CalcProgrammer1
@CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml
Software Engineer, Linux Enthusiast, OpenRGB Developer, and Gamer
- Comment on REPORT: Arm is sensationally canceling the license that allowed Qualcomm to make Snapdragon chips which power everything from Microsoft's Copilot+ PCs to Samsung's Galaxy smartphones and tablets 4 weeks ago:
APIs can be complex too. Look at how much stuff the Win32 API provides from all the kernel calls, defined data structures/types, libraries, etc. I would venture a guess that if you documented the Win32 API including all the needed system libraries to make something like Wine, it would also be 850 pages long. The fact remains that a documented prototype for a software implementation is free to reimplement but a documented prototype for a hardware implementation requires a license. This makes no sense from a fairness perspective. I’m fine with ARM not giving away their fully developed IP cores which are actual implementations of the ARM instruction set, but locking third parties from making their own compatible designs without a license is horribly anticompetitive. I wish standards organizations still had power. Letting corporations own de-facto “standards” is awful for everyone.
- Comment on REPORT: Arm is sensationally canceling the license that allowed Qualcomm to make Snapdragon chips which power everything from Microsoft's Copilot+ PCs to Samsung's Galaxy smartphones and tablets 4 weeks ago:
In the mobile Linux scene, Qualcomm chips are some of the best supported ones. I don’t love everything Qualcomm does, but the Snapdragon 845 makes for a great Linux phone and has open source drivers for most of the stack (little thanks to Qualcomm themselves).
- Comment on REPORT: Arm is sensationally canceling the license that allowed Qualcomm to make Snapdragon chips which power everything from Microsoft's Copilot+ PCs to Samsung's Galaxy smartphones and tablets 4 weeks ago:
RISC V is just an open standard set of instructions and their encodings. It is not expected nor required for implementations of RISC V to be open sourced, but if they do make a RISC V chip they don’t have to pay anyone to have that privilege and the chip will be compatible with other RISC V chips because it is an open and standardized instruction set. That’s the point. Qualcomm pays ARM to make their own chip designs that implement the ARM instruction set, they aren’t paying for off the shelf ARM designs like most ARM chip companies do.
- Comment on REPORT: Arm is sensationally canceling the license that allowed Qualcomm to make Snapdragon chips which power everything from Microsoft's Copilot+ PCs to Samsung's Galaxy smartphones and tablets 4 weeks ago:
Hopefully Qualcomm takes the hint and takes this opportunity to develop a high performance RISC V core. Don’t just give the extortionists more money, break free and use an open standard. Instruction sets shouldn’t even require licensing to begin with if APIs aren’t copyrightable. Why is it OK to make your own implentation of any software API (see Oracle vs. Google on the Java API, Wine implementing the Windows API, etc) but not OK to do the same thing with an instruction set (which is just a hardware API). Why is writing an ARM or x86 emulator fine but not making your own chip? Why are FPGA emulator systems legal if instruction sets are protected? It makes no sense.
The other acceptable outcome here is a Qualcomm vs. ARM lawsuit that sets a precedence that instruction sets are not protected. If they want to copyright their own cores and sell the core design fine, but Qualcomm is making their own in hoyse designs here.
- Comment on Why is UI design backsliding? 2 months ago:
Change for the sake of change is so dumb. I’m tired of pointless UI changes every so many years because some middle manager and their designers need to wow some dumb exec to get a promotion and they do so just by rearranging all the existing functionality because the product itself is already a complete solution that doesn’t actually need a new version. Sadly, this mentality even creeps into FOSS spaces. Canonical and Ubuntu wanting to reinvent the wheel with Unity, Mir, Snap, etc. GNOME radically changing their UI all the time.
- Comment on What do people really ask chatbots? It’s a lot of sex and homework. 3 months ago:
I wrote a program to do just that
- Comment on Intel's stock drops 30% overnight —company sheds $39 billion in market cap | As of now, Intel's market value is a fraction of Nvidia's worth and less than half of AMD's 3 months ago:
Ugh, I got a fair return from buying to AMD right before Ryzen came out. I sold some of it and bought multiple different chip companies so now I have some AMD, some Intel, some NVDA. Oh well, it’s not a huge amount but still sucks. I hope they can come back if only because AMD needs competition to keep them from becoming the evil that old Intel was. I was hoping Intel would also be a viable third GPU competitor, I like my Arc A770 for the price and I’m hoping they don’t kill off the GPU division.
- Comment on CrowdStrike Update Causes Global Microsoft Outage Affecting Banks, Airlines And More 3 months ago:
Who knew that allowing, no, PAYING third parties to inject whatever the fuck they want encrypted proprietary binary blobs into the highest privilege and most dangerous level of your operating system without any user acknowledgement or third party code review could possibly have negative consequences?
This is also why we shouldn’t be allowing kernel anticheat games on our PCs by the way. One day Crowdstrike, the next day it could be Riot Vanguard. Proprietary shitware has no place in your kernel (though in Windows’ case the entire kernel itself is proprietary, maybe do something about that next).
- Comment on "Privacy-Preserving" Attribution: Mozilla Disappoints Us Yet Again 4 months ago:
I don’t care if it’s “better” than the existing system, Mozilla should not be helping the advertising industry at all. They should be actively working to block any and all attempts to gain access to user data, flat out. They are not, and their acquisition of an ad company shows that their motives are not in line with what their users want. They’re a company after money, no different than any other. Big fucking shame, but when you hire business people and operate as a business, you can’t have true integrity no matter what your supposed mission is. Yes, Mozilla operates a nonprofit but they also operate a corporation, and the corporation exists to make money above all else which is why they’ve succumbed to this ad industry bullshit. I hope we see a viable third option for browser, but until then the best option is a Firefox fork that actually gives a damn about the user and not just their wallets. I’ve switched to using LibreWolf on all of my devices. Like Firefox, but without the anti-user, pro-ad-industry garbage turned on by default. I’ve been calling Firefox adware for years now ever since they started stuffing Mozilla VPN ads, sponsored link garbage, “Pocket recommendations” horseshit, and all the other paid/sponsored nonsense in users’ faces without their permission but people were like “no no Mozilla is actually good”…cut it out, Mozilla has shown their hands very clearly now. They want the advertising $$$ and are willing to give up any respect and integrity they used to have for it. They aren’t at the level of Chrome and Google, but they’re inching closer every day and acquiring their own ad company certainly isn’t going to help in that regard.
- Comment on Mozilla roll out first AI features in Firefox Nightly 4 months ago:
I use Fennec F-Droid on Android and LibreWolf on Linux/Mac/Windows.
- Comment on YouTube's war against third party apps is just as ridiculous as its war on adblockers 6 months ago:
Youtube doesn’t care about the collective “you” that is its namesake. It hasn’t for over a decade. Itps all about the big studio level productions. It’s no better than the mainstream television networks at this point.
- Comment on Windows 11 just isn't enticing Windows 10 users to upgrade, and its market share is actually falling 6 months ago:
Pretty good for the price! I was using it woth a 144Hz 1440p monitor for at least a year and played mostly Overwatch and CSGO/CS2. It does pretty well and Mesa support/performance for it has gotten pretty good. I still use that build (the A770 paired with a Ryzen 9 3950X) for LAN parties and with my TV and it is a fine GPU. It wasn’t handling 4K 144Hz too well especially on more demanding titles which is why I ended up getting the 7800XT. I’m definitely excited for Battlemage cards.
- Comment on Windows 11 just isn't enticing Windows 10 users to upgrade, and its market share is actually falling 6 months ago:
Yeah, building a new PC without NVIDIA or at least swapping your GPU really is the best solution. The past two years I’ve run an Intel Arc A770 which was rough at first because the drivers were brand new but has been solid for over a year now and then in February or so I upgraded to an AMD Radeon RX 7800XT which has been absolutely amazing with my 4K 144Hz display. My setup before that was a 1080Ti and it was never an enjoyable experience on Linux and I usually gamed on Win10 on it. I haven’t really touched Windows other than a small handful of times on the A770 or 7800XT as Linux runs great on them.
- Comment on Windows 11 just isn't enticing Windows 10 users to upgrade, and its market share is actually falling 6 months ago:
Driver installation is really only a hassle for NVIDIA users. AMD and Intel GPUs simply work out of the box on most Linux distros these days (with the main issues being related to using slow moving distros that lack support for the newest hardware). Use a fast moving distro such as Arch and you likely won’t have any issues even with recent GPUs. Hopefully NVK will make the situation for NVIDIA cards better too, been testing it on my laptop and it’s starting to be viable for gaming.
- Comment on Dating app Bumble will no longer require women to make the first move | CNN Business 6 months ago:
Any dating app where both people have to “like”/“swipe right” each other should allow either side to initiate tbh or at least opt out of the stupid matchmaking system and accept all incoming matches.
I was on the dating apps last summer after having been out of the dating pool for 6 years and the current crop of apps are pretty awful for men. When I used dating sites in the early/mid 2010s most sites let anyone initiate a conversation so you didn’t need to worry about the (usually paywalled) “like” system. These days literally everything is a Tinder clone and the only interaction you have with the app is like or dislike. I get why they did it because women receive so much bullshit from unsolicited messages, in my experience it devolved into just mashing the Like button over and over again blindly because it’s a shitty numbers game and the odds aren’t in your favor. There’s no sense reading through detailed profiles and making thoughtful decisions when it’s rare to get a match anyways. Easier to like every single profile and then be the one to filter out matches once they come in. If the harassment is going to primarily target women and women are the ones who need to be more selective in their matches, the dating apps should let women be the ones to pick matches, or better yet give each and every user a toggle that lets them accept matches from anyone, because that makes it easier to get over the hurdle of not receiving any matches at all.
I eventually gave in and paid for the Tinder upgrade that lets you like an unlimited amount of times. I just mindlessly mashed the like button until the queue was empty every day. Before long, matches were actually happening. Two months into that nonsense I actually got a perfect match (she sent the first message) and we’ve been together for 6 months now. I absolutely love her and I’m glad it worked out, but damn was dating on Tinder, Bumble, OKCupid, and POF a horrible experience all around. All owned by the absolutely dreadful Match.com now of course. The prospect of your perfect match being hidden behind a stupid loot box RNG style gacha system is absolute insanity, because that’s what it is. You have a limited number of likes and the profiles you get to see are seemingly picked at random.
- Comment on Chinese battery developer unveils new tech with 1,300-mile range that could revolutionize EVs: 'An important piece of the puzzle' 6 months ago:
How do sodium ion batteries help here? Driving into the wind and running your electric heater at full blast aren’t a battery issue, it’s just an unavoidable increase in power consumption that you need the extra capacity to deal with.
- Comment on Chinese battery developer unveils new tech with 1,300-mile range that could revolutionize EVs: 'An important piece of the puzzle' 6 months ago:
Range anxiety isn’t about your daily commute, it’s about the few times a year road trip you make across multiple states to see family on holidays. Having to stop and charge every 150 miles (as I wouldn’t trust letting it go below 50) sucks if you’re trying to go 500+ miles. Owning a gas car taking up space in your garage and costing you taxes and registration just to use a handful of times a year is wasteful. Renting a car is an option, but it’s cumbersome and if you plan to stay a while, expensive. I would not want an EV with less than 300 miles range. You have to factor in worst case scenarios as well, sometimes it gets dreadfully cold and windy in the winter. When it’s -10F and the wind is howling you’re cranking the (usually resistive) heat and driving head first into the wind kills your efficiency. These are real scenarios I have had to drive in my current car (Volt, so plug in hybrid) and my battery range can be halved (from 35+ miles under 20) in these worst case scenarios, but at least I can fall back on gas. I want to go EV for my next car but if I can’t reliably make it to and from my parents’ house 300 miles away on a bad winter’s Christmas break then it’s just not a feasible option yet, even if my drive to work is maybe 15 miles round trip. Also, charging station density is an issue. I would need to go half way to their house, 150 miles, to reach a charging station. You can’t just stop anywhere to recharge if you have a low range EV.
- Comment on Framework won’t be just a laptop company anymore 6 months ago:
I want a phone that:
- Calls - Must support VoLTE, preferably VoWiFi, audio quality has to at least be listenable but I rarely use calls for anything other than authenticators
- Texts - MMS not super important, I only use texts as a last resort
- Data
- Waydroid support (mainly for the Discord app, possibly Teams for work)
- Browser for most other services
- Desktop Linux applications on-device
- Good camera, doesn’t have to be the best but it needs to have one
- Lots of local storage, preferably expandable
- Connectivity (USB-C with video out support preferably)
I already have plenty of ways of running desktop applications on big screens. I have a laptop, I have a desktop, I have a Steam Deck. However, my phone is always on me and those devices aren’t. Linux phone is awesome because I can always have the applications I need literally in the palm of my hand, and if not they’re just an apk or flatpak install away. I’ve been working on tweaks and utilities to make the experience of using desktop applications easier on mobile Linux, including a virtual mouse using the touchscreen and now working on a Phosh plugin to quickly change screen scaling. A pocket keyboard accessory would make using said desktop applications even easier. I’ve done quite a bit of coding, compiling, and dabbled in image editing on my mobile devices.
My daily driver phones at the moment are a OnePlus 6 running stock Android (because Linux isn’t quite 100% yet) and a OnePlus 6T running postmarketOS. I got a cheap Mint SIM in both phones. Android phone for my calls, texts, camera, and occasional Google apps (mainly maps) usage. Linux phone for everything else, mainly my pocket computer on the go. I used to carry the PinePhone with keyboard, but even with the keyboard case the battery life was awful and it got super hot and it was slow. The OnePlus 6T with pmOS gets surprisingly good battery life. I can’t daily drive the 6T due to the lack of VoLTE, which means calling falls back on the 2G network which they are shutting down very soon. Luckily, someone is working on reverse engineering VoLTE bringup and released a proof of concept daemon to enable it. I’ve successfully made VoLTE calls but it doesn’t always enable and audio sometimes breaks.
- Comment on Framework won’t be just a laptop company anymore 6 months ago:
I have seen the GPD devices before and if they were a bit smaller (phone sized) and had cell capability maybe that would be a good option. As is, they are not small enough to be in a separate category than the Steam Deck IMO, and I already have a Steam Deck. I also like the idea of the keyboard being detachable as sometimes the phone form factor is desirable, like when holding it up to your ear.
- Comment on As TikTok ban threatens stability in social media ecosystem, some brands settle into the fediverse 6 months ago:
While I’m not a fan of advertising or marketing in general, brands having a presence on the Fediverse would be great for Fediverse adoption, and sometimes complaining about a brand on social media is needed to get proper customer service in this world of AI and bot controlled customer service channels. I can see this being a good thing, and there are some brands/companies I would likely follow. I already do follow a few who are on Mastodon, such as Framework, Pine64, and Raspberry Pi.
- Comment on Framework won’t be just a laptop company anymore 6 months ago:
I have some of those tiny keyboards, but the PinePhone keyboard case is far more convenient to use as a mini on the go PC than a separate keyboard. If
- Comment on Framework won’t be just a laptop company anymore 6 months ago:
I would like a phone that has a removable battery, user replaceable screen, and expandable storage. I think Framework would do well to add one or two of their modular slots on the phone since phones already have USB-C support. I would also love to see a phone keyboard similar to the PinePhone keyboard case but using USB-C instead of I2C. Such a case could also incorporate a USB-C dock, providing more Framework module slots or at least additional USB ports, video outputs, an extended capacity battery (using USB-PD to charge itself as well as the phone), and of course also being a tiny keyboard clamshell that fits in your pocket. It could also be nice if the phone could easily detach from said case for taking calls, as the PinePhone keyboard replaces the back cover and does not separate easily when needed.
- Comment on Framework won’t be just a laptop company anymore 6 months ago:
A Framework phone with 2 modular Framework sockets would be amazing. I don’t care if it’s thick. Make it repairable and support Linux Phone OSes like postmarketOS and I would absolutely buy it.
- Comment on Amazon builds AI model to optimize packaging 7 months ago:
Just fitting objects into the smallest box isn’t everything according to the article. This is trying to identify fragile objects and recommend appropriate protective packaging where required to minimize the risk of damage in shipping. If you use a conventional packing algorithm to pack dishes and vases into the smallest box you will receive a box of glass shards on your doorstep. Is AI the best solution? I’m not sure, but using actual statistics of damaged goods and their means of packaging sounds like a worthwhile consideration.
- Comment on Amazon builds AI model to optimize packaging 7 months ago:
This…actually seems like a good use of AI? I generally think AI is being shoehorned into a lot of use cases where it doesn’t belong but this seems like a proper place to use it. It’s serving a specific and defined purpose rather than trying to handle unfiltered customer input or do overly generic tasks,
- Comment on Adding TV to bedroom without using mainstream smart device 8 months ago:
I’m just using a Dell PC monitor (21" 1080p) from like 2010. It supports HDMI but I don’t know about CEC. Either way it could just put the monitor to sleep and that would be fine, doesn’t require CEC. I just am not sure of a way to trigger this manually when I’m done using it.
- Comment on So which budget printer to buy? 8 months ago:
I’m happy with my Ender 3 Pro. I paid $200 but you can get it cheaper. I think there is a coupon sometimes for $100 at Micro Center. It’s common enough that replacement parts and upgrades (both printed and purchased) are readily available. Runs open source Marlin firmware and the design itself is also open source. Print quality is good for the price. For the price I’m OK with it not having direct extruder or dual Z axis, and adding auto bed leveling is easy enough with a BLTouch or CRTouch.
- Comment on Adding TV to bedroom without using mainstream smart device 8 months ago:
I just set up a bedroom “TV” which is just an old monitor and Raspberry Pi. I installed Kodi and some addons for TV sources. Works OK, just wish there was an easy way to turn the monitor off from the Pi on command so I don’t have to walk over to it and shut it off manually.
- Comment on Nokia tells Reddit it might be infringing on Nokia's patents. 8 months ago:
Both sides suck here but I have to side with Reddit over patent trolls. Nokia, what a disgrace you are these days if you have to resort to patent trolling. You used to be cool. That said, if this hurts Reddit’s IPO then I’ll be happy anyways.
- Comment on "Best" Mac browser: Your view 8 months ago:
I mostly use Linux but have a Mac Mini as a TV PC. I use the same browser everywhere - LibreWolf. It’s Firefox but with Mozilla’s bullshit adware/sponsored garbage removed and some extra privacy-focused features/default settings. Firefox has become adware itself, with its home page having sponsored garbage and suggested stories from partners. I generally love what Mozilla is doing and we need competition in the browser space, but I don’t want Mozilla spamming up my homepage with their “suggestions”.