wizardbeard

wizardbeard , 1 month ago to Technology in Netflix Windows app is set to remove its downloads feature, while introducing ads

You can pirate, or if you want to do it the "right" way, you can sign up when there's something you want to watch and cancel when there isn't.

wizardbeard , 1 month ago to Technology in Online Content Is Disappearing

Yo ho yo ho a pirate's life for me

wizardbeard , 1 month ago to Technology in Microsoft PC Manager App 'Repairs' Your System by Making Bing the Search Default

Bleachbit is the open source, non trash "replacement" for CCleaner

wizardbeard , 1 month ago to Memes in Numa

Wow, meme necromancy

wizardbeard , 1 month ago to Technology in Winamp has announced that it is opening up its source code to enable collaborative development of its legendary player for Windows

Musicbee is a pretty good Foobar alternative.

wizardbeard , 1 month ago to Mildly Infuriating in "Features"

If by "only so much" you mean every BS thing in OP's image, sure.

To be clear, you can turn off all web content in the search menu/start menu search.

wizardbeard , 1 month ago to Mildly Infuriating in Microsoft extolling the benefits of cloud storage in their Office save dialog

Sounds like your IT team messed up the setup. In their defense, Microsoft doesn't make it easy to set it up well.

A "good" setup hides all this shit from the end user. All your "library" folders (Documents, Desktop, Pictures, etc) can be invisibly made into OneDrive folders. Still save your shit where you normally do, navigate in the file manager like you normally do, no lag for changes you do locally to show locally, minor lag (like 1-2 minutes) for changes to propagate to OneDrive itself (and other machines you are currently logged into). Just now everything is backed up to the cloud.

wizardbeard , 1 month ago to Technology in Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports to add proper ray tracing, ultrawide, high FPS, and more

They basically did similar stuff with some of the stuff in the sm3d collection thingy.

They did not.

For Super Mario 64, they emulated it. They increased the resolution the game renders at (trivial with emulation of 3D systems) and they used basic LUA patches in the emulator to override HUD textures with higher resolution ones adjusted for the Switch controller.

They did not add any further enhancements in any way. Compared to even 64 DS, it was extremely sophomoric. Compared to the Super Mario 64 decomp project, and what its native switch port is capable of (more on that later), it's an incredibly lazy port. They didn't even fix the slowdown with Bowser's Sub that is as simple as adjusting a single compiler flag when you build the ROM from the N64 game source code.

For Sunshine, it's an admittedly impressive solution of mostly emulation with some sections of the game engine ported (I think it's the audio processing?). Once again, the game is rendered at a higher resolution, but they did not redo ot improve further any textures (besides some of the HUD again), graphical effects, or game content. Wind Waker HD this ain't.

For Galaxy they cannibalized the existing port of it to Android on the NVidia Shield. The Switch shares most of the important internals with it (CPU, GPU). It's a combo of emulation with certain key code ported, like Sunshine. Again, besides resolution and HUD, no improvements.

Beyond that, Nintendo has been content to sell straight up emulation through the Virtual Console service since the Wii. They've had multiple instances of straight ports over the years, and some of the most popular Switch games are straight ports with DLC bundled in.

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There are numerous impressive remakes they have done over the years, but that is absolutely not the norm.

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The Super Mario 64 decomp on the Switch supports (not available in Nintendo's official port in 3D All Stars):

• Effectively infinite render distance for objects (coins, enemies, stars, etc)
• 60 fps (compared to the original/all stars 30fps at best)
• True analog camera control using the right stick (All Stars is just the original's clunky button based control mapped to the stick)
• All sorts of QoL options like collecting stars not kicking you out of a level, options for streamlined/faster message boxes
• Optional bugfixes
• Optional cheats
• Variety of HD texture packs to choose from
• Variety of higher quality 3D model packs to choose from
• Support for an astounding variety of mods. Levels, entire new games, new characters, new movement and control options (Odyssey Mario in 64 with full cappy and enemy capture mechanics anyone?)
• Support for many more languages
• Nearly all of the above is toggleable mid-game from the pause menu.

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I don't think anyone was expecting something amazing out of 3D All Stars, but they absolutely fucking phoned it in.

wizardbeard , 1 month ago to Technology in Stack Overflow Users Are Revolting Against an OpenAI Deal | WIRED

PowerShell Microsoft Graph Module. Most of the official doc pages have at least one section of "TODO" in them.

After they officially deprecated the previous modules with similar functionality.

wizardbeard , 1 month ago to Technology in Stack Overflow Users Are Revolting Against an OpenAI Deal | WIRED

When I do find relevant answers, lately they're all so old that they no longer work, or rely on now deprecated functionality of a library or system.

Finding code snippets for interfacing with Azure through PowerShell is a crapshoot because Microsoft keeps deprecating different PowerShell modules for it.

wizardbeard , 1 month ago to Technology in First human brain implant malfunctioned, Neuralink says

But those options were available to him without a risky brain implant. There's a large amount of alternative interface methods and tools available for these purposes, they just don't have Musk's marketing budget and they aren't run by someone that owns a newspaper, so they're not well known outside the disabled community.

We've had wearable (and thus removable and non invasive) neural interfaces for years now that have been able to do mouse control.

We've had robust eye tracker control since Steven fucking Hawking.

This is being framed as though this was the only way for this person to have these abilities and options available, and that is patently false.

wizardbeard , 1 month ago to Comic Strips in "I have the sunshine on the other line"

https://youtu.be/hePJ1YPMxEw

wizardbeard , 2 months ago to Technology in Microsoft won't fix Windows 0x80070643 errors, manual fix required

They don't need to reinstall the OS to resolve this issue though, unless they absolutely fucked their paritions.

Which is why Microsoft couldn't automate a fix. It's incredibly easy to fuck your partitions to hell and back, especially through Windows. Too many conditions to check for and try to handle automatically.

wizardbeard , 2 months ago to Technology in Microsoft won't fix Windows 0x80070643 errors, manual fix required

It's more than strictly a recovery partition. It is also used for updates and the files needed to roll individual ones back. The entire issue was that they had an update that didn't properly handle when there wasn't enough space for it in the recovery partition.

wizardbeard , 2 months ago to Technology in Microsoft won't fix Windows 0x80070643 errors, manual fix required

Not dickriding microsoft here, but they have provided all the tools to fix this. They just can't make them happen automatically on effected machines because they broke something particularly complicated.

You need to have enough space to resolve the issue (which was caused by not having enough space in the recovery partition in the first place). You need to adjust the size of the parition (traditionally a risky operation, especially through Windows). You then need to download a specific update while skipping another, install, and reboot.

They have provided scripts for backing up the recovery partition, expanding it, and restoring the contents from backup if expanding fucks the contents. They have provided a script to download and install the specific update to fix the problem once you have enough space in that paritition. They did not automate restarting the computer (piss easy to automate), or to hide the problematic update (easy through UI, probably a pain to script).