Thorry84

@Thorry84@feddit.nl

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I once went down the rabbit hole of thinking about how the targeting works on the TNG kind of transporter. Like they need to know to the molecule where your body ends and the rest of the universe begins. And you want it to identify clothing, because you don’t want to end up nude on the other side. Plus it needs to identify what creepy crawlies are a part of you and which were just randomly wandering by. We don’t want any of those pesky Fly problems now do we? This might sound easy, but is actually extremely hard. The human body is very complex and like a ship of Theseus what is part of the body is a bit nebulous and can change. All of the microbiome in our gut is essential for us to stay alive. And more importantly we don’t want to leave behind a puddle of crap every time we transport. Plus what happens if we come out the other end, do our intestines just implode? Or does the transporter fill them with air, leaving you to fart uncontrollably until you die?

  And how does it know what clothes are? If I’m wearing shoes, does it know where the shoes end and the floor starts? What if I’m wearing skies? What if I’m barefoot on a carpet? What if it’s a leather carpet? What if I’m wearing shoes made by folding carpet around my feet?

  The only thing that makes sense is a super powerful AI system that can real-time scan every molecule and figure out what’s what. And it doesn’t only need to be smart, it also needs a lot of real world knowledge. It needs to know what is “logical” to include in every situation. This means it has to be an AGI, has to be superintelligent (at a minimum speed wise) and would most likely be sentient. Them being used for this one and only purpose is really cruel.

  This leads me to the conclusion TNG style transporters are basically slavery and put a whole different spin on the morality of the people in that universe. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨NASA landed on the moon, by shooting for the moon⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s not how orbital mechanics work

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨SHUT UP EDDINGTON! NOBODY LIKES YOU!⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Worf worked in security and got to be first officer of the Enterprise. After that became Strategic Operations Officer, which is command even though it’s still ops related. As a bonus he became first officer on the Defiant as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stars⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Honest question: Do people think stars look like the star shape because of diffraction spikes in refractor telescopes? I thought the star shape pre-dated any refractor telescope. And I don’t know how many people would have seen refractor images back in the days to make it so culturally engrained?

  The post-processing used in astronomical observations is a really interesting topic. I’m following the debate around the black hole images with great interest. I don’t know enough about the specifics to have an opinion, but it is very interesting and has overlap with some of the things I do for work.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Over 200 days after its official closure, the last user of Nintendo Network's online servers finally disconnected after a 3DS system crash⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Nah you can just emula…

  Fuck Nintendo is at my door, I’m afraid I’ll run out of ammo before they will, when I get to hell I’ll shout Ya-hoo

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft wants $30 to let you keep using Windows 10 securely for another year⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Most people who are fed up with Microsofts crap simply don’t buy a new computer anymore. They just do everything on an iPad (maybe pro) or similar without Windows. Gamers switch over to consoles, with Nintendo and Steam deck being preferred. Those things may run Linux like the Steam deck or another non Windows OS, but the user won’t notice or care since they don’t interact with it.

  The time of the desktop and to a lesser extent the laptop has come and gone. It’s only for enthusiasts and people at work. At work people probably just use the same couple of apps or even just a browser with a webapp and never really interact with the OS. If it’s even a full computer and not a thin client connecting to a virtual desktop environment. People don’t know or care about OSes. Maybe they’ll bitch about Windows at times, but they bitch about a lot of things at work and they have no influence over any of it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨M4 Mac Mini Power Button Has New Bottom Location⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That would depend heavily on how accessible the computer is and how fat your fingers are. And I can tell you, mine are pretty fat.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sending intranet Email on a token ring network still used the same process as creating a Memo⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Back when token ring was designed normally networks would use coaxial cables for communication. No matter if it ran ethernet, token ring or something else, everybody would share basically a single cable. The cable would have T connectors inserted to connect a computer and the end of the cable needed something to terminate it. It didn’t need to be a single line, you could have splits and even a star like design, although there were limitations.

  Normally in a room the cable would be laid out like a ring although it usually wouldn’t be a closed ring, but instead terminated on one end. This meant each computer would be connected to its direct neighbors, but this wouldn’t be an active thing. It wasn’t like the computer could only transmit to its neighbors and then they needed to pass it on. It was like a shared line, where everyone could transmit and every computer would receive everything transmitted.

  When everything switched over to the regular twisted pair cables we know today, it didn’t really change from a communications point of view. Every computer wasn’t connected to their neighbors but instead to a hub, but just like before anything anyone transmitted could be received by anyone on the network. It wasn’t until much later when things like switches became commonplace and not everyone got all the traffic.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Eat lead⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And the fun scientific counterpart of the Boltzmann brain. The idea that in an infinite universe (at least in a couple of the spatial dimensions if not also a time dimension) random fluctuations could combine to form your brain. Including all of your memories, thoughts, hopes and dreams. You think you have had an entire life, but in reality your brain was just formed moments ago. And it may possibly stop existing in a few more moments, this moment being the only one the brain has actually experienced.

  When taken to its natural conclusion, the entire Earth of even the solar system or galaxy might have just been created by random chance. The perfect storm of randomness. It may have been created longer ago or just nanosecond before now. There is no way of telling.

  Thermodynamics has been used to counter and strengthen this idea. And with infinity on the table anything goes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Birmingham Travel Guide⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Well you say that, but near the office park where I used to work there was a gas station that served as the outlet for a local sandwich place. All the sandwiches would get made fresh in the morning and be delivered just in time for lunch. They were awesome, there were lines around the block at lunchtime. They were known throughout the area. The sandwich shop also did deliveries for orders of 50 pieces and up, but the company I worked for only did that a few times a year. Haven’t worked there for over 15 years, but I still remember the taste of those sandwiches.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Publishers Always Innovating⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah totally correct. The CRT is only the tube part, the whole thing is the monitor. But when I call it monitor people automatically assume it’s like an LCD. So I would have to call it CRT monitor, but that’s a lot.

  I will post a vid of the thing if people care.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Publishers Always Innovating⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah the pot is fine, that was the first suspect. Cleaned it and even thought of replacing it, but it measures just fine.

  I’ve found several versions of the service manual and combined them to get the info I want. Both seem to be parts of a larger manual, which I can’t find.

  I’ve been probing and scoping for hours over the past months. But when the CRT is apart that’s kinda hard, since it has a lot of high voltage I want to avoid. No worries, I have the tools and the experience to work with these things. Over my professional and hobby lifetime I’ve fixed over a hundred CRTs and worked on/designed/built hundreds of other electronics.

  I took out a couple of transistors (this thing is almost all discrete components, no integrated stuff) in the horizontal deflection path and tested them and they seem fine. I hooked them up to a function gen and a scope and tested them within parameters. That’s how I found and replaced two other transistors that were dodgy and bringing the thing back to life to start with (it had fully collapsed vertically).

  I checked every component in the horizontal deflection path and they all seem fine. And since the thing works most of the time, I suspect they are fine. It might be mechanical, but I’ve tapped all around and that does nothing. If the issue shows up, it stays like that for a while and then randomly disappears again. Only for it to randomly come back.

  I’m pretty sure it isn’t a thermal issue, it’s a small CRT which doesn’t use a lot of power and doesn’t really get hot. The issue also appears and goes away randomly. And with the parts open on my bench it still happens. I’ve blasted the entire horizontal path with hot air in case of some cracked solder or something like that. But it still happens.

  I suspect it’s actually one of the other circuits that throws off the horizontal deflection. Probably something shorting or close to somewhere. I’ll have to get out my notebook, print out the schematic and start drawing it out. That usually does the trick to get my brain to figure out what the actual issue is. Somehow even after using computers for so long, I need to revert back to how I learnt it in school back in the days to fully engage my brain. Computers probably are too easy and make me lazy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Publishers Always Innovating⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Finding datasheets and service manuals is a nightmare. So many websites claiming to have the right file, only to end up being a scam and not having any files. Having files they have no right to and are publicly available behind a pay wall. Having weird online viewers instead of just giving the file. Padding the file with extra pages of nonsense so they can claim more pages and a larger file size. Having the wrong file mislabeled. Etc. It goes on and on. And then there’s the sites that redirect a thousand times and then crash the browser. I hope I didn’t just get a virus or something.

  All I want is to fix this old CRT from 1981 so I can enjoy it for a few more years, is that too much to ask? And back in those days they actually cared about repairability. Especially the services manuals with scope traces for the test points save so much time troubleshooting.

  Archive.org is a good place luckily. If it isn’t down because shit heads can’t behave on the internet. As a species we really like to get in our own way all of the time.

  And no I still haven’t fixed up that CRT. It is working now after replacing two weirdly behaving transistors, a new power cord and a new power button (old one worked but didn’t stay on unless you held it on). Replaced a few caps but most tested fine, good quality caps. Even the once I replaced were working, but marginal on the ESR. Cosmetics are also good, but there is still an intermittent fault with it losing horizontal size adjustment. It goes from fine and perfectly working to a little too narrow without any adjustment. 90% of the time it’s fine, 10% of the time it’s faulty and it switches random. I’ve been going mad tracing where the issue is, but I will fix it one day.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rabbit Population⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  As so often with anything related to maths, pi pops out at the most unexpected places.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Installation⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Holy shit that must be some freak combination of factors. Thanks for sharing!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Installation⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks for the clarification, pipes look like copper but might be cast iron.

  Still doesn’t fit with the explanation, aluminum has more resistance than copper, but not that much more. The resistance of cast iron is an order of magnitude higher than aluminum. So it would still be the lowest resistance in the circuit and thus the coolest part.

  And cast iron is pretty good at conducting heat. Not as good as copper or aluminum, but still pretty good. We’ve been using the material to make pans and pots for cooking because of it’s thermal properties. So the heat wouldn’t just stop at the fitting, but continue on at least some ways.

  Moreover it’s physically impossible to get aluminum hot enough to glow like this and still keep it’s shape. It melts at 600 degrees C, well below the point where something gets red hot, let alone yellow like this. If the aluminum were to be this hot, it would be in a puddle and at risk of burning.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Installation⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  This makes no sense at all.

  Why would only these two specific pipes get hot, so hot to glow, but not the other lines connected to it? And not the fittings around it? It’s all copper, so even if the power itself doesn’t heat them up, why would being connected to an extremely hot pipe heat it up. Since it’s you know copper and being good at transferring heat is what it’s known for.

  And why would the lower resistance part be the part that get hottest? Low resistance means less loss, so those parts would in fact be the coldest of all.

  Plus thin walled copper pipes can’t get so hot they glow without melting or at the very least lose all structural integrity and break.

  And a downed power line with a short to ground would almost immediately turn off. It’s when there isn’t a direct line to ground those things are dangerous. As soon as it shorts, it gets turned off at the source to prevent further damage, fire and not cause issues upstream.

  Either it’s Photoshop or someone has wrapped led lighting around some pipes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does leaving a single board computer caseless can be a problem or not?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If you are statically charged and you touch the bare PCB, you will do damage. Having a case prevents you from touching the PCB directly and a metal grounded case will also allow you to discharge without damage.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube has found a new way to load ads | AdGuard Blog⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  No, you misunderstand. You get seconds assigned to your token. It doesn’t matter where in the video you use those seconds.

  So if you watch an ad you get say 60 secs of video until you need to watch an ad again. You can watch 30 secs, then skip 2 minutes ahead and watch another 30 secs, then you get an ad. In reality the times would be larger, but to illustrate a point.

  In the current setup YT uses, if you watch an ad, watch 2 secs of video, then skip ahead of the next adbreak, you get more ads.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube has found a new way to load ads | AdGuard Blog⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Nope that’s not necessary at all, the client experience can be the same as it’s always been. See my other response for what I was thinking of.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube has found a new way to load ads | AdGuard Blog⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah I’m thinking of a system like this:

  A user opens a session to watch a video, the user is assigned a token to watch the requested video. When the user isn’t a premium subscriber and the video is monetized the token is used to enforce ads. To get video data from the server, the user needs to supply the token. That token contains a “credit” with how many seconds (or whatever they use internally) the user can watch for that video. In order to get seconds credited to the token, the user needs to stream ad content to their player. New ad content is only available to stream, once the number of seconds they were credited have been elapsed.

  One way to get around this is to have something in the background “watch” the video for you, invisible, including the ads. Then records the video data, so it’s available for you to watch without ads. But it would be easy to rate limit the number of tokens a user can have. There’s ways to get around that as well. But this seems to me well beyond what a simple browser plugin can do, this would require a dedicated client.

  The idea is to make it harder for users to get around the ads, so they’ll watch them instead of looking for a way to block ads. In the end there isn’t anything to be done, users can get around the ads. Big streaming services use DRM and everything and their content gets ripped and shared. With YouTube it would be easy for someone to have a Premium account, rip the vids and share them. But by putting up a barrier, people watch the ads. YouTube doesn’t care if a percentage of users doesn’t watch the ads, as long as most of them do.

  My point was, there’s ways to implement the ads without sending metadata about the ads to the client.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube has found a new way to load ads | AdGuard Blog⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not talking about the player or the controls being server-side. I’m talking about the player being locked into a streaming mode where it does nothing but stream the ads. After the ads are streamed, the player returns to normal video mode and the server sends the actual video data.

  This means no metadata about the ads are required on the player side about the ads.

  Sure you can hack the player into not being locked during the streaming of the ads. But that won’t get you very far, since it’s a live stream. You can’t skip forward, because the data isn’t sent yet. You can skip backwards if you’d like, with what’s in the current buffer, but why would you want to? You can have the player not display the ads, but that means staring at a blank screen till the ads are over. And that’s always the case, one can simply walk away during the ads, that’s always been the case.

  Technically I can think of several ways to implement this, without the client having meta data about the ads. And with little to none ways of getting around the ads. Once the video starts it’s business as usual, so it doesn’t impact regular viewing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube has found a new way to load ads | AdGuard Blog⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Why would that be the case? The player can simply be locked into ad mode till it gets the cue from the server all of the ads have been streamed. Only then will the player unlock. When watching what amounts to a video stream, this doesn’t have to be handled clientside.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Headlamp tech that doesn’t blind oncoming drivers—where is it?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Oncoming drivers? I’m getting blasted by “cars” behind me. Fucking trucks or even lifted trucks with their headlights at my eye level. And it seems like lights are getting brighter as well, or people drive with their high beams on. My rearview mirror is auto dimming, which helps a lot. But since I drive the speed limit these trucks are swerving back and forth behind me, blinding me via the side mirrors.

  Man we really really need restrictions on size and weight of cars. It’s getting ridiculous out there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please make sure to check the expiration date on your toilet paper⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  For people wondering: This is to track batches from the factory, so when there’s a quality issue, they know when and where it was created.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Zelda-Inspired Plucky Squire Shows What Happens When A Game Doesn't Trust Its Players⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah this game is really annoying to play, which is a shame because it is cute as hell. It continually prompts you to do the thing. It’s like playing Mario and having someone tell you to walk right and jump all through the game. What makes it much worse is that the game fully comes to a stop to do so. Everything just pauses and the game explains what to do. Even when there is a puzzle, the game basically gives you the answer.

  The approach Astro Bot uses is much better. It let’s you struggle for a bit and then gives an animation with the move you need and which button it is. Which is really handy because even if you know what move you want it’s easy to forget the right button combination for it. It’s very non intrusive and if you know the move the animation won’t even pop up. An experienced player won’t notice the mechanic at all. If you come back from not playing for a bit, the reminder about the buttons is useful. For kids who genuinely get stuck, the help prevents them from giving up.

  Gamez that were infuriating with these kinds of mechanics were the new God of War games. At every fucking puzzle when you take 10 secs just to get oriented and look at what you need to do, some NPC (usually Boi of War) just tells you the answer. There is no way to turn this off and it made me turn off the game multiple times. If you want to put puzzles in the game, put puzzles in your game and let me figure it out. If you are going to give the answer, why are there puzzles to begin with? It doesn’t help Atreus is one of the worse characters ever written especially in the last game.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Transparent solar cell technology could allow smartphones and cars to self-charge⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Did a simple calculation to see how long it would take for such a tiny solar panel to charge the phone. And that’s not using the phone (turned off) and without concern for overheating the phone by putting it in direct sunlight. The efficiency of regular solar panels are bad, this transparent thing is cool but way worse than regular panels. In an optimized scenario (not realistic) it would take 60 hours for a full charge. Since there aren’t usually 24 hours of sunlight (let alone full direct sunlight) it would probably take a week to charge.

  Self charging phones using solar isn’t a thing that’s practically possible.

  Even at high efficiency (which isn’t possible) it isn’t practical since phones don’t do well in the sun and are usually stored in pockets, bags and often have covers over them. Plus they are mostly used inside where there isn’t sun, or outside where most of the times there also isn’t a lot of sun.

  Just put a solar panel on the roof, that’s the best place for solar panels.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Closing the car boot on your head will now kill you in Pacific Drive⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve closed the boot on my own head at least a thousand times in this game. The hitbox is janky AF.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨elucidating 🤌🏼⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Perchance?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sony announces the PS5 Pro with a larger GPU, advanced ray tracing, and AI upscaling⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Rendering a 3D scene is much more intensive and complicated than a simple scaler. The scaler isn’t advanced at all, it’s actually very simple. And it can’t be compared with running a large model locally. These are expert systems, not large models. They are very good at one thing and can do only that thing.

  Like I said the cost is fixed, so if the scaler can handle 1080p at 120fps to upscale to 2K, then it can always handle that. It doesn’t matter how complex or simple the image is, it will always use the same amount of power. It reads the image, does the calculation and outputs the resulting image.

  Rendering a 3D scene is much much more complex and power intensive. The amount of power highly depends on the complexity of the scene and there is a lot more involved. It needs the gpu, cpu, memory and even sometimes storage, plus all the bandwidth and latency in between.

  Upscaling isn’t like that, it’s a lot more simple. So if the hardware is there, like the AI cores on a gpu or the dedicated upscaler chip, it will always work. And since that hardware will normally not be heavily used, the rest of the components are still available for the game. A dedicated scaler is the most efficient, but the cores on the gpu aren’t bad either. That’s why something like DLSS doesn’t just work on any hardware, it needs specialized components. And different generations and parts have different limitations.

  Say your system can render a game at 1080p at a good solid 120fps. But you have a 2K monitor, so you want the game to run at 2K. This requires a lot more from the system, so the computer struggles to run the game at 60 fps and has annoying dips in demanding parts. With upscaling you run the game at 1080p at 120fps and the upscaler takes that image stream and converts it into 2K at a smooth 120fps. Now the scaler may not get all the details right, like running native 2K and it may make some small mistakes. But our eyes are pretty bad and if we’re playing games our brains aren’t looking for those details, but are instead focused on gameplay. So the output is probably pretty good and unless you were to compare it with 2K native side by side, probably you won’t even notice the difference. So it’s a way of having that excellent performance, without shelling out a 1000 bucks for better hardware.

  There are limitations of course. Not all games conform to what the scaler is good at. It usually does well with realistic scenes, but can struggle with more abstract stuff. It can get annoying halos and weird artifacts. There are also limitations to what bandwidth it can push, so for example not all gpus can do 4K at a high framerate. If the game uses the AI cores as well for other stuff, that can become an issue. If the difference in resolution is too much, that becomes very noticeable and unplayable. Often there’s also the option to use previous frames to generate intermediate frames, to boost the framerate with little cost. In my experience this doesn’t work well and just makes the game feel like it’s ghosting and smearing.

  But when used properly, it can give a nice boost basically for free. I have even seen it used where the game could be run at a lower quality at the native resolution and high framerate, but looked better at a lower resolution with a higher quality setting and then upscaled. The extra effects outweighed the small loss of fidelity.