d3Xt3r

@ d3Xt3r @beehaw.org

Posts

15
Comments

139
Joined

3 yr. ago

As a retro enthusiast, I've been following this project for a while and it's been great seeing all the improvements over the years. I recommend checking out this video on its current state: https://youtube.com/watch?v=nWjAxNHXd_8

Equally, or possibly more interesting, is their Ladybird browser, which is cross-platform. Its been making great progress as well, and I sincerely hope that it can compete with the big two some day - would be nice to have a major browser/engine that's not based on Webkit or Gecko.

I wish 90s interfaces would make a comeback, I really miss the aesthetics of that era. Luckily there are some excellent themes out there that scratch that itch, like Chicago95 for XFCE - and here's bonus a screenshot of it running on my Galaxy Fold 4:

2y ago

A map app for mobile phones with fog of war

You could make yours a Geocaching app with fog-of-war. They've got an API for third-party apps too, so it should be easy enough to develop, and actually fun to play.

If you're feeling ambitious, add some RTS elements like from Age of Empires - eg if you add someone as your ally, you can share their line of sight. Finding certain types of caches, or POIs, increases your resources (gold/stone/food/wood - maybe visiting Pizza Hut gives you extra food lol). And with these resources, you could build virtual structures like castles etc. Other players could spend resources to take it down (but they need to be physically at that location), and you could spend resources to defend your building.

Kinda like Ingress basically, but with medieval/RTS elements and geocaching thrown into the mix. How's that for a challenge? :)

2y ago

What details/tools have you found help people transition to similar, open software from closed software, or think could help?

You should check out Pinta then, I find it easier to use than Paint.net, yet reasonably feature-packed (obviously nowhere near GIMP/Photoshop).

2y ago

Maybe hot take: as a handheld, the regular switch is an awful handheld

I game on my bed too, and use a flat right-angled USB adapter. Basically, something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Duttek-Degree-Adapter-Extender-Support/dp/B0C244K2HC/

I use a similar but magnetic version with my phone and other USB-C devices, and it's been a game-changer.

2y ago

A personal argument for a benefit of gaming

That's incredible. Your son has far, far, more patience than I ever did. I still haven't managed to clock most of the games I grew up with, such as Dangerous Dave, Prince of Persia 1 & 2, Wolf3D, Doom 1 & 2, Crystal Caves, Aladdin, Lion King, Jazz Jackrabbit, Mario (NES), Pokemon Red (GBA), Crash Bandicoot (PS1)...

Every now and then I try to clock one of those old games, but then I get stuck and/or lose interest, and move on to something else. Even among recent games, I spent over 400 hours playing BotW and only managed to do two of the divine beasts. I also have over 200 hours in TotK and still haven't gotten to the first major spirit quest. Similarly, got several hundreds of hours in Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim, but never actually completed any of those games.

I think the only game that I recall beating would be the Bio Menace trilogy - which I finally managed to complete as an adult, and that too thanks to DOSBox's save states. Oh, and Diablo II too, it someone had the perfect mix of action + story + game length, to keep me interested till the end.

Honestly I've no idea how people manage to stick to one thing for so long and see it thru till the end, without losing interest or getting distracted by something else.

2y ago

Generative AI is still a solution in search of a problem

That's going to change in the future with NPUs (neural processing units). They're already being bundled with both regular CPUs (such as the Ryzen 8000 series) and mobile SoCs (such as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3). The NPU included with the the SD8Gen3 for instance can run models like Llama 2 - something an average desktop would normally struggle with. Now this is only the 7B model mind you, so it's a far cry from more powerful models like the 70B, but this will only improve in the future. Over the next few years, NPUs - and applications that take advantage of them - will be a completely normal thing, and it won't require a household's worth of energy. I mean, we're already seeing various applications of it, eg in smartphone cameras, photo editing apps, digital assistants etc. The next would be I guess autocorrect and word prediction, and I for one can't wait to ditch our current, crappy markov keyboards.

2y ago

What do you personally use AI for?

Summarising articles / extracting information / transforming it according to my needs. Everyone knows LLM-bssed summaries are great, but not many folks utilise them to their full extent. For instance, yesterday, Sony published a blog piece on how a bunch of games were discounted on the PlayStation store. This was like a really long list that I couldn't be bothered reading, so I asked ChatGPT to display just the genres that I'm interested in, and sort them according to popularity. Another example is parsing changelogs for software releases, sometimes some of them are really long (and not sorted properly - maybe just a dump of commit messages), so I'd ask it to summarise the changes, maybe only show me new feature additions, or any breaking changes etc.
Translations. I find ChatGPT excellent at translating Asian languages - expecially all the esoteric terms used in badly-translated Chinese webcomics. I feed in the pinyin word and provide context, and ChatGPT tells me what it means in that context, and also provides alternate translations. This is a 100 times better than just using Google Translate or whatever dumb dictionary-based translator, because context is everything in Asian languages.

3y ago

What do you think the bare necessities of the current world is?

d3Xt3r @beehaw.org 3y ago

Bear necessities you say? All that a modern bear needs is a pic-a-nic basket and a trusty sidekick.

3y ago

$600 Million And A Decade Later, Where Is Star Citizen?

Given the current pace of development, how long would you reckon it might take them to get rid of the bugs, at least, the annoying game-breaking ones? I don't mind incomplete content, but game breaking bugs is something I don't have the patience to deal with. Like, I made the mistake of pre-ordering Cyberpunk - dropped it on day one cause of the bugs and didn't touch it until three years later, when it was finally in a playable state (for me). Just wondering if Star Citizen would reach that sort of bug-free stage within the next couple of years.

3y ago

Can I replace the wired USB cable with a USB port in this keyboard?

d3Xt3r @beehaw.org 3y ago

It's not in the opposite order, it's just flipped around in the photo lol.

3y ago

Can I replace the wired USB cable with a USB port in this keyboard?

d3Xt3r @beehaw.org 3y ago

Looks like this might work: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005094002506.html

3y ago

Can I replace the wired USB cable with a USB port in this keyboard?

d3Xt3r @beehaw.org 3y ago

3y ago

Say I want to make an app on my phone for personal use. How to begin?

d3Xt3r @beehaw.org 3y ago

If it's just for personal use, why not just use Tasker? Judging by what you've written, it could be easily done without needing any Android coding experience.

3y ago

FOSS Image editor

If you're interested, there's a patch for it that makes it look and behave more like Photoshop.

3y ago

Beans Are a Vegetable: an Overanalysis

d3Xt3r @beehaw.org 3y ago

That was a fun read, cheers for sharing!

I just wish more places offered beans as an alternative protein option. I ordered a burger yesterday from this new restaurant, and their only veggie option was a "plant-based patty". And as it turns out, it was a fake meat patty, which tasted gross. I don't understand why they don't just offer a bean patty instead - it'd be cheaper, healthier and tastier.

3y ago

The Elder Scrolls VI will skip PS5 and isn’t coming until at least 2026

d3Xt3r @beehaw.org 3y ago

But Bethesda could very well release a Skyrim Extra Special Edition in the interim, and fans will lap it up, no doubt. Jokes aside, there are many large fan-projects in the works which fans are looking forward to, such such as OpenMW, Skyblivion and Skywind, not to mention more "normal" mods for Skyrim itself, so I doubt the interest in the franchise is going away any time soon.

3y ago

Why do you use firefox?

[Meta] I don't think there's a need to cross-post this within Beehaw. Beehaw is low-activity as it is (in terms of new posts) so most people here would be just browsing new/local so they'd be seeing this post in their feed twice.

Even if you're not browsing by local, most people in this community would likely also be subscribed to the Technology community as well, so again, there's a double-up.

3y ago

I am so pumped for Phantom Liberty and Cyberpunk 2077 v2.0!