Farid

Really? That’s weird.

But then it would just all be Linux? Was that what you were trying to say?

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.

Opponent players in games have been labeled AI for decades, so yeah, software engineers have been producing AI for a while. If a computer can play a game of chess against you, it has intelligence, a very narrowly scoped intelligence, which is artificial, but intelligence nonetheless.

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 say it’s not intelligence is incorrect. It’s still (an inferior kind of) intelligence, humans just put certain expectations into the word. An ant has intelligence. An NPC in a game has intelligence. They are just very basic kinds of intelligence, very simple decision making patterns.

I selected all and it’s still not enough of a reason!

Bow to Alec! Let Alec consume you!

How dare you ignore Alec’s video? 😤

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.

PS4 is actually easier to emulate than PS3, because former has regular x86 architecture, but latter has a very weird CELL/PowerPC architecture CPU.

I doubt it costs that much. You’re looking at it from buying PC components perspective. But they are mass producing identical boards with components that are 4+ years old by now, except the GPU. The cost of production is probably around the same as it was for non-Pro when it was released.

Vita can Run 99% of PS1 games “natively” and has a bunch of PS2 ports (some through PSP). Not PS3 though.

I don’t remember if I tried Plex/Jellyfin, but I’ll check vaapi thingy when I use it next time. In Firefox settings, right? It’s still weird that it works fine in Windows Firefox, but not Linux Firefox.

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.

Hey, I saw that you added more content to the comment that I responded to, that wasn’t there when I was composing my response. And seeing that content, I think I understand where the confusion is coming from.

If that screenshot is yours and you think those are the permissions, I don’t think that’s the case. That looks like a screenshot from an app store where it just lists what data the app might be using and not the permission system. It’s just a list of categories of data that may or may not be collected if you use the app, which must be disclosed by the developer. You can’t agree or disagree to those things from the OS side, because that’s all that happens on the developer’s side. In case of FB, you might be able to opt out of those things in their settings, but I wouldn’t bet on it, cause that’s their bread and butter.

For these things it doesn’t matter if you, for example, gave them direct access to the mic or uploaded the audio file, they will process the audio file and gather as much useful information as they can.

In fact, if you don’t give it any hardware permissions, they will still be able to gather some information, for instance from the Personal Info category (email address, sexual orientation, and home address, etc.) because you enter that info on registration or they infer it from your usage. The OS can’t do anything about that. As long as you use the app and interact with it you give them information, what you clicked, which posts you liked, what you commented and so on.

When it comes to OS, you can individually (separately) give permission for mic, camera, location data, file storage, contacts info, etc. Most of the things listed in the “Data collected” panel doesn’t even come from your phone hardware.

Let me know if I have now understood you correctly.

When I said “well almost” I meant the impossible case in the second point. Otherwise, everything is implemented as a I listed. What kind of Android do you use that you haven’t seen these features? This granular permission system has been the standard since Android 11.

In iOS it’s implemented in a very similar manner, but I don’t use it as often to describe it in as much detail as with Android.

The OS can create the file and then hand it off to the app.

That is also implemented, but is a separate API, storage access. You’re free to upload any file you like if the app requests it. You can create the file with any voice recorder of your choosing. Although I can’t imagine a scenario where Facebook would request a voice clip. When it’s requesting the mic it’s usually for live audio, like calls.

How is a user to know if something was captured when the screen was off?

It’s true, if you gave the app permission to use mic whenever the app is running, it can in theory quietly use mic in the background. If you start a call and lock the screen, the call will continue in the background. Not sure if there are any safety measures implemented for that. But if the case was of a routine sneaky mic spying, it will become obvious fast, due to battery drain and network usage.

still don’t have basic controls like restricting network access

There are some network controls, like restricting background data usage (depending on Android version/implementation). But yes, there’s still no granular network permission system, you have to manually go into setting to turn on restrictions. Thought to fair, there isn’t a consumer OS out there that lets you easily restrict network access to a certain app, even on desktop (correct me if I’m wrong). And I can see why, it would be counterproductive for vast majority of users to manually give network access to each app they install, when the whole point if the device is to have apps that have network access.

All of those things are implemented in modern Android. Well, almost.

• Whenever the app wants to use microphone an OS popup asks you if you want to give the app permission to use the feature. The options are “when using app”, “only this time” (it will give the app one-time-use access to the mic) and “never”. If you click the 1st or 3rd options, you wouldn’t see the popup again and you’ll have to change the permission from settings. If you choose the 2nd option, you can manually choose to give permission each time it’s requested.
• This is impossible? The OS can either let the app use the mic or not, it can’t tell what the app is doing with the mic. Unless you mean give a one-time permission this time, but not in the future, then we covered that in previous point.
• Android always shows a green indicator on screen (upper right corner) when any app is using the microphone or camera API. Well, almost always, some system apps might not trigger it. But if you want to see which app is using mic/camera you can tap the indicator.