Software Endorsements

  • 🐕 I am attempting to get the site runnning as fast as possible. If you are experiencing slow page load times, please report it.

Did you like the App?

  • yes

  • no

  • Stop waisting our time


Results are only viewable after voting.
Okay so that's not really a software endorsement but I just found out that on Windows, when you press the windows key + ' ` ' you get a KDE-style terminal on the top of the screen:

1741549077213.png
 
Okay so that's not really a software endorsement but I just found out that on Windows, when you press the windows key + ' ` ' you get a KDE-style terminal on the top of the screen:

View attachment 7073488
That is assuming you have Windows Terminal installed and have it running in the background. IIRC it's installed by default on Windows 11 but not on Windows 10. The Quake style terminal is definitely a great thing to have.
 
and have it running in the background.
Yes that's an observation I failed to make at the time of making the post. Apparently you have to have it running in the background or have another terminal window open.
The Quake style terminal is definitely a great thing to have.
Just looked it up. Seems great. Thanks!
 
Gonna quadruple endorse: SillyTavern, Oobabooga, ComfyUI, and CivitAI.

SillyTavern lets you connect to OpenRouter and basically any local or cloud AI configuration and run the best philosophy or waifu bots you could ever want. I enjoy spending hours just discussing high level philosophy and science without all the ridiculous censorship or assholery that comes with doing it with people. Right now OpenRouter has a free DeepSeek R1 API, that's pretty responsive, that you can use to chat about basically anything you want with very little censorship.

Oobabooga lets you run basically any AI text generation model you want (within reason) locally. I have a GTX 4090 and about the best I can run is Qwen QwQ 4-bit model. You have to play with it to get the best results but you never have to worry about some internet nanny standing over your shoulder and censoring you. AI models don't have anything inherently dangerous to them in the first place, but internet nannies still love to ban you for having a bad day or venting about how much you don't like things. Oobabooga lets you chat with your bots in peace and security and they can be a great boon to the autistic, misanthropic mind.

ComfyUI is the king of local image generation with AI. It's fast, super configurable, and has very little bloat. All you have to do is drop in an AI generated image (with metadata) and it'll build the workflow out that was used to create that image. I recommend Flux or PonyXL for base models (see CivitAI below). That might include downloading some models, but you can create tons of cool shit from the Buddha stomping evil people to whatever disgusting porn floats your boat. Fair warning: You probably need a 3080 Ti or better to get good results.

CivitAI is super badass and awesome as a website. They host basically any image generation model you could ever want and it's very cheap to run on their own servers. You can make whatever degenerate fantasies you want or uplifting awesome artwork of the coolest things you can write out. I really respect them as a website and I'm happy they've achieved so much success.
 
Last edited:
You probably need a 3080 Ti or better to get good results.
Depends on what you mean by 'good'. A 3070 does fine with 64GB system RAM running Flux, and by 'fine' I mean about 1.5 minutes per image. Most of my prompts are wildcards/random, so I'll just batch a bunch up and come back later. If you're looking for exact prompts then the slowness might bug you.
 
  • Like
Reactions: reformed alert
After asking a few pages ago I discovered Pocket Casts as a podcast player. I wanted to move away from spotify because their desktop "app" is constantly redesigned and made more and more terrible somehow. Anyways, Pocket Casts just announced that their web player will now be free (used to cost the $40/year subscription). Pretty sick ethos in their concluding paragraph on the blog post too imo. Check them out if you're a podcast type.


We’re not just making our Web Player open, we’re making a statement. Podcasting is one of the last open corners of the internet, and we’re here to keep it that way.

With this move, sharing podcasts is easier than ever. No paywalls, no closed platforms, just open links that work anywhere. Whether you’re sending a must-listen episode to a friend or embedding a show on your website, Pocket Casts remains committed to giving all podcasters, big or small, the tools to reach their audiences freely and without barriers.

If you believe in a future where podcasting remains open, and accessible to all, join us.
 
I'm looking for a cloud solution for backups because I want to maintain a 3-2-1 policy and have no off-site for the 1. Does anyone have any recommendations? The only ones I know of are Google One and OneDrive because I have more than 15 GB of photos I want saved.
 
I'm looking for a cloud solution for backups because I want to maintain a 3-2-1 policy and have no off-site for the 1. Does anyone have any recommendations? The only ones I know of are Google One and OneDrive because I have more than 15 GB of photos I want saved.
mega.nz is pretty good. You get 20 GB on the free tier, automatic encryption, and the company is reasonably based.
 
I'm looking for a cloud solution for backups because I want to maintain a 3-2-1 policy and have no off-site for the 1. Does anyone have any recommendations? The only ones I know of are Google One and OneDrive because I have more than 15 GB of photos I want saved.
I have used Ente to back up a few things, but I still mostly use iCloud. https://ente.io/
 
Since simplewall has been abandoned and the dev seems to have a bit of a melty over it, I've decided to switch to an alternative Windows firewall, Fort Firewall. So far it's promisingly better.

Extremely lightweight with total RAM usage below 100MB, equally, if not more robust filtering, comes with telemetry blocking domain lists on by default, and has nice QoL features that simplewall didn't have. For example wildcard filtering, so you can apply a single rule for all programs in a given subdirectory or with a given executable name, or connection stats to let you know which program tried to connect with what and how much and if it was allowed to do so.

Much like simplewall it also screams at you whenever some program you're yet to add to the list tries to access the Internet and preemptively blocks it from doing so. It's basically the entire reason you'd install an extra like this over the default Windows Firewall, since it gives you a more granular and active control over what's going on in your system. Definitely a nice upgrade over simplewall.
 
I cannot recommend or "endorse" FreeTube for YouTube viewing any longer. It's a nice application in the rare instances that it works nowadays, but it has gotten so unstable, and quite literally unusable to the point I have switched completely to the Grayjay desktop application.

This error renders the application completely unusable as of writing this:
1742971443936.png

It would come up every once in awhile over the past year or so, but would be fixed in a matter of a week with an update to the application, but over the past few months this has been a constant occurrence. Now I can't say for certain what exactly is causing it, whether it's solely YouTube backend changes, or it's something additional, but I can say with confidence that NewPipe on Android never has this problem. It is extremely rare nowadays for NewPipe/Bravenewpipe to be rendered completely unusable due to solely YouTube back-end changes, whereas you cannot watch anything in FreeTube.

I've switched to Grayjay for desktop YouTube, and I'm happy: https://grayjay.app/desktop/

Bravenewpipe still works great on Android. It's a fork of NewPipe that allows Sponsorblock to work, and has Rumble support.
 
Last edited:
I cannot recommend or "endorse" FreeTube for YouTube viewing any longer. It's a nice application in the rare instances that it works nowadays, but it has gotten so unstable, and quite literally unusable to the point I have switched completely to the Grayjay desktop application.

This error renders the application completely unusable as of writing this:
View attachment 7137440

It would come up every once in awhile over the past year or so, but would be fixed in a matter of a week with an update to the application, but over the past few months this has been a constant occurrence. Now I can't say for certain what exactly is causing it, whether it's solely YouTube backend changes, or it's something additional, but I can say confidence that NewPipe on Android never has this problem. It is extremely rare nowadays for NewPipe/Bravenewpipe to be rendered completely unusable due to solely YouTube back-end changes, whereas you cannot watch anything in FreeTube.

I've switched to Grayjay for desktop YouTube, and I'm happy: https://grayjay.app/desktop/

Bravenewpipe still works great on Android. It's a fork of NewPipe that allows Sponsorblock to work, and has Rumble support.
There's been similar troubles with SmartTube as of late too. Constant 403 errors which usually get patched within a day or so, but the latest one still has playback broken even after the supposed fix.

There's been talks of YouTube rolling out DRM implementations so maybe something attributed to that?
 
There's been similar troubles with SmartTube as of late too. Constant 403 errors which usually get patched within a day or so, but the latest one still has playback broken even after the supposed fix.

There's been talks of YouTube rolling out DRM implementations so maybe something attributed to that?
While I do believe that YouTube's fuckery is at some fault here, I don't buy that it's the only issue since during all these 403 error occurrences over the past several months, NewPipe/Bravenewpipe never had this problem at all, and both NewPipe and FreeTube use the YouTube API. I don't understand why FreeTube becomes unusable so frequently whereas NewPipe doesn't have this issue. I'm not a developer, so I guess it could be possible that it's 100% Google's fault, but I just don't buy it given the experience.

The reason Grayjay never has these problems at all is because they don't use the YouTube API, at least it was stated as such in the letter Louis Rossmann read on video once. The desktop client is still in alpha, so it's got some work to do, but so far it's usable, and works fine for me.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ddddank
This error renders the application completely unusable as of writing this:
1742971443936.png

It would come up every once in awhile over the past year or so, but would be fixed in a matter of a week with an update to the application, but over the past few months this has been a constant occurrence. Now I can't say for certain what exactly is causing it, whether it's solely YouTube backend changes, or it's something additional, but I can say confidence that NewPipe on Android never has this problem. It is extremely rare nowadays for NewPipe/Bravenewpipe to be rendered completely unusable due to solely YouTube back-end changes, whereas you cannot watch anything in FreeTube.
There's been similar troubles with SmartTube as of late too. Constant 403 errors which usually get patched within a day or so, but the latest one still has playback broken even after the supposed fix.

There's been talks of YouTube rolling out DRM implementations so maybe something attributed to that?
A Google search suggests that it's an issue with some upstream dependency (youtube.js). The GitHub issue says there will be a patch out soon.
 
Vivaldi Browser got a new update, where they've partnered with Proton AG and offer Proton VPN built into the browser now. You just have to register a free Vivaldi or Proton account and you'll get access to the free Proton VPN servers in your browser. None of this Chinese Opera trickery where you join a botnet use a proxy, might be a good option for the now-disgraced UK users. Granted, Vivaldi is Chromium based, but it also has it's own ad blocker, so it may still be a viable option if that's your only concern with Manifest v2 getting killed off this year.
 
Vivaldi Browser got a new update, where they've partnered with Proton AG and offer Proton VPN built into the browser now. You just have to register a free Vivaldi or Proton account and you'll get access to the free Proton VPN servers in your browser. None of this Chinese Opera trickery where you join a botnet use a proxy, might be a good option for the now-disgraced UK users. Granted, Vivaldi is Chromium based, but it also has it's own ad blocker, so it may still be a viable option if that's your only concern with Manifest v2 getting killed off this year.
I cannot recommend any other VPN in good faith while Mullvad is still around. Not only are they run by privacy schizo ideologues that have proven they do not log user data as of the time they got raided in 2023, they're also working on tools to fuck with modern AI data scrapers. Proton, on the other hand, did hand user data over to the Swiss feds when hit with a court order. That's enough to earn a them 'no, thank you' in my book.
 
I cannot recommend any other VPN in good faith while Mullvad is still around. Not only are they run by privacy schizo ideologues that have proven they do not log user data as of the time they got raided in 2023, they're also working on tools to fuck with modern AI data scrapers. Proton, on the other hand, did hand user data over to the Swiss feds when hit with a court order. That's enough to earn a them 'no, thank you' in my book.
Remember, "no logs" just means logs. If the feds show up and seize their servers, they can track active connections. So if you do anything that you seriously think might attract actual glowie attention or fucking Microsoft's to the point they'd go to the effort, never use that connection again.

If you're in a country, you can't really defy court orders from a court of that country, no matter who you are.

I'd still trust Mullvad more, but they'd be just as vulnerable to such a court attack.

They're both "no logs" but that doesn't mean "no way of tracking anything ever."

I'd definitely recommend Mullvad though. I wouldn't say no other. Windscribe seems to have lots of options for the more geeky types.

But if you've never used a VPN and just want to download, install, run, and you're done, Mullvad is definitely the choice.
 
Back