A brief check-in with KDE and a look at FOSS speech recognition, Meltdown and Spectre, last year’s predictions, and new ones for 2018.
News
KDE Community 2017 & Browser integration in June
Epic Games and Redis throughput performance impact
Entroware
This episode of Late Night Linux is sponsored by Entroware. They are a UK-based company who sells computers with Ubuntu and Ubuntu MATE preinstalled. They have configurable laptops, desktops and servers to suit a wide range of Linux users. Check them out and don’t forget to mention us at checkout if you buy one of their great machines.
Predictions
We look back at the predictions that we all made at the start of 2017 and make some more about what will happen in 2018.
See our contact page for ways to get in touch.
I prefer ogg. It has a smaller file size and is generally superior.
I vote for opus, if you aren’t using it inside that ogg container already. It’s even smaller (compared to mp3 up to 60% reduction, at least for the podcasts I listen to) while retaining great audio quality, especially for speech.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_(audio_format)
Besides, all the cool kids are converting to opus 😉
I vote for a combination of opus as the main version and mp3. Opus is now an established format, technically superior to ogg and mp3, and supporting/pushing the most modern free from the ground up format would be a nice gesture from a Linux/FLOSS podcast IMHO. The mp3 version would then rather be a backwards compatible catch-all solution in the unlikely event that opus can’t be played properly on the listener’s device. I’ve seen this approach a couple of times now at podcasts who care about such matters and quite like it.
As an *.ogg subcriber, i don’t get why you’d need two feeds 🙂 I use *.oggs because you provide me with choice and because (at certain points) i can tell the difference, especially sibilants & higher frequencies. If it were up to me, i’d KISS and only keep *.mp3. A low bitrate *.opus feed would be interesting, but this isn’t a 3hr show and *.opus is tricky to stream, at least on my end using AntennaPod.
I haven’t noticed that problem in AntennaPod, downloaded episodes work, will have to try streaming.
Are the devs aware of that bug?
You mad bro? I see you don’t publish critical comments, but post snippets on twitter like a little sniveling passive aggressive pussy. Anyways linking intel CPU bug to the ecologically unsustainable nature of capitalism is just a stupid and illogical as someone on the right saying that heartbleed or a critical linux kernel security vulnerability is an example of the laziness, complacency and mediocrity that goes with socialism. Hardware, software bugs are not to be indictments of particular political systems.
You posted it on the wrong episode. See the comments below episode 27.
Bro
On the contrary John Smith…Capitalism isn’t a political system but, an economic system. Bringing up an economic system in relation to the development of a good or service being produced in that said economic system is quite logical and beyond fair. After all, economic systems are logically connected to goods and services.
I like the OGG feed, initially because it was free (and now feels ‘more free’) but smaller sizes are nice too. Even though MP3 is now free I still feel that OGG should be recommended. MP3 isn’t free because they wanted it to be open, it’s just because they can’t enforce it any more.
I guess though, what are the stats like for the 2 feeds? Are there a significant number of listeners that download the OGG files? And how much time do you guys spend. If there wasn’t an OGG feed I think everyone would just choose the MP3, I doubt people wouldn’t listen because there isn’t an OGG version.
In the Ruby world, Redis is mostly used in combination with Resque or other backgrounding packages to do delayed processing. For example, background hit some API and change an object there while sending an email. While the impact of Meltdown is annoying since yes, I am using containers in production, performance is not as critical as everything I do is delayed anyway.
I wonder what the impact on other unstructured database servers is like, such as MongoDB or NOSQL within containers. The spread of Docker as a way to quickly deploy code without using elaborate deployment setups like Capistrano to handle dependencies means I’ll bet there is a non-trivial set of people using things like Mongo within Docker. Or other things inside Docker where set up is a giant hassle when you are not using containers.
As usual, love the show, you guys brighten my commute. Please keep MP3s as it plays very nicely in almost any MP3 player.
I am so glad that you have at least one advocate for KDE on Late Night Linux. KDE has, by far, the coolest and least user hostile experience I have had on any desktop. I don’t like any organization dictating what I can and cannot have as part of my desktop experience (system tray, anybody?).
I would like to hear some honest discussion that is not riddled with emotional bias toward desktop environments. I have complete respect for every desktop environment, even one as antiquated as XFCE, and I look forward to a Qt based Budgie.
On Ogg or mp3, I could really care less. I don’t need great audio, I just need audio that is clear enough to understand the discussion.
Well, ogg had good reasons in the past (companies blocking mp3 and failing on blocking ogg, ogg being a free format etc.).
The time we’re living in now, there’s no real reason to deliver both, ogg and mp3. Likely, mp3 would be the logical choice for simply having wider support.
I use the mp3 feed, but seeing the link for the ogg always gives me a little bit more respect for you.
Count me in as another vote for opus. Files with opus are smaller and the sound quality is better than either mp3 or ogg. I understand the frustration with technical problems you’ve had with ogg files. Hopefully that wouldn’t be an issue with opus.