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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • It seems to be a per-school kind of thing. I am late millennial/early Gen Z, and my school had computer classes where we learned how to use Windows and Microsoft office, how to touch type, the meaning of computer terminology, and what the functionalities are of basic computer parts (eg, “CPU is the brain of the computer”). And later on we started learning how to use Photoshop and Illustrator.

    I’m always surprised when I hear that other people don’t have that sort of in depth tech learning in their schools, and worse so, that some people don’t even have computer class. It just always felt like what we learned in computer class was an essential skill





  • Some astronauts are on the international space station. They were scheduled to come down to Earth some time ago, but the rocket that’s supposed to take them down has failures, and so the return trip has been postponed. NASA isn’t convinced that the rocket can be fixed in time, and they have no alternatives ready, so for now the astronauts are just stuck in space.

    Obligatory note that the rocket was built by Boeing, who are already in hot water for negligently lax construction protocols on their planes. As an extra note, Boeing engineers seem to think that NASA should use the rocket anyways because it’s “unlikely” to crash and burn this time


  • I find that it’s best to use 65C for the bed temperature for the first couple of layers, and then drop the temperature to 50C. If you’re using Cura, there should be an option to do that, but you’ll need to dig through the advanced settings to find it. Doing this has completely solved warping for me (Ender 3 Pro v1 with PLA filament). My understanding is that it works because the temperature differential between the top and bottom layers causes a pulling force that causes the warping that you see. I think it’s something about the expansion of the plastic due to heat - as the plastic cools down, it shrinks, which pulls the layer below it upward. The wider the base, the stronger the pulling force. And the more layers you add, the more the pulling force compounds, until eventually the print warps.

    The solution is simple - minimize the temperature differential. You really only need it to be hot on the initial layer, for the print to stick properly. And afterward you only need to maintain a temp that’s just hot enough that the print doesn’t pop off. Hence, 65C initial, 50C for everything else afterward

    Probably less relevant, but I also find that adhesion improves if you have the printer go at half speed for the first couple of layers. Again, there should be a setting in Cura, but it’s in the advanced settings

    I find that I can just use these 2 modifications and everything just works. No need for glue. I just dust off the bed when it gets dusty but beyond that, I don’t mess with it. Actually, the adhesion is quite strong. Even after the bed has cooled to room temperature, I have to exert a bit of force to pull the print off the bed


  • It’s confusing because both AMD and Nvidia call both frame gen and upscaling as the same thing.

    Upscaling: GPU renders game at low resolution (eg, 720p), and then (semi) smartly guesses what’s in the pixels that weren’t rendered. You get improved framerates because the GPU is doing less work per frame. The downside is typically that the image is typically a bit blurrier, and depending on how the GPU guesses the missing pixels, you might also get ghosting, which is where moving objects leave a smear trail behind them.

    Use when:

    • your GPU isn’t powerful enough to drive your monitor at its native resolution (ie you were going to run the game at a lower resolution anyways)
    • your game isn’t running as fast as you’d like, but turning down the settings would result in too noticeable of a drop in visual quality (the general consensus is that you should only use quality mode when upscaling, any lower and you’ll get significant blurring)
    • your game doesn’t support your monitor’s native resolution (common in older games)

    Do not use when:

    • you could turn down the settings and still be satisfied with the visual quality

    Frame gen: GPU renders a frame, holds on to the frame, renders the next frame, and then guesses at what happened between the two frames. The framerate is improved because the GPU is inserting an entirely guessed frame in between every rendered frame. The downside is that because the GPU has to hold on to a frame, the latency is increased. More specifically, the time between when you move your mouse and when your camera moves will be increased with frame gen.

    Use when:

    • your game isn’t latency-sensitive (eg puzzle games, strategy games, some adventure games)
    • you have a high refresh rate monitor (higher refresh rates typically lead to less added latency)

    Do not use when:

    • your frame rate (without frame gen) is below 60 fps (added latency becomes too noticeable)
    • your game is latency-sensitive (eg competitive multiplayer games)

    Terminology:

    • AMD FSR 1: semi-dumb upscaler

    • AMD RSR: literally just FSR 1

    • AMD FSR 2: semi-smart upscaler

    • AMD FSR 3: very slightly smarter upscaler than FSR 2, and comes with semi-smart frame generation

    • AMD AFMF: literally just the frame generation part of FSR 3, but slightly dumber

    • nVidia DLSS 1: semi-dumb upscaler

    • nVidia NSR: literally just DLSS 1

    • nVidia DLSS 2: semi-smart upscaler

    • nVidia DLSS 3: smarter upscaler than DLSS 3, and comes with semi-smart frame generation

    • Intel XeSS: semi-smart upscaler



  • Flying is definitely the first challenge that players tend to meet. Just use autopilot. You can cancel the autopilot mid-flight, and you absolutely should cancel the autopilot if you start to see that a planet is getting in your way. Most people just fly with the autopilot, and that’s really my biggest advice.

    If you really insist on flying manual, don’t treat it like driving a car. Spaceships (both real and in-game) drift most of the time. You want to get up to speed (400 m/s is a good top speed most of the time) and then drift the rest of the way to your destination. Do you see the white dotted arrows coming out from the planet that you’re targeting? You want to get those arrows to be as short as possible. If the arrows are visible, that means you’re not lined up with the planet and you’ll miss the planet



  • Yeah, people tend to have that problem, especially if they’re treating it like driving a car. If you want to fly manual, never fly more than 400 m/s, because then you won’t have enough time to slow down.

    My actual advice though is to just use autopilot. People seem to forget that you can cancel autopilot. If you start to see that there’s something getting in your way, cancel the autopilot and push the ship to the left or right (it’s easier to go around the planet than to slow down). Once you’re clear, resume autopilot.


  • Linux is really a superfamily of loosely-related OS’s (called distributions). Arch and Debian are 2 of the more common ones. Arch in particular has a reputation of being really beginner un-friendly, particularly in that, to my understanding, you have to build the OS yourself.

    There’s also the caveat that many Linux distributions end up sharing/copying code from each other, so you end up with a kind of “OS lineage.” The most common distribution, Ubuntu, is copied from Debian. And then the most beginner-friendly distribution, Linux Mint, is copied from Ubuntu. Arch, to my knowledge, doesn’t copy code from elsewhere, so much of the advice given from users of other distributions won’t apply to Arch (hence the meme, “I use Arch btw”)

    Anyways, the real advice for a Linux beginner is to stick with a beginner-friendly distribution: either Ubuntu or Linux Mint or Pop!_OS. Most or all distributions have various “flavors,” which are basically like how the OS looks. I think the real difficulty is picking a flavor that you like. I personally like the look of KDE Plasma (IMO resembles Windows 10 the most), so my personal recommendation is Kubuntu, which is the KDE Plasma flavor of Ubuntu



  • Games, as with all creative media, by default improve over time as people learn what makes something enjoyable. I think people tend to forget that. So I think for older games, you have to keep 2 “ratings” in your head - how was it compared to the games at the time, and how is it compared to games now?

    I loved GTA3 when I played it. But that was back then. I’m not sure if I would say the same thing now, comparing it to modern games.

    I get that people like to clown on all the remakes and remasters that are coming out, and for the most part, rightly so. But I also think it’s really important to encourage high quality remakes for this exact reason - when a good game ages poorly, it doesn’t feel quite right to just tell new, younger players to deal with it if they want to figure out what the hype is about





  • Heaven’s Vault, Hardspace Shipbreaker, and both Subnautica games.

    Heaven’s Vault is a puzzle game where you have to learn to translate an unknown language. Haven’t gotten too deep into the game yet, but I picked it up because I liked Chants of Sennaar, which has a similar premise. Chants is 25% off right now, so I think that’s a decent recommendation

    Hardspace Shipbreaker is a casual game where you break down spaceships for parts. It seemed fun, and I wanted to have something casual to balance out my library, which currently has more intense games than I would like.

    Subnautica is a survival game where you’re stuck on an ocean world. I’m honestly not too sure if I would like this one too much, since I’m not too much of a fan of survival games. It just seemed unique enough from the other survival games, and it had a decent deal, and it was in my wishlist for a while. So I acted a bit on impulse and bought both games (Subnautica and Subnautica Below Zero)


  • Pretty good setup, decently balanced and good cost-effectiveness.

    I do want to ask though - why water cooling? Based on my understanding, your setup does not produce enough heat to really require watercooling (unless you really want sub-50C under load). My understanding is that a decent tower cooler is much more reliable and nearly as effective as a 240mm AIO.

    Regardless, I don’t necessarily even think you need a tower cooler - I have an R5 5600 and RX 6800 combo in a sub-10 L case (Geeek A50 Plus), and I’m cooling it just fine with a small-form-factor cooler (ID-Cooling IS-55). Actually, I got by just fine with my stock cooler (Wraith Stealth), I just upgraded because there was a good deal on the IS-55 cooler.

    I think the 5700G comes with the same Wraith Stealth stock cooler, so I think it could be worth trying out the stock cooler first before you pull the plug and buy a 3rd-party cooler. Even if you’re not satisfied with it, at least it’ll give you a frame of reference for how much better you want your cooler to be. After all, you could always just replace the cooler any time if you’re not happy with it