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Cake day: August 15th, 2023

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  • PipeWire is a server and user space API to deal with multimedia pipelines. This includes:

    • Making available sources of video (such as from a capture devices or application provided streams) and multiplexing this with clients.
    • Accessing sources of video for consumption.
    • Generating graphs for audio and video processing.

    Nodes in the graph can be implemented as separate processes, communicating with sockets and exchanging multimedia content using fd passing.


  • I’m not redefining anything, I’m just pointing out that intelligence is not as narrow as most people assume, it’s a broad term that encompasses various gradations. It doesn’t need to be complex or human-like to qualify as intelligence.

    A single if statement arguably isn’t intelligence, sure, but how many if statements is? Because at some point you can write a complex enough sequence of if statements that will exhibit intelligence. As I was saying in my other comments, where do we draw this line in the sand? If we use the definition from the link, which is:

    The highest faculty of the mind, capacity for comprehending general truths.

    Then 99% of animal species would not qualify as intelligent.

    You may rightfully argue that term AI is too broad and that we could narrow it down to mean specifically “human-like” AI, but the truth is, that at this point, in computer science AI already refers to a wide range of systems, from basic decision-making algorithms to complex models like GPTs or neural networks.

    My whole point is less about redefining intelligence and more about recognizing its spectrum, both in nature and in machines. But I don’t expect for everybody to agree, even the expert in the fields don’t.



  • I would put it differently. Sometimes words have two meanings, for example a layman’s understanding of it and a specialist’s understanding of the same word, which might mean something adjacent, but still different. For instance, the word “theory” in everyday language often means a guess or speculation, while in science, a “theory” is a well-substantiated explanation based on evidence.

    Similarly, when a cognitive scientist talks about “intelligence”, they might be referring to something quite different from what a layperson understands by the term.


  • In a way, yes, if you frame it right. To simplify, you’re basically asking “is a calculator intelligent?”, right? While it’s an inanimate object, you could say that, in a way, it acquires knowledge from the buttons user presses and it applies knowledge to provide an output.

    “But that’s not making decisions, it’s just circuits!”, you might say. To which I might reply “Who’s to say that you’re making decisions? For all we know, human brains might also just be very complicated circuits with no agency at all, just like the calculator!”.

    IIRC, in his book The Singularity Is Near, Ray Kurzweil even assigns certain amount of intelligence to inanimate objects, such as rocks. A very low amount of course, and it might be a stretch, but still.

    So yeah, it’s really hard to draw a line for intelligence, which is why there’s no firm definition and no consensus.


  • Of course there are various versions of NPCs, some stand and do nothing, others are more complex, they often “adapt” to certain conditions. For example, if an NPC is following the player it might “decide” to switch to running if the distance to the player reaches a certain threshold, decide how to navigate around other dynamic/moving NPCs, etc. In this example, the NPC “acquires” knowledge by polling the distance to the player and applies that “knowledge” by using its internal model to make a decision to walk or run.

    The term “acquiring knowledge” is pretty much as subjective as “intelligence”. In the case of an ant, for example, it can’t really learn anything, at best it has a tiny short-term memory in which it keeps certain most recent decisions, but it surely gets things done, like building colonies.

    For both cases, it’s just a line in the sand.








  • To be fair, PS2 emulation is still not that great, but I guess it’s due to sheer amount of games for that system. Last summer I decided to check the PS2 emulation after 10 year break and 2 out of 3 games I tested didn’t work properly. Granted, those are kinda niche games (Transformers (2004) and Free Running), but compatibility still needs work. Hardware requirements are decently low for the games that do work, though.







  • Farid@startrek.websitetoLinux@lemmy.mlAbsolutely loving Linux btw
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    2 months ago

    Here’s an anecdote. Recently, I got a 14yo (I believe) MSI MS-AC73 AIO (i3-2120, 4GB DDR3, 120GB SSD), mostly to use as a 1080p display, but it had a free PC inside as a bonus. For shits and giggles I started installing different OSes on it. First was XP. finding drivers was a pain but doable, since the machine is old af. But no matter what I did, Intel GPU control panel didn’t want to center 3:4 games properly.

    Since it wasn’t working so well, I decided to go the opposite side of the spectrum and install W11, to see how horrible it would be. After many hours of convincing W11 to install on this machine (which is surprisingly not Copilot+ compliant), I finally got it to boot with a local account, with all devices recognized (including the touch screen). MFW when it runs pretty decently all things considered. I went ahead and removed all the extra crap using CTT Debloater. Played a couple retro PC games, installed FF and watched some YT, which manages to run at 1080p without dropped frames.

    Now, of course, I decided to dualboot Linux, cause duh. Picked the latest Manjaro (KDE), hoping it will handle games better in case I try anything (might be an uneducated choice). Install is much easier, of course, but everything also works out of the box. My disappointment when same FF massively drops frames on YT. Touch controls technically work, but it doesn’t show the touch locations and other minor issues.

    In the end, I mostly use the neutered W11 (too lazy to downgrade to W10), cause it plays videos much better and W95-98 games. But if somebody can tell me how to fix Linux video playback issues, that would be great, as I want to make it my Linux daily driver.