Sorry to put you on the spot but I saw this countless time this morning after reading the news so I’m asking you :

• did you buy a Lynx XR1?

My point being that there already are standalone VR HMDs that do NOT need Meta and can be great to tinker. The example I share works, can be rooted and even run Linux proper (even though quite experimental) https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Lynx_R1_(lynx-r1)

So… it’s a nice thing to say, and yet please do not give your “money to the zucc” but also I believe that means there is something else people are missing, otherwise they’d have already made the move. I don’t mean this as a criticism, only to try to understand what that gap is.

In France at least internships are nearly 6 months long. It’s nowhere near as long as a normal project length but still, it’s quite a bit.

On the project aspect, it doesn’t have to be done this way. Contributing to existing project is totally feasible. One could contribute a plugin to PeerTube, a patch to the Linux kernel, etc. Sure one can start from scratch, and maybe in some cases it’s better (maybe less fear) but I think it’s rare to be an actual requirement from teachers.

even if i cant escape them i will try to give the minimum data possible.

Yep, one has to be pragmatic. We all wish our behavior was perfect at all time but sadly we must compromise and come to term with it.

Accepting that is important. I believe what can also help is to :

• avoid is possible
• if not, not provide unnecessary information (maybe the real name is NOT actually needed)
• delete what can be deleted locally (short history) and remotely (e.g. GDPR request)
• to data takeout regularly to be ready to move away any time
• isolate the problematic app (container, other device, emulator, etc)

… and finally, most importantly, minimize the actual negative impact. For example if one does provide data to Google or Meta then at least while blocking ads then their actual business model, namely selling your profile to advertising company, is lost.

i ask people to be aware that for some of us, our situations makes impossible to remove some of the meta, microsoft or google services.

Right, I’m not saying it’s necessarily bullying by people, it can be precisely by those companies. They make themselves as hard as possible to ignore.

Or worst because Meta itself make such plans cheaper, or even free (as they did in e.g. Brazil), when data is used on their platforms.

3 years of just theory is going to produce decent software engineers

Eh… isn’t everybody encouraged to do projects? Like isn’t every single class doing that? If so then it’s not just theory, it’s actual practice.

Also universities and engineering schools to suggest (some make it mandatory) to have internships. That’s also practice.

I think only CS graduates who plan to become professors are perfectly fine with “just” theory but everybody else has actual opportunities to go being that.

almost mandatory

That’s bullying talk. It’s the same everywhere… and what matters is the “almost” part. If people need you, they find a way. It might be SMS, it might be email, you might be left out from groupchat but you can still be reached.

Treating Google and Meta as apolitical …

I didn’t.

Tracking from WHOM and thus WHY should be the question.

It’s different to be tracked for profit, e.g. Google or Meta, versus for political or corporate espionage purposes.

The former is basically volunteering information through bad practices. Those companies do NOT care about “you” as an individual. In fact they arguably do not even know who you are. Avoiding their services is basically enough. It might be inconvenient but it’s easy : just do not.

The later is a totally different beast. If somehow the FSB, because you criticized Putin, or NSO Group, for something similar or because you have engineer something strategic to a business competitor who is a client of theirs, then you will be specifically targeted. This is an entirely different situation and IMHO radically more demanding. You basically don’t have to just care about privacy good practices, which is enough for the former, but rather know the state of the art of security.

So… assuming you “just” worry about surveillance capitalism and hopefully live in a jurisdiction benefiting from the Brussels effect with e.g GDPR related laws, either way is fine.

when I used an old laptop I relied on https://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/ nowadays KDE is good enough for with its shortcuts (e.g. meta + arrows) and KWin scripts.

I don’t. That’s the entire point about having different mailboxes in the first place : they stay isolated and I manage notifications (or not) exactly how I want, when I want.

suddenly it hit me. Im on linux I can do a lot of this easier with the command line.

Nice, you get it! You have so much to learn so don’t be afraid of taking notes. The CLI and the UNIX philosophy are very powerful. They remain powerful decades after (from desktop to mobile with e.g. adb on Android to the “cloud” with shell via e.g. ssh) so IMHO it still is a good investment. Still discovery can be tricky so be gentle with yourself

Also few tricks that can help you go further faster :

• take notes (really! can be a .txt or .md file or a wiki page, entirely up to you)
• consider aliases or .bashrc to keep your shortcuts and compose
• stop typing the same commands again, instead reverse-i-search with e.g. Ctrl-r
• TAB autocomplete (as suggested after)

Anyway, enjoy it’s an adventure!

I’ll be checking over the subtitles anyway, generating just saves a bunch of time before a full pass over it. […] The editing for the subs generation looks to be as much work as just transcribing a handful of frames at a time.

Sorry I’m confused, which is it?

doing this as a favour […] Honestly I hate the style haha

I’m probably out of line for saying this but I recommend you reconsider.

There’s no getting around using AI for some of this, like subtitle generation

Eh… yes there is, you can pay actual humans to do that. In fact if you do “subtitle generation” (whatever that might mean) without any editing you are taking a huge risk. Sure it might get 99% of the words right but it fucks up on the main topic… well good luck.

Anyway, if you do want to go that road still you could try

• ffmpeg with whisper.cpp (but honestly I’m not convinced hardcoding subtitles is a good practice, why not package as e.g. .mkv? Depends on context obviously)
• Kdenlive with vosk
• Kdenlive with whatever else via *.srt *.ass *.vtt *.sbv formats