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mallenwho

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About mallenwho

  • Birthday Nov 07, 1994

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Melbourne

System

  • CPU
    Intel i7 4770
  • Motherboard
    ASUS Z87 Expert
  • RAM
    Kingston DDR3 16GB
  • GPU
    ASUS 970 Strix
  • Case
    Coolermaster CM 690 II Advanced NVidia Edition
  • Storage
    128GB SSD, 2TB HDD
  • PSU
    Corsair 750W CM
  • Display(s)
    Crossover 21:9 29" Engineering Sample, with ASUS 24" TN Secondary
  • Cooling
    Stock
  • Keyboard
    Ducky Shine 3 Cherry Brown
  • Mouse
    Corsair Vengeance M65
  • Sound
    Something 15 years old that works
  • Operating System
    Windows 10

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  1. Summary Two issues: a bad automated mis-translation and an auto-moderation change to particular Palestinian accounts which has harmed their posts' reach. Mis-translation - reported 19/20: Meta has apologized saying a bug caused 'inappropriate' auto-translations. The bug 'affected users with the word “Palestinian” written in English on their profile, the Palestinian flag emoji and the word “alhamdulillah” written in Arabic. When auto-translated to English the phrase read: “Praise be to god, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom.” It now reads "Thank God". A Meta spokesperson on 20/10: “We fixed a problem that briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations in some of our products. We sincerely apologize that this happened.” Moderation change - reported 19/10: Several individual Palestinian accounts experiencing a substantial drop in views and exposure in the past week since the conflict began, or even being banned outright and without warning. This isn't new; 'in May 2021 during a separate escalation in Palestine, Facebook and Instagram users posting about Palestine reported a similar reduction in the reach of their posts.' At the time, the auto-moderation incidents led 200 Meta employees to write an open letter to management demanding that Meta address moderation shortcomings. A subsequent independent analysis commissioned by Meta found that Instagram/Facebook had violated Palestinian human rights by censoring content related to Israel's 2021 attacks on Gaza. Quotes from Fahad Ali, the secretary of Electronic Frontiers Australia and a Palestinian based in Sydney: there had not been enough transparency from Meta on how the mis-translation was allowed to occur: Quotes from a former Facebook employee with access to discussions among current Meta employees: Quotes from Facebook back in June 2021 in response to the last time this happened. Clearly, they didn't learn: My thoughts Halon's razer: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. This probably isn't some Meta executive turning the knobs of moderation to squash individual Palestinian views; it is probably automated. Which makes it worse: what will the automated system decide to subjugate and censor next?? The moderation is clearly being supported by algorithms or high-level assumptions that have internal biases of some sort, but Meta is not transparent enough to reveal what those biases might be. This isn't an isolated incident, but in this case a pattern of behaviour that has repeatedly and specifically impacted Palestinian accounts. This has been flagged by Meta, studied by Meta, and supposedly 'Fixed' by Meta. But it doesn't seem to have been fixed. What will it take to properly change big social media moderation practices? Sources 19/10 Guardian article covering the whole issue: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/18/instagram-palestine-posts-censorship-accusations 20/10 Guardian article, followup including the apology: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/20/instagram-palestinian-user-profile-bios-terrorist-added-translation-meta-apology Mis-translation first published by: https://www.404media.co/instagram-palestinian-arabic-bio-translation/ Open letter from 200 Meta employees back in May 2021: https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/6/2/facebook-employees-demand-change-around-palestine-posts-report
  2. Hi. I'm setting up an overhead back-lit projector (projector is behind the screen) for a venue where the projector is 1080p 16:9, but the screen it projects onto is 4:3. This means that the left and right portions are lost. I want to isolate the content to the central 4:3 portion of the screen only. Replacing the screen is not a solution. A low-tech stopgap we've been using is to use 4:3 powerpoint slides, which are cropped appropriately, but for other applications like ProPresenter (which we're migrating towards from Powerpoint) or fullscreen 16:9 videos, it becomes more of a hassle to get 4:3 content positioned well, and 16:9 content cropped to fit. The best solution would be a tool which convinces the computer that it is outputting to a 4:3 monitor not a 16:9 one. But I don't know what that tool is. I tried looking in display settings but it seems to be locked off to controlling framerate only. I must clearly be lacking the right keyword to search because all I find are screenshot cropping tools. Thanks in advance!
  3. I let it run overnight, I've updated windows and antivirus. I've turned off/uninstalled some programs that really don't need to run from boot. No change The issue isn't with some peice of malware that's consuming all my processing. It's that the relative computational work of all activities has just skyrocketed, meaning that simple activities or programs overwhelm the system. it's not like there's one process hogging all my resources. They're the normal programs. It's just tougher for them. And even when resources are only being used at 50% ish, normal behabiour is still sluggish. I'm confused as to what is slowing it down when no resource monitoring detects a change. And why a couple of simple resource troubleshoots might have made this change.
  4. Updated windows and windows defender. No change. System still using 152MBs of disk. It might be because I told windows to "do maintenance", whatever that is. It's accessing my G drive (main storage drive). It's pinning it at 40% use. It has my documents and most of my applications, and is mirrored in RAID 1. So both physical drives are being hit with the same load. I guess i didn't think much of it before. C drive use is close to 0 most of the time. Is this use of the secondary hard drive significant?
  5. I've been troubleshooting another larger problem with my system but something I've changed (or maybe coincidence) has profoundly affected my overall pc (cpu) performance. I have an i7 4770. Not the fastest, I know. But it can still handle most of my applications simultaneously without breaking a sweat. 200 tabs in Chrome, will be a lot of ram but might only be 30% use. Idling, it should be under 10% use. The past day, merely idling has been over 50% use, and something as strenuous as opening windows search takes it to 100%. Furthermore, normal proceses are behaving exceptionally sluggishly - moving the mouse across screen is jumpy; almost all commands and hotkeys take a moment; video playback is choppy with fragmented audio. Overall, it's behaving like a windows xp machine with a hard drive. This is not normal performance! It's not like there's a virus sucking up all my performance. It's like normally simple tasks are suddenly a tremendous burdon on the CPU. Using task manager to force quit java used 10% cpu temporarily. Changing desktop backgrounds used 20%. Runtime broker is now idling at 10-15%. These processes should be a fraction of a percent. Other processes that would normally be insignificant are instead using a % each which is how idling can get up to 50-80% use. see screenshot of task manager for demo. The troubleshooting I had done for my other problem was to run chkdsk on the c drive, and to run memtest off a usb. I went into bios a couple times while switching boot priority, but I don't think I changed anything. Resource Manager shows all 8 threads running away.... at close to 100% work. I don't think it's to do with a disabled core. Software doesn't recognise anything is wrong. System has been restarted several times. Any tips would be very much appreciated.
  6. I've been happily using the nvme at speed for a year, but I now have a need to migrate the system to an itx case and there's not enough PCI slots to go around (for the adapter) it's not ideal but I'd much rather adapt the drive than copy the contents to sata. In that case, sounds like the best call is some sort of pcie ribbon splitter...
  7. I've currently got an ATX z97 motherboard with an nvme C drive, installed in a riser card in a PCIe slot - Because of course the z97 chipset was before m.2 slots on motherboards were a thing. I need to migrate my computer into a tiny case so I have an itx z97 motherboard. It also lacks an m.2 slot. It only has the one PCIe slot and I'd like a graphics card. I've found devices such as these https://www.ebay.com.au/i/112562167122?chn=ps which are basically a sata header to m.2 adapter, in a 2.5" enclosure. To me, that means they're using the sata m.2 protocol, not nvme. Is there a straightforward way to have an nvme drive run on a sata interface? Or failing that, to split a 16x PCIE lane between a 4x and 8x slot (or 2 8x slots) so I can have the adapter card too, all while being flexible ribbons because it has to fit in an itx enclosure. Thanks for any help or wisdom.
  8. Really sad to see cities skylines miss out on the gaming benchmarks. It's a well defined CPU bound game that has at least some multithreaded optimisation, it's a top 50 steam game for the past three years, and currently the community is more toxic than most with everyone having an opinion on what's best (the prevailing being Intel is just "better for gaming" despite not every game having the same workload.) Real benchmarks with no bottlenecks (might need 64gb ram to avoid bottlenecking there) would go a really long way in that community, where the difficulty to run the game and its dedicated fan base sees MANY people building dedicated rigs custom optimised to run it. And with the misinformation out there as to what happens with cities skylines, a lot of people are getting the wrong deal. One graph would be great. A number would be better. Please let me know if this is something you'd consider expanding upon LMG.
  9. Hey yall. I'm case shopping but want a case with a side panel window on the right panel not the left. If it's on the left I will never be able to see or appreciate it, and I want to. That's non negociable. As far as i can tell the single case on the market right now with an inverted layout - at least the only one worth salt, is the corsair 600c. It's a nice case, I like it. But it's plastic and perspex and I'm a huge sucker for quality material choices. It was glass and aluminium shopping for me, long before they became popular. I know there are a couple cases with reversable motherboard trays such that they're flexible. I can't name them all off the top of my head, but they include the Be Quiet! cases and the origin pc custom tower. I would look into a good case like that. What I want is to take a conventional ATX case, flip it upside down, put the top panel on the bottom and the bottom on the top (either by a perfect fit, adhesives and glue, or by some modification) and for the front panel to look good enough upside down as it is. The way I see it, there are two cases right now that look like they'd be easy to make the same upside down as right way up - Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ATX, and the Corsair 570x. Could someone with one of those cases take a look at their top and bottom panels and see if they line up at all? I've gone to pc shops but they're not fans of me inverting and deliberately dismantling their display cases. Otherwise, tips on other good invertable cases, either by design or by accident. Many thanks.
  10. It's $1400 for 128gb, which is same as what i'd get through the Axon 7. Yeah i know i'm not here for phone advice. I'm here to figure out how something costs that much. Apple for a decade how has been the benchmark for overcharging for the sake of design and style. I'm honestly shocked that Google one-up'd them. The Pixel XL is $14 more even than an iphone 7 plus from the apple store - the most expensive place. Apple still holds the crown for best design and most polished software, and most people say that it is that good but not that worth it. That combined with google always subsidising their first party options to get more into android. It's just reverse bonkers crazy to me. Yes, clearly the correct answer is value for horses go for one of the chinese. So i will. Easy solution.
  11. I know i've seen 2 or 3 posts similar to this but oh well... Comparing prices to buy my first ever smart phone (yes. get excited) Upgrading from this: Looking at Australian retail, the Axon 7 launches in Aus next week for $600 at launch. This is comprable to the One Plus 3, which makes sense. Choose what you want to focus on, either sound or ram. pay the same price. Linus said similar in his Axon review. Then, pixel launches, and everyone talks awesome about it. I am about to click buy on the ZTE and decide to check out the other team. The pixel xl sports almost idential hardware to the Axon 7 (according to GSMArena), but retails in australia through JB Hi Fi for a whopping $1400!!! What the actual and absolute heck! iPhone 7 is $1200, so i could get a really good bluetooth headphones TOO for that cost! The specs between the axon 7 and pixel xl are really similar. Both are 1440p amoled displays. both are 4gb rams. Both have good cameras (I expect the pixel to have better software and autofocus, but the zte is f1.8 compared to f2.0) The pixel really delivers through on the camera (trumpeting the "best smartphone camera ever", apparently a weekly prize), while the zte is the only phone since the HTC One m8 to do really good sound, and has "broken the sound test" of some reviewers by being that loud and good! I'd rather go for the sound anyway, and this is the ONLY phone doing anything about it. Meanwhile, every single phone now has a very good camera, so i can forego an outstanding camera. The zte is a snapdragon 820. The pixel is an 821, which by Qualcom's own materal is practically an identical chip, instead "building upon" the 820 and only really improves on "VR performance", which we all know is rubbish on mobile anyway. So i know that because the pixel is a first party google phone, the software will be great. And that's what they want you to think. But how polished can something really get?? Google has always subsidised their first party phones, and they're practically the largest company on the planet now. Seriously, what gives??? What can make a phone cost $1400??? Apple is the benchmark for overkill price, and they're $200 cheaper!! The zte is the same hardware, maybe better, with less great software, for 40% of the cost. Please enlighten me!!
  12. got a 970 strix. While the polaris stuff is unlikley to be better for me for raw horsepower, I'm very interested in the better display workings with the AMD offerings. I'm also wanting to build a stream PC. so there's that...
  13. This is a massively confusing issue, with lots of useless guides online on what i'm supposed to be doing. It also involves using a lot of stock windows tools which are rubbish and outdated. But required, as you have to transplant the OS so seamlessly it doesn't notice. I have now tried this operation twice by myself, failing both times. Now i need help. This post may be very long. More of a journal than a formal post. Please bear with me. Advice is appreciated. I have a 128gb SSD boot drive and a number of 2tb hdds for mass storage (i do a lot of things with media, i have about 4tb worth of files). 128gb is puny for a C drive, and despite me deliberately never installing any application, or document to the drive (chrome, Microsoft office, that's it), it still repeatedly fills up with cache and temp files, especially from adobe applications (again, the whole "large files with media" thing, going straight to the c drive with no scratch disk to speak of) So I've bought a new 480gb ssd. I'd like to make it my boot drive, put applications on it, etc. Convert the SSD into a scratch disk. Keep mass storage. In fact, remove the old C drive entirely, and copy across the contents so perfectly that the computer can simply reboot off the new drive (same designation etc) and never skip a beat. That's the plan, anyway. Attempt one: Macrium Reflect to create a disk clone on the new drive. There is a lot of conflict on the internet over what exactly disk cloning and disk imaging do. I have found sources that both claim one works to copy a c drive, the other doesn't (doesn't grap crucial boot info). For both drives. useful. The clone seemed to work seamlessly enough, but cloned the same partitions leaving a 300gb hole on the new drive. Problem 1: windows does not allow you to extend partitions on a boot drive. this makes it unbootable.... Furthermore, when i replaced the drive in the computer, the thing failed altogether. I tried to rebuild windows following its own instructions, but it got caught in a restart loop at 64%, 1% Configuring Startup Settings (eg. http://www.tenforums.com/installation-setup/12857-endless-boot-loop-after-reset.html) This was unnerving, as it said it would format all my hard drives and rework them. It didn't. I pulled out the new drive, put in the old one, everything booted fine as usual. Went on normal way. Attempt two: I aborted this because the last backup i had was from December. So i decided to do a proper backup and re-image, and use Windows' own recovery tools to apply that image to the computer. Backup had a lot of hiccups. A number of backups failed because of insufficient drive space, and one or two files corrupting the process. List of errors: 0x807800C5, 0x80070002, Windows update troubleshooter failed, 0x807800F, Windows 10 Service registration is Missing or Corrupt. But finally, it created a passable image. And i got a full backup of my C drive. Made a recovery disk. Shut down the computer. Unplugged everything. Put in the blank drive and recovery disk. had another crack at it. Immediately had to plug drives back in again. For the system-wide image to work (DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW TO IMAGE ONLY A SINGLE DRIVE???) i needed the other hard drives to be installed, which would then be formatted, wiped and replaced by the image. I tried this twice. both times it failed (You need to repair your PC, 0x8078012D). I try to use command prompt to run checkdisk on the two drives, /r and /f to find bad sectors and repair them. The new C drive (with the botched images on it) took four hours through this process, turned over zero bad sectors, gave the all clear. The O drive (with the image) didn't get past 0%. got stuck for half an hour on sector 28. I gave up. tried to restart again. Failed again (you need to repair your PC, 0xc000000f). I was very scared that my hard drives would be wiped. But once again, they're untouched. Either the image actually worked perfectly, or it isn't actually doing anything at all! I'm not sure which is scarier!! Should i try running checkdisk before i create the image? should i be using third party software (do not want to pay for anything!)?? Tell me something better to do! Thank you in advance.
  14. The "Gamer Branding" not only applies to the product's design itself, but the design of its packaging too.
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