Euchre

40 minutes ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

I think you have this idea that LTT is someone a major brand that Targus is competing with, let alone is even aware exists. 

Just for a little historical context about how appearance of a product that isn't a major segment of a market, can influence a much larger and broadly reaching market, look at the Ferrari GTB/4 'Daytona'. Only 1,284 examples were ever made, but many manufacturers copied the overall styling for their sports coupes for over a decade. The Porsche 924 and 928, Mazda RX-7, Nissan Z car, and others emulated the Daytona's aesthetics heavily, and all of them sold in far higher numbers. That's my point here. The LTT backpack is a halo product in the world of backpacks, especially those for hauling tech around.

34 minutes ago, Lurick said:

https://us.targus.com/collections/laptop-backpacks/products/18-inch-strike-2-gaming-backpack-tbb639gl

 

5 seconds on their site to find similar ones.

That's red. Poster before you found more examples of orange on backpacks. Some of theirs aren't quite so comparable, with orange as the overall color, or more prominently on the outside. The closest example is the Steelseries branded, Targus manufactured Sniper backpack, which is discontinued, apparently. It was $150, then marked down to $100, probably because they couldn't get rid of them. They had to clearance theirs, while LTT has run out and had to restock before. Kinda tells you something, doesn't it?

28 minutes ago, filpo said:

I've seen quite a few clones. Even today I saw someone with a very similar looking backpack with orange inserts and a grey outside and a very similar layout outside. They want to get the sales that a backpack from LTT can for cheaper. Normally a lot cheaper. I can't speak on the quality of this one but the one I saw today looked quite cut down, some features missing and looked like a hard fabric

This backpack is about $20 or so. Obviously a MUCH cheaper product. Maybe not a totally terrible one, but nothing like the durability of the LTT unit.

28 minutes ago, Lurick said:

So they have a trim of orange colors and suddenly it's LTT imitation?

That's not what that is, that's them using colors is not copying LTT in the slightest.

If they tried to put LTT logos and stuff on there that's a completely different story but it's a black bag with a bit of orange accents. The inside isn't even completely orange.

Little hint here - I work retail. I've never, ever seen Targus put that splash of orange in their backpacks ever before. LTT makes a backpack of legendary quality, and suddenly Targus throws some inside theirs? Oh, and it is only on the inside - kind of like how LTT put theirs only on the inside? If Razr decided to make a backpack, and it didn't use their characteristic green as a highlight, especially inside the backpack, I'd be stunned. LTT's color scheme is pretty well known and recognized among gaming and tech enthusiasts. The whole bag isn't an outright imitation, but the color scheme and implied quality are definitely there.

So in a certain big box retail store the other day, looking at the backpacks sold for laptops, I notice something on the inside of the backpack. Seems someone wants to imply the same quality and cachet of an LTT backpack.

I guess everyone forgot how websites used a single pixel image as a tracking tactic, to see if their site was being loaded in whole, or if images were being scraped.

With all the fancy new testing gear you've got in the labs, how about a test of some USB plug in power supplies? You could do the little USB-A and USB-C 'wall wart' power 'bricks', and do one for universal laptop power supplies, and the USB-C higher powered chargers commonly offered for Chromebook charging. Try common brands like Belkin and Anker, as well as store brands and random generic stuff.

Slow response from me, I know, but I appreciate the feedback. The SCUF Envision looks like a decent option, except for me the extra paddles and buttons are overkill. If they start offering Hall Effect, though - could be a deal maker. The Nacon having Xinput support is nice, as is the price, but it is a little odd that the manufacturer's site won't show it as an option when you select US for viewing the site. At least it is on Amazon.

@Poinkachu are you saying that the electrical signal output from standard HE assemblies you buy is equivalent to that from the potentiometer sticks? If so, my dream of modding the Logitech might be a lot easier - especially since I now have 2 of them. My lady gifted me a new one for Christmas, delaying the urgency to find my holy grail of controllers, but now I have a spare with 1 85%+ good stick, and one floppy POS, that I can afford to tear into to mod.

I've been searching for what seems to be the unattainable holy grail of game controller to use on PC. I want hall effect sticks, Playstation style analog stick layout, Xinput support, in a wired controller. Seems like this is a combination of features nobody wants to make. Most PC controllers are Xbox analog stick layout. If I'm lucky enough to find one that is Playstation layout, it doesn't have hall effect sticks, and even the one Steel Series model that did, was wireless and doesn't seem to be in production anymore anyway. Why is this combination so impossible to find? Use a Playstation controller, right - I mean it is fairly well supported these days, right? Well, not exactly - they are Directinput, and thus don't interface well with PC games, which are nearly all natively Xinput. To work, the PS controllers use a translation layer that adds latency and lowers reliability. Even if I did use a PS controller, I'm still stuck with rheostat sticks, so stick drift is never too far away. I've already murdered the sticks on my Logitech F310, which checks every other box, but there doesn't seem to be a way to mod it with hall effect sensors.

So, anybody know where this unicorn of a controller can be found? Come on Steel Series, Logitech, somebody - make this controller a reality!

Modern Macs are stupid durable. People don't appreciate that although the amount of real metal used in their construction is part of what balloons their price, the upshot is a chassis that won't flex for it's thinness, and won't crack if you lightly drop it or it does manage to get it to flex that much. Things that would gouge or ding or even deeply scratch a plastic body laptop hardly mark the metal chassis on a Mac. If you open up a Mac, you aren't breaking every tab holding it together, and it will fit like new, and not creak. In the real world of computer consumers and use, there's a giant swath of Windows laptops with plastic chassis, even some fairly expensive ones. Only in the lofty heights of the lineup do you regularly find real metal chassis, in the thin and light high end or 'elite' tier laptops. At this point, basically all the Macs are metal.

Do the fans always go full speed and whine a lot? If so, either something is wrong with it, you're really good at loading the utter crap out of it, or if you've only just started using it and it's been less than 24 hours, it could be running an absurd amount of updates. Often updates will cause the fans to go full blast, particularly the HP software updates. It will definitely go full blast on CMOS/BIOS updates, and other major firmware updates, but that's outside the normal Windows environment. I hope your first steps with your new laptop were to 'decrapify' it (uninstall all the bundled extraneous software and free trials), then run updates on Windows and all software you keep before installing your own software choices.

How about doing some Chrome OS Flex testing? It's out now and can be installed (or at least attempted to) on any machine out there.

This sounds like a power or thermal kind of failure.

3 hours ago, EricX2 said:

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it did it make a noise?

 

Same answer as the apple watch.

The answer is a tree falling moves air, as does its impact with the ground. Sound is moving air. So yes, it makes a sound. But, that's not scientifically equivalent to how an Apple watch works. So....

3 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Ok bad example. But how the hell do you expect a device that only connects to WiFI to connect to Cellular data? Your watch doesnt have cellular data radios. If your not connecting to WiFi then you have NO network connection. No network connection equals no 911. Simple. If you want your watch to call 911 without a phone or WIFi present, then you should have bought the cellular data model. 

To clarify on that topic of a SIM-less phone able to make 911 calls: the cell phone has a transceiver that can connect to a cell network all on its own. An Apple watch uses a phone as its proxy to connect to the cell network. It doesn't and can't make the call itself, without having its own cellular transceiver, in the way a SIM-less phone can. Making a phone call, though, is done via another layer beyond the cell network, though. Cellular calls don't bounce from tower to tower, they go tower to ground, and become a regular phone call, just like an old fashioned landline. When a call has to go to a cell phone, it has to be routed to the tower that the cell phone is connected to. Now, that wifi calling mentioned before works in a similar proxy fashion as the cell calls to the landline network, they just start from a wifi connection to the internet. So yes, if an Apple Watch can make a wifi call, it theoretically should also be able to make a 911 call all by itself, as long as it has a wifi connection.

I am guessing you intend to format the iMac hard drive and blow away the data and OS. You'll need to repartition, as HFS isn't gonna play nice with Windows. If you do mean a magnetic media spinning hard disk drive, and not an SSD in the form factor of a SATA hard drive, I also hope your iMac isn't so old that it has a SCSI HD in it. Not many systems other than servers and Macs used SCSI natively, and finding an expansion card to support one may not be easy, and being bootable is another gamble.

What does it offer in the boot order?

On 12/5/2021 at 5:08 PM, LogicalDrm said:

What I hope is that they do something bit different next time. Its been now young females twice. Maybe next should be older person, like a parent looking for something for their own or relatives teen?

I like that idea.

On 12/5/2021 at 5:08 PM, LogicalDrm said:

How would these work exactly? For both, its going to be visiting store, and filming such covertly is next to impossible (and publishing is illegal on top). And that type of stuff is not sold over the phone in a way where customer calls to company. For phones, other way around for sure.

For cell phones, it would be tricky, and would have to be limited to unlocked devices, because of carrier differences based on country. You can buy devices directly from Apple, Samsung, and Google online. Similar thing would apply to audio gear. The upgrade hardware sources, like Newegg or Crucial or whatnot, could be a really like what we saw for whole system purchasing.

It was 2 years between the first two, and I think that's a good interval for such an undertaking. I think it is actually more fair to the SIs and OEMs they're shopping, because it can take that long to try to change processes and practices to resolve their issues.

Maybe the secret shopper type of idea could be applied to some other product than gaming PCs? How about cell phones? Audio gear? Maybe even upgrade part sources, which right now would be the most relevant thing.

Summary

Canon is being sued for disabling functions of its multifunction (printer/fax/scanner/copier aka PFSC) devices that don't rely on ink, when the printer is out of ink.

Quotes

Quote

David Leacraft, a customer of Canon, filed the class action lawsuit on Tuesday alleging deceptive marketing and unjust enrichment by the printer manufacturer. ... While using his Pixma MG6320 printer from Canon, the plaintiff was surprised to discover that the "all-in-one" machine would refuse to scan or fax documents if the printer ran out of ink.

My thoughts

This could set precedent which could be used to push back against a number of dubious profiteering tactics used by device makers, including the inability to print in black and white only when color ink runs out.

Sources

 https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/legal/canon-sued-for-disabling-scanner-when-printers-run-out-of-ink/

I've done a fair bit of UI modding over time. I've run alternate shells on Windows (multiple versions), messed with themes on Linux and Solaris, and done other UI hacks to make things work 'my way'.

Solaris 10 x86:

Windows 98SE with bbLean shell:

Windows XP with bbLean shell:

But basically these days I just try to have one aesthetic across all of my devices, with a very clean UI setup:

I think what some people are forgetting here is that we basically have the ear of a potentially major influence on the direction the company takes. In theory, and if they were really being wise, all of the companies LTT reviews would want to listen to the feedback and even considering using it to make changes to their products and the direction of their designs. We've seen that this isn't the case, and really is a classic example of the 'we already know that' which brings down companies in the long run. Why do you think brands like Compaq, Gateway, and others vanished or dissolved into some diluted form somewhere else?

I've seen some mentions of other laptop designs Framework is working on, beyond this thin-and-light category machine. I look forward to those, because the T&L category is a lot tougher to engineer for. People discussing the difficulty fitting in an ethernet port, or DB9 serial port, are missing that it is already a challenge for any T&L machine. Just imagine how much easier and efficient it will be if they decide to make a desktop replacement or gaming laptop - two categories where being upgradeable will be MUCH more useful and relatively easy to do. I'm sure the gamer biased LTT core audience would find a laptop to be a real gaming option if they could upgrade the GPU regularly, and otherwise adapt new peripherals that may emerge in the gaming landscape.

15 hours ago, LinusTech said:

Too much hassle to change stuff'.

 

They're just gonna come up with a new windows and I'll have to do it all over again 

Welcome to the world of UI modders, or even people who prefer to customize most of their UI experiences to be as similar to each other as possible. Doing it once ever 5+ years isn't the end of the world, though. Usually at most a day of work, for 1825 or more days of use.

Sitting here with my AMD A10 9620P powered HP laptop, which I play Portal, Portal 2, and older games like Star Wars: Battlefront (2004) on, I wonder just how new of a game a given platform could support? Alternatively, how old of a platform can support a given newer or current game? Might be interesting to do a video based around what integrated graphics will support game-wise, and what minimal graphics processing, integrated or not, would be needed for more current but still popular games. Rocket League is often used to show what can be done with even brand new systems, despite the fact it isn't the newest game around. People are still playing WoW, after all, and it doesn't demand much, and can be played on machines a couple of years old with integrated graphics fairly easily.

So uh, the new iMac is not the first time a desktop Mac has had an external power brick. The first generation (in terms of physical design) Mac mini used a power brick. Both of mine do, a 2005 PPC and 2007 Intel.

I do find it interesting that they are putting the ethernet in the brick. I wonder, though - is that parallel conductors in the same cable (not great for signal noise induction), or are they modulating the network signal through the power conductors themselves somehow?

I posted on the Corridor Crew video where they used the old Mac with Photoshop 1 on it, but I'll reiterate here:

Next collab with CC: They have to make a hacking scene that is both realistic and not completely boring. Linus judges it for both accuracy, and for enjoyment and engagement. Commenters have said Anthony should be CC's advisor, and I like this idea. We've all seen the cheesy hacking scenes, and some more plausible, but not many have been both seriously accurate and exciting to watch.

If you want to simplify the process of installing your programs other than Windows to your second drive, once Windows is installed, change the Program Files environment variable, and Windows and installers for programs will automatically assume you want everything installed there.