Macha's recent activity
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Comment on Is YouTube's use of AI upscaling for Shorts unethical? in ~tech
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Comment on Donald Trump pushing Paramount to make Rush Hour 4 in ~movies
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Comment on Donald Trump pushing Paramount to make Rush Hour 4 in ~movies
Macha LinkI think we should support this, the more effort trump spends on pointless things like encouraging movie sequels, the less effort he has to spend on interfering with important things.I think we should support this, the more effort trump spends on pointless things like encouraging movie sequels, the less effort he has to spend on interfering with important things.
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Comment on Google backpedals on new Android developer registration rules in ~tech
Macha Link ParentWill wait and see if they've backpedaled enough before I replace my phone.Will wait and see if they've backpedaled enough before I replace my phone.
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Comment on Humble Bundle: Modern Sci-Fi Classics (Charles Soule, Joseph Fink, Hugh Howey, and Neal Stephenson) in ~books
Macha Link ParentI've bought plenty of DRM-free book bundles from Ireland. I haven't encountered any that were region locked before, but I've only checked a small minority.I've bought plenty of DRM-free book bundles from Ireland. I haven't encountered any that were region locked before, but I've only checked a small minority.
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Comment on Tilderinos in ~talk
Macha Link ParentI enjoy the site and its atmosphere, I've certainly described it in the past as an old school forum in a social news costume. I'm probably not really active enough to be anything but another name...I enjoy the site and its atmosphere, I've certainly described it in the past as an old school forum in a social news costume. I'm probably not really active enough to be anything but another name in a crowd to others on here, but I do appreciate recognising people and personalities beyond "another screen name you'll never see again" on some bigger sites.
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Comment on OpenAI moves to complete potentially the largest theft in human history in ~tech
Macha (edited )Link ParentA non-profit gets all sorts of beneficial treatment around e.g. tax etc. For it then to hand over the primary output of that non-profit to a for-profit, even if run by the same people, kind of...A non-profit gets all sorts of beneficial treatment around e.g. tax etc. For it then to hand over the primary output of that non-profit to a for-profit, even if run by the same people, kind of retroactively paints these benefits as ill-gotten.
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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
Macha LinkOf course, the number of times this happens is going to be dwarfed by the amount of times US healthcare companies use AI to find reasons to reject claims or use LLM based support to frustrate and...Of course, the number of times this happens is going to be dwarfed by the amount of times US healthcare companies use AI to find reasons to reject claims or use LLM based support to frustrate and stall appeals against those denials.
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Comment on Amazon ordered to pay $20K after British Columbia customer says package never arrived in ~tech
Macha (edited )Link ParentSo I had a bin company for 7 years at the house where I previously rented. And one day, they just stopped collecting the bins. They missed every delivery for a period of 2 months. 7 years of...So I had a bin company for 7 years at the house where I previously rented.
And one day, they just stopped collecting the bins. They missed every delivery for a period of 2 months. 7 years of service up until then and the only previous time they hadn't collected the bins was the one time when the country had it's record levels of snow.
Of course the company's initial response was to deflect. Apparently I mustn't have put the bins out early enough, or put them visible enough or there was an obstruction on the street.
It was only after I insisted on a refund of my annual fee as they had totally stopped providing service (with the implied threat of small claims court) that they bothered to investigate what was going on.
They told me their driver had got out the of the vehicle, gone to the house number 2 doors up from mine and observed no bin. So I went out to that spot, took a photo at that house pointed at mine, and sent it to them to show the bin was clearly visible and at this point out for months straight.
Turns out they'd gotten a new driver who was going down the parallel street with a similar name (XYZ Avenue Vs XYZ road)
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Comment on Not sure if coincidence or I should give up (on USB flash drives) in ~tech
Macha LinkHonestly there's no flash drive I would trust as more than a transfer medium or a immediate use os installation media. I wouldn't trust them as backups and I certainly wouldn't trust them as...Honestly there's no flash drive I would trust as more than a transfer medium or a immediate use os installation media. I wouldn't trust them as backups and I certainly wouldn't trust them as primary active storage.
The most frequently used flash drive I have is some 8GB drive from the early 10s as most of the newer drives I've gotten have failed.
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Comment on What's your video game comfort food? in ~games
Macha LinkOpenTTD and factorio. Both have the “there’s always something that can be done” feel while not putting huge pressure on when I feel like taking things chill.OpenTTD and factorio. Both have the “there’s always something that can be done” feel while not putting huge pressure on when I feel like taking things chill.
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Comment on Amazon Web Services outage impacts in ~tech
Macha Link ParentNo docker, no npm, slack is a mess. IAM is causing problems in work even though we’re in eu regionsNo docker, no npm, slack is a mess.
IAM is causing problems in work even though we’re in eu regions
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Comment on I could use recommendations for an ultrawide monitor in ~tech
Macha Link ParentI think six years ago the only OLED option were the LG TVs which absolutely do have burn in issues if you use them as computer monitors, yeah. Dedicated computer monitors usually compromise on...I think six years ago the only OLED option were the LG TVs which absolutely do have burn in issues if you use them as computer monitors, yeah. Dedicated computer monitors usually compromise on other areas (like peak brightness or pixel shift) to avoid that
The pixel layout thing is controlled by fontconfig on Linux which I’m pretty sure only supports rgb or bgr layouts.
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Comment on I could use recommendations for an ultrawide monitor in ~tech
Macha (edited )LinkI have two IPS displays and an OLED display, same resolution and size (27" 1440p) and have them next to each other. Burn in is not a problem really. I work from home and game often, which means it...I have two IPS displays and an OLED display, same resolution and size (27" 1440p) and have them next to each other.
- Burn in is not a problem really. I work from home and game often, which means it gets 8-12 hours of usage without a break. I leave the monitor do two things to manage burn in:
- I left the pixel shift feature on. This works by your monitor having like 10 extra pixels in each direction and it periodically shifts the visible area slowly around the actual resolution so that hard lines (like window splits, taskbars etc) aren't leaving clear burn in. You'll probably notice this a lot for like the first day or two using a monitor and then never again.
- I leave the monitor do its refresh cycle thing once a day. Now it suggests doing it every 4 hours, and if the monitor goes to sleep and then wakes up it'll ask you to send it back to sleep for the refresh, but I only let it do it when I'm done for the day, so 2-3 times less often than it suggests.
- I've had no noticeable burn in which aligns with what Tim from Monitors Unboxed has observed on his (you can only really see the burn in with their exaggerated filter view)
- Text is a problem. So there's a technology called subpixel rendering which is used to make text look better on non-retina displays (So 1440p 27", 4k 32" all count as "low" dpi for this, 4k 27" is kind of mid-dpi). This makes assumptions about how the subpixels in your monitor are laid out. Most LCDs are laid out in consistent patterns (usually RGB, sometimes BGR), while OLEDs have all sorts of "unusual" layouts that the subpixel rendering wasn't designed for like triangle RGB or RWGB etc. If you use subpixel rendering for the wrong pixel layout, you'll get color fringing. If you turn it off, you'll get blurrier text. A lot of the operating systems aren't that interested in upgrading their subpixel rendering tech in light of retina/high DPI displays (like 1200p13" etc.) becoming more common in laptops. So that means on an OLED you get to choose between blur and colour fringing, while on an IPS panel you can have neither.
Honestly, as much as I like my OLED, I think you'd be better served with an IPS if your priorities are code and photo editing first. 60hz to 120hz is a huge improvement, and most IPS panels now are 144hz or 165hz. Most OLEDs are 240hz (or above), but there's serious diminishing returns. 120hz to 240hz is like.... 20% of the improvement vs going 60hz to 120hz.
- Burn in is not a problem really. I work from home and game often, which means it gets 8-12 hours of usage without a break. I leave the monitor do two things to manage burn in:
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Comment on Spit on, sworn at, and undeterred: what it’s like to own a Cybertruck in ~transport
Macha Link ParentAs discussed it has become a bit of a political symbol so I also imagine there’s people who either want to own one or want to support the idea of owning one because they agree with musk’s...As discussed it has become a bit of a political symbol so I also imagine there’s people who either want to own one or want to support the idea of owning one because they agree with musk’s political views. But it’s an expensive vehicle so they wouldn’t be able to afford one.
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Comment on What code editor / IDE do you use (2025)? in ~comp
Macha LinkIt depends on context really: Java/Kotlin/PHP: IntelliJ with IdeaVim plugin. The Java world sort of assumes you're using a heavyweight IDE, and IntelliJ is still the best option there. The PHP...It depends on context really:
- Java/Kotlin/PHP: IntelliJ with IdeaVim plugin. The Java world sort of assumes you're using a heavyweight IDE, and IntelliJ is still the best option there. The PHP extension for VS code is also really limited, though I think all the people trying to use Cursor lead to some movement/improvement there
- Rust/Javascript/Typescript: VS codium with vscode-neovim plugin. These languages benefit from an LSP that is easiest to get going in VS Code. VS Code has historically been the example that Electron doesn't have. That said, the fact that Microsoft now primarily sees VS Code in terms of "CoPilot delivery vector" has left me a little concerned about the future of VS Codium. There are vim bindings for VSCode that are just sequences of shortcut but I found that unlike IdeaVim, they weren't authentic or feature complete enough to not break my vim usage, so I use vscode-neovim which sort of bonds vscode and neovim in an unholy manner
- Python/random other text editing: neovim, though I have dabbled in helix
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Comment on Tildes Minecraft: What do you want to see in the next season? in ~games
Macha Link ParentI haven't played in previous seasons, so take this with whatever level of grain of salt you feel that deserves (but have been considering joining the server when it starts again). But generally I...I haven't played in previous seasons, so take this with whatever level of grain of salt you feel that deserves (but have been considering joining the server when it starts again). But generally I feel anything that makes travel be more "in the world" is a good idea. Railway stations, nether hubs, etc have always been good community focus areas on servers I've played on before.
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Comment on Tech companies are finding out everything is political in ~tech
Macha Link ParentThey set out to be techno-libertarian twitter with a side of crypto bro, but those weren't the people looking to leave twitter so they sort of accidentally became "lefty but not mastodon-lefty...They set out to be techno-libertarian twitter with a side of crypto bro, but those weren't the people looking to leave twitter so they sort of accidentally became "lefty but not mastodon-lefty twitter" and then also gained a bunch of of the Mastodon crowd too as it looked to have higher adoption
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Comment on Google details Android developer certification requirement, and it’s as bad as we feared in ~tech
Macha Link ParentDue to the EU's competition rulings, Apple is loosening their policies from "you may only distribute on the App Store with Apple's permission and yearly developer fee, and cut of sales" to "you...Due to the EU's competition rulings, Apple is loosening their policies from "you may only distribute on the App Store with Apple's permission and yearly developer fee, and cut of sales" to "you may only distribute with signing by Apple's permission and yearly developer fee", so the upcoming looser rules are about the same as Google's new rules.
The EU has indicated that they think that Apples new plan is still too strict to comply with the ruling against them
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Comment on Factorio Space Exploration 0.7 released in ~games
Macha (edited )Link ParentImportant to note that the steam deck runs vanilla factorio great. Performance suffers with megabases, or as they’re called in the space exploration mod, mid game basesImportant to note that the steam deck runs vanilla factorio great.
Performance suffers with megabases, or as they’re called in the space exploration mod, mid game bases
To play devil's advocate here: how is an upscaling filter that different to YouTube reencoding videos in newer algorithms or allowing uses to full screen the video when their screen resolution differs from the video resolution? Those compression algorithms and scaling algorithms also encode biases and choices about what's most important to keep and what can be lost.
It's not like people never noticed that either, there was lots of talk of e.g. webp or av1 compression smoothening film grain because the film grain is high frequency data that compresses well and the algorithm designer's definition of perceptual quality considered that an ok trade off for file size.
They'll also re-encode high bitrate videos at lower bitrates to save on storage and bandwidth costs, which is a problem if you want to show details like snow or rain, for example.
And iirc YouTube's original recommended upload file was like flv containers with 360p h263 video content and MP3 audio. These are mostly converted to av1 with opus audio as the "primary" format and then potentially transcoded to h264 and aac depending on the receiving devices compatibility. And some of those older videos end up looking even poorer quality and not as the creator envisioned them than they might have been from all these transcoding steps. Sure some of it is that we were all so amazed at online video being a thing and everything on the internet had jpeg compression artifacts that we didn't notice some noisy line boundaries on Dr octagonapus or whatever meme videos we were watching in 2010, but also some of those older videos (maybe not quite going back into the 360p era) people have downloaded copies of or had older screenshots to compare to see that the quality has deteriorated from YouTube's reencodes over the years.