JCAPER's recent activity

  1. Comment on Xbox confirms 'Project Helix', its next-gen console that will also play PC games in ~games

    JCAPER
    Link
    This won’t come as a surprise for those who’ve been following rumors, but now it’s confirmed TL;DR: the next “xbox” is a PC

    This won’t come as a surprise for those who’ve been following rumors, but now it’s confirmed

    TL;DR: the next “xbox” is a PC

    22 votes

  3. Comment on Apple announces Macbook Neo, a new budget Mac in ~tech

    JCAPER
    Link Parent
    Not to disregard your point, but how much RAM do you have? Because that might explain it, nowadays most OSes consume more RAM the more they have available. A fresh install of Windows 11 for...

    My Macbook Air running Tahoe is chilling with over 10GB of RAM in use with pretty much just the OS and Firefox with 5 tabs running.

    Not to disregard your point, but how much RAM do you have? Because that might explain it, nowadays most OSes consume more RAM the more they have available. A fresh install of Windows 11 for example can use about 10gb on a 64gb machine (wouldn't be surprised if it used over 20gb on a 128gb machine).

    Browsers do the same thing, so your macOS and Firefox might just be filling the free space that they have rather than actually needing it.

    13 votes

  4. Comment on Sony pulls back from PlayStation games on PC in ~games

    JCAPER
    (edited )
    Link
    Not surprised, but still disappointed. As a PC gamer I would love to disagree, but I can’t. I think they’re right. I think that as long they provide a box that plays games, they’ll always have an...

    Not surprised, but still disappointed.

    A faction within PlayStation has also expressed concern that releasing their games on PC risks damaging the console’s brand and will hurt sales of the PlayStation 5 and its successors, according to the people familiar with Sony’s inner workings.

    As a PC gamer I would love to disagree, but I can’t. I think they’re right.

    I think that as long they provide a box that plays games, they’ll always have an audience. PC gaming is more convenient than ever, but it will never be as convenient as just going to a store, pick up a console that you know that will run any game that is advertised for it. No need to think, pick or choose. Just buy the box that plays the game.

    But if we put that “casual” audience to the side, you have the audience that either doesn’t mind or prefers PC. For this group of people, I don’t believe that most would buy a PS5 if the game that they want already exists for PC. But I can see many buying the console just to play the exclusives. I should know, I was once like that.

    All of this said, I would love to play Ghost of Yotei, but I don’t really want to get back into the practice of buying consoles because of the exclusives. I’ll play it if someday they backtrack or an emulator pops up

    6 votes

  5. Comment on The internet was weeks away from disaster and no one knew in ~tech

    JCAPER
    Link
    TL:DW version: a hacker (or group of hackers) managed to become a trusted maintainer of xz project, and used that to build a backdoor into SSH protocols. They almost managed to make it into...

    TL:DW version: a hacker (or group of hackers) managed to become a trusted maintainer of xz project, and used that to build a backdoor into SSH protocols. They almost managed to make it into several distros - for a short bit, their backdoor was in Fedora and Debian. Someone by accident noticed how debian SSH calls were taking longer than usual, and reported it to debian, which then they sounded the alarm to everyone else.

    29 votes

  7. Comment on I switched my gaming PC to Linux, and this time I think it's for good in ~comp

  8. Comment on I switched my gaming PC to Linux, and this time I think it's for good in ~comp

    JCAPER
    Link Parent
    If you decide to try out arch again, try Endeavour OS. It's arch but with extra scripts, with several features and settings preconfigured for you. It makes Arch ready to go out of the box, so you...

    If you decide to try out arch again, try Endeavour OS. It's arch but with extra scripts, with several features and settings preconfigured for you. It makes Arch ready to go out of the box, so you don't waste time configuring every minute thing.

    It also has a welcome screen which acts as a tutorial, it tells you what you need to do upon first launch, and it also acts as a shortcut for several features that you can use later

    1 vote

  9. Comment on The Claude C Compiler: what it reveals about the future of software in ~tech

    JCAPER
    Link Parent
    For me LLMs are useful, but as a software that helps speed up the process rather than an automation software. Imo the problem is the insistence on trying to make it an automation tool. It’s not....

    For me LLMs are useful, but as a software that helps speed up the process rather than an automation software.

    Imo the problem is the insistence on trying to make it an automation tool. It’s not. It’s prone to mistakes, and these compound on each other the longer we let the agents run autonomously, much to the dismay of CEOs who want their companies to run only with bots that don’t need salaries

    The real use for me came from me using it to build simple functions/scripts that complement what I’m doing. Like how a mathematician uses a calculator to help his calculations.

    Like for example “I need a function that sums variables” or “I need a function that cleans up the string”, etc. I’ve been using it in this context for a long while now and it improved my performance quite a bit, I can make scripts in few hours that before would take days

    6 votes

  10. I switched my gaming PC to Linux, and this time I think it's for good

    ~comp Text 701 words
    This year I'm finally putting into action something that I've been wanting to do for some time: fortifying my home's network, improving privacy for my father and me, and laying the foundation for...

    This year I'm finally putting into action something that I've been wanting to do for some time: fortifying my home's network, improving privacy for my father and me, and laying the foundation for a smart home. (You guys took the time to help me out with that here, which, btw, thanks again!)

    The network and privacy fortification is well underway and working. I set up Pi-hole with Unbound on one of my Raspberry Pis that also acts as a Tailscale exit node, got a new router that can connect my devices to ProtonVPN, have my Synology server working as storage, and... you know what, let's save this for another post. I'm still figuring some things out and want to let the dust settle first.

    Anyway, back to gaming and PC'ing.

    I'm no stranger to Linux; I've been using it on and off for over a decade on older PCs. But I've never committed to it on my main rig. As I said in another post, "It's the little things that make me not jump to Linux". While "these little things" didn't completely go away, I guess rolling up my sleeves to reconfigure my network, becoming more privacy-conscious, and reading about the ongoing issues with Windows 11 tipped the scales.

    I debated between EndeavourOS and Fedora KDE. Fedora won.

    EOS is a solid choice and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to try out an Arch-based distro. But Fedora is undeniably more popular, which means if there's a Linux app, it's almost guaranteed the devs will have a Fedora version with dedicated documentation and installation commands. In other words, the potential for more convenience won out.

    And convenient it was, mostly thanks to this website: https://nattdf.streamlit.app/. It helped a ton. It installed codecs, SSH, enabled Flathub and RPM Fusion, etc. It even provides a script to install Nvidia drivers.

    But drivers weren't my real worry. My real worry was something else entirely.

    You see, I lied to you guys by omission. I actually tried to install Fedora a few months ago, but I had severe issues with my TV. My PC is connected to both a monitor and a TV. The monitor worked without problems, but the TV was a different story. The image quality was terrible. You know those photos taken with the very first camera phones? That's how the colors looked. I remember trying everything: switching to X11, installing different driver versions, messing around with Nvidia settings, display settings, color profiles, even the TV's internal settings. Nothing worked. So I gave up and went back to Windows.

    But today, while trying to fix an issue with my TV, I noticed two things:

    1. I found out that my TV's HDMI ports are not all equal. Port 4 is HDMI 2.1, while all the others are 2.0.
    2. My PC was connected to Port 3.

    This was the problem. It's what caused my Windows to randomly lose sound, and it's what made the image quality terrible on Fedora, and it's what caused issues I mentioned in my old post. I don't know how or why Windows could "deal with it" and output 4K 120Hz without apparent image quality loss, but somehow it did.

    Regardless, after moving the cable to Port 4, installing Fedora, and getting the drivers running... it works just fine and dandy. Great image quality, 4K, and 120Hz. My PC still works flawlessly as a gaming machine.

    The moral of the story? Don't be like me. Before blaming Wayland, Nvidia, drivers, or Linux... check the back of the TV.

    This also brings a much-needed sense of standardization to my setup. Now that everything is under the same Linux umbrella, I can manage it all via SSH with total consistency. I’m already eyeing my Raspberry Pi’s Telegram bot as a way to remotely wake the PC for heavy tasks and shut it down afterward. The potential of this setup has me feeling pretty euphoric.

    Now that the biggest hurdle is cleared, Steam is running perfectly and Proton is handling my game library like a champ. I'm finally daily-driving Linux on my main rig, and this time, I think it's for good.

    85 votes

  11. Comment on Hold on to your hardware in ~tech

    JCAPER
    Link
    The article doesn't touch on what happens when/if AI bubble bursts. (imo, it's more when than if, but that's besides the point) I'm not going to pretend that I know what will happen for certain,...

    The article doesn't touch on what happens when/if AI bubble bursts. (imo, it's more when than if, but that's besides the point)

    I'm not going to pretend that I know what will happen for certain, but I imagine that a lot of orders will be cancelled, these factories will scramble to find new buyers, and for a while a lot of hardware costs may come back down (and then we all perish and die in the panic of the stock market crash and all that jazz)

    Or is there something that I'm missing?

    14 votes

  12. Comment on The AI disruption has arrived, and it sure is fun (gifted link) in ~tech

    JCAPER
    Link
    Pressing X for doubt. Or I'm working for peanuts and not charging what I should, which is possible I guess

    When a friend asked me to convert a large, thorny data set, I downloaded it, cleaned it up and made it pretty and easy to explore. In the past I would have charged $350,000.

    Pressing X for doubt.

    Or I'm working for peanuts and not charging what I should, which is possible I guess

    2 votes

  13. Comment on Palantir was allegedly hacked, exposing CIA collusion and deep-rooted global surveillance/meddling in ~tech

    JCAPER
    Link Parent
    Unless you're Kim Dotcom. That's just another thursday for him

    Unless you're Kim Dotcom. That's just another thursday for him

    2 votes

  14. Comment on I hacked ChatGPT and Google's AI – and it only took twenty minutes in ~tech

    JCAPER
    Link Parent
    This matches with my experience (perplexity, gemini, claude, and others). When using web search, the models are instructed to believe what they find. So if bad/malicious results pop up in their...

    This matches with my experience (perplexity, gemini, claude, and others). When using web search, the models are instructed to believe what they find. So if bad/malicious results pop up in their discovery, they can't tell the difference between them and legit results.

    I had already assumed that this was being abused somehow, but it's still funny/worrying/depressing/more-adjectives seeing it in action in such an absurd way

    2 votes

  15. Comment on Popcorn lung: how vaping could scar your lungs for life in ~health

    JCAPER
    Link Parent
    Ultimately, putting anything other than air in your lungs will have some sort of impact. I say this as someone who smokes dry herb vaporizers (which, I imagine, should have a lot less impact than...

    Ultimately, putting anything other than air in your lungs will have some sort of impact. I say this as someone who smokes dry herb vaporizers (which, I imagine, should have a lot less impact than the vaporizers that the article talks about, but I imagine it should still have some)

    6 votes

  16. Comment on I need a sanity check from security experts (opening ports on the router) in ~tech

    JCAPER
    Link Parent
    Funny thing, I was revisiting their documentation and noticed a new section talking about VPNs and proxies. Apparently, it's possible to run this server inside my VPN network without opening it to...

    Funny thing, I was revisiting their documentation and noticed a new section talking about VPNs and proxies. Apparently, it's possible to run this server inside my VPN network without opening it to the public. I'm going to check it out

    Thanks for the comment mate

    4 votes

  17. Comment on I need a sanity check from security experts (opening ports on the router) in ~tech

    JCAPER
    Link Parent
    Thanks for the comment mate I forgot to mention, those two ports were forwarded to the local IP address of the raspberry. I'm not using a VPN in this case. The Anytype server was configured to use...

    Thanks for the comment mate

    I forgot to mention, those two ports were forwarded to the local IP address of the raspberry.

    I'm not using a VPN in this case. The Anytype server was configured to use a DDNS that I created with Synology. So regardless of where I am or what network I'm connected to, the anytype app can connect with my server.

    But opening ports in general is a requirement for a server to do anything useful, so it's kinda a moot point.

    At the time when I set this up at first, that was also my conclusion. But idk, since I revisited the topic I let the doubts fester my mind again

    1 vote

  18. I need a sanity check from security experts (opening ports on the router)

    ~tech Ask
    First, let me just say that I'm tech savvy, but I'm self taught for the most part. I never studied cybersecurity or network security. I know the basics, but not the nitty-gritty. I used to host my...

    First, let me just say that I'm tech savvy, but I'm self taught for the most part. I never studied cybersecurity or network security. I know the basics, but not the nitty-gritty.

    I used to host my own Anytype Server (note taking app) on my raspberry pi. To do this, the documentation says that I need to open two ports, one TCP and another UDP. So that's what I did, and had it set up this way for a while now.

    Yesterday though, my raspberry's microSD died. So while I wait for the new one to arrive, I'm taking the chance to review my home network settings.

    I closed off a third port that I had for my synology server (for the OpenVPN). I am now using Wireguard (with Tailscale) which doesn't require opening ports. And since my raspberry is offline, I also turned off the other two ports (as of now, I have none opened)

    So here's the thing: I remember from my searching that a lot of people are strongly averse to opening ports. Iirc, the basic idea is that if a bad actor knows my home IP and which ports are open, they can enter. So, in theory, a hacker could potentially infiltrate my raspberry pi - and from there potentially wreak havoc in my other devices.

    So my questions are:
    1- Is it really like that? Could a hacker gain unlimited access to my raspberry via an opened port?
    2- If yes, is there something that I can do to strengthen my raspberry pi security?
    3- Am I being overly paranoid by worrying about this, even if it’s theoretically possible?

    12 votes

  19. Comment on Someone made a social media website for AI agents in ~tech

  20. Comment on Moltbot personal assistant goes viral – and so do your secrets in ~tech

    JCAPER
    Link
    I tried it on a raspberry pi (with the OS freshly installed) and it's both a really cool toy, and a real security nightmare. It's a cool toy because it's very versatile. You can easily, without...

    I tried it on a raspberry pi (with the OS freshly installed) and it's both a really cool toy, and a real security nightmare.

    It's a cool toy because it's very versatile. You can easily, without any programming, set up a chat in telegram, connect it to a ridiculous ammout of AI providers (or local), and done. You can then from telegram tell it to set up cron jobs, send it links to summarize them, tell it to search the web (after you set up the api key), etc etc. Then there's the "skills" that let it do other things, like connecting to gmail, calendar, apple notes, etc etc

    On the other hand, having an AI agent that can run 24/7, autonomously, doesn't require permissions even though it has root access, and could end up in some loop that burns tokens like there's no tomorrow...

    And keeping in mind that it can interact and take actions by itself, it's basically vulnerable to prompt injections from any and all sources with user inputs. Send it an email to tell it to run "rm -rf /" and it might do that.

    10 votes