[X] My Assistant

ASUS Engineers: Our motherboard's over current protection is not working we will have to issue a bios update later. Don't worry the

I've always found bios firmware worryingly buggy and horrid. talking to some of the coreboot guys when they were struggling to reverse engineer some black magic, theres really a lot of awful stuff going on in there.
and that was old relatively well engineered and documented stuff, I can only imagine whats left of even that with budget cuts in engineering and rushed deadlines

In other thoughts does anyone still listen to radio anymore? I quite like the experience but the FM band is slowly disappearing here. I tried switching to internet radio but now its quite a struggle to find decent stations that have that radio vibe of just presenters/djs throwing in music and talking abour and random things

I've always found bios firmware worryingly buggy and horrid. talking to some of the coreboot guys when they were struggling to reverse engineer some black magic, theres really a lot of awful stuff going on in there.
and that was old relatively well engineered and documented stuff, I can only imagine whats left of even that with budget cuts in engineering and rushed deadlines

The old MBR-based BIOSes were bad for different reasons, mostly because of how small the bootstrap code had to be, and all the other legacy crap that they had to start with and then work their ways up from.
(U)EFI might be somewhat better in one sense because it might be written in a higher level language than assembler, but worse in others because there's so much more code to sift through when reverse engineering for something like Coreboot. It also usually is harder to replace the BIOS ROM or remove things like whitelists on mini PCIe cards on (U)EFI systems than on the MBR-based BIOS ones where you can just boot into FreeDOS and flash, oftentimes. I was able to successfully make a BIOS flashing USB drive for my MBR-based thinkpad using FreeDOS as a base, even though Lenovo only supported booting from a CD for DOS-based BIOS updates (which was hilarious because my Thinkpad did not ship with a CD drive).
Anyway, I'm getting off-topic.

In other thoughts does anyone still listen to radio anymore? I quite like the experience but the FM band is slowly disappearing here. I tried switching to internet radio but now its quite a struggle to find decent stations that have that radio vibe of just presenters/djs throwing in music and talking abour and random things

I listen to a local NPR member station, especially when they switch over to the local music shows late at night. There's a progressive rock one that finds some really nice obscure tracks that's hosted by a local record store owner. Found a lot of good bands and musicians through him.

NPR (nationally syndicated) stuff is hit or miss for me. Sometimes I turn it off in disgust (I consider myself to be a well-meaning and open minded person, but sometimes it really feels circlejerk-y the ways things are framed on NPR news and the exact stories they choose to report on).
But the less news-related things like "Hidden Brain" or "Radio Lab" can be really, really good. I do not hesitate to recommend those two programmes.

The rest of the FM band here is total garbage. AM is even worse. And I don't want to even think about how bad shortwave must be.

Thought:
I've been continuing to teach someone the ways of computer wizardry - at least, to the extent that I am capable of it. It's great to have such a willing and enthusiastic learner with a confident attitude (they are confident that they can learn this stuff, even if it takes a while to really settle in and 'click'). That's largely how I learned, except I didn't really have a teacher who could drop hints or offer solutions/explanations. Just answers from random people online who didn't always know what they were doing. My hope is that I'm providing some assistance to help them get there a little faster. Kind of eager for whenever they finally decide they need to compile a program from source. I think that's a major rite of passage.

I did a lot of that with cross compilation and other things to make life harder, but I think I have a relatively solid understanding of compiling and linking now. Enough that I've been able to make LD_PRELOAD libraries to override specific C functions to disable some menu bars I didn't like in a binary-only GTK C program (the standalone flash player projector program - removing the top menu bar and window borders to make a pseudo full screen, since the regular full screen mode made keyboard inputs not work). And port some relatively ancient graphical programs to work with modern compilers or with newer versions of libraries.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: May 21 2023, 10:29

Just dreamed about Sony A7R Mark 6 last night, 80MP, 12fps, 4K 120fps, priced around US$4000

Just dreamed about Sony A7R Mark 6 last night, 80MP, 12fps, 4K 120fps, priced around US$4000

I dreamed about the Sony MVC-FD7. It had 10x digital zoom and 'functionally infinite' storage space because you swap out the floppy disks on the fly.

work

I dreamed about the Ampex VPR-2 last night.
2" Quadruplex tape recorder (VTR).
[postimg.cc] (IMG:[i.postimg.cc] https://i.postimg.cc/7Z097Wkx/ampex-vpr2-800.jpg)

Also I just bought my first safety razor (double-edged style; adjustable. Merkur Progress 500). Bleeding is anticipated (but I'll try to be careful). Not too familiar with this style of razor, but I fancy that my intuition and common sense will mostly work, given my functional mechanical understanding of how razor blade angles work.

Got sick and tired of the cost of cartridges, not to mention the plastic waste, and that was enough for my somewhat masochistic tendencies regarding cost and convenience decisions to kick in. 100 blades for $10 to $20 was too good to pass up. Even if I'd gone for the Feather brand blades (which widely seem to be seen as the best), it'd still be massively cheaper than buying mach-3 cartridges from Costco (or Trac-II cartridges from <wherever>).

Guessing it'll slow down my shaving speed significantly, but I don't value my time so that's okay.

...Hey, I could have chosen a straight razor instead, if i really wanted to go all-in.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: May 24 2023, 19:38

Guessing it'll slow down my shaving speed significantly, but I don't value my time so that's okay.

Longterm solution: Laser hair removal and/or electrolysis (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)
No more environmental waste!!

Longterm solution: Laser hair removal and/or electrolysis (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)
No more environmental waste!!

I've considered it for body hair.

Longterm solution: Laser hair removal and/or electrolysis (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)
No more environmental waste!!

I've considered that, but then I discovered it wasn't a one time thing, you have to go over and over again over a long time, and must do your own cut before going into the procedure.........anyway that was infinitely more complicated, time-consuming and intimidating than I was hoping for (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif) (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif)

edit: and the cost increase along those parameters too (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)

This post has been edited by uareader: May 25 2023, 22:01

I got AltWFC-based Pokémon battles in Diamond/Pearl/Platinum to work the other day between two of my systems on different subnets. Sent a friend a router so we could try to play together, and suddenly it didn't work anymore.

Going to try with a VPN involved, but I am still getting quite confused and frustrated, because now I can't even connect between two of my own devices like I was able to the other day.

We can both connect and see that the other is connected, but the moment we interact the DSes try to directly communicate with each other peer-to-peer and it all comes crashing down. DMZ's, port forwards don't seem to be working or helping.

It is sublimely irritating.

Regarding facial hair coming back after laser removal: maybe the solution is to chop off your balls.

For the rest, the solution is to chop off your body. Don't thank me; thank your endocrine system.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: May 26 2023, 07:58

RTX 4060TI is affected by techno shrink-flation.

Its the same price as the 3060ti (which nvidia claims is a price cut due to inflation) and provides 0-10% performance increase.

Nvidia: its for 1080p gamers (because it has negative performance increase at 4k).

JACOSub is actually a pretty high quality program, in my opinion.

It's a shame that it appears the source may have been lost for the latest release, although there is source out there for older versions.

Regardless, it's more awkward than something like Aegisub today, but the documentation is superb and the stability and quality of output is good. I've actually been enjoying using it more than I'd expected to.

(Amiga subtitling software for use with genlocks.)

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: May 29 2023, 08:03

Maybe I just don't understand/know physics right, but I wonder why computers don't become bigger, assuming that while technology become smaller, cooling reach a limit, so it would be better to leave space around or something to keep it efficient, thus leading to bigger things.

Maybe I just don't understand/know physics right, but I wonder why computers don't become bigger, assuming that while technology become smaller, cooling reach a limit, so it would be better to leave space around or something to keep it efficient, thus leading to bigger things.

I mean making the container bigger kinda still works. You see bigger fans, bigger cases being the trend recently. But it's only effective to an extent, like a pc case too big can introduce spots where the air stays stale and there's no good air flow in the case.
Making the chips themselves bigger is an entire different problem, however.

Maybe I just don't understand/know physics right, but I wonder why computers don't become bigger, assuming that while technology become smaller, cooling reach a limit, so it would be better to leave space around or something to keep it efficient, thus leading to bigger things.

Super computers are still pretty big, I had one workplace where the 'computer' took up an entire level. The workstation I used then was beefy, xeon with four graphics cards and 15 hotswap hard drive bays and dual psus.
Not that great for gaming though.



Everyone is using cloud now, which just servers elsewhere that you don't physically control.

Maybe I just don't understand/know physics right, but I wonder why computers don't become bigger, assuming that while technology become smaller, cooling reach a limit, so it would be better to leave space around or something to keep it efficient, thus leading to bigger things.

1. we are obsessed with making things small and light, it seems - and with reducing expandability/repairability.
2. Electrons travelling longer distances take longer to reach their destinations, and the timing errors that result from high clock speeds with poor board design also increase.

In a couple ways, computers are getting bigger: ultrawide monitors (if considered to be part of a computer), as well as GPU sizes.

I for one like the idea of bigger things, but I think a lot of people wouldn't stand for it.

Audio gear with decent a decent clock and proper power design are now luxury class devices rather than just the norm. I find it weird that products list features that were considered the standard, as stand out design choices these days.

Audio gear with decent a decent clock and proper power design are now luxury class devices rather than just the norm. I find it weird that products list features that were considered the standard, as stand out design choices these days.

It's because audio is a relatively mature technology and there's little to add that actually differentiates products.

So either things get made up, like MQA, or things get "renewed" because the competitors aren't talking about those existing elements of their products.

I know which one I prefer.

Also our expectations have dropped, on the whole. I think perhaps people in general are actually becoming less tech literate in these technical respects, too. But I can't prove that.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Jun 1 2023, 02:50

Also our expectations have dropped, on the whole. I think perhaps people in general are actually becoming less tech literate in these technical respects, too. But I can't prove that.

I think the mass market is less technical but there were always less technical people. I can't afford the replacement value of all my audio gear now... like it doubled or tripled in price for even second hand lol.

So there are people that appreciate good gear.

I feel bad about continuing the robot ant ai contest on codingame.
I'm quite satisfied with my current version, as it is not working exactly like in concept, and this lead to some entertaining subjectively random behavior change.
I'm afraid if I try to make it "better", it will just be more "rigid" and "boring" (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)