It was advertised as “2 TB (64 GB Extended)” at a local clearance sale (not AliExpress), which was basically correct though I would prefer “64 GB but misprogrammed so everything can get corrupted at any time”. When buying it, I didn’t yet know if I could reprogram the chip but the low price was justified for the pretty aluminum case with a USB-C port and place for a custom PCB. I decided to buy it also to prevent another, less technical person from using it and losing their data. The store was getting rid of inventory for very cheap and would close soon so no more fake drives would be ordered.

Well, depends on how much you’re OK with some problems. I knowingly bought a “2 TB (64 GB Extended)” flash drive, tested its sectors and reprogrammed it to 32-in-64-GB for wear leveling and bad sector avoidance because it was still a cheap 32GB USB drive. I made sure to label it for “non-critical use” such as movies.

As for camping lanterns, ones charged from mains might have a nasty habit of shocking their users. (The YouTube channel contains a huge number of cheap Chinese charger teardowns and most don’t meet safety criteria. Usually, there is just 1 or 2 layers of thin tape between mains and the output you can touch.)

Sometimes, counterfeits or unknown brands are so similar to the real deal that it barely matters. I’d say that basic electronics (alarm clocks, kitchen scales, calculators, SD security cams) or even RAM is fine. With appropriate expectations, parts like video or USB cables, hubs etc., small home improvement items (hooks, screws) are fine too. Avoid categories where a lot of items have fake specs (storage devices, LED bulbs, anything that claims a runtime on a Li-Ion battery). Power electronics (especially if using mains or non-tiny Li-Ion batteries) can be downright dangerous. For novelty items and electronics modules, it’s usually easy to find text or video reviews on other websites because they’re easy to uniquely describe. Remember to consider ways in which the product can be utter crap despite high reviews citing good first impressions; it also helps to have practical knowledge of testing the properties of the items and fixing common issues.

Well, then you’re going to hear

Limited offer! Sign up until September 30 for Ford Fun Plus and get a year of ad-free rides at just $10 per month!

most of the time, much like Spotify.
(Last time I was in a Spotify-“enhanced” waiting room was 6 years ago so no idea if that still holds.)

The Ion launcher for TI-83 calculators has existed since 1999. Why did the Android port take so long? /s

A surprisingly serious typeface from Adobe Fonts.

IMO, the most egregious one is Essay Text.

Note that if supported by the font you use, the three symbols will usually be drawn the same way as an asterisk (*) in that font. This means a lot of variation.

Your browser’s rendering: */⁂

Several typefaces’ rendering of Unicode U+2042 ASTERISM:

I think the diversity is alright! It’s like the Fediverse: instances follow a standard to work with each other but can be heavily customized without breaking integration.

It’s in Unicode, duh… Otherwise, you’d need an image to represent it.

I have Bluetooth earbuds that crack open when they hit a hard surface (have surviveed so far) and the battery is a little Li-Ion pouch on soldered wires. They probably don’t last as long as sealed ones of the same size but it’s very easy to find and install a replacement battery. Just check disassembly guides before buying.

In the Czech Republic, BILLA uses them and they respond to the RFID reader on my phone. It’s a different kind though, most have black-white-red displays.

Can’t wait for somebody to hack them, the displays are certainly neat. Especially if they manage to add it to an existing Home Automation network without extra hardware.

AFAIK, they use RFID now so they must be changed manually but maybe someday, they will devise a price-gouging scheme involving face detection and tracking people with security cameras.

“Here comes this lady that always buys four cans of dog food despite the last price increase! Let’s notch it up it by another 20%!”

unironically, your votes have great influence on the fate of posts

If they can’t respect a recipient’s consent, they deserve it being a little harder to deliver to people using that mail server.

I know but human skulls have foreheads.

The official logo is realistic and it still works as a Jolly Roger. Even better, arguably.

How did they fail at drawing a casette… in the age of casettes?

I thought the average !programminghumor@lemmy.world user is already FOSSpilled. Of course you don’t have to use the FOSS tools but they are convenient enough to be able to make this in 10 minutes.

Anyway, the relevant commands are

yt-dlp -f "bv*[height<=480]+ba" --no-mtime --convert-subs srt --write-sub https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SOryJvTAGs
# aegisub needs srt; we don't need above 480p

aegisub "The B-52's - Love Shack (Official Music Video) [9SOryJvTAGs].en.srt"
# now go rewrite appropriate lines in gui, apply style and save as "LoveShack.ass"

ffmpeg -i "The B-52's - Love Shack (Official Music Video) [9SOryJvTAGs].mp4" -filter_complex "[0:v]subtitles=LoveShack.ass[s];[s]crop=w=640[f]" -map [f] -map 0:a -ss 49 -t 21 -acodec aac -vcodec libx265 -crf 20 crowdstrike.mp4
# crf 20 for generously high quality because file size is small anyway

# or for Lemmy upload (no sound, WebM to prevent encoding...
# ...and subsequent ffmpeg timeout errors; my instance limits uploads to 10 MiB)
ffmpeg -i "The B-52's - Love Shack (Official Music Video) [9SOryJvTAGs].mp4" -filter_complex "[0:v]subtitles=LoveShack.ass[s];[s]crop=w=ih/3*4[f]" -map [f] -ss 49.5 -t 21 -vcodec vp9 crowdstrike.webm
# note that Lemmy instances limit videos to 900 frames (usually 30 s) by default

I didn’t bother recreating your subtitle and cut timing but I did crop the video to 4:3. The frame rate is doubled and so is the apparent resolution, while the file size is 6x smaller; the Lemmy version is also about 6x smaller but I went for low-bitrate 720p:

It’s really not any harder than what you are currently doing. You’d just use a more reasonable video codec. But you do you, it’s not that bad.

GIF from YouTube

YouTube doesn’t provide GIFs. It provides videos. Conversion to GIF is an unnecessary step. Use yt-dlp, Aegisub and ffmpeg for a FOSS way of downloading a video, trimming it and burning subtitles into it.

GIF is really terrible as a video format. You can upload actual video with sound on Lemmy (most instances use a 20MB, 900-frame limit, also server-side ffmpeg often times out) or Pixelfed (15MB, unknown frame limit).

Yes, I know you didn’t bother to use an AI or commission an artist to sing the new lyrics but you could mux in an instrumental version (or heck, even just leave the original) for me and others who may remember the melody from the radio but don’t associate it with the music video.