Nene

The Quad Head version is still available, though more expensive it can still run in a 2x1 mode

VHS will almost always degrade with age, and just because you could in theory get a sharp (or sharper) image out of VHS that doesn't mean it's going to do that over its whole life. Laserdiscs can also degrade, especially with disc rot, but playing it doesn't cause that degradation, and if you didn't buy a disc with rot it's (probably) not going to just suddenly develope disc rot one day. Disc rot was cause by moisture trapped against the aluminium reflective layer allowing it to oxidise. Without that the disc isn't going to just start rotting unless the plastic layer separates from the aluminium and allows air and moisture to contact it. It's just not as inevitable as you make out, though I'll admit it's a known weakness and not exactly rare. Sony, I'm looking at you and your shitty adhesive. Oh and 11:50? Yes you're right, stopping first and then winding makes it go as fast as it can, trouble is you have to guess how far into the tape you are when you start to play the tape again. There's no way to skip to a chapter and you can't review a VHS tape at an arbitrary speed, because every time you move the tape against the head it causes wear, and the faster it goes the more wear it causes. That's the crux there, playing a tape causes contact with the tape and makes it wear out. Tapes and binders will eventually degrade in storage, can you tell me in all honesty that's not inevitable? It's not a case of will it happen, it's a cause of how much it happens and whether it's noticeable.

On the WAN show Linus was talking about his server cooling and pool heating setup, and explained that the server room was still getting pretty hot because all the other components like the switches and network gear are still dumping their heat into the air. Well I've got an idea; in the UK it's becoming more and more common to use air source heat pumps to take heat from outside and put it into water that's either pumped through radiators or PEX tubing for underfloor heating. Why not do this to take heat out of the server room and put it somewhere else, like the pool? They're available literally off the shelf without having to do any refrigerant lines, just hot water out and cool water in.

1: potentially far too small. If you're estimating 600W then assuming a worst case 0.8 power factor you'd want to look at 750VA. Bear in mind that's peak though, and most of the time it won't use that. 2: depends on the UPS, some of them will switch into bypass when overloaded, some won't and will just lose regulation. Some will just shut down. A bad UPS will often be worse than no UPS. 3: again, depends on the UPS. 4: physically? If the UPS doesn't have any safety mechanisms it might degrade the PSU, otherwise the main risk is sudden power outages causing data corruption. 5: that's not quite what happens in all cases, but as with 4 the main risk is data corruption if your PSU decides it isn't going to play any more. 6: probably, yes, but it depends what you want to protect them from. A surge protector will "clamp" excessive voltages. 7: not really, no. The thing they're good for is preventing or reducing the risk of excessive voltages damaging your PSU and things connected to it. However it's perfectly possible for a surge protector to be overwhelmed and not effectively clamp a spike, or just plain explode when it tries. You can improve that by layering two or more different types of surge protection, but you're getting pretty deep into the weeds.

I'm having a terrible time with Asus at the moment. Just over a month ago I opened ticket about two problems I was having. Apparently foolishly I have both an Asus motherboard and graphics card. The first problem being a bit weird; I installed a BIOS update for a CPU vulnerability, but after installation the CPU just wouldn't boost. I downgraded the BIOS, reinstalled it, still had the same problem, so opened the ticket. I eventually solved this myself about two weeks ago after getting sick of messages back and forth that centred around "well it works for us" and not much more. Apparently upgrading the BIOS for the third time was just the trick and now the boost behaviour is back to normal. No thanks for the help there, but at least it's resolved. The second problem is even more weird; I'd previously had problems running PCIE gen 4 with DDR4 at 1.35V, mostly causing the GPU to not be recognised. I worked around them for a while by manually setting the PCIE slots to PCIE gen 3 in the BIOS and all was good. After installing the new BIOS for the first time, the BIOS started occasionally reporting that the GPU did not support UEFI and it was enabling CSM, and thus disabling secure boot. I turn CSM back on and the machine boots normally. This gives me a kick to finally solve the problem with the DDR4 at 1.35V and eventually got it running at 1.2V, and life is good back on PCIE gen 4. This was a whole saga with Crucial giving me the run around because I asked for timings to run the DDR4 at 3200MHz when the only settings on the DIMMs were for 3600MHz, but I used the old technique of making a wild-ass guess at the timings, and it worked first time. Back to Asus; on booting from cold the machine still tells me the GPU doesn't support UEFI, I go through the dance disabling CSM and booting normally. A few days ago Asus gave up and told me to RMA with the note that they will not accept a direct RMA from me. I ignore my concerns about an RMA taking many months, and asked if they want me to RMA both parts, or just one, since I bought them from different sellers and didn't fancy my chances with RMAing apparently otherwise working parts when the problem might only show when they're tested together. Their response? They don't advise on third party parts. They didn't even read the ticket. I'm sick of this, I don't know why I trusted them and gave them so much money. Don't buy Asus, don't accept sponsorships from Asus.

Relying on them? Yep, terrible idea. With enough eyeballs most problems are shallow though, and a lot of folk want to help. You also gain access to people who might be experts in fields that simply don't exist in the LTT staff.

Posting the info for review is a good idea for exactly the reason you stated, but that doesn't catch errors that are in the script instead of the graphs, so I think having both is the best way to go. It's also a good idea to have a recognised and official way to report errors we find, something we know is being read and comes with some sort of acknowledgement that it's been received and a person is actually going to look at it. That's starting to sound a lot like a bug tracker isn't it.

A thousand things sting every day. It's part of being chronically sick and a wheelchair user. It's just life. I'm not offended and raging on a path to their doorstep, just want to ask for a little thing. It might seem ridiculous to you, but it's not to me. I watch youtube, and LTT, for a way to escape from the grind of life. It's just this little thing, like if you find a stone in your sock when you're doing something you like. It's not the end of the world, it's nothing you can't ignore, but it's just a little sting that you find in a place you usually find peace.

but ... I didn't? I'm not offended. Uttamattamakin made the best point so far, that some people prefer it. She's right as well. To some it is hurtful though. Overall it's not a big deal, it's not like a pattern of behaviour or harm, and it wasn't done with ill intent. I'm just trying to put something where it can be seen, to make something good even better. I'll address the rest of the stuff about terms tomorrow or something. As you've probably guessed from my spelling I'm from the UK - it's 1am, and yes I am disabled, and also pretty tired. Just chill everyone, please?

... and using the term triggered is all about minimising the impact your words have on other people. Seems ironic that you're the one being so angry? I dunno, I just wanted to say something, to make the world just a little better. As for to what? Well I don't have that answer, as much as I would love to, I've no editorial input and that's fine too. I'm a set of eyeballs here. I figure some folks who are smarter than me could give some advice, like the National Center on Disability and Journalism and they seem to be pretty on top of things.

Where did I say I was offended? Where did I say that anyone was offended? Where did I even say that what he said was meant as ill-natured? I even addressed that it wasn't intended in any sort of bad way. This just makes it so tiring

I just can't get over people who say "politically correct" in actual conversation. It just looks like a way to minimise the consequences of being an ass. You can say whatever you want, you're not supposed to say anything! What I'm saying is "this hurt me, consider changing it" which presumably means that it's going to get further piled on with something about how fragile I must be to be hurt like that.

This, right here, is why I tried to find some way to bring it up in private. Please read what I said.

Probably not. Servos are looking at the timing of the PWM signal, from 1000 µS to 2000 µS out of 20 ms interval pulses. That puts you firmly into the Undefined Behaviour realm. Why not use one of the servo testers you can get?

So I couldn't find a way to bring this up privately, but there's something that's bugging me from the Linus office upgrade video. It probably means everything to me but nothing to most people. At 18:16 Linus starts reading a quote off the poster that YouTube sent them, and finishes up " ... which I took to mean that someone at YouTube figures I'm differently abled." There's some laughter and it's made a bit of a joke of. Like I said, I didn't want to put this up publicly but I can't find a different way to do this. First of all, using the phrase 'differently abled' was an in-thing for a while, but mostly now comes across as being condescending, or as if talking about a disability is somehow shameful or to be avoided. To be honest it was probably better than some of the things it replaced, but it's still not appropriate. I'm disabled, and it stung. Secondly, come on, disabilities aren't a joke. That's just not cool. I'm not looking for a big deal, or a song and dance, some big apology or something. I just wanted to say to someone "this isn't cool, and I think you should change it in future" and to have some acknowledgement that it wasn't done in the best way it could have been, and that you'll try to avoid it happening again. In my turn I acknowledge that making this number of videos on this schedule is really hard, and that mistakes happen, or some words can come across in a different spirit to what they were said. A little mistake doesn't detract from the massive body of good work that LTT does, but you know I just wanted to speak up.

Yes, the earth pin isn't switched on the socket side, and cannot be detached on the socket side without disassembling something. In most cases on the live pin is switched, but some sockets also switch neutral. When you look at the socket, it's the female side, and NEL is a female name and gives you the order of the pins - Neutral on the left, Earth on the top, Live on the right. When you look at the plug, it's the male side, and Len is a male name and gives you the order of the pins - Live on the left, Earth at the top, Neutral on the right. If you need a source of ground you can get it by plugging into a UK mains socket but not turning it on.

The hold up time should be specified in the PSU manual, if anyone is wondering. I would also caution people to avoid relying on this too much, because it's really the best case scenario, and your PC is going to turn off anyway when the power OK signal from the PSU disappears. I've configured my UPS to be relatively conservative about how much voltage it will boost or buck. Also to be conservative about how long it will wait to switch back from battery during an outage. It also switches to battery if the grid frequency goes out of spec. If the voltage goes high, that's a sign that something bad has happened nearby, and a large load has just dropped off. Whatever it was I don't want to be sharing a power grid with it. If the voltage goes low, that's a sign that something even worse has happened. A brown out due to demand being higher than generation or local transformer capacity is about the most benign thing I can think of. It might be due to arcing from a power flash in a storm, it might be a stepper fault, it might be a tree on a power line. Anything with an arc is going to create high voltage transients which is not something your PSU is happy about, as well as dropping the voltage out of spec. If the power drops out once, it's likely to drop out a second time, or sometimes third (or more), depending on the cause. Most low (100-450V or so) and medium voltage (11kV-33kV) distribution will have auto-reclosing breakers. If a fault causes a breaker to trip, if you reclose into the fault a lot of times it will "burn out" or eliminate the fault - ie it will explode the tree branch or squirrel that caused the fault. That means a breaker might reclose and blip the power several times in 30 seconds before it locks out. If the grid frequency goes out of spec, it's either because a big chunk of generation or load has gone offline. If it's because a power station has tripped, I'm doing my part by removing my load. If it's because some load has tripped, well that's not my problem if I'm not connected to it. Oh, someone up there suggested buying an APC UPS - please consider this carefully, the smaller ones always seem to have inadequate ventilation and kill SLAs quickly. They also have a metal case that's close to the batteries, so when they invariably swell up after dying, you can't get them out. When I pointed this out to a friend of mine once, he needed to use his jeep and a crowbar to swap the batteries. So anyway, do you need a UPS? Well that comes down to whether the benefit you get from it is worth how much you intend to spend on it. Also consider that cheaper UPSes will often be line interactive, meaning they have a relay or contactor to switch from grid to battery. If that switch over takes longer than the hold up time of your PSU, your PC will reboot anyway, making it worse instead of better. Worse still, if the UPS fails then your PC turns off, again potentially making it worse, not better. I don't need a UPS, but I wanted one because I live in the middle of no-where, and I don't want to lose 50 SR if the power blips in the middle of a game of Overwatch. So I would ask yourself, why do you want to think about a UPS? What are the benefits it will give you? Can you afford one big enough to power at least one monitor as well for long enough to shut the PC down?

You'll only see a drop in frame rate if your computer doesn't have enough resources to do everything you're asking it to. Not simply because one display is running at a faster refresh rate than the other. Also bear in mind that your 144Hz monitor needs to be connected to an output capable of that.

I have a 165Hz and a pair of 60Hz monitors either side of it, they all coexist perfectly happily. If you find that your 144Hz monitor doesn't want to actually do 144Hz, you may have to select the refresh rate directly, either in a game or the control panel, or both.

Whilst it's true that using an XLR mic with an audio interface is the best way, I would advise absolutely no-one to use anything made by Behringer if there is any alternative whatsoever. At best it's a lottery. Some of their gear is great, some of it invariably sucks. What doesn't fall into either of those categories, experience has shown me is going to work most of the time and then fail at the worst possible moment, in the worst possible way.

So my most solid piece of advice here, is that if you're dealing with a stereo source you should avoid having more than two speakers until you have a lot more experience. I would also avoid using any sort of home stereo for an event that is going to have drunk people, because you will cry when it gets beer spilled on it. For a small event I would hire some self-powered speakers. You plug them into power and an output, and they generally just work without much fuss. They usually have an input and a thru connection, so if one isn't loud enough, you can put another one right next to it and make it louder - this is the only exception to no more than two speakers, and if they're more than a few inches apart they will sound weird and shitty when given the same signal. You can also hire a small mixer which will give you the right sort of signal to feed into the speakers, let you use more than one source, and plug in a mic. Hopefully there is a helpful hire company near you, because most of them will have account managers you can tell what you want to do and how big the venue is, and they will tell you what you need. The really friendly ones will even tell you how to connect it together, and many will have a list of people you can pay to put it together for you.