I wrote and open-sourced an RSS feed parser plugin for Zoom Player in order to support RSS Audio/Video stream lists:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2FbLightZP%2FDe...

I have a need for a very specific feature I'd like to add to Zoom Player, an HTTP caching bridge.

The purpose of the http cache bridge is to cache repeated http GET queries generated by DirectShow media streaming filters (components) such as LAV Filters when streaming mp4/mkv files from media servers such as PLEX, Emby or Jellyfin. Caching is required as these components treat streaming files the same as local files with repeated seeking to read headers and frame indexes, degrading performance.

Since the http cache bridge is a 100% self-contained feature, I thought AI would be well suited to the task.

I wrote a very detailed design document and fed it into every AI system I had access to, including Kimi 2 and frankly the results were sub-par with all of them, I wrote about my experiences here:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2FZoomP...

YouTube's "Playables" are only playable in every country.

From the FAQ:
"Currently, Playables is an experimental feature rolled out to select users in eligible countries/regions. In addition, some users in these areas may not see Playables discoverable on YouTube but may still be able to access them through shareable links unique to each game. Our goal is to expand availability in the future."

No list of the actual countries. Sad.

It's not just news, it's also review sites.

Zoom Player has been in development for 25 years, over that time it received quite a few awards from software review sites.

Recently, I went back to my awards page and except for a few major sites, the majority are gone.

I performed a Semrush back-link/referring-domain site check and over the past year, even though my site received more traffic due to my increased activity, the back links and linking sites dropped 80%. For newer and ultra-popular software like OBS Studio, the drop is not as massive, about 15% less referring domains and 25% drop in back-links.

The internet is disappearing.

As a programmer for over 25 years, I've been blind typing and a lot of it.

Recently, I switched to a chicklet keyboard design because of the lower noise profile and (for me) the ease to distinguish keys keys due to the extra spacing between each key.

Unfortunately, this keyboard had a slightly different layout, no extra spacing between the F4/F5 keys and F8/F9 keys. That alone was enough to throw my orientation and greatly increase the number of typos.

I tried adjusting for months and eventually gave up and found a different chicklet keyboard with the proper F-key spacing and my typos dropped to normal levels and my typing speed slightly accelerated.

I wasn't aware that I had this dependency until after I bought a keyboard without the F-key spacing, sometimes you learn by trying different things.

I bought my daughter an 11th gen Intel PC and it was not compatible with Windows 11 because the BIOS didn't support TPM out of the box. As a technical person I was able to find and flash a new bios to fix this issue, how many non-technical people are just going to get stuck without even realizing they can fix the issue.

I had an issue where the media player I'm working on didn't support WebVTT subtitles, there wasn't much I could do as the subtitle renderer was 3rd party code and I didn't really the resources to add support for the WebVTT format myself.

I looked into the WebVTT format and it was not that different from the very popular SRT format. I then asked ChatGPT's o1 preview to write a function that takes a .VTT file as input and outputs an .SRT file.

o1 preview thought for about a 30 seconds and then wrote the code with way too much text explaining everything it tried to do. I tested the code and it failed. The parsing code that was supposed to remove the extra WebVTT position/color/comments tags not supported by SRT, actually cropped off every subtitle entry's "End Time", essentially returning a broken SRT file.

I informed it of the mistake and it fixed the code and so far it seems to be working.

The morale of the story is that you can use AI to write very specific functions with a defined input and output. It may actually work if you double-check the code and understand what it does.

I have a community page on facebook I use to announce new versions as I release them, live coding sessions, new plugin releases, etc.

I recently released a major version representing over 8 months of work. I wrote a long blog post about the new/enhanced features and posted a one paragraph announcement on my community's facebook page along with a link to the blog on my own website.

Facebook instantly deleted the post, classifying it as "spam" with no recourse to object. How can I be spamming my own page?! The linked blog post was all original text and imagery I created specifically for the new release.

I ended up posting the announcement with no links and told my followers to move to Zoom Player's reddit community instead.

It makes sense to investigate the possibility of using CRISPR like systems to enhance human genome with better resistance against the increased radiation exposure required for space travel.

This is about cash, Onlyfans made it work and the technological jump from subreddit to onlyfans features is minimal.

Twitter already announced they are doing it with their super-twits, how long before for-pay private subreddits?

With so many apps released daily, even good apps are lost in the stream unless they manage to build a strong word of mouth or they pay to advertise the apps.

Did google receive payment to promote these apps? Did they use another mechanism to fool the users into installing these apps?

The article lacks a lot of pertinent information.

This is what happens when control overtakes security as a priority.

Yes, MadVR isn't working.
I contacted the author, so hopefully it will eventually work.

Converted desktop apps are not limited to one window.

It hasn't been a cake-walk converting Zoom Player (http://zoomplayer.com) to the AppX model.

The 'Desktop Bridge' conversion tool breaks the Executable/AppData folder model introduced in Windows Vista and is completely incompatible with the Windows XP admin access model.

By this I mean that the app can't write any file to the installation folder.
And any files installed to the local AppData folder by the Win32 installer are non-accessible after the conversion to AppX (they are installed in a read-only folder where no API can be used to find the folder's path).
The work-around is to install everything to a single folder and then copy the required files to the local AppData folder on the initial run.

There are other issues dealing with the App's icon in various places, it seems they changed the model and it's impossible (as far as I can tell and as far as my questions get non-answers on the microsoft UWP forum) to present the same icon as a desktop app on the start menu, task bar and elsewhere.

I also found that some 3rd party components (DirectShow filters) don't always work in the virtualized environment, but it's something I'm trying to resolve with the authors.

And finally, there is no clear process to get a store listing for the App.
We filled in the form, got no reply that it was even received, later follow-ups on the MS forum resulting in this:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsocial.msdn.microsoft....

Hopefully they will streamline the process soon.