this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
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.7z seems to be good and I do recommend it to people, saying that it's better than regular zip. Have recently started using opus n webm files more.

I've also heard about jxl recently. Would be very nice to see it become popular, as it could reduce the size of my memes n screenshots folders. Faster webpage loading too.

Are there any other file formats that'll be useful to people, but isn't getting enough attention?

In the case of apps, Trebleshot seems to be good for android file sharing. I like it's web sharing option having an upload form. Helps me where I don't have to ask others to install an app to send me a file locally. Not sure about its encryption n security aspects, but I only have used it for local file sharing.

And what about other stuff similar to that, other than file formats or apps?

Recently have started exercising my neck. Not neck bridges and loaded things tho. Only safe n simple movements. Seems to be good, especially after using a monitor for some time. I think it's not much talked about, maybe because of the fear that people will overdo it?

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

I just think Microsoft Word is actively making the entire world less efficient. It's not made to produce documents that are easy to read. Don't have an obvious contender though. LibreOffice Writer just tries to be the same shitty product but free, LaTeX is way too technical and has horrible error handling. Markdown usability and quality breaks down if you make any serious use of tables and figures.

Since I'm not a US citizen I also think it's a threat to our country that our entire administration and every company is dependent on storing documents in an effectively proprietary format controlled by a US company, on cloud servers controlled by a US company. If compelled by the US government, Microsoft could put all of EU to a halt with the flick of a switch. National security calls for formats as central as this to be open standards supported by multiple competing products.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Markdown accomplishes 90% of non technical writing needs imo.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I keep taking about wanting to use markdown files for contacts and policies at work, stored in reports repos for change tracking. The problem is always "the legal team isn't going to use Git". What I'd love to see is a front end for Git that allows direct markdown editing and emulates the Track Changes feature in Word.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Couldn't agree more. Tried OnlyOffice? Lovely suite . Markdown is amazing, I am writing a web book & PDF version with the same source. Did LaTeX, but it was just so cumbersome.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Sorry, I can see from the first screenshot on their web site that OnlyOffice is not conducive to legibility. A user interface that promotes direct control of the typeface (instead of styling rules based on semantic tags) is going to produce inconsistent documents.

User interfaces should be designed to make it easy to do things right, and difficult to do things wrong. This UI encourages people to produce crap.

Their other screenshots further show that they do not care about things like appropriate margin size or inter-word spacing, leaving me with little trust in the product.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Agreed. This UI is very much inherited from ancient word processing applications. The shift that Microsoft made in the Vista era to the tabbed menu buttons only added extra mouse clicks to get to the same set of functions. Word and LibreOffice both allow you to do the kind of thing you're talking about, but those features are nestled way down into menus and trays that are ugly and hard to use and promote the use of the wrong tool since the wrong tool is made more accessible.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

Onlyoffice works with microsoft ooxml standards by default, in other words, promoting them and encouraging its use. OOXML is everything but efficient. OpenDocument, instead, which is used by LibreOffice by default, is the open and efficient standard.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Markdown (.md) could and should be used for simple, somewhat structured text files. It's easy enough to learn, and WYSIWYG editors are abundant as well.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I made a little markdown users community if anyone wants to talk markdown. Not much there at the moment!

[email protected]

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

Sorry Mr robot.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (5 children)

.tar.zst

People should stop using .tar.gz or .zip

They both are not horribly bad, but .tar.zst is just the best option we have, as zstandard is pareto optimal

https://insanity.industries/post/pareto-optimal-compression/

Linux

I use arch btw

GrapheneOS

GrapheneOS is the best android custom ROM by far. It is more secure, it gets updated very often and security patches land on my phone faster than I hear about them. It is way more performant than the default ROM that ships with Pixel Phones, my battery lasts for days if I don't use the phone.

At first I was very sceptical, as I want to be sure I can rely on my phone. But it is super stable, way better than the Samsung ROM I had before.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (1 children)

GrapheneOS is still just for pixel phones right?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yup. Apparently it has done security features they are not willing to go without by supporting other phones

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Why doesn't anyone specify that Graphene OS can only be installed on Pixel?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

zst

Been hearing about this. Peazip seems to support it.
Is zstd better than lzma in compressed size or is the optimality weighing in both compression time and compressed size?
Will try it out. Thank you

Arch Linux

Opensuse Leap, because I have a nvidia laptop. Thinking about switching to Pop OS, as ubuntu gets more packages and simple online tutorials on them.

Graphene OS

I'm on a random Chinese android. It's cheap and decent, but I don't know if it would handle flashing a new rom. Graphene aims at support for Pixel, right?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

At its highest compression setting (zstd -T0 -19 --long), it's about the same as lzma in compression ratio (varies a bit from file to file though), but slightly faster to compress, and much much faster to decompress. Decompression speed is not significantly affected by the compression setting (though compression speed is) and is usually at least a few hundred MiB/s to 1G+

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (6 children)

I have Arch with an Nvidia card. Granted not a laptop but, it works. Even with Wayland (Hyprland).

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Open source file formats in general. I've personally known friends who have lost access to their old works because it was using some proprietary file format that only one abandoned proprietary software they don't have access to anymore can read.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago (3 children)

AV1 for video. Just running my video files through it gets the same quality at 1/10th the size. Thought I was having a stroke.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Cool. How much time does it take for encoding?
Which container do you generally prefer? mp4 or webm? Is there any remarkable benefit in choosing one over the other?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

It depends if you have modern enough hardware to contain an AV1 hardware encoder (pretty much just current enthusiast stuff).

AV1 typically ends up in an MKV or WebM container (btw WebM is just a kind of MKV with less features intended for web use).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

1/10??? I need to look into this ASAP!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Ratios that extreme would probably only be seen in cases where the source video was really poorly compressed anyway, which is what the commenter probably experienced. I've had that happen before too. Expect more like half the size compared to H264, which is still pretty good

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Some examples of poor compression: cameras, dashcams, security cameras, basically anything that just dumps an image into a stream.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago (2 children)

This is a bit more low tech, but you mention technique, and I think people should hand write things more. At least, for first drafts.

You neurologically process things in a different way when you use your hand in that manner, and the act of transcribing your own work into a computer or device is an incredible editing measure in its own right. It forces commitment and flow, which is so precious in our time of short attention and focus.

Also, its good to be fluent in both skills, because you never know what could happen to your body. Realizing you haven't extensively used a pen or pencil much in years is a pretty fucky kinda feeling from a motor dexterity perspective.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Funny story, I wanted to switch from digital note taking to hand writing but my hand writing was shit. So I worked on improving my letter forms and even started practicing cursive so if someone ever needed to read my work, they could.

Well, hyper focused a bit too hard and now I do calligraphy. Handwriting hasn't improved much

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Kind of a moot point these days, but I always wished OGG pushed MP3s out of the way. It generally has better audio quality, lower file size, and is an open source format. MP3s had their patent die (I think) and file storage has become less of an issue, but damnit OGG was perfect for the 00s. My plex server is still full of OGGs (I can't hear the difference with uncompressed, but my hearing is bad).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

Isn't opus getting popular nowadays, because it's used by youtube?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Oh that brings back memories. I used to burn all my HDD backups onto CDs using PAR2 to prevent degredation.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

I’m still generating par files to accompany my static backups. It’s not a bad bit of extra insurance.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Good luck with JXL. It won't take off on the web because Google killed it as I recall. But it might be nice for your local collection. πŸ‘

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Convert from folders to labels/tags.

The folder system was based off of physical folders and cabinets, which has limitations that don’t exist in the digital space. Labels/tagging offers so much more usable metadata.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Directories are nice because they easily and clearly filter information in a human way and they naturally build a tree that can be parsed quickly by a person.

I like the desktop metaphor, because it's how I think.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (7 children)

Like tags n artist labels for mp3 files?

How is it done for other things?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Gmail uses labels instead of folders.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

.txt is an amazing format that can be opened by an enormous number of file readers and editors. It’s cross-platform and cross-decades.

Next time you’re distributing something in .docx, consider including a txt file so that people can read it next month too!

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I think if someone made a highly efficient cryptocurrency that was pegged to a specific value and the owners of said crypto kept their hands out of the cookie jar, then it'd potentially be very useful.

I used to be very, very anti-crypto, but with banks and companies like MasterCard and Visa banning websites from being able to host NSFW content, I've started to shift towards "maybe crypto is good for some things". It sucks, I don't like crypto, I think it's generally extremely inefficient. However, if someone could come up with a cryptocurrency that was relatively secure, power efficient, had a stable value and had a morally stable team behind it, then I'd be tempted to support it.

Edit: yeah, I know it's not a popular take, but the alternative is letting banks, credit card companies and payment processors dictate and impose their will on the internet. I'd prefer not to use crypto, but like, what else can you do? Do you really think the US government gives a fuck? Even if they did, do you really believe the Supreme Court is gonna let the US government tell companies that they aren't allowed to restrict what people legally spend their money on?

Sex work is still work, whether it's on OnlyFans, Gumroad or Patreon, and if someone wants to pay for it then the sex workers and nsfw artists deserve to be paid.

Edit 2: also, bans on NSFW content often disproportionately affect members of the LGBT community because LGBT stuff tends to get classified as "adult content" even if it's completely safe-for-work. Considering things like KOSA and the current push against people who are LGBT in the US (like myself) it's not hard to imagine a near future in which it's hard to make money as freelancer and a member of the LGBT community.

Edit 3: honestly, I feel dirty talking about crypto this way. If anyone has a better idea that doesn't involve relying on geriatric, out-of-touch politicians or blatantly corrupt Supreme Court justices, feel free to chime in.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The problem that payment processors have with NSFW content is the chargeback rate. Purchases in that category have a disproportionately high rate of people going to their card provider to get charges reversed.

The only reason crypto solves this is because charge reversals are basically impossible.

[–] nitefox 4 points 8 months ago

Why don’t they just disallow chargebacks for NSFW content then?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

The .opus audio format. People need to stop ripping everything to MP3, it's inefficient and a flawed compression format. Opus is better than it and AAC.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Plain text. It's the most readable of files. It's the only thing I use for true record keeping.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

compact.exe, it's a built-in tool in windows for compressing executables. there's an open source GUI too, very useful for compressing games and the compression is "transparent" so you can still play the games after compressing. there's more info on the page I linked

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)
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