LRossi

Just received the email below from Wyze. Not the first time this issue happens with Wyze, by the way... "(...)in some cases an Even Video was able to be viewed." I hope no one got caught walking around naked... Easiest lawsuit win ever.

Just putting it out there: Corsair currently has their K63 Wireless on sale (Cherry MX Red) for $50, which is less than half the MSRP. The product page says it qualifies for free shipping but it'll still try to charge you for shipping, so you might need to contact support for that. Context: it seems like this keyboard has been discontinued by Corsair (or so I was told by Corsair support), along with its lapboard pair which apparently can't be found anywhere for a while now. Still a pretty good keyboard for a very good price, so if you're ok with the fact that support will likely be limited going forward, it's a great deal. https://www.corsair.com/us/en/p/keyboards/ch-9145030-na/k63-wireless-mechanical-gaming-keyboard-blue-led-cherry-mx-red-ch-9145030-na

Hm...it's would be expensive for sure, but not nearly as much as a dedicated PC, with the plus side that you can then also use it as a HT-PC. I already own a Valve Index as well. A 25-meter optical TB3 cable costs around $430, plus ~$120 for a good dock with DP-out, and in my case another $70 for the TB board (Asrock X570 mobo). Main question is: does it work in practice (latency, compatibility, etc.), especially considering that the Corning datasheet recommends using the cable only with MacOS?

TL;DR: Can you use a Corning Thunderbolt 3 Optical cable to keep a desktop PC in one room and use VR in another? It gets way too expensive for the real person to have one PC dedicated for VR in the living room while also having a gaming PC somewhere else in the house. Considering Corning makes optical TB3 cables that are up to 50 meter in length, could it be used to connect to a dock in a different room for a VR setup? I know Linus used one of these in a video once, but this would actually be a very good real-world application for it...I'm thinking about it myself...if it works...

Update: apparently, the hacker has the court's data and experts fear a major leak on classified and sensitive cases. The Court's website is still down (https://www.stj.jus.br/), with just some updates posted on the efforts made so far.

Never been to Brazil, I assume? hehe

Summary The Brazilian Supreme Court of Justice, second-highest court in the Country (hierarchically beneath the Federal Supreme Court), suffered a cybernetic attack today. According to the report, the servers containing the entirety of the court's database have been encrypted by hackers, basically rendering the court useless until the issue has been dealt with. After encrypting the main database, the hackers managed to encrypt the backup servers as well. Technicians are trying to recover data from physical backup tapes. It is unsure at this point if all data will be recovered, or if a few days, weeks or months of data will be lost, including sensitive case files. No report was made so far if this was a case of ransomware or just foul play. Quotes My thoughts Well...shit. An attack of such magnitude raises questions about a possible targeted attack, since this Court deals with cases involving very powerful people. Sources https://brazilian.report/tech/2020/11/05/massive-hackers-attack-brazilian-government-on-alert/ [In portuguese]: https://www.tecmundo.com.br/seguranca/206233-ataque-hacker-ter-atingido-stj-pf-investiga.htm

Summary Facebook Strikes Deal to Skirt Apple’s App Store Commission Apple allowed Facebook to use its own payment system for paid online events until at least the end of 2020. Quotes My thoughts This is sure to spice things up in the Epic vs. Apple battle. Sources https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-strikes-deal-to-skirt-apples-app-store-commission-11601049903?mod=hp_lead_pos2

Watercool your mattress. Quite cool (ha!). Changed the fan to a Noctua one to make it quieter and it runs perfectly. No RGB, though...lol

I thought about using distilled water, but it would be too much every week...I mean, it uses at the very least 1/2 cup of water every night (now that I got the new fan I'm running it faster, so it's evaporating a full cup). There are other models out there, but most of them are waaaay more expensive. This same company also sells a more DIY model, which looks nice as well - I'd probably have bought that one had it been available at the time, as it seems to allow easier modding (maybe even changing the pump). Let me know if you need info on how to change the cooler, if you decide to go for it. I don't know if the silver strip will be effective, but I can provide an update on that in a few weeks. Cheers!

This may be a good video idea for LTT, I don't know...now that Linus is at home, would be a good opportunity...haha So, I decided to give this product a try - it's a mattress cooler that circulates water through a topper to keep you cool: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KPMPVLM/ It really works, and if you're a hot sleeper like me, you know you'd pay to keep your mattress cool. The working principle is simple - evaporative cooling. While it won't bring down the temperature more than 4~6degC lower than ambient (before you lay down), it will definitely pump the excess heat out of your mattress to keep you comfortable. I did put it beneath a 1" mattress topper, though, to make it more comfortable and avoid excess wear and tear, since I don't want any early leaks into my mattress. There were only two issues: Fan noise was a bit too much, probably due to a cheap Chinese fan. As with any water loop without biocide, it will develop some slime or even mold. Solving problem #1: The noisy fan was indeed a cheap Chinese fan. It moves a lot of air, but has to work at high RPMs to do so, and even the slowest fan speed is still pretty noisy - my wife was complaining every night. Nothing like a naggy wife to force you to fix something... So I opened it, found out it uses a standard 12V 120x25mm fan (although blade depth is shorter to accommodate an arguably unnecessary in-fan grill). Bought a Noctua A12 FLX, replaced it, now it's extremely silent. And it has a Noctua fan, come on... Pictures attached. *Possibly* solving problem #2: I don't want to add any biocide or anything, since it's not a closed loop and water evaporates around half a cup every night - so any chemical should be avoided. Chlorine would be perfect, but can you imagine the smell? What I did was to buy a silver strip made for water cooling and put it inside the reservoir. Now, I don't know if this will fully solve the issue, but it may at least improve the situation enough to allow me to flush it only every 4~5 weeks. Since water evaporates, there is some carbonate residue. Oh, there's another issue, of course: it has no RGB. But given that I use it inside my bedroom, I'll let that one slide.

Hey guys, I'm posting this here in case someone ever saw this happen and knows how to fix it... I have a Dell Precision 5530, was having issues with random reboots. Out of the blue it would just shutdown, unrelated to CPU activity (happened while idle or while running simulations, no traceable trigger). Nothing gets logged in Event Viewer, but I get an "ASF2 Force Off" in the BIOS. I read some posts in the Dell community forum and this issue seems to be very general, no particular root cause - but one post stood out, the person disabled C-states in the BIOS and it stopped rebooting. My laptop has never been able to sleep, it would reboot instead, so I thought it was related indeed. Disabled it for a few hours and it seems to be working. Did anyone ever see this? Anything I can do to fix this besides disabling C-states? I have the latest BIOS, btw. RAM modules are fine (re-seated them last week, ran Dell diag today), temps are fine (just re-pasted), no abnormal logs from HWiNFO just before a shutdown. Thank you!

Hey folks...I'm looking for some guidance here, maybe some of you can provide some insight... My father-in-law was disabled after an accident and had his right side paralyzed, so he has difficulties handling a mouse with his left hand (he's undergoing rehabilitation). We already got a high-contrast keyboard, which is extremely helpful, and we're trying a trackball mouse, which is indeed better for him. But we also want to have a touch monitor so he can have an alternative in case he's experiencing difficulties with the mouse. Do you have any recommendations for that? We're looking for something around 24", preferably that can be set at an angle on the table to make it more accessible. I mean, I have looked online and found some models, but the ones that are in a good price range (<$400) are usually from brands I never heard of...like this one, which would fit what we need, but I'm not sure if the touch function works well: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824016174 Any advice is much appreciated. Thank you!

I just wanted to share my experience with liquid metal on my AW13R3, and provide some tips and warnings in case anyone decides to repaste. For anyone not willing to read the whole thing, here are the tips and lessons learned from my case: - It will most likely void your warranty, if not right away, surely after a few months, as it stains the heatsink and doesn't come fully off from the die. Don't assume you can just wipe it off and replace with thermal compound in case you need to activate your warranty later on, as it kight not be the case. - AW13R3's heatsink seems to have only a thin copper sheath in contact with the die, the rest may be made of aluminum or some other alloy which reacts with the LM. Sorry I didn't take pictures, but after I removed the LM I tried using sandpaper on the copper to try and get all the LM out, only to discover it had somehow migrated into the heatsink. Don't know how deep because I didn't want to scrap it, but it was clear that there was some reaction involved. Scratching the copper didn't show more copper underneath. Really weird. - Protecting not only the GPU/CPU but also the area around them is an important safety measure. The electric tape is fine for the chips, but maybe using nail polish or something more heat-proof in the area around the CPU and GPU should prevent issues in case you have any mishap. - As mentioned by Alex here somewhere, moving the laptop around, especially with the LM still a bit warm, may cause issues. I'd wait a few minutes for it to cool before turning off, or even force the fans to run at full for a couple of minutes. Having the area around the chips better protected is a good mitigation measure, but never underestimate Murphy's law. - Maybe consider opening your laptop to inspect the service every so often, maybe every year, or even every 6 months. This could've avoided me a lot of trouble. I don't think you need to replace the LM, it works differently than regular thermal compound. As for the thermal pads, if you've replaced them as well, maybe consider getting new ones as they seem to become a bit dry and may come apart when you remove the heatsink. This may have been just the brand I used (Fujipoly), as the stock ones seem more forgiving, but still. - If for any reason you get LM anywhere but the die, isopropyl alcohol and a microfiber cloth are bad to remove it, but it seems to be the best there is. This thing is just awful to remove from anywhere, I guess there's some metal bonding thing that makes it extremely hard to clean. If you get it underneath any component, get a compressed air can, protect the other side with a microfiber cloth (you don't want to blow the LM from one place to another where it might be even worse), and start blowing from multiple sides, alternating with soaking it with isopropyl alcohol (90% plus, please). Worked for me. Ok, now to the issue. I won't go into details about how I did it, but I followed the guide available in iUnlock, which is great, and it worked out fine for almost 1 year. My temps dropped 17degC, which is a lot. Anything is better than the crappy stuff Dell uses, anyways. I repasted even the Dell I use at work. Preemptively answering some questions or comments: Yes, I used electric tape. No, I didn't apply too much, in fact I probably used a tad less than what is shown in iUnlock. Not my first repaste. So, what happened after almost 1 year of low temps? Suddenly my 1060 stopped working and Windows showed a "code 43" in device manager. My graphics amplifier still worked fine, so I started troubleshooting. After DDA didn't solve the problem I imagined it could be something hardware-related. Opened the laptop and found a tiny bit of LM has squirted out from the die all and made its way underneath one of the GPU memory modules. It was probably from throwing the laptop around (mea culpa here, as I have thrown it on my bed once or twice), but there's no way to know for sure, since the last time I threw it around was probably months before this happened, and I had been using the laptop every day for 3 days without moving it from my desk (I was on vacation). One day I'm gaming normally, the next day I notice my fps is dead. It probably took a few heat-cold cycles for the LM to actually short something. But still, it's amazing how the LM can escape from the middle of the die-heatsink contact. Regardless, I was lucky enough to be able to clean it without sustaining permanent damage to the laptop. Anywhere else the LM caused a short might have bricked my laptop. First I removed the excess with a microfiber cloth, then again but soaked in isopropyl alcohol. It's impossible to properly see underneath these chips without proper equipment, but it seemed like it had been just in one set of contacts close to the edge, so I cleaned what I could with the cloth and isopropyl, then used a compressed air can to blow the rest away from the contacts in several directions, starting with the closest path out, of course, and protecting the other side with the cloth. On the first blows I saw some LM coming out (traces, but still), then I soaked everything with isopropyl and blew it out several times. Repasted with Kryonaut and it's working normally, although a bit warmer. I might replace the heatsink in the future, since it's quite bad now after I tried to remove the LM, but only if I start to see throttling. If I do I'll take pictures and see how far the LM has migrated. Lucky me, I guess. I hope this helps anyone considering applying LM. Cheers