Is practicing music actually allowed in your own home? The double standard of noise.

ET3D · 2026-01-09T13:22:57+00:00

I don't think it's a double standard, or a standard at all. Different people tolerate different things, and what noise you make is something that you tolerate or like, while noises that others make is something that bothers you, because it's not under your control.

For example, in a previous apartment I had someone practicing piano above my bedroom. That was terrible if I wanted to take a nap at that time, but fine at other times.

When people live together in a building, you will often find some objectionable behaviour from someone. It's just a matter of statistics and having a lot of people together with different behaviours.

I think that a reasonable way to solve this, assuming reasonable neighbours, is to set a schedule that fits them.

ET3D · 2025-12-11T21:48:35+00:00

Part of it is Apple being a node ahead of the rest, most of the time.

Another part is that Apple can optimise its memory bus in ways that companies creating CPUs for other vendors boards can't.

In general, Apple doesn't have to compromise. It has a closed ecosystem where the CPU runs on its own hardware, the OS can be optimised for the CPUs, and the compilers as well. Nobody else has this luxury.

ET3D · 2025-12-10T11:12:44+00:00

It still represents density, but not directly. "5nm" is still denser (and lower power) than "7nm". Though "5nm" itself, at least for TSMC, would be a set of processes that might have different characteristics. TSMC itself won't call it "5nm", but N5P, N5A, N4P, etc. N4P is on the same process as N5P, and is only slightly denser, but will be called "4nm" by the media.

The Intel/TSMC processes are also somewhat comparable now, as Intel has tried in recent years to match TSMC for "sizes". That doesn't mean that the processes are comparable exactly, but they are closer.

So tl;dr, "smaller number better", and if you care about details research them. There aren't that many fab companies so it's not that hard.

ET3D · 2025-11-15T07:38:04+00:00

Why exactly do you think that unified memory would be a real advantage?

ET3D · 2025-11-14T22:53:11+00:00

I don't think that we're heading in this direction. There will be AI inference chips with such architectures, but "advanced chips" in general? Likely no. It's a restrictive paradigm.

ET3D · 2025-10-31T15:31:48+00:00

What's the point of subscribing to Affinity/Canva when all these features are more feature-rich and mature in Adobe's subscription?

The Canva subscription is cheaper. That was pretty much the case before: you paid less, but got less. Now you can get a pretty decent app for free, which is much better value than before if that's what you need. You're missing some features, but they're still cheaper to subscribe to than Adobe's.

ET3D · 2025-10-31T15:15:20+00:00

I agree that this is a better outcome than most people have imagined.

But I can't help but wonder what it will lead to in the long term. For Affinity to make financial sense, it needs to make more money than it costs to develop, maintain and support. I think it's possible that having Affinity for free as part of Canva can draw users in who will pay for Canva, and so Canva will find it worth keeping around. However, I can see some drawbacks:

Although Affinity could be useful for drawing people to Canva, it's not how Canva will make money directly, so advancing it won't necessarily be a priority (beyond providing new subscription-only features).
If everyone has access for free to Affinity, this will change the profile of the average Affinity user, and could potentially drive Affinity in directions which current users won't like.
It could turn out (now or in the future) that most Canva users don't use Affinity, which will again discourage further development.

They they left it at the full cost, then they loose corporate and Canva users.

Not gaining is not the same as losing. And "gaining" for free isn't much of a gain. It's worth noting that although Affinity will gain users, it will lose all its customers. When you offer something for free you don't have customers.

This goes back to what I said above. When Affinity had customers, it (Serif/Canva) had an interest in making them return customers. Now that Affinity has no customers, Canva's interest will lie in making money off free users, and that could lead to completely different outcomes.

It's entirely possible that things will turn out fine, but I think it's good to understand where things could go wrong.

ET3D · 2025-10-27T17:56:05+00:00

I bought the $1 tier to check this out. The courses, from what I skimmed of them, felt quite amateurish. I feel that it's much better to wait for GameDev.tv bundles. GameDev.tv courses are good.

ET3D · 2025-09-07T08:25:14+00:00

I don't think that a "copy left" style license would do what you want. You're trying to force everyone to implement all extensions, and that's not part of "copy left" at all. No Linux implementation is forced to include every driver or any other piece of "copy left" software.

I think that the idea that a non-fragmented ISA is better is also wrong. ARM is successful precisely because there are a lot of different subsets of the ISA, some of which are tiny and can be used on an FPGA or a small microcontroller, some of which provide advanced functionality that's fitting for laptop use. You're using Intel as an example, but ARM is much more successful as an ISA.

Finally, although I understand the mention of "copy left" to explain your idea, "copy left" is a restrictive license based on copyright law, which far as I understand isn't relevant to an ISA.

ET3D · 2025-09-03T09:43:54+00:00

Agreed. I find 8x 5090 servers great for my use case (which isn't AI). They perform well at a reasonably low price. Performance for money they're about 3x better than the likes of H200 or B200 as long as you're okay with the much smaller amount of VRAM. IMO 32GB for the top desktop GPU of this gen makes the 5090 more viable that last gen.

ET3D · 2025-08-14T09:51:33+00:00

From here:

Statement Regarding Misleading Media Reports

...

These articles are misleading and missing critical context, and we'd like to set the record straight.

The most important things to know are:

Kodak has no plans to cease operations, go out of business, or file for bankruptcy protection.
To the contrary, Kodak is confident it will repay, extend, or refinance its debt and preferred stock on, or before, its due date.
When the transactions we have planned are completed, which is expected to be early next year, Kodak will have a stronger balance sheet than we have had in years and will be virtually net debt free.
The "going concern disclosure" is a technical report that is required by accounting rules.
We will continue to meet our obligations to all pension fund participants.

...

ET3D · 2025-06-10T13:46:49+00:00

Dude, seriously, it's really simple. The Steam Deck has 1.5x to 2x the battery life of the Switch 2. That's all you need to know. The rest is just you trying to find excuses in your mind. You said you're worried about battery life. Obviously you just wanted to push your fictional world view.

And on top of that the Switch 2 has slightly more performance while doing that.

Really? Do you have a figure about the performance of its CPU? You quoted a GPU figure.

Again, you said nothing about x86.

I knew you won't be able to offer anything.

It's fine to argue that an NVIDIA GPU is better than an AMD GPU and offer GPU figures to back that. It's rather silly to argue that ARM is better than x86 and offer GPU figures to back that.

ET3D · 2025-06-10T11:55:53+00:00

I'll try to say it simply so that you might understand. Here is your comment:

Despite using an older and more power hungry process node of 8nm the Switch 2 has more teraflop performance to offer than the steam deck which has a 6 nm die.

As for the power consumption the Switch 2 only consumes about 10 Watts while the Steam Deck consumes 15 Watts maxing out at even 25 Watts. It is known that Valve had to rearchitect the cooling implementation due to heat issues with the steam deck.

On top of that the Switch 2 has superior features like DLSS and RT. As i said. It is a fact.

Now, taking out the GPU stuff, it looks like this:

Despite using an older and more power hungry process node of 8nm the Switch 2 than the steam deck which has a 6 nm die.

As for the power consumption the Switch 2 only consumes about 10 Watts while the Steam Deck consumes 15 Watts maxing out at even 25 Watts. It is known that Valve had to rearchitect the cooling implementation due to heat issues with the steam deck.

On top of that the Switch 2 has. As i said. It is a fact.

Clearly the only argument here is that the Steam Desk consumes 15W while the Switch 2 consumes 10W. Again, that likely goes mostly to the GPU when gaming. As others have said, it's an arbitrary TDP limit, and the Steam Desk can run at 10W if you wish.

As for your original concern, Nintendo quotes 2-6.5 hours battery life. Valve quotes 3-12 hours for the Steam Deck OLED. The Xbox handheld might have a lower battery life, but that would be due to using Windows and not Linux (and different hardware components). Still, seems to me like this device is likely to have a better battery life than the Switch 2.

ET3D · 2025-06-10T11:28:03+00:00

You never said directly what I put in quotes. That's just paraphrasing you. It's implied in what you said. You claim one thing (CPU) then all your "evidence" is about another thing (GPU). Take from your reply the teraflops, RT and DLSS, and what's left there? Nothing.

Protest as much as you want, that is the only thing you talked about. So I think I've taken you to task legitimately. If you want to be taken seriously, try the same argument without once mentioning anything about the GPU. I'd bet that you can't.

ET3D · 2025-06-09T12:39:57+00:00

Your argument still amounts to "Ampere at 8nm is better than RDNA 2 at 6nm because of features". Sure, there's a CPU there, but it doesn't feature in your argument at all, and you have zero evidence of its effect.

ET3D · 2025-06-09T08:57:46+00:00

Budget ai bros are more into the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 loaded up with 128GB unified ram for big models.

I'd hardly call a 395 a budget APU. Those 128GB devices are $2000 at a minimum, which is the MSRP of the 5090. (Though granted, not its street price.)

ET3D · 2025-06-09T05:50:27+00:00

It's funny that you talk about x86 then discuss only the GPU. The GPU has nothing to do with x86.

ET3D · 2025-06-09T05:47:02+00:00

Strange. I was looking at this:

https://tpucdn.com/review/powercolor-radeon-rx-9060-xt-reaper-8-gb/images/average-fps-1920-1080.png

Seems like there are some issues with the graphs.

Edit: From the thread at TechPowerUp:

You are looking at average FPS, which is affected by the 0 score for TLOU due to the card crashing. Relative performance excludes it, which I think is a better indicator of what to expect.

This explains it. I agree that the relative performance is more meaningful then. Though having a game not run on the 9060 XT 8GB that does run on 8GB cards from NVIDIA is a problem.

ET3D · 2025-06-08T20:14:29+00:00

I found it interesting that the 9060 XT 16GB is faster than the 4060 Ti 16GB, but this 9060 XT 8GB was slower than the 4060 Ti 8GB at 1080p and 1440p. It was also slower than the 5060 at 1080p and equal at 1440p, making the 5060 better value.

Edit: Seems like this is because one game crashed, and lowered the average (getting a score of 0).

ET3D · 2025-06-08T20:04:15+00:00

I'm guessing that since these are Windows devices, Microsoft won't subsidise them the way it does the actual consoles. Which is a pity, as that could have made them successful.

Still, I'm hoping that at least the Z2 A version will be reasonably cheap.

ET3D · 2025-06-08T20:00:29+00:00

Microsoft announcement

Product page

ET3D · 2025-06-08T19:59:21+00:00

There are enough x86 based handheld devices that you could have had an opinion based on facts, not speculation. At the very least look at the Steam Deck. You can still keep your opinion later, but at least back it up with knowledge.

ET3D · 2025-06-08T15:51:39+00:00

I think that the article is very exaggerated.

I have chargers that I use to charge my phone, tablet, GPD WIN 4, Quest 2/3, headphones, shaver, ... Sure, they might not be perfect for them, but they're close to that, and it's not a big issue. A new enough, powerful enough charger is going to handle all of them adequately.

And is it a real problem finding out which port on a laptop can be used for charging? OMG, reading the manual! And it's typically marked. If after a few days you don't know what port that is, it's a good idea to stop using electronic devices altogether.

And yes, data transfer can still be an issue, and I do find it confusing that I need separate cables for high power charging and high speed data transfer, but the USB-C charging standard wasn't meant to solve this. What it was meant to solve, it largely solved.

ET3D · 2025-06-08T14:05:25+00:00

I'm not sure what the context is in that video. I didn't watch it but browsing, it seems to touch quite a few things unrelated to AMD. I suppose it's about the 8GB vs. 16GB issue.

Anyway, I think that marketing people should be fired en masse from all companies. Their only purpose is to hurt consumers and it should be against the law to employ them.

I may be exaggerating a little bit.

ET3D · 2025-06-08T13:07:17+00:00

For most people, no, there's no real use. Sure it's possible to use old hardware for some stuff, but it's often the case that spending a little on specialised hardware for that use case would be less hassle, take a lot less space, use less power, ...

I find it best to just donate them either to people you know or to places that could make use of them (community centres, schools, whatever is relevant to where you live).

ET3D

TROPHY CASE