Eldritch

Back in the DOS days and early windows days. They were one of the gold standards for PC audio. Even if you didn’t own a sound blaster card, you likely owned a clone that emulated one. They were the bees knees so to speak when it came to PC gaming.

But by the late 90s the company had spread itself so thin on branding and other things. Sound blaster CDROM drives? Yep. Sound blaster video cards? Yep. Etc Etc Etc. They tried to parlay being a lucky defacto standard into something else. Wanted to be a premium brand. Prices go up, quality goes down. Kinda like Nvidia now. Fake frames, AI slop, shitting on traditional customers.

Turn of the century and a standard set in 97 finally started rolling out on consumer motherboards. No longer when you bought your computer if you wanted it to make anything more than basic beeps boops and buzzes. Did you have to go out and spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to get an ad in card. It was on board. On the motherboard.

The newest computer I own is an early ryzen from the previous Dark Times. Not to be confused with these dark times. So I don’t have first-hand experience. But it is my understanding that Intel integrated Graphics isn’t quite the joke is that it used to be. Just a bastard stepchild that Intel can’t decide if they really want to support of not. And some AMD chips have an APU on it which is similar. But still chokes under anything very intense. It’s getting close. But just not quite. Give us a truly standardized setup with the basic power of a mid 2010s graphics accelerator and vulkan api, most people would be in business.

Honestly I’m hoping something along this line happens and becomes common with risc-v systems. Like Mali with arm.

Definitely. I just hope that sooner rather than later it’s possible for them all to move over to local open source models. Supporting wasteful content thieves is not sustainable.

That and that all the GPU manufacturers Etc have their sound blaster moment. These days a lot of socs have quite powerful Graphics accelerators on them. At some point, someone’s going to release a bit of silicon equivalent to the AC 97. May not have been able to compete with sound blaster on the ridiculously high end of the market. But was good enough for 99% of tasks. So that most people don’t even remember sound blaster anymore. Even though they still technically exist.

If he’s still auditing and understanding the code. Something that he’s done as a project manager for decades at this point. I don’t see how it will. If the code is generated by a person or a machine. The auditing isn’t much different.

If it’s something I really want. Absolutely.

These days handbrake is pretty much all you need. We’ve come a long way since my days moderating over on the Doom 9 Forum way back in the early 2000s.

Codec wise there really isn’t anything that would be more recommended for black and white. Black and white are colors. 16 million Shades of Black and White are still 16 million colors if that makes any sense. So a color encoder is generally going to do just as well. You’re not really going to save that much just because something is black and white.

The codec that you might want to choose will generally depend more on the resolution of your content, and the hardware you intend to play it back on. Older Hardware might only support h264. Also DVDs, anything newer than h264 doesn’t really save you a lot of space. And takes more time to encode. H264 also uses smaller macro blocks which are generally preferable for lower resolution. When it comes to HD or 4K sources. Then h265 or AV1 should probably be your go-to’s. Unless again you are limited by playback hardware.

The settings again depend a lot on your content. If it’s largely static scenes with Talking Heads. You can get by with some pretty insanely low bit rates. If it’s an action movie with lots of motion all over the place explosions etc etc etc. You’re going to need every bit of bitrate you can get.

When it comes to basic settings? Under the video dialogue in handbrake. Whenever you select and encoder towards the bottom left there is a slider labeled preset. Which is sort of misleading. It is the motion estimation quality. You would generally never want it set to anything higher than medium and preferably closer to slower. As the name implies slower is slower. But it performs much better motion estimation. Which will create less blocking and artifacts when constrained for bitrate. Leaving more for those blacks which are often the first thing sacrificed.

Bitrate wise. And easy rule of thumb is previous generations bit rate. Ripping DVD in h264 a VCD bitrate of 1–2 Mbps is pretty solid. 1080p? DVD bitrates of 5-9 Mbps in h265 or AV1 will save lots of space and keep excellent video quality. 4k, 20 to 35 Mbps h265 or AV1. A bit wasteful but generally visually lossless. If you take the time and do 2 pass you can go lower still.

Yes, to put it mildly technically. Blacks and dark bits are often the first things quantized to hell in modern codex. They’re one of the areas that the eye is generally least sensitive to. And they will be one of the first things to show if you over compressed too much.

Bigger size is usually better. Unfortunately an encoding is only as good as the person who did it. There’s any number of filtering or higher quality settings that can be used. But people often avoid to save time.

So you’re better off to find groups or individuals who’s work you like. And sticking with that. On Modern CPUs you can rip through high def video faster than real-time speed if you set the quality low enough. And the bitrate High enough. But an experienced encoder knows the combination of filtering and settings to use to bring out the maximum visual quality with minimal file size.

And when it comes to that I tend to do all my own encodings.

I dunno. If anyone should do it it’s Stephen. I kinda wanted to see what he’d do.

Yup. I use Picard and Nicotine regularly. Then drop in grease monkey in your browser with a couple of user scripts for discogs and bandcamp. You’re a tagging machine.

A small splash of fash cash can be very convincing. The ship isn’t sinking, until all the funding is diverted.

If you like the world? Probably. This is going to have a very different vibe being visibly mele focused. But Manhattan patterened in on itself looks plenty claustrophobic. And the gravity mechanic along with the rest of the mobility mechanics look like it will be a blast of a sandbox.

There is decent crossover. There’s an OOP from Alan Wake in the panopticon in control. I think I heard there was more in the DLC? Ahti also makes an appearance in Alan WAKE 2. They are all in the same universe. Alan Wake is basically just another AWE to the FBC.

Currently this does not exist.

False. There are a number of models trained on data they were explicitly given permission to train on. Are these the models they’re using? Well I know as much as you, which is to say I don’t know. Though I think we’d probably agree they aren’t largely. But aren’t != can’t.

The AI policy did not restrict AI usage to non-destructive self-hosted models.

Brody’s videos that I linked go into this rationally and reasonably.

1. These are unpaid volunteer developers.
2. With what tools and funds will they police this?
3. The Black Arts of control C control V are also widely known. Better that the code be attributable and traceable than not.

There’s no reasonable way they can actually ban this. And they don’t have the time or money to police it. The only real solution is to just shut the projects down at this point. Is that what you’re aiming for?

The people who are most impacted by the negative externalities of AI are not taken care of. The people losing their jobs are also not taken care of. That is why people care so much. It’s not viable to handwave away the negatives AI are causing in the here and now with the assurance that in some far off day we’ll live in utopia where the negatives won’t matter.

No one is hand waving away the negative impacts. You are simply misattributing them to artificial intelligence and not wealthy authoritarians seeking to profit. By all means, fuck zuck, musk, altman, etc and their companies. They’ve always been and always will be destructive in every way possible. AI or not.

AI can be implemented ethically. AI can be done without destruction of the environment etc. Who cares if AI replaces people as long as we take care of the people.

Capitalism/authoritarianism is what destroys the environment and causes war and genocide. AI can never take away your passions or hinder your ability to pass them on.

If we outlaw generative AI tomorrow, nothing will change. Because the problem will remain untouched. It was never AI. But oligarchs leeching and exploiting society as always.

Yes OP has been daily Doom posting for the last month or so. I daily drive plasma. And have been keeping an eye on things. But I have not seen anything unreasonable or concerning. I find Brody Robertson has a decent insight into some of these things and explains himself relatively well on these topics.

It’s undeniable that AI has been trained unethically. And certain instances are being deployed unethically. Similar could be said for certain vaccines. We didn’t ban use of them however. Unfortunately the cat is out of the bag when it comes to ethical training. AI is now a tool and it is widespread regardless of whether or not we like it. The best we can hope to do is to push for accountability going forward. Supporting everyone. And punishing those who act unethically.

People need to make the connection that the problem with AI replacing people. Isn’t ai. It’s that wealthy capitalists are trying to cut people off from a means of supporting themselves. I.E the problem is capitalism. The problem is always capitalism. The problem has always been capitalism and the system that came before. If we provided proper social safety nets and social support for everyone in society. No one would care if AI replaced them at some menial soul-sucking job. If they could live and pursue their passions instead they would all be glad to.

Brits out there quietly queuing like MFers.

A decent portion of it yes. Several ships of Jewish refugees turned away. There was even a plot to install their own authoritarian furer by deposing FDR. Unfortunately a lot of the details were lost to history due to FDR’s wheeling and dealing. Blackmailing the guilty parties in Congress to pass the new deal.But look up the business plot. The lot of them should have been publicly hung.

It is indeed. Chum on Irene was a real hopper.

We had our chance in the 1930s and 40s. We failed back then. And with things even more stacked now there’s no chance. I’d like to be surprised. But everyone is still sleepwalking to be sure.

State Supreme Court. Granted the easy marks that live here would happily give up their complete autonomy to the sundowning shitheel. But removing money from politics and fair redistricting had broad bipartisan support. That the GOP had to nullify with legislation filled with doublespeak.

Well yeah, it was tradition by that point and had only gotten worse. Here’s a video link talking about another, mildly less damaging (?) Case