Kithop @kithop@social.kithop.ca

We have a new mayor, by a *long* shot. She seems fine?

To be fair, pretty much all our candidates, mayor, council, or school trustees all seemed fine. The benefit of a small-but-growing town with very obvious issues re: housing, homelessness, and employment that everyone seems to be basically on the same page on.

The one person I was rooting for council didn't make the cut, sadly, but it was close.

Still, interesting to see if and how things change.

Hm. I swear I did the rel="me" linkback correctly from kithop.ca but it doesn't seem to be validating in my profile metadata.

Is it because I'm putting in the full https:// and www ? But it does collapse the display down to a link outbound.

I'll check logs.. somewhere later. :p

Did my civic duty and voted in the local municipal elections~

Idea for a lewd outdoor thermometer:

A dangling scrotum - the lower it hangs, the hotter it is outside. Extreme cold causes it to retreat and shrivel up into the top of the thermometer.

Nailed to the wall on your patio/porch.

@Zeny Win95's clouds.bmp for me, though I don't think it *actually* defaulted to it, just a plain teal.

One week going gluten-free
Doctor looked in my eyes and said, "I'm sorry"
Three days livin' in the bathroom
Using all my toilet paper taking mad poos

@msk If you're going fast-paced, I'd recommend going no higher than 720p @ 60fps. Even at 6000kb/s, 1080p @ 60fps can look like a smeary mess.

6Mbit/s, 1080p30 for strategy/simulation/etc. games or 720p60 for action games is currently my go-to.

It's so surreal to re-read the confirmation e-mail being like 'yup, here's your order for some Pink Kush, a high-CBD premilled blend, etc., and here's the GST/PST we charged, your credit card confirmation (!)'.

If you told me 10 years ago that I could one day order weed from a government store *online* with my *credit card* as easy as ordering... well, anything online, I'd have called you... probably something ableist because I wouldn't know better.

@msk That should make a *huge* difference. Slight degradation in quality, but there's a mostly-dedicated encoding circuit in your GPU using that, rather than making your main CPU do all the work in software.

I wouldn't use it for say, transcoding a movie offline or something, but it's designed for streaming.

@msk Bitrate shouldn't be the big factor in encoding speed/load on your PC, but if you're worried, you may want to use a hardware encoder offload if you have it.

Instead of Software (x264), do you have options for Intel QuickSync (if an Intel CPU), AMD VCE (if AMD GPU) or NVENC (if nVidia GPU)? If so, and you're not already - try switching to those first, that helps *immensely*.

If you can only do software/x264, try switching the preset from e.g. 'veryfast' to 'superfast' or 'ultrafast'

@msk Depends on the other end, basically - Twitch usually only offers transcoding as 'best effort' for people who aren't partnered, while YouTube I think has it for everyone.

If you're streaming at a much higher bitrate than your viewer's download speed, they'll get lag/stuttering/etc. without the streaming service supporting transcoding your stream down to a lower bitrate (and resolution) for them.

They're keeping me on dual antibiotics until my next CT scan almost exactly a *month* from now.

Coupled with the slow wean off of prednisone I feel absolutely awful. I've been on... five different antibiotics (one a daily IV) over the past... 2 or 3 months, now?

I'm genuinely losing my apetite from feeling so gross all the time. This Zofran stuff helps a little, but it knocks me out.

I don't want to be this miserable for another month.

@corvidae You can argue Mastodon and the Fediverse itself is already rapidly on the way to such a win.

I think we're both looking at the same facts from two different perspectives, to be honest. I'm actually super positive about what we've already accomplished, and where we're going.

What we're missing is mostly to do with stable project management (no more BDFLs) and *people* problems (see: Linus Torvalds, the rage against perfectly reasonable CoCs, etc.).

@corvidae Microsoft threw *tons* of money into trying to make Windows Phone a thing, and failed spectacularly, so it's not just about capitalist interest. Arguably they should have won out in that case.

It's more complex than that, of course, but it wasn't just the money.

Conversely, 'But we don't have anything better' can be valid! But be sure you understand what 'better' means in *your* context vs. someone else's.

IMO, we *do* have better, because my priorities may be different than yours, and that's okay.

Don't defend Discord and its ilk to me.

Just don't. I don't care if you think the sun shines out of their ass, it's trash and needs to die. :)

@corvidae Most of the internet is powered by Linux and BSD.

Almost all of the 'smart' devices, including smartphones we tend to have in our pockets, run Linux (Android) or BSD (iOS).

'Year of the Linux Desktop' isn't even relevant these days; Linux already won. Smartphone usage is surpassing traditional desktops anyway.

@mona Yes - that they released and claimed to support a client that they don't actually test properly, and don't release the code for so we could maintain and troubleshoot it ourselves, instead waiting for their benevolence. :)

It's 100% Discord.

@mona I've had Discord on Linux just flat out refuse to recognize my microphone before, as a result of a forced update that they fixed themselves a couple days later.

I want tools I can rely on and work more than shiny UX and 'features' (like the new game store) that no one asked for.

Everyone's priorities are different, though, which is fine - I get why things are the way they are, on both counts.

@corvidae It's definitely more often people being pushed *away* from 'bad' things than being drawn towards better ones, especially lately.

It's going to be a combination of early adopters finding + setting up infrastructure on the potential successor ahead of time, and being ready to embrace the influx of people looking for alternatives when their current system finally drops the ball or does something so egregious that they're pushed away.