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(Redacted with apologies to Steve. The more I watch, the more I like his channel.)

That guy’s not someone who’s in it for the fame and exposure, he’s in it to show stuff. Personally, I’ll happily suffer through a crappy video that teaches me a lot rather than some Retro Encabulator BS that looks/sounds great but has no real substance.

—Patrick

PatrThom said:

Retro Encabulator

—Patrick

Click to expand...

That was brilliant

Ravenpoe said:

That was brilliant

Click to expand...

Back when I was still pursuing a career in voicework, it was given as a prime example of how to properly deliver copy even when you don’t necessarily understand the material.

There are several other “encabulator” vids out there. It was a running gag for a while amongst companies like that.

—Patrick

Hey @DarkAudit I hear you ordered your RX580 card finally.
Sure hope you didn't get it from these guys.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

Hey @DarkAudit I hear you ordered your RX580 card finally.
Sure hope you didn't get it from these guys.

Spoiler: Explanation

Starting with macOS 10.13 "High Sierra," support for GPUs based on Polaris (RX4xx/RX5xx) has been included with the OS. No weird aftermarket drivers needed or anything like that, you grab one and plug it in and it just works(tm) (except for the pre-boot environment but that's not a deal-breaker).
This means you can grab ANY off-the-shelf RX580, plug it into a Mac Pro and you're off to the 10.13 and up races (assuming you don't exceed the computer's power budget, of course)
Now this company is usually reasonable about their accessories, but FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS? Come on! It's just a stock Gigabyte Card (which btw is on sale right now at Newegg for $220 after rebate), the only thing they've added is a second PCIe power cable. I mean, I'm sure these guys bought a bunch of 'em back when prices were high due to mining, but if they wanna sell 'em they're just gonna have to suck up the loss. Sheesh.

--Patrick

Click to expand...

Got the $189 XFX card from Amazon. Plus a PCI wifi card to replace the dongle-on-a-string I'd been using.

Oh, look at that. Server outage. Right when I'm trying to turn the day over. Yay. Problem with a web-based solution is when things go bad on their end, they take me and a few thousand other properties down with them.

My Windows computer won’t go beyond the load up screen for Windows. When I would usually hit return for my username and password to come up, nothing happens.

I’ve tried restoring Windows to four days ago and reinstalling it with my personal files intact.

I still can’t hit return to see my user name so I can enter my password. Brutal.

This may sound dumb, but do your use a wireless kbd? Did the battery die?
If you have a USB kbd, I'd try that, if only so you can log in and find out if this is just the kbd dying on you.

--Patrick

Squidleybits said:

My Windows computer won’t go beyond the load up screen for Windows. When I would usually hit return for my username and password to come up, nothing happens.

I’ve tried restoring Windows to four days ago and reinstalling it with my personal files intact.

I still can’t hit return to see my user name so I can enter my password. Brutal.

Post automatically merged: Jan 20, 2019

View attachment 28450

Click to expand...

Sometimes the lock screen won't respond to the keyboard to bring up the password box, but will to a mouse click.

DarkAudit said:

Sometimes the lock screen won't respond to the keyboard to bring up the password box, but will to a mouse click.

Click to expand...

There are times with some Macs where I've had the opposite as well. Can't click but can use arrow/TAB keys to select account, then cursor is back the instant you log in.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

This may sound dumb, but do your use a wireless kbd? Did the battery die?
If you have a USB kbd, I'd try that, if only so you can log in and find out if this is just the kbd dying on you.

--Patrick

Click to expand...

This is a laptop, I use the keyboard built in (at work we get fancy with extras).

I do have a usb keyboard that I can try. Do laptop keyboards die?

Thank you

DarkAudit said:

Sometimes the lock screen won't respond to the keyboard to bring up the password box, but will to a mouse click.

Click to expand...

I’ll give that a try too

Thank you!

PatrThom said:

There are times with some Macs where I've had the opposite as well. Can't click but can use arrow/TAB keys to select account, then cursor is back the instant you log in.

--Patrick

Click to expand...

I’ve mashed every button it feels like, but I’ll try what you’ve suggested.

Squidleybits said:

This is a laptop, I use the keyboard built in (at work we get fancy with extras).

I do have a usb keyboard that I can try. Do laptop keyboards die?

Thank you

Post automatically merged: Jan 21, 2019

I’ll give that a try too

Thank you!

Click to expand...

It happens more often on my laptop. Clicking my trackpad or the mouse tends to wake up the lock screen better than the keyboard.

DarkAudit said:

It happens more often on my laptop. Clicking my trackpad or the mouse tends to wake up the lock screen better than the keyboard.

Click to expand...

I’ll be sad if I reinstalled Windows and it was this all along lol.

Squidleybits said:

I’ll be sad if I reinstalled Windows and it was this all along lol.

Click to expand...

But you'll be in good company, I'm sure.

--Patrick

I just recently had the keyboard in my laptop literally stop working. Had to send it in for service (under warranty, thankfully). Does the light on the keyboard turn off/on if you toggle caps lock/num lock? Does hitting CTRL-ALT-DEL do anything?

I’ll have a look tonight when I get home. I have work and then class all night.

Thanks so much!

DarkAudit said:

Sometimes the lock screen won't respond to the keyboard to bring up the password box, but will to a mouse click.

Click to expand...

A mouse click isn’t working

I have a USB mouse/keyboard combo plugged in at the moment. I do have one USB port that’s never worked. That’s probably not a great sign.

GasBandit said:

I just recently had the keyboard in my laptop literally stop working. Had to send it in for service (under warranty, thankfully). Does the light on the keyboard turn off/on if you toggle caps lock/num lock? Does hitting CTRL-ALT-DEL do anything?

Click to expand...

I get a light for caps lock, but not num lock. Nothing happens for CTRL-ATL-DEL on either keyboard.

The porn bots are still following me. Fuck you, Verizon. Fuck you, Oath. Fuck you, Yahoo. And FUCK YOU, Tumblr. Nose? You've cut off your whole head to spite your face.

I haven't deleted my main account... yet, but I haven't been back since the ban started.

DarkAudit said:

The porn bots are still following me. Fuck you, Verizon. Fuck you, Oath. Fuck you, Yahoo. And FUCK YOU, Tumblr. Nose? You've cut off your whole head to spite your face.

I haven't deleted my main account... yet, but I haven't been back since the ban started.

Click to expand...

I have no idea what you're talking about, but tell me more about these porn bots.

Ravenpoe said:

I have no idea what you're talking about, but tell me more about these porn bots.

Click to expand...

Tumblr banned what they deem “adult content” as of last month. It didn’t go over well, and of course it did absolutely nothing to rein in the porn spam accounts.

That 2009 Mini I've been using as a server for almost 5yrs straight now? Well, last night noticed the fan is starting to noisily complain.
Not unexpected, what with it being almost 10yrs old and running 24/7 for probably most of that (5yrs under me, and its condition when I got it looked like the previous owner had been using it as a server, too).
Replacement fans are no longer carried by Apple (because Obsolete since 2016) but can still be had elsewhere for $10-50, and I AM a computer technician (so I won't have to pay hourly labor), and there's no real rush since the basement is currently at a constant 50F/10C, but ehhhhh...now there's one more thing I gotta get to.

--Patrick

DarkAudit said:

Got the $189 XFX card from Amazon. Plus a PCI wifi card to replace the dongle-on-a-string I'd been using.

Click to expand...

I'm looking at a similarly-priced compact RX580 to serve as an interim replacement for my 7970 until I can start putting a new system together for myself (now that everyone else at home but me has computers 3yrs old or less), and that I can repurpose to modernize my Mac Pro once I move on, and came across this review:

Look elsewhere for a 7970 upgrade
Pros: As good as the excellent Radeon HD7970, nice compact form factor.
Cons: No better than the six year old Radeon HD 7970 Ghz Ed I finally replaced with this. Virtually no improvement in framerates or graphical fidelity over the 7970 in any of the games I play, including WoW, Diablo 3, or Destiny 2.

By far the biggest disappointment for me is that it is unable to play WoW on ultra settings at 1080p at 60fps. Multiple settings must be turned down to maintain 60fps in deserted outdoor zones. This includes liquid detail to good, ground clutter to 5, shadows to good or lower, and environmental detail to 5. Raiding requires further reduction in settings. Overall recommended graphics preset by the WoW client based on the graphics hardware is 7 out of 10, which coincidentally is the exact same recommended setting as the nearly seven year old 7970.

Moving on to Diablo 3, with ultra settings the card will maintain 60fps in the camps. This changes quickly when you are in a rift with three other people. When the screen gets busy, the card chokes hard. Sub 40fps is common when multiple elite packs are engaged.

Click to expand...

Sooo...dude upgrades to a better graphics card, but is upset that he isn't getting more FPS in games that are CPU-bound? And then leaves a bad review because he doesn't understand how computers work? RrrrrRRRRrrrgh...

--Patrick

Dangit. I've already taped out my next system, a bit of a "sleeper" with parts people might not normally think of using in a gaming PC. I know I already ranted about a major tech site promoting my choice of CPU because sure enough the price on 'em went up (when you can even find them now). Now another big tech site has reviewed the motherboard and given it a glowing review, and at this rate demand is going to spike the prices of parts I already couldn't afford to levels that'll add several extra months of saving onto my schedule and that'll ruin the whole "sleeper at a decent price because people didn't know about these parts" angle. Grrr.

--Patrick

Stop encouraging people to film things vertically. And while you're at it fuck off with the "everything needs to be more like a phone" mentality.

mikerc said:

Stop encouraging people to film things vertically. And while you're at it fuck off with the "everything needs to be more like a phone" mentality.

Click to expand...

Hee-hee I saw that and that was the first thing I thought of.
How many people are going to watch a movie on it while the TV is vertical and think, "Damn, why is this so small?"
But if it doubles in the setup as a computer monitor, well, then it might have some usefulness for things like being able to see an entire page of this forum, for instance.

--Patrick

Yay in the victory thread for getting my old computer working.
Boo because I had to run one of them from floppy.
Oh, setting up the floppy wasn't the problem. But a box of ten 3.5in HD floppies today, when you can find them? Almost $20.
Ow.

--Patrick

Gone are the days of buying them for 50 cents at the high school store when you desperately needed to save your english paper to a disk so you could print it at school.

Has anyone else been having trouble with SSL over the weekend? I keep running into random FORBIDDEN and "certificate invalid" errors, with no obvious pattern.

--Patrick

Not random, but I haven't been able to access Home Depot's website for the last two months or so.

The uselessness of android's battery useage tracking drives me up the wall. I noticed abnormally high battery useage today (33% over 5 hours), and the graph shows a major dip at a specific point. Of course, I remembered, at that time I ran a speedtest on wifi and then did a little web browsing, which chewed up 10% in 10 minutes.

But the breakdown of useage below that said:
Wi Fi: 1%
Chrome 1%
Phone Idle: 1%
Android System: 1%
Screen: 1%

... so, despite being at 66% battery power, you're telling me I should be at 95%.

I know it's nitpicky but broke-ass shit like this drives me up the wall, because so often I've had a rogue app chewing up battery and had this screen be exactly no help at all in tracking down which one it was.

GasBandit said:

broke-ass shit like this drives me up the wall, because so often I've had a rogue app chewing up battery and had this screen be exactly no help at all in tracking down which one it was.

Click to expand...

Can't you get a Task Manager-type app for Android to track that stuff down?

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

Can't you get a Task Manager-type app for Android to track that stuff down?

--Patrick

Click to expand...

Most of the battery app are black box fire-and-forget "battery saver" apps that automatically reduce various apps functionality to get them to use less juice. But I guess I could try one or two like AccuBattery, despite some reviews saying the new version of android broke it.

Thing is, and my gripe is... the core android functionality of this feature should not be lying to me.

GasBandit said:

the core android functionality of this feature should not be lying to me.

Click to expand...

Well, you're not wrong.
I still have no Android devices in the home, so I got nothing, but one of the other techs is an almost-everything-Android guy, I'll ask if he knows of anything.

--Patrick

Only thing he says he's tried is "Power Battery," but he's heard there are others that are better.
He did not name any of these "others."
Maybe see if you can track it down another way? Find which apps use the most cell data or wifi, or which ones keep the screen/audio on the longest, if that's possible?

--Patrick

I'm gonna try AccuBattery for a couple days and see how that goes. It seems to be a very aggressive monitoring system, and I worry that it in and of itself will cause higher battery drain.

The AMD driver update really fucked me over.
Got no more HDMI Audio. Wont show up in Device Manager nor in Audio Settings. Downloaded Realtek Audio Drivers, but that is for the onboard audio not audio via GPU. Guess I need to dig out my old PC speakers with the 3.5 jack.

LordRendar said:

The AMD driver update really fucked me over.
Got no more HDMI Audio. Wont show up in Device Manager nor in Audio Settings. Downloaded Realtek Audio Drivers, but that is for the onboard audio not audio via GPU. Guess I need to dig out my old PC speakers with the 3.5 jack.

Click to expand...

Uninstall the current drivers and re-install an older version?

Also, was this you updating your AMD drivers, or was this a Windows Update thing? Because Windows has a bad habit of installing really old AMD drivers when it does a major system update.

I updated my AMD drivers. Tried reinstalling the drivers.
Tommorow I am going to use the AMD cleaner to remove every trace of AMD on my PC and then try it again.

For tonight I am using my bluetooth usb speaker. It is good enough to play Hobo Tough Life on silent and have a podcast in the background.

LordRendar said:

The AMD driver update really fucked me over.
Got no more HDMI Audio. Wont show up in Device Manager nor in Audio Settings. Downloaded Realtek Audio Drivers, but that is for the onboard audio not audio via GPU. Guess I need to dig out my old PC speakers with the 3.5 jack.

Click to expand...

Did you install the "optional" drivers? Go back to the "recommended" 20.4.2 drivers. This caught me out a few weeks back, too.

I try to stick to the WHQL ones when possible.
Heck, I'm still only running the 17.7.1 version.
Of course, that's because I'm using a GCN v1.0 card on Windows 7, but still.
Yes, I could upgrade all the way to 20.4.2 (the most recent WHQL'd version), but I don't know as I need all that Adrenalin stuff added in, since a lot of it requires a newer OS than Win7 to work anyway.

--Patrick

AMD Cleanup did the trick. It removed every file,driver,profile, anything AMD and I reinstalled the newest drivers and new everything works fine again.

I am going to pull what little hair I have left out of my head, I swear, if I have to deal with any more of this complete and utter batshit insane, utterly incomprehensible compatibility failures! Bought a new hosting package. Integrated email into it. Have my own private email server now, well, for the business. Set up Thunderbird on my computer flawlessly. Set up Thunderbird on Aislynn's last computer flawlessly. Set up Thunderbird on Aislynn's new Omen Desktop? Are you insane? You can't set up POP3 and SMTP over SSL on this computer, that's just lunacy.

What. The. Absolute. Fuck.

Gared said:

I am going to pull what little hair I have left out of my head, I swear, if I have to deal with any more of this complete and utter batshit insane, utterly incomprehensible compatibility failures! Bought a new hosting package. Integrated email into it. Have my own private email server now, well, for the business. Set up Thunderbird on my computer flawlessly. Set up Thunderbird on Aislynn's last computer flawlessly. Set up Thunderbird on Aislynn's new Omen Desktop? Are you insane? You can't set up POP3 and SMTP over SSL on this computer, that's just lunacy.

What. The. Absolute. Fuck.

Click to expand...

I should say that it's this sort of asshattery that has me looking so seriously at Linux instead of Windows. Three windows computers. Three of the exact same version of Thunderbird. Do the setup exactly the same way three times. It fails 33% of the time. That's just un-fucking-acceptable.

If I so much as gently caress the USB-C connector of my thunderbolt dock at work, it locks my laptop hard. What a piece of shit. What an EXPENSIVE piece of shit.

Well, accubattery has revealed one unpleasant fact for sure... my battery charging neurosis has definitely hurt my battery. Of an original 2770mAH capacity, my obsession with keeping it above 80% means its capacity is now closer to 900mAH. Apparently there are studies out there showing that you should only charge your battery to 80% and charge it again when it gets down to 20%.

So, I guess I need a new battery. This was also driven home today when my phone shut itself down at 49%.

Yup, i usually try to stick to the 20%, but 80% is harder... Why would I not just let it charge further, you know.

This accubattery app has a helpful alarm that goes off when charging reaches 80% to let me know to take it off the charger.

But yeah, it's a hard habit to break.

My Logitech Mx510 mouse finally gave up the ghost after only 15 years of use. I ended up replacing it with a Microsoft Intellimouse. I could have waited a few more weeks and gotten a Mx518, but I was in a rush since my games were unplayable.

GasBandit said:

Apparently there are studies out there showing that you should only charge your battery to 80% and charge it again when it gets down to 20%.

Click to expand...

Sorry, I thought you already knew.

Li-ion/LiPo battery tech is the current king of capacity-by-weight. BUT that capacity degrades over time, and it degrades faster when used heavily, subjected to thermal stress, etc. And as you discovered, charging it that last 10-20% causes more wear than charging it the first 80%. It is not by coincidence that satellites are usually hard-limited to never charge their onboard battery above 80% nor let it get below 20%, because in a satellite longevity trumps runtime.

So a haphazard charging schedule usually works out better in the long run because it means your battery spends most of its time between 20-80 and doesn’t spend long stretches of time >80 or <20.

—Patrick

4K UHD anime has finally hit the US with the release of Ghost in The Shell 25th anniversary edition. I will be purchasing it, but as of yet am unaware of any set-up that will allow me to either rip it or watch it outside of a set-top box, which btw fewer and fewer companies are supporting.

Bones said:

watch it outside of a set-top box

Click to expand...

What, you mean like via a service + a Roku? Or an appliance like a DVD player?

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

What, you mean like via a service + a Roku? Or an appliance like a DVD player?

--Patrick

Click to expand...

EDIT2: UHD refers to UHD 4K Blu-ray discs to be clear.
EDIT:misread pats reponse lol
the UHD drives for computers exist but require a load of DRM black magic to work, and you cant use any GPU that is not onboard. the set-top players are easier but most companies are abandoning support and it seems from the complaints effectively bricking them as they exit.

Bones said:

most companies are abandoning support and it seems from the complaints effectively bricking them as they exit.

Click to expand...

In other words, once people figure out how to use them to break the DRM, they are forced out of the market.

--Patrick

hey @PatrThom I am trying to understand your response. are you saying they look at it as "fucking pirates ruining it for all of us"? or "well the DRM is compromised, burn the bridges and fields on our way out!"?

Bones said:

hey @PatrThom I am trying to understand your response. are you saying they look at it as "fucking pirates ruining it for all of us"? or "well the DRM is compromised, burn the bridges and fields on our way out!"?

Click to expand...

...neither-ish? But both?
My assumption* is that each manufacturer gets issued its own set of keys, and once enough of a particular line of players have enough of their keys compromised, Blu-ray HQ considers them "traitors" for not somehow preventing this (in spite of the fact that this is inevitable) and so somehow makes it difficult for them to continue--prohibitively increases their licensing fees, sues them for aiding piracy, whatever.

--Patrick
*This is completely a guess on my part, but I feel like it makes sense.

PatrThom said:

...neither-ish? But both?
My assumption* is that each manufacturer gets issued its own set of keys, and once enough of a particular line of players have enough of their keys compromised, Blu-ray HQ considers them "traitors" for not somehow preventing this (in spite of the fact that this is inevitable) and so somehow makes it difficult for them to continue--prohibitively increases their licensing fees, sues them for aiding piracy, whatever.

--Patrick
*This is completely a guess on my part, but I feel like it makes sense.

Click to expand...

no i meant literally there are like 3 manufacturers left making UHD players as far as I am aware. as each company exits they cancel their keys effectively bricking the player when it goes to renew its passkeys every 30-90 days. (you have to have a connection or it will just autobrick anyways >_>)

Bones said:

no i meant literally there are like 3 manufacturers left making UHD players as far as I am aware. as each company exits they cancel their keys effectively bricking the player when it goes to renew its passkeys every 30-90 days. (you have to have a connection or it will just autobrick anyways >_>)

Click to expand...

This sounds like a singularly unsuccessful business model. The player mfrs become literal slaves to Sony and if they don't pay what Sony demands, their products go dead, so at some point they get fed up with being beholden to Sony and commit seppuku. I seriously don't understand why anyone would tool up to manufacture any sort of widget that can be remotely destroyed at the whim of another.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

This sounds like a singularly unsuccessful business model. The player mfrs become literal slaves to Sony and if they don't pay what Sony demands, their products go dead, so at some point they get fed up with being beholden to Sony and commit seppuku. I seriously don't understand why anyone would tool up to manufacture any sort of widget that can be remotely destroyed at the whim of another.

--Patrick

Click to expand...

im just guessing to be fair, but yeah on the same page as you. normal blu-ray works pretty good in my experience other than needing to update keys every so often when they revise something. the 4K ones seems pretty user unfriendly, so for the most part I was planning on just ripping the discs and watching the resulting files on my local network.

Buddy of mine: "My Internet is kinda spotty when I'm on my deck."
Me: "Well the WiFi probably just has trouble with that location."
B: "Oh but it's not WiFi. I thought WiFi would have trouble so I hardwired it."
M: "Hmm, I don't know then."
[time passes]
B: "Hey I think I found the cause."



Me: "Yeah, that's probably it, all right."

--Patrick

I totally forgot how Windows always seems to need to update. Grrr.

Squidleybits said:

I totally forgot how Windows always seems to need to update. Grrr.

Click to expand...

Yep. Many mornings I've gotten up to log in to my computer only to find my login screen greeting me.

Went to do my dailies last night after work, discovered my gaming PC wouldn’t boot. ”Hmm,“ I thought. “It was working just fine last night.”
Hook up a ps/2 keyboard, and a handful of restarts later, I can get into the BIOS. Temps are ok, power is ok, RPMs are ok, everything is recog...oh, there it is. Looks like one of my new hard drives has failed, or at least the RAID1 isn’t happy. Well, that’s why I have a RAID1 array in the first place. I’ll look into more detail after I do my dailies.
<Two hours pass...>
Ok. RAID controller says disk just dropped, not an I/O error. Might just be a cabling issue. Start disk health check to rule out bad sectors, but that says it’s gonna take 3+ hrs to complete. Fine. Set an alarm for 2:30a to check on it.
<Four-ish hours pass...>
Hmm disk comes up clean. Guess it musta been the cable. But now I need to rebuild the array. How long will that take? Ugh. I’m going back to bed. It should be done by morning.
<Four-ish more hours pass...>
Ok let’s see what...why is the computer off? Oh, it’s just asleep. Must’ve shut down when idle. I’ll just check the [57% COMPLETE] oh for f...it went to sleep during the rebuild? AARGH.
Fine. Abort the rebuild since I can’t trust it now and make it start over. Change sleep settings to “Aw Hell Naw!” and I’ll just have to check it when I get home from work in another TEN HOURS uuuuughhhh.

—Patrick

PatrThom said:

Went to do my dailies last night after work, discovered my gaming PC wouldn’t boot. ”Hmm,“ I thought. “It was working just fine last night.”
Hook up a ps/2 keyboard, and a handful of restarts later, I can get into the BIOS. Temps are ok, power is ok, RPMs are ok, everything is recog...oh, there it is. Looks like one of my new hard drives has failed, or at least the RAID1 isn’t happy. Well, that’s why I have a RAID1 array in the first place. I’ll look into more detail after I do my dailies.
<Two hours pass...>
Ok. RAID controller says disk just dropped, not an I/O error. Might just be a cabling issue. Start disk health check to rule out bad sectors, but that says it’s gonna take 3+ hrs to complete. Fine. Set an alarm for 2:30a to check on it.
<Four-ish hours pass...>
Hmm disk comes up clean. Guess it musta been the cable. But now I need to rebuild the array. How long will that take? Ugh. I’m going back to bed. It should be done by morning.
<Four-ish more hours pass...>
Ok let’s see what...why is the computer off? Oh, it’s just asleep. Must’ve shut down when idle. I’ll just check the [57% COMPLETE] oh for f...it went to sleep during the rebuild? AARGH.
Fine. Abort the rebuild since I can’t trust it now and make it start over. Change sleep settings to “Aw Hell Naw!” and I’ll just have to check it when I get home from work in another TEN HOURS uuuuughhhh.

—Patrick

Click to expand...

You and your raid. Live free like me. My Outlook on data:

Ravenpoe said:

You and your raid. Live free like me.

Click to expand...

My next system will likely only have a single drive, but that’s because all the irreplaceable stuff will get shipped off to a NAS.

—Patrick

So my computer started acting up. The screen would randomly turn off, and when I tried to force it to restart, it'd give off 5 beeps and then sometimes grudgingly restart.

I looked up what 5 beeps would mean for my Gigabyte motherboard. Holy crap, it could mean a whole bunch of hardware failures, such as CPU failure, motherboard failure, CMOS battery dying, etc. Cue panic.

Then I looked around some more, and it turns out 5 beeps can also mean a faulty display cable or display.

Right now I'm not sure what the problem is. I fiddled with the CMOS battery, and reseated the display cable, and so far things are going okay. But just in case, I'm gonna back up all my pr0n important files and maybe look into what a new computer build would look like these days.

bhamv3 said:

So my computer started acting up. The screen would randomly turn off, and when I tried to force it to restart, it'd give off 5 beeps and then sometimes grudgingly restart.

I looked up what 5 beeps would mean for my Gigabyte motherboard. Holy crap, it could mean a whole bunch of hardware failures, such as CPU failure, motherboard failure, CMOS battery dying, etc. Cue panic.

Click to expand...

This is something which is easily checked and fixed, btw. Assuming you have some way to test the voltage, that is. Any reading below 2.7VDC means it needs to be replaced.

bhamv3 said:

just in case, I'm gonna back up all my pr0n important files

Click to expand...

DO THAT ANYWAY, ALL THE TIME

--Patrick

I don't have a multimeter or anything like that, so I might just get a new battery and stick it in there, for peace of mind.

bhamv3 said:

I don't have a multimeter or anything like that, so I might just get a new battery and stick it in there, for peace of mind.

Click to expand...

This IS how many people troubleshoot that particular issue. Just chuck in a new one cuz they’re cheap and because they usually last something like ten years.
Quite a few modern BIOSes have added the CMOS voltage to their system health page, though. Might be worth a peek.

—Patrick

Had to switch out keyboards today because the enter key on my old Gateway MediaCenter keyboard had finally snapped and wasn't registering. Fortunately I have an NMB 104-key IBM-equivalent keyboard, but it doesn't have the volume controls the old keyboard had.

My husband's job is giving everyone an extra $25 a month for internet expenses since everyone is mandatory work from home until at least January. We decided to upgrade out home Internet to gigabit, which actually saves us $3 a month because how the plan worked out. Being locked in to a new contract hardly matters because there's not likely to be another better option in the next year. But the actual rant is that the setup of the new plan claimed out current modem was fine, but that turned out to be a lie, as it can only pull 600/5 and not the up to 1000/35 we are actually paying for. (And there is a 600 plan, so they can't even try that nonsense) We can't open a ticket on it online until our current order goes through, and neither one of us has the desire to be on hold with comcast right now, so I guess when we go in to swap the TV equipment, we'll just bring the router too. The closest office is in Longmont anyways I think, and those guys never have anything to do because everyone there uses Nextlight anyways.

Dei said:

My husband's job is giving everyone an extra $25 a month for internet expenses since everyone is mandatory work from home until at least January. We decided to upgrade out home Internet to gigabit, which actually saves us $3 a month because how the plan worked out. Being locked in to a new contract hardly matters because there's not likely to be another better option in the next year. But the actual rant is that the setup of the new plan claimed out current modem was fine, but that turned out to be a lie, as it can only pull 600/5 and not the up to 1000/35 we are actually paying for. (And there is a 600 plan, so they can't even try that nonsense) We can't open a ticket on it online until our current order goes through, and neither one of us has the desire to be on hold with comcast right now, so I guess when we go in to swap the TV equipment, we'll just bring the router too. The closest office is in Longmont anyways I think, and those guys never have anything to do because everyone there uses Nextlight anyways.

Click to expand...

FIVE up? How the fuck have you been streaming?

GasBandit said:

FIVE up? How the fuck have you been streaming?

Click to expand...

Poorly. That's why I bullied about upgrading our internet.

I guess technically we get between 5 - 6 up, but my point stands.

Heck even *I* get at least 10 up on my 100/10 plan (though my ping is in the 30's).

--Patrick

comcast is famous for shitty upload...its shocking they haven't offered something non-business for people who want higher upload speeds...everytime i have asked about getting a better up ratio they suggest maybe i should switch to business >_>

my comcast services is 330 down, 12 up.

Bones said:

everytime i have asked about getting a better up ratio they suggest maybe i should switch to business >_>

Click to expand...

That's because the ONLY reason you could possibly want faster upload is because you are running some kind of web/file server, and they more or less mandate you be on a business plan if you're running a "server" machine.

PatrThom said:

That's because the ONLY reason you could possibly want faster upload is because you are running some kind of web/file server, and they more or less mandate you be on a business plan if you're running a "server" machine.

Click to expand...

I realize now that I have obviously made a mistake by my previous comment, wasnt expecting a "no shit, you idiot" response. guess thats my bad for feeling like we deserve more than 5 Mb up when we are paying for 500 Mb down.

Unity is so retarded.

I literally have to install a different version of it for every thing I do.

Making beat saber avatars? That's 2017.1.4.

Making VRChat avatars? Whups, better install 2018.1.2.

Making vtuber avatars? Welp, download and install 2018.20.2.

Jeesh.

Bones said:

I realize now that I have obviously made a mistake by my previous comment, wasnt expecting a "no shit, you idiot" response. guess thats my bad for feeling like we deserve more than 5 Mb up when we are paying for 500 Mb down.

Click to expand...

I think Pat's comment had at least some amount of sarcasm in it.

Bones said:

I realize now that I have obviously made a mistake by my previous comment, wasnt expecting a "no shit, you idiot" response. guess thats my bad for feeling like we deserve more than 5 Mb up when we are paying for 500 Mb down.

Click to expand...

Oh, this is definitely not a "no shit, Sherlock" kind of answer.
It's me railing at ISPs because they're using the excuse of "you must be a business trying to sneak by on a residential plan" as a way to push customers up into more expensive plans, even when they already subscribe to "unlimited."

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

Oh, this is definitely not a "no shit, Sherlock" kind of answer.
It's me railing at ISPs because they're using the excuse of "you must be a business trying to sneak by on a residential plan" as a way to push customers up into more expensive plans, even when they already subscribe to "unlimited."

--Patrick

Click to expand...

oh, my bad, I read it as a serious response, I asked them the last time about something with more upload speed, maybe 50 Mb up as I back up a large amount of data to cloud storage regularly and also upload media to major sites like youtube. the agent just laughed at me when I asked about the possibility. I was willing to pay a bit more money(20-30 bucks a month more) for more upstream speed.

ive also been threatened with legal action when i inquired under the same idea that im trying to do something illegal, and my usage would be investigated for wrong doing.

Bones said:

ive also been threatened with legal action when i inquired under the same idea that im trying to do something illegal, and my usage would be investigated for wrong doing.

Click to expand...

Yup. To hear them tell it, if you want more than whatever paltry upload speed they give you, then you must either be a dirty illegal torrenter, or else you're a cheap-ass business. Remote backups? Large family? Power user? Work from home? "Ha ha what are those myths? Also would you like to see our business-class plans? The ones that don't have data caps? They start at $129/mo for 50down/50up..." And then you get a faster upload speed, but they slash the download speed to make up for it. And if your business is a bar/restaurant/apartment building, well then it starts to get even more complicated.

I DON'T CARE how many flavors/colors it comes in. Just. Give. Me. Internet.

--Patrick

Hilariously, even though online setup said we needed a new TV box and not a new modem, they sent us a modem, not a new TV box. So I guess somewhere in the pipeline after online setup is a person who actually makes sure everything is correct.

My download speed is still no where near where it should be, but woo @ my upload speed.

Dei said:

My download speed is still no where near where it should be, but woo @ my upload speed.
View attachment 35765

Click to expand...

That's common for gigabit. It's the old "UP TO 1000mbit!" charade that means you can't get mad when you don't get it. Mine's the same way, I usually get around 600 as well, down. But man, that 50 up is what I really am paying for.

GasBandit said:

That's common for gigabit. It's the old "UP TO 1000mbit!" charade that means you can't get mad when you don't get it. Mine's the same way, I usually get around 600 as well, down. But man, that 50 up is what I really am paying for.

Click to expand...

But there's a separate 600mb charge, so we're probably going to call to see if someone will come uselessly check it.

Dei said:

But there's a separate 600mb charge, so we're probably going to call to see if someone will come uselessly check it.

Click to expand...

I know that. That's just what happens with gigabit. Sometimes, during peak hours, you'll get 400mbit or less. I don't think I've ever actually gotten more than 700mbit on my gigabit.

This is just how cable modems roll. What are you gonna do, get some OTHER gigabit cable service?

GasBandit said:

I know that. That's just what happens with gigabit. Sometimes, during peak hours, you'll get 400mbit or less. I don't think I've ever actually gotten more than 700mbit on my gigabit.

This is just how cable modems roll. What are you gonna do, get some OTHER gigabit cable service?

Click to expand...

The point is more one of trying to get Comcast to concede something on price, because they are actually worried about towns trying to follow suit with Longmont. Either way it doesn't matter, it still ended up being cheaper in the short term.

Dei said:

The point is more one of trying to get Comcast to concede something on price, because they are actually worried about towns trying to follow suit with Longmont. Either way it doesn't matter, it still ended up being cheaper in the short term.

Click to expand...

Even with your proximity to Longmont, I'll be VERY surprised if Comcast does anything at all about your speed (or price).

Cable companies are notorious for this stuff, and Comcast is renowned to be the worst of the bunch.

So I'm working today on site... commissioning a big combined classroom. I get up to go to the bathroom, and lock my laptop naturally.

I come back to see a mother fucking windows 10 update in progress.

I had a bunch of shit open and unsaved >_<

Fuck. You. Microsoft.

NEVER. UPDATE.

GasBandit said:

NEVER. UPDATE. ALWAYS. SAVE.

Click to expand...

FTFY

—Patrick

PatrThom said:

FTFY

—Patrick

Click to expand...

As a programmer who's lost so much work to crashes, etc....I just habitually hit control-s every 5 minutes or so. I barely even think about it any more.

Tinwhistler said:

I just habitually hit control-s every 5 minutes or so.

Click to expand...

Yep. Just like tapping the reload button between skirmishes.
Be prepared!

—Patrick

GasBandit said:

I come back to see a mother fucking windows 10 update in progress.

Click to expand...

Also:


—Patrick

A few days ago, Windows 10 wouldn't shut down. I'd tell it to shut down, it would, and then it immediately started up again. At first I thought I'd accidentally selected "restart" instead, but nope, it was starting itself back up after shutting down. I was mildly spooked.

I had to disable something called "fast startup" to get it to stop doing that. I didn't even know I had fast startup enabled. My computer had never done anything like this before. Not sure if this was due to a recent Windows update or something, but it was a bit annoying and creepy.

It's time for my annual "Let's try Linux". I wanted to test the performance of emulators in my pc with linux. I have three screens. The icons appeared in one screen, the menu in another, and the main screen was empty. I can't find how to correct that. Also my pc needed to reboot after updates. I thought that didn't happens on linux.

Cog said:

Also my pc needed to reboot after updates. I thought that didn't happens on linux

Click to expand...

Certain things, like some drivers and especially kernel-related updates, require a reboot. It's far less often than with Windows, but it happens.

Network admins will fight tooth and nail and sandbag for hours to avoid doing one task that would take them 90 seconds.

Also, I get griped at for e-mailing them directly. I have to e-mail someone else so they can put in a request to someone else so they can assign the task to the network admin. Because that way it takes 2 hours to get something done instead of 5 minutes.

Whatever, I guess. I'm paid hourly.

Looks like Phision and Silicon Motion are finally releasing native (i.e., faster & lower-power/heat) PCIe v4.0 NVMe controllers instead of the less efficient 4.0-interface-bolted-onto-a-3.0-controller method they’ve been doing.

...which is great because the specs for PCIe 6.0 are on track to be released next year. Starting to wonder if anyone is going to bother using v5.0 for anything.

—Patrick

The D:\ drive on my laptop has vanished. So now I'll probably have to open this sucker up and fiddle with the cables, see if that fixes it.

Oof, I just watched a teardown video for this. I can see myself accidentally breaking a couple of things within the first three steps or so. Maybe I should send it in for repairs.

PatrThom said:

This thread is now about scalpers.

Click to expand...

Ok, so is this one.
I know we had a discussion about Apple's new headphones, and how a price point of $550 seemed... high.
But apparently there's plenty of people willing to spring that much for them, since they're apparently being scalped on eBay for $1500... and up.

Scalping is the new Bitcoin, I guess. Instead of hashrate, we're going to see people start rating their GPUs by their scalprate, by how many times a second that GPU can reload a webpage to try to submit a purchase order.

--Patrick

Playing Crossout on my PC tonight (yes I still play it), when my gaming computer suddenly makes a sound like you hear when someone throws a branch into a wood chipper, and I immediately exit the game mid-match and shut it down to find out what is causing the loud VRRRRRRRRR it is now making. Pop the side off and look around and, near as I can tell, the front intake fan either had a big ball of lint break loose and get sucked into the fan blades or else it was one of these bastards getting mulched while looking for a cozy place to wait for Spring.

Stupid Arthopoda.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

Playing Crossout on my PC tonight (yes I still play it), when my gaming computer suddenly makes a sound like you hear when someone throws a branch into a wood chipper, and I immediately exit the game mid-match and shut it down to find out what is causing the loud VRRRRRRRRR it is now making. Pop the side off and look around and, near as I can tell, the front intake fan either had a big ball of lint break loose and get sucked into the fan blades or else it was one of these bastards getting mulched while looking for a cozy place to wait for Spring.

Stupid Arthopoda.

--Patrick

Click to expand...

that is why my case has screens, fuck that on ice.

Bones said:

that is why my case has screens

Click to expand...

This case is reeeeeeally old.
Like, flip-down shutters over the DVD/CD drives, I-don't-know-what-HDMI-means, no USB3 support old.

--Patrick

Wanted to blow the dust out of my case for the first time in forever. The front cover resisted coming of, so I tug a little harder. The cover did come off, but snapped 90% of the pins holding it on. It's still secure after putting it back, but dammit.

I have the side panel off permanently, because the front fan needs to be manually stopped a few times before it'll whirr away happily. Otherwise it just sounds like a vacuum trying to suck up metal ball bearings. Used to restart 3 times every time I wanted to do something but I've now found just sticking my hand in there to stop the blades works just as well, and it's probably better for the computer.

Chrome mobile now enforced the use of grouped tabs, and I absolutely hate hate hate it. I'm sure there'll be some hidden way of turning it off (I haven't checked flags etc yet, just the settings).
I can see how it ought be useful in some cases, but for people who browse like me, it's just a hassle, a whole bunch of extra clicks, and if slows switching over down a lot. Also, swiping downward opens a bar at the bottom of the screen to quickly jump to other tabs in the same group... Taking up my screen real estate. This quick bar might help the slower switches... If it would just stay away unless I want it to. That's NOT every time I swipe downward. Grrr. Arghhhh.

I found it here:

Go to
chrome://flags
Search grid
And disable

I had to restart my phone before I could change it.

I finally got to wire all of the things required for my first animatronic part - an eye mechanism. It did nothing, so now I get to figure out how to debug hobby electronics, which I have literally no time for (I was following an online design and using my birthday as an excuse to take the time to do this).

A moment of silence, please, for my old GPU* which failed after something like 8 years of service. Replacing it with something new is going to be next to impossible without bending my wallet backwards over a counter. Buuut...


--Patrick
*had to update the video, the first one was so annoying,

Cranky FINALLY decided to take the dive to newer storage.
He's been running since 2015 on a 400GB Intel 750 SSD (which is an absolutely amazing SSD, even today) but trying to install games has been a nightmare because a single game install these days can eat up as much as 80-120GB. So this past weekend we finally had him step up to a 2TB HP EX950 mounted in a carrier. Don't knock the fact that it has an HP logo on it, it's actually one of the top performing PCIe v3 drives out there, and it was on sale.

Installed card & carrier, system recognized it just fine, downloaded and installed the free version of Macrium Reflect and successfully cloned the drive over on the first try. Even remembered to increase the partition size from 400GB to the full 2TB before hitting "go!" Moved the new card to replace the old one aaaand... it wouldn't boot. Boot settings were correct. Couldn't even boot to diagnostic boot because boot would just hang on start with the drive activity light staying on for many minutes before going dark and staying there.

So I swapped out the new drive for the old one to return it back to the original configuration. Still wouldn't boot (or else would take ages and ages to boot, not a good sign for such a fast SSD). Scandisk found nothing. "Repair boot issues" did nothing. Hours pass. And then I realize something... where did the D: drive go?

See, because his (old) SSD has such a low capacity, I added 2x 2.5in 1TB WD Red in a 3.5in RAID-1 adapter connected via SATA to give him a place to offload any stuff he didn't need fast access to, with the idea that it would be safer than a single external drive. Well apparently the RAID adapter (or one or more of the drives inside of it) picked exactly that day to fail. So I disconnected it. Computer now boots flawlessly. Swapped to new drive. Computer still boots flawlessly. Left him to gleefully download probably 500GB of game data overnight.

So now I have to find out what's up with the RAID adapter and either fix it or extract and manually hook up the drives inside of it to get back what was on them. So stupid.

--Patrick

We're a software company...

Far said:

View attachment 37831


We're a software company...

Click to expand...

I called a customer today, and when I asked her to open a file in Excel, she asked me to call back later when someone from IT could be there to help.
I tried, but, yeah, no, she really did need someone to open it for her.

So, I think my ssd might be dying. It started with some steam games... downloading an update lead to corrupted files. Trying to uninstall and reinstall the game lead to more corrupted files. Trying to reinstall steam leads to steam not working, and now an automatic update left my pc completely unable to boot, requiring that I rollback to before the update. Does this sound like drive problems to anyone else?

Ravenpoe said:

Does this sound like drive problems to anyone else?

Click to expand...

Could be. Many SSDs switch to "read-only" mode when they fail BUT the thing they usually don't tell you is that it will only keep working until you reboot, after which it probably stops recognizing the drive. So if it's still working, grab what you wanna save onto an external, just in case.

It could also be a flaky cable or controller, so it MIGHT not actually be the drive. You might try reading the drive's S.M.A.R.T. data to see if that reveals anything. The three main ones to watch for are "Bad sector count" (drive) "Pending sector count" (drive) and "CRC error count" (cable).

--Patrick

This probably belongs more in a "funny pictures" type thread, but whatever.


( @GasBandit can appreciate this, I'm sure)

I can intimately feel the exasperation in this post. It is palpable.
But what I also find amusing is that someone decided to make a subreddit for IT that uses the F7U12 nomenclature. SUCH an IT nerd thing to do, and adds so much meta.

--Patrick

Don't know where to put this, could've gone here, could've gone in the regular minor rant thread, or the stories from work thread (but that's more lighthearted I guess)...
So anyway, we support a whole bunch of software and online solutions. One of the fairly new ones is not being really properly supported at the moment, so we now got a questionnaire to fill in to gauge everyone's knowledge of this to see where and what is needed as far as training goes. Fair enough.
It starts off fairly easily ("do you know where to find the installer?" and that sort of thing).
And then it goes on to questions like "explain your understanding of all functionalities in the Agent"
Err, the user manual is 198 pages. I'm not saying I know all about all functions available, but do you really need me to list off "new shipment" - click this for a new shipment, "cancel shipment" - click this to cancel a shipment, "printer locations" - click this to open a menu to choose which printers to use, "pending shipment" - click this to go to the Pending Shipments screen" and so on and so on? Mind you, I asked, and I'm NOT ALLOWED TO USE SCREENSHOTS, TEXT ONLY.
Whoever created this questionnaire is a MANIAC. And whatever manager approved this idea is an IDIOT.

Bubble181 said:

Whoever created this questionnaire is a MANIAC. And whatever manager approved this idea is an IDIOT.

Click to expand...

The questionnaire might have been created for different software with much less functionality and was repurposed for use with this software. The manager that signed off on it is still an idiot though.

I guess it may have been adapted from something else, but some of the other later questions were very solution-specific ("how do you set up option X to work with integrator tool Y to achieve result Z", "how many projects would you need to set up to turn this type of input files into a stable solution that would output valid labels and show examples" (yes, work out how to set up flows and writing it all out by hand...ARGH). Someone who knew the software at least added questions.
Half of these questions frankly don't even apply to me, I'm support, if it's about setting up new workflows I'm supposed to just send it on to Field, I'm not allowed to mess with that. Still wrote the explanation on how to do it, though

WELL-I'm either gonna have to get a new mother board, return the legacy Nvidia I got, OR start a fresh build, either way that's on me for not checking.

Yoshimickster said:

WELL-I'm either gonna have to get a new mother board, return the legacy Nvidia I got, OR start a fresh build, either way that's on me for not checking.

Click to expand...

Why would you need a new motherboard? A new case, maybe, but a new board?

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

Why would you need a new motherboard? A new case, maybe, but a new board?

--Patrick

Click to expand...

WELL-the motherboard is fine, its just theoretically I can't add the part I want to the system because the HDMI port on my Motherboard MAY be permanently disabled, and the graphics card I got don't got a HDMI port. I MIGHT be able to be work around it in BIOS but LORD knows if I know the cheatcode to get it to work, mucked around in it too much today and I had to re-insert the CMOS battery just so's I can get my PC to show up on my monitor.

Yoshimickster said:

WELL-the motherboard is fine, its just theoretically I can't add the part I want to the system because the HDMI port on my Motherboard MAY be permanently disabled, and the graphics card I got don't got a HDMI port. I MIGHT be able to be work around it in BIOS but LORD knows if I know the cheatcode to get it to work, mucked around in it too much today and I had to re-insert the CMOS battery just so's I can get my PC to show up on my monitor.

Click to expand...

Amazon product

I use these alllll the time. Almost every single job, customer gives us a PC with only displayport outs, and we gotta have HDMI for our AV gear.

GasBandit said:

Amazon product

I use these alllll the time. Almost every single job, customer gives us a PC with only displayport outs, and we gotta have HDMI for our AV gear.

Click to expand...

Sweet strawberry Jesus, THANK YOU, I'd say it'd muck up my USB organizational system but FUCK it I'm doin' it!

ALSO-are Amazon ads not showing up on anyone else's PC, or is that an Adblock thing?

Adblock.

My surplus Optiplex doesn't have HDMI, but it does have DisplayPort. I bought a DisplayPort to HDMI adapter from Best Buy and never looked back.

Easy to go DP or mDP -> HDMI, much harder to go the other direction.
So usually if a card only has one kind of output it's gonna be some flavor of DP.

--Patrick

My laptop is gradually failing piece by piece. First the D:\ drive will only be detected about half the time when I start it up, so if it doesn't find the D:\ drive then I need to shut down and restart until it does. Then the touchpad started becoming unresponsive, but I usually use a USB mouse so it's not a huge deal. And now the built-in microphone has apparently died, which is more problematic because I use this laptop for remote meetings, and it only has one 3.5mm port that functions as both the headphone jack and the microphone jack, depending on what you plug in. Sure, I could plug in a microphone, but then I'd need to use the laptop's speakers, and that's not a good idea for remote meetings.

bhamv3 said:

My laptop is gradually failing piece by piece. First the D:\ drive will only be detected about half the time when I start it up, so if it doesn't find the D:\ drive then I need to shut down and restart until it does. Then the touchpad started becoming unresponsive, but I usually use a USB mouse so it's not a huge deal. And now the built-in microphone has apparently died, which is more problematic because I use this laptop for remote meetings, and it only has one 3.5mm port that functions as both the headphone jack and the microphone jack, depending on what you plug in. Sure, I could plug in a microphone, but then I'd need to use the laptop's speakers, and that's not a good idea for remote meetings.

Click to expand...

I recommend a USB headset.

Unless you can, you know, swing a new laptop.

GasBandit said:

I recommend a USB headset.

Unless you can, you know, swing a new laptop.

Click to expand...

A USB headset is an option, because I do have the spare USB port for it. Though I am also thinking about getting a new laptop, because the recent lockdown in Taiwan has led to my wife pretty much taking over the desktop computer, resulting in me doing most of my gaming on my laptop. And this laptop isn't exactly bad for gaming (i5-8250U, GTX 1050, 12GB ram) but it could be better.

Now my D:\ drive will randomly disappear while I'm using the laptop. I suspect it's a hardware issue, probably a loose connection or something, but from my rudimentary research this laptop is really finicky to crack open and fiddle with.

So time to get a new laptop I guess.

So now I have a new laptop.

I7-11800H@2.30GHz, 16GB of RAM, RTX 3070.

You didn't tell us what size your drive is. Hopefully at least 512GB, 1TB would be even better.
Your next stop will no doubt be 32GB RAM, unless you run out of drive space within the next 6mo.

--Patrick

Originally it was a 512GB SSD but I sprung for the 1TB upgrade. I believe I can also stick a HDD in there if I want, but I haven't looked into it in detail.

I've been thinking about building a new pc for a good long while now, but prices... Man, it's ridiculous.
The same graphics card costs $1400 in the USA, €1270 in Germany (about $1490), and... €1490 in Belgium (about $1750).
I could literally have a forumite buy this stuff and FedEx it to me, pay all import and shipping fees, and still be cheaper off. Sometimes taxes really suck.

Of course, on the other hand... While I still like to consider myself a gamer... I've still never run into a game I wanted to play but couldn't, and those I have that are near the edge I don't play anyway (I have Jedi Fallen Order installed and have literally not booted it up once), and given my current mental health half of me is telling myself not to invest in that kind of stuff because I won't be around in 3 months anyway, and it all adds up to "not going to happen any time soon".

I honestly can't recommend doing a new build right now unless you absolutely HAVE to. Pricing and availability are stupidly weighted in favor of seller(s) right now, and the speculators are murdering anything decent that does happen to make it to market.

--Patrick

Laptops are still somewhat reasonable, but yeah, building a new desktop PC right now is going to come with a 200% markup.

I know, but it's been like that for... What, three years now? I remember "wait 'til the 2000-series drops so the 1080ti drops in price" way back when. The 1080ti is still one of the more viable bang for buck cards now and it's four years old.

Bubble181 said:

it's been like that for... What, three years now?

Click to expand...

I thought it started some time in late 2019/early 2020, but it looks like the actual start date of ballooning GPU prices was December of 2017 (GeForce GTX 10x0/Radeon Vega), meaning we're coming up on four years of this shit.


--Patrick

Bubble181 said:

I know, but it's been like that for... What, three years now? I remember "wait 'til the 2000-series drops so the 1080ti drops in price" way back when. The 1080ti is still one of the more viable bang for buck cards now and it's four years old.

Click to expand...

TBH, unless you're doing a lot of VR (like, AR embedded VR that you are then streaming in real time) or insisting on 4k at 60fps. you don't need a 3000 series card. My 1060 3gb, the most bargainy of the 10 series, still plays everything that doesn't go in goggles marvelously in 1080p60.

Microchip shortages, CPU/GPU(/console) scalpers, RAM/flash price fluctuations, alleged "spy chips" on motherboards, cryptocurrency demand, and now...

...yes that's right, now it's not just chips, but also other surface-mount components like resistors, chokes, capacitors, and so on. Companies like Rubycon, Nippon-Chemicon, and other well-known names in the electronics industry are all succumbing to COVID-19 and other factors, leading to shortages of even the most basic electronic components found on circuit boards everywhere. Heck, even raw material prices are going up due to supply constraints. I didn't even really know anything about Ho before reading these stories. And supplies aren't expected to recover for as much as six months...IF nothing else happens to disrupt things even further, that is. It's gonna get to the point where you can't even buy a wireless doorbell or a walkie-talkie if this keeps up.

--Patrick

Microsoft, regarding Windows 11: "We pretty much require that your system be built around Intel's 8th generation ‘Coffee Lake’ CPU or newer architecture or else your system will be flagged by the upgrade advisor tool as not meeting the requirements for Windows 11."
The *nix community: "Goddammit, Intel! Why did you hopelessly break HPET reliability in your 8th generation and later CPUs?"
Consumers: "You guyyys! I just wanted to dual boot my machine! "

--Patrick

Why does imgur not show me any progress for my uploads on the app or in my browser? People are paid more than I will ever make to design this

Cat said:

Why does imgur not show me any progress for my uploads on the app or in my browser? People are paid more than I will ever make to design this

Click to expand...

Imgur's been on the downslide for a long time now. Just waiting for the next starry-eyed idealist startup to come along for everybody to jump to, that gets its 12-18 months before it has to actually start making a profit/paying for overhead, and turns into what all other image hosts turn into since even flickr and photobucket.

GasBandit said:

Imgur's been on the downslide for a long time now. Just waiting for the next starry-eyed idealist startup to come along for everybody to jump to, that gets its 12-18 months before it has to actually start making a profit/paying for overhead, and turns into what all other image hosts turn into since even flickr and photobucket.

Click to expand...

I've been using bc it's so easy to bulk upload but on my desktop it's not even putting them in the right order

Cat said:

I've been using bc it's so easy to bulk upload but on my desktop it's not even putting them in the right order

Click to expand...

I've never had it upload multiple things in the right order. Then I fix the order... then it reverts back to the wrong order.

GasBandit said:

I've never had it upload multiple things in the right order. Then I fix the order... then it reverts back to the wrong order.

Click to expand...

The app at least gets the order right for me, I had to move my screenshots to my phone for the upload lol

Cat said:

The app at least gets the order right for me, I had to move my screenshots to my phone for the upload lol

Click to expand...

The phone app has sooooo many other issues though, from what I read. I refuse to use it in any case.

GasBandit said:

The phone app has sooooo many other issues though, from what I read. I refuse to use it in any case.

Click to expand...

I can believe that if even what is functioning correctly is still shit

To be fair, when you copy a group of files, Windows does not properly order the list that it passes to whatever program/api. It's been like this since like Win3.1.
Here's a 6 year old StackOverflow question bitching about it.

So if you're selecting a bunch of files and dragging them to Imgur on the web, imgur is at the mercy of whatever random file order Windows decides to send.

Tinwhistler said:

To be fair, when you copy a group of files, Windows does not properly order the list that it passes to whatever program/api. It's been like this since like Win3.1.
Here's a 6 year old StackOverflow question bitching about it.

incorrect order of files in dragdrop event in vb.net 2013

I'm dragging multiple files from Windows Explorer into my VB.net program. Everything works, except that in the DragDrop event the order of files that I get from e.Data.GetData, appears to be random...

stackoverflow.com

So if you're selecting a bunch of files and dragging them to Imgur on the web, imgur is at the mercy of whatever random file order Windows decides to send.

Click to expand...

Huh, did not know that

Edit: tried deleting an album and now I have 50 loose images to delete goddamnit

Cat said:

Huh, did not know that

Edit: tried deleting an album and now I have 50 loose images to delete goddamnit

Click to expand...

If you use the website from a PC, you can select multiple images to delete all at once.

GasBandit said:

If you use the website from a PC, you can select multiple images to delete all at once.

Click to expand...

I was, didn't notice an option to select more than one post at a time so I used tabs and hit delete as I flipped through them

Nowhere is safe from superfluous RGB.


NOWHERE.
(available for iPhone and Android)

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

the board I've chosen is absolute effing overkill

Click to expand...

Ha ha well looks like supply is so tight that suppliers are only selling this board directly to OEMs or as part of an entire system and not to the general public. I have a call in to a supplier to see if they can release one (just one!) board for me, but I've already ordered most of the other components (because I didn't know there was any kind of restriction on the boards) and if/when they get here it's gonna be a real shame if I can't get my hands on a board to slot them into. Whooops.

--Patrick

Why is it so hard for my ISP to maintain an Internet connection? Every few months the Internet will start going down for several hours at a time. I'd call, they'd send a tech, the tech will mess around with things, the connection will come back, and then the cycle repeats.

Next time, find out what they're messing with.

--Patrick

Last time around the guy replaced some of the cables physically connecting the router to the... connection thingy in the wall. He suspected that there was something wrong with the cable or the connector.

bhamv3 said:

Last time around the guy replaced some of the cables physically connecting the router to the... connection thingy in the wall. He suspected that there was something wrong with the cable or the connector.

Click to expand...

What's your uplink? Is this cable modem? DSL? Or just an ethernet plug that goes somewhere-you-know-not?

GasBandit said:

What's your uplink? Is this cable modem? DSL? Or just an ethernet plug that goes somewhere-you-know-not?

Click to expand...

Cable, I think. The router (provided by the ISP) connects to an F type connector that goes into the wall. That's pretty much all I know.

bhamv3 said:

Cable, I think. The router (provided by the ISP) connects to an F type connector that goes into the wall. That's pretty much all I know.

Click to expand...

It's rare for a router to have a coax uplink, it's probably a modem with a built-in router. It seems rather odd to me that a bad coax cable would take several visits, but I suppose dumber things have happened.

GasBandit said:

It's rare for a router to have a coax uplink, it's probably a modem with a built-in router. It seems rather odd to me that a bad coax cable would take several visits, but I suppose dumber things have happened.

Click to expand...

Any suggestions on what I could do? Aside from harass the ISP every time my Internet goes down?

bhamv3 said:

Any suggestions on what I could do? Aside from harass the ISP every time my Internet goes down?

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, if it is upstream of your modem, it is pretty much out of your hands. Of course, the modem itself could also be the problem, especially if it uses the Puma chipset. Replacing it with one of your own that uses a Motorola chipset might help in that case, but it is a bit of a hassle to get your ISP on board with it sometimes. At the very least, you will have to spend time on their support line to tell them your new modem's CMAC.

Keep an eye on whether anything interacts with that cable--furniture, pets, weather, guests, foot traffic, other nearby electronics, mechanical strain, etc. If none of those things are a concern, you may want to peek at the cable itself just to see whether the center wire is too long/too short at either end, or consider getting a shorter cable (if possible). If the cable is fine, then it is either upstream OR something to do with your router. If you reboot your router and everything goes normal, then it's probably sloppy router software that just needs to be rebooted every month. If that doesn't resolve it, then we're starting to get into stuff that's outside of the consumer realm (router config, intrusion attempts, other people on your loop).

--Patrick

Also, if there are any cable splitters before your modem, try to remove them (if possible) - those degrade signal too.

I hate tech people online, especially anime fans. Everybody's a fucking Mort.

"Hey, Yameii, when you name your torrent 'Show name 6th season episode 4' Sonarr thinks it's season 1 episode 4 because the ENTIRE TORRENTING WORLD has standardized on S06E04 for season and episode codes and you're just being contrarian. Would you mind naming things in accordance with established practice?"

"No, Sonarr sucks, you should use Medusa."

"Sonarr has worked just fine for literally every other show that YOU have not uploaded. You are literally the only group I have to manually spoon feed, and it's because of this issue. But just to give it a try, I have now tried to set up medusa and it is 9 flavors of arcane inscrutable bullshit that never works and often makes things worse. So your pet favorite niche torrent scraper only works for you and your iconoclastic naming convention. So that's a no go. And it sucks that I have no alternative other than to manually load your torrents and manually import in sonarr them because no other group will duplicate the effort since you're doing it already. But it's not like I'm paying you to do your thing so I guess I just have to put up with it."

God I miss Golumpa. His shit worked just fine. Now the only consistent purveyor of english dubbed anime torrents is Yameii. I almost hope Yameii gets busted too. Almost.

In case anybody's confused by what I mean about being a "Mort."

I keep getting these weird network hiccups on our LAN. I thought it was the wireless, so I completely disabled one of our three APs. Didn't get worse, but also didn't get better. Finally thought about a ping test, and I can now confirm that what we're having is either due to our modem or my router, because it happens just like this even on a computer connected directly to the router, like so:
75ohm Internet cable -> ISP-provided modem -> 1m Cat5 -> ridiculously overbuilt 8-port router -> 1m Cat5e -> Test computer
See, this is the part I don't get. My connection/turnaround time is ROCK SOLID (only varying by a bare handful of milliseconds each ping)...except that it'll just up and lose what, 1 out of every 32 packets? I thought it was due to the flow control I have on the router (which is set to occasionally drop packets for any client that tries to suck up all the bandwidth in order to throttle it down), but it continues even after I turned off the traffic shaping, so it's not that.
The rant? Now I have to contact my ISP and attempt to get them to understand that 1) I have a problem, and that 2) it is definitively being caused by something on their end, which will require being connected to someone who understands these things well enough to be just as confused as I am about what's going on.

--Patrick

Someone at your ISP is an XKCD fan?

It looks like it may have been the patch cable between the modem and my router. My speed was upgraded from 100Mbps (110ish effective) to 200Mbps (180-210 effective), then again to 300Mbps (265ish effective) BUT nobody upgraded the patch cable from standard Cat5 to at least Cat5e, meaning the link from my modem to my router officially only supported up to 100Mbps. The tech who came out did also find we had a second coax run from the distro box to our property that wasn't terminated and another few things, and also replaced our DOCSIS 3.0 modem with a newer DOCSIS 3.1 model. So who knows what the real reason was? ...but it was probably the older patch cable.

ANYWAY: On to my new rant.
Why is it so dang hard to find a new monitor??? All I want is a monitor that is:

• 240Hz
• IPS or xLED (not VA or TN)
• 10-bit HDR 400nits minimum
• At least 2K (1440p) resolution
• HDMI 2.1 (will accept 2.0) and DP 1.4
• Minimum 27in diagonal measurement
• Under US$1000

Every monitor I can find is lacking in at least ONE of these categories. Arghhhhlgl...
Oh sure, CES was full of a bunch of really interesting monitors, but most of them don't even have prices yet and aren't going to be coming out on the market until around Christmas of 2023, according to the mfrs.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

aren't going to be coming out on the market until around Christmas of 2023, according to the mfrs.

Click to expand...

Unsure if you mean manufacturers or motherfuckers.

I mean, that IS a pretty stringent level of requirements.

GasBandit said:

I mean, that IS a pretty stringent level of requirements.

Click to expand...

it is not it's perfectly normal you hush I know you are but what am I

--Patrick

240Hz is kind of a crazy requirement to me. Especially since you didn't list Freesync, or is that just a given for 240Hz monitors?

figmentPez said:

240Hz is kind of a crazy requirement to me. Especially since you didn't list Freesync, or is that just a given for 240Hz monitors?

Click to expand...

Most monitors in that class have some form of VRR included. It's practically expected at that point.
I don't know which video card I'll ultimately be using with it, so at this point which one(s) it includes is less of a concern.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

All I want is a monitor that is:

• 240Hz
• IPS or xLED (not VA or TN)
• 10-bit HDR 400nits minimum
• At least 2K (1440p) resolution
• HDMI 2.1 (will accept 2.0) and DP 1.4
• Minimum 27in diagonal measurement
• Under US$1000

Click to expand...

Eventually settled on the Gigabyte M27Q-X (US$450-ish). I ordered it on Thu afternoon from B&H and it arrived Sat 10a.
The rant? Between taxes and work schedule and other obligations, I won’t even be able to open the box until Wed afternoon at the earliest.

—Patrick

I really hate how crappy Google's search algorithms have become over the last few years.
Sick, so trying to replay some easy-on-the-mind old classics. In this case, Warlords: Battlecry. Yes, the first one.
Now, several years ago (when this was already an old game), I could use google and easily find WBC walkthroughs, guides, and all that. There are far more for WBC2 and 3, but you could easily tell them apart, tell Google not to look for those, and with the right search choices and such, it was easy to get those for the first game on the first page of results.
These days, even with literally telling it to exclude ANYTHING containing the word "sequel" or the numbers 2 or 3 or the Roman numerals or whatever, on the first 11 pages of Google results (yes, I actually went beyond the first page), I managed to find 3 links, all leading to the same walkthrough (which is not the one I'm looking for. I remember the file). Everything else is "popular" WBC3 guides, trainers, cheat lists, or WBC2 guides, sponsored links, suggestions, ads, etc.
Google has just gotten so incredibly unusable to find anything but the most popular or successful page that is somewhat tangentially related to your search terms it's appalling. If I just type in some random crap, ok, fine, but if I'm using multiple search operators MAYBE TAKE THOSE INTO ACCOUNT YOU PIECE OF CRAP.
I swear, I'd go back to using Altavista if it still existed. This can't be "the best search engine around". By now I'd damn well prefer using the Google of 2005 which actually showed what I was looking for. They're just making themselves useless.

OK, while I didn't find the actual old file I was looking for - BING returned better, more accurate results. BING.
That's like finding Internet Explorer actually providing a better experience than Chrome. Holy crap.

I, too, miss Lycos.
And Dogpile.

—Patrick

What's good for users is usually shitty for ad revenue.

What's good for ad revenue is usually shitty for users.

Companies built up a userbase in phase one, floated by investment capital that wants in on phase 2's profits.

Phase 2 is the enshittening of the user experience through monetization, because the users are now being sold as a product.

Phase 2 lasts until enough people get sick of the shittiness and move on to the next phase 1 venture that the thing in question collapses/gets sold to yahoo who shuts it down a few years later.

A week ago PatrThom said:

I won’t even be able to open the box until Wed afternoon at the earliest.

Click to expand...

Another week gone, still in the box.

--Patrick

Bubble181 said:

OK, while I didn't find the actual old file I was looking for - BING returned better, more accurate results. BING.
That's like finding Internet Explorer actually providing a better experience than Chrome. Holy crap.

Click to expand...

Modern day Bing is very much a better search engine than modern day Google. No, it's not great but despite its reputation it is decent - and that's more than Google has been able to honestly claim for years.

mikerc said:

Modern day Bing is very much a better search engine than modern day Google. No, it's not great but despite its reputation it is decent - and that's more than Google has been able to honestly claim for years.

Click to expand...

It is FAR and away superior if you're trying to find specific varieties of porn.

GasBandit said:

It is FAR and away superior if you're trying to find specific varieties of porn.

Click to expand...

The algorithm is so trained on finding what gas is looking for that it's learned to feel disgust

Ravenpoe said:

The algorithm is so trained on finding what gas is looking for that it's learned to feel disgust

Click to expand...

That's not disgust it's feeling .

GasBandit said:

It is FAR and away superior if you're trying to find specific varieties of porn.

Click to expand...

Now want a comparison of each search engine's response to the goat question.

--Patrick

OH MY GOD SO MUCH THIIIIIIS

--Patrick

Am on vac 'net so slow 4Mb/s 4000ms ping.
Civilization calls to me but not enough bars to answer.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

Am on vac 'net so slow 4Mb/s 4000ms ping.
Civilization calls to me but not enough bars to answer.

--Patrick

Click to expand...

That's enough to stream 720p from plex!

GasBandit said:

That's enough to stream 720p from plex!

Click to expand...

The drop-outs are long enough that it sometimes takes 15min before I can reconnect to HF.
The spread between my signal/noise varies between 20dB to only 3dB over 802.11n and my AP is something like 30m away.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

The drop-outs are long enough that it sometimes takes 15min before I can reconnect to HF.
The spread between my signal/noise varies between 20dB to only 3dB over 802.11n and my AP is something like 30m away.

--Patrick

Click to expand...

"Time to move out of the sticks, gentlemen." - Winston Wolfe

I'm in the middle of bumfuck nowhere in France and I have 5g here. I don't even get that at home!

Am currently here:

According to Wikipedia, they had a total population of just 136 in 2020. And I can believe it. The cell coverage map just kinda fades out as you get closer to the tip of the Keweenaw. The annual snow thermometer shows they managed to “only” get just over 21ft (6.5m) of snow this year.

—Patrick

Computers are annoyingly weird sometimes. On my PC Netflix playback stutters when subtitles appear on screen. If the subtitles remain up playback smooths back out, but if they stop then the next line of dialogue causes stutter again. Turning subtitles off makes playback smooth. But here's the weirdest part, it's only full screen, and only when the window is in focus. If I put another window in focus, even the tiniest little bit of another program in the corner of the screen, playback with subtitles is smooth. I have no idea why this is. Reminds me of an issue I had back in the WinXP days where some sort of video playback would only be smooth as long as I kept moving my mouse.

figmentPez said:

it's only full screen, and only when the window is in focus. If I put another window in focus, even the tiniest little bit of another program in the corner of the screen, playback with subtitles is smooth.

Click to expand...

This sounds like a viewport issue. The subtitles are being treated as their own window, which knocks your computer out of fullscreen (i.e., “exclusive”) mode in order to display layered windows. If your player has an option for “windowed” or “fullscrren-windowed” try that and see if that fixes it.

—Patrick

PatrThom said:

This sounds like a viewport issue. The subtitles are being treated as their own window, which knocks your computer out of fullscreen (i.e., “exclusive”) mode in order to display layered windows. If your player has an option for “windowed” or “fullscrren-windowed” try that and see if that fixes it.

—Patrick

Click to expand...

It's Netflix, the player is probably a browser.

Which leads to the next question - WHICH browser?

And, of course, what video card, and are your drivers up to date.

GasBandit said:

It's Netflix, the player is probably a browser.

Which leads to the next question - WHICH browser?

And, of course, what video card, and are your drivers up to date.

Click to expand...

Microsoft Edge, because that's the only one that does 1080p (Chrome and Firefox are limited to 720p on Windows, and Linux, according to Netflix). The issue also happened with the Netflix app, the last time I tested with it.

Video card is AMD RX 480. Graphics drivers are up to date, but this has been a periodic issue for years. At least I think there have been times when it hasn't been an issue.

figmentPez said:

Microsoft Edge, because that's the only one that does 1080p (Chrome and Firefox are limited to 720p on Windows, and Linux, according to Netflix). The issue also happened with the Netflix app, the last time I tested with it.

Video card is AMD RX 480. Graphics drivers are up to date, but this has been a periodic issue for years. At least I think there have been times when it hasn't been an issue.

Click to expand...

The app might just be a wrapper for an Edge instance without exposing the URL, a lot of crappy devs do that sort of thing.

I wonder, even at 720p, does firefox experience the same subtitle issue? This kinda smells like SmEDGEma to me.

I'd also be curious if watching something with subtitles in, say, crunchyroll or plex in a browser has the same symptoms.

GasBandit said:

I'd also be curious if watching something with subtitles in, say, crunchyroll or plex in a browser has the same symptoms.

Click to expand...

I thought that Netflix was the only problem, but I re-tested to be sure. Disney+ and Amazon Prime are fine. I don't have HBO Max anymore, so I can't retest, but it was working fine. Freevee stutters, though; which is weird because Freevee is tied to Prime Video, and I thought they were using the same player (the interface looks the same). I've tried two different Freevee shows, and they both do the subtitle stutter, but an Amazon Prime show does not.

Freevee does not have a stutter problem on Firefox (and can do 1080p*). I'll test Netflix on Firefox when I get a chance, I'm not currently logged-in there.

*Arbitrary DRM weirdness. Prime Video happily does 1080p in Firefox on Windows, but on Linux (on my Raspberry Pi, but I think in general as well) Prime is limited to 480p. Other streaming services play 720p on Linux, but won't do 1080p on Firefox+Windows. I assume this is because Microsoft has a deal with them to make Edge the "better" browser, but I can't figure out what Amazon has against Linux.

figmentPez said:

Computers are annoyingly weird sometimes. On my PC Netflix playback stutters when subtitles appear on screen. If the subtitles remain up playback smooths back out, but if they stop then the next line of dialogue causes stutter again. Turning subtitles off makes playback smooth. But here's the weirdest part, it's only full screen, and only when the window is in focus. If I put another window in focus, even the tiniest little bit of another program in the corner of the screen, playback with subtitles is smooth. I have no idea why this is. Reminds me of an issue I had back in the WinXP days where some sort of video playback would only be smooth as long as I kept moving my mouse.

Click to expand...

these guy found the same issue, and use an always-on-top window to basically 'solve' the problem without fixing it.

figmentPez said:

*Arbitrary DRM weirdness. Prime Video happily does 1080p in Firefox on Windows, but on Linux (on my Raspberry Pi, but I think in general as well) Prime is limited to 480p. Other streaming services play 720p on Linux, but won't do 1080p on Firefox+Windows.

Click to expand...

I believe this is because Widevine is required to properly play back the encrypted HD content, and Google is, uh, … resistant to providing a FOSS (and thereby reverse-engineerable) version of Widevine for the *nix crowd.

—Patrick

PatrThom said:

I believe this is because Widevine is required to properly play back the encrypted HD content, and Google is, uh, … resistant to providing a FOSS (and thereby reverse-engineerable) version of Widevine for the *nix crowd.

Click to expand...

That's the excuse for why most streaming services are limited to 720p on Linux. However, that doesn't explain why Prime Video, seemingly alone among the streaming services, is limited to 480p on Linux, while at the same time being more permissive with browser playback on Windows.

I think we’d be able to draw some conclusions if we were able to see the real-time streaming stats/metrics, but I don’t know if the respective players allow you to do that any more.

—Patrick

No Safari, but I assume this was meant to specifically represent the choices available on WinOS.
Still. Yeah. This.

--Patrick

Liked because we don't have a "this is scary" rating.

PatrThom said:

View attachment 45041

No Safari, but I assume this was meant to specifically represent the choices available on WinOS.
Still. Yeah. This.

--Patrick

Click to expand...

This meme format makes me nerd mad because it's backwards, in that scene Peter could only see clearly without his glasses.

Ravenpoe said:

This meme format makes me nerd mad because it's backwards, in that scene Peter could only see clearly without his glasses.

Click to expand...

Oh good, I wasn't the only one.

--Patrick

FIFY

Thank you, that's much better.

--Patrick

I loathe the push to make ad supported devices standard, but this one is exceptionally bad:

Telly, the ‘free’ smart TV with ads, has privacy policy red flags

First, this TV is "free" because it has a second screen dedicated to showing nothing but banner ads, and it has sensors to detect how many people are in the room watching (and probably gather a whole lot more information about them as well).

The sketchy levels get even higher when reading the privacy policy, which includes comments from someone at the company asking if they actually have the ability to delete information gathered about children under 13, as they claim to be able to do.

I hope this stinking pile of dog shit goes up in flames.

Permanent on screen banner ads just reminds me of one thing.

"GO WAY, BATIN. OW MY BALLS IS ON"

This is what Pluto does after selling to Paramount for $340mil, I guess.

--Patrick

Earlier this month, Google introduced eight new top-level domains (TLD) that could be purchased for hosting websites or email addresses.
The new domains are .dad, .esq, .prof, .phd, .nexus, .foo, and for the topic of our article, the .zip and .mov domain TLDs.
[N]ow that they are TLDs, some messaging platforms and social media sites will automatically convert file names with .zip and .mov extensions into [clickable] URLs.

Click to expand...

WHAT NO NO NO NO

--Patrick

At a certain point it gets really hard to attribute it to stupidity instead of malice.

PatrThom said:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...ins-spark-debate-among-cybersecurity-experts/

WHAT NO NO NO NO

--Patrick

Click to expand...

It would have to be some terrible programming indeed to mistake
https://thissite.com/thisfile.zip (obviously a file)
with
https://thissite.zip (obviously a tld)

though I suppose if you were generically discussing a file...like "open mycontent.zip in your local drive"...but how often does that come up in casual conversation?

Tinwhistler said:

It would have to be some terrible programming indeed to mistake
https://thissite.com/thisfile.zip (obviously a file)
with
https://thissite.zip (obviously a tld)

though I suppose if you were generically discussing a file...like "open mycontent.zip in your local drive"...but how often does that come up in casual conversation?

Click to expand...

"Can you download notascam.zip to keep as a backup please?"
"Hey man, you got to see this aweosme new video of Scarlett Johansson ScarJonaked.mov!"
"Please click here to download the videos of your trip to Jamaica: ScubaDiving123.zip!"

Tinwhistler said:

how often does that come up in casual conversation?

Click to expand...

Because so many client OSes automagically use logic to convert any displayed text strings that they recognize as URLs (such as "halforums.com") into clickable links, the worry is that websites, notes, emails, messages, or the like -- even ones that were created prior to these TLDs being released -- will be "gamed" by people abusing this detection logic in order to convince clueless users to visit a website. As an example of this gamed logic, imagine you are emailing a pics.ZIP file from yourself to yourself, between a work and personal computer, let's say. When you open the email on the destination computer, you will see your email "Here are those pics I needed" or whatever, and there will be the icon in the email showing the file "pics.zip," which you can click on to download the file. The email client program will of course put the name of the file under that icon (again, "pics.zip") because that's what email clients do. BUT if someone registers the http://pics.zip/ URL and sets up a site, the existing URL-detection logic on the client's computer will say, "Oh hey, that's a text string that is also a URL" and so light it up as a hyperlink which you could easily click on because you would expect it to download the linked .ZIP file. They then have their site auto-download a file named "pics.zip" which is actually something entirely different than what you expected, and you go and automatically double-click on it because innocent ol' you is expecting it to be the pics that you just sent yourself, but nope! Malicious payload!

This is something that an email client could easily be updated to avoid, but of course the threat actors are counting on it to take a while before the IT community at large comes around to guarding against this sort of thing.

--Patrick

I hadn't even considered email..which would be a major issue, I agree

Son's HDD just failed.
Well, there goes 1TB of Minecraft worlds and mods/packs, we'll see what we can salvage once the drive gets replaced.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

Son's HDD just failed.
Well, there goes 1TB of Minecraft worlds and mods/packs, we'll see what we can salvage once the drive gets replaced.

--Patrick

Click to expand...

I just bought a 16 TB external. That gives me about 40 TB spread across 8 drives RAID 10 format. Hot swapping on the fly can be so nice.

Dave said:

I just bought a 16 TB external. That gives me about 40 TB spread across 8 drives RAID 10 format. Hot swapping on the fly can be so nice.

Click to expand...

What made you decide to go raid 10 instead of, say, 5? Are you doing something that requires the faster write and rebuild time?

(I use raid 5 on my server)

I’m probably going to upgrade him to a 1TB SSD. He’s not gonna know what to do with that kind of speed.

—Patrick

GasBandit said:

What made you decide to go raid 10 instead of, say, 5? Are you doing something that requires the faster write and rebuild time?

(I use raid 5 on my server)

Click to expand...

Some of the disks are plate read so I wanted faster read/write speed. I had the extra space so fuck it. I know it uses more space but I only do it for my media/plex stuff. My M.2 drives hold my games.

Dave said:

Some of the disks are plate read so I wanted faster read/write speed. I had the extra space so fuck it. I know it uses more space but I only do it for my media/plex stuff. My M.2 drives hold my games.

Click to expand...

Well, it's not like you did anything wrong. Raid 10 is definitely the most solid way to go. But it's also the most expensive per byte.

But you get 90% of the read speed of 10 with 5 (though 66% of the write speed due to having to do parity calculations), and get to use n-1 drives worth of your total space instead of n/2. So if you had 4 10tb drives, a raid 5 would give you 30tb of space whereas a raid 10 would give you 20. And you have to expand your 10 in pairs, whereas you can expand a raid 5 1 drive at a time. 5 is a good option for those looking to get speed and redundancy for less money. And even if you're doing platter drives, motion video needs, at most, ~50 mbit per simultaneous user, and even the slowest single non-raid platter drive out there is gonna give you 600.

PatrThom said:

Son's HDD just failed.
Well, there goes 1TB of Minecraft worlds and mods/packs, we'll see what we can salvage once the drive gets replaced.
I’m probably going to upgrade him to a 1TB SSD. He’s not gonna know what to do with that kind of speed.

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Salvaged all of it. Put it all on freshly installed SSD.
Too bad he can't play right now because his privileges are taken away until he gets his schoolwork caught up, but at least that's complete.

My own rant: Built this new machine almost 2 years ago now. Only just last week finally installed the IGP drivers. Couldn't install 'em earlier because I had the IGP set to "Auto" in the BIOS which means it never got lit up since I never plugged anything into it, and that means 2 years where I never got to enjoy the benefit of Intel's v8 QuickSync (not that I was transcoding all that much, but still).

--Patrick

Roku has filed a patent for your TV to detect when you're paused and play 'relevant ads'. Nope, no thank you, not for me I'm afraid https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/ro...t-ads-nope-no-thank-you-not-for-me-im-afraid/

The article I saw had it titled like this:
...because what we here at Roku have determined is that you are not seeing enough ads.

--Patrick

God damn it we love our roku! You were supposed to be the chosen one!

Dave said:

God damn it we love our roku! You were supposed to be the chosen one!

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Here at (corporation), one of our guiding principles is line go up. Our other guiding principle is rate at which line go up go up. And we will burn any bridge and poison as many wells as we need to in the pursuit of those principles.

GasBandit said:

Here at (corporation), one of our guiding principles is line go up. Our other guiding principle is rate at which line go up go up. And we will burn any bridge and poison as many wells as we need to in the pursuit of those principles.

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Ah, I see you also work in (corporation). Hello, colleague. Let's go make line go up more.