Macil's recent activity
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Comment on Shopping around for a new-and-improved backup solution in ~comp
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Comment on Access to Fable and Mythos 5 cut off after US government order in ~tech
Macil LinkI think this is an overstep by the US government based on misunderstanding or corruption (it's hard to imagine that the feud between Pete Hegseth and Anthropic a few months ago is not a factor),...I think this is an overstep by the US government based on misunderstanding or corruption (it's hard to imagine that the feud between Pete Hegseth and Anthropic a few months ago is not a factor), but I also think that the US government could be right to do this in a situation where AI was disturbingly more capable than it is now.
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Comment on Google Chrome to fully remove legacy support for manifest v2 in ~tech
Macil Link ParentAre there many examples of websites where uBlock Origin Lite fails to block ads but uBlock Origin works? I never noticed any issues after switching to uBlock Origin Lite but I never rigorously...Are there many examples of websites where uBlock Origin Lite fails to block ads but uBlock Origin works? I never noticed any issues after switching to uBlock Origin Lite but I never rigorously compared them.
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Comment on If Claude Fable stops helping you, you'll never know in ~tech
Macil LinkIf they're aiming for the level of effectiveness of their next best model (Opus) on the limited tasks, then I don't think is too different from them keeping the best models for themselves (which...If they're aiming for the level of effectiveness of their next best model (Opus) on the limited tasks, then I don't think is too different from them keeping the best models for themselves (which is a thing I have complex feelings about, but I can't imagine not doing that in their shoes if I thought there was a chance of AI being good enough to start doing recursive self improvement). Though they did fumble the communication hard by not emphasizing this if they are in fact aiming for Opus's level of effectiveness.
I do expect to see more of the top labs cautiously holding back their best stuff as AI gets better at programming.
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Comment on Bun has been rewritten in Rust in ~comp
Macil Link ParentThey're doing the rewrite because they frequently have bugs caused by memory safety issues, which Zig, like C and C++, does not have good protections against. It's true that this rewrite has a lot...They're doing the rewrite because they frequently have bugs caused by memory safety issues, which Zig, like C and C++, does not have good protections against. It's true that this rewrite has a lot more usages of unsafe blocks than most Rust projects, but it's a huge improvement from all the code effectively being inside an unsafe block as before, they're manually cutting down on many unnecessary unsafe blocks, and any new code that's written as idiomatic Rust from the start should be free of new memory safety issues.
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Comment on Reddit will implement human verification to tag and combat bots in ~tech
Macil Link ParentThe passkey standard specifies an optional "device attestation" feature which would have made this possible, but Apple and Google both decided to not to support that feature years ago.The passkey standard specifies an optional "device attestation" feature which would have made this possible, but Apple and Google both decided to not to support that feature years ago.
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Comment on AI’s memorization crisis in ~tech
Macil Link ParentYes, it just refers to clever prompting that confuses the LLM to not follow the guidelines it was trained with.Yes, it just refers to clever prompting that confuses the LLM to not follow the guidelines it was trained with.
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Comment on Anthropic rejects latest US Pentagon offer: ‘We cannot in good conscience accede to their request’ in ~tech
Macil Link ParentAn LLM can be given millions of documents and asked how they might relate to an investigation. An LLM could be given an image and write-ups of an ongoing situation and be asked if the image...An LLM can be given millions of documents and asked how they might relate to an investigation. An LLM could be given an image and write-ups of an ongoing situation and be asked if the image represents something new to be reported on or if the image might contain targets to shoot. Obviously anyone wanting to put firing control in the hands of today's LLMs is crazy but combined with human operators checking their work they could possibly find leads to be investigated.
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Comment on Anthropic rejects latest US Pentagon offer: ‘We cannot in good conscience accede to their request’ in ~tech
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Comment on Tildes Minecraft - Get hyped countdown thread in ~games
Macil Link ParentI use Migurinth, which is a fork of the Modrinth launcher with all ads removed. (I tried Prism but I found I really appreciated the ease of use and layout of Migurinth/Modrinth over it.)I use Migurinth, which is a fork of the Modrinth launcher with all ads removed. (I tried Prism but I found I really appreciated the ease of use and layout of Migurinth/Modrinth over it.)
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Comment on Removing obfuscation in Minecraft Java Edition in ~games
Macil (edited )Link ParentThere's Java Edition and Bedrock Edition. Bedrock Edition is the main one that users are pointed to nowadays. Java Edition pretty much only still exists to make the pre-existing modding community...There's Java Edition and Bedrock Edition. Bedrock Edition is the main one that users are pointed to nowadays. Java Edition pretty much only still exists to make the pre-existing modding community and Linux and MacOS users happy, because those things aren't supported on Bedrock Edition. The two editions have been developed in parallel, sharing the main game features and assets, and only really differ in platform support (Bedrock supports consoles, phones, and Windows; Java Edition supports Windows, Linux, and MacOS) and in Bedrock's content marketplace where paid add-ons (skins, asset packs, and custom maps) are available.
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Comment on Removing obfuscation in Minecraft Java Edition in ~games
Macil (edited )LinkI was always completely baffled that they released the game with obfuscation but then released official mappings to undo that obfuscation, instead of just removing the obfuscation to begin with....I was always completely baffled that they released the game with obfuscation but then released official mappings to undo that obfuscation, instead of just removing the obfuscation to begin with. Clearly they wanted to be friendly to modders but they couldn't get someone in charge of the decisions to understand anything. It's nice that sanity broke through, six years later.
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Comment on Knights of Guinevere in ~tv
Macil (edited )LinkIt's interesting how this feels in part inspired by the "mascot horror" trend (Five Nights at Freddy's etc). There's a famous artificial (both as a machine and as an intentionally designed...It's interesting how this feels in part inspired by the "mascot horror" trend (Five Nights at Freddy's etc). There's a famous artificial (both as a machine and as an intentionally designed pseudo-celebrity persona) "mascot" character known to the characters in a way with some similarities to the way we the audience know the characters, and we follow the characters meeting and interacting with the mascot. I imagine the trope could be used well to explore aspects of our modern media environment.
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Comment on All things classic Doom in ~games
Macil (edited )LinkI was 7 when I played it (and Duke Nukem 3d). There wasn't much else to do with the family computer, and then I was doubly hooked when I discovered the level editor included with Duke 3d and then...When did you first play/"get into" Doom?
I was 7 when I played it (and Duke Nukem 3d). There wasn't much else to do with the family computer, and then I was doubly hooked when I discovered the level editor included with Duke 3d and then later user-made maps on the internet. I remember watching sub-1mb map files slowly downloading from Geocities over 28k dialup.
What is your favorite source port of Doom?
GZDoom. I used to use ZDoom for its support for custom enemies, weapons, and level scripting, and then switched to GZDoom when it was new for its support for 3d floors and proper 3d rendering with good mouselook. I can't imagined going back to a port without 3d rendering: looking up and down in the old vanilla renderer stretches the world grossly and doesn't let you properly look around.
Anyway, public service announcement while we're on the subject of GZDoom: in Options -> Display Options, set "Texture Filter mode" to "None (linear mipmap)". This fixes the terrible blurry default rendering of the game and makes it actually look like the official release! GZDoom's terrible opinionated default texture filter mode is the single worst thing about GZDoom. (I really don't understand how there aren't any popular forks of GZDoom yet dedicated just to fixing this one issue.)
What are your favorite WADs?
- MyHouse.wad
- Lost Civilization. I've never found any other maps that are as large and interesting.
- Project Brutality. Great gameplay mod that replaces the weapons and enemies. Works well with most regular maps (including Lost Civilization but not MyHouse.wad).
Do you still play Doom regularly?
I hadn't touched Doom much in years until I saw some posts online about MyHouse.wad, and then I got back into it after that. I even contributed a few bugfixes to GZDoom recently. I've been playing Neon Overdrive lately which is pretty good.
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Comment on Should C be mandatory learning for career developers? in ~comp
Macil (edited )LinkIf someone already knew Rust specifically, then to know C they just need to imagine if Rust didn't have explicit lifetimes, generics, traits, modules, or a package manager. Also they need to learn...If someone already knew Rust specifically, then to know C they just need to imagine if Rust didn't have explicit lifetimes, generics, traits, modules, or a package manager. Also they need to learn about terrible things like header files and maybe autotools. All that's to say that I don't think there are any important computing fundamentals to be learned by such an exercise.
The real value is in knowing at least one language that compiles to native executables and uses manual memory management instead of garbage collection. This is a pretty short list including C and Rust and a few others like C++, D, and Zig.
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Comment on Google is killing the open web in ~comp
Macil (edited )LinkThe author is weirdly obsessed with XML and XSLT and is judging everything through this one weird lens. Has anyone used XSLT voluntarily within a webpage for anything but an obscure tech demo in...The author is weirdly obsessed with XML and XSLT and is judging everything through this one weird lens. Has anyone used XSLT voluntarily within a webpage for anything but an obscure tech demo in this millennium? (Has a non-tech-demo webpage ever been linked on Tildes that relied on browser support for XSLT? Would a list of "top 10,000 historical websites" contain even one that relied on XSLT?) Why should browsers support or further develop these entire separate page and styling formats in addition to HTML and CSS? Do they offer any specific power that the current web platform lacks? This is like getting mad at modern PC manufacturers for not including PS/2 ports for ancient keyboards and mice. Roughly 0% of users or working web developers want it and the remaining people can use an adapter (like a separate program or a page with embedded JS that renders XML+XSLT). Anything else about Chrome development is more consequential than this.
It's a weird bit for them to rail on Google about backing out from JPEG XL support, when the whole initiative to include it was from Google, they were the only browser to even implement it, and they backed out because no other browsers were interested in implementing it at the time and Google wanted to avoid fragmenting the web in this way. Also Google has successfully pushed other new efficient media formats like WebP and WebM, so it's not like they're consistently a blocker to progress. (Everything negative anyone ever says about WebP is just about other software not supporting it, which is an issue that would face any new format including JPEG XL. Just bringing this up because weirdly often I see people get really deranged into some kind of team sports mindset where they label WebP as a bad and evil thing that Google pushed on the world and JPEG XL as this pure and great thing that Google killed, and none of that framing makes any sense except as an excuse to have an information-free rant about Google.)
The only real substantial point is about RSS support being removed, but I struggle to blame the browsers for it. Were RSS features in the browser actually used by many people? Firefox's support IIRC was just that you could make a bookmark folder be populated by RSS, and it was an extremely lackluster experience! Is it specifically the browser developer's job to develop a compelling RSS reader? Anyone could make an RSS reader, and if nobody has made a successful and compelling RSS reader, then it feels weird to fault browser developers for not being the first to do so. (Okay, people do often point at the long-dead Google Reader, but if its design was so good, where are its successful clones? I mean I'm sure it has a few but they're not successful enough for me to have heard of them, and I don't agree that it's every browser's job to push that system to users.) I really get the impression that far more people like to bring up RSS to rant about the death of the "open web" or such than people actually use RSS.
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Comment on The rise of Whatever in ~tech
Macil Link ParentI definitely agree with the author that it's bad at a lot of specialized tasks, but yeah it's a weird to see this common insistence that this fact or that it's not always right makes it always...I definitely agree with the author that it's bad at a lot of specialized tasks, but yeah it's a weird to see this common insistence that this fact or that it's not always right makes it always 100% useless or net negative. Google and Stack Overflow have pretty bad hit rates too if you don't search for things the right way and don't retry a few times.
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Comment on SUPERHOT VR's story was removed. What? in ~games
Macil (edited )LinkI only ever played the VR version when it was new, and I felt the scene where you shoot yourself was completely out of place for the sake of edginess. Years later now, I've often seen people who...I only ever played the VR version when it was new, and I felt the scene where you shoot yourself was completely out of place for the sake of edginess. Years later now, I've often seen people who played the desktop game talk about how it was an important part of the story, and I have no idea what they're talking about. I think the VR version always had a lot of story content cut out, and/or I skipped through the story text because it was a slow interruption while I was standing ready to play in VR and because text was also very hard to read on the original Vive headset which I was using at the time (and I assume most players used back then). I don't feel confident that the author understands how the story was originally presented in the VR version. It's a shame that the VR version's original story isn't still officially available as an option, but I think the newer release is probably a better default experience.
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Comment on What happens after dying in tutorials? in ~games
Macil Link ParentTalos Principle 2 has a similar thing where at the start of the game, you can choose not to go on the big expedition where nearly all of the game takes place. The game then ends with a cutscene...Talos Principle 2 has a similar thing where at the start of the game, you can choose not to go on the big expedition where nearly all of the game takes place. The game then ends with a cutscene showing the rest of the characters going on without you and remarking that it really seemed like the player character would've had fun coming too.
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Comment on All four major web browsers are about to lose 80% of their funding in ~tech
Macil LinkIf web browsers are invested in less and fall behind, then companies will invest more in the closed ecosystems of iOS and Android apps instead. I don't think people appreciate the web ecosystem...If web browsers are invested in less and fall behind, then companies will invest more in the closed ecosystems of iOS and Android apps instead. I don't think people appreciate the web ecosystem enough for being an open standards-based system with multiple interoperable implementations. Twenty years ago the ecosystem was bad and it was a crazy fantasy that it could ever get as good as it is now; I hope it doesn't peak and taper off here now.
I believe that Restic stores all the files in a content-addressed manner where the contents will be deduplicated even in this case. When it encounters file paths it doesn't recognize or files with an updated last-modified timestamp, it has to re-read them but it will end up recognizing that their contents already exist in the backup if they're unchanged.
I wouldn't worry too much about the possible redundancy of your backup's encryption when using a tool like Restic. If your backups are on a filesystem that's already encrypted and you're worried about the risk of losing the Restic key, you could always save that key in plain text file right next to the backup. And if you do ever move/copy your backups off that encrypted filesystem onto an unencrypted system or a cloud host, it will be convenient to be able to move/copy the backup files as-is instead of needing to layer in another program to manage encryption.