youtubedown bookmarklet
If you've been using youtubedown as a bookmarklet, try the new version. I rewrote the CGI wrapper to be much more reliable, not time out, and display download and muxing / transcoding progress.
5 Comments
Tags: firstperson, mpegs
OpenVPN
Dear Lazyweb,
It is possible to run OpenVPN Connect on macOS for my outbound connections, and also run a web server on my static IP for inbound connections? Launching OpenVPN seems to prevent any incoming connections.
I'd like to be using Sonic's VPN on my home desktop machine, but I also run a web server on it that I occasionally need to access from the outside world.
Tags: computers, firstperson, lazyweb, mac, security
How the Internet Archive is Digitizing LPs to Preserve Generations of Audio
Earlier this year, the Internet Archive began working with the Boston Public Library (BPL) to digitize more than 100,000 audio recordings from their sound collection.The recordings exist in a variety of historical formats, including wax cylinders, 78 rpms, and LPs. They span musical genres including classical, pop, rock, and jazz, and contain obscure recordings like this album of music for baton twirlers, and this record of radio's all-time greatest bloopers. [...]
Once cataloged, the LP's are then digitized. The Internet Archive partners with Innodata Knowledge Services, an organization focused on machine learning and digital data transformation, to complete the digitization process at their facilities in Cebu, Philippines. An Innodata worker digitizes 12 LPs at a time, setting turntables to play and record by hand, then turning each record over to the next side. Since each LP is digitized in real time, it takes a full 20 minutes to record an average LP side. By operating 12 turntables simultaneously, the team expects to be able to digitize ten LPs per hour.
This is awesome. However, as someone who has put many hours into manually digitizing records using what I think is the very same turntable pictured (they look like Panasonic 1200s to me) this idea that you can just fire-and-forget seems... fantastically optimistic. Perhaps the records in the BPL collection are all of a never-been-played, white-glove level of archival quality, but if these records have ever been owned by a human... no. No, that's just not going to work. It's going to be a wobbly mess of oscillating playback speeds and skips.
Decades ago I read about someone's project to rip vinyl by scanning the disc on a flatbed scanner and then processing the image. Did that ever go anywhere? That would be kind of analogous to the way IA is archiving old floppy disks with flux scans that record a ludicrously high resolution image of the analog waveform rather than the bits comprising the file system.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
Tags: mad science, music
California Combatting Wildfire Risk By Shutting Off Oxygen To Thousands Of Residents
SAN FRANCISCO -- With blazes engulfing Sonoma County and smoke-filled skies blanketing much of the Bay Area, officials in California announced Friday they would attempt to mitigate any further spread of wildfires with a mandatory shutoff of oxygen to thousands of the state's residents."In order to eliminate factors that could contribute to the fires' growth, we will cut the flow of oxygen in high-risk areas throughout the northern part of the state," California Public Utilities Commission president Marybel Batjer told reporters, explaining that the rolling "air-outs" would last 12 hours on average and residents would need to plan accordingly. "If each Californian can learn to make do without oxygen for just a day or two, we could avoid much of the devastation caused by wildfires. We understand this is a hardship, but it is simply too dangerous to allow open oxygen in fire-prone areas. Those requiring emergency supplies of air will be allowed to offset the shortage by cultivating hundreds of plants inside their home."
Batjer later confirmed that oxygen would continue flowing to all businesses deemed vital, including the headquarters of every major tech giant in or around Silicon Valley.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
Tags: big brother, conspiracies, doomed, grim meathook future, sf
Angus man who tried to fly drone into Perth Prison claimed Romanian circus stole his chihuahua
The 33-year-old was heard rustling in the undergrowth after prison officers chased the 70mph drone away from the outer wall of Perth Prison.Moreton was spotted putting the drone into the boot of his Audi but he drove up a dead end and the officers blocked his escape.
He clambered over a six-foot fence to try to escape and used his remote locking key to deadlock the car with the active drone in the boot.
Moreton claimed he was near the prison in the dead of night because he believed Romanian circus performers had stolen one of his pet chihuahuas.
He said: "We were told the circus left the dogs outside at night. As daft as it might sound, I brought the dog's father, Archie, to see if he could find it."
Moreton then claimed he was found in the bushes because he had downed a litre of vodka and had collapsed in the middle of the dog-hunt.
He said he had been using the drone to search the riverbank for the dog.
Tags: blimps, conspiracies, mad science
