tal
@tal@lemmy.today
- Comment on [Linux] Unlock the bf16 tensor cores on RTX3090 4 days ago:
The install procedure does involve changing some kernel boot parameters, so if you make a mistake it’s possible that you soft-brick your OS.
I mean…just interrupt the boot process at GRUB, and edit the kernel boot parameters to whatever you want, boot into the OS, and then change them back persistently.
- Comment on Uber begins self-driving robotaxi trial in Manchester 5 days ago:
streets of Manchester…Europe’s first autonomous taxi service in the Croatian capital, Zagreb.
Zagreb and Manchester are some odd bedfellows.
- Comment on Diaspora, Caves of Qud's first expansion, enters early access in December 1 week ago:
Oh hell yes.
- Comment on BBC to force more to pay licence fee with ‘YouTube tax’ 1 week ago:
Why would the BBC be allowed to collect money on services it does not provide? This is basically saying “everyone must pay this fee, or unplug their internet”.
I think that it’s because the BBC puts content on YouTube (and I assume either doesn’t have ads enabled or wants more money than they generate).
I guess I could understand someone saying "well, with TV, I have to watch British brosdcast stations, and with YouTube, I don’t, but I’d think that the same would apply to TVs using satellite receivers, and I assume—though I don’t know, don’t live in the UK—that satellite TV users are also subject to the license fee.
- Comment on Ministers preparing to slash heat pump subsidies to fund defence spending 1 week ago:
Madeleine Gabriel, a director at the charity Nesta, said: “Bills are soaring again because of high gas prices. Our reliance on gas is the reason we are in an energy crisis, so cutting funding for heat pumps makes no sense.
Mmm…I’d say that high gas bills—if they are high relative to electricity prices—are a good reason not to need a subsidy, because it means that people already have a potent incentive to switch to a heat pump.
You need a subsidy or a tax on something when there is a positive or negative externality, something that isn’t captured in consumer price information, because then purchasing decisions are made without incorporating that externality. You internalize the externality. But…in the case of a high gas bill, price information informing a consumer to switch is present. If they already want to switch on their own…shrugs
Not only that, but in general, for negative externalities, you normally want a tax, and for positive externalities, you normally want a subsidy. The issue with natural gas heating is the carbon emissions, which is a negstive externality. You probably don’t want a subsidy on heat pumps to internalize that, but rather a tax on natural gas heaters.
- Comment on Car bloat is causing parking problems in Singapore 1 week ago:
Well, some of them do.
- Comment on Car bloat is causing parking problems in Singapore 1 week ago:
Car bloat is causing parking problems in the US too.
- Comment on 1 week ago:
If this is Linux, I’m pretty sure that you can use RandR (or whatever Wayland’s analog is, if this is Wayland) to crop the visible area to whatever aspect ratio you want. Probably on Wayland the
wlr-randrcommand can do it on wlroots-based conpositors.I’ve done so before on X11 with an HMD that extended into the edges of my visual field, where I wanted everything in the (crisp, clear) center.
searches
Looks like it:
man.archlinux.org/man/wlr-randr.1.en
--mode | --custom-mode <width>x<height>[@<refresh>Hz] Set output resolution and, optionally, refresh rate. --pos <x>,<y> Position the output with absolute layout coordinates.
- Comment on Why hotter summers are making British potatoes smaller 2 weeks ago:
Probably possible to genetically-engineer potatoes that can deal with drought better, given time and work.
The EU has historically had a pretty anti-genetic-engineering position, but (a) I understand that things have been slowly changing and (b) I don’t know whether Brexit and the TCA permit for broader use in the UK regardless.
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From this Telegraph article, it sounds like the UK and EU are currently negotiating terms, so all this is gonna be in a state of flux, but it gives me the impression that the gene-editing, a slightly-restricted form of genetic engineering, may be getting the thumbs-up.
telegraph.co.uk/…/uk-gene-edited-crops-to-be-spar…
British and European negotiators are close to a deal that would save UK gene-edited crops from an EU ban.
Britain used Brexit freedoms to pioneer the crops, which are more resistant to drought and disease.
In an important breakthrough, two British farmers became the first in Europe to grow and harvest gene-edited crops in commercial field conditions this summer.
- Comment on Bill Gates: People saying AI will create more jobs don’t understand what’s coming 2 weeks ago:
Speaking as someone with what I’d consider to be a pretty decent homelab, I can’t self host the kind of AI that I use for work, not without literally emptying my savings into the hardware and energy needs.
I think we’re at least a decade away from having user-accessible hardware for AI that doesn’t break the bank.
So, for coding, which is what Gates was specifically talking about being doable now, maybe we could corral up the hardware. Like, maybe one could cover specific fields.
There are still going to be issues like power and cooling and hardware cost and whether people who make competitive models are even interested in providing it for home use (since it makes it harder for them to make a return on their model). But set that aside.
As I’ve said before on here, I would say pretty confidently that we will not have local models running to do all of the stuff that cloud is or is being built out to for at least something like four to five years, and that’s if we started immediate, massive buildout of memory fabrication to a much greater degree than we have. The majority of fabricated memory now is going to AI use, and cloud AI hardware will have considerably higher capacity utilization than hardware at home. You’d have to have many times over as much memory being produced to have the same compute capacity at home.
I’m not opposed to doing LLMs or parallel compute at home at all. I have a 128GB Framework Desktop and an XT 7900 XTX that I got to do just that. I’m just saying that we are not going to realistically be able to move all of the stuff in the cloud to the home for at least something like half a decade, and very probably more, because humanity does not have the memory available and can’t build enough memory fabrication capacity for it in that timeframe. It doesn’t matter how much value is being provided by some home user of that hardware or what their willingness is to spend on it if we don’t have the memory. Like, even if every person in the world could produce, to pull a number out of the air, a real $1M in value every year via use of a home AI rig, even if all that demand suddenly materialized out of thin air, all that would happen is that prices would rise sufficiently to make the hardware unaffordable even at those extreme levels. The constraint is on the supply end, not the demand end.
- Comment on Bill Gates: People saying AI will create more jobs don’t understand what’s coming 2 weeks ago:
GATES: Go to San Francisco and ask people “would you rather ride in a Waymo or rather ride with a human driver?”
So, he’s right about that—I’ve seen past polling that shows that people in the Bay Area do say that they prefer to not have to deal with a human and would prefer the robotic taxi over the human. But it’s also true, unless things have changed recently, and I have not been monitoring the situation, that Waymo’s rates were higher, and so it’s also not presently an even comparison.
That being said, my bet is that a lot of Waymo’s costs are fixed, so those costs will drop on a per-ride basis as their fleet scales up.
- Comment on Green party drops longstanding opposition to nuclear power 2 weeks ago:
I wish the Sierra Club here in the US and Greenpeace would do a similar transition.
- Comment on BT accused of ‘bullying’ customers by pausing broadband in digital landline push 2 weeks ago:
>who worry about being able to call emergency services if there is a power cut.
I mean, that’s not a completely invalid concern, though I’d bet that the UK has pretty good cell coverage in general.
But you could stick a battery-backed inverter in place and put your router and VoIP to POTS adapter on it and keep using your phone.
- Comment on Inside McDonald’s push to have AI price your Big Mac 3 weeks ago:
This is going to make life complicated for The Economist’s Big Mac Index.
- Comment on Why so many Steam games have weirdly similar (and forgettable) names 3 weeks ago:
$ git clone -q https://github.com/karlforshaw/opengamedb.git $ cd opengamedb/ $ cut -d, -f1 names.csv |xargs -i% cat %.csv|cut -d, -f1|sort|uniq|sed 's/^"//'|sed 's/"$//'|grep -E '^(.*)\1+$'|uniq [snip] *** 1010 101010 222 999 Ape QuestApe Quest BeatBeat DingDingDing GUNGUNGUN JUJU KARAKARA MochiMochi MokMok niconico OlliOlli QbQbQb ROCKETSROCKETSROCKETS ROWROW RRRR RUNRUNRUN TripTrip VVVVV VVVVVV YamaYama zzzzz $
There do appear to be games like that (though “Ape QuestApe Quest” appears to be a typo).
- Comment on Why so many Steam games have weirdly similar (and forgettable) names 3 weeks ago:
I strongly suspect that the surname predates the automobile.
searches
www.familysearch.org/en/surname?surname=carless
Carless Name Meaning
English (Staffordshire): variant of Corliss .
- Comment on Why so many Steam games have weirdly similar (and forgettable) names 3 weeks ago:
I’d rather have numbered titles in the series so that I don’t have to memorize the order.
- Comment on Why so many Steam games have weirdly similar (and forgettable) names 3 weeks ago:
There was an earlier era, when <NOUN> hadn’t been already taken.
- Comment on Gene-edited bananas that don’t go brown could hit UK supermarkets 3 weeks ago:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zucchini#Culinary_uses
Raw grated zucchini can also be combined with flour and spices in a zucchini bread.[26][27]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpkin_bread
Pumpkin bread is a type of moist quick bread made with pumpkin.[1]
- Comment on Far-right activist Daniel Thomas slashes dinghy in Channel with blade while rescue worker onboard 4 weeks ago:
The noise of escaping air was audible, and Thomas shouted: “This is England. This is not France any more.”
Thomas had presumably recently updated his slogan.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Tommo
In January 2026, Thomas was one of 10 British nationals banned from entering France for engaging in anti-migrant vigilantism with the group Raise the Colours.[13]
- Comment on Microsoft patent describes in-game advertising triggered by boss fights, loading screens, and cutscenes 4 weeks ago:
I generally don’t think F2P games are a very good deal for the player.
- Comment on Why are games priced in € (EUR) quoted the same as $ (USD)? 4 weeks ago:
I dunno. If someone sets the price at the same number…let’s see.
The current exchange rate is 1.1486 dollars per euro.
www.tradingview.com/symbols/EURUSD/
I’m pretty confident that VAT is higher than 14% in some countries in Europe.
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taxfoundation.org/…/value-added-tax-vat-rates-eur…
This says 19% in Germany to 27% in Hungary.
That assumes that whatever prices OP is looking at does indeed include VAT for the EU price (which would require knowing his location), and does not include sales tax in the US (which presumably is the case, if he’s not in the US, as there’d be no way to calculate sales tax anyway, since that would require a specific location in the US).
- Comment on Bristol becomes first British city to ban advertisements for fast fashion 5 weeks ago:
How does one identify fast fashion for this classification?
- Comment on Only slim chance target of 1.5m new homes in England will be met, Angela Rayner says 5 weeks ago:
I prefer using a suffix “M” and “B” over “m” and “b” for “million” and “billion” in text.
Apparently the convention for “million” in the finance industry is the even more unambiguous “MM”.
- Comment on Why was Concord DoA upon launch? 5 weeks ago:
I haven’t played it, but:
store.steampowered.com/app/2443720/Concord/
All Reviews: Mixed (849)
Generally, if it’s got a “Mixed” rating on Steam, it’s not going to do well.
- Comment on Burnham must understand Wales is ‘not a region in England’, says first minister 5 weeks ago:
Burnham must understand Wales is ‘not a region in England’, says first minister
It’s a noble and important region located in Not-Greater-Manchester.
- Comment on FFVII Revelation Director Insists S-E Had No Choice but to Require a Download to Play the Physical Disc Version 1 month ago:
I would guess that most of that is textures.
They could probably reasonably just ship half-resolution textures on disc and make higher-res textures be a downloadable option. Bethesda did that with their games, later on added free, downloadable higher-res textures. Shouldn’t require a lot of technical work. Maybe reducing texture resolution could trip some existing bug, a race condition somewhere, but it should be pretty mechanical, as changes go.
I don’t really have a dog in this race—I wouldn’t get the game either way. So I’m not pushing for that as an option. Just saying that I think that it’s an option from a technical standpoint, if one wanted to provide a compact, on-disc version of the game.
- Comment on FFVII Revelation Director Insists S-E Had No Choice but to Require a Download to Play the Physical Disc Version 1 month ago:
It might let you download less than would be the case if it were purely digital.
- Comment on Miami wants to turn parts of the city into a real-life GTA Vice City, but sheriff opposes the plan 1 month ago:
There are legitimately locations that have gotten a tourism bump from being present in media.
vegasspecialtytours.com/goodsprings-fallout-tour/
Step into the world of Fallout: New Vegas on our Goodsprings Fallout Tour. This immersive tour takes you to the historic town of Goodsprings, Nevada, the real-life inspiration behind the beloved video game. Experience the rich history and unique charm of this iconic location as you explore its fascinating past and connection to the Fallout universe.
I think that the idea of Miami doing it is pretty nuts, though, content aside. Miami isn’t some kind of obscure backwater from a tourism standpoint.
…yahoo.com/…/greater-miami-convention-visitors-bu…
The numbers are in and Greater Miami and Miami Beach continues to deliver by charting new records in visitation. At the GMCVB’s annual State of the Travel & Tourism Industry event, tourism leaders gathered to herald a milestone 2025: 28.3 million visitors, $32.2 billion in total economic impact and a globally competitive destination that continues to bolster employment, drives commerce to local businesses and delivers quality-of-life benefits for every Miami-Dade County resident.
- Comment on no comment (fandom.com) 1 month ago:
If the issue is the sidebar:
