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silentdragon95

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  1. Agree
    silentdragon95 reacted to Mr.Zixxel in I Made a Wifi Cracking Van   
    I always feel sorry for North Americans when I hear "use up your data limit" when it comes to internet connections.
  2. Informative
    silentdragon95 got a reaction from Wiking22pl in We Downgraded all our PCs to Prove You Don’t Need a New One   
    I wonder if any of the weird glitches they encountered might have been because they swapped the SSDs from their original workstations into the refurbished ones. Yes, Windows is pretty good at dealing with this nowadays, but there can absolutely still be minor driver or stability issues.
     
    That being said, I do like that they came to the conclusion that even 10 year old systems are perfectly fine for most everyday tasks. I mean heck, there is also still a Core2Quad machine deployed in the family, not because its owner couldn't afford to upgrade, he's just a bit stingy and also doesn't really need to - all he ever really does is check his e-mails, write documents in Word and check a few websites, which works fine. Apart from that I outfitted some family members with refurbished Fujitsu LifeBooks years ago, running 4th (and one 6th gen) Intel CPUs, and they are also still in use as they work fine. The worst thing about them is their screens, but to be honest the rather low resolution is way less of an issue for users who would struggle to be able to read anything at 1080p on a laptop screen anyway.
     
    Even my "new" laptop that I just recently bought for my masters degree is a 4-year old refurbished Dell Precision 5540. Sure, way newer than anything I mentioned so far, but I specifically needed a laptop with 32GB of RAM and good CPU performance because I'm going to have to work with various VMs and virtual networks a bunch. I could have gotten something newer or fancier, but I already have a very powerful desktop PC at home which obviously isn't going anywhere, so I simply didn't want to spend >1000€ on another computer - the Dell was half that.
     
    Although a lot of these old machines will probably get upgraded when support for Windows 10 ends. I know you can install Windows 11 with an easy workaround, for now, but I simply don't want the headache of dealing with support for half of my family when Microsoft eventually does something that actually breaks compatibility with older CPUs or when something doesn't quite work like it used to. It may never happen, but I'm not going to accept that risk on behalf of someone else (even though I'd personally be fine with it).
  3. Agree
    silentdragon95 got a reaction from podkall in We Downgraded all our PCs to Prove You Don’t Need a New One   
    The hard drive certainly didn't help. I was able to play GTA V on GPUs as old as a Radeon HD 4890 from 2009 (with modded drivers) with a Core2Quad. In fact, it even works with two of them in Crossfire, and quite decently so (just don't ask why anyone would subject themselves to two TeraScale GPUs in CrossFire, because it is a terrible idea 😅).
     
    GTA V is not only pretty good as a game, it is amazing from a technical standpoint as well. It still looks quite good after all these years and it can run on anything from a literal potato to a modern high-end PC, and if you play with the advanced graphics settings it still allows modern high-end GPUs to stretch their legs. I don't approve of everything Rockstar is doing, but in this regard I do think that other developers should take note.
  4. Like
    silentdragon95 reacted to Itrio in We Downgraded all our PCs to Prove You Don’t Need a New One   
    I wanted to point out that at no point during the video was it addressed that moving a Windows install between CPUs, GPUs and other such hardware considerations can cause a LOT of the complaints I heard in the video from the subjects. Depending on what the source drive was installed on, I've had some weird issues that stemmed completely from just "slapping my old drive in the new box", where as a fresh Windows installation experienced none of the issues.
     
    You mentioned the NVMe support, and your ability to just swap drives at 2:54 in the video, but don't make any further mention, but then have the subjects complaining about the issues they experienced, all of which could be attributed to, or at least impacted by, an unclean windows installation having a significant change in hardware configuration. If it was from another similarly spec'd model of HP or Dell prebuilt, sure, that's acceptable in most cases from an IT perspective - just not in this use case, I fear. For context, I recently upgraded from a 5800X to a 7900X CPU, moving motherboards and RAM architectures in the process (AM4 to AM5, and DDR4 to DDR5). As an avid VR Chat player, the same world would net me 23-26 FPS on the same 3070 with my reused windows install, and almost 40-50 FPS on a fresh windows install. A clean install makes a world of difference for significant hardware changes.
     
    My question, was any consideration for the significant change in hardware to the pre-existing Windows installations that were used for this experiment? (understandably, this was not a Labs thing, and more a "proof of concept", but I'm curious)
  5. Agree
    silentdragon95 reacted to YoungBlade in We Downgraded all our PCs to Prove You Don’t Need a New One   
    Honestly, for modest tasks, modest hardware is still perfectly serviceable. When my mom was really strapped for cash, but needed a desktop, I was able to use some spare parts and eBay upgrades to get her up and running for under $100. The machine has a Core 2 Quad Q9400, 4GB DDR2 RAM, and a Quadro 600 for the GPU - the key piece was a 120GB SSD and having it run Ubuntu 20.04.
     
    When she had gotten some degree of of financial stability, I approached her about upgrading it, assuming it had been giving her headaches.
     
    Turns out, she's totally fine with it, so rejected the offer - even if I was willing to front the bill. She has no complaints about the speed or what it's able to do on the computer, because for the way she uses her computer, she just doesn't need more. The most intensive thing she ever does is watch a YouTube video or browse Facebook. She also doesn't really multitask beyond rare occasions where she might have a dozen tabs open along with LibreOffice, which the computer can barely handle, sure, but it can handle it.
     
    So yeah, I know that a lot of folks who do more basic tasks can get away with way less than a modern system.
  6. Funny
    silentdragon95 got a reaction from Do everything later in I’ve gotta get out of this contract   
    Aw man, I was so hoping that Linus would build another mineral oil PC for Luke. That actually might have worked, given how annoying those are to deal with 😄
  7. Funny
    silentdragon95 got a reaction from AbsoluteWoo in Stop Calling these “Chromebooks”   
    The main thing I dislike about Chromebooks is the fact that they are just yet another tool by Google to collect your data and lock you into their ecosystem. And the fact that they are popular in schools (at least in the US) means that this happens from a very young age. I wish Mozillas Firefox OS would have taken off instead, but... Oh well. Of course most people don't actually care about that.
     
    I do think that a tablet (which, let's be real, is going to be an iPad) is better suited for a classroom, simply because you can use the pencil to write notes on it, but then again when I went to primary school 20 years ago we were proud of having a computer in the classroom, so what do I know. It could however run Pinball! Take that, Chromebooks!
     
    But I do see the merits ChromeOS has. It's actually pretty easy to use and, unlike on Windows, it is a really hard for inexperienced users to screw something up by clicking the wrong link or downloading the wrong file. It does share these advantages with iPads and MacBooks, however against those Chromebooks tend to have a price advantage and ChromeOS is also a lot more feature complete than iPad OS these days. Ultimately, I don't see myself ever owning one, but I can understand that for some people it is pretty much just the perfect laptop.
  8. Agree
    silentdragon95 got a reaction from Issac Zachary in Stop Calling these “Chromebooks”   
    The main thing I dislike about Chromebooks is the fact that they are just yet another tool by Google to collect your data and lock you into their ecosystem. And the fact that they are popular in schools (at least in the US) means that this happens from a very young age. I wish Mozillas Firefox OS would have taken off instead, but... Oh well. Of course most people don't actually care about that.
     
    I do think that a tablet (which, let's be real, is going to be an iPad) is better suited for a classroom, simply because you can use the pencil to write notes on it, but then again when I went to primary school 20 years ago we were proud of having a computer in the classroom, so what do I know. It could however run Pinball! Take that, Chromebooks!
     
    But I do see the merits ChromeOS has. It's actually pretty easy to use and, unlike on Windows, it is a really hard for inexperienced users to screw something up by clicking the wrong link or downloading the wrong file. It does share these advantages with iPads and MacBooks, however against those Chromebooks tend to have a price advantage and ChromeOS is also a lot more feature complete than iPad OS these days. Ultimately, I don't see myself ever owning one, but I can understand that for some people it is pretty much just the perfect laptop.
  9. Agree
    silentdragon95 got a reaction from randy123 in Stop Calling these “Chromebooks”   
    The main thing I dislike about Chromebooks is the fact that they are just yet another tool by Google to collect your data and lock you into their ecosystem. And the fact that they are popular in schools (at least in the US) means that this happens from a very young age. I wish Mozillas Firefox OS would have taken off instead, but... Oh well. Of course most people don't actually care about that.
     
    I do think that a tablet (which, let's be real, is going to be an iPad) is better suited for a classroom, simply because you can use the pencil to write notes on it, but then again when I went to primary school 20 years ago we were proud of having a computer in the classroom, so what do I know. It could however run Pinball! Take that, Chromebooks!
     
    But I do see the merits ChromeOS has. It's actually pretty easy to use and, unlike on Windows, it is a really hard for inexperienced users to screw something up by clicking the wrong link or downloading the wrong file. It does share these advantages with iPads and MacBooks, however against those Chromebooks tend to have a price advantage and ChromeOS is also a lot more feature complete than iPad OS these days. Ultimately, I don't see myself ever owning one, but I can understand that for some people it is pretty much just the perfect laptop.
  10. Agree
    silentdragon95 got a reaction from Uttamattamakin in Stop Calling these “Chromebooks”   
    The main thing I dislike about Chromebooks is the fact that they are just yet another tool by Google to collect your data and lock you into their ecosystem. And the fact that they are popular in schools (at least in the US) means that this happens from a very young age. I wish Mozillas Firefox OS would have taken off instead, but... Oh well. Of course most people don't actually care about that.
     
    I do think that a tablet (which, let's be real, is going to be an iPad) is better suited for a classroom, simply because you can use the pencil to write notes on it, but then again when I went to primary school 20 years ago we were proud of having a computer in the classroom, so what do I know. It could however run Pinball! Take that, Chromebooks!
     
    But I do see the merits ChromeOS has. It's actually pretty easy to use and, unlike on Windows, it is a really hard for inexperienced users to screw something up by clicking the wrong link or downloading the wrong file. It does share these advantages with iPads and MacBooks, however against those Chromebooks tend to have a price advantage and ChromeOS is also a lot more feature complete than iPad OS these days. Ultimately, I don't see myself ever owning one, but I can understand that for some people it is pretty much just the perfect laptop.
  11. Agree
    silentdragon95 got a reaction from Tideroo in Stop Calling these “Chromebooks”   
    The main thing I dislike about Chromebooks is the fact that they are just yet another tool by Google to collect your data and lock you into their ecosystem. And the fact that they are popular in schools (at least in the US) means that this happens from a very young age. I wish Mozillas Firefox OS would have taken off instead, but... Oh well. Of course most people don't actually care about that.
     
    I do think that a tablet (which, let's be real, is going to be an iPad) is better suited for a classroom, simply because you can use the pencil to write notes on it, but then again when I went to primary school 20 years ago we were proud of having a computer in the classroom, so what do I know. It could however run Pinball! Take that, Chromebooks!
     
    But I do see the merits ChromeOS has. It's actually pretty easy to use and, unlike on Windows, it is a really hard for inexperienced users to screw something up by clicking the wrong link or downloading the wrong file. It does share these advantages with iPads and MacBooks, however against those Chromebooks tend to have a price advantage and ChromeOS is also a lot more feature complete than iPad OS these days. Ultimately, I don't see myself ever owning one, but I can understand that for some people it is pretty much just the perfect laptop.
  12. Like
    silentdragon95 got a reaction from unv in My network is bigger than yours - Redundant Networking Upgrade / Server Room Update   
    Kinda wild that LMG does not appear to have redundant internet connections. When Covid hit and my internet connection via Coax-Cable became even more unreliable than it was before, I went and got an additional DSL connection. It's technically a little less than half the speed of the Coax connection (200Mbit vs. 500Mbit), but it's had zero downtime or lagspikes and the speed doesn't randomly decrease in the evening (yay, shared mediums). OPNsense handles load balancing and failover, which works great, as long as you don't need native IPv6. Somehow there seems to be no proper way to implement load balancing of two connections in IPv6 yet. Anyway.
     
    It's funny how even LMG seems to be running into the classic "we used to be a small company, now we're large, our infrastructure just sort of grew uncontrolled and now we're starting to hit a bunch of walls" problem. It happens to the best of us.
  13. Like
    silentdragon95 got a reaction from dogwitch in My network is bigger than yours - Redundant Networking Upgrade / Server Room Update   
    Kinda wild that LMG does not appear to have redundant internet connections. When Covid hit and my internet connection via Coax-Cable became even more unreliable than it was before, I went and got an additional DSL connection. It's technically a little less than half the speed of the Coax connection (200Mbit vs. 500Mbit), but it's had zero downtime or lagspikes and the speed doesn't randomly decrease in the evening (yay, shared mediums). OPNsense handles load balancing and failover, which works great, as long as you don't need native IPv6. Somehow there seems to be no proper way to implement load balancing of two connections in IPv6 yet. Anyway.
     
    It's funny how even LMG seems to be running into the classic "we used to be a small company, now we're large, our infrastructure just sort of grew uncontrolled and now we're starting to hit a bunch of walls" problem. It happens to the best of us.
  14. Like
    silentdragon95 got a reaction from Needfuldoer in My network is bigger than yours - Redundant Networking Upgrade / Server Room Update   
    I still meet two out of three criteria, I'd say that's pretty good for a home solution that's essentially unnecessary since any sane person would have just taken the hit in speed and switched to the DSL connection entirely 😄
     
    On none of the three occasions in the last 2 years where the coax connection went down for an extended amount of time due to somebody accidentally digging through the line somewhere (again, yay, shared mediums) the DSL connection was affected. After all, it's entirely different infrastructure.
     
    Can't say that the municipal government was as lucky, someone there clearly must have thought that getting two internet connections with the same provider was a good idea (Narrator: It wasn't.) They ended up running a cable across a street to wire a residential DSL connection into the fiber ring between their various buildings, so users could at least send and receive e-mail. They specifically told users not to use it for anything else though as it would have been overwhelmed easily.
  15. Like
    silentdragon95 got a reaction from Needfuldoer in My network is bigger than yours - Redundant Networking Upgrade / Server Room Update   
    Kinda wild that LMG does not appear to have redundant internet connections. When Covid hit and my internet connection via Coax-Cable became even more unreliable than it was before, I went and got an additional DSL connection. It's technically a little less than half the speed of the Coax connection (200Mbit vs. 500Mbit), but it's had zero downtime or lagspikes and the speed doesn't randomly decrease in the evening (yay, shared mediums). OPNsense handles load balancing and failover, which works great, as long as you don't need native IPv6. Somehow there seems to be no proper way to implement load balancing of two connections in IPv6 yet. Anyway.
     
    It's funny how even LMG seems to be running into the classic "we used to be a small company, now we're large, our infrastructure just sort of grew uncontrolled and now we're starting to hit a bunch of walls" problem. It happens to the best of us.
  16. Agree
    silentdragon95 reacted to maplepants in Apple please watch this.   
    Yeah, you're right. My use of fanless there wasn't quite what I meant. I meant that Apple's choice of passive cooling for the Air and active cooling via fan for the Pro was validated in this video.
     
    I disagree here. All laptops are thermally constrained. Engineering teams have to balance how much heat to let the system generate and how to get rid of it. Thermal throttling can be a valid way to keep a system's temps safe. Thinkpads, and other laptops that offer high end single threaded performance often choose to make this trade off for sustained multi-core workloads. Because it allows you to push single core performance (which people feel much more) further.
     
    In the Macbook Air, Apple decided to let the peak heat output be such that extended workloads that push the CPU and GPU will result in some thermal throttling. In the Macbook Pro, they decided to put in active cooling system which would have fans spin instead of thermal throttling.
     
    The M1/M2 Macbook Air would be a worse laptop than it is now if a noisy cooling solution were added to it, just so that you could run workloads like Cinebench for 30+ minutes without thermal throttling. 
  17. Like
    silentdragon95 got a reaction from dogwitch in It’s Back and I’m SO Excited! - Threadripper 7000   
    As sad as it is, HEDT like we used to know it really appears to be dead. Now to be fair, with the current core counts on consumer platforms, an important would-be unique selling point of HEDT is gone, but it's not like that was the only reason to go HEDT.
     
    All I really want is more PCIe lanes, or at least the ability to split down PCIe 5 lanes into twice the amount of PCIe 4 lanes (which, let's be real, are more than fast enough). But unfortunately, the manufacturers seem to have decided that you now have to drop enormous amounts of money if you want this.
  18. Agree
    silentdragon95 got a reaction from Needfuldoer in Building a NAS   
    Keep in mind that RAID is not a backup. Ideally you'd either be storing backups of your other computers on the NAS, in which case you don't really need redundancy because the data is already a copy, or you'd be storing important files that aren't necessarily saved anywhere else, in which case you really should have a regular backup to an external drive or cloud storage. In both cases RAID isn't really all that necessary.
     
    If speed isn't as much of a concern, also keep in mind that 5200RPM HDDs aren't extremely loud either, and you could always set them to spin down after x amount of time, so they wouldn't be running during the night for example. Also do make sure that the rest of your components are quiet if that is a big concern for you, especially SFF power supplies aren't really known for being super quiet due to the small fan inside.
  19. Informative
    silentdragon95 got a reaction from dogwitch in I should have done this in the first place   
    And this is exactly what happens when people want "wireless everything" - there's only so many frequency bands these devices can use.
     
    I understand that sometimes running wires isn't an option, especially when you're renting, but whenever possible I would always prefer a wired solution. In my current apartment I was luckily able to do a lot of wiring inside the ceiling, as it already has cable channels under some faux wooden beams, but I still had to have a bunch of holes drilled. On the plus side though, there is now ethernet going everywhere, and switches are cheap. And, well, my audio setup is delightfully analog and I have no desire to change that - I have enough smart stuff connected to it, and I really don't need surround sound at home.
  20. Agree
    silentdragon95 reacted to emosun in I should have done this in the first place   
    I like how audio peaked in like the late 80's early 90s and has just been getting more complicated and less reliable ever since. That's what happens when an industry peaks , they start adding tons of expensive unreliable crap to pretend the industry is still innovating.
  21. Agree
    silentdragon95 got a reaction from GOTSpectrum in They Sent me a Broken PC AGAIN - $1500 PC Secret Shopper 3 Part 2   
    So uh, can we talk about the shipping costs for these systems? Is this a North America thing? I just checked a bunch of system integrators here in Germany and I honestly couldn't find any that would charge more than €20 for shipping. Triple-digit shipping costs is something I've only ever encountered when ordering something from another continent (that isn't Asia).
  22. Agree
    silentdragon95 got a reaction from MarkPol88 in They Sent me a Broken PC AGAIN - $1500 PC Secret Shopper 3 Part 2   
    So uh, can we talk about the shipping costs for these systems? Is this a North America thing? I just checked a bunch of system integrators here in Germany and I honestly couldn't find any that would charge more than €20 for shipping. Triple-digit shipping costs is something I've only ever encountered when ordering something from another continent (that isn't Asia).
  23. Like
    silentdragon95 reacted to Kilrah in Young People Try a Mac from 1996!   
    Heh, having to browse the filesystem to the apps folder to launch things definitely will throw people off. One common trick was to make a shortcut to the Applications folder and drop it into the System Folder/Apple Menu folder, then you got an approximation of a start menu... but that'd be a "power user" move. Also some apps would install to the HD root instead of the Applications folder as can be seen in the video so you'd have to know to move them to have that easy access to everything (which would usually work, unlike in the PC world).
     

     
    Our school had Mac Pluses, and we had one at home since my dad was a teacher and all schools were Mac back then thanks to the "generous" discounts Apple were giving schools to get people used to the system hoping they'd buy their own later.
  24. Like
    silentdragon95 reacted to Sousuke in Young People Try a Mac from 1996!   
    I love vintage Macs, especially from the "Lost Era" as it's called. 
     
    I only own one a Macintosh Performa 532, the one I have is running Mac OS 8.1 but originally ran System 7.5.1. It can run Mac OS 9.1 but is a machine from the same time as the one used in this video.
     
     

  25. Agree
    silentdragon95 reacted to ASines in LMG Sponsor Complaints   
    Hello!  I wanted to make a post (my first on LTT forums!) after following a new sponsor LMG used today in Flexispot. I didn't want to make this in the form of complaint, more like feedback.
     
    As someone looking into a standing desk, I found the options provided by Flexispot compelling.  I still may make a purchase (I always wait on these things).  However, I found the website to contain many things I do not like and I know Linus have complained about these tactics on WAN shows in the past.
     
    Firstly, the site is hard to navigate as there are many pop-ups, overheads, noises, and displays that make actually looking at the desks difficult.  They have "limited time offers" with hours and minutes left on their sale.  They misrepresent the price by showing their desk picture display on the home page show with a desk, but the price displayed is only for the frame, which you will not see until you click on the link, which you can't r-click but click to open a new tab.  And if you try to close the page, you get a browser pop up to confirm you wish to close the page.
     
    Honestly, the fact they offer a frame only option to be fine, as I live near an IKEA, and the price all in all appears to be a good value, but the website design concerns and based on what LMG has stated in the past is not up to their standards.  I do not wish to bash, simply if LMG can make a request to Flexispot it would be greatly appreciated.
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