[londons_explore]

Gnome (Ubuntu, Linux) allows a custom shader to be applied to the whole desktop, including fullscreen apps.

Here is an up to date fork with some example shaders: https://github.com/Hello1024/gse-shader

I use it to make sure a 'sensitive' pixel on my screen never turns on (it's a row of pixels which, if the difference between it and the pixels to the side have more than a certain difference in brightness, the whole screen fails - presumably due to a power supply fault in the column driver circuitry).

[EZ-Cheeze]

I want to be able to edit anything on my screen in ways defined by me: "hide any faces" "put a red circle around any animal" "hide any word under three letters"

http://zeroprecedent.com/lore/flipside.html

[londons_explore]

Well now you have all the building blocks to implement it...

[EZ-Cheeze]

I'll do it when I can just tell the computer to do it - maybe 2024

It will be interesting to rewatch movies with all the faces blanked out - they're eye-magnets that prevent you from noticing other details, for example in body language

[franky47]

Funny how recent developments in AI have warped our comprehension of what is easy to ask to a computer vs what is hard.

Obligatory related XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1425

[lesuorac]

Besides the fact that GPS already exists, it seems like it would take longer (~20 years) than the 5 years claimed to detect birds.

> The GPS project was started by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1973. The first prototype spacecraft was launched in 1978 and the full constellation of 24 satellites became operational in 1993

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System

[squeaky-clean]

Never forget to read the alt-text joke on an XCKD comic. The punchline on this one is based in some truth.

> In the 60s, Marvin Minsky assigned a couple of undergrads to spend the summer programming a computer to use a camera to identify objects in a scene. He figured they'd have the problem solved by the end of the summer. Half a century later, we're still working on it.

https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/6125/AIM-100....

[xattt]

AI is turning out to be the singularity that science fiction writers talked about. You just have no freaking idea what’s next at this point.

[somat]

I am halfway convinced that the singularity has already occurred and has been ongoing from the 1700's* however, being carried along with it, you can't see it directly, you can only dimly sense it's tidal pull.

It is like a black hole. how long does it take to fall into a black hole? the answer is a surprising "just about forever" due to time itself dilating as you approach the center.

* think about it, mankind had been trundling about with effectively the same economy for many thousands of years then at some point about three hundred years ago it went exponential and has not slowed down.

[speedgoose]

How did you manage to find the issue?

[londons_explore]

I noticed the screen only died when playing videos and always died at the same point if I rewatched a video. Notably, greyscale videos never caused the issue. Then I went through a video frame by frame to get to the frame it died on. Then I erased parts of the frame to find which part caused it. Eventually I found that if the red or blue pixel in the 481st column and the green pixel in the 482nd column have a difference of brightness of too much, and neither are 255 or 0, the screen dies.

I'm pretty sure the problem is the column drivers (which put data onto the column lines). They take in serial data, and my 1920 screen has 4 column drivers, each responsible for 480 columns, so the 481st pixel is the first column that the 2nd column driver deals with.

It uses more power during the row sync pulse (because it has to drive all the column lines to the correct voltages for whatever is being displayed). It uses more power for grey values (because 255 or 0 are solid on or off, while mid values are typically dithered, wasting energy in the column capacitance). I would guess all these worst-case events for power consumption within the column driver, combined with probably 'barely passing qa' silicon, means that in edge cases the power sags, something gets reset, and the whole screen fails.

So my fix is a shader to make sure the worst case conditions can never happen all at once. Visually, it isn't really noticeable. And with more work it could probably be turned into something that could be shipped to customers (within the GPU driver) without any customer complaining (for example if you are a laptop manufacturer who has purchased millions of screens with this fault).

[jcims]

What's the odds that such an obscure problem happens to someone with the patience and wherewithal to figure it out *and* fix it? Pretty impressive.

[londons_explore]

I did consider replacing the screen, but the only source I could find was China with 60 day delivery by boat, and I decided to find a workaround till the screen arrived... The screens now arrived, but the workaround is so good I can't be bothered to fit it.

[bombcar]

It’d be wonderful if we were in a world where working things like this out was worthwhile. I shudder to think how many perfectly working monitors are dumped each year, let alone ones with problems like this.

[fuckstick]

It’s probably not all that obscure. There’s an awful lot of ewaste.

[moffkalast]

That is some top tier investigating and persistence, hats off. I would've used the excuse the upgrade the monitor lol.

[CamperBob2]

Or replace the 30-cent capacitor that's likely causing it.

[londons_explore]

It's likely one of the power bond wires from the glass screen to the silicon IC. Without equipment stretching into the millions of dollars, you won't be fixing that.

[CamperBob2]

Why would that cause a current-dependent symptom? Do they rely on a lot of parallel bond wires? If so, breaking one isn't realistically going to do anything.

[e-_pusher]

This is really cool. Is there a way to do a global shader like this in Android?