Found a few candidate tools though can test neither now, mutool (part of the mupdf tools), PDFtk, qpdf, pdf2txt (name sounds familiar though it might be memory playing tricks).

If any of those could be found as a single portable exe around 2020, chances are it is the tool I used for it.

Iirc, tested it out quite a few years ago, and I had to use a software that would both decompile and recompile the PDF, and while it was decompiled, I had to remove the repeating pattern I didn’t want with something like Notepad++. File got recompiled a bit over 50% bigger iirc, maybe different compression methods, but the pages themselves didn’t seem affected.

Sadly can’t remember the name of the program I used for compiling and recompiling, only that it’d do both and that I looked for how to remove watermarks from PDFs. Also the program was certainly offline.

That’s something that’s been bothering me on the microblogging side of Mbin too, how replies to posts are presented. There, all replies appear on the feed, and they’re also on a parallel code block to the post, so even browser scripts or filters have trouble picking them.

Your comment gives me some ideas, so will be poking on the Mbin issues tracker later. Thanks! ^_

Mind sharing a link to the tool? Checked the post on the original url and it doesn’t seem to be there either so guessing it was forgotten.

Been noticing that for quite a while now, each platform has their own cultures, even when there can be exchange between two or more. If an instance blocks another, I’d imagine it’s due to differences in such cultures.

As an user for some 2 years now, I get an idea of the communities I’d rather avoid, but other than the most extreme examples, haven’t seen much openly discussed about specific instances.

Now, I wouldn’t worry about what people from instances x, y or z think if I were you. If you like how your chosen instance is, and people from other instances organize to hunt you down, seek your instance’s support if needed, or simply block each and every one pestering you.

Everyone, including Commodore themselves: “how you’re not dead?”

Commodore: "I don’t know! =D "

cd command.

No joke, when I started, it was the thing I stalled on the most as it’s so basic no one explains

Don’t like Youtube’s design choices, too bloated and the little you can configure is all over the place. NewPipe from the little I used it was a bit noisy, but felt like it better used the space than YT, and also had integration to a few other services.

I like learning and the thrill of tinkering, my computer’s HD had died, remembered a system a teacher had commented about and also a friend suggested to recover some needed files, tested and was positively surprised.

That would be easier implemented with microblogging tagging, and the only thread-based platform that uses tags is Mbin afaik. However, even in it you can’t still block tags. Maybe poke the devs of Mbin to implement it?

The ones I tested on Linux that I remember:

• Original PS3 controller on Ubuntu 20.04; cable works great, bluetooth is extremely temperamental
• PS2 controller with adapter on a handful systems; works well but maybe due to age of the adapter, has some ghost inputs
• Xbox Series X controller on recent Mint systems up to iirc 21.3; works great on cable, can’t get bluetooth to work
• Previous controller on an Android 13 phone; bluetooth works great, didn’t look if you can run on cable
• 8bitdo Ultimate Bluetooth Controller also on Mint; can’t get bluetooth to work, 2.4G adapter needed a small change in the system env to work
• 8bitdo Ultimate C 2.4G Wireless Controller also on Mint; bluetooth same story, 2.4 adapter and cable work out of the box
• Previous controller on a Raspberry Pi 5 with Android (KonstaKANG’s AOSP fork) and Recalbox (independent Linux distro according to distro watch); Android didn’t work on either cable, adapter or bluetooh, and Recalbox iirc tested with both the adapter and bluetooth and both worked fine

All ways give some form of data to Google, so I’d say the best ones are those that allow offline watch, like yt-dlp, Grayjay, etc., the ones with in-built DRM-free download options

QuickDic’s default databases are compiled from Wiktionary entries, and Wiktionary seems like the most reliable part of Wikipedia currently. Wonder then if that couldn’t be used also. On QuickDic, having all databases installed takes a bit over 1 GB, not much for desktop standards afaik.

If you fear breaking something and you have some spare money, why not buy some used computer to test around? If prices are similar over where you live, an used computer, specially older ones but still from this century, shouldn’t be too expensive. And that way, you won’t lose as much if you somehow does a major mess up (which from my experience, is on itself pretty rare to happen).

Yt-dlp doesn’t deal with cracking, but by fetching the files from DRM-free endpoints of a given service. And from what I’ve seen in issues from both yt-dlp and Grayjay, such endpoints were all removed in recent months for Crunchyroll (and by extensions, neither support downloading from Crunchyroll anymore).

More immediately, push as hard as possible against it. No mountain is too big that it can’t be moved with the right strategy.

On the longer term, forking AOSP would be a good bet, I think, but do note it requires a continuous effort/investment. In the same vein, pushing for Linux and non-Apple-developed BSD systems for mobile (the latter dunno if exists, but if Apple did it, others could also).

Another thing, but for much longer down the line, to change culture. For example, to stop using, as the saying goes, “the language of the enemy”, like instead of “sideloading”, which implies avoiding the main/correct way, say “installing”, and “program” instead of “app”/“application”, same as more standard computers. Also if the situation allows, whenever possible, to point the problem Google is, and to not cause apathy, to include solutions in the argument.