'No Stupid Questions' (NSQ) Internet & Technology Edition

[Aidan]

I'm trying to figure out how to get the best quality audio when downloading videos using yt-dlp.

Am I correct in thinking that it's just a matter of typing -F and then choosing the audio file with the highest bit-rate? A lot of the times 128 or 133 kbps seems to be the highest there is, this can't be right, though, can it?

Hey, just what ya see pal.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Most normal humans cannot tell the difference between uncompressed audio and audio compressed at 128kbps with a modern codec.

That's because there's too much oxygen in their audio cables.

 

[Friendly Primarina]

Real or fake?

 

[Frail Snail]

Real or fake?

First time I've seen such a thing too, but it appears to be real. The Internet says it's most likely an AM tower which has the entire mast electrified. The mast sits on top of a non-conductive surface away from the ground, the concrete bit where touching it with the grass did nothing. Whatever you get close to the conducting parts will form an electrical arc that gets modulated the same way radio waves would, which is how you're able to hear the broadcast. It's also explains the guy wearing thick rubber gloves and why he can't seem to do it for long, as even a piece of grass gets really hot from all the electricity passing through it. At least that's my layman understanding of it. Video of a guy explaining it:

 

[draggs]

Halp halp

My mom's old office computer is now my parents' home computer, windows 7 professional. My dad hit the power button and hard shut it down somehow, and now...

When it turns on it says blah blah windows didn't shut down properly, do system repair or start windows normally. Pick start normally, the windows logo screen shows, then before the login screen shows the monitor goes black, monitor says it lost the signal. Screen comes back on but it's a bunch of artifacts, red rectangles or brown and green rectangles. Then after about 10 seconds the computer restarts itself

Loading windows in safe mode works fine. I've tried system restore with multiple restore points, no go. It's an HP with all kinds of system and hardware diagnostics on it, run those, says nothing is wrong with either. Ran sfc/scannow, says nothing is wrong. I can't do system repair because it says it needs an installation/recovery disk, again this computer is from 2010 they don't have the disk anymore of course. For an old computer it ran a little slow but fine until this. Checked graphics drivers, windows says they're updated and fine

Tried to research it a bit with the Google, nothing really useful found. Except maybe a corrupted user profile but I doubt it, there's two users, administrator and one used just to manage their Carbonite storage they're still paying for for some reason. Logging on with administrator in safe mode is no problem. Something in the memory from the hard shutdown? Something in windows got messed up from it obviously but I dunno what

Any ideas greatly appreciated, should I get an iso of an installation/recovery disk, put it on a flash drive or CD and try that? They only use the computer for bank stuff online and boomer music and old football and basketball games on youtube, I guess they could keep using it in safe mode with networking but that low resolution is annoying lol

 

[Kosher Dill]

I'd try getting a Linux live CD and running that as a test. See if it still gives the same problems with completely different software.

 

[Least Concern]

Any ideas greatly appreciated, should I get an iso of an installation/recovery disk, put it on a flash drive or CD and try that?

It couldn't hurt, I guess. If you can't find the ISO on HP's site, try searching archive.org with the model number and see if they have it.

The graphical glitches make me think it's a busted video card, but if you're able to boot it up and use it in different modes, then it must be broken in a very peculiar way if it's broken at all.

If all else fails, get your parents a new computer.

 

[Frail Snail]

Halp halp

My mom's old office computer is now my parents' home computer, windows 7 professional. My dad hit the power button and hard shut it down somehow, and now...

When it turns on it says blah blah windows didn't shut down properly, do system repair or start windows normally. Pick start normally, the windows logo screen shows, then before the login screen shows the monitor goes black, monitor says it lost the signal. Screen comes back on but it's a bunch of artifacts, red rectangles or brown and green rectangles. Then after about 10 seconds the computer restarts itself

Loading windows in safe mode works fine. I've tried system restore with multiple restore points, no go. It's an HP with all kinds of system and hardware diagnostics on it, run those, says nothing is wrong with either. Ran sfc/scannow, says nothing is wrong. I can't do system repair because it says it needs an installation/recovery disk, again this computer is from 2010 they don't have the disk anymore of course. For an old computer it ran a little slow but fine until this. Checked graphics drivers, windows says they're updated and fine

Tried to research it a bit with the Google, nothing really useful found. Except maybe a corrupted user profile but I doubt it, there's two users, administrator and one used just to manage their Carbonite storage they're still paying for for some reason. Logging on with administrator in safe mode is no problem. Something in the memory from the hard shutdown? Something in windows got messed up from it obviously but I dunno what

Any ideas greatly appreciated, should I get an iso of an installation/recovery disk, put it on a flash drive or CD and try that? They only use the computer for bank stuff online and boomer music and old football and basketball games on youtube, I guess they could keep using it in safe mode with networking but that low resolution is annoying lol

Another live OS could help you diagnose a GPU issue, if it has the right drivers. I'd also check physical connections inside the computer. Maybe your boomer dad is just embarrassed to tell you he accidentally punted it. If not, a Windows 7 recovery CD could fix it. There's probably a torrent of it somewhere.

 

[draggs]

Another live OS could help you diagnose a GPU issue, if it has the right drivers. I'd also check physical connections inside the computer. Maybe your boomer dad is just embarrassed to tell you he accidentally punted it. If not, a Windows 7 recovery CD could fix it. There's probably a torrent of it somewhere.

It couldn't hurt, I guess. If you can't find the ISO on HP's site, try searching archive.org with the model number and see if they have it.

The graphical glitches make me think it's a busted video card, but if you're able to boot it up and use it in different modes, then it must be broken in a very peculiar way if it's broken at all.

If all else fails, get your parents a new computer.

Good idea yeah I'm gonna check out how things look inside and try with a different monitor, the tower is old enough have to use an adapter for the monitor they currently use. And luckily the sticker with the product key/version number is still intact on the tower, so I'll try the recovery disk ISO too. It is just so weird that safe mode works fine but normal is fucked, i know a little bit about trying to fix shit that goes sideways but I'm no expert by any means. Thanks guys

 

[Dick Justice]

Why does mp3 top out at 320kbs CBR? AAC's lossy and it goes higher, right?

 

[Not a Step]

Why does mp3 top out at 320kbs CBR? AAC's lossy and it goes higher, right?

It's largely an arbitrary limitation. I think LAME can encode MP3s up to 640kbps, but player support is spotty because the standard says 320kbps is the maximum.

 

[Boris Blank's glass eye]

Why does mp3 top out at 320kbs CBR? AAC's lossy and it goes higher, right?

MP3 used to have a lossless variant consisting of a "core" lossy file that could be played by anything and a complementary lossless "module" that IIRC only some proprietary software could play, like WinAmp. At that point it's unnecessarily complicated when you have FLAC.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Good idea yeah I'm gonna check out how things look inside and try with a different monitor, the tower is old enough have to use an adapter for the monitor they currently use. And luckily the sticker with the product key/version number is still intact on the tower, so I'll try the recovery disk ISO too. It is just so weird that safe mode works fine but normal is fucked, i know a little bit about trying to fix shit that goes sideways but I'm no expert by any means. Thanks guys

For the ISO part this is a good program that I have used multiple times: https://www.heidoc.net/joomla/techn...icrosoft-windows-and-office-iso-download-tool
There's nothing shady about it, it's really just a frontend for MSDN that allows you to easily specify what ISO you want and download it without having to navigate through Microsoft's site or getting an account.

If all else fails and you have to reinstall Windows then Win10Pro and probably Win11Pro will take OEM/OA Win7Pro keys without complaining, while retail Win7Pro might not accept an HP OEM key.

 

[draggs]

For the ISO part this is a good program that I have used multiple times: https://www.heidoc.net/joomla/techn...icrosoft-windows-and-office-iso-download-tool
There's nothing shady about it, it's really just a frontend for MSDN that allows you to easily specify what ISO you want and download it without having to navigate through Microsoft's site or getting an account.

If all else fails and you have to reinstall Windows then Win10Pro and probably Win11Pro will take OEM/OA Win7Pro keys without complaining, while retail Win7Pro might not accept an HP OEM key.

I already found the correct ISO and downloaded it but it woulda been a lot easier with this lol, ty

EDIT: And ah well system repair with the recovery disk "couldn't fix the problem," same graphics glitches with a different (older) monitor, I'm either going to try reinstalling Windows, or tell my dad "Look, fat, you know, boomer, the thing, just use that [safe mode], Let's go Brandon"

 

[Dick Justice]

I already found the correct ISO and downloaded it but it woulda been a lot easier with this lol, ty

EDIT: And ah well system repair with the recovery disk "couldn't fix the problem," same graphics glitches with a different (older) monitor, I'm either going to try reinstalling Windows, or tell my dad "Look, fat, you know, boomer, the thing, just use that [safe mode], Let's go Brandon"

TBH just install an idiot-proof Duplo Linux and don't give them the root password.

 

[Frail Snail]

I already found the correct ISO and downloaded it but it woulda been a lot easier with this lol, ty

EDIT: And ah well system repair with the recovery disk "couldn't fix the problem," same graphics glitches with a different (older) monitor, I'm either going to try reinstalling Windows, or tell my dad "Look, fat, you know, boomer, the thing, just use that [safe mode], Let's go Brandon"

My personal stance on tech support for family is no half measures. Something you gave up on and forgot will inevitably bite you in the ass later.

 

[Aidan]

I already found the correct ISO and downloaded it but it woulda been a lot easier with this lol, ty

EDIT: And ah well system repair with the recovery disk "couldn't fix the problem," same graphics glitches with a different (older) monitor, I'm either going to try reinstalling Windows, or tell my dad "Look, fat, you know, boomer, the thing, just use that [safe mode], Let's go Brandon"

I'm with @Dick Justice on just getting them on some boomer-proof Linux distro and putting all the files on there, assuming that will work for what they were using it for anyway. Mint is very boomer proof with a basic rundown in my experience, though you may need to put buttons in certain places for them.
Alternatively you can grab xubuntu (or another compatible distro) and set up Chicago95.



ps Mint XFCE works for the most part, but you have to manually change some of the things and is not officially supported. Noteworthy because Mint XFCE is, by default, very close to the Windows experience by design.

 

[acme]

my retarded ass was trying to download track mods for assetto corsa, i clicked on one expecting like a mediafire or mega download page but there was an adfly url shortener.
>monumental amounts of autism kicks in
a 5-4-3-2-1 download button in the top corner appears so i click it and i think to myself that ill run it thru VirusTotal when it downloads
>mfw according to my browser VirusTotal isn't a website
so i try to delete the file witch is called 'Your File is ready to download' and is a 126,726 Kb disc image file, but apparently its now installed on my system or something so i cant delete it.

After a few useless virus scans from windows defender and a restart of my pc i was able to delete it.

But now im scared the virus moved somewhere else on my pc or something so the file is just sitting in my recycle bin very menacingly

ive looked at some sites and they are saying to get malwarebytes and to use the control pattern.
any suggestions? should i just take it to the geek squad tomorrow?

 

[Never Scored]

my retarded ass was trying to download track mods for assetto corsa, i clicked on one expecting like a mediafire or mega download page but there was an adfly url shortener.
>monumental amounts of autism kicks in
a 5-4-3-2-1 download button in the top corner appears so i click it and i think to myself that ill run it thru VirusTotal when it downloads
>mfw according to my browser VirusTotal isn't a website
so i try to delete the file witch is called 'Your File is ready to download' and is a 126,726 Kb disc image file, but apparently its now installed on my system or something so i cant delete it.

After a few useless virus scans from windows defender and a restart of my pc i was able to delete it.

But now im scared the virus moved somewhere else on my pc or something so the file is just sitting in my recycle bin very menacingly
View attachment 2912205
ive looked at some sites and they are saying to get malwarebytes and to use the control pattern.
any suggestions? should i just take it to the geek squad tomorrow?

Wait, so you downloaded an ISO and you couldn't delete it? What happened when you tried to delete it? An ISO or anything else can't usually just download, execute itself and worm its way through your system without asking for elevated privileges first, unless it's exploiting some kind of back door which you're generally, (not 100% of the time, but generally), safe from as long as Windows and your browser are updated. What was the exact error that came up when you tried to delete it? Did the error come from your browser or from Windows?

Malwarebytes picks up some stuff that Windows Defender doesn't, so it never hurts to give it a try. They are a perfectly reputable company.

Don't take it to Geek Squad. They're retarded and their service is for old ladies.

If you're really worried just flatten it and reinstall Windows.

 

[Delta Integrale]

Is there a place to reliably get macOS ISOs to install on a VM or a "hackintosh"?