ByteSorcerer

@ByteSorcerer@beehaw.org

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Americans are holding onto devices longer than ever and it's costing the economy⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I am typing this on a 5 year old Android phone. It has 128GB of memory and 8GB of RAM, very decent cameras, a beautiful OLED screen and a processor that is more than fast enough for everything I do with it. And even now the battery still lasts two days with normal use. It cost me about €300 at the time.

  Unfortunately the Android version is getting so far behind that some apps are starting to get a few issues, so I have been checking out some black Friday deals for new phones, but they look very disappointing.

  In the current market it seems like I’d have to pay about €500 to effectively just get a side-grade. All €300 offerings look like just a straight up downgrade in any way apart from the more recent android version.

  So I think I’ll hold on to this one a while longer. Hardware-wise it’s still in perfect condition, and if software support really becomes an issue then perhaps I’ll try out a custom ROM.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Americans are holding onto devices longer than ever and it's costing the economy⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The main reason is tech debt and proprietary software. Most companies have decades of software infrastructure all built on Microsoft based systems. Transitioning all that stuff to Linux is a massive investment, especially taking into account the downtime it’ll cause combined with the temporary decrease in productivity when everyone has to get trained and build up experience with the new platform.

  And then you have to deal with proprietary software. A lot of niche corporate or industrial hardware only supports Windows. And you probably have to regularly interact with customers who use Windows and share files with you that can only be opened in Windows only proprietary software.

  Linux also frequently struggles with a lot of weird driver issues and other weird quirks, causing an increased burden on the IT department.

  Basically you’re looking at a massive investment in the short term, for significantly reduced productivity in the long run. And all that mostly to save a bit of hardware costs, which are only a fraction of the operating costs for most companies. Just sticking with Windows ends up being the more economical choice for most companies.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  For me it’s mostly for text and content with fine lines where the difference is the most obvious. I use a 1440p monitor at work and a 4k one at home. Text is noticeably sharper and easier to read on my 4k monitor and remains readable at smaller font sizes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stellantis abandons hydrogen fuel cell development⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Natural hydrogen deposits do exist, but they’ve only been mapped out quite recently and it is still unknown if it can be extracted in a safe and economically viable manner.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Like it or not, developers are experimenting with AI for their remasters and remakes - but can they ever be any good? [Eurogamer]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There are probably more remakes/remasters that do use AI upscaling for background assets than those that don’t.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ChatGPT 'got absolutely wrecked' by Atari 2600 in beginner's chess match — OpenAI's newest model bamboozled by 1970s logic⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the problem is that, while the model isn’t actually reasoning, it’s very good at convincing people it actually is.

  I see current LLMs kinda like an RPG character build with all ability points put into Charisma. It’s actually not that good at most tasks, but it’s so good at convincing people that they start to think it’s actually doing a great job.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cloudflare CEO warns AI and zero-click internet are killing the web's business model⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Unfortunately no one else is interacting with it either. I miss the old style forums, and most of the ones I used to frequent are still online. But they all haven’t had any real activity in years, so they aren’t really usable anymore unfortunately.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The enshittification of Duolingo has already been going on for quite a while. It has really gone downhill in the last few years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Overblown quantum dot conspiracy theories make important points about QLED TVs⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Depends on viewing conditions. As of yet there isn’t an objectively superior display technology.

  OLEDs have the best contrast in a dark room as black pixels can be fully turned off, but they are generally less bright and use more power than comparable LCD TVs or monitors (especially when you compare models of a similar price range).

  LCD based monitors and TVs can get brighter and can actually achieve a higher contrast in a well lit room as the black pixels on an LCD are less reflective than black pixels on an OLED, and when viewing in daylight the ambient light is more than enough to drown out the backlight bleed.

  There are also other smaller pros and cons. OLED for example has a better pixel response time, while IPS LCDs are more colour accurate. Text rendering and other fine graphics also generally look slightly sharper on an LCD than on an OLED display (when comparing displays of equal resolution / pixel density) due to the subpixel layout.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'You can now jailbreak your AMD CPU' — Google researchers release kit to exploit microcode vulnerability in Ryzen Zen 1 to Zen 4 chips⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Any guesses how long it will take for someone to use this jailbreak to get Doom to run on just the CPU?
  In theory, at least some of the affected processors should have more than enough cache to run it directly from there, right?

  Though I have to admit that I don’t understand CPU internals well enough to know if the microcode even has enough control over the chip to make that physically possible.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨On May 5, Microsoft’s Skype will shut down for good⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It was successfull for a while up to 10 years or so ago, when it was the main free option for video calling. But nowadays there are plenty of alternatives, pretty much all of which do a better job than Skype ever did.

  Skype has now been pretty much obsolete for years so I don’t think it’s too bad that it’s ending.

  The Google approach would have been to already have killed it in 2004 before it ever even had a chance to be successful.