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Latest Comments by walther von stolzing
You can now order a PC case that looks like the classic Commodore 64
12 Oct 2020 at 5:00 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: randylThere was a VIC-20 in the science room when I was in 8th or 9th grade around 81 - 82. It had a cassette tape drive to load programs. They took minutes to load. It was a nightmare of impatience for a young kid. I loved playing that program where your cannon was supposed to shoot the other cannon. You were given the mass, distance, and wind velocity and were supposed to calculate your shot.

I don't want to go back to the beige days. Honestly, as a mechanical keyboard fan, that thing looks horrible.
I do believe someone made a mechanical keyboard for the C64 / VIC-20s.
He was hand-building and selling that (the 'Mechboard64') in small batches; but earlier this year he open sourced the project: https://www.breadbox64.com/blog/diy-mechboard64/ [External Link]

There are occasionally crowdfunding campaigns to produce small batches of keycaps as well. If I can (ever) sort out my current ... stuff ... I seriously intend to put together an almost-all-new C64 with the help of projects such as these.

64C-style new cases have been in production for a while now: https://shop.pixelwizard.eu/en/commodore-c64/cases/37/c64c-case-classic-beige [External Link]

You can now order a PC case that looks like the classic Commodore 64
12 Oct 2020 at 3:23 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: NanobangSomeone needs to tell Sean Donohue that this isn't retro. It's kitsch.

My first computer was a VIC-20. I bought it in 1981 from a local stereo store for $300, so I could maybe see someone getting a kick out of playing around with an original VIC or C-64 nowadays, or maybe retrofitting a modern computer into a real VIC or C-64 shell, but I don't get this.

This is a fake antique. This is the equivalent of one of those phones that look like a rotary phone, but have buttons instead of holes in a dial, and have modern electronics inside.

And how'm I gonna get my GTX 1070 into that? ;)
Yeah, I think so too. My first thought was that this is an attempt to sell off 10-year old unused stock from the 2011 thingy, and it looks like that really is the case. (No pun intended.)

By the way, if anyone's inclined to use their existing Commodore machines for their keyboards on modern pcs*, there's long been an add-on board that allows doing just that: http://wiki.icomp.de/wiki/Keyrah_V2 [External Link]

(* I haven't touched a C64 in a *long* time (I'm an idiot, so I got rid of mine the day I got my first 486); but as far as I can remember, the original keyboards on those devices were pretty awful, with thick springs under each key (*not* buckling spring style, just a straight spring that the keycap bounces on) with ridiculously long 'action', and no real sense of feedback. So unless you're using the original keyboard specificially on VICE, there really is no point.)

OBS Studio adds in better noise suppression thanks to RNNoise in the 26.0 release out now
2 Oct 2020 at 1:46 pm UTC

On the topic of using OBS for video chat, I just got reminded of this, which is worth taking a look: https://obs.ninja/ [External Link]

The 'server' part of it does pretty much nothing (just some initial routing, IIRC), and in any case it can be self-hosted. I sort of 'tested' it only inside a LAN, where it worked very well; I don't know how it would behave on the internet though.

OBS Studio adds in better noise suppression thanks to RNNoise in the 26.0 release out now
1 Oct 2020 at 5:14 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: scaine
Quoting: beko
Quoting: scaineYeah I... know? Like I said, I wish you could set it up in silent mode, and automatically start the replay buffer. Right now, you have start OBS, then press "start replay buffer". I'm just being lazy!
Do you know about obs-websocket [External Link]? This may scratch your itch. Afair that's used by e.g. http://touch-portal.com/ [External Link]
Haha! I'm waaaaay too lazy to build my own launcher that hooks into OBS via websocket! Interesting though, I had no idea OBS was so easy to integrate with other platforms. Well, I say easy... well beyond my skillset.
FWIW, I (a silly amateur) had a baffling experience setting up a python client for obs-websocket, so that I could trigger some animations 'remotely'. The trouble was that not all controls are exposed to the websockets api; also the json files that are sent back & forth were a little too complex, with little in the way of documentation to explain how they're laid out.

(I eventually made something in JS that runs inside the browser using the amazing GSAP library, & talks to a python websocket server -- a lot easier to implement... but then again the browser doesn't work properly on Linux, so I had to use all this on windows. -- all for the purpose of injecting a couple of silly effects & animations over my weekly video chats with family that lives abroad, haha.)

OBS Studio adds in better noise suppression thanks to RNNoise in the 26.0 release out now
30 Sep 2020 at 1:43 pm UTC Likes: 2

Another currently Windows-only feature was added with support for a "Virtual Camera", which allows you to use the OBS output as a camera in other apps. They said support for other operating systems will be added when they're ready.
Virtual Camera used to be a plugin on windows; it looks like they're integrating it into the base version. A Linux port has existed for quite a while, though it's been a hassle to get it working: https://github.com/CatxFish/obs-v4l2sink [External Link]
-- it's partly because the documentation isn't clear as to where to install the plugins & what v4l2 module settings it requires; and if you're building it on any distro other than Ubuntu, the install script puts the files in the wrong folder. So hopefully they've accelerated the development of the Linux port.

Microsoft Edge comes to Linux in October as a preview
23 Sep 2020 at 10:42 pm UTC

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: PhlebiacThe problem is that Google intentionally hinders other browsers; for example, YouTube is using deprecated HTML which other browsers don't support, just to make the experience there slightly worse on browsers other than Chrome. I wouldn't trust Microsoft not to start doing the same for Edge.
Now that's an old song. Remember when Microsoft Internet Exploder used to pull exactly that kind of crap? The more things change . . .
The other day I was thinking how they had mocked the antitrust deposition with a spoof of the famous SNL sketch:

https://youtu.be/IY2j_GPIqRA [External Link]

Assholes

Microsoft Edge comes to Linux in October as a preview
22 Sep 2020 at 6:00 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: WJMazepasA lot of government websites from my country requires Internet Explorer so if this makes possible to access then with my Linux machine, i will be really happy
Is this 'Edge' thing at all compatible with IE, though? My impression was that it's a clean slate; and that IE is going to be phased out completely.

Anyway, I think one reason why MS wants their browser on as many platform as possible is that it comes with all kinds of bull$hit 'MS account' features -- just like Google's Chrome, you log in, then the browser starts tracking your every move. So there.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 is out today, some details for you (plus new driver release)
20 Sep 2020 at 2:14 pm UTC Likes: 1

I see one 'generational leap' on that graph; & it's the Olympic record leap in ridiculous pricing taken by the 2080Ti.

GNOME 3.38 'Orbis' is out now to showcase a modern Linux desktop
16 Sep 2020 at 11:34 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: PhlebiacI say "is/was" on those because I'm not sure if they have retained their original acronyms?
I wonder if they tried to come up with a recursive acronym ('backronym', that is) at any point.

GNOME has NO MErcy.

Xfce desktop environment sees a 4.16pre1 release, better fractional scaling
14 Sep 2020 at 8:31 pm UTC Likes: 1

Some serious 'quality of life' improvements coming up; esp. dark mode for panel alone (dirty workarounds exist, but a clean solution would be very welcome), & desktop file actions on the launchers. What I really am waiting for, though, is keyboard shortcuts (at least an option to focus & navigate by arrow keys) for the panel 'window buttons'.

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