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Typeblock

Por: EasyWithAI
31 Agosto 2023 at 12:13
Typeblock lets you easily build customizable AI apps and tools without coding. It has a simple drag-and-drop interface for building apps, and the developers have likened it to using a tool like Canva. You can use Typeblock to make tools like an SEO blog post writer, email generator, social media assistant, and more. An introductory […]

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Activated Alumina for Desiccating Your Filament

27 Junio 2024 at 23:00
A man in a red plaid shirt draped over an olive t-shirt holds sandpaper in one hand an an aluminum tube filled with white beads in the other over a wooden table.

When you first unwrap a shiny new roll of filament for your FDM printer, it typically has a bag of silica gel inside. While great for keeping costs low on the manufacturing side, is silica gel the best solution to keep your filament dry at home?

Frustrated with the consumable nature and fussy handling of silica gel beads, [Build It Make It] sought a more permanent way to keep his filament dry. Already familiar with activated alumina beads, he crafted a desiccant cylinder that can be popped into the oven all at once instead of all that tedious mucking about with emptying and refilling plastic capsules.

A length of aluminum intake pipe, some high temperature epoxy, and aluminum mesh are all combined to make a simple, sealed cylinder. During the process, he found that using a syringe filled with the epoxy led to a much more precise application to the aluminum cylinder, so he recommends starting out that way if you make these for yourself.

We suspect something with a less permanent attachment at one end would let you periodically swap out the beads if you wanted to try this hack with the silica beads you already had. Perhaps some kind of threaded pipe fitting? If you want a more active dryer, try making one with a Peltier. If you want to know just how dry your filament is getting, you could also put in a sensor. You might also wonder, do you really need to dry filament at all?

Portable, Full-Size Arcade Cabinets

27 Junio 2024 at 20:00

Believe it or not, there was a time when the only way for many of us to play video games was to grab a roll of quarters and head to the mall. Even though there’s a working computer or video game console in essentially every house now doesn’t mean we don’t look back with a certain nostalgia on those times, though. Some have turned to restoring vintage arcade cabinets and others build their own. This hackerspace got a unique request for a full-sized arcade cabinet that was also easily portable as well.

The original request was for a portable arcade cabinet, and the original designs were for a laptop-like tabletop arcade. But further back-and-forth made it clear they wanted full-size cabinets that just happened to also be portable. So with that criteria in mind the group started building the units. The updated design is modular, allowing the controls, monitor, and Raspberry Pi running the machines to be in self-contained units, with the cabinets in two parts that can quickly be assembled on-site. The base is separate and optional, with the top section capable of being assembled on the base or on something like a tabletop or bar, and the electronics section quickly drops in.

While the idea of a Pi-powered arcade cabinet is certainly nothing new, the quick build, prototyping, design, and final product that’s mobile and quickly assembled are all worth checking out. There is even more information on the build at the project’s GitHub page including Fusion 360 models. If you need your cabinets to be even more portable, this tabletop MAME cabinet is a great place to start.

Enjoy Totality Every Day With This Personal Eclipse Generator

27 Junio 2024 at 08:00

There have been a couple of high-profile solar eclipses lately, but like us, you probably missed the news of the one that passed over Munich in 2019. And every day since then, in fact, unless you were sitting in a particular spot: the couch of one [Bernd Kraus], who has his very own personal eclipse generator.

We’ll attempt to explain. Living in an apartment with a gorgeous western view of Munich is not without its cons, chief among which is the unobstructed exposure to the setting sun. Where most people would opt for a window treatment of some sort to mitigate this, [Bernd] felt that blotting out the entire view was a heavy-handed solution to the problem. His solution is a window-mounted X-Y gantry that dangles a cutout of the moon in just the right place to blot out the sun. An Arduino uses the time and date to calculate the position of the sun as it traverses the expansive window and moves the stepper motors to keep the moon casting its shadow in just the right place: on his face as he sits in his favorite spot on the couch.

There are a couple of time-lapse sequences in the video below, as well as a few shots of the hardware. We know this isn’t an actual coronagraph, but the effect is pretty cool, and does resemble an eclipse, at least in spirit. And it goes without saying that we applaud the unnecessary complexity embodied by this solution.

OverflowAI

Por: EasyWithAI
1 Agosto 2023 at 13:20
OverflowAI is a new set of AI-powered products and features being added to Stack Overflow’s public platform and Stack Overflow for Teams. The goal is to leverage AI like semantic search and natural language processing to enhance the developer experience, while still keeping the Stack Overflow community at the center. OverflowAI is expected to be […]

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In Future, Printer Documents You

23 Junio 2024 at 02:00

[Jason Dookeran] reminded us of something we don’t like to think about. Your printer probably adds barely noticeable dots to everything you print. It does it on purpose, so that if you print something naughty, the good guys can figure out what printer it came from. This is the machine identification code and it has been around since the days that the US government feared that color copiers would allow wholesale counterfiting.

The technology dates back to Xerox and Canon devices from the mid-80s, but it was only publicly acknowledged in 2004. With color printers, the MIC — machine identification code — is a series of tiny yellow dots. Typically, each dock is about 10 microns across and spaced about a millimeter from each other. The pattern prints all over the page so that even a fragment of, say, a ransom note can be identified.

Apparently, printers use different encoding schemes, but reading the dots is usually done by scanning them under a blue light.

The EFF has an out-of-date list that identifies many printers that track. But they point out that some printers may use a different method, especially those that can’t print yellow. They also mention that it is likely that “all recent commercial color laser printers” print some kind of code.

If you want to check your printer, [Jason] points out an Instructable and a website that can decode common patterns.

While we can think of times we are glad people can figure out the origin of a death threat or a ransom note, we can also think of times when we would like whistleblowers or people with different opinions to be able to print things without fear of retribution. But either way, the technology is an interesting real-world example of steganography.

We prefer these yellow dots. Yellow steganography reminds us of turmeric.

Title image: “Yellow dots produced by an HP Color LaserJet CP1515n” CC BY-SA 3.0 by [Ianusisu].

Respell

Por: EasyWithAI
20 Julio 2023 at 15:22
Respell is a no-code platform that allows you to explore and create AI-powered automations called “spells“. These spells can be used to enhance various workflows and applications, providing a magical touch to your tasks and saving precious time. You can browse the Respell Explore Page to find spells created by the community and the Respell […]

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An Enigma Machine Built in Meccano

15 Junio 2024 at 20:00

As far as model construction sets go, LEGO is by far the most popular brand for building not only pre-planned models but whatever the builder can imagine. There are a few others out there though, some with some interesting features. Meccano (or Erector in North America) is a construction set based around parts that are largely metal including its fasteners, which allows for a different approach to building models than other systems including the easy addition of electricity. [Craig], a member of the London Meccano Club, is demonstrating his model Enigma machine using this system for all of its parts and adding some electricity to make the circuitry work as well.

The original Enigma machine was an electronic cypher used by the German military in World War 2 to send coded messages. For the time, its code was extremely hard to break, and led to the British development of the first programmable electronic digital computer to help decipher its coded messages. This model uses Meccano parts instead to recreate the function of the original machine, with a set of keys similar to a typewriter which, when pressed, advance a set of three wheels. The wheels all have wiring in them, and depending on their initial settings will light up a different character on a display.

There are a few modifications made to the design (besides the use of a completely different set of materials) but one of the main ones was eliminating the heavy leaf springs of the original for smaller and easier-to-manage coil springs, which are also part of the electrical system that creates the code. The final product recreates the original exceptionally faithfully, with plans to create a plugboard up next, and you can take a look at the inner workings of a complete original here.

Thanks to [Tim] for the tip!

This Week in Security: Unicode Strikes Again, Trust No One (Redditor), and More

14 Junio 2024 at 14:00

There’s a popular Sysadmin meme that system problems are “always DNS”. In the realm of security, it seems like “it’s always Unicode“. And it’s not hard to see why. Unicode is the attempt to represent all of Earth’s languages with a single character set, and that means there’s a lot of very similar characters. The two broad issues are that human users can’t always see the difference between similar characters, and that libraries and applications sometimes automatically convert exotic Unicode characters into more traditional text.

This week we see the resurrection of an ancient vulnerability in PHP-CGI, that allows injecting command line switches when a web server launches an instance of PHP-CGI. The solution was to block some characters in specific places in query strings, like a query string starting with a dash.

The bypass is due to a Windows feature, “Best-Fit”, an automatic down-convert from certain Unicode characters. This feature works on a per-locale basis, which means that not every system language behaves the same. The exact bypass that has been found is the conversion of a soft hyphen, which doesn’t get blocked by PHP, into a regular hyphen, which can trigger the command injection. This quirk only happens when the Windows locale is set to Chinese or Japanese. Combined with the relative rarity of running PHP-CGI, and PHP on Windows, this is a pretty narrow problem. The XAMPP install does use this arrangement, so those installs are vulnerable, again if the locale is set to one of these specific languages. The other thing to keep in mind is that the Unicode character set is huge, and it’s very likely that there are other special characters in other locales that behave similarly.

Downloader Beware

The ComfyUI project is a flowchart interface for doing AI image generation workflows. It’s an easy way to build complicated generation pipelines, and the community has stepped up to build custom plugins and nodes for generation. The thing is, it’s not always the best idea to download and run code from strangers on the Internet, as a group of ComfyUI users found out the hard way this week. The ComfyUI_LLMVISION node from u/AppleBotzz was malicious.

The node references a malicious Python package that grabs browser data and sends it all to a Discord or Pastebin. It appears that some additional malware gets installed, for continuing access to infected systems. It’s a rough way to learn.

PyTorch Scores a Dubious 10.0

CVE-2024-5480 is a PyTorch flaw that allows PyTorch worker nodes to trigger arbitrary eval() calls on the master node. No authentication is required to add a PyTorch worker, so this is technically an unauthorized RCE, earning the CVSS of 10.0. Practically speaking it’s not that dire of a problem, as your PyTorch cluster shouldn’t be on the Internet to start with, and there’s no authentication as a design choice. It’s not clear the the PyTorch developers consider this a legitimate security vulnerability at all. It may or may not be fixed with version 2.3.

Next Level Smishing

My least favorite term in infosec has to be “smishing”, a frankenword for SMS phishing. Cell phone carriers around the world are working hard to blocking spam messages, making smishing an impossible task. And that’s why it’s particularly interesting to hear about a bypass that a pair of criminals were using in London. The technical details are light, but the police reported a “homemade mobile antenna”, “illegitimate telephone mast”, and “text message blaster” as part of the seized kit. The initial report sounds like it may be a sort of reverse stingray, where messages are skipping the regular cellular infrastructure and are getting sent directly to nearby cell phones. Hopefully more information will be forthcoming soon.

Zyxel’s NsaRescueAngel

The programmers at Zyxel apparently have a sense of humor, given the naming used for this mis-feature. Zyxel NAS units have a bit of magic code that writes a password for the new user, NsaRescueAngel, to the shadow password file. The SSH daemon is restarted, and upnp is fired off to request port forwarding from the outside world. One of the script names, possibly from a previous iteration, was open_back_door.sh, which seems to be sort of lampshading the whole thing.

It’s presumably intended to be a great troubleshooting tool, when a customer is stuck and needs help, to be able to visit a web url to enable remote access for a Zyxel tech. The problem is that the Zyxel NAS already has an authentication bypass flaw, and while it’s been patched, it wasn’t patched very well, making this whole scheme accessible without authentication, just by slapping /favicon.ico onto the url. The additional problems have been fixed in a more recent update.

Russian Secure Phablet?

A Twitter thread tells the story of a Russian secure device, left behind on the back of a bus in England. That’s an interesting premise. But the thread continues, that ‘conveniently the owner also left a briefcase with design notes, architecture, documentation, implementation, marketing material and internal Zoom demos about “trusted” devices too!’ OK, now this has to either be a fanfic, or a fell-off-the-back-of-a-truck story. There’s some convincing looking screenshots, and even rom dumps. What’s going on here?

Nobody knew how the devices worked, conveniently the owner also left a briefcase with design notes, architecture, documentation, implementation, marketing material and internal Zoom demos about "trusted" devices too! We'd all have been lost without those. https://t.co/LN7cTybxOV pic.twitter.com/j5OCHprSie

— hackerfantastic.x (@hackerfantastic) June 11, 2024

The most likely explanation is that somebody got their hands on a trove of data on these devices, and wanted to dump it online with a silly story. But fair warning, don’t trust any of the shared files. Who knows what’s actually in there. Taking a look at something untrusted like this is an art in itself, best done with isolated VMs and burner machines, maybe a Linux install you don’t mind wiping?

Bits and Bytes

Buskill just published their 8th warrant canary, a cryptographically signed statement attesting that they have not been served any secret warrants or national security letters that would undermine the trustworthiness of the Buskill project or code. In addition to a good cryptographic signature, this canary includes a handful of latest news headlines in the signed material, proving it is actually a recently generated document.

[Aethlios] has published Reset Tolkien, an open source tool for finding and attacking a very specific sort of weakness in time based tokens. The targeted flaw is a token generated from improper randomness source, like the current time. If the pattern can be found, a “sandwich attack” can narrow down the possible reset codes by requesting a reset code for a controlled account, requesting one for the target account, and then once again for the controlled account. The target code must come between the two known codes.

And finally, TPM security is hard. This time, the Trusted Platform Module can be reset by reclaiming the GPIO pins connected to it, and simulating a reboot by pulling the reset pin. This results in the TPM possibly talking to an application when it thinks it is talking to the CPU doing boot decryption. In short, it can result in compromised keys. Thanks to [char] from Discord for sending this one in!

Lutra AI

Por: EasyWithAI
27 Abril 2024 at 11:33
Lutra AI is an automation tool that allows you to transform your English instructions into workflows that orchestrate apps to efficiently complete tasks. The tool has integration with popular apps like Gmail, Google Sheets, Airtable, and Slack, and has the ability the ability to schedule automated workflows. You can view a list of popular use […]

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Hackaday Links: June 9, 2024

9 Junio 2024 at 23:00
Hackaday Links Column Banner

We’ve been harping a lot lately about the effort by carmakers to kill off AM radio, ostensibly because making EVs that don’t emit enough electromagnetic interference to swamp broadcast signals is a practical impossibility. In the US, push-back from lawmakers — no doubt spurred by radio industry lobbyists — has put the brakes on the move a bit, on the understandable grounds that an entire emergency communication system largely centered around AM radio has been in place for the last seven decades or so. Not so in Japan, though, as thirteen of the nation’s 47 broadcasters have voluntarily shut down their AM transmitters in what’s billed as an “impact study” by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. The request for the study actually came from the broadcasters, with one being quoted in a hearing on the matter as “hop[ing] that AM broadcasting will be promptly discontinued.” So the writing is apparently on the wall for AM radio in Japan.

There was another close call this week with our increasingly active sun, which tried but didn’t quite launch a massive stream of plasma out into space. The M-class flare was captured in the act by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, which keeps an eye on what’s going on with our star. The video of the outburst is fascinating; it almost looks like a CGI render, but it’s real imaging and pretty spectacular. The active region on the sun’s surface suddenly belches out a few gigatons of plasma, which quickly get sucked right back down to the surface. You can actually see the material following ethereal lines of magnetic force, and the way it splashes when it hits the surface is just beautiful. Seeing this puts us in the mood for a feature on the SDO and how it gets these fascinating images, so stay tuned for that.

Also in space news, we’re saddened by the sudden loss of yet another of the Apollo astronauts. Bill Anders, lunar module pilot on Apollo 8, died Friday in a small plane crash off San Juan Island in Washington. Anders, 90, was piloting the Beechcraft T-34 Mentor, a single-engine military trainer aircraft from the 1950s. Anders’ only trip in space was Apollo 8, but what a trip it was. Along with Commander Frank Borman and pilot James Lovell, they were the first humans to leave Earth’s gravity well and visit another world, riding the mighty Saturn V rocket all the way to the Moon for a ten-orbit visit that paved the way for the landing on Apollo 11. He is also officially the luckiest photographer in history, having been in just the right place at just the right time to snap the famous “Earthrise” picture that gave us for the first time a Moon’s-eye-view of our fragile little world:

 

 

Godspeed, Major General Anders.

In more mundane news, a story from Maryland that should give anyone who depends on tools for a living a moment’s pause. Police cracked a massive tool-theft ring thanks to the actions of a carpenter who, sick of having his tools ripped off repeatedly, stashed a couple of AirTags among his stock in trade. When the inevitable occurred and his tools took a walk yet again, he tracked them to a storage facility and alerted police. They in turn conducted an investigation and got search warrants for twelve locations, where the scale of this criminal enterprise became apparent. Check out the photos in the story; mountains of cordless tools sorted by brand, DeWalt yellow here and Milwaukee red there. There’s a surprising amount of puke-green Ryobi, too; are people really trying to make money with those tools? Between the piles of cordless tools and the rows of air compressors, the total value of the haul is estimated to be from $3 to $5 million. Hats off to the carpenter for running his own mini-sting operation.

And finally, from the Genuinely Interesting Apps files we have ShadeMap, which does exactly what you think it does: plot shade and shadow on a map. It has controls for time and date, and zooms down to a pretty fine level of detail, even for the free version. Shadows from buildings, terrain, and trees are calculated and displayed, making it perfect for surveys of locations for solar power installations. There’s also supposed to be a way to virtually remove shadow-casting features, although we couldn’t find it; perhaps in a paid version? That would be a handy tool indeed to see which trees need to be cut down or which buildings demolished to improve your solar aspect. YMMV on that last one, of course.

Making Intel Mad, Retrocomputing Edition

9 Junio 2024 at 20:00

Intel has had a deathgrip on the PC world since the standardization around the software and hardware available on IBM boxes in the 90s. And if you think you’re free of them because you have an AMD chip, that’s just Intel’s instruction set with a different badge on the silicon. At least AMD licenses it, though — in the 80s there was another game in town that didn’t exactly ask for permission before implementing, and improving upon, the Intel chips available at the time.

The NEC V20 CPU was a chip that was a drop-in replacement for the Intel 8088 and made some performance improvements to it as well. Even though the 186 and 286 were available at the time of its release, this was an era before planned obsolescence as a business model was king so there were plenty of 8088 systems still working and relevant that could take advantage of this upgrade. In fact, the V20 was able to implement some of the improved instructions from these more modern chips. And this wasn’t an expensive upgrade either, with kits starting around $16 at the time which is about $50 today, adjusting for inflation.

This deep dive into the V20 isn’t limited to a history lesson and technological discussion, though. There’s also a project based on Arduino which makes use of the 8088 with some upgrades to support the NEC V20 and a test suite for a V20 emulator as well.

If you had an original IBM with one of these chips, though, things weren’t all smooth sailing for this straightforward upgrade at the time. A years-long legal battle ensued over the contents of the V20 microcode and whether or not it constituted copyright infringement. Intel was able to drag the process out long enough that by the time the lawsuit settled, the chips were relatively obsolete, leaving the NEC V20 to sit firmly in retrocomputing (and legal) history.

Lossless Scaling 2.9 agrega Modo «X3 Frame Generation» para Triplicar los FPS generando 2 Fotogramas Intermedios

THS, el desarrollador de Lossless Scaling, una herramienta que permite activar soluciones de reescalado espacial (como FSR 1.0 y NIS), además de otras opciones con aprendizaje automático, lanzó la nueva actualización 2.1 para LSFG (Lossless Scaling Frame Generation), que trae significativas mejoras al algoritmo de generación de fotogramas, reduciendo a su vez los errores visuales y mejorando el frame pacing y la latencia.

No obstante, la adición destacada de esta nueva versión es la implementación del modo X3 Frame Generation, la cual puede triplicar los FPS al generar dos fotogramas intermedios en vez de uno (como en el modo X2).

Si bien X3 ha aumentado la carga de GPU aproximadamente 1.7 mayor veces en comparación con el modo X2, los algoritmos LSFG 2.1 Performance y LSFG 1.1 se han optimizado para que sean un 20% más rápidos en modo X2 en comparación con la versión anterior.

El desarrollador asegura que el modo X3 no provoca ninguna latencia adicional en comparación con X2. La latencia se ve afectada por la velocidad de fotogramas base y cuando la GPU se utiliza por completo. Para obtener la mejor experiencia tanto en fluidez como en latencia de la imagen, se recomienda limitar la velocidad de fotogramas del juego en 1/3 de la frecuencia de actualización del monitor en el modo X3.

Cabe destacar que la velocidad de fotogramas base mínima recomendada sigue siendo la misma que para el modo X2, que es 30 FPS para 1080p y 40 FPS para 1440p, respectivamente.

Por último, THS aclara que el Frame Generation (ya sea X2 o X3) funciona con monitores con VRR (Tasa de Refresco Variable) para G-Sync y FreeSync, pero por el momento no funciona con GPUs de Nvidia, solo con las de AMD e Intel.

Nuevo comportamiento cuando la velocidad de cuadros final debe exceder la frecuencia de actualización del monitor:

  • Anteriormente, LS renderizaba todos los fotogramas necesarios, algunos de los cuales luego se descartaban cuando se mostraban en el monitor. LS ahora omitirá la renderización de fotogramas adicionales y tendrá en cuenta el ritmo de fotogramas (frame pacing) correcto, por lo que el resultado debería ser muy similar al comportamiento anterior pero mucho más eficiente en cuanto a recursos.
  • Si bien una velocidad de fotogramas base más alta es mejor para fines de latencia, obligar a LS a omitir fotogramas puede no dar como resultado la mejor fluidez.
  • Dado que la velocidad de fotogramas de LS ahora nunca excederá la frecuencia de actualización, por conveniencia y también para identificar problemas, la opción ‘Dibujar FPS’ también genera fotogramas capturados cuando se usa la captura DXGI.
lossless scaling 2.9 fg 2.1 x3 frame generation mode

En aquellos títulos que soportan Reflex de Nvidia, recuerden activarlo para disminuir la latencia ya que, si bien se ha mejorado en esta versión 2.1, un poco de latencia lógicamente siempre habrá, pero al menos es menos notoria que en su versión anterior.

En pocas palabras, LSFG permite activar Frame Generation en cualquier juego y en GPUs de cualquier fabricante (ya sea AMD, Intel o Nvidia), incluso en títulos que no son compatibles con FSR3 o DLSS 3 y en emuladores de cualquier tipo (ya sea Xenia de Xbox, RPCS3 de PS3, o Ryujinx o Yuzu de Nintendo Switch).

Características de Lossless Scaling FG 2.1:

  • Arquitectura mejorada para procesar movimientos a gran escala, lo que permite un uso eficiente a velocidades de cuadro más bajas. Por lo tanto, las velocidades de cuadro base mínimas recomendadas son 30/40 para resoluciones de 1080p/1440p respectivamente, con 60 FPS y más recomendados para una experiencia óptima.
  • Reducción notable de errores visuales (Artifacts) comunes como imágenes fantasma por movimiento (Ghosting), distorsión de bordes e imágenes borrosas. En los casos en los que persistan los artifacts, es recomendable aumentar la velocidad de fotogramas base.
  • La carga de GPU ha aumentado entre 1.5 y 2 veces según la resolución. Por lo tanto, se ha agregado un nuevo modo ‘Rendimiento’ para preservar el rendimiento de la versión anterior. La 2.0 conserva todas las ventajas principales de la versión de calidad y supera al LSFG 1.1, todo a la misma velocidad.

Según THS, para tener la mejor experiencia con su herramienta, lo ideal es tener al menos 60 FPS (o limitarlo a 60 FPS) acompañado de un monitor de 120 Hz, que es básicamente lo que recomiendan AMD y Nvidia tanto para DLSS 3 como para FSR 3.0. Por supuesto, también se puede utilizar una combinación de 30 FPS o 40 FPS y 60 Hz en algunos juegos a una resolución de hasta 1080p.

Dado que LSFG no soporta pantalla completa exclusiva, el juego debe estar limitado a la mitad de la frecuencia de refresco del monitor para lograr tener un frame pacing fluido y se debe ejecutar en modo borderless o ventana (pueden usar la herramienta Windowed Borderless Gaming en caso de ser necesario).

También hay que tener en cuenta que cualquier tipo de métrica u overlay sobre la ventana de LS puede interrumpir la generación de fotogramas hasta que se desactive LS.

Para ponerlo en términos simples, aquellos que tengan un monitor de 120 Hz tendrán que limitar sus juegos a 60 FPS para el modo X2 o 40 FPS para el modo X3. Luego, al usar LSFG, podrán ejecutarlo a 120 FPS con un buen frame pacing. No es una solución ideal, pero funciona en todos los juegos y en todas las GPU para aquellos que sí tienen monitores de 120 Hz o más.

En caso de tener un monitor con una tasa de refresco impar (como 165 Hz), tendrán que hacer una resolución personalizada a 165 Hz o simplemente bajar a 144 Hz y configurar el juego en 72 FPS para X2 o 48 FPS para X3). Con la herramienta Custom Resolution Utility (CRU) pueden hacer lo primero fácilmente en cuestión de segundos.

Guía para usar Frame Generation en Lossless Scaling 

  1. Configurar el juego en pantalla completa sin bordes (si la opción no existe entonces elegir modo ventana y usar Windowed Borderless Gaming, no funciona con pantalla completa exclusiva)
  2. Configurar «Scaling Mode» en «Auto» y el «Scaling Type» en «Off» (esto garantiza que estés jugando en resolución nativo y no usando reescalado, ya que la aplicación también tiene una funcionalidad de reescalado)
  3. Limitar la velocidad de fotogramas a la mitad de los hercios de su monitor. Si deseas tener una velocidad de fotogramas más baja, también deberá reducir sus hercios (por ejemplo, 120 ÷ 2 = 60) a través de RTSS o el controlador de la GPU. Los hercios que terminan en números impares que no se pueden limitar de manera uniforme (165 Hz) tendrán que crear un Hz personalizado como 164 Hz o bajar a algo así como 144 Hz (RTSS Beta tiene soporte Nvidia Reflex ahora. Debería estar disponible públicamente en cualquier momento. Esto ayudará mucho con la latencia)
  4. Cualquiera que sea la velocidad de fotogramas que tengas, asegúrate de poder mantenerla para no alterar el ritmo de fotogramas (tiene que ser estable y consistente).
  5. Ahora haz clic en Scale y luego haz clic en tu juego. También puedes configurar una tecla para activarlo o desactivarlo. Después de este paso tu juego estará interpolado.

Relación de Hz/FPS recomendada para usar Lossless Scaling Frame Interpolation para el modo X2:

  • Mínimo soportado: 30 FPS a 60 Hz
  • Mínimo aconsejable: 45 FPS a 90 Hz
  • Mínimo recomendado: 60 FPS a 120 Hz
  • Recomendado: 120 FPS a 240 Hz

Consejos adicionales

  • Consejo 1: algunas personas encontraron mejores resultados agregando Lossless Scaling a su software del controlador (Panel de Control) y luego forzando la sincronización vertical.
  • Consejo 2: Los overlays pueden interferir con Lossless Scaling.
  • Consejo 3: Las opciones en la pestaña «Rendering», excepto «Draw FPS» en el programa, pueden causar problemas ya que no están probadas. Si encuentran algún problema, desactívelo.
  • Consejo 4: Jugar con el mando ofrece una mejor experiencia que con el ratón, ya que las penalizaciones de latencia son mucho más difíciles de percibir.

Lo sorprendente de LSFG (al menos en comparación con AMD Fluid Motion Frames) es que no se desactiva durante movimientos rápidos, que es uno de los principales problemas de la tecnología de AMD. De este modo, LSFG parece brindar una mejor solución que la que AMD implementó en sus controladores (que se actualizaron el 8 de enero con soporte para las Radeon 700M).

Si bien esta herramienta no es gratuita, tampoco es muy cara, mucho menos en relación a los beneficios que puede brindar. En EE.UU tiene un costo de US$ 6.99, mientras que en los países de Latinoamérica con el dólar USD LATAM tiene un valor de US$ 3.49. En México, Chile o Colombia, por ejemplo, cuesta entre 4 y 5 dólares, así que tampoco es tan caro.

La entrada Lossless Scaling 2.9 agrega Modo «X3 Frame Generation» para Triplicar los FPS generando 2 Fotogramas Intermedios apareció primero en PC Master Race Latinoamérica.

Using Kick Assembler and VS Code to write C64 Assembler

7 Junio 2024 at 02:00

YouTuber My Developer Thoughts, a self-confessed middle-aged Software Developer, clearly has a real soft spot for the 6502-based 8-bit era machines such as the Commodore 64 and the VIC-20, for which he has created several video tutorials while travelling through retro-computing. This latest instalment concerns bringing up the toolchain for using the Kick Assembler with VS Code to target the C64, initially via the VICE emulator.

The video offers a comprehensive tutorial on setting up the toolchain on Windows from scratch with minimal knowledge. While some may consider this level of guidance unnecessary, it is extremely helpful for those who wish to get started with a few examples quickly and don’t have the time to go through multiple manuals and Wikis. In that regard, the video does an excellent job.

VS Code is a great tool with a large user base, so it’s not surprising that there’s a plugin for using the Kick Assembler directly from the IDE. You can also easily launch the application onto the emulator with just a push of a button, allowing you to focus on learning and working on your application. Once it runs under emulation, there’s a learning curve for running it on native hardware, but there are plenty of tutorials available for that. While you could code directly on the C64 itself, it’s much more pleasant to use modern tools, revision control, and all the conveniences and not have to endure the challenges.

Once you’ve mastered assembly, it may be time to move on to C or even C++. The Oscar64 compiler is a good choice for that. Next, you may want to show off your new skills on the retro demo scene. Here’s a neat C64 demo with a twist. There is no C64.

Thanks to [Stephen] for the tip!

GitLab Code Suggestions

Por: EasyWithAI
11 Agosto 2023 at 13:35
GitLab’s Code Suggestions is an AI tool that helps developers code faster and more efficiently. It can suggest complete lines of code, functions, tests, and boilerplate code as you type, letting you auto-complete code with a single keystroke. Code Suggestions keeps your source code secure, doesn’t retain or train on your code, and supports 13 […]

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Clock Mixes Analog, Digital, Retrograde Displays

31 Mayo 2024 at 02:00

Unique clocks are a mainstay around here, and while plenty are “human readable” without any instruction, there are a few that take a bit of practice before someone can glean the current time from them. Word clocks are perhaps on the easier side of non-traditional displays but at the other end are binary clocks or even things like QR code clocks. To get the best of both worlds, though, multiple clock faces can be combined into one large display like this clock build from [imitche3].

The clock is actually three clocks in one. The first was inspired by a binary clock originally found in a kit, which has separate binary “digits” for hour, minute, and second and retains the MAX 7219 LED controller driving the display. A standard analog clock rests at the top, and a third clock called a retrograde clock sits at the bottom with three voltmeters that read out the time in steps. Everything is controlled by an Arduino Nano with the reliable DS3231 keeping track of time. The case can be laser-cut or 3D printed and [imitche3] has provided schematics for both options.

As far as clocks builds go, we always appreciate something which can be used to tell the time without needing any legends, codes, or specialized knowledge. Of course, if you want to take a more complex or difficult clock face some of the ones we’re partial to are this QR code clock which needs a piece of hardware to tell the time that probably already has its own clock on it.

Alice

Por: EasyWithAI
14 Abril 2024 at 02:05
Alice is a native app that offers a fast and reliable experience with models (OpenAI, Perplexity, Claude and more). You can use keyboards shortcuts and pre-built prompts to boost your productivity. Alice not only give you answers, but connects to your apps and execute actions! Key features include access to advanced language models like GPT-4, […]

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How to Use Midjourney AI Art Generator

Por: EasyWithAI
18 Enero 2023 at 17:22
AI art is becoming more popular, with Midjourney being in the forefront as one of the leading AI art generators. You may have seen Midjourney images on Twitter or your other social feeds, have you been wondering how exactly can you use Midjourney yourself? It’s surprisingly easy, although many people are put off by the […]

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Play Giant Tetris On Second-Floor Window

28 Mayo 2024 at 20:00

Sometimes it seems like ideas for projects spring out of nothingness from a serendipitous set of circumstances. [Maarten] found himself in just such a situation, with a combination of his existing Tetris novelty lamp and an awkwardly-sized window on a second-floor apartment, he was gifted with the perfect platform for a giant playable Tetris game built into that window.

To make the giant Tetris game easily playable by people walking by on the street, [Maarten] is building as much of this as possible in the browser. Starting with the controller, he designed a NES-inspired controller in JavaScript that can be used on anything with a touch screen. A simulator display was also built in the browser so he could verify that everything worked without needing the giant display at first. From there it was on to building the actual window-sized Tetris display which is constructed from addressable LEDs arranged in an array that matches the size of the original game.

There were some issues to iron out, as would be expected for a project with this much complexity, but the main thorn in [Maarten]’s side was getting his controller to work in Safari on iPhones. That seems to be mostly settled and there were some other gameplay issues to solve, but the unit is now working in his window and ready to be played by any passers-by, accessed by a conveniently-located QR code. Tetris has been around long enough that there are plenty of unique takes on the game, like this project from 2011 that uses Dance Dance Revolution pads for controllers.

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