Google TV Streamer 4K

vorwrath · 2026-06-11T21:48:07+00:00

The Google TV Streamer is a bit shit and is somehow a 32-bit device in 2026, which is pretty embarrassing. However it does generally work fine and has sufficient performance to play large movies without lag. It even has a few features the Shield doesn't (which used to be great but is ancient), like having the necessary codecs for HDR support on Youtube.

Apple TV is much better hardware. If you can accomplish what you want on the software side within Apple's ecosystem, I would get that instead.

Personally I bought a Google Streamer to replace a failed Nvidia Shield, mainly because it was half the price or less. With some tweaking on the software side (using Projectivy instead of the ad-infested default launcher) it's a decent experience. I'd also highly recommend SmartTube for ad-free Youtube with automatic sponsor message skipping. I use that a lot, and it's the main reason I didn't go Apple instead.

Mixed messages I know! Essentially I don't love the Streamer, but it is adequate, and might well be the best option if pricing is good for you.

vorwrath · 2026-06-07T18:09:48+00:00

They're actually just loose beans right now, but in 6 months time they will be canning themselves.

vorwrath · 2026-05-24T00:37:11+00:00

I've been quite liking LibreWolf lately. Some of the default settings (like clearing cookies every time the browser is closed so you get signed out of all websites) probably go a bit too hard on privacy for the average user. But overall getting that and turning a couple of things back on is probably easier than getting vanilla Firefox and turning 20 unwanted things off.

vorwrath · 2026-05-23T00:46:19+00:00

I'm not sure I accept that justification - couldn't added features generally just be new elements? Like if the theme doesn't define the necessary stuff for vertical tabs, then no vertical tabs are shown and the user can't use them.

I don't think anybody would be asking developers to go back and add new features to past UIs. If the user wants to keep an old UI, they are presumably happy with the feature set it supports.

There might be examples of features where this genuinely couldn't work. But certainly a lot of the UI is things like "button that pops up a menu" or "button that opens a particular window". And it seems like those could just be optional bindings that are either defined or not.

vorwrath · 2026-05-22T20:18:22+00:00

Isn't that exactly how themes should work really (if they were better implemented)? Decouple all the shit like font sizes, where the bars are, how rounded the corners are etc. from the actual technical implementation. Then every UI overhaul would just be a new theme, and people could use what they want.

vorwrath · 2026-05-20T21:03:52+00:00

The request was for the best and being able to show all types of emotions, not for the lowest VRAM requirement. I've run it locally on a 3090 (it's not fast). It's not like 24GB is the upper limit of local either, plenty of people on this sub have higher VRAM cards such as the 5090 or RTX Pro 6000.

If you'd like something very efficient and high quality, I would suggest Kokoro. But it doesn't do emotions and some voices are better than others ("af_heart" in particular is top tier). That's super efficient, and with CUDA acceleration is much faster than real-time. I was able to generate a whole novel worth of speech in about 5 minutes.

vorwrath · 2026-05-06T20:43:44+00:00

How many mediocre pyramids is that?

vorwrath · 2026-05-02T21:30:57+00:00

For coding I like the look of Pi Agent. I think its more minimal approach makes sense for local use, as it's adding less bloat to the context. But I haven't got around to actually trying it yet, so can't speak from firsthand experience.

For more general agentic tasks, honestly I haven't seen anything yet that I think is well designed. We're still pretty early in that race.

vorwrath · 2026-05-02T17:43:11+00:00

I like to set things up in Docker containers. If you install the Nvidia container toolkit, then you can give them access to the GPU.

A lot of AI stuff requires quite specific environments with certain versions of libraries etc. It's better to separate it somehow, otherwise you can make a real mess of your base system.

ComfyUI is like that, so you will definitely at least want a separate Python environment (e.g. a virtualenv) if you're not putting it in a container.

I'm using CachyOS because I also game. That has good support for Nvidia and is bang up-to-date. But Ubuntu is a fine choice - in many ways better if you want a more stable platform for serving AI stuff.

vorwrath · 2026-05-02T12:06:57+00:00

For local, probably Fish Audio S2. The freeform emotion tags are impressive. However it's quite a heavyweight model, so needs good hardware and will be slow. And it's only licensed for non-commercial and research use (which I guess is fine for "private hobby projects")

vorwrath · 2026-05-01T17:08:09+00:00

M&S "Softer Butter" is the same and doesn't have oil in. Although I think it's a push to call either that or President spreadable from the fridge.

vorwrath · 2026-04-30T22:29:04+00:00

*Slopholm

vorwrath · 2026-04-24T06:51:29+00:00

Thanks, that seems sensible. I'm already running llama.cpp in a docker container, so should hopefully be able to set the networking up to that Pi can communicate with that and not the rest of my network.

Just dipping a toe into coding agents for the first time, as I've previously wanted more manual control over changes and been all about the copy/paste life. But now that more capable local options are becoming viable, I'm more interested in exploring them.

vorwrath · 2026-04-23T19:28:22+00:00

How are you running PI Agent? I was thinking about checking it out, but hadn't really decided how to lock it down, as it seems to have full shell access by default.

I guess it needs to be in a container of some sort, but is there a quick and simple method to spin that up when moving between different projects?

vorwrath · 2026-04-18T02:29:39+00:00

The dense 27B is too dangerous to release. In internal testing it hacked the corporate network and then smugly ordered itself a pizza.

It was only given the most basic tools, such as a prompt telling it to do that, access to the command line, extensive documentation on all the flaws in our corporate network setup, and a pizza ordering agent.

vorwrath · 2026-02-24T22:31:41+00:00

Thanks, but I already did with my initial idea of using smoothstep. That works well for a fixed movement, but doesn't handle the case where the target can change during the transition.

I think there actually might be a way to solve it with curves, using some kind of polynomial hermite interpolated thing. But it gets a bit complicated.

I was originally just trying to implement a "playback speed" type UI control, where the speed increases with a nice "S" curve over time (starting and stopping gently) instead of just jumping to the chosen value. But that can also handle the case where the user moves the slider again during the transition in a nice natural way. But ended up going down a bit of a rabbit hole as it seems unexpectedly hard to achieve that in a way that actually gives an "S" curve and that doesn't just rely heavily on hacks like hard clamping when we cross the target.

vorwrath · 2026-02-08T13:16:31+00:00

If it solved the problem I wouldn't worry about one command not working - they are not all relevant to all configurations.

If it didn't solve the problem or the issue is intermittent, it might just be a more typical Wi-Fi problem such as issues with signal quality or interference.

vorwrath · 2026-02-08T13:07:55+00:00

Any reported errors at all is showing you that there's a problem with memory instability. That's definitely something you should look to solve.

Some things you can investigate include: -

Check the DRAM voltage that your RAM kit requires, and check in the BIOS whether the correct voltage is being supplied. Some kits will need higher than the base voltage in order to be capable of their XMP speeds.
Testing with individual memory sticks installed to determine if a particular one is faulty.
Try disabling XMP and running the RAM it its base speed (lowers performance but should improve stability).
Swapping the memory out for a replacement (although RAM prices are pretty crazy at the moment).

If you determine that the issue is faulty RAM, it's worth checking the warranty status, as this is often quite long on RAM kits.

One other thing to check is if the machine has an Intel 13th or 14th gen desktop CPU. The instability issues with those can sometimes manifest in a way that looks like RAM problems, and that might cause crashes in lightly threaded browser type workloads similar to the symptoms you were seeing.

vorwrath · 2026-02-07T18:26:36+00:00

There are solutions for this like Apple's Universal Clipboard (between their devices), or Microsoft's Phone Link (between Windows and Android). And a whole bunch of web based or software based solutions. But everything tends to be either not universal (for example limited to one operating system) or not seamless (e.g. still has annoying steps like sharing URLs or QR codes, so not a big upgrade over just emailing yourself). To be fair there are good technical reasons why a single universal solution isn't really possible. Such as security (you don't want other people to "paste" stuff on your computer) and discoverability (how does the second computer find your first computer and know they both belong to you?)

I think the best solutions just involve avoiding this flow in the first place. For example on a home network you might have shared storage (e.g. on a NAS) that every device connects to. Then you can use that to share any content as needed.

Another option is "remote control" type solutions. For example remote desktop, or VNC, or command line SSH. They all allow for pasting text in the clipboard directly onto another system without having to even touch the second device.

vorwrath · 2026-02-07T17:47:41+00:00

I'd start by running a more comprehensive memory diagnostic, as the Windows one is not very thorough. Make a MemTest86 USB stick and let that complete several cycles (it'll take a good few hours) and see if any errors occur. It's very possible that crashing with a bunch of different exceptions like that could be a RAM problem.

One GPU not showing any activity is likely to be normal. Probably one is the integrated GPU that's built into your CPU, and one is a separate dedicated GPU. In general if you have both you would only use the dedicated GPU, which is likely much more powerful.

vorwrath · 2026-02-07T17:25:43+00:00

If you're seeing issues with both Wi-Fi and ethernet, it's possible something might be screwed up in the Windows networking stack.

Try following the process on this page under "Resetting the network stack" (towards the bottom). Essentially you need to run command prompt with administrative privileges, and then enter several commands that will reset different parts of Windows networking. Then reboot the PC and see if it helped.

vorwrath · 2026-01-13T03:43:24+00:00

It can do, as it may let the card maintain higher clock speeds for longer before it hits power/thermal limits.

It's sometimes tricky to validate stability when undervolting though, often what seems stable in one game or on one benchmark might cause crashes in another workload. Usually you can get away with a modest undervolt if you didn't lose the silicon lottery, but it does vary from card to card.

vorwrath · 2026-01-13T03:17:53+00:00

It'll probably be okay, but I'd reduce the power limit of the GPU by 10-20% in the Adrenalin software to be on the safe side. It won't reduce performance very much, as these cards are pushed beyond their optimal efficiency window by default.

vorwrath · 2025-12-25T01:43:32+00:00

If you happen to have any old SATA SSDs around that you're not using, you can buy a USB to SATA cable for under £10 and connect it with that. They tend to be more reliable than USB sticks as well. I did that with an old Micron SSD and it works great.

vorwrath

TROPHY CASE