atxcyclist

It can be really difficult, I have problems throwing things out or giving them away, because I rationalize keeping things like old computers because 'what if' there's a time I need it. Case in point: The server at my office nosedived some years back and I had to get something back in service over a weekend, and I had all the parts at home to make it happen. It's probably just reinforcing bad habits, but the way I see things is it saved my bacon many times, so in the back of my mind I always wonder if tossing something will put me in a jam later. It doesn't help that I'm the repair guy in my immediate family and for many of my friends in terms of computers, cars, motorcycles, and even bicycles, so I've accumulated so much stuff over the years it's ridiculous. So the answer to the question of which stuff do I keep? Seemingly everything, haha.

I have some older Paradigm Titan speakers that I've placed on stands for a while, but thought maybe to try loading the stand columns with something (dried sand, steel BBs, etc.), but the design of these stands is such that everything would just leak out of the cable management at the bottom. So my idea was to use some microphone arm stand weights, preferably some that are a split-ring type that I could fill with some heavy material and set down on the flat part of the base. My question: Is the true benefit of weighing-down stands actually reducing vibrations in the vertical column with some material, or just the weight holding the stand down to the floor? If I'm not really going to do anything but spend money, this would be a pointless exercise.

Hold up, is that a GoPro/camera mount on the front?

I do like this concept, but I'd probably not go through all of that just to skip a few YouTube ads (I also really appreciate fast-switching games and other apps on my Series X). I will say though, that I'm considering finally rolling-out an opnsense router build and wonder if there's some way to run an adblock through there. Again, I'm not against ad revenue for creators, but I know most don't really rely on the small amount that it gives them, and also if YouTube is going to make skipping and viewing them annoying with apps built-in to standard hardware, I'd consider options at a router-level if possible.

I'm wondering if this is something other people have noticed. So, we've all experienced the ad countdown at some point in time, but there's a new annoying thing that I've been experiencing the last week or so: On my smart TV or XBOX, an ad gets down to zero where it looks like in the next instant I'll be able to skip, but what happens is the ad continues to play for an additional few seconds and I end up pausing the ad trying to skip. Can YouTube seriously not put an accurate timer on ads? This seems like it shouldn't be an issue for the largest video platform online, unless it's on purpose, to make advertisers think people are pausing to look at their products. I am pretty OK with ad revenue being a necessity for creators, but YouTube shouldn't be janky with something as simple as a countdown until an ad ends.

Yep, making ineffective safety equipment during a pandemic is so scummy. Giving someone that could be sick the false sense of security that their mask was keeping them from spreading a virus, really sucks and I would personally feel terrible if I gave someone else covid. When I had it I interacted with as few people as possible, but when I absolutely had to I wore a rated mask.

I received a small handheld vacuum/duster as a gift a while back, and it’s replaced canned air for me. For working inside computers it’s just as effective, and since it’s rechargeable with no cord I can actually get it down into a case much easier.

I bought a 2020 Asus G14, on the recommendation of every tech channel and magazine review out there saying it was ‘the best’ compact gaming laptop. Lies. Driver problems, horrible battery life, it ships with soldered ram in single channel, and it had a pretty low-end small SSD in it. Upgraded it with an 8GB stick to get 2x8GB, put a better and larger NVMe drive in there, and did a fresh Windows install with all the updated drivers from Asus; still unreliable. It’s been sitting in a closet with a fresh ‘out of the box’ install of Windows 10 for over a year as I’ve tried to sell it, and no one wants it even with the upgrades and asking only $550 for it. Absolute waste of money and time, and I’ll never buy a Windows laptop again if this is supposed to be ‘the best’ in the consumer market. I bought a maxed-out 13” Apple-refurbished M2 MacBook Pro for daily portable computing, and I couldn’t be happier; I need something that works more than gaming ability, though the MacBook plays Minecraft and VMs Windows just fine for some older titles. It also has extremely good battery life.

The Series X graphics are roughly equivalent to a 6600XT, so a bit of a jump but not massive. I will say, having played a few games on my Series X that I've also played on my desktop, the amount of optimization in console releases can be really good. You're comparing both, do you have GamePass Ultimate? You could always try both if your internet connection is decently quick. It looks like it needs 130GB of space.

My brother ran an MSI RX 480 for a long time, it was not a bad card performance-wise, but the cooler was extremely cheap-ish feeling. It wasn't high up their product stack so I guess that can be forgiven, but he moved to a rather basic MSI RTX 3050 and that card is so much 'cleaner' and feels much higher quality.

I bought two rechargeable battery packs for my Series X controller, they charge through USB-C and the cord they came with even has a charge indicator. I didn’t want to burn through a bunch of AA batteries, so for the ~$20 it cost me I’d say it was a good purchase.

I’d eat ramen for a month for that, that’s freaking nice. I’ve been running an older 1080p 240hz Dell monitor for a few years, it’s great. I have had such good luck with Dell monitors over the years I probably wouldn’t buy anything else.

I have replaced my own disposal and I wouldn’t try to give a flat price for it. Too many variables, especially on an older house where the drain trap might be installed in an unconventional way, or the electrical hookup is funky. Rolling a diagnostic fee into labor is really common, if for no other reason than it sweetens the deal with a perceived discount at time of the work being completed.

LightScribe is cool tech, I didn't realize it took that long to put the image onto a disc. I think a few of my old drives support LightScribe, I should try it out sometime.

You're too far gone into the void dude, and not listening to important things like, 'game developers should not be required to release multiplayer code for old games as they may continue to use parts of it in the future.' If you put money into digital items there's a huge risk you will lose them in the future, but they're not your property and you're not owed a refund for digital subscriptions or items under any laws that exist or likely will exist, because companies are not going to zero-out their finances when they stop supporting a game. I'm out.

Yeah, a lot of people want a lot of things that are not attainable. Questioning whether I 'understand' some completely unattainable utopia where game developers just hand you your subscription money back and refund you for stuff you willingly bought in-game, is honestly wild; You seemingly do not understand that developers don't have and should not have a responsibility to give you money back that they used for operating/payroll/marketing costs, nor do they have any compulsion to release the code to run servers when they deprecate an old game, especially when they may be using aspects of that programming in future titles. I used to play on Quake III servers back in the day, and I even ran my own Minecraft server a few years back for some of my friends and family, I'm aware that private servers for certain games have existed. That doesn't mean every game is built that way or could run on consumer hardware, something like an MMORPG is going to be very expensive to upkeep, just one example like GTA V doesn't describe all online games.

So my question is; With you understanding some of the server-side costs and complexities, why do you think some random enthusiasts are going to float those costs for a game?

I've never been "robbed by a game publisher". If I purchase a subscription for a game I know my interaction with that game is what I'm paying for, and I don't buy in-game assets with real money. I fully realize entertainment costs money, and if I'm paying even the fairly high subscription cost of World of Warcraft at $15 a month or whatever it is, per-hour my entertainment costs $1 or less; That's a win for me.

$100 a month as a small piece of a huge server colocation, it's an exercise in scaling. The server they're leasing for $100 a month isn't going to run an online game with 20k players on it, that takes a whole room full of them. Companies like Blizzard or EA make this happen by scaling, if a game loses popularity even with subscriptions there's a point where the operating costs don't make sense.

I could probably go through this and answer these directly, but you're way far off-base and impassioned to points that are not realistic. Bottom line: You do not own any game assets, ever. It's nothing like a bank holding your money, and it's not like repair parts for a physical electronic device you can hold in your hand; With a few exceptions in an in-game market, once you buy something in a game for real money it becomes intrinsically valuable but none of it has a real-world value, nor is any of it deeded/titled to you. Companies don't have to run servers forever for any game, if you spend a bunch of money on a game subscription or items then you've paid upkeep and to purchase servers, pay employees, and marketing costs; Once that money stream goes away the company isn't going to dump money down a hole to keep an old game server running, support for everything ends sometime. And the DRM is copy-protection and anti-cheat, but it's there because of piracy, so blame them for making software companies put things in nightmare-mode for everyone else. These are all just facts, and there's no legal standing for anything you're striving for in this discussion; Don't pay for in-game purchases or get into subscription-based software if you want to keep your money, it's that simple.

Probably, my only concern would be that there are some A320 boards that have 5000 series support, but they have a lot fewer features and I/O than other chipsets. The price difference between a budget A320 and a better A520 is not much, and while the A520 may not have VRM heatsinks it would be significantly better.

No company would willfully make a product that they have to support indefinitely. While that would be a boon for gamers, it's untenable and unreasonable. There's an argument to be made about how nice it would be if they released the code to other people that wanted to keep them up, but if the game isn't being sold, or a subscription isn't being paid for upkeep, that infrastructure is just a massive money-sink so no one is going to take it on anyway. The EULA you agree to says that in-game items are not your property, and it doesn't technically reside on hardware you own anyway if it's online-only. Those microtransactions are what pay the bills, any online game or 'cheap upfront' game with microtransactions has a profit model based on those microtransactions running the servers. As far as online-connected single-player games, that is almost always for DRM purposes, so if you want to blame someone for that point it at software pirates; They've made companies protect their income stream by putting DRM into games. It sucks but piracy hurts businesses, and they're finding ways to deal with it. Even VHS tapes had copy-protection on them, for decades media creators have taken great strides to limit piracy. Also, safety recalls are completely different, it is an inconvenience that a video game goes offline but it won't cause a safety problem like a PSU or battery failing spectacularly.

By design, any AM4 motherboard should run any AM4 chip the BIOS supports. Really though, the difference in cost between a board with and without VRM heatsinks is typically small. What board are you looking at that doesn't have the heatsinks on it?

It's so funny to me just how far vehicle performance has come in the last few decades. I remember back in about 2003 driving an LT1 C4 Corvette for the first time, and being absolutely shocked at what 300hp felt like; It was like a rocket ship compared to anything else I'd driven at the time. That was a vehicle Road & Track tested when new at 5.7 second 0-60mph, and a 14~ish second 1/4 mile; A new V6 Camry will do that, with similar braking and skidpad performance as well.

Jay’s video is illuminating; EK pre-paying for content and basically ghosting creators is crazy stuff. EK clearly mismanages funds. Edit: To be clear it’s much worse that they are currently not paying invoices and employees they owe, though that is a much more common scenario. They’re seemingly unreliable in all aspects of business relations.