I feel like most of the FBI warnings these days are “by the way the stove is hot don’t touch it”.
They said something very similar about free VPN services
“Users who in the past would type ‘free online file converter’ into a search engine are vulnerable, as the algorithms used for results now often include paid results, which might be scams.”
Nooo, you mean turning search engines into monetization and ad delivery engines had downsides? Who would have thought!
Fucking greed at the root of another goddamned issue…
Protip: ask your favourite llm to write you a python script to convert between the formats you’re interested in. Bonus benefit: simultaneously learn a bit about programming!
As much as I’m not a fan of this, I’ll at least admit it was helpful in helping me quickly learn how to scale videos using FFMPEG. That, combined with the documentation and now I have a command saved to a reference text document to help if I ever forget.
I have zero interest in learning all the intricacies of ffmpeg so I find ChatGPT to be very useful. I’ve also used it for yt-dlp for downloading videos and converting the audio to mp3. Very useful. I personally save them as bash scripts so I can just input the file name or url as a command line argument. On Mac you can also wrap your bash scripts in AppleScript if you want to make applets for these functions. ChatGPT works great for apple script as well but I’ve had to feed it source code (eg from Apple Digital Mastering applets) to ensure it writes the new code correctly. You still must know what you’re doing.
Is yt-dlp really that difficult that you can’t take ten min to learn the syntax? Do you not worry that you might end up relying on this stuff too much?
For example, I know I’m completely reliant on GPS, and I would be useless without it
The syntax is easy, but the options change a bit depending on what you want to do. My entire job I requires me to use my brain so I don’t mind cheating when it doesn’t really matter as in this case. In my case I wanted a SQLite database to store URLs and playlist IDs for recording attempts and to make sure I don’t download the same video multiple times. I think I also had songs run thru music brainz for audio fingerprinting and mp3 tags. ChatGPT doesn’t get it right the first time but often gives a reasonable boilerplate piece of code as a template to start from.
Ffmprg is remarkably powerful. If it is a picture on your screen, you can use ffmpeg to do what you want to it. Recently discovered it could convert PNG, jpeg, and webp images back and forth. To think I’ve only used it for video.
I’d recommend some CLI utility to a beginner over Python: pandoc, ffmpeg, image magic…
True, that’s a good point :)
“Users who in the past would type ‘free online file converter’ into a search engine are vulnerable, as the algorithms used for results now often include paid results, which might be scams.”
Mm hmm.
I refuse to believe that the free service I’ve been using for years has been exploiting my behavior for money… what kind of world is this?? What kind of psychopathic organization would do such a thing? Why isn’t capitalism working for me? Why?
The best is online CSR generators.
Yes, I know people who have implemented private keys they have been given from random websites.
I’m… Wut… Just…
WHAT THE FUCK?
What? Just base64 encrypt it before you store it in the git hub
That’s why I only use totallylegitfileconverter.ru they even have a lottery where they can directly transfer the money to your bank account when you win. They’re very friendly!
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