VGA was originally a proprietary technology developed by IBM, though it was later built upon by VESA and is now publicly documented, so while it wasn’t developed by VESA as an open standard from the get-go, it is now considered an open standard that doesn’t require any licensing fees to implement. DVI was developed by the “Digital Display Working Group” and also does not require any licensing fees, though there are licensing terms you may have to abide by and there may be some costs associated with testing and validation to ensure you meet those terms and the spec.

H.265 is not a royalty free standard like AV1, VP9, Theora, etc. It’s covered by proprietary patents held by groups like MPEG LA so in order for manufacturers to build hardware level support for it into their devices they have to pay whatever the then current royalty fees are to those patent holders.

That’s reasonable, people deserve to get paid for their labor. In this situation however, the difference between them is that DisplayPort is a royalty free VESA standard. So while manufacturers have to pay for the materials and such to include it in their devices, they don’t have to pay any additional fees to license the standard. HDMI on the other-hand is a “brand” of proprietary connector/interface (kind of like how “Velcro” isn’t the actual name of a product, it’s a “brand” of hook and pile tape), so not only do manufacturers have to pay for the materials and labor related to physically acquiring and installing the connectors, but they have to pay both per-device and annual licensing fees for rights to use the HDMI product.

“Direct playing” just means the source file is entirely compatible with the client device and doesn’t require any transcoding/re-encoding by the server, it doesn’t really tell you whether the client is using software or hardware decoding to play it. I’m guessing it’s probable that a Jellyfin server could still report “direct playing” even if the client is using software decoding to play it. However, if the client device is something like a smart TV or something with a more locked down OS, and the maintainer/manufacturer removes support for a codec from that device, you may show more transcoding action on your server for things that previously just direct played because smart devices like that may not have support for software decoding, or may not have the horsepower to try even if they still have the codecs installed.

I just set it to downmix to mono in Handbrake and it’s been alright. I’ll definitely do some reading/comparing to see what this setting is all about though.

H.265 (HEVC) is not a free (as in freedom) codec, so yes. You as an individual consumer can use things like Handbrake to encode H.265 video for your personal use, probably using the free x265 software encoder, but in order for a device like your phone, camera, TV, laptop, etc. to have hardware accelerated encoding or decoding, the manufacturer has to pay a licensing fee.

This is true of lots of proprietary technologies. HDMI is another one. In order for a device to ship with an HDMI port (as opposed to Displayport), the manufacturer has to pay a per-device licensing fee.

Kinda makes me even more glad I’ve been migrating all my stuff over to AV1/OPUS.

The desire of intelligent, hardworking people to just live their lives and be left alone means we’re eternally condemned to be ruled by those who are absolutely unfit for the job. Anybody smart enough to be a good leader wouldn’t have the job.

They’re completely out of touch with how normal people use their computers. The only people who want AI in their OS are the AI tech bros.

The online multiplayer for the original version of Modern Warfare and other older games still works fine on Linux and even has community modded maps and modes.

They say it can run games at 4k60 “with FSR”, so it seems like it’s targeting 1080p native rendering, which is totally fine for me. I’ll be connecting it to the living room TV and sitting 6-8 feet away so I’ll probably keep it set to 1080p anyway just to keep the framerate high.

There are alternatives to Microsoft Office like LibreOffice and OnlyOffice. Plus you can still use Office 365 in a browser if it “has” to be Microsoft Office.

Definitely will be grabbing the Steam Machine when it releases.

It looks like you used the eraser in paint to just delete part of his head.

We moved on from the pantheons of Greece, Egypt, Rome, the Norse and Aztecs, etc. Hopefully one day our descendants will be smart enough to realize that Abrahamic mythology is no different than any other, it was just more successful.

Walking to my grocery store and back would be an all day affair and I’d have to have help hauling everything because I’m married with two kids, so our two week grocery bill runs between $200 and $300 depending on what all we need. My closest Walmart is 25 miles away. My closest local grocery store is about 7. And there is no public transportation here.

I dropped it in favor of Jellyfin some time back, but this was a good excuse to go ahead and delete my family’s accounts.

I used the term shadow ban in the OP because honestly it feels like it happens a LOT to me, and for things that honestly, I don’t think are controversial, don’t contain excessive (or any) swearing, etc. I commented on a video of somebody passing out and said “don’t lock your knees” and the comment got removed for being “too similar” to other comments, per an auto response I got. I told a lady being attacked by a dog to protect herself and the comment got removed for “threatening harm to others” until I requested review and told the mods to actually read the damn comment before removing it. It just gets tiring trying to use Reddit at all when there’s a 50/50 chance that anything I do will get removed or hidden from view, sometimes without my knowledge.

You’re right, it appears to be back now. It’s just annoying to have probably half my attempts to contribute auto moderated by a bot because I included some trigger word, or I forgot to add the proper “flair” etc.

I’m not sure, but with that much oxygen in the air I’m sure anything could “become” flammable, especially when atomized or turned into a powder. That’s why grain silos on farms are fire hazards; the dust.