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tikker

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  1. Informative
    tikker reacted to irfdude2162 in UK Starlink experiences (or suggestions)   
    Starlink user here. I work somewhere where I cover 20 different sites around Devon, ranging from rural to urban. We have a combination of ADSL, FTTP, 4/5G modems, and Starlink recently.
    One rural site that only had ADSL was upgraded to SL for over 2 years now, with probably 10 minutes of downtime in that entire period. DL speeds of around 100Mbps–400Mbps and upload speeds of 90–200Mbps. The highest ping I've ever seen is 100 ms. Because of that reliability, we purchased another for a business site, and they consistently get 50–150 Mbps downlad and 50–100 Mbps upload. So bizarrely lower performing than the rural site, but likely to have to do with being in a built-up area.
    We run IP CCTV, IP phones, alarm systems, and all day-to-day usage on it, and it has been absolutely fine.
    Yes, its expensive, but in my experience, it's very reliable. £10-15 cheaper and I would get it to replace my fttp at home without a doubt.
  2. Agree
    tikker reacted to YoungBlade in How to only login as root?   
    What is the reason that you want to do this?
     
    If you're needing to run a lot of commands as root, and are getting annoyed by needing to type "sudo" a bunch, or something that you're doing needs to be root for whatever reason, you can run the command "sudo su" to become root in that session, do what you need to do, then simply logout, exit the terminal, or switch back to your own account.
     
    I can't think of any situation where this solution is not better from the perspectives of both security and system stability compared to removing all user accounts and only running as root.
  3. Like
    tikker got a reaction from filpo in UK Starlink experiences (or suggestions)   
    No 5G option from them at my location sadly.
    Ah that is good to know.
  4. Informative
    tikker reacted to porina in UK Starlink experiences (or suggestions)   
    SMARTY Unlimited data is showing as £18/month, monthly contract, supports 5G. SIM only so you'd need to arrange something for it to go in should you go this route. I wonder if I could have got faster speeds if I had a 5G capable device.
     
    I don't play ping sensitive games online so I didn't feel it. The online games I do play, I had no problems with. 
  5. Agree
    tikker reacted to johnt in Youtube on auto quality doesn't lower quality when there's are significant frame drops (PC)   
    Man I have the complete opposite issue with YT. Just lowers the quality when nothing happened haha
  6. Agree
    tikker reacted to Godlygamer23 in A 1 Petabit DVD-like disc has been created   
    If a RAM manufacturer is representing GiB as GB, then it's wrong, and I say the same thing about Windows as well. Represent it for what it actually is - if there are additional units that are available to define what you're talking about...then fucking use them. There's no excuse except for companies that refuse to change. 
     
    Microsoft clearly acknowledges the difference between GiB and GB, and units of similar caliber(KiB and KB for example) because it's in the default Windows calculator, and yet Windows is representing storage space in binary vs decimal. It doesn't even need to change anything - just change how the unit is being represented, and users will probably figure it out. 
     
    This is a debate that shouldn't even be a debate.
  7. Informative
    tikker got a reaction from Tushar Sehdev in Why cpu and wafers from cpu made are like this?   
    The silicon "ingot" from which they are made is produced as a cilindrical shape so you get circular discs:
     
  8. Agree
    tikker reacted to WereCat in Disney Invests 1.5 Billion in Epic Games to create Disney branded titles   
    Steam is not forcing anyone. Devs put their games on Steam because it's good. Not only it promotes their games but it also ties it with communities and allows for direct mod supports trough workshop and communication with the player base. Steam also has chat and voice chat tools for player to communicate and to also stream gameplay, share gaming moments, achievements, game reviews, etc... It's so much more than just a store.
    The Steam % cut being higher is likely not a deal breaker for most devs and it's completely different situation to what Apple does with their store.
     
    Besides, devs can at the same time sell their game on other stores like GOG or Epic.
     
     
    While if they go with an Epic exclusive offer they can't sell it anywhere else. It's not bad for Steam, it's bad for any other store. Epic also lacks a lot of features that Steam has so people just don't really use it that much even if they got a lot of free games there. 
    Epic literally pays the devs a lot of money to make up for them not being able to sell their game anywhere else. How is that good for anyone else than the short-term revenue of the dev? It certainly sucks for players since they are now forced to go on Epic if they want to play that game even though they don't want to use another launcher and it sucks for any other store as well.
  9. Agree
    tikker got a reaction from Idkwhattodowithmylife in Disable military time on fake apple watch   
    12 AM vs PM always trips me up with midnight.
    We don't even really have the AM and PM qualifiers in a direct sense at all in Europe as far as I know. When speaking it is on the 0-12 scale where it's either clear form context which one or you just say "in the morning/afternoon". Writing and the likes are 24-hours all the way. It wasn't taught to me as "military style" either, but simply analogue and digital clock reading.
  10. Agree
    tikker got a reaction from goatedpenguin in Disable military time on fake apple watch   
    I don't know about the watch, but the 24 hour clock is rather straightforward: the AM hours are 00:00 to 12:00 and the PM hours are 12:00 to 23:59. If the numer is larger than 12, subtract 12 and you know the time in PM. For example, 09:45 is 9:45 AM while 21:45 is 9:45 PM.
  11. Agree
    tikker got a reaction from Somerandomtechyboi in Disable military time on fake apple watch   
    I don't know about the watch, but the 24 hour clock is rather straightforward: the AM hours are 00:00 to 12:00 and the PM hours are 12:00 to 23:59. If the numer is larger than 12, subtract 12 and you know the time in PM. For example, 09:45 is 9:45 AM while 21:45 is 9:45 PM.
  12. Agree
    tikker got a reaction from Needfuldoer in Should LTT invest on KDEnlive?   
    These are not some sort of magic words though. Open source is nice, but you still need leadership with a vision of where the project is going and a big team of developers and maintainers to keep the project going and maintained. That ties into the second point: "free" doesn't support the livelihood of people working on the project. Either their employers need to allow for a certain amount of work time to be spent on arbitrary community software (meaning money lost for the company), or they need to spend their free time on it. Either way it is likley they will have limited time to spend on the project, or at least a lot less than e.g. Adobe's teams can whose literal job it is to develop it.
     
    You are asking a project with substantially less money, less time and maybe less experience than Adobe to beat Adobe at their own game. That is not impossible, but at least very hard. Moreso because you need to break the industry standard.
  13. Agree
    tikker got a reaction from Lunar River in Should LTT invest on KDEnlive?   
    These are not some sort of magic words though. Open source is nice, but you still need leadership with a vision of where the project is going and a big team of developers and maintainers to keep the project going and maintained. That ties into the second point: "free" doesn't support the livelihood of people working on the project. Either their employers need to allow for a certain amount of work time to be spent on arbitrary community software (meaning money lost for the company), or they need to spend their free time on it. Either way it is likley they will have limited time to spend on the project, or at least a lot less than e.g. Adobe's teams can whose literal job it is to develop it.
     
    You are asking a project with substantially less money, less time and maybe less experience than Adobe to beat Adobe at their own game. That is not impossible, but at least very hard. Moreso because you need to break the industry standard.
  14. Agree
    tikker reacted to Needfuldoer in What makes Linux great for you and what do you think about the future?   
    On the server, Linux is rock solid.
     
    On the desktop, Linux is a Jenga tower.
     
    All the good Linux applications (that aren't system utilities) have Windows ports.
  15. Informative
    tikker got a reaction from Eigenvektor in Trying to learn SIMD programming in C.   
    I've never done such low-level programming myself, so I can't give a direct example, but I guess you can look for examples like
    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10930595/sse-instructions-to-add-all-elements-of-an-array
    https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/07/08/improving-performance-with-simd-intrinsics-in-three-use-cases/
    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39759936/the-correct-way-to-sum-two-arrays-with-sse2-simd-in-c
     
    I think you are finding out that "simply" and advanced subjects like this don't really go hand in hand. I like this video about optimisations since I found it:
    I think it highlights well that this stuff is hard and is why why big math libraries like BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms) , MKL (Intel's Math Kernel Libary), AOC (AMD Optmised CPU Libraries) etc. exist for you to write C code with and link against. Even with all the clever optimisations covered in that video, MKL still wipes the floor with it all. You are way past the point of "simply add 2 arrays" and are more trying to do pretty hardcore optimisation trying to use assembly intrinsics, requiring detailed knowledge about your algorithm.
     
    I don't know what your level of experience is, but I think you are going way too fast in that case. Your topics seem to fluctuate wildly from in-depth expert questions like "I'm writing my own heap memory and garbage collector" to the in comparison very basic like "how do I build/install a library" and then right back to "I'm going to write assembly". I like jumping in the deep end as well, but you can shoot yourself in the foot with it if you skip too much of the groundwork at once.
     
    If you just need fast array/vector math, use a BLAS library. They are made so you don't have to deal with the hassle of assembly. for micro optimisations.
     
    If you are trying to learn optimisation to this level I would maybe try to break this program down in smaller, easier (relatively speaking) chunks:
    Write a normal C program adding two arrays. Learn about optimisations for that operation. There is no way around having to learn these things. Learn about/from the optimsations the compiler already does or can optimise for you by looking at the generated assembly code. Start learning how the appropriate SIMD instruction works
  16. Informative
    tikker got a reaction from dcgreen2k in Trying to learn SIMD programming in C.   
    I've never done such low-level programming myself, so I can't give a direct example, but I guess you can look for examples like
    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10930595/sse-instructions-to-add-all-elements-of-an-array
    https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/07/08/improving-performance-with-simd-intrinsics-in-three-use-cases/
    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39759936/the-correct-way-to-sum-two-arrays-with-sse2-simd-in-c
     
    I think you are finding out that "simply" and advanced subjects like this don't really go hand in hand. I like this video about optimisations since I found it:
    I think it highlights well that this stuff is hard and is why why big math libraries like BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms) , MKL (Intel's Math Kernel Libary), AOC (AMD Optmised CPU Libraries) etc. exist for you to write C code with and link against. Even with all the clever optimisations covered in that video, MKL still wipes the floor with it all. You are way past the point of "simply add 2 arrays" and are more trying to do pretty hardcore optimisation trying to use assembly intrinsics, requiring detailed knowledge about your algorithm.
     
    I don't know what your level of experience is, but I think you are going way too fast in that case. Your topics seem to fluctuate wildly from in-depth expert questions like "I'm writing my own heap memory and garbage collector" to the in comparison very basic like "how do I build/install a library" and then right back to "I'm going to write assembly". I like jumping in the deep end as well, but you can shoot yourself in the foot with it if you skip too much of the groundwork at once.
     
    If you just need fast array/vector math, use a BLAS library. They are made so you don't have to deal with the hassle of assembly. for micro optimisations.
     
    If you are trying to learn optimisation to this level I would maybe try to break this program down in smaller, easier (relatively speaking) chunks:
    Write a normal C program adding two arrays. Learn about optimisations for that operation. There is no way around having to learn these things. Learn about/from the optimsations the compiler already does or can optimise for you by looking at the generated assembly code. Start learning how the appropriate SIMD instruction works
  17. Agree
    tikker got a reaction from Eigenvektor in Trying to learn SIMD programming in C.   
    Your question is a bit like "there are so many fields of mathematics, which one should I learn?, so as the others said you use the one that addresses your needs. The number one question you need to answer first is what problem you are trying to solve. Then you can figure out which or what kind of SIMD operation you are after.
     
    As you can see from that page each intrinsic exists for a specific task. Why so many? I would guess it is a combination of 1) it is nice to have a convenience function to do a complex operation and 2) the engineers behind it perhaps knowing an or the optimal way to do that operation on their CPU. Instead of having the compiler or programmer try and figure something out, you can then leverage that instruction directly if you know that it does exactly what you are after.
  18. Like
    tikker got a reaction from jre84 in AI: Help making Nature videos with AI or music videos   
    I haven't used it myself, but what problems are you encountering as janky? AI is not magic. It won't spit out Planet Earth 4 from a mere prompt just yet.
    I have no doubt it is or will be possible. It's also lawsuits waiting to happen.
  19. Agree
    tikker got a reaction from Needfuldoer in AI: Help making Nature videos with AI or music videos   
    I haven't used it myself, but what problems are you encountering as janky? AI is not magic. It won't spit out Planet Earth 4 from a mere prompt just yet.
    I have no doubt it is or will be possible. It's also lawsuits waiting to happen.
  20. Agree
    tikker got a reaction from da na in AI: Help making Nature videos with AI or music videos   
    I haven't used it myself, but what problems are you encountering as janky? AI is not magic. It won't spit out Planet Earth 4 from a mere prompt just yet.
    I have no doubt it is or will be possible. It's also lawsuits waiting to happen.
  21. Informative
    tikker reacted to Sauron in Why are inbuilt C (and perhaps other languages as well) libraries have so complicated and SLOWER code?   
    To elaborate, the likely reason this happens is that the operating system may schedule execution of other processes in the middle of your strlen call, varying the time required. Generally tests like this are more relevant over thousands or millions of executions where you might see a relevant change in the average time.
     
    As pointed out by others @Gat Pelsinger, never assume you're smarter than the compiler unless you've analyzed the resulting binary.
     
    Also, "int" is not the same size on all systems. using size_t makes it so that the function will work on any system, on strings as long as the system allows.
    Your code also declares a new variable (i) for that matter.
    On any decent compiler, a for loop and a while loop doing the same thing will result in the same exact binary. It's just syntactic sugar.
    As mentioned this all gets optimized away by the compiler but, if it weren't, consider that every time you use
    str[i] you're doing an addition.
  22. Agree
    tikker reacted to Kilrah in Trying to learn SIMD programming in C.   
    The one your target supports.
     
    If you look this doc is specifically about programming the PS3 with its pretty unique architecture.
  23. Informative
    tikker reacted to dcgreen2k in Why are inbuilt C (and perhaps other languages as well) libraries have so complicated and SLOWER code?   
    @Eigenvektor @tikker just wanted to let you know that the call to (built-in) strlen in your testing code gets optimized away, even when compiling without optimizations. When compiling with -O1, all functions get optimized out except for the kernelstrlen function, strangely.
    No optimizations:

     
    -O1:


     
    The same thing happens on GCC 13.2, which is the latest version on Godbolt.
     
    My testing code:
     
  24. Like
    tikker got a reaction from Eigenvektor in Why are inbuilt C (and perhaps other languages as well) libraries have so complicated and SLOWER code?   
    Not a C programmer, but if for large projects (which a kernel certainly is) I feel "my mind is boggled seeing half of the words I don't understand" then it is all but certain that I do not have the full knowledge or picture to conclude
     
    A quick search on datatype sizes seems to support at least one of @Eigenvektor's points regarding the use of int and portability: https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/types/size_t
     
    I tried to modify it slightly so it loops over them a couple million times and actually typing out the kernel function and compiling it along is slower, but your version only seems as fast as the native strlen when adding -O1 or higher. Any higher levels put it back in the very hard to measure regime.

     
    Now I'm actually a bit curious about it as strangely if I copy paste that kernel version it doesn't get close to the performance that strlen seems to get on either godbolt or my laptop running Ubuntu. That, or my logic of timing a loop is flawed. I can't say I have ever done much C.
  25. Agree
    tikker got a reaction from Tideroo in Retrotink 4k Review   
    Apart from my wallet not liking the price tag this looks great. I should still have a CRT stashed away somewhere for if I ever would want to hook up the good ol' SNES again, but it looks like I no longer have to.
      
    Nobody is talking about making it their identity? I think you may have missed a vital point of this video and the retro gaming aims in general besides just keeping  old games available to play. The goal of the device is to reproduce the old games in a way that is faithful to how they would be experience in their time (see the point at the end).
    You know that it is not as black and white as posed here. Of course nostalgia will play into it, but enthusiasts exist everywhere. N.B. we are on a forum that worries themselves with the unbearing struggles of having to choose between buying a 4080 now or waiting a few months to see if a 4080 Ti will drop; an issue that probably 99% of people could not care less about. All of us would be in your second group of people. The way you have phrased this makes you sound just as obsessed with making "living in today's world" your identiy as you accuse retro gamers of for wanting to faithfully reproduce the CRT era. Linus even makes the exact point that now there seems to be little reason to still hold on to CRT's image-quality wise as they are far past their prime and since new ones aren't produced anymore for a while now.
    Why, what is your definition of "sufficient"? As the video goes to show, the CRT era games have a specific look to them is not trivially replicated by not-a-CRT. Reproducing that look is a valid reason on its own. Emulators exists because of your first reason: first and foremost people want to play retro games. That doesn't mean you are not allowed to chase the dream of actually reproducing what it would have looked like. If you start entering the territory where, say, sprites were specifically designed with the workings and shortcomings of a CRT in mind you can say that if you don't properly emulate what a CRT would look like then you are not seeing the game as it was intended to be seen.
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