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  • 369 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: June 18th, 2023
  • NaibofTabr@infosec.pubtolinuxmemes@lemmy.world•...wasn't it supposed to be other way around?English
    2·
    1 month ago

    Heh, so ALSA has kind of been the audio architecture for Linux distros since forever.

    Pulse Audio was supposed to modernize audio for Linux and ultimately replace ALSA.

    But last time I installed Linux on my desktop, I couldn’t get audio output from my motherboard’s TOSLINK S/PDIF port no matter which settings I changed in the GUI, uninstalled/reinstalled drivers and codecs and whatnot, etc.

    Nothing made any difference until I eventually found some forum post which suggested using ALSAmixer to check the settings for various audio channels. ALSAmixer is not typically installed by default and not commonly used anymore, but it was the only tool that could unmute the digital audio output channel that served the TOSLINK port - that functionality was not present anywhere else in any of the configuration options. Pulse appeared to be in control of the system audio hardware, but in reality it was just sitting on top of and still relying on ALSA to handle the back end. Also, whoever set ALSA to mute some audio channels by default on a clean install… wtf dude, that shit just makes people think their hardware isn’t properly supported and they have a driver issue.

    The point being, ALSA was supposed to be deprecated years ago and all of the old audio issues resolved and modernized with a new architecture, but… I’ll believe it when I see it, when whatever the new thing is actually proves itself to be an all-singing, all-dancing audio architecture. I’ve seen this rodeo before, and last time I checked it was still a clownshow.

  • NaibofTabr@infosec.pubtolinuxmemes@lemmy.world•...wasn't it supposed to be other way around?English
    1·
    2 months ago

    So… what do you use for audio output on a desktop? Because I feed my monitor with the DisplayPort output from my graphics card, and I’m definitely not running a separate HDMI just for the audio signal. Even with 5.1 channel outputs, the 3.5mm audio on the motherboard is not up to the quality of the optical audio output, and besides that’s 5 copper cables to run instead of one fiber. My soundbar has an optical input. The optical output is the only thing that makes sense.

  • NaibofTabr@infosec.pubtoSelfhosted@lemmy.world•How bad of an idea is it to use computing HDDs in a DIY NAS?English
    68·
    2 months ago

    First and most important:

    In the context of long-term data storage
    ALL DRIVES ARE CONSUMABLES

    I can’t emphasize this enough. If you only skim the rest of my post, re-read the above line and accept it as fundamental truth. “Long-term” means 1+ years, by the way.

    It does not matter what type of drive you buy, how much you spend on it, who manufactured it, etc. The drive will fail at some point, probably when you’re least prepared for it. You need to plan around that. You need to plan for the drive being completely useless and the data on it unrecoverable post-failure. Wasting time and money to acquire the fanciest most bulletproof drives on the market is a pointless resource pit, and has more to do with dick-measuring contests between data-hoarders.

    Knife geeks buy $500+ patterned steel chef’s knives with ebony handles and finely ground edges and bla bla bla. Professional kitchens buy the basic Victorinox with the plastic handle. Why? Because they actually use it, not mount it on a wall to look pretty.

    The knife is a consumable, not an heirloom. So are your storage drives. We call them “spinning rust” for a reason.

    The solution to drive failure is redundancy. Period.

    Unfortunately, this reality runs counter to the desire to maximize available storage. Do not follow the path of desire, that way lies data loss and outer darkness. Fault-tolerant is your watchword. Component failure is unpredictable, no matter how much money you spend. A random manufacturing defect will ruin your day when you least expect it.

    A minimum safe layout is to have 2 live copies of data (one active, one mirror), hot standby for 1 copy (immediate swap-in when the active or mirror fails), and cold standby on the shelf to replace the hot standby when it enters service.

    Note that this does not describe a specific number of disks, but copies of data. The minimum to implement this is 4 disks of identical storage capacity (2 live, 1 hot standby, 1 on the shelf) and a server with slots for 3 disks. If your storage needs expand beyond the capacity of 1 disk, then you need to scale up by the same ratio. A disk is indivisible - having two copies of the same data on a disk does not give you any redundancy value. (I won’t get into striping and mucking about with weird RAID choices in this post because it’s too long already, but basically it’s not worth it - the KISS principle applies, especially in small configurations)

    This means you only get to use 25% of the storage capacity that you buy. Them’s the breaks. Anything less and you’re not taking your data longevity seriously, you might as well just get a consumer-grade external drive and call it a day.

    Buy 4 disks, it doesn’t matter what they are or how much they cost (though if you’re buying used make sure you get a SMART report from the seller and you understand what it means) but keep in mind that your storage capacity is just 1 of the disks. And buy a server that can keep 3 of them online and automatically swap in the standby when one of the disks fails. Spend more money on the server than the disks, it will last longer.

    Remember, long-term is a question of when, not if.

  • NaibofTabr@infosec.pubtoProgrammer Humor@programming.dev•Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal 2011 09 08English
    501·
    3 months ago

    AI coding tools can do common, simple functions reasonably well, because there are lots of examples of those to steal from real programmers on the Internet. There is a large corpus of data to train with.

    AI coding tools can’t do sophisticated, specific-case solutions very well, because there aren’t many examples of those for any given use case to steal from real programmers on the Internet. There is a small corpus of data to train with.

    AI coding tools can’t solve new problems at all, because there are no examples of those to steal from real programmers on the Internet. There is no corpus of data to train with.

    AI coding tools have already ingested all of the code available on the Internet to train with. There is no more new data to feed in. AI coding tools will not get substantially better than they are now. All of the theft that could be committed has been committed, which is why the AI development companies are attempting to feed generated training material into their models. Every review of this shows that it makes the output from generative models worse rather than better.

    Programming is not about writing code. That is what a manager thinks.
    Programming is about solving problems. Generative AI doesn’t think, so it cannot solve problems. All it can do is regurgitate material that it has previously ingested which is hopefully close-ish to the problem you’re trying to solve at the moment - material which was written by a real thinking human that solved that problem (or a similar one) at some point in the past.

    If you patronize a generative AI system like Claude Code, you are paying into, participating in, and complicit in, the largest example of labor theft in history.