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Latest Comments by Nocifer
Intel Arc is the new brand for their high-performance GPUs, Alchemist arrives in 2022
16 Aug 2021 at 8:46 pm UTC Likes: 2

I can't wait for the moment when it will be a "no-brainer" for gamers to build their über gaming PC with an AMD CPU and an Intel discrete GPU. Oh how the tides turn.

Fortune's Run is an upcoming retro-styled hard-scifi shooter worth watching
16 Aug 2021 at 11:42 am UTC

Definitely seems dystopian enough to pique my interest, but I fail to get how this isn't a DOOM/Quake-like when the combat showcased in the trailer is all fast-paced jumping and running and ducking and sliding and dancing around enemies and their projectiles while blasting them in the face, i.e. exactly like in DOOM and Quake, which unfortunately I've always disliked (even though I do appreciate the old-school hardcore gaming experience they offer.

Valve puts up a Steam Deck trailer and the head of Xbox seems to really like it
15 Aug 2021 at 12:20 pm UTC Likes: 8

Quoting: gradyvuckovic
It doesn't mention SteamOS, Proton or anything Linux related but simply mentions it runs a "new version of Steam" and ends by telling people to reserve now.
That is probably the right amount of information for the general public. They don't care how games run, they only care if they do.
Not to mention that it works far better as a marketing strategy to precede a new and totally unknown thing with a real-time showcase of how good it is compared to the existing solutions, instead of trying to convince people to trust you and change their habits based only on the potential that this new unknown thing will turn out to be good.

I can't count* the times I've had people asking me to switch them to Linux after watching me working on my PC and liking what they saw, compared to the times I was successful in convincing someone to switch to Linux because "it's better, you'll see".

(*OK, actually I can count the times because they're really not that many, but hopefully you get my drift :P)

Didn't last long: Back 4 Blood no longer working on Linux with Proton
15 Aug 2021 at 12:07 pm UTC Likes: 16

I don't find it sad at all, rather I find it absolutely par of the course. That's because a) no anti-cheat solution officially works on Proton yet, and b) Valve is officially working with the anti-cheat solution vendors in order to make Proton officially compatible with them - and that's what really counts.

Until that point in time, there really is no point in trying to play games protected with anti-cheat via Proton and either hooraying when they happen to work or crying when they most often do not.

What will be actually sad is if the Steam Deck's launch day arrives without Valve having already managed to secure and implement official anti-cheat support into Proton.

Key word in all of the above: OFFICIAL. Even if it technically works, there is no point in playing a game with anti-cheat via Proton if one risks getting themselves banned due to it being considered as unsanctioned use (aka cheating) by the game company.

Patience, people.

Garry Newman of Facepunch mentions working with EAC for Rust on Linux with Proton
28 Jul 2021 at 1:33 pm UTC Likes: 3

That's to be expected. I mean, Valve would never officially announce a game console with explicit support for games that utilize anti-cheat solutions, without first having worked with the anti-cheat companies behind the scenes and ensured that said anti-cheat solutions will be working like a charm come the console's release day. That would be unbelievably irresponsible and shortsighted of them in terms of marketing and company credibility, and Valve are not generally known for being irresponsible or shortsighted. Even the Steam Machines were less of a flop and more of a testing the waters thing, if you ask me; Valve's continued long-term involvement with Linux and eventually Proton confirms this in my eyes.

DOSBox-X and DOSBox Staging both had new releases lately
5 Jul 2021 at 6:35 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI'm losing track. How does Boxtron relate to these projects?
It's DOSBox Staging behind the scenes.

There's now a Debian User Repository in the style of the Arch User Repository
30 Jun 2021 at 3:19 pm UTC

For desktop usage this sounds great on paper, until you realize that Debian as a rule tends to have very stale libraries, which means that DUR apps will eventually need to also fetch and install newer versions of these libraries from the DUR, which means that you'll keep on piling extra libraries on top of your Debian system apps and libs, especially if you like to have the newest versions of all the apps you frequently use and not just a few of them, which means that at this point you really shouldn't be using Debian but a distro more suited to desktop usage with up-to-date apps included from the get-go.

For server usage this sounds even greater on paper (a rock-solid system coupled with a few hand-selected up-to-date software/services? yay!) until you remember that this is a problem that has already been solved since a few years ago by Docker et al. Why have a DUR app messing with my rock-solid Debian system, when I can have a properly sandboxed container that does not pollute whatsoever the rest of my system?

TL;DR the DUR sounds great in theory but IMHO is actually not that great in practice. Maybe if it came a few years earlier it could have seized the day on the server in place of containers, but as it is now it seems more like a solution without a problem.

Dislaimer: I'm an Arch user who otherwise loves the AUR and its broad possibilities for a desktop distro (was one of the three main reasons I eventually ended up on Arch for the long-term, the other two being its rolling nature and its minimalism that allowed me to tailor my system exactly as I want it) and I'm even maintaining a few AUR packages myself. Though to be honest, the onset of Flatpak seems to be slowly spelling the end of the AUR as well. Not yet, but I'd say give it 5 years and people on other distros will be able to do with Flatpaks what Arch has been doing with the AUR since forever, only better than the AUR.

AMD reveals Ryzen 5000 G-Series desktop APUs, FidelityFX Super Resolution and more
3 Jun 2021 at 12:45 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Guest"Instinct" doesn't imply that because in its nature, an instinct is a genetically encoded sequence of reactions to specific stimuli. It can be as simple as a plant reacting to the change of humidity and as complex as humans striving to preserve their race.
Sure, but instinct can evolve on its own and create new reactions and motives over time (and over generations), while our algorithms can't, for the simple reason that we don't adequately understand the natural mechanism that creates these new reactions and motives, so we can't perfectly imitate it (just as we can't imitate e.g. abstract thought and convert it into electrical signals - we simply don't know enough about how the brain works). As it stands, no matter how complex our "AI" appears to be, its limit to "create" is only what we've programmed it to be able to create, and no more. So the more "specialized" the person creating the AI is, the more "specialized" that AI can ultimately be.

Quoting: GuestPeople don't have to be "highly-specialized" to implement a neural-network or a genetics algorithm - as you said, they're just regular algorithms - "good ol' programming".
Well alright, if you say so - I was just trying to be gracious and not call them "good ole script kiddies" :P But joking aside, I'm not bashing the quality of these algorithms, or their usefulness, or their limitations, or how easy or hard it is to create them and/or train them; I'm only bashing the marketing-focused change in lingo: what we market today as AI/ML, and how we market it to the masses, is parsecs away from actual intelligence, let alone actual awareness, i.e. what "AI" originally used to mean. And IMHO we shouldn't be calling it instinct either because even instinctive reactions in nature are (or can be) infinitely more complex and more nondeterministic than what we can currently do with our AI/ML stuff.

AMD reveals Ryzen 5000 G-Series desktop APUs, FidelityFX Super Resolution and more
3 Jun 2021 at 9:02 am UTC

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: scaine
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: ShmerlI think for an anti-feature, it's good enough to end DLSS. Because it works everywhere and will also get better over time. The other side of it - it's general purpose. While AI/ML is more limited to specific use cases. So it is better in some cases and worse in others. Everything is a trade off.
This sounds like it was written by someone who doesn't understand either of these features. Hardware-assisted AI/ML being "limited" to specific use cases while an upscaling tech being "general purpose"? Give me a break...
Honestly, you sound like you don't know how Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence works. It's typically incredibly focused.
Personally, I think a more honest name for it would be Artificial Instinct. 'Cause like, instinct is this stuff animals do without actually being smart or thinking or figuring it out, where through evolution they became really good at some particular task they need to be good at to survive. Machine Learning AI seems to be this forced evolution thing where you let the algorithms survive that are good at some specific task, until you've evolved a black box that can do that specialized thing really well but has no general reasoning ability. So it's instinct, but for some (marketing) reason we call it "intelligence".
Ah, thanks for bringing up my favorite pet peeve (OK, one of many really) of the last ~5 years or so: the fact that we went from AI = "Skynet wakes up and takes over the world" to AI = "my coffeemaker can deduce how many sugars I take my coffee with and suggest new recipes for my morning coffee based off a list it downloaded from the coffeemaker vendor's server".

I wouldn't even call this "instinct", because instinct implies the subconscious ability to adapt to new situations by creating new responses on the fly. I'd just call it for what it is: highly specialized deterministic algorithms programmed by highly specialized people to do highly specialized tasks, with the ability to better adapt to these tasks by using a preprogrammed set of highly specialized criteria to perform a highly specialized form of reflection.

In other words the key differentiating factor when compared to normal software is "highly specialized", so kudos to the developers that have dedicated thousands of man-hours to make such a tech possible, but otherwise AI/ML is simply just another form of good ole programming. Nothing more, nothing less, despite what 21st century marketing-speak would have us believe.

Sci-fi action-RPG Beyond Mankind launches with Linux support this August
21 May 2021 at 8:38 pm UTC Likes: 2

Looks nice and the premise is good, too bad the trailer is indeed a bit underwhelming in that it doesn't actually tell us much about a game that's supposedly ready to release. I mean story-wise and gameplay-wise (beyond being an FPS, at least partly). Also, it seems juust a bit janky/clunky at some points.

What's in there though gave me pleasant vibes of Half Life, Deus Ex, Crysis, Alien vs Predator and a bit of System Shock 2 - i.e. pure '00s bliss. Also, for some reason it left me with a strong urge to replay STALKER :P