pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2026…. Select “Social Web” from the “Track” dropdown, and include the length of your talk (8/25/50) in the submission notes. The deadline is December 1, 2025, so get them in as soon as possible!

FOSDEM 2026

Schedule, talks and talk submissions for FOSDEM 2026
pretalx.fosdem.org
#fediverse #fosdem #cfp #socialwebfosdem #fosdem2026 #guidance
This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

mastodon - Link to source

Speech-to-text right from your terminal?? 🎤

⚡ **ostt** — A terminal-based recorder & speech-to-text transcription tool.

💯 Real-time waveform visualization with dBFS volume metering & clipping detection.

⬇️ Demo by the author below

🦀 Written in Rust & built with @ratatui_rs

⭐ GitHub: github.com/kristoferlund/ostt

#rustlang #ratatui #tui #audiotech #tts #transcription #terminal

GitHub - kristoferlund/ostt: Open Speech-to-Text recording tool with real-time volume metering and transcription.

Open Speech-to-Text recording tool with real-time volume metering and transcription. - kristoferlund/ostt
GitHub
#terminal #RustLang #transcription #tts #tui #ratatui #audiotech @Ratatui

reshared this

mastodon - Link to source

Well, it's December 01, which means it's time to drag Sammy out of his box again.

This silly little song, which was probably someone's throw-away recording for a morning show in the 70s, has a story behind it, at least for me.

On Christmas Eve 1992, Brad Krantz played a song on Asheboro, NorthCarolina's WKRR, called Sammy the Christmas Snake, on his morning talk show.
It just so happened that my brother had a few boomboxes recording local radio stations to capture the essence of a Carolina Christmas that morning, when Sammy the Christmas snake played on Brad's show.
As I was 8 years old at the time, and my brother and I liked this silly little song so much, we decided to make it tradition to play it every Christmas morning before going upstairs for the "good stuff".
Unfortunately, however, in 1994, my brother went off to college, and the tape was lost somewhere. Naturally, it was the only copy we had.

A few years after that, Brad was fired from WKRR, and I lost track of him. I emailed one of the guys at the station around 2001 or so, to see if they knew where Sammy the Christmas Snake might be, or at least knew who recorded it. I was told that Brad took their only copy with him when he went to Charlotte, and they had no idea who actually wrote or recorded the song, only that Brad got it from someone in Boston.

In the summer of 2004, WZTK, a new FM talk station owned and operated by Curtis Media was launched. And, guess what? Brad Krantz is back with the Brad and Brit show.

I emailed him in August of 2004 just to politely ask if he still had Sammy the Christmas Snake, and asked if he would play it on his show over the holiday season. He said he would, that it was apparently widely requested, and said "thank you for remembering Sammy".

So, I started my audio recorder on December first to try and record Sammy the Christmas Snake for my own personal amusement, seeing as how I have been looking for it for 12 years on and off at this point. Apparently, Brad had expected this, and made sure to talk or play IDs at every possible opening in the song, which, as you can imagine, infuriated me. Yep, this was war!

I kept the recorder going every weekday morning through December 21, 2004, to see if he would slip and forget to play an ID in the same places.

Finally, on December 21, 2004, I had enough pieces to reconstruct it!

I ended up running seven different copies of the song as played on the Brad and Brit Show through my favorite audio editor, taking the best parts from each, to get the relatively unmutilated version of Sammy the Christmas Snake, albeit with a few compromises. The song came from a slightly scratchy record, dubbed to who knows what media, played over an FM radio station. After editing, there were differences in equalization in some parts of the song, most likely due to Brad playing the track back through a different player or channel on the station's console, but considering it was the only version of the song I could find anywhere, and, as of December 2025, I still have no idea who recorded it, my edit was good enough.

I wanted to share the song as widely as possible, thanks to my beef with Brad, and this was before the existence of Youtube, so I put it on a webpage with links to contact Brad and Brit, and thank them for allowing us to have access to such a wonderful song. This, of course, was in response to Brad's claim that he had exclusive rites to it, which I thought was completely unfair. There's no need to keep Sammy in a box like that!

Several years went by, and someone uploaded my edit of Sammy to Youtube. It has now been featured in several different videos, but it's obvious that it's my edit, and I've yet to find another version of it anywhere, online or offline.

There were some things that bugged me about my original 2004 edit, which I could now fix with tools and skills I didn't have at the time, so, on December 1, 2018, I fixed some small timing issues that existed between splices, reduced crackles, pops and rumble, made the equalization a little more consistent, got rid of some noise, and performed a few other touch-ups. This is the result. It's still not perfect, but it's better than it was, and certainly cleaner than any other version on Youtube as of December 1, 2018.

I'm still looking for a real copy of this song, or, at the very least, an idea of who recorded it. There is some speculation on the comments of this Youtube video.

I was told that this song also featured on a morning show on WNAP in Indianapolis, Indiana, around 1978-1982.

A few years ago, my edit was played on WKRR again, where it all started for me. Go figure.

As of May 2025, Brad Krantz has passed away, so if he actually knew anything about the origins of this song, we can't ask him now.

youtube.com/watch?v=o0eWo6qvZO…

Lyrics, sung by a guy with a New England accent sped up and singing with himself to the backing of a Fender Rhodes, some flutes, drums, bass and a glockenspiel are as follows:

There are such cute little Christmas galoots...
Little angels, and reindeer, and snowflakes that fly.
But from all those yule underdogs fondling my memory logs,
one multiple vertebrae kind of a guy.

Sammy the Christmas Snake
hid in the corner of Santa's workshop.
Sammy the Christmas Snake
bit all the elves and made all the work stop.
Hid in the stockings, he hid up the flue,
bit on Rudolph 'til his nose turned blue,
ain't no tellin' what a Christmas snake'll do...
*hiss, hiss, hiss*
Merry Christmas

Sammy the Christmas Snake
had peppermint stripes and pointy ol' fangs.
Sammy the Christmas snake
he hides in the holly where the mistletoe hangs.
Hid in the stockings, he hid up the flue,
he bit on old Santa and Misses Santa Too! OH!
Sammy the Christmas Snake
*hiss, hiss, hiss*
Merry Christmas.

Come on kids, sing with me!

Now, Santa lived with Herb the Christmas Dwarf at Santa's house,
and no one liked him much since he bit Sid, the Christmas Mouse.
'Til Rick the Christmas Mongoose went berserk and tried to wreck,
the sleigh and Sammy saved the day when he broke Rick's Christmas neck.
HEY!

Sammy the Christmas Snake
Now there ain't a ban on anacondas in the arctic.
Sammy that ol' Christmas Snake
Now those elves don't chase him with that forked stick.

What a merry mood he has all the girls and boys in,
givin' out the cheer and holdin' back the poison...

Sammy the Christmas Snake
Hey! Hey!
*Hiss, hiss, hiss*
MERRY CHRISTMASSSSS!


Sammy the Christmas Snake

On Christmas Eve 1992, Brad Krantz played a song on Asheboro, NorthCarolina's WKRR called Sammy the Christmas Snake, on his morning talk show.It just so happ...
YouTube

mastodon - Link to source
Is it me, or did Slack adjust some focus behaviors in the reactions dialog? Others on Slack: Please check for me.
In the past, I could right arrow from the search field into "frequently used" and pick an emoji. Now, right arrowing just announces: "Search property page." No indication what I land on, nothing about an active emoji highlighted. This is making reacting to Slack messages nearly impossible for me.
in reply to James Scholes

mastodon - Link to source

Tamas G

ah interesting! I am running Windows Store 4.47.59 64-bit (ARM) of Slack. But it does smell like some sort of UIA mis-fire so will try rebooting the machine too, a Slack restart didn't change it. The store version is for sure more performant but can sometimes get odd focusing quirks too I've noticed in general. Really appreciate you checking this on your side.
This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

mastodon - Link to source
Think my best snag was the AirPods Max for 150 off, since they sold it for 399 instead of the retail $549 price. Easier to swallow. Even in 2025 they are one of the best (if not the best) headphones I own. Bluetooth 5.0 is a bit crappy, H1 chip has not aged well. For those reasons I would never pick them up as full retail price.
However: The all-metal construction, premium magnetic earcups, superb ANC that still rivals the QC Ultra but falls slightly short of XM6 in blocking rumbles, type-C audio, and comfort make it all worthwhile in 2025.
The XM6 might be a little better, but it is all plastic and terrible workmanship for what you pay. QC Ultra upped the game with metal hinges, but what you pay for in the max is that all-metal cups and surprisingly repairable design with easy to change earcups. The Sonos Ace, if you don't want Apple's ecosystem, is the closest contender, but may not win on comfort to some. Others will appreciate the Sonos Ace for being lighter (The max are very heavy cans.)
I have multiple Apple devices so for me this was worth to buy, as the Airpods Max auto-sync to all of them. I already had the AirPods Pro 3, and because those have smaller 11MM drivers, they will never produce the depth of the max. Not to mention a lot of the bass-forward nature of the AirPods Pro 3 comes from DSP (Digital signal processing) tricks.
So, there you have it. My honest review. No, the max are not bad, but also, not for everyone, and other solid ones exist today like it.
in reply to MariahL

mastodon - Link to source

Tamas G

@MariahL I was actually shocked at how low-lag they have even on standard SBC codec and Bluetooth. It's nowhere as good as AptX or one of those 2.4 dongle headphones, but good enough that compared to QC Ultra with SBC and AAC codecs, there's a lot less lag. I'd say around 80-90MS for the Max. I will have to see how well they age, people say the white one turns yellow around the foam and band over time. I got the blue one. It's good to know the lightning one still works for you though, good sign there, and since you have the converter, the type-C version is not worth the upgrade.
@MariahL
in reply to MariahL

mastodon - Link to source

Tamas G

@MariahL ah yeah, the only downside, you can't charge them while plugged in. Unless, you can get a lightning splitter that has both charging and audio, wonder if that could work on a Max to get the same behavior as the Type-C one. Was very happy to know they can be used while plugged in, not so happy that the only way to really get them in that low power state where they disconnect is to put them in their case.
I do use them on Windows a lot too, it's good that my iPhone will still see its battery status even when its connected to my Windows side. It was a bit tricky to put it in pairing mode with the side-button hold trick but it does work, so I can still use it either on Apple stuff or on Windows depending on what I'm near.
@MariahL
in reply to MariahL

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Tamas G

@MariahL I wil have to really put them through their pace next year when I go to Europe with that! I wonder how well they'd do on Airplane engine noise. Some say there was a firmware update that borked noise canceling, basically weakened it somewhere around the 4X version time. I did test them with things like our furnace side-by-side to the QC Ultra and XM6, and the only ones that slightly beat it were XM6 and the newer AirPods pro 3. Not shocked there, but the difference was super subtle and not enough that an entire noise of speech or the hum bled in through the max.
@MariahL
in reply to MariahL

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Tamas G

@MariahL ah yeah, those had a sale but not quite at a deep discount, think the lowest I saw pro3 go for was 219 bucks. So around a 10 or 15% discount. I do think they'll stick around for a long time though so if you wait longer the patience reward will be worth it. They kept the Pro2 around for years. I still have them, the lightning pro2, but my left one has a problem where ANC doesn't work equal to the right one and transparency wavers voices. So had to pick them up when they launched and recycle them next time at Best Buy.
@MariahL

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The best way to test the resilience of your service is: reboot the server. I mean it. Don't just restart the service, reboot the server. A story in two parts:

Part 1: a while ago I configured ZFS under my Talos Kubernetes cluster, and everything was fine, until I decided to reboot. When it came back, nothing was working, because I forgot to properly configure a way for Talos to read the ZFS volume encryption key.

Part 2: at some point I configured Audiobookshelf to store data on top of said ZFS volume. Everything was working fine for a few weeks, until I had to reboot the server again (for reasons). When it came back, I lost all my downloaded podcasts, because I had a typo on my configuration that was pointing to a directory outside of the PVC, so it mounted as an emptyDir volume.

Honestly, I should have known better. I had issues in the past when some servers went down because of power failures (battery didn't last) and they did not come back properly.

You gotta do a reboot/power test every once in a while, just like you have to test your backups on a regular basis.

#HomeLab #TalosLinux #ZFS #SRE #DevOps @homelab

#homelab #devops #sre #zfs #TalosLinux @Run your own homelab

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RE: infosec.exchange/@WPalant/1156…

Another drama in the FLOSS world! (In history this time.) Forks and insinuations! Who could have guessed.

Wladimir Palant (@WPalant@infosec.exchange)

I almost forgot an upcoming anniversary. 20 years ago I wrote this comment complaining about the state of the AdBlock extension: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=315754#c12.
Wladimir Palant (Infosec Exchange)

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The other day, I thought yet again about how the formalized government of the USA was officially started because "The Thirteen Colonies" didn't like a nation (England) taxing them from abroad in addition to local taxes...

Yet the US is 1 of 3* countries worldwide that taxes its own citizens who live elsewhere _in addition_ to where they live.

(* The other two countries are the totalitarian dictatorships of Eritrea and North Korea.)

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