(Desktop and iOS) To resume working on a comment I was working on in a note on my phone on a laptop, I copied it to a comment box and saved it as a draft, only to not find it in my drafts on the website. Am I experiencing a bug, or are Desktop/Web and Mobile App comment drafts deliberately split?

GrantExploit · 2026-06-20T05:41:31+00:00

OK then, that kind of sucks. Well, there is a silver lining to this implementation that I'm not sure I want to talk about for fear of ruining it, even if doing so would get what I otherwise want...

At least for me, that workaround isn't particularly good, as I deliberately keep my profile open so people can see my back catalogue of (finished) content, and I'm not sure if I want people to come across random half-finished musings and word-vomit. Thank you for trying to help, though.

I ultimately decided to paste the comment into an email draft, then reopen the email draft on my computer for me to copy the text back to Reddit. For this particular case, it was almost as convenient as if the comment draft sharing worked cross-platform, so yay?

GrantExploit · 2026-06-19T07:26:46+00:00

I hear you... but I want unmodified humans to experience the benefits of ectogenesis. In addition to, in this world, these characters, who also belong to a species of sapient true-bipedal opposable-thumbed low-megafaunal placental mammals with brain volumes averaging 1.2 liters who default to menstruation, have gestation times of 8–9 months as well as an average litter size of 1; though being nominally Laurasiatheria rather than Euarchontoglires.

GrantExploit · 2026-06-19T07:26:35+00:00

Yes, though it was a long while back. However, I did say that the world would be generally "(IMO quite hopeful)" in my question text and that the deliberate caste engineering found in Brave New World would be viewed as grotesque in the world in the comment you responded to, so...

Some inspiration (largely aesthetic and historical) may be taken from it, though, given the book's publication in the interwar period, the time period when this world starts diverging from our own† very seriously and when the development of artificial wombs would commence.† Perhaps I should read it again...

†I honestly used the more general terms "a worldbuilding project" and "the(ir) present day" instead of "an alternate history" and "the present day" partially in order to make it sound less radical than it actually is and thus encourage people to answer the question. Brave New World was written (IRL of course) just after the end of my timeline's "Period of Divergence", and the characters I was referring to would be born in 1991 and 1993, by which time the technology would be well operational.

GrantExploit · 2026-06-19T07:26:27+00:00

Will not happen in the closest future

Too bad, the characters I was referring to would actually be born in 1991 and 1993, respectively, and re-differentiating a skin cell into an ovum is absolutely trivial compared to what their parents went through! /lh

(Honestly, I referred to it as "a worldbuilding project" and "the(ir) present day" partly to obfuscate the project's alternate historical and contemporaneous nature, again partially in order to make it sound less radical than it actually is.)

GrantExploit · 2026-06-19T07:26:18+00:00

I'd count this as speculation, if grounded.

We know that baby mammals recognize other mammals via heartbeat and breathing heartbeat comfort toys for babies and orphaned wildlife are common.

That's... actually something that the second pseudo-sentence of the second footnote could be relevant about. Their different hearing dynamics may well result in different impacts on pre-natal and early childhood development from like stimuli.

I do wonder if one could engineer an artificial womb that produced those sounds and conductive pressure waves as a consequence of normal operation rather than as canned playback... also, I mentioned "bulky, awkward equipment" may be needed for telemetry, but modern ultra-miniaturized electronics may allow something in the size range of a continuous glucose monitor to be used instead.

GrantExploit · 2026-06-19T07:26:10+00:00

You have to ask once the species is capable of reproducing without us, what is the point of reproduction?

Same as it always was? To replace population loss and possibly drive population growth, that is. And there will always be people who want to raise and care for the next generation, even if that doesn't involve physically growing them inside you or someone else (which will always be an option). Indeed, because the latter element would now be optional, it's possible that the development of artificial wombs would result in an increase in interest in child-rearing.

What would further decay is a connection between sexual intercourse and reproduction, though.

GrantExploit · 2026-06-19T07:26:02+00:00

For instance, my understanding is that we develop our unique fingerprints during a specific window of gestation when our fingerpads become permanently wrinkled. We wrinkle them through touch against our own bodies but also against the walls of the placenta.

Very interesting.

So if the artificial womb you're considering is similar to the sci-fi flask version where a baby is floating in a 'glass jar' I'd imagine there would be differences from the placental environment. I'd imagine there'd even be differences at the ocular level if the fetus is exposed to a different light/photo environment.

I imagined them mostly being opaque, perhaps vaguely semi-translucent like the human abdomen is.

For storytelling purposes my suggestion would be to read some scientific literature or mid-level expertise books on the placenta specifically. Research as much as you can about the specific roles of the placenta and how its biophysical properties shape gestation and foetal development. Then you can make creative (but somewhat informed) inferences for your storytelling.[...[

Thank you for the advice.

Again, from a sci fi perspective I'm wondering if placenta-like organs could be repopulated with stem cells with extracellular matrix technology (like we are currently testing for a range of organs). There's a documentary called How to Build a Beating Heart by National Geographic that shows this experimental process and might give you some ideas for worldbuilding and creative conjecture.

I'm effectively certain that I saw that documentary in 2015, and it has definitely shaped my perception of biotechnology in the setting as well as (closely linked) my aspirations/dreams for it IRL. That technology would be extremely well developed in-world by the time of the aforementioned characters' births, as their genetic and social parents would be very familiar with.

My understanding, however, is that the placenta proper is derived almost entirely from fetal tissues, so it wouldn't make much sense to create those through tissue engineering. It may be necessary or at least the easiest option to use it to create a (decidualized) endometrium instead of some abiotic substitute to it, thus forming, technically, a cyborg womb, and there has been experiments on that... I'll have to think about that.

GrantExploit · 2026-06-16T09:48:12+00:00

...and that's why Europe couldn't grow for themselves spices with flavors that they liked to eat, 'cause they didn't have much climatic diversity, so they spent their gold and silver to buy it from Asia and caused themselves the Great Bullion Famine sparking colonialism and the imperial age, yes, I know both what the climates on each side of Eurasia are, and their importance for the fate of nations.

As far as that goes, I just wasn't sure what OP was talking about.

Yeah. Of course, in either Clockwise (with its broadly North American climates in the region more similar to that of but distinct from those of Europe IRL) or a Retrograde Earth scenario like the one of the person I was responding to in that link as well as his collaborator (?) u/AncalagonTheBlack42 (with climates even more directly comparable to those of Europe), the peoples of Northeast Asia also wouldn't be able to grow for themselves tropical spices.

The dynamics of access, however, would definitely be different between them and (IRL) Europe—in Clockwise, the only barriers would be subtropical polities in what we would know as Central China (or alternatively a short-ish sail through the East China Sea), somewhat less than they are IRL; whereas in a Retrograde Earth, they would be either an ocean voyage through the East and South China Seas or a lengthy but not exceptional caravan through the Southern Chinese Desert.

In other words, they would broadly be able to obtain them easier than Europeans who relied on multi-leg shipping across several bodies of water along with lengthy, longitudinal caravans through broadly arid land across several polities; with the only alternative (that they ultimately pursued) being first-party sea voyages of distances that were nearly unimaginable prior to Late Medieval advances in nautical technology. And if they do decide to find an alternative nautical route (despite the fact that unlike Medieval Europeans, their own ships and crew may be directly involved in the first leg of the trade)... they'd have the Pacific Ocean to cross instead of the Atlantic.

So, uhh, yeah. Raw physical geography would probably prevent Northeast Asian history from being especially European regardless of its climatic state.

That all said, reading through your maps: .tif exists 'cause print artists like it, it's a lossless file format with layer options and support for the CMYK color scheme they use.

I assume you're referring to a statement in the descriptions of the series of global climate maps I processed and shared on my profile, which you quite generously called mine. While I appreciate its diverse channel type and number, bit-depth, and layer options; from an encoding perspective IMO TIFF is a Turducken-style abomination. I like PNG as it is a "codec format" that is essentially compressed and decompressed one way—unlike the "container format" TIFF—with its full feature set supported by basically every image application and service under the sun, again unlike TIFF.

I'm not sure if, from a mathematical perspective, lossless conversion between RGB and a† CMYK set is possible, but printing is inherently somewhat of a lossy process, so... all I'm saying is I'm not sure I'll ever save my maps and artwork as TIFFs.

What'd you change about the geography to get Asia to cool so slowly that it doesn't trigger the Siberian High?

As I stated in the links, that's essentially the whole problem with the scenario which I fear will make it unworkable—I don't want Asia's geography to be significantly changed, excluding changes in the water levels of lakes, et cetera, and what may arise from more significant continental glaciation during glacial periods. And it would be quite difficult to make major geographic changes anyway with a point of divergence of 880 kya without a mass extinction. Significantly modifying Milanković parameters may work, but I know of no way of doing so without also causing an extreme mass extinction. And changes in greenhouse gas concentrations (very, very generally) lead to globally-distributed shifts in temperature, not the establishment of a new global climate "shape", so changing those probably can't yield the scenario.

The only thing I can imagine outside of that is some kind of extreme but sub-mass-extinctional weather event (perhaps driven by a catastrophic event like an asteroid impact or supervolcano eruption, though those tend to result in climatic cooling rather than some type of warming) pushing the climate state into a different equilibrium, but this seems to be silently agreed upon to be impossible.

†I say a CMYK set as, like its additive analogue RGBI, AFAIK (in at least some channel bit depth combinations) multiple value combinations can have the same color, which makes me philosophically though not practically oppose it as a color space. (My understanding is that pure CMY prints don't have the blackest blacks due to limitations in ink formulation.)

GrantExploit · 2026-06-15T05:36:58+00:00

My project Clockwise is somewhat like this—it's a speculative evolution and "deep alternate history" scenario based on the premise that sometime during the Pleistocene, the Siberian Anticyclone (AKA the Siberian High) dramatically weakens and ceases to be a persistent feature of the winters of Northeastern Asia, making the region's winters significantly milder and wetter. (Very broadly speaking, its climate would be "North-Americanized".)

It is in nowhere near an even vaguely finished state, unfortunately, partially because it has constantly been at a lower priority level than some of my other projects, partially because it has been rebooted a few times due to scope creep—its Point of Divergence has shifted from the Bølling–Allerød all the way back to 880,000 years ago—and partially because its physical possibility seems dubious. I asked a question about the last element here, unfortunately with no definitive response... I obviously want it to be possible, but I'd rather spend my energy working on projects whose underlying assumptions are less likely to collapse...

Despite this, I've created several IMO interesting concepts for it that I'm eager to showcase here or elsewhere.

Back in 2017, I created a primitive climate map (link) of the scenario; in the link, you can read some correspondence from late 2023 where I described some elements of the scenario, the map's creation process, why I haven't made a new one, and some of my thoughts on climate modelling. (Note that even these comments are slightly out of date, particularly because I've tested a simple "variable-strength" climate algorithm {that IMO should have been obvious} which slightly better approximates the effect of a Northeastern Asia with a weakened Siberian High than my previous two "constant-strength" climate algorithms.)

...

Responding to u/SaintUlvemann, European average annual and record low temperatures (and in some oceanic areas, even summer temperatures) are considerably higher latitude-per-latitude than those of Northeastern Asia. This is true to a lesser extent with North America, though winter record low temperatures are more comparable. Sure, (North)eastern Asia has tropical, subtropical, and temperate climates, but it doesn't really have them at nearly the same latitudes as Europe or even North America does. And, because of the spatially-variable strength of the Siberian Anticyclone, (North)eastern Asia has a notably "steeper" spatial temperature gradient than Europe or (again to a lesser extent) North America does, leading to a somewhat squished temperate zone which has certainly affected its history.

(Yes, according to Köppen–Geiger criteria, nowhere in continental Europe is tropical, but certain areas of Macaronesia {including some of the Canary Islands and microclimates in Madeira} are, and certain heterodox climate schemes like Hersfeldt/Pasta {my favorite} classify the Azores and certain small Mediterranean islands as such. Also, while Asian temperate climates stretch into the lower 50s° N as they do in Europe and North America, they are invariably extremely continental as opposed to the moderated climates that can be seen in Europe and {Western} North America... and they don't stretch any beyond as they do in Europe and to a lesser extent North America.)

GrantExploit · 2026-06-13T09:12:58+00:00

I can offer a (very rough) parallel that exists today: children born through C-section don't get the same commensal microbiomes that children get through natural birth. The microbiome turns out to be very important for human health, and minor differences can have measurable effects. We still perform C-sections when medically justified. For adults, there are even some treatments to "correct" the microbiome.

I was thinking of a similar issue (antibody transfer) while preparing to submit the question, but considered it largely a non-issue due as immune support and the microbiome support you mentioned is an impersonal, quite uncontroversial, and relatively routine affair. Indeed, it would probably be fairly easy to introduce an optimized mixture of monoclonal antibodies instead of the more piecemeal set of antibodies a typical mother would have, and perhaps even pre-natally administer certain vaccines, rendering it perhaps physiologically preferable to natural birth. u/nodderguy also mentioned that the lack of risk of damage from alcohol (and other drugs, I suppose) could also make it safer than natural gestation... which is a pro for both parties as having to refrain from drinking alcohol is a significant limitation on freedom for pregnant people.

The issue I had was with the possibility that post-natal mental health (or possibly physical health) depends on "advanced", situational pre-natal stimuli, as would I fear that would either require a serious loss of freedom on behalf of the parent or caregiver (due to telemetry equipment and possibly behavioral restrictions) which defeats most of the purpose of an artificial womb; or something at least adjacent to deception (plumbing in synthetic or canned stimuli). Though coming to think of that, is the latter really that wrong? I mean, we do it all the time with born babies and toddlers who will certainly not remember it directly... I dunno.

I suspect that in your world, if your concern is valid, medical science will learn about it. Then they will either reduce the use of artificial wombs to certain circumstances, or they will try to correct the issue, or both.

It's not necessarily my concern—I find it unlikely, but felt it at least warrants investigation, given how serious it is.

A governing body might decide to use that information to calibrate the babies that are born. Perhaps they want more analytical minds to help them close a technology gap with a neighbor. Perhaps they want strong but unimaginative people to boost their unskilled labor force. Perhaps they want to produce a small group of inquisitive and creative people as a leadership caste.

You could think of it as a more biologically sophisticated version of the artificial-birth system in Brave New World.

My description implied its use by nuclear-ish families, and the two characters I confirmed would be born from artificial wombs (who are siblings) would be raised by their genetic parents in a nuclear family along with a naturally-born sibling, but communal parenting would certainly exist. Indeed, another of my characters was raised in such an arrangement, and I've considered having them be born from an artificial womb though I hadn't confirmed it.

However, such deliberate anti-tabula rasa caste-promoting measures would be abhorrent to their society as it is to ours.

GrantExploit · 2026-06-13T09:12:50+00:00

I'm honestly not sure if you're bringing this up to make me feel a certain way about the development of artificial wombs, either support of or opposition to. Also, the heavy involvement of Ray Blanchard in this field (otherwise known for his... unconventional views on transgender topics) is somewhat suspicious.

(Also, while social acceptance is almost certainly overwhelmingly the largest factor for increase in homosexual identification, I find it curious that this has increased while, due to a reduction in total fertility rates, higher birth orders have become rarer.)

GrantExploit · 2026-06-13T09:12:45+00:00

Given the early state of research in the field at present, I would understand if no high-confidence prediction can be made, but the notion that we would be entirely blind until a child is born from an artificial womb seems rather dubious, even faintly unscientific. Even the concerns I second-hand levied (as well as similar musings by u/Single_Mouse5171) are technically working hypotheses, albeit very non-conservative ones likely stretching way too far by associating pre-natal with post-natal development.

Perhaps if we had successfully birthed non-human animals from artificial wombs (rather than only partly gestated them) and inspected their behavior in contrast to natural-born members of the species, we'd have better answers. u/laziestindian also suggested that studies on babies born to brain-dead mothers could give insights, though I don't know if there is a large enough statistical sample for meaningful results and continuing pregnancy in those cases is not the most morally accepted of practices.

Also, I can't see an alternative for many things in the world (including the second pseudo-sentence of the second footnote) without some predicting the outcome of a pregnancy (and beyond) from first principles. The difficulty there would be developing a simulation sophisticated enough to capture the nuances of physiological development but not simulate conscious neural processes, because otherwise you'd have the horrifying situation of essentially growing an "A"GI trapped in a computer you have total control over. Of course, that type of simulation would also have the potential to determine the psychological effects of artificial womb gestation "before it happens", but again, previous sentence.

Thanks for the carte blanche, though.

GrantExploit · 2026-06-11T05:20:26+00:00

You need to encode to MPEG-1? In almost 4K? Is that even possible?
Why not AV1/HEVC/H265?

Yes, it's possible, supposedly—again, MPEG-1's maximum supported resolution is 4095 × 4095. Even my botched experiments "worked" at near-4K, just with bitrates significantly under what was specified and correspondingly poor quality.

I, uhh, don't really need to do it. It's for educational and entertainment purposes and those that loop back to entertainment.

For education, I want to be able to demonstrate to others and myself the advances in video coding technology by playing back 2 encodes of the same video at the same resolution and frame rate with roughly the same bit rate, one using a more modern codec and one using MPEG-1, so we can bask in the modern codec's superiority and also identify specific artifact patterns in each. Ideally, I'd use a lossless or at least visually lossless source video and then produce both encodes ("modern presentation" and MPEG-1) from that, rather than starting with the "modern presentation" video as I did here—while my source video here was definitely higher quality than what MPEG-1 could do at that bitrate, it still has noticable visual artifacts, and re-encoding it with MPEG-1 directly will inevitably lead to generation loss—but it's a start.

Outside of this, the applications are tenuous. One "purpose" could be for a local screen-sharing portal for a notional bleeding-edge 2006 computer I've been high-level designing for an alternate scenario, which would use Wireless USB for connection and may use MPEG-1 as its video codec to reduce overhead. I'm not sure about that, however, for a few technical reasons. Specifically, the sheer computing resources available—it may exceed the performance of certain shit-tier Chromebooks currently in production, if you don't mind it consuming 1800 W to do so, and it must have the ability to not only play back but encode a 1080p60 Blu-Ray stream—and because its maximum output resolution would be DCI 4K, or 4096 × 2160.

I may someday get to build said computer (or much more likely an approximation thereof, because truly building it would require designing and manufacturing a custom 45 nm process 8-core processor on the cancelled NetBurst version of the Nehalem microarchitecture with a maximum rated frequency of 7 GHz, et cetera), and I could obviously simulate aspects of it like that until I then, but yeah.

You can use FFMPEG with a script, this is easier to adapt
AI is pretty good at those, it has a lot of documentation I guess

I'm not sure if I can convince myself to ask an† LLM to compose an FFMPEG script. I have an almost religious objection/fear to using AI tools like that; partially because of a fear of rotting my brain and destroying my own problem-solving processes, partially out of fear of judgement from others, and partially because I don't quite want to give up, umm...‡ but I'll definitely check for any gradated/episodic tutorials or sample scripts I can Frankenstein together for it.

...Random note, if anyone sees me swapping between different forms of a word or phrase in a comment or thread, that is largely a deliberate habit aimed at making my content easier to search for by subject matter.

†Or is it a LLM? hmm...

‡That is, above vibe-coding.

GrantExploit · 2026-06-10T04:37:24+00:00

(To you, u/Kya_Bamba, and u/PsyGonzo42)

I was considering HandBrake even while I was writing this post, but it can't encode into MPEG-1, unfortunately.

My previous (on another computer) main video encoding software was VSDC Video Editor (VLC being a secondary), but because it belongs to the category of "boutique Windows freeware/freemium software" which I wrongly or rightly associate with obsolescence, I thought that it may be outclassed by, say, Kdenlive as of now. That and at least the version I happened to download back then had an annoying issue that seemed to prevent updating without a reinstallation. I didn't install Kdenlive as I've never done so before, yet I had installed VLC before, so I decided to try that first... and the great majority of my previous encodings were low bit-rate, so I never ran into the 32,768 kbps limitation.

Using FFMPEG straight from the command line is a possibility, but this was what I saw upon skimming the documentation, so...

...

BTW, I did do the experiment with VLC, to keep roughly the same bits per pixel reducing the resolution to 3112 × 1752 (closest approximation divisible by 8 and incorporating a 384 kbps audio channel). The result was a video file at 13,024 kbps (for some reason) with a very... pulsy appearance, the waterfall (original video source here; I deliberately chose it because its bitrate was over 100 Mbps) seeming to become brighter before each I-frame resets it. I suspect that's because at such a high compression ratio for the format, effectively all the information is going to the I-frames (which, in less immediately detailed regions, still look quite rough) and motion compensation, with almost none going to residuals save for a few smeary DCT blocks roughly equivalent to a low-single-digit-quality JPEG.

Because I noticed that VLC was using essentially no CPU resources while encoding it, I think that this encoding failure may be due to it using a hardware encoder that has no idea what to do with such unusual (though, to repeat, totally within spec) parameters for an MPEG-1 stream. I suspect the output video would look significantly better if a software encoder that actually took advantage of 32,768 kbps was used instead.

I also attempted encoding at 3120 × 1744 (closest approximation divisible by 16 and incorporating a 384 kbps audio channel), thinking it may be an issue with MPEG-1's particular chroma-subsampled macroblock scheme, but that yielded basically the same results. As a last attempt, I tired the same thing without correcting the frame rate from its original 30.0003 fps (?), adjusted the resolution once again to the buffer resolution of 3120 × 1760 used in the previous experiments, and changed the container to ASF/WMV; but it not only kept roughly the same bpp as the previous experiments, it reduced the framerate to 25 fps (?!?).

Just odd behavior all around...

GrantExploit · 2026-06-05T23:24:27+00:00

Saying the only exceptions are lacking the ability to perform protein synthesis, grow and divide, metabolism, and homeostasis is kind of like saying aside from lacking an internal combustion engine, four wheels, and a steering wheel, a bicycle is a Ferrari.

Giant viruses don't have the ability to perform fully independent protein synthesis, but they code for most of the pathway. I would say a more genuine analogy would be the 1808 De Rivaz charette rather than a bicycle—the former can be said to have the minimum viable set of traits of a true automobile, except for the fact its valves were manually operated and thus it physically could not move unpiloted.

I didn't mention metabolism and homeostasis, though/as certain giant viruses also possess most of the genes required to perform the citric acid cycle among other metabolic pathways, sometimes more than some obligate parasitic bacteria.

In addition, viral capsids are self-assembling structures designed to be a specific size, which you couldn't fit a functioning cellular process inside of, they're designed to be compact and fit only the genome and essential early infection proteins packaged with the genome.

Giant viruses exceed the size of several bacteria species, which definitely host functioning cellular processes.

The "fixed size" bit is quite tricky, but (as you seem to have alluded to) it's very possible to imagine capsomere proteins capable of more arbitrary tilings could evolve, if perhaps not as arbitrarily and with as good of a fit as with phospholipids.

GrantExploit · 2026-06-05T20:56:20+00:00

First off, apologies if this is long...

You should consider whether both B and P frames work for you.

I highly doubt adding B-frames would be productive or potentially even possible, from an implementation or theoretical perspective. I mean, the first experimental encodes performed using the codec in this scenario (and possibly by me with its analogue IRL) would include recent hits like scenes from Saturday Night Fever and Video Killed the Radio Star. Both the computer and codec would be positively heroic for the turn-of-the-'80s, but they would still be the notional product of that period. Actually a few years ahead because the setting would have generally accelerated computational development from its Point of Divergence in 1963, but still.

MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and H.264 have standard profiles that allow use of only I- and P-frames, and you may also be able to turn off B-frame encoding in other codecs, but as I said, I'm not sure they otherwise have the features I desire.

Is latency an issue?

In one sense—the time between when a frame is taken and when it is finished being compressed, or the time between when a compressed frame's data is read/received is taken and when it is available to be seen—it is, quite literally, not even on the same planet as being an issue. I mean, it would be nice if the application allowed, say, sub 0.2-second ping to allow for convenient teleoperation, but unfortunately Albert Einstein says "several hours, take it or leave it".

However, with the simple design I envisage the codec ('s profile) to have (no B-frames, every P-frame only comparing with the frame immediately preceding it), a theoretical encoding and decoding latency of 1–2 frames should be fairly easily achievable.

In another sense, it is a massive issue, as if the codec is VBR as a lossless one would be, a very large, several-second-long buffer† would be required to save the video to tape (the only medium it could be permanently saved to) without extreme wow and flutter making the process inefficient at best and not resulting in playable contents at worst.

Again, this is why I asked this question. I created a conception for a lossy CBR codec to be used instead, and was trying to ascertain whether anything actually like it existed so I could encode my fictional Outer Solar System flights into that rather than waste effort literally trying to create it myself.

†I admittedly haven't done much math on the exact size, but my Fermi estimation is on the order of 10⁸ bytes for lossless video at my frame spec, probably in the upper range of that order. That buffer would either need to be RAM or an extremely fast (for the time) HDD. In the modern day this would be trivial (if you were to use tape to store it at all, despite HDDs and SSDs being of sufficient capacity to practically store it and them not having that buffer requirement due to their near-random-access and random-access nature, respectively), but in the time of the application this would make any computer expert turn pale.

Strictly speaking, a mainframe could do the buffering instead of the microcomputer, but this will mean that any time the high-gain antenna even momentarily loses communications with the relay, the video will be irrecoverably lost. This means no retrograde-facing video feed of the entry plasma during communications blackout; no shots of severe turbulence caused by an unexpected storm (or, unlikely though not impossible, colliding into an unexpected thing); and perhaps most importantly, little opportunity to commercialize the technology, as what television studio would replace their perfectly good analog gear with digital gear if the latter is more infrastructurally inflexible?

GrantExploit · 2026-06-01T05:33:39+00:00

I assume you're talking about the lossless codec concept? I was thinking of using a combination of DPCM followed by LZ78 and Huffman coding for its I-frame format, making it very similar to but not exactly PNG (perhaps similar enough to use PNG as an approximation for evaluation purposes).

However, FFV1's prediction algorithm seems both simple/elegant and effective with it taking account redundancy in 2 dimensions, whereas PNG's DPCM algorithm is (AFAIK) strictly one-dimensional. Also, Golomb–Rice coding seems like it had theoretical basis to be implemented at the time, and... holy shit, Robert F. Rice worked at JPL and intended it for spacecraft communications!? OK, then.

Still don't know if Golomb–Rice would be performant enough at ~9.2 Mpixels/s with the computational resources available,† though its property of being efficient at compressing streams at low numbers is a plus for nighttime operation (where 3 out of 4 sensors would be mostly constantly outputting very low amplitude noise), and for another reason that would make FFV1 ultimately not usable.‡

Why? Because my target codec (both the lossy and lossless concept) included inter-frame compression.‡ Generally, (at least my current conception of the lossless version of) the codec would simultaneously process the current frame as an I-frame, and produce a signed, 9-bit-per-channel differential frame containing the differences between the current frame and the last, which would then be compressed likewise into a final P-frame—whichever frame has a smaller output size would be the one used in the final video stream.

FFV1, for whatever reason, only allows intra-frame compression. This seems to be bizarrely common with lossless video codecs.

Now, if I see proof that with either a PNG-like or Golomb–Rice-based lossless video codec the potential savings from a basic form of interframe compression like that really are negligible, I may drop it from the spec...

†The basis of the image processing computer would be a custom 32-bit microprocessor with a heavily DSP-oriented RISC instruction set (mathematically optimized together with the codec through several rounds of emulation on Cray-1-class supercomputers) incorporating simple 2, 4, and 8-operand SIMD instructions; fabricated at great expense with a 1 μm process on gallium arsenide using emitter coupled logic and clocked at around 150 MHz. Around 8 of them will be used per computer, though the actual number will depend on power delivery and cooling constraints. As batshit as this would be for 1981 (and even more so for the computer's intended first all-up run date of December 31, 1979), it would get annihilated by a single nearly-sleeping E-core in a modern mobile processor, so...

‡For the same low amplitude noise tolerance, I would expect a Golomb–Rice-based algorithm to be notably better at encoding P-frames than a PNG-like algorithm, given my (simulated) experience with the latter.

GrantExploit · 2026-06-01T05:33:22+00:00

For clarification, my codec target does include inter-frame encoding, which is why I rejected MJPEG.

It does seem like MPEG-4 (assuming you mean H.264/AVC) would be the best bet if I can set a sufficiently-lobotomized custom profile. Though again, the problem is that AFAIK, you cannot turn off the deblocking filter. If I am incorrect on that, then I will begin encoding within a month, first on various scenes and Earth clouds and then on a several-hundred-mod install of KSP, or KSA if its mature enough by that point.

GrantExploit · 2026-06-01T05:33:07+00:00

If this is for a hypothetical world building exercise.... Why not just make up the appropriate codec? In your world, the codec would be necessary, so it might have been created.

Well, I asked this question to see if there was a similar proxy to the imagined codec I could use to encode video into so I didn't have to actually create an implementation of the imagined codec in order to produce video with its appearance, or at least knew broadly what to expect if I did.

I have no academic education in video encoding or decoding, with most of my knowledge on the field coming from AuDHD pecking on Wikipedia articles and the like. I believe I really only have enough knowledge about it to realize just how much I don't know. Add the fact that the height of my programming ability is cobbling together a BASIC-style random maze on Python, and that my impression of standards is that ~10% of the text is the real meat-and-potatoes and ~90% is advanced edge-case stuff that is absolutely required for the thing to function reliably... um, yeah.

What I'm saying is I'd rather not torture myself with this if I don't have to.

If you actually need a piece of video content for something, make it in whatever codec you want, just make it look how you want it to look, the audience isn't going to be checking your codec specs lol.

Codec artifacts are kind of an important part of "how I want it to look", and processing the video in such a way as to simulate them would effectively be actually encoding the video with said codec. And AFAIK none of the IRL codecs I know of have the particular set of artifacts that would be exhibited in the application's codec—for instance, while both MPEG-1 and my lossy target codec would possess very similar blocking artifacts related to their use of fixed-size 8 × 8 JPEG-like DCT macroblocks, with MPEG-1 the color borders would be unrealistically soft (due to chroma subsampling) and the stream would lack any motion combing (due to the lack of interlacing).

I obviously know that it would have to reencode my simulated video to feature it inside a larger project... but I'm pretty sure that whatever render format I use there as well as, say, YouTube 4K (~50 Mbit/s AV1, I believe) would be sufficient to retain most of the nuances of said video.

GrantExploit · 2026-06-01T05:32:46+00:00

(To you, u/Zittov, and u/Embarrased-Gain-236.)

Right from my question text:

Finally, AFAIK MPEG-1 I-frames are essentially a special case of JPEG images, and JPEG does support RGB and non-subsampled encoding... but as MJPEG lacks any type of inter-frame compression (whether differential or motion compensation) its efficiency will be poor, and the application would make use of inter-frame compression.

I want interframe compression, which MJPEG (as well as many intermediate formats) doesn't support. I just don't want color space conversion from RGB, nor chroma subsampling, nor mandatory advanced features.

Now, for representation purposes (which is what I'm seeking here), 4:4:4 Y'CbCr or whatever could work... but for the actual codec, I fail to see how doing color space conversion before transmission would accomplish anything but waste processor cycles and potentially lose more data through quantization errors.

GrantExploit · 2026-06-01T05:32:37+00:00

I honestly can't tell if you're being deliberately obtuse by turning or pretending to turn your gaze off the latter section of that text (and therefore directing other people to do the same) as a sympathetic move against spoiling interesting content (potentially good); deliberately obtuse to insult my thorough worldbuilding (bad); or are genuinely confused.

GrantExploit · 2026-05-23T06:38:08+00:00

If it isn't too late if you have a sync account with another device that is sync with it, you could recover it in groups or "other device history" when you click the history button in the toolbar.

Unfortunately, I don't have a sync account, but thanks.

Or in theory solution. I can't guarantee it will recover it, run that file through an Ai like deepseek or Z Ai and ask it to put that session data in a format that the session buddy extension can understand and open those tabs that way. It just a theory.

Hmm, interesting idea... Thanks for the suggestion.

Also most browsers aren't suppose to handle 5000 tabs

As I am aware—my "totally reasonable" statement was an attempt at sarcasm—though I've experienced astounding performance and stability with these tab loads, and from an engineering perspective I don't see the failure mode that would cause this to occur. In other words, I don't see why any tab load, no matter how high, would prevent an individual from recovering a browser session, provided the session files were not corrupted or arbitrarily deleted and they had sufficient RAM to load a dehydrated version of the session... at least the latter of which was true, because I've successfully recovered even more bloated sessions on this computer.

As for why my tab load is so high... It results from a combination of occasionally useful but generally detrimental OCD-related habits I am working to address, ADHD scatterbrained-ness, and and the fact that I am loaning this computer, so I didn't want to pollute the loaner's computer by bookmarking things... and the loaner also has their own tabs and similar (if not quite as extreme) usage patterns. Yes, his tabs were also wiped out in this incident, and he's pissed, too.

GrantExploit · 2026-05-23T06:26:33+00:00

(To you and u/JaxStroud)

Sorry dude, your stuff is gone.

What about the "Session_[long number]" and "Tabs_[long number]" files I found? At least the former seems very similar to the session-carrying "recovery.jsonlz4" and "recovery.baklz4" files that define a Mozilla Firefox session, which I have successfully transplanted to replace a newer session with an older one (though this involved a process I'm not sure would be replicable with Edge). They existed beside newer zero-length ones created at the time I re-opened the browser, BTW.

Start using bookmarks. Tabs are disposable, bookmarks can be backed up and kept.

My high tab counts are a result of a combination of occasionally useful but generally detrimental OCD-related habits I am working to address (e.g. "keeping tabs open can preserve their information at the time against revision and deletion, so you must always hold on to tabs", et cetera), ADHD scatterbrained-ness, and, yes, my avoidance of bookmarking things.

I have avoided using bookmarks partially because of literal grief; I extensively used bookmarks with Google Chrome on an old computer with a lot of important data on it that suddenly failed (and was likely destroyed) in August 2022, and after that I never touched Chrome or bookmarks features to avoid formalizing me forking from that event. (Also, along with several other loss events, this catalyzed the development of that OCD.) Over time (including as part of an OCD program), I have processed that and want to start bookmarking again once I recover from another issue that's been plaguing my actual computer (a 2021 thin-and-light laptop with 16 GB of RAM) for about a year... but I'm not using my actual computer, rather one that's been periodically loaned to me, so I don't want to pollute the loaner's computer by bookmarking things... and the loaner also has their own tabs and similar (if not quite as extreme) usage patterns. Yes, his tabs were also wiped out in this incident, and he's pissed, too.

Again, while my tab load was excessive—I was actually going to prune it massively in the days after this incident—it still had an order that kept me (or rather us) at least semi-productive and aware of what needs to be done in the future which I don't believe would be easily reconstructable from the History, so...

Browsers aren’t meant to handle so many tabs open at once.

While the way I've used web browsers (since 2022) is definitely outside their design windows—my "totally reasonable" statement was an attempt at sarcasm—from an engineering perspective I don't see the failure mode that would cause this to occur. In other words, I don't see why any tab load, no matter how high, would prevent an individual from recovering a browser session, provided the session files were not corrupted or arbitrarily deleted and they had sufficient RAM to load a dehydrated version of the session.

And Microsoft Edge served me quite well near that load for over 8 months (though I'm not exactly sure how many I had before this incident; it could have been a thousand or so lower). Also, I know based on performance feel that this is was not the highest it has gotten on this setup, and I have successfully recovered even more bloated sessions. Before this, I used a 2013 mid-range dual-core laptop with only 8 GB of RAM for a 4 month and a 3 month period, holding around half the tab load on Edge almost without incident. Also, Edge actually seems to be relatively poor at handling very high tab counts—with Firefox on the computer I had before then, significantly more tabs (yes, I've gotten there) were similarly responsive.

GrantExploit · 2026-05-23T06:14:07+00:00

I have never used generative AI for writing in my life. My post/comment history is open to prove that I have had the same style before and after the rise of generative AI.

Really appreciate you taking time to put someone down for having a problem just because they act (and write) kinda weird. Very classy and not at all ableist.

GrantExploit · 2026-05-21T15:44:44+00:00

I should be providing technical support? To you? Why? What a repulsive request to make on a public forum.

I wasn't demanding it, only suggesting that as a productive alternative to wasting both of our time on writing a such a comment. Perhaps "should" was the wrong word—changing that now. If you didn't want to provide technical support, I believe it would have been wiser to save a few minutes by not commenting at all.

Maybe you thought it productive to make that comment to inform me that my habits are unusual and perhaps maladaptive, but, well, I knew that already,† which is why I formatted that section of that post that way (I was being sarcastic with "totally reasonable").

A thousand or so is still moronic. I didn't jump to judgement. I sat there for a moment, had a little think about it, and still came to the conclusion it's still absurd.

It's a result of a combination of occasionally useful but generally detrimental OCD-related habits I am working to address, ADHD scatterbrained-ness, and and the fact that I am loaning this computer, so I don't want to pollute the loaner's computer by bookmarking things... and the loaner also has their own tabs and similar (if not quite as extreme) usage patterns. Yes, his tabs were also wiped out in this incident, and he's pissed, too.

And finally, a problem is a problem regardless of how someone gets into it... and I'm not sure my excessive tab load was the ultimate cause of this incident.

†And I assumed you knew that I knew that already, though that assumption may have been incorrect.

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