The computing stuff rant thread

[Jaded]

So, WhatsApp. I'd like to make a group. I've been using you for a several of years.

WhatsAt you say? I don't have any contacts? How am I getting all these messages then?

Ah. You mean that you haven't got access to my phone contacts. Well, there is a reason for that. You don't need them. You will do linky stuff in the background and make assumptions about me. Assumptions that you will sell.  To me and to my contacts.

Never mind. I won't make a WhatsApp group.

[DaveReading]

Backup your contacts, sanitise them, create your WhatsApp group, and then restore them?

[Jaded]

They want my phone contacts.

They aren’t getting them..

[ian]

That must have (annoyingly) changed, I've always managed by telling it no, you can't access my contacts.

[SoreTween]

Dear FruitStuffCo,

Let me guess why when exporting photos from the walled garden to the real world you:
a) give them random GUID filenames.
ii) set all the file times to the exported time.
3) Set all the EXIF metadata dates to the same exported time.

This makes them impossible to sort into correct order other than by manually renaming them all

It is because:
a) By doing so makes everything look so much better in the walled garden and surely upon seeing this the rest of the fucking world will change the way they work to join the walled garden.
ii) Because you're a bunch of 42 carat steaming thundercunts.

[grams]

Because embedding exact locations and timestamps when sharing a picture is not the expected behaviour, to the point of possibly getting people killed.

There’ll be a checkbox somewhere to turn it on.

[Tim Hall]

Not really a rant, bit above a grumble.

I use Kodi on a Raspberry Pi to play music and video.

There's a radio plugin which grabs streams from radio.de, so I can listen to thousands of radio stations from aroud the world. In reality I listen to half a doze, if that. Of those, three are BBC stations, (Radio 4, 4 Extra and 6 Music).  The BBC have changed the way their streams are delivered so now I get nothing.  I contacted radio.de who tell me "Currently, some BBC channels are no longer available".   Indeed, I can't get BBC stations viathe radio.de website either.

Presumably it's part of the drive to get everyone to use BBS Sounds, which I do on my phone.  This is not the same as playing it througha Big Amplifier with Real Speakers though.

[aidan.f]

mOOde audio works, although I seem to remember having to change the URLs for BBC radio.

[chopstick]

Not really a rant, bit above a grumble.

I use Kodi on a Raspberry Pi to play music and video.

There's a radio plugin which grabs streams from radio.de, so I can listen to thousands of radio stations from aroud the world. In reality I listen to half a doze, if that. Of those, three are BBC stations, (Radio 4, 4 Extra and 6 Music).  The BBC have changed the way their streams are delivered so now I get nothing.  I contacted radio.de who tell me "Currently, some BBC channels are no longer available".   Indeed, I can't get BBC stations viathe radio.de website either.

Presumably it's part of the drive to get everyone to use BBS Sounds, which I do on my phone.  This is not the same as playing it througha Big Amplifier with Real Speakers though.

I don't know if this is useful or useless to you but the m3u streams as per here still work for me, playing them through a media player on my Linux PCs.  I understand that they're 320kbps and that that is as good as it gets for BBC radio streaming.  I have an old laptop with a USB soundcard putting an optical output to the integrated DAC on my reasonably sized amplifier with Real Speakers (though mostly I just use BBC Sounds via a web browser - which, I believe, is still 320kbps).

[Maverick]

This explanation was given on a forum by a Hi-Fi company representative recently.

   1. International feeds that were MP3 streams are being switched off. They are switching to 96kbit AAC streams in HLS containers.

    2. UK, Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey streams require an agreement between the BBC and the 3rd party company distributing the streams. The streams require a rolling token to get access, that require server side logic to implement this dynamic token generation.

[Tim Hall]

Not really a rant, bit above a grumble.

I use Kodi on a Raspberry Pi to play music and video.

There's a radio plugin which grabs streams from radio.de, so I can listen to thousands of radio stations from aroud the world. In reality I listen to half a doze, if that. Of those, three are BBC stations, (Radio 4, 4 Extra and 6 Music).  The BBC have changed the way their streams are delivered so now I get nothing.  I contacted radio.de who tell me "Currently, some BBC channels are no longer available".   Indeed, I can't get BBC stations viathe radio.de website either.

Presumably it's part of the drive to get everyone to use BBS Sounds, which I do on my phone.  This is not the same as playing it througha Big Amplifier with Real Speakers though.

I don't know if this is useful or useless to you but the m3u streams as per here still work for me, playing them through a media player on my Linux PCs.  I understand that they're 320kbps and that that is as good as it gets for BBC radio streaming.  I have an old laptop with a USB soundcard putting an optical output to the integrated DAC on my reasonably sized amplifier with Real Speakers (though mostly I just use BBC Sounds via a web browser - which, I believe, is still 320kbps).

Ah, that does look useful, thanks.  This Kodi article suggests I can do some jibbling with m3u files so they get played. https://kodi.wiki/view/Internet_video_and_audio_streams

[Lightning Phil]

Plug a Bluetooth receiver into your real amp and speakers. Sure the sound has been through Bluetooth compression but you can then send BBC sounds to the amp.

[Kim]

Plug a phono cable into your real amp and speakers, and then  a) there won't be any compression  and  b) it will actually work.

[Tim Hall]

Plug a phono cable into your real amp and speakers, and then  a) there won't be any compression  and  b) it will actually work.

It will still need a source of some kind, which in my case I do not have.

Or did not have. After a bit of web based research, ssh session into my pi and a spot of text editing I've created three playlists which play the output from the streams that chopstick pointed me at up thread. I've even made them into favouties so I can easily get to them from the Yatse remote control app on my phone.

Phear mi l33t haxxor skillz
 

[Mr Larrington]

“Shitfuckwankbuggerbollockspiss'n'arse!” exclaimed Mr Larrington on discovering that $GAME_MOD is not nearly as self-contained as he thought, resulting in trucks that look less like a Mercedes Actros with a 20’ container on the back than they do a gingham tablecloth from a nauseatingly twee tea-room.

It's all got to come apart again.  Things have to be moved into different mods.  Files have to be copied, edited, munged, processed, jibbled, filtered, Dolbyised and squeezed through a muslin bag.  Spreadsheets have to be faffed with to make sure everything is copied to the right place and then sworn at because you typed “trick” instead of “truck”.  And it’s T > 33 C up there.  And there are sixty-one different containers.  And…

AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!

[Kim]

Have you ever considered running a real logistics company?  Might be less jbex...

[Diver300]

Trainline, why the name of Stan's left testicle does may account on your webpage not show today's journey, or the one I took a couple of months ago, but does show all the previous ones back to the dawn of time when I signed up. Your App manages to show those two, plus all the others.

[Bledlow]

Plug a phono cable into your real amp and speakers, and then  a) there won't be any compression  and  b) it will actually work.

With analogue input from spinning vinyl available via a Rega product. 

[Kim]

USB-C.  Again.   

Look, I'm a reasonably technical person.  I know more than two programming languages, and can can solder a transistor the right way round without burning my fingers and so on.  But if I have to resort to Google to make sense of every unintuitive USB behaviour (this week: Power Delivery, and why it doesn't work in the presence of Anna Daptor) what hope is there for the average user?  Especially when the molishers of usefully non-compliant accessories are vague in their specifications.

[R_nger]

Dear FruitStuffCo,

Let me guess why when exporting photos from the walled garden to the real world you:
a) give them random GUID filenames.
ii) set all the file times to the exported time.
3) Set all the EXIF metadata dates to the same exported time.

This makes them impossible to sort into correct order other than by manually renaming them all

It is because:
a) By doing so makes everything look so much better in the walled garden and surely upon seeing this the rest of the fucking world will change the way they work to join the walled garden.
ii) Because you're a bunch of 42 carat steaming thundercunts.

I was quite concerned when I read this - but can’t you just “export unmodified originals” from within the photos app ? Or am I missing something

[SoreTween]

I was quite concerned when I read this - but can’t you just “export unmodified originals” from within the photos app ? Or am I missing something

I don't know, I don't do FruitStuffCo.  A colleague took a load of photos at a work site & I ended up with the tedious job of making sense of them after.

[Mr Larrington]

Great Hall Babbage-Engine, plz to not make your display go completely wonky like that, shut off completely and then return pretending nothing happened!

[rr]

Microshaft and GoDaddy, blocking and deleting without trace all emails with the standard K9 signature on them has cost me 3 hours of my day off, in addition to the several hours of persuading thunderbolloxks and K9 to play nicely with exchange online.
I doubt I am going to renew, anyone got any recommendations for someone to host a couple of domains and a few email accounts, IMAP needed, exchange not wanted?

[chrisbainbridge]

I have failed to receive several emails from private domains to my gmail account. When I asked what response they had received I was told that the email had been refused by gmail for security concerns.
The hey we’re most upset when I pointed out that was their problem and not mine. Oh no they said gmail should know we are trustworthy and should have let it through.

[Mr Larrington]

Gmail refused an e-mail from my domain the other day too, but were quite happy when I! resent! it! from! Yahoo! I have not the foggiest notion of how to jibble e-mail servers so I had to just shrug it off.