Cassettes have been trending for a couple of years now. Millennials brought back vinyl, so their Gen-Z counterparts had to reject that and brought back cassette tapes. There was a whole TikTok trend about this. So of course now everything is expensive and artists are selling new albums on cassette again.

I can’t wait until Gen Alpha brings back CD’s. (actually my kids have discovered my old CD collection and have been going through it)

Lemongrass in large quantities supposedly helps. About 2/3rds as effective as Deet based on one study.

I planted some along my driveway two years ago, but I still got bit a lot. I’m the mosquito whisperer so they will bite me even when not biting others. YMMV.

One software not mentioned is Ente (https://ente.io/) which can also be hosted locally.

Also, I think it would be great to have a self-hosted AI assistant with voice to text, but I’m not sure if we are three yet.

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I guess don’t get involved then?

Also, this conjures images of Shinzo Abe in a fighter jet with the numbers 7-3-1 on the side.

No, Facebook and Twitter are still useful for the status quo.

Fox News isn’t rallying people to support Palestine.

Thanks AIPAC, for protecting Americans from foreign misinformation campaigns.

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Ozzy the man was already in from Black Sabbath. But Ozzy Osbourne the band is in now. Their first six albums (through No More Tears) are as good as any other band in metal.

I assume this means Randy, Zakk, Jake E. Lee, etc are in.

Curious to see what they do about the bassist and drummer who sued and were subsequently removed from the reissue of Blizzard of Oz and Diary.

EDIT: Looks like Randy has been in the hall of fame on his own since 2021. TIL.

Guaranteed way for me to not watch a video is when the thumbnail shows the narrator doing their best Forky face.

Maybe SuSE?

Play Minetest.

I remember the last few versions of Netscape Communicator had a “Shop” button.

This was the sign that Netscape had lost the browser war and was giving up.

Never heard of this service. Thanks.

I’m still on a Fairphone 4 – in fact, in December it surpassed all my previous smartphones as the one I’ve owned and used the longest since smartphones became a thing. However, I’m on CalyxOS and have always used a GCam port for taking photos. So I’m not sure if I will get this camera software update or if I have to move back to the (buggy) stock Fairphone OS to see the changes.

This is a big complaint for me. I know that there is the official standalone APK, but if I am running a de-Googled phone, I want to be able to use Signal and have it update on a regular basis.

I mean licensing comes in here. The FOSS licenses allow this. Microsoft EULA and copyright almost certainly does not. But yes, I get the sentiment.

It’s almost as if all of the FAANG/Magnificent 7 market outperformance the past 15 years was built on the backs of the free labor provided by the FOSS movement. But then they will turn around and claim that non-western companies steal IP, etc and have US intervene to ban competition, or sue in courts. Kind of funny.

Back to the tech discussion, I’ve been using doas for a few years now instead of sudo. Even on my GNU/Linux machines. It’s a lot simpler to setup for desktop workflow machines.

Good post, my favorite Sabbath song and album.

I’m happy for them.

Was this the best metal album of 2023? Not by a long shot.

Was it the best Metallica album in 25 years? Absolutely. They tried new things and pulled it off well.

The Grammys have very narrow criteria. Basically you are going to get top 40 radio friendly songs and they choose from that. Looking at the list of nominees, they were the only metal band actually nominated in this category. The rest of the nominees are what people who drive in to “easy listening soft hits” think metal sounds like. 2023 was a pretty weak year for metal anyway.

In my 30s, I’ve come back around to appreciating Metallica. We don’t have many years left of them being around. Enjoy them for the time that we still can. One of these days, soon, they will play Master of Puppets for the last time.

And at least Babymetal didn’t win.