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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • When I was around 12, I was learning about overclocking, and accidentally killed my dad’s graphic card, an Nvidia FX 5900.

    I vividly remember launching The Sims 2 to test my overclock, when suddenly the screen started turning on and off (the video driver was probably crashing and restarting), and after I reset the PC, there were 2 green lines on the screen and XP was stuck in 640x480 16 colors because not even the basic display driver was able to load.

    My dad was mad obviously because it was an expensive card, the damage wasn’t covered by the warranty, and he was into gaming too at the time. I was stuck with integrated graphics for about a month while we waited for the geforce 6000 series to come out.

    I was so scared of overclocking after this happened, I didn’t try it again until a few years later years later when I had my own computer (and killed another card, a 9800GX2).






  • It gets better bro.

    I’m 33 and I was in a worse situation:

    • Started getting depressed in 2011 at the age of 20
    • Graduated in CS in 2016, super late, but with top grades
    • Started working as a software developer, hated it
    • For a few years I switched between working in a local computer shop and uni to get a master’s degree
    • Again, I graduated super late in 2021 but with top grades
    • Still hated working as a developer and now hated working as a technician too
    • At the end of 2021, I got a call from my old high school, they needed someone to teach programming
    • Decide to give it a try, absolutely love it
    • Suddenly, depression is gone and I have a reason to get up in the morning
    • A 10 year old nightmare is over, still single though



  • Windows becoming completely hostile towards power users.

    I used to LOVE Windows, I even made fun of friends who were using Linux, which I only used on servers because I thought the desktop experience was sub par (and at the time it was, we’re talking 10-15 years ago). Then Windows 8 came and I stayed on 7 because the experience was bad. Then 10 came and data collection started getting out of control, so I had to jump through a bunch of hoops just to make it usable and “private enough”. Eventually things got so bad around 2019 that I realized that I was spending more time fixing that pile of crap than the average Arch user and I decided to give Linux a serious try.

    I was somewhat annoyed by some UI/UX flaws but eventually I got used to it, and with the coming of Linux gaming I started using Windows less and less (it’s an AMD system so the Linux experience is excellent), eventually last year I realized that I hadn’t booted it in months so I just wiped that drive and started using it for games. I’ve also gotten a lot more paranoid about privacy and sandboxing proprietary software.

    Now with Windows 11 things have gotten so bad that even my students are making fun of it so I don’t think I’ll be coming back.





  • Talos 2 is very promising in terms of gameplay, the first one is one of my favorite games and I played through it many times, and I’ve already played this demo 3 times.

    This one is more ambitious, the environments are bigger, there’s more content, the art style is fantastic, BUT… I can’t help but feel a deep sense of technical jank that is shared by many players. The game is a constant state of desperately loading stuff and stuttering due to shader compilation, and you can feel all of it every time you turn around or walk in a new area. Even on ultra with native upscaling, the game only looks good if you stay still, as soon as you move you get smears from every object, the grass stops moving, you can clearly see problems with lighting like shimmering and bleeding, the water and vegetation have no physics whatsoever (the first one at least had water ripples), and despite using raytraced AO they’re still using those horrible screenspace reflections (the first one had actual reflections). To top it all off, settings don’t always apply correctly until you restart the game, and sometimes the game reverts them to whatever it feels more appropriate for your hardware with no indication whatsoever that it’s happened. I’ve yet to see an UE5 game that doesn’t have these issues, that engine just… doesn’t look good in motion. To quote AVGN, it feels like driving an old beat up car, you’re always afraid it’s going to break down.

    Also, one of the developers said they don’t want to support Linux, not even through Proton, then another one said they’ll try to get it to work. Get your shit together, the first one had a native port!

    This is based on my experience with a 5800x, and a 6900xt, in 1440p, so your mileage may vary and I know they’re hard at work to improve the situation.

    So yeah, respect for croteam for making what it’s undoubtedly going to be a great puzzle game, but shame on them if they release it in this state.






  • It’s doable, just follow the installation guide meticulously and read the page about nvidia drivers first. The wiki is excellent.

    If you’re worried that you might end up with a broken system, try installing it in a VM first until you’re familiar witht the whole process, or try an intermediate distro like manjaro or endeavouros that have an automatic installer and will sort out driver issues for you.




  • I tested live to ground, live to neutral, both in and out of the UPS, and I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

    The input signal isn’t a clean sine wave but it’s not dirty either, I’d say it’s sine with some extra harmonics and a little bit of noise. There were no sudden peaks or meaningful variations even while the UPS was switching furiously.

    I don’t have CFL bulbs, only LEDs. I can’t think of anything else that could be causing interference. I’ll try contacting the power company as suggested by @[email protected]

    Thanks for all the replies.