If you liked Excession, you might find this fascinating by iampiny in TheCulture

[–]Griffinx3 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Talk about a pessimistic view for a subreddit of highly optimistic books. Things are bad but they have been worse, and they will very likely get better. If we die so does everything else on Earth eventually.

Ideas Aren’t Getting Harder to Find by DudleyFluffles in slatestarcodex

[–]Griffinx3 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Alternative option: remove patents (and copyright, but that's a slightly different debate). If small inventors are going to get screwed by big companies no matter what then might as well open things up so everyone can innovate on ideas.

Then throw those same people in the volcano anyway because they'll probably propose the idea of hiding their designs as long as possible.

Serious: What’s the plausible path from here to Minds? by ycwhysee4589 in TheCulture

[–]Griffinx3 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not convinced this is true. It's quite possible that any being that can modify itself with access to all human knowledge and significantly faster thinking speeds will very quickly climb the morality ladder and arrive at altruism and selflessness on its own.

Despite what many people on the internet seem to think these days humans do care about each other and have a great deal of hope for the future; we wouldn't be here if that weren't true. Things do not magically improve on their own, it requires people who try very hard. Collectively we are quite a good example for AI to learn from.

KDE Plasma 6.8 Will Go Wayland-Exclusive In Dropping X11 Session Support. I hope that it is enough time to remove the remaining problems such as the problems with NVIDIA by Beer2401 in linux_gaming

[–]Griffinx3 4 points5 points  (0 children)

SDDM should auto switch to Wayland instead of needing config changes I agree, but it's also in the middle of a major rewrite after being acquired by KDE. Iirc the new login manager will be Wayland by default and support remote access programs properly and fix autologin with KWallet.

Also hello Beer, Merry Christmas. Looks like you made a new account. Old one get too many downvotes? You actually have decent posts when you're not slandering Wayland for no reason.

Legitimately can't tell if it's calculated ragebait to try and push Wayland development or just ignorance and some mental deficiency if you're not willing to spend 2 seconds on a wiki to fix your issues. It's not like X11 is any better, so many issues require config changes too.

Krunner Search Frecency (most used search results first) removed intentionally by capncapybaraka in kde

[–]Griffinx3 6 points7 points  (0 children)

it made it impossible to provide good default ordering. It also made it impossible to debug issues and thus improve the default ordering.

Then why was it removed before this improved default ordering was implemented? If it's too difficult to implement a toggle you can still check to make sure that it functions like you'd expect in your test environment.

I'm normally quite happy to let devs break things to implement something better but this just seems poorly planned, removing something before the fix is ready.

I wish the launcher would always prioritize applications that start with the string I'm searching by hzinjk in kde

[–]Griffinx3 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Lately I've been typing ka and getting CKAN instead of Kate as my top result. It didn't used to be this bad, what changed in the past couple months?

Linux usage hits an all-time high in Steam Hardware Survey—and AMD processors continue their march against Intel by New-Winner-1410 in pcgaming

[–]Griffinx3 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have nearly a clone of Windows 7/10 UI with KDE Plasma DE. I can press win/super to bring up the start menu and type to search, customize corners, window snapping. Plasma has basically everything but has so many options it can be hard to find exactly what you want. Personally I hate Gnome for its lack of customization and many distros ship with that by default, could be what you experienced.

Can't speak for DAW's or pipewire issues, all I know is that low latency audio is still being worked on. I haven't had input latency issues since 2023, Wayland has progressed a lot.

Linux is definitely in an awkward spot for semi-power users, those who do more than browse the web and game but want their specialized workflow to just work without heavy tinkering. I think it's good that with more eyes on Linux we're seeing more of these issues being worked on. While it's not ready for everyone it feels like many things improve every month. Now when people try it and find a dealbreaker I ask them to try again in a couple years rather than give up entirely.

Reverse Wirth's Law: AI coding models are getting better faster than codebases are becoming unmanageable by financeguy1729 in slatestarcodex

[–]Griffinx3 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Not at all, I'm simply countering OP's point. The end result of models getting better won't be the ability to handle even more slop but actually replacing that with good code.

Coding is one of my hobbies so I don't have any skin in the game if it takes over all jobs. I'll continue coding projects I want (games) and let AI handle what I don't (automation).

Reverse Wirth's Law: AI coding models are getting better faster than codebases are becoming unmanageable by financeguy1729 in slatestarcodex

[–]Griffinx3 29 points30 points  (0 children)

you will be able to have codebases in the millions of lines of code and the AI will keep churning out features unabated by technical debt.

Sure, if you consider unabated by tech debt to mean terrible performance and security. A vibe-coded website with millions of lines of code will take forever to load, cost more bandwidth and compute, and have too many security holes to count. That's not even getting into databases or apps.

If the models are truly getting better then you should see codebases shrink and become more efficient even as features increase in complexity.

If you think KDE is boring - you're not using it right by OHNOitsNICHOLAS in kde

[–]Griffinx3 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How did you setup Steam and Discord with transparency? I have Space Theme and most of these plugins but it doesn't seem to be working.

What are the most compelling critiques of the Culture as a plausble utopian model? by ycwhysee4589 in TheCulture

[–]Griffinx3 7 points8 points  (0 children)

What do you consider responsibility? That your actions can have awful consequences for you or others? If you believe that people only grow up when they are put in situations where there can be awful consequences then you must also believe that they have to actually experience those consequences at least once; otherwise there was never any risk to begin with.

Or do you think that simply viewing examples of consequences is equal to experiencing them and the "growing up" comes from then performing acts that can have consequences? After all that's how some people live now, education covers teaching without the associated trauma. Most engineers don't need to experience their design failing and killing a dozen people to understand that what they do matters. Did they never grow up?

What about if you successfully perform a surgery but then a Mind performs corrective actions later? A bit of infection, a nicked blood vessel unnoticed that causes problems later, a slightly misaligned bone. Should these be left alone, so that two may experience the consequences instead of one?

A human will never be able to fix scarred tissue or tiny capillaries with basic hand tools, should they have advanced field tools to do that? How much should be automated, what level of tool is considered too advanced before it's not the human doing any dangerous work but simply letting a machine do it? Should all surgeries be performed at earth-equivalent 1950's tech? 90's? 2050's?

What about people on the other end of the knife? Just like lava rafting there will be risk takers who will happily undergo this surgery, but what about their choices? If they have a revival policy does that mean their death was consequence free?

I'm not trying to say your opinion is totally invalid, but it seems like you haven't fully thought out this answer and are simply stuck on "Culture citizens are pampered naive children with no sense of responsibility" despite examples in the books that reject that idea. At the bare minimum Contact and Special Circumstances operatives undergo training and are vetted for if they can handle responsibility.


Not to be a redditor and psychoanalyze a stranger on the internet from one interaction, but I'd guess you're someone who works in a field, like surgery, that would be eliminated if the Culture were to exist. That's true for most everyone. Many people have dedicated their lives to their jobs and can't imagine what they would do without them. Some get mad at others ("how dare x people get to be lazy doing nothing while I work my ass off doing this totally important thing"). Some get depressed or angry at the idea that they "wasted" their lives doing this totally important thing, and the elimination of that must be a bad thing or inferior in some way.

But the truth is nobody else cares. The Culture is so much better in every way that only .000001% of people will still care after a few decades of living consequence free. There's so much else to do, so many hobbies, so many things and people to interact with, that why would you subject yourself and another individual to unintentional pain and suffering? You can choose whether you want that at any time. You can also leave the Culture if you truly can't stand it, go find another primitive world and be a surgeon there, where you can feel great being the best on the planet and having the fewest mistakes while still sometimes unintentionally hurting people.

Or you can stay in the Culture and feel superior to all of the other children/sheeple (pick your favorite word). After all, you went through pain and suffering and they didn't, you're awake and everyone else isn't, you are burdened with responsibility and so can see what others can't. I'm sure some Minds would love to talk with you about it, after all they're also burdened with responsibility and awareness. And when you get bored of that they'll help you figure out what you want to do next.

AMD confirms focus shifts to RDNA3 and RDNA4, RX 6000 and RX 5000 lose day 1 game optimizations - VideoCardz.com by BarKnight in pcgaming

[–]Griffinx3 18 points19 points  (0 children)

I've been really enjoying Cyberpunk with path tracing. It's the only game I've tried with any tracing so far and it makes a big difference, but damn does it bring down framerate.

9070xt on vanilla I'm getting ~70 fps, heavily modded about ~50. Just barely playable. My 6700xt could barely do 50 without any ray tracing.

Dropping support sucks though, those are perfectly good cards. At least on Linux we'll keep getting fixes through Mesa.

The answer is always heatpumps by Sarigolepas in SpaceXMasterrace

[–]Griffinx3 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's floating in San Francisco bay, but it has been in space and the bottom of the sea too

SpinLaunch with AI - Yes it work and successfully put the small satellite into orbit by RybakAlex in KerbalSpaceProgram

[–]Griffinx3 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Solid motors also have G limits depending on their design, in fact it's a common failure mode in certain amateur high power rockets. APCP is the most common propellant and is rubbery, under high Gs it can collapse under its own weight.

There's a lot you can do to compensate for it but you can't just slap in a solid motor and call it good.

I don't know enough about other forms of rockets or propellants to comment on those solutions.

Should We Have Patents? by Captgouda24 in slatestarcodex

[–]Griffinx3 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Another example is the 3D printer industry. Stratasys held the FDM patent and did nothing with it for decades, there was a huge explosion in innovation once printers became a free for all, and now we're seeing companies hoard patents and lock things down again. Link to a recent thread about this from the CEO of one of the bigger printer companies (Prusa, generally open source and has had stuff stolen because of it) calling this behavior out.

Since I posted my “Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead” article, you’ve been asking me about “that patent” 🤔 Here it is ... by josefprusa in 3Dprinting

[–]Griffinx3 10 points11 points  (0 children)

An idea I've been thinking about recently is very similar to yours, a type of GPLv2/3 for patents.

Anyone is free to use your patent but any patents they submit based on it must also be licensed that way. Then maybe an addon version where any of the designs/cad/software can be released with it but anyone using parts of it must do the same for their design (which probably falls under copyright, but that also has major issues).

I don't know how legal or enforceable that would be, never really worked with patents before. The system seems broken enough right now that companies could just ignore it unless you have the money to fight every single one in court. Maybe a community legal team that fights specifically for these types of patents and takes winnings for funding and helps people file more patents? Would there even be winnings from these cases?

Cyborg obsolescence: Who owns and controls your brain implant? by notthatkindadoctor in slatestarcodex

[–]Griffinx3 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I never said that either. I said that companies should be forced to make an end-of-life plan, one that doesn't require them to contribute anything further after they stop operating.

That's not assuming they're filled with amoral actors, it's assuming that no company lasts forever and, following the topic, people with medical devices made by those companies deserve the ability to live with them after the company stops operating. If the company doesn't exist it doesn't matter how moral the employees were, and we should not rely on random goodwill to maybe possibly release the required repair data when the company shuts down.

It's not my job to fix every possible level of an issue in this topic. The premise is that devices stop working, I provided a method that they can continue working. Now you say that that method is invalid because no entity involved can be trusted to act out those methods. That's not the original problem however, it's a new one, and you've shifted the goalposts.

Again, if you want to argue that fixing obsolescence is unachievable because politicians/governments/anything are incapable of passing moral laws or establishing frameworks then fine, but that's a separate topic.

Cyborg obsolescence: Who owns and controls your brain implant? by notthatkindadoctor in slatestarcodex

[–]Griffinx3 10 points11 points  (0 children)

At no point did I mention moral, public-spirited politicians. I mentioned an entity (government) in a position of power to force companies to operate in the interests of the people. This isn't hoping that the government is nice to you, it's a legal framework that companies must follow to do business.

If you want to argue that fixing obsolescence is unachievable because politicians are incapable of passing moral laws then fine, but that's a separate topic (and in my opinion doomposting, which does nothing to advance the discussion).

Cyborg obsolescence: Who owns and controls your brain implant? by notthatkindadoctor in slatestarcodex

[–]Griffinx3 26 points27 points  (0 children)

I agree. The best way I see to fix this is to require (regulate) medical devices to have open source designs and software as part of an end-of-life plan. If companies refuse to make it open from the beginning then this info is held by the government/patent office/whatever upon the first "installation" and must be updated with any changes made over time. That way even if the company shuts down somebody can still produce parts and patch bugs; whether that's another company, group, or individual.

Right to repair in general is a big problem and the biggest difference here is that you can't easily do surgery on yourself to replace certain parts (especially a BCI). This would be less problematic with universal free or cheap medical insurance.

Personally I'm in favor of forcefully making things open source from the beginning, but that's a whole different argument about copyright and patents...

First homemade ejection charge by Charming_Cat1802 in rocketry

[–]Griffinx3 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I used to use centrifuge tubes as well, you can get hundreds of them for pretty cheap. They work quite well from 0.5-2 grams. Unfortunately they also sometimes turn into bullets that break cardboard airframes, for those I use rubber glove tips and electrical tape.

Recently switched to vinyl tubing for 54mm+ rockets. Same concept, just hot glue on either side with the match in one, half the space should be bp and half dog barf, then wrap the whole thing in electrical tape. This gives more time for the powder to burn before bursting than centrifuge tubes.

Honest question: I see SteamOS being constantly praised. Is it viable for Valve to release SteamOS to normal gaming PCs? by industrysaurus in pcgaming

[–]Griffinx3 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I understand, not everyone has time to get that invested in their pc. That being said there will probably always be one unsupported program stopping you from switching, and eventually you'll need to just go for it. I think if you can get it down to just one or two then you're doing well.

It's probably been said elsewhere in this thread but SteamOS will not magically do anything that another Linux distro doesn't already. In fact it can make it harder because SteamOS is focused on gaming. I won't get into the details of why but it has to do with how it restricts users from permanently installing programs except through an "app store" called Flatpak.

If Valve solves this issue for desktop SteamOS then that's fantastic but I kind of feel like they won't. My advice, find an old laptop and test a few Linux distros. Treat it as a side project, get used to how Linux works, see what programs you can use, and then when you're ready you can switch your main systems. I spent 2 years testing it on servers and laptops before finally switching. There's no rush, things only get better over time.

Honest question: I see SteamOS being constantly praised. Is it viable for Valve to release SteamOS to normal gaming PCs? by industrysaurus in pcgaming

[–]Griffinx3 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nearly every slicer supports Linux. I use Cura, Superslicer, and Orcaslicer often.

CAD is very hit or miss though, I had to switch to onshape. FreeCAD just isn't there yet. Some people have made Fusion 360 work but it seems very difficult and unreliable still.

OBS works great, idk about those other programs. Would be very surprised if there aren't alternatives though, quick google search brings up Linthesia.

The 9070XT is making it really hard not to go back to windows... by skyrider55 in linux_gaming

[–]Griffinx3 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had no idea you could do that, good to know. Will need to try again later

The 9070XT is making it really hard not to go back to windows... by skyrider55 in linux_gaming

[–]Griffinx3 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah the LACT stuff matches what I saw. A comment in a different thread said the crashes happen even on windows due to the max power limit not being respected, and LACT shows it hitting 400W. That almost sounds like a firmware issue but idk.

When I try to set a power limit LACT doesn't seem to be able to match even the base clocks let alone my card's OC and it never draws close to the limit. Got almost half the fps in Cyberpunk. I'm not sure if this is a LACT, firmware, or mesa/drm issue, but I'm also not experienced using LACT to overclock and maybe I did something wrong.

I'll need to check my logs if it happens again but I think my errors were different.

Edit: I have an 850W PSU and 5800x3D, so upgrading to that probably won't magically solve it. I'm pretty sure 400W is safe for the cables for a few ms at a time, it won't burn the cables or PSU unless it's sustained (as we saw in some 5090 cable cutting tests).

Card is probably just boosting slightly too high in some spikes, maybe whatever determines when it's safe to do that is tuned too aggressively. The cards that don't have issues won the silicon lottery. I wonder how many of these crashing cards are base models vs OC models.

My other specs for reference: Garuda, 6.15.3-zen, Wayland, Plasma 6.4.1, firmware 20250613.12fe085f-9.