Uebercomplicated

upvote because correct colon usage

The Serval WS is also more than twice the price of my Pangolin... and I had a one year warranty, so I'm not sure what you mean with lifetime support. As for the specs (i.e. the screen etc.), yeah, they are great. But the case is very poorly designed on my pang12, and gets bent out of shape, which can cause mechanical failure in the hinge, quite frequently, despite the aluminum chassis. My complaint is just that it is far from rugged, which is problematic for me, as I travel a lot with it. But your mileage may vary.

PS: one more thing that really bothers me is the known problem with the touchepad on the pang12, which regularly fails. Mine also came with a faulty motherboard, which suggest bad quality control. Over all, these issues have caused me to lose faith in System76 hardware.

I'm traveling right now, but will get back to you on my playlist generator.

I hadn't thought of syncing music libraries! You are indeed right, MPD does not have that, and it would be a hassle to set up. One point to apple...

I have a Pangolin 12. While it has great specs and software support, the build quality is horrible, and over the course of two years now, I have had to screw it open and bend the laptop case in position more often then I'm comfortable with. It is the far, far opposite of rugged, which is the main reason I want to replace it. Twice now, it has just randomly decided to not boot for one or two weeks...

MPD works pretty well for the music thing, and, I don't know if this is would be an option for you, but I programmed my own smart-paylist-generator in rust as a hobby project to get control of my 500Gb (around 10,000 100% legally acquired tracks cough, cough) library. The additional control over the algo meant I got something that works waaaay better than pretty much anything else I've tried (including Spotify suggestions, etc. — the only thing I still use is Bandcamp for new artist suggestions); if you have the time, I highly recommend a homemade solution like that. It is a lot of work though.

Anyone here have a StarLabs laptop (briefly mentioned in the article) and am opinion on it? I'm thinking about replacing my crappy System76 laptop and looking for something with good build quality.

The VLC thing can be solved relatively easily by installing opi with zypper, and then running opi codecs, which will add all the necessary repos and install everything. After that VLC (and h.264 etc) will work like a charm.

I use librewolf, with default settings, as my main browser. If a page doesn't work (which is quite rare for me) I usually turn of uBO which does the trick. There are of course a few known culprits that don't work, like Netflix. I have brave installed for that kind of thing 🤷.

Also Tor is definitely not more usable then Librewolf...

Could you point out any specific sites that don't work for you?

I'm not sure I entirely follow you (I'm only half awake, sorry), but programmed music is only generated by computers insofar the computer is generating 44100 samples every second based on a set of mathematical rules the composer made. AI music is generated based on huge datasets and probability; the composer has very little to no specific control.

If I program a instrument/synth in Supercollidor or Pure Data or some hardware synth, and then sample the instrument/synth or create and sequence a melody for it on my MIDI (piano) keyboard or Schism Tracker, etc., I have complete and absolute control over everything, down to the very waveform. In that case I am truly and purely the creator of the piece.

If I type in a prompt, I am just playing a probability lottery. I have done jack shit more than describing a piece of music.

I might have misunderstood you though. For now, I'm going to bed. Good night!

I wholeheartedly agree with you for the most part, but one thing confuses me. You say

Fucking DJ sets are walking around using synths instead of analog instruments [...]

Synthesizers can be both analog or digital. Neither is even remotely comparable to AI music, as there is still a very real composer. Is this a typo/misunderstanding? Thanks for clarification!

That is by no means AI generated, and certainly not by today's understanding of the term. If I write a score and design an instrument (or sound, etc), that is still a creative process. Brian Eno literally created ambient music with algorithms like that, but it is still his creative work.

My point is just computer-generated ≠ ai-generated in general discourse.

In all fairness, those are all very well optimized, compared to today's complete and utter bullsh*t... A 1060 is Dldefinitely not E-waste though!!