[X] My Assistant

I think I was bored and went too deep on cars and trains for no real reason.

My current car is probably more difficult on the software side, I do find multi-map interpolation pretty cool but more difficult to dial in unless you tune for the different engine cycles and usage modes, then do tune with dyno, road usage and track.

I mean its not that difficult I guess, over 6k rpm is tuned for racing, under 5k is tuned more for regular driving then I have manual mode configurations. I had the backfiring mode deleted as that is retarded.

I got experts to do it mostly, I tried and failed. The software simulators to tune cars don't really work that well, you can kinda of dial things in but so much goes wrong. You run into weird shit like low rpm detonation or high RPM micro detention around direct injectors. Though to be fair, even the manufacturers did not know about these real world problems when they designed the engine.

Then there is shit like the 3D geometry of the piston shape which is beyond me. That requires so crazy computers to calculate. I guess most of that is done for like F1 racing and trickles down to mainstream cars 10-15 years later.


edit: The EVGA 4090 was one of the highest performing cards, but they were pissed off enough to rage quit due tohow Nvidia was messing them around. Going into negative ROI for the 3000 series thanks to Nvidia was too much.

The problem is that Nvidia is dishonest, the RRP on the cards is not profitable for the board partners and is only sustained for the release window due to rebates from Nvidia. Then prices have to rise, because the launch prices are not realistic based on Nvidia costs that are then passed on to board partners.



This post has been edited by EsotericSatire: Nov 10 2022, 04:17

I wish FFmpeg would stop breaking its goddamn API.

I just spent two hours or so updating an old abandoned program (last commit in 2016, last release in 2012) that I use to handle the newest version (which had removed quite a bit of stuff that it uses). Many of the things I was supposed to change it to use instead were not entirely clear, so I basically just stumbled my way through it until it compiled and now I'm hoping I didn't just introduce more bugs.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Nov 10 2022, 23:00

[i.imgur.com] (IMG:[i.imgur.com] https://i.imgur.com/MkTcdiCg.jpg)
So. Fucking. Close. I'm in hell.
That corner has no populated parts on it, so I am actually seriously considering snapping it off. I kind of wonder if that's something that was designed that way on purpose to deal with this kind of bullshit.

Has anyone seen that done before?
Hesitant to actually do it if not certain of success because it is a 3dfx card and I'll probably never get another one this cheap (it was free in around 2012; I've not used it even once because my only AGP stuff was Pentium 4 era and the wrong voltage).

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Nov 11 2022, 06:16

Can't you use a riser?

Can't you use a riser?

Sure. where do I put the actual card then, though? Gotta be a slot in the case somewhere.

Also that's something I have to buy and then wait for, So I'd rather not.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Nov 12 2022, 06:37

Sure. where do I put the actual card then, though? Gotta be a slot in the case somewhere.

Also that's something I have to buy and then wait for, So I'd rather not.

Last time I had that issue, we still had cool computers stores and computer markets here. So I could go and get cheap retro stuff for purpose. These days, its harder.



Also Nvidia is scumming on warranty if you don't use their adapter if it melts.

Just swapped the rubber domes from an old broken thinkpad keyboard into one of my dell latitudes' boards. I'd noticed that one felt significantly better to me than the other, and that the better feeling one had been made by NMB. My thinkpads' board had also been made by NMB. So I popped NMB domes into the other latitude's board.

It is feeling nicer now (to my tastes at least). Bottoms out just a wee bit harder (less spongy), and is a little bit lighter to actuate.

The other board was made by some company called "Sunrex." Which according to its own website is the world's largest laptop keyboard manufacturer now.
So I guess that probably means that shitty keyboard layout that every goddamn laptop seems to use nowadays is their fault.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Nov 13 2022, 08:12

getting the (stand-alone) Linux version of Flash Player working is just going to keep getting harder.

Digging through the dependency tree was a nightmare this time around. Especially because flash player gives no console warnings if it can't dlopen() a library.

Tried building lightspark (a free software flash player that doesn't require goddamn Vulkan to work) today. It always feels like it's in a perpetual state of 'not working.'

This time it bugs out on simple flashes on amd64 and segfaults at startup on i386 (32-bit).

I have a build for amd64 from a few months ago that seems to work decently that I'm holding on to. Not tried building that git revision for 32-bit yet, though.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Nov 14 2022, 06:03

regex and awk are wonderful creations

Debian's '/usr merge' policy just scrozzled my server's 8 year old installation.

I fixed it by brute force moving everything from /usr/lib over /lib's contents, moving /lib to /usr/lib, and symlinking /lib to /usr/lib.


There's still tons of broken cancerous shit to fix... but at least it's letting me log in now instead of failing to find init.

Update:
all better now... as far as I can tell. had to run ldconfig and mess with /etc/nsswitch.conf a little.

I'm glad I keep an old hard drive around with an ancient debian (or was it linuxmint?) install that i can use to fix the filesystem. IIRC I updated ext4 utils on it so I wouldn't wreck one of those optional extensions that older fsck.ext4 doesn't deal with properly. Can't remember what that was anymore.

---
edit 2:
meanwhile, the same upgrades on my only slightly newer debian install on my laptop went relatively fine - although I had to kill it by force and reboot it before i could run any new programs on it.
Something with the upgrade had stopped me from being able to execute anything that wasn't already running. Usually I'd suspect libc, but I didn't get the usual warning about libc upgrades this time around so i'm wondering what else would have caused it.

Guess it could just be fallout from the /usr/ merge, too.

I'd been dreading that merge for a while now.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Nov 14 2022, 22:12

It's always seemed strange to me how much variance there is in terms of how much old beige ABS electronics stuff has yellowed.

On my Apple Extended board it is barely noticeable at all; many that I've seen (maybe even most) are horrible, though.

It's always seemed strange to me how much variance there is in terms of how much old beige ABS electronics stuff has yellowed.

On my Apple Extended board it is barely noticeable at all; many that I've seen (maybe even most) are horrible, though.

Also varies on exposure to heat, light, UV, and other solvents.

Also varies on exposure to heat, light, UV, and other solvents.

Yes... but I wonder how much is that and how much is specific batches of plastic.

Because all early SNES consoles yellowed much, much faster than later ones did, for instance.

Yes... but I wonder how much is that and how much is specific batches of plastic.

Because all early SNES consoles yellowed much, much faster than later ones did, for instance.

Well first they didn't have stablisers and also fire retardants. The problem was the first gen fire retardants were toxic as fuck. Stablisers also broke down into environmental pollution. So there are few different wild cards thrown in as well.

It tends to be the surface film layer that is most affected, so you can clean some plastics up fairly easily by disassembling and using hydrogen peroxide.


I am also tempted to try and clean the ancient AC, as its fairly yellow.

Upgraded from a Pentium II to a Pentium III today.
Old was a PII SL2U3 (Deschutes, 350MHz, SECC1 slot-1 packaging); new is a PIII SL35E (Katmai, 500MHz, SECC2 slot-1 packaging).

And got the Voodoo3 installed.

I pulled both of these cards (yes, I am calling the CPU a card) out of junked computers about a decade ago and had no idea if either worked until tonight.
[i.imgur.com] (IMG:[i.imgur.com] https://i.imgur.com/ZSMpw9eg.jpg)

Well first they didn't have stablisers and also fire retardants. The problem was the first gen fire retardants were toxic as fuck. Stablisers also broke down into environmental pollution. So there are few different wild cards thrown in as well.

It tends to be the surface film layer that is most affected, so you can clean some plastics up fairly easily by disassembling and using hydrogen peroxide.
I am also tempted to try and clean the ancient AC, as its fairly yellow.

A fair explanation, except I have a famicom from 1984 (based on IC datecodes) with no yellowing.
They must have changed something with the formulation. I haven't seen a pearly made-in-japan SNES for a long time. Some of the later China units look good still.

Peroxide makes them brittle as fuck. Moreso than they already were.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Nov 16 2022, 09:16

A fair explanation, except I have a famicom from 1984 (based on IC datecodes) with no yellowing.
They must have changed something with the formulation. I haven't seen a pearly made-in-japan SNES for a long time. Some of the later China units look good still.

On a collectors forum, they said the level of Bromide in batches of the plastic different wildly and on earlier models the ABS plastic was prone to quickly turning yellow.

So Its probably a mix of different plastic and also differences in the batches.



On a weird design note, the Sega Astro City Mini has the same design quirk that only official controllers work with it, just to annoy everyone.

I've spent way too much time preparing an autistic torrent of an imported anime blu ray box set.

I did the rips over a month ago, and just have been slowly getting closer and closer to being ready for release. I think the last thing I have to do is extract the bonus features out of the BDMV's I ripped (AMV's, etc.). I don't think I'm going to put the BDMV's in the torrent (at least not in this one) since it'd be lacking subtitles and would therefore just be more cumbersome than helpful for most people.

This box set has two blu-rays and a bunch of music CD's.

I've made FLAC rips of the music CD's in the box, and just wrote up instructions on how to convert the FLAC's back into a bin/cue that you can burn to get CD's that are bit-perfect identical to the originals.

Probably made it too confusing/overwhelming by going into how to set up ffmpeg (which is the method that I'm using to do the conversion).

I'd just upload the .bin/.cue, but I'm already doing lossless blu-ray rips and I think the torrent is going to be big and cumbersome enough already.

I'm not uploading raw blu-ray images or a BDMV though (for now at least); just losslessly ripped MKV's with subtitles synchronized to them.

The CD FLAC rips also have metadata for all the tracks, are named appropriately, have studio info/release dates, etc. all added in, which was something I did with the assistance of a shell script I wrote. Tagging music is a real pain in the ass.

I wish cue/flac were a proper standard that I could rely on things to support, and that standard, portable cuesheets could use one audio file per track instead of requiring all the tracks to be concatenated in one file. Sure, some Windows programs like EAC seem to be able to handle that, but tons of other programs don't.

Update: Think I'm done now, just procrastinating on actually cleaning up my temp folders.

On a collectors forum, they said the level of Bromide in batches of the plastic different wildly and on earlier models the ABS plastic was prone to quickly turning yellow.

So Its probably a mix of different plastic and also differences in the batches.

I'm pretty sure it's actually _all_ snes models made in japan.
Game boys, too.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Nov 17 2022, 07:10

Just transferred a bunch of driver files to my Win98 SE machine via HyperTerm with a null modem rs232 serial cable. Installed Voodoo3 drivers and SB Live! drivers, as well as ethernet.

I took the opportunity to test out my personal website (not linked) in Internet Explorer 5. Lo and behold, it works properly, and looks alright, even at 800x600.

I didn't have to change a damn thing to support it.

Yesss. The karma. The 4080 initially sold out... but it was mainly scalpers... On Ebay scalpers have only moved 8% of the scalped cards.

Gamers: Its shit at the RRP, why would be pay the scalped price.


So scalpers are getting hosed. Nice. Unfortunately they still made loads on the 4090 but losing big on the 4080 is good.

That's odd, because 4090 is even worse at RRP.

Goes to show people only care about e-peen measurements and imaginary performance.

There's a long running joke in the Amiga community that every incredibly expensive accelerator board and whatnot you buy for it is just a way to boost your numbers on benchmarking software and serves no other purpose. I have to agree.

Speaking of commodore, got another C64 today for $20. No idea if it works, but I'm not about to turn it on until I have a non-commodore-made power supply to test it with.

Another thought: every image host is shit. Been preparing to upload a torrent to a private tracker and uploading a batch of screenshots is a major pain in the ass.

They don't require me to post screenshots, but I think it's good courtesy. Not to mention it gives people an idea of what to expect from the torrent so they might take the time and ratio hit to download it.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Nov 20 2022, 10:46