• 0 Posts
  • 47 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: June 30th, 2023
  • quixotic120@lemmy.worldtoGames@sh.itjust.works•With Switch 2 and presumably a new 3D Mario on the horizon, it's time for me to admit Super Mario Odyssey always felt a little weirdEnglish
    83·
    5 months ago

    Mario games were always kind of tech demos for Nintendo innovation and the innovation is kind of boring now

    In the 90s it was graphical fidelity and gameplay mechanics, smb1-3 on the nes, smw on snes, m64 were serious contenders for “oh my god this shit is crazy and plays like a dream”.

    Sunshine is around where the graphical fidelity started to lag but the physics were still nice.

    Then they started to innovate in other ways and galaxy brought in motion controls which were well done (arguably) and the (by then) distantly lagging graphics were almost a feature

    But odyssey showed that doesn’t work anymore. Everyone has motion controls now, even phones, and they’re often just annoying. The switches innovation isn’t something that really applies directly to gameplay itself, so ultimately odyssey stays just a standard game, with solid graphics thanks to great design but noticeable slowdown in several areas because it’s running on an outdated tegra tablet, and the same old platformer gameplay because there’s nothing new to do with it.

    They did have some cool level design that helped it feel fresh and interesting at times but it ultimately felt like it had similar problems to sunshine: not a bad game, but not an experience the way mario 64, mario world, or mario 3 was. Maybe I’m just too old

  • quixotic120@lemmy.worldtoPrivacy@lemmy.world•Asking some reasonable questions about Elon Musk's "help" with the Cybertruck bombing caseEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    You think tesla is awful for this (they are) because elon is the current boogeyman but most if not all modern vehicles have eulas that reserve the right to save an obnoxious amount of data including images, voice recordings, routes driven, etc. you almost always have no way to opt out despite spending tens of thousands of dollars and almost all of them have absolutely horrible data security practices

    It’s a serious concern already when it’s concerning vehicle telemetry and autonomous features like adaptive cruise control and automatic braking but they pretty much rely on imagery outside of the vehicle. That can and will of course pick up images of you. However an increasing number of cars are including facial recognition inside the cockpit to identify the driver, sold as a “comfort feature” for households where multiple users drive the same vehicle. The facial recognition IDs who is driving and will automatically set the seat, climate, etc. sounds fancy right? But they overwhelmingly reserve the right to store that data, absolutely will share it with law enforcement, and will sell it likely for advertising as well

    The scummier manufacturers have eulas that say something along the lines of you give tacit consent to this by simply riding in the vehicle as a passenger. So your friend buys a nice new subaru, you have a conversation with them, and that data could be harvested, sold, shared with law enforcement, etc, solely because you were stupid enough to accept a ride. You were never presented with an eula, you were never given a chance to give informed consent, but it doesn’t fucking matter to Subaru, apparently (who also does the facial recognition thing)

  • quixotic120@lemmy.worldtoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•Streaming-devices without adware?English
    2·
    6 months ago

    I have a similar experience with the am6b+ and a similar sized library. Even on the stock android browsing my iptv provider which has 23,000+ channels has no issue

    But you mention cec - does the x4q+ power off and on with the original display remote? That’s my one nag about the am6b+. Ugoos locked the boot loader and refuses to unlock so cec power on doesn’t work, every other cec command does though.

    I just have it wake on lan by having homeassistant send it a packet when it notices my avr turns out as a workaround but this isn’t the most elegant solution and like 1:20 times it hiccups

  • quixotic120@lemmy.worldtoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•Streaming-devices without adware?English
    2·
    6 months ago

    How is the x4q plus? I frankly dont care about av1 (I’m a store everything in remux/flac person) but the x4q, theoretically, should have a faster processor than my aging am6b+

    One suggestion I would make is to copy your install of coreelec onto the emmc directly. In my experience that makes everything a bit “snappier”, it’s easy enough to do, and only takes a few minutes.

    “SSH into you device; then run ceemmc -x; type in Y; then type in 1. Once the process is complete, remove your external media and enjoy. To speed up CoreELEC installed on the eMMC on Ugoos devices, go to Settings-> CoreELEC → Hardware → eMMC Speed Mode and change it to HS200/HS400”

  • quixotic120@lemmy.worldtoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•Streaming-devices without adware?English
    6·
    6 months ago

    ugoos box with coreelec. I use the am6b+. Only format it can’t play is av1

    stock runs a stripped down version of android with 0 ads that is very barebones so if you just want streaming apps this is for you. I use this part for my IPTV client but basically any streaming app available on the play store or that can be side loaded with an apk works

    You can also flash coreelec and run kodi natively. You can just use the android build of kodi but using the coreelec build has many advantages; it can boot directly to kodi, it’s much snappier within the ui, and most importantly there are far less (basically no) issues with content playback. This option can basically play any file you throw at it natively. You can also set it up to stream files from a pc/nas with jellyfin/plex/emby but this is really the setup for weirdos like me that refuse to subscribe to streaming services (aside from an iptv provider).

    Notably the ugoos is the only device, currently, that is licensed to playback Dolby vision content and actually does so properly.

    Literally every other option, amazon stuff, shield, chromecast, appletv, pc directly connected to tv, the internal players of TVs, etc don’t play back Dolby vision content correctly in some way. Either they fail at playing certain profiles, they have issues with color accuracy, they flicker, etc. obviously this depends on your setup though, if you have a Samsung dv is meaningless unless you plan to get an oled at some point. That said even if dv is pointless for you it still does hdr/hdr10+ and all the lossless audio stuff/audio pass through

    If Dolby vision and av1 are important to you the coreelec team have extended their work to other devices that have av1 support. Do research though because not all of them are fully supported, like some you need a usb Ethernet/wifi adapter which is dumb

    Downsides are that it’s tough to set up, like you should be a tinker type person. This is a bit more of a pain than an apple tv or a shield. Also it’s not the easiest thing to get support

    But if you’re like me and you’re super paranoid about streaming services harvesting your watch data and selling it, plus super frustrated that they continually fragment and want yet another $17 to access another library that you only want 3 shows of while increasing prices every year and still shoving an excessive amount of advertising in despite having you pay for the service, I would highly recommend just pirating media and using kodi/jellyfin to locally stream.

    As an added bonus you get a noticeably higher image quality if you download stuff sourced from physical media because most (tbf not all) streaming networks have shit quality, much less likely to have issues with buffering or the stream dropping from 4k to 480p because the bandwidth wasn’t there for 4 seconds, often can get much better subtitles that are timed and syncd (and in the case of anime like animated and shit), etc. plus no ads, ever, no data harvesting (disconnect your tv from the internet so it doesn’t use brightness patterns and power usage to determine what you’re watching!), no corporate censorship (my collection has Daria with the original music and not the “soundalikes” because mtv couldn’t be bothered to relicense the music. It also has all the blackface episodes of various shows like community and it’s always sunny because I can decide whether something is offensive or satire for myself without netflix or disney to act as a nanny)

  • quixotic120@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.world•TV that doesn't require 'on-line activation' to set up.English
    0·
    8 months ago

    I’ve heard this and while they are sturdier they generally also have worse panels from an image quality standpoint. If you’re buying a $400 60” lcd tv it probably won’t be all that different but if you’re looking for an oled level tv these panels will be noticeably worse in comparison

    Another alternative is projectors. Can be impractical in many scenarios but often come with a pretty barebones OS, especially if you get a proper one and not one of the goofy portable ones they sell for $100

  • quixotic120@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.world•there's now more ads in "legit" sites (YouTube, amazon) than in piracy sitesEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    Depends on the piracy site. If you go to some of the pirate streaming sites or the blogs that host tons of pirated software with 30 rapidgator links that die after a month (instead of just using a torrent like a normal sensible person trying to share a 2-30+gb file that is begging to be taken down) without Adblock it’s absolutely comical how many ads there are. Even with Adblock those are the sites that manage to still have ads because they’re on the cutting edge of sketchy shit. It’s like seeing a late 90s to early 2000s website with how much random bullshit is pasted everywhere

    Despite that I’m pretty sure that Amazon, google, etc do far more nefarious shit behind the scenes in terms of tracking/fingerprinting you and collecting data to sell

  • quixotic120@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.world•Paralyzed Man Unable to Walk After Maker of His Powered Exoskeleton Tells Him It's Now ObsoleteEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    It’s a trivial repair assuming that’s the extent of the damage and there’s not any quirks associated with an extremely complex medical device that has no documentation whatsoever. Like maybe after not having the controller’s power supply connected for such a length of time there needs to be a calibration process upon bringing it back to life that can only be done with proprietary software

    The biggest thing though is that by going in and fixing it yourself you open yourself to the possibility that the company will now say “oh this was worked on by someone else and that’s why it’s broken, we won’t work on it now”. That’s the state of repair rights in America, vendors are openly hostile to people who fix their own things even if they do it sufficiently. We used to have political representation that gave us regulations to allow us to work on and even modify our cars without impacting the warranty but that’s been eroded and there’s not really anything of that nature for tech stuff (other than judgements saying broken warranty seals don’t count for anything)

  • quixotic120@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.world•LG TVs start showing ads on screensavers | LG's TV business is heightening focus on selling ads and trackingEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    What kind of tv? For webos it’s potentially a bit complicated but also potentially stupid easy depending on which version of webos your tv has

    https://www.webosbrew.org/rooting/

    I would strongly suggest avoiding nvm even if it’s supported unless you’re very comfortable with hardware hacks. The others are all software and fairly easy to do if you’re capable with following instructions. The most recent, dejavuln, is fairly simple but can be a bit finicky (you may have to try a bunch of times) but lg is also rolling out patches for it so if your tv is updated you may be out of luck. It’s hard to say because the patches aren’t rolled out unilaterally. Webos is a bit confusing and there are many “branches” that all have similar features but wildly different numbering. If your tv is patched block updates by either disconnecting from the internet or blocking the above sites in your router and watch the webos homebrew discord (linked on that site). There are people actively researching new exploits and if one pops up it’ll be discussed in the discord first (and if it’s a big deal, like they expect it to be patched, they usually ping everyone to let them know to do it asap)

  • quixotic120@lemmy.worldtoSelfhosted@lemmy.world•Software for manga/book readerEnglish
    4·
    9 months ago

    You can also use komf alongside komga/kavita to just scrape metadata automatically upon import. A bit finnicky to get going (a tampermonkey script is required to give it accessible setting on the komga page) but works very well and even has a gui for identifying results and selecting the correct option if the auto scrape fails similar to jellyfin

    For the actual reader part I just use komga as a server and read through Mihon (one of the tachiyomi forks) on my ereader mostly. occasionally I’ll use paperback on my iphone (although recently I’ve been trying Tachimanga, which is basically an iOS tachiyomi fork). Loads library, can sort by tag/library/date added, reads most things very well, can sync read status with the komga server (and/or manga updates or whatever), etc.