If it’s the control you find clunky, Kodi does support LIRC, and USB infrared receivers are like $20. You should be able to convince it to listen to your TV or universal remote for menu navigation, volume, etc, which will make it feel a lot like a normal/smart TV. I use the Kore app on my phone.

But UI is the Achilles heel of most open source software.

There’s mythtv, but it’s significantly more complicated than kodi and doesn’t have the streaming plugins. IME, mythtv makes a nice backend for Kodi, especially if you want to capture live TV OTA/cable. For just watching stuff, Kodi is great. It doesn’t really honor any file hierarchy you might set up under its “Movies” or “Music” tabs, but you’ll find that structure preserved in “Browser.”

I’ve found OSMC, which is just a dedicated OS wrapper around Kodi, a little wonky, but that could be just me. I’m used to ssh-ing in to systems to maintain them, and it took me a long time to understand OSMC’s connman network manager. I think it’s probably fine if you intend to interact only though Kodi’s on-screen controls, but osmc feels like a ‘weird’ linux. Doesn’t even log to /var/log/syslog

In the 4(?) days since I got my first anti-adblock popover, I’ve completely stopped watching random videos. My few favorite channels I’ve watched in incognito without harrassment, and the only thing I’ve noticed is having more time for other things.

If those content providers were on some other platform, I’d go there, but that’s honestly asking a lot of them for a small slice of their subscribers.

Who are these kids under 20 with $14,000 to give out to scammers? Retirees with a spare $35k, I believe, but I’d really like to see the distribution for both. I’m guessing the means and medians are very different.

No sweat, friend. I was just using the opportunity to extend the “It’s all Reagan’s fault” train. And Donald Regan was a real guy appointed by Ronald Reagan. They didn’t have the diversity of names we do now, so a lot of them repeated, rhymed, or required a middle initial to differentiate. Like all the George Bushes - GWB, GPB, GHWB…

Yeah. https://www.educationnext.org/remembering-nation-risk-reflections-politics-policy/

Abolish the Department of Education. School choice vouchers. Standardized testing. All these memes started with Reagan. Not Regan, his Secretary of Treasury, but a lot of people confused Ronald Reagan and Donald Regan, even at the time.

Since the 4 hands are all equal multiples, you should only need two shafts and a bunch of 16:1 reductions, like couples of 10 and 160 teeth. Second hand 10-tooth gear drives a stub 160, coupled to a 10, which drives 160 on the 4-minute hand, coupled to a 10… In my head, gear trains get more complicated when they need more shafts, because making sure all those different shafts are aligned and non-interfering is hard. Just stacking more 10/160 gears on longer shafts is pretty straightforward. Your clock would be deep, but not necessarily large.

If you have a 3D printer, you can download models of gears from places like https://mcmaster.com and print them out. Or modify them and print them. A 3D printed clock isn’t likely to last until 2038, but it’s great for prototyping.

I thought Apple was on to something with their cylindrical form factor. It’s inconvenient from a mobo perspective, but a central core motherboard, with CPU, GPU, even memory and M2 sticking out like fins. Get the mobo down to segments like 25mm x 250, and stack the whole thing over a massive -like 250-350 mm- low rpm fan would be great for heat management and noise. Heck, put it in a venturi tunnel driven by a 500mm fan.

Got a cabinet in similar state: got the doors cut, fitted and filled, just need the hinges. But the doors will stay if you lean them and maybe a little wedge. They’ve been like that since July. 2002.

There’s definitely an arms race - if it’s cheaper to pay an SEO to get your pages shown, then you pay the SEO; if it’s cheaper to pay Google advertising, then you pay to play. I’m sure Google is constantly tweaking their algorithm to filter SEO techniques to get better, authentic results, but it seems like a losing battle at this point.

human nature remembers negative experiences much better than positive, so it only takes like 5% assholes before it feels like everyone is toxic.

I would not be surprised if this is an experiment to see the effect of killing API on the event. I mean, really, not many accounts have left reddit (a lot have showed up on lemmy/kbin, but a small fraction of reddit), and I remember a lot of complaints of bots in the last place. It’s just 3 months since the last one, so they should get great data on the effect of API charges on their bot access.