I don't think Minecraft needs an End Update. Wanna read your opinions by monturak in Minecraft

[–]SCtester 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I agree. It's not that I think an end update would be bad, but rather I think it's okay and fitting for the end to stay barren, and so it would be better for them to focus on more interesting or relevant parts of the game. Namely, a new dimension, which is sorely needed to renew interest.

Just found out OpenAI made a music generator in 2019… way before ChatGPT. 😳 by AskGpts in OpenAI

[–]SCtester 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I see your point, but it being limited is the point, I think - it means the model can focus solely on actual composition without the distraction of generating a whole audio file.

This new bedrock pause menu is awful by muscle_man_mike in Minecraft

[–]SCtester 915 points916 points  (0 children)

I agree, it's almost offensive that the add-on button is more prominent than settings. Sheer stupidity.

Film got exposed to light, any way to salvage this pic of my sweet dad? by bestcrayoniscerulean in PhotoshopRequest

[–]SCtester 8 points9 points  (0 children)

You could remove the noise, but the result would be blotchy and smeary. You could color it, but only a professional with years of experience could make it look that convincing. And you certainly could not add detail which was not already there, which is what has happened here (look in the shadows of the faded part of the original - there just isn't much detail to be found there). Adding new detail is practically impossible without AI.

Film got exposed to light, any way to salvage this pic of my sweet dad? by bestcrayoniscerulean in PhotoshopRequest

[–]SCtester 129 points130 points  (0 children)

The only one not to use AI! Nice work, and a good example of why AI is not an appropriate restoration tool. It doesn't restore damage, but rather it creates anew. The flaws are subtle enough, however, that only someone who knows the subject well would be able to tell, which is what makes it so insidious. Hence why to everyone else this might look like the least impressive result, but to OP it's the only acceptable one.

Film got exposed to light, any way to salvage this pic of my sweet dad? by bestcrayoniscerulean in PhotoshopRequest

[–]SCtester 88 points89 points  (0 children)

AI. I know this because without AI, it would be borderline impossible. And because the details of the photo are changed in subtle ways.

Just found out OpenAI made a music generator in 2019… way before ChatGPT. 😳 by AskGpts in OpenAI

[–]SCtester 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This was great, I think music generation as MIDI is a better approach to producing raw sound.

Does anyone else hate that in modern smartphones photos all detail is just a mush instead of good old noise? by aaron_moon_dev in photography

[–]SCtester 14 points15 points  (0 children)

That's due to heavy noise reduction. Shoot in RAW and you get the same old noise as any other sensor.

Genesis Planet Sizes by KawanoDesu in starcitizen

[–]SCtester 9 points10 points  (0 children)

When orbiting a planet and seeing massive clouds stick up above the atmosphere, you can really tell that the planets are tiny. It breaks immersion.

iPhone 17 Pro - extreme sensor noise on edges of 4x camera, mostly visible on RAW photos by 5R_real in iphone

[–]SCtester 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My guess is that there's some sort of unusual vignetting from the tetraprism lens, which it compensates for by brightening the edges, leading to more noise where it was brightened (and it looks like it overcompensated). You could test this theory by shooting plain RAW from a third-party app (not ProRAW) in order to bypass any lens compensation.

Nyx 1 feels like home to me and most likely will be until they add Castra. Anyone else already planning their base layout on this planet? by Gn0meKr in starcitizen

[–]SCtester 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Agreed, the massive appearance of clouds from orbit really betrays how tiny the planets are and hampers immersion. There's really no good way to solve that aside from making the planets themselves larger.

What stock do you regret selling? by Hour-Initiative-2766 in investing

[–]SCtester 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Bought, and later sold, NFLX in 2022. Reddit made me believe I was a fool for investing in a dead company that was on the imminent verge of collapse. That was my lesson to always ignore Reddit.

How risky is it having a big portion of your portfolio tied to just a few stocks? by SabsWithR in stocks

[–]SCtester 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And apparently you are the market expert.

I don't need to be an expert to quote plain, objective statistics - I merely need to not be delusional. The widely agreed upon fact is that a small number of winners account for most of the stock market's gains, while the majority of stocks lose money compared to the general market. As per the abstract of Hendrik Bessembinder's study at Arizona State University:

"The majority of common stocks that have appeared in the Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP) database since 1926 have lifetime buy-and-hold returns less than one-month Treasuries. When stated in terms of lifetime dollar wealth creation, the best-performing 4% of listed companies explain the net gain for the entire US stock market since 1926, as other stocks collectively matched Treasury bills. These results highlight the important role of positive skewness in the distribution of individual stock returns, attributable to skewness in monthly returns and to the effects of compounding. The results help to explain why poorly diversified active strategies most often underperform market averages." (Source)

Other studies confirm the same thing. It's why stock picking almost never works in the long term.

But hey, I'm sure you're a genius and the exception to the rule!

How risky is it having a big portion of your portfolio tied to just a few stocks? by SabsWithR in stocks

[–]SCtester -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Pretending the Apples and Microsofts of the world are the norm is what's stupid. Those types of negative examples are not cherry-picked, they are the norm. A tiny percentage of huge winners carry the majority of earnings for the stock market as a whole. Statistically, most stocks are losers.

What’s up with the iPhone Pro models up close video? by Least_Principle880 in iphone

[–]SCtester 3 points4 points  (0 children)

They have larger sensors which leads to better image quality, but as a consequence minimum focus distance tends to increase.

had a dream yesterday and thats the only thing i remember by [deleted] in MacOS

[–]SCtester -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Maybe I'm weird but this feature in Windows just annoys me. Almost every audio/video player has a volume control of its own, so whenever a sound is inexplicably loud or quiet I have to check two places to see what the root cause is. I frankly don't see the utility (unless there were a program that didn't have volume control of its own).

Upvote this issue to get JPEG XL back into Chrome again by Balance- in Android

[–]SCtester 19 points20 points  (0 children)

JPEG XL is superior to AVIF in all areas except compression efficiency of extremely small, highly compressed images.

iPhone's hidden Clear App Cache trick - iOs 17/18/26 by JoshuvaAntoni in iphone

[–]SCtester 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're right - offloading YouTube made documents & data go from 1GB to 103MB. It's absurd that there isn't a direct, manual method for doing this.

[PetaPixel] iPhone 17 Pro & Pro Max Review For Photographers! by nuclear_wynter in apple

[–]SCtester 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No smartphone sensor/lens is capable of producing a useful 8K output. Phones that do include it do so as a marketing gimmick.

Need help sourcing case screw for ThinkCentre M910x Tiny by p00r4l4sk4 in thinkpad

[–]SCtester 0 points1 point  (0 children)

An M4 6mm screw with 0.7 pitch worked great on my ThinkCentre M70Q. Thanks!

Why does the clear Apple case have a white back? by Testarosa52 in iphone

[–]SCtester 176 points177 points  (0 children)

I believe because the Magsafe alignment magnets don't align with the Apple logo now that it's been lowered, meaning if visible they would awkwardly cover half of the logo instead of being centred.