coyotino [he/him]

u/theangriestbird@beehaw.org
56 posts · 29 comments

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The most cost-effective solution will always be a SBC NAS, as those bad boys just sip on power. However, there is a tradeoff - if your computer is being used as a media server, having higher end hardware means better transcoding performance.

In the bios, there should be an option called "Eco mode". Make sure you have that turned on, if that is an option. Not sure if it's different for the Ryzen chips with integrated GPU.

Finally, if you are using Windows, you'll probably get better power efficiency by switching to Linux. But I'm not sure how much.

Hmm I'm not sure about contributing. You've presented yourself as someone too broke to afford a VPN so I didn't think you were buying CDs and ripping flacs. Sorry if I misunderstood your goals. I was more focused on the goal of obtaining files.

Edit: ps, not sure if you saw yet, but I pm'd you about another possible solution.

Doesn't Proton have a free VPN tier? I think it doesn't support port forwarding so your connections would be limited, but that might still work?

Otherwise, check the megathread and go with direct downloads. Those happen over https so completely encrypted.

just checked on my server, which is on 10.11. Android app seems to be working fine. I tried signing out and then signing back in, and I was able to do so without issue. It's sounding like this is an issue specific to your machine.

on ComicK 2.0 is in the works · c/piracy · 3 pts · 364d

Did we ever get an official reason why ComicK 1.0 went down? This feels like a pirate-style publicity stunt lol

This is a cool book! Great advice, especially for prep-heavy RPGs like D&D. I can't say that I have personally put it to use, but that's my own inexperience as a GM.

on How much do you use AI? · c/discuss · 4 pts · 1y

If they could create an AI that uses dramatically less energy, even during the training phase, then I think we could start having an actual debate about the merits of AI. But even in that case, there are a lot of unresolved problems. Copyright is the big one - AI is essentially a copyright launderer, eating up a bunch of data or media and mixing it together just enough to say that you didn't rip it off. It generates outputs that are derivative by nature. And stuff like Grok shows how these LLMs are vulnerable to the political whims of their creators.

I am also skeptical about its use cases. Maybe this is a bit luddite, but I am concerned about the way people are using it to automate all of the interesting challenges out of their lives. Cheating college essays, vibe coding, meal planning, writing emotional personal letters, etc. My general sense is that some of these challenges are actually good for our brains to do, partly because we define our identity in the ways we choose to tackle these challenges. My fear is that automating all of these things away will lead to a new generation that can't do anything without the help of a $50-a-month corpo chatbot that they've come to depend on for intellectual tasks and emotional processing.

on How much do you use AI? · c/discuss · 6 pts · 1y

all of that would be well and good if using AI didn't cost an outsized amount of energy, and if our energy grids were not mostly comprised of dirty energy. But it does, and they are, so I can't help but feel like you are boiling the oceans because you...

I use it sometimes for tasks like “Write a Python snippet that aggregates a Pandas dataframe like so...so that I can learn. Yeah, I could RTFM but the docs are scattered around and frequently out of date.”

“Make me a menu with these ingredients that I have in my cupboard and keep in mind these dietary constraints” or similar queries.

...don't like using your human brain sometimes? Like sure, we all pull out the phone calculator for math problems we could solve on paper within 30 seconds, so I'm not saying I can't relate to that desire to save some brainpower. But the energy cost of that calculator is a drop compared to the glasses of water you are dumping out every time you run a single ChatGPT prompt, so it all just feels really...idk, wasteful? to say the least?

on How much do you use AI? · c/discuss · 13 pts · 1y

absolutely nothing, because there is no AI application in my personal life that is so useful and reliable that it is worth the cost to the planet. Most uses of AI are not worth the cost to the planet. The only valid use cases to my mind are those where the pattern-recognition abilities surpass anything we've seen before, and using the AI saves lives, and there is no alternative that will save as many lives. Here's an example of one such use case.

Using AI for coding is a good example of a use case that is absolutely not worth the cost to the planet. Just use one of the amazing tools we were using for years before this AI snake oil scam.

I tried airvpn, but found it confusing in some regards. ProtonVPN is easier to use and it has served me well, despite the recent controversy around it. The only real annoyance is that it randomly selects a new port to forward every time you connect, so you have to manually update that in your client. Quantum is a nifty tool that will read your ProtonVPN logs and automatically complete this step for you, if you use qBittorrent.