zestier's recent activity
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
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Comment on How do you survive time change? in ~life.pets
zestier (edited )LinkMy cat is on an auto feeder that permanently stays using the offset it was originally set to. It isn't internet connected or anything that would change it so from my cat's perspective nothing...My cat is on an auto feeder that permanently stays using the offset it was originally set to. It isn't internet connected or anything that would change it so from my cat's perspective nothing changed.
My dog is a super inconsistent eater that never cared about fixed feeding times. Prior to having a toddler that would get into his food his bowl would just be topped up twice a day, but he rarely ate both meals and almost never immediately. Now that we can't leave his choking hazard sized food out he gets fed when he asks, but he isn't even remotely consistent about what time of day he does.
So a long winded way to say I do nothing to accommodate the time change.
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Comment on ChatGPT made me delusional in ~tech
zestier LinkA lot more interesting than I was expecting it to be, and I watched this same guy drive to every Rainforest Cafe. It's a good thing he knew it was all fake because it's pretty scary how quickly it...A lot more interesting than I was expecting it to be, and I watched this same guy drive to every Rainforest Cafe.
It's a good thing he knew it was all fake because it's pretty scary how quickly it feeds into delusion. I do wish he hadn't rolled back to GPT4 though as some of the people that need to see this most would probably just go "well they fixed it in 5 so my chat bot is not a problem." That and for personal amusement I would've liked to see how much work it took to get the model with supposedly improved guardrails to plow right through them.
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Comment on Dithering explainer in ~tech
zestier LinkI can't say I'd ever before really thought about how dithering would be done, but now after seeing it threshold maps feel so intuitively obvious. I'm rather confident though that it's one of those...I can't say I'd ever before really thought about how dithering would be done, but now after seeing it threshold maps feel so intuitively obvious. I'm rather confident though that it's one of those things that only feels obvious in hindsight because I could feel myself being drawn to overcomplicating it when the question was posed a few slides earlier.
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Comment on Grieving family uses AI chatbot to cut hospital bill from $195,000 to $33,000 — US family says Claude highlighted duplicative charges, improper coding, and other violations in ~tech
zestier (edited )Link ParentI could be wrong, but I think the two of you may have been using the word "coding" differently. Medical coding is part of billing. I'm no expert, but I understand it to be the process of...I could be wrong, but I think the two of you may have been using the word "coding" differently. Medical coding is part of billing. I'm no expert, but I understand it to be the process of generating the standardized billing codes used to submit for insurance and such. Stuff like a human reviewing the documents outlining the completed work and saying, "the billing codes for associated work that needs to be paid are 154, 647, and 478." So mistakes in medical coding are definitionally billing errors.
I don't actually know that medical billing codes look like, so don't read into my example beyond the concept of mapping work items to standardized identifiers for payment.
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Comment on Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles for no good reason in ~anime
zestier (edited )Link ParentI use Jellyfin rather than Plex, but I know Jellyfin decides whether to direct play or transcode on the server based on the player hardware. This is because many pieces of video playing hardware...I use Jellyfin rather than Plex, but I know Jellyfin decides whether to direct play or transcode on the server based on the player hardware. This is because many pieces of video playing hardware have very weak general purpose compute and use dedicated hardware for decoding and compositing features. This is the same reason that some formats also trigger transcoding with no overlay (if memory serves Rokus less than 4k don't support HEVC). Ultimately this leaves them designing for lowest common denominator devices and very limited ability to implement interesting features in app. Plex and Jellyfin and such can get away with it in ways that actual services can't because your library being broken is your own fault and problem. I have wondered if it would be possible to implement PGS as a UI-like overlay, but presumably there's a reason no one does.
As for what that means they should do though is messy. To me it means that they should continue to do what they used to of having a copy of the video per language and with burned in subtitles on each. But, as said, it kind of requires that the infrastructure has that very abnormal design. Part of the problem with that design is that you can't as cleanly license the content to be playable on players without that design, such as how historically the Crunchyroll content looked good on Crunchyroll but bad on Amazon. The approach of having it be bad everywhere is a pretty bad solution though. So part of why Sony wants this change is that Crunchyroll has been producing a barely-compatible library for licensing.
So there's a whole mess of conflicting stuff. Crunchyroll should have an app that works in the ideal way, but they also should have a library that works in the ideal way on the Crunchyroll Amazon Prime channel that they don't have control over the code for. They already did effectively the exact thing you were suggesting except that they did it up front rather than on-demand, but it gave them other problems. Specifically they were doing the work twice in different ways for the different distribution channels with some of those channels having objectively superior results.
These are the reasons that my original comment was about using a more flexible standard. Leveraging a more powerful standard is something they could presumably convince other distribution channels to do since it's a net benefit for their apps where "rebuild your infrastructure to work in this weird way ours does" wouldn't realistically ever go anywhere.
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Comment on Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles for no good reason in ~anime
zestier (edited )Link ParentThat's a usage of transcoding and can be rather computationally expensive, especially to perform at scale. I use a Raspberry Pi as a media server and it works great for direct play (ie. just...That's a usage of transcoding and can be rather computationally expensive, especially to perform at scale. I use a Raspberry Pi as a media server and it works great for direct play (ie. just forwarding the bits from storage to network) but it can't really handle on-demand transcoding. It not being able to handle the PGS from my Blu-rays is why I even care about what TV boxes support PGS. Using a device that doesn't really support on-demand transcoding was a semi-intentional decision on my part because I didn't like hearing a computer fan spin up when I started watching things because to me the fan kicking on means the machine is working harder than I want it to.
It can get better if you have hardware that handles transcoding so you don't need to use the slower software solutions, but a service provider isn't going to want to build out a fleet of such devices unless they have to, especially when they're also quite a bit more expensive to operate. That, combined with a bunch of other factors related to mediums where you don't have that option (ex. broadcast, DVDs, etc.), mean that it is generally more sane to have the user device do the conversions.
User devices can also generally perform said conversions far more efficiently. This is not only because the device will generally have hardware specifically designed for video compositing, but all because rendering a frame and then overwriting some pixels is the easy part. Your TV will do that basically any time you open a menu. The hard part is encoding that new stream of frames into an equivalently high quality video stream because video encoding is computationally complex as it tries to optimize for both size and quality. This usually is at the cost of performance since you can generally just store and serve the result. It's basically the "pick 2: good, fast, cheap" thing renamed to "quality, size, encoding time/cost".
So all that's to say that on-demand hard subbing would be expensive to pay for the compute power for if you were a large operator. It would also waste a lot of electricity and likely bandwidth (on-demand transcoding usually has to favor fast even if it could compress it better with more compute time). It's more reasonable to do what Crunchyroll used to do: proactively burn in subs for every language stored as separate video files, but that gives file management woes and only really works when the service is designed to work like that.
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Comment on What we talk about when we talk about sideloading in ~tech
zestier Link ParentGrapheneOS does have "Network" as a per-app permission, but when digging through the info on it it says I can't say I fully understand what is meant by that. I think it is saying that the app...GrapheneOS does have "Network" as a per-app permission, but when digging through the info on it it says
Allows the app to create network sockets and use custom network protocols. The browser and other applications provide means to send data to the internet, so this permission is not required to send data to the internet.
I can't say I fully understand what is meant by that. I think it is saying that the app could bypass the network permission by using an intent sent to another application, such as the browser, to cause data to be sent to the internet anyway.
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Comment on Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles for no good reason in ~anime
zestier LinkI learned about this a few weeks back through a YouTube video. Quite an unfortunate degradation in behavior. I do get why they're doing it, but for such a huge company I personally find their...I learned about this a few weeks back through a YouTube video. Quite an unfortunate degradation in behavior.
I do get why they're doing it, but for such a huge company I personally find their reasoning a bit flimsy. Sony has far more than the resources required to build an in-house tool that properly does everything they want.
And on soft vs hard subs, it's unfortunate how many devices don't bother to support PGS. My TV box is a super cheap like $20 thing and I'm pretty sure it does, but Rokus and such don't. If it was more widely supported they could use PGS to soft sub while still making it look almost as good (it's possible to hard sub animating subtitles though I don't think you can do that in PGS, but that kind of thing is exceptionally rare). A company the size of Sony could potentially have the leverage to get more support added, at least as long as they're pushing a standard format that those companies may find it reasonable to support.
For anyone unfamiliar with PGS, it's an image based subtitle format. This isn't exactly how its done, but this is close enough to explain it for the purpose of this discussion: imagine the subtitles are actually just a collection of pngs alongside a data stream that contains instructions of when and where to overlay each image. They're obviously then more annoying to edit, but no one says they have to edit them as PGS. They could edit them in a tool designed for their workflows that just has a PGS export button.
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Comment on What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga) in ~anime
zestier (edited )LinkJust going to pick something airing....Just going to pick something airing. https://myanimelist.net/anime/60303/Shinjiteita_Nakama-tachi_ni_Dungeon_Okuchi_de_Korosarekaketa_ga_Gift_Mugen_Gacha_de_Level_9999_no_Nakama-tachi_wo_Te_ni_Irete_Moto_Party_Member_to_Sekai_ni_Fukushuu___Zamaa_Shimasu it is.
This show is... weird. It has a bunch of the standard cliche anime stuff. Power fantasy. Loyal and obsessed harem. Dungeons. Fantasy races. Unique special skills. Adventurer guild with letter ranks. Numeric levels that appear as text that floats in the air. But it also has some odd decisions.
As an example, the whole second episode feels entirely out of place. Practically none of it serves any purpose. And then the next episode just completes a multi-year time skip before it seems to want to get back into the story. By a few minutes into episode 3 something like 3 years have passed.
Spoilers
It seems that the main character intends to use his special power to go to war with the entire world. He seems perfectly content with mass murder. I have to give the show that a main character not only not caring to be a good person, but to be an actively hostile force toward basically the entire planet, is pretty rare.
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Comment on What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga) in ~anime
zestier (edited )Link ParentSecrets of the Silent Witch was a series my wife and I watched together. The show felt like it started off with a reasonably interesting premise and then ultimately ends up entirely forgetting...Secrets of the Silent Witch was a series my wife and I watched together. The show felt like it started off with a reasonably interesting premise and then ultimately ends up entirely forgetting about it. She supposedly is antisocial to the point that she can't even bring herself to speak incantations in the presence of others so she invents entirely new techniques to not need to speak them, but when shown it seems more like she's just a little shy. The reality is she has tons and tons of lines, I think maybe even more than many generic loner characters in other series that are never presented as having issues talking. Even trying to write it off as character development felt so flimsy due to her age and some of the flashbacks themselves. By the end I felt like every episode I was making the same comment to my wife: "she sure talks a lot for being silent, they should've just made her mute." It turned out to be more like Secrets of the Slightly Shy Witch.
It also kind of dropped the ball on things that could have been cool within the magic system. For example, incantations put a speed limit on casting and effectively prevent parallel multi casting just due to how fast a mouth can move. They could have went with her not using incantations letting her bypass that restriction, effectively making her powerful due to impossible to match scale. Instead she just seems vaguely more powerful in ways that don't seem related to her silent casting.
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Comment on Microsoft's ambitious new Xbox: Your entire Xbox console library, the full power of Windows PC gaming, and no multiplayer paywall in ~games
zestier (edited )LinkWell, that's me wrong. I recently posted a comment on Tildes basically saying that I think that this is what they should do (aside from the 3P devices, I think the 3P devices are a bad idea for...Well, that's me wrong. I recently posted a comment on Tildes basically saying that I think that this is what they should do (aside from the 3P devices, I think the 3P devices are a bad idea for reasons I'll state later). My comment called this idea "absurd" though because I didn't think they'd ever do it. https://tildes.net/~games/1qhr/updates_to_xbox_game_pass_introducing_essential_premium_and_ultimate_plans#comment-gih3
Contents of my original comment
While this would be an absurd thing for them to actually do, the weird way they're positioned makes me think that if they want to continue making consoles they should just ship a well-performing plug-and-play box that has full compatibility across all Windows games (at least as much as anyone would expect of a custom PC) that just directly integrates the various competing storefronts, although presumably via some cross-service integration (like needing to link Xbox and Steam, Epic, GOG, etc accounts). The idea being that rather than fighting this losing battle against Steam where Steam is making it easier than ever to drop Windows, embrace it and capture the audience that wants a Steam box for their TV that doesn't have the limitations of Proton. Make that audience stop being interested in competing OSes and compatibility layers by just supplying the box that "just works" for what they want as a route to steer them back into the MS ecosystem. Send a signal to developers that they can stop thinking about a future that needs to consider Linux compatibility of future "Steam boxes" because Microsoft is embracing Windows as a gaming OS for all users, including console users, so go ahead and just help entrench Microsoft rather than supporting those other boxes that lack a competitive advantage now that they aren't the only ones with Steam library support.
I obviously don't see any of that as even remotely realistic though. Doing it would mean sacrificing the storefront slice that they want, although if I'm being realistic that's probably not doing great for them anyway. It's possible they would be literally better off giving that up just focusing on the revenue streams they could extract from being the hardware platform, such as data harvesting and integrated ads. A model much closer to something like a Roku.
As for why I think that 3P devices are a bad idea for them: developer targets. Fixed configuration consoles create hardware targets that developers can optimize for, but critically there has to be very few of these targets due to time constraints for the developers. These targets are why for a long time consoles have been able to produce much more impressive results than comparably mid-range hardware: the developers were able to optimize for that exact hardware. Take that away, which I think will be the ultimate effect of having 3P "Xboxes", and the expectation that games will be at a performance/quality level comparable to the competition at a similar price point (ie. same gen PlayStation) may not survive and instead replace it with a reputation of being low quality for its price. So I'd expect that any given game would play better on a PlayStation than an Xbox of the same generation because even if they're comparable in power the PlayStation likely had more work go into optimizing for that exact hardware configuration which will only serve to further push the "Xbox is inferior" narrative.
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Comment on What the hell are we doing with hierarchical tags? in ~tildes
zestier Link ParentSomeone should engineer a post designed to earn as many of the already-used obscure tags as possible. Not entirely sure how the gooning monkey wizard curse will fit in with others, but surely...- Exemplary
Someone should engineer a post designed to earn as many of the already-used obscure tags as possible. Not entirely sure how the gooning monkey wizard curse will fit in with others, but surely someone more creative than I can come up with something.
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Comment on Making liquid nitrogen from scratch (an absurd amount) in ~science
zestier (edited )Link ParentTo be clearer my suggestion of suction does still require that the dewar is pressurized, at least for some definition of pressurized. It just doesn't need to be so highly pressurized when the...To be clearer my suggestion of suction does still require that the dewar is pressurized, at least for some definition of pressurized. It just doesn't need to be so highly pressurized when the pressure on the other end has been lowered. With a vacuum on the other end of the tube it may be possible to achieve flow at the regular operating pressure.
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Comment on Making liquid nitrogen from scratch (an absurd amount) in ~science
zestier (edited )Link ParentMy guess about removal is that you aren't meant to just spray it out but instead transfer it to more manageable vessels. To fully simplify the mental model I'm thinking, imagine a bottle with 2...My guess about removal is that you aren't meant to just spray it out but instead transfer it to more manageable vessels. To fully simplify the mental model I'm thinking, imagine a bottle with 2 hoses going into the top where one is vacuum and the other is going to the bottom of the liquid. That bottle could then be designed to be tipped, have a bottom spout, etc. Now that I think about it I basically just wrote out of a design for a wet vac.
The impression I get is that he's aware of those things, but just didn't put much thought into it. Like he seemed aware that it was normal for it to immediately evaporate when hitting the bottom, but was just surprised how long it took to stop. My guess is that if he'd purchased something that he knew worked, or at least expected to based on the product description, he would have been more patient before panicking that his newest money pit wouldn't work.
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Comment on Making liquid nitrogen from scratch (an absurd amount) in ~science
zestier (edited )Link ParentIt isn't clear to me why suction wouldn't work. Fundamentally it is just using the same principal of trying to get it to flow from high pressure to low pressure, but your high pressure doesn't...It isn't clear to me why suction wouldn't work. Fundamentally it is just using the same principal of trying to get it to flow from high pressure to low pressure, but your high pressure doesn't need to be so dangerously high anymore.
If suction isn't the answer then how is the dewar designed to have the liquid removed? It only has top openings, isn't designed to be pressurized, and doesn't seem like it's meant to be tipped. The only option left I can think of is to suck it out.
4 seemed both dangerously high and barely enough.
Edit: another comment from YouTube suggests that it doesn't have an obvious way to remove the liquid because this model isn't intended to have the liquid removed.
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Comment on Making liquid nitrogen from scratch (an absurd amount) in ~science
zestier (edited )LinkI'm not qualified to discuss any of the safety parts, of which there are apparently a variety of issues, but the siphon was hilarious to me. A nearly-level siphon trying to operate on a vessel...I'm not qualified to discuss any of the safety parts, of which there are apparently a variety of issues, but the siphon was hilarious to me. A nearly-level siphon trying to operate on a vessel that can't safely be pressurized. Either get gravity to help by increasing the height difference of the siphon ends or, better yet, use suction!
I use an auto siphon when bottling home brew and his dribbling hose looked basically just like when I don't use a big enough height difference on my siphon.
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Comment on SpaceX disables 2,500 Starlink terminals allegedly used by Asian scam centers in ~tech
zestier (edited )Link ParentSo the complaint is that they aren't an unrestricted safe haven ISP that allows any and all usage, including deliberately protecting known criminal activity reported by international law...So the complaint is that they aren't an unrestricted safe haven ISP that allows any and all usage, including deliberately protecting known criminal activity reported by international law enforcement? Of course they aren't. I don't think that's what any serious ISP anywhere wants to be. That will likely never exist and I think it's pretty rough to argue it would even be a good thing. If that's what you're looking for I suspect you'll be looking forever.
As it stands it seems that Starlink only even bothers with moderation when specifically pushed to do so. There was really nothing legal about the devices in the article because in addition to being used to commit crimes they were illegally installed in a country that they weren't allowed to be. Even if there was no regulation on it at all it's not great to become known as the criminal ISP with a horrible public reputation and potentially resulting in your traffic being rejected by various other nodes for their own risk mitigation, either by choice or regulation that impacts them.
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Comment on Thieves steal crown jewels in four minutes from Louvre Museum in Paris in ~arts
zestier (edited )Link ParentGot an audible chuckle out of me. The whole article is great, but that line in particular caught me off guard in just the right way.The assumption seems to be that none but a highly experienced criminal architect could have come up with a plan to access an unmonitored second-floor balcony via a ladder.
Got an audible chuckle out of me. The whole article is great, but that line in particular caught me off guard in just the right way.
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Comment on SpaceX disables 2,500 Starlink terminals allegedly used by Asian scam centers in ~tech
zestier (edited )Link ParentI don't understand this comment. A solution to what? I'd say I'm pretty anti-Musk in general, but this seems like the right move. My understanding is Starlink's intent is to provide competition in...I don't understand this comment. A solution to what? I'd say I'm pretty anti-Musk in general, but this seems like the right move. My understanding is Starlink's intent is to provide competition in the internet provider space with a focus on places that aren't easily connected to fixed infrastructure, not to help facilitate illegal activity.
Or is the complaint that they weren't proactive enough in removing these devices? Ideally no ISP can see what you're doing well enough to do that sort of invasive monitoring. Maybe they just needed to be geofencing better? Although honestly it is kind of a weird burden to put on companies to say that they need to be adhering to local regulations on products smuggled to places they don't operate (ie. if they aren't operating in those countries why would they be spending time implementing anything related to those countries, even blocks?).
Sonic X Shadow Generations
I find that this is a game I want to enjoy more than I actually do. The primary culprits are the controls and camera.
The controls aren't quite good enough in my opinion. Sometimes Sonic doesn't feel as responsive as he should, making simple things feel quite frustrating. I also don't love some of the context sensitive buttons. For example, because jump is also an air dash it is too easy to make dumb mistakes like throwing yourself off a platform you are trying to land on by attempting to buffer a jump input slightly too early.
The camera issues are slightly less of a problem overall since the camera is mostly on rails so it should be good in general. There are edge cases where it's kind of a nightmare though. One example that comes to mind is there's a level where there's a bunch of enemies that you have to defeat that are kind of near an edge, but the is edge on the bottom side of the screen and the camera is angled forward. This means that a lot of the fighting is done with Sonic facing the camera, which notably means fighting toward an edge that is off screen.