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MSMSMSM

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  1. Agree
    MSMSMSM got a reaction from Rob S in The slow death of citizen science - BOINC   
    There are a variety of factors which imo may have resulted in reduced interest over time
    Crypto.

    At least some of the contributors have invested significant computational resources into these projects because of projects like GridCoin (which have long usernames) and CureCoin (which require team membership)
      Source: https://gridcoin.us/guides/foldingathome.htm
     
    Source: https://curecoin.net/knowledge-base/folding-for-curecoin/how-do-i-start-folding-for-curecoin-quick/

    These projects are no longer what they used to be and the market speaks for itself (CoinMarketCap price graphs for CureCoin and GridCoin) not to mention the issues with GridCoin that were reported (I don't know if they were truly resolved, I'm not too intimately familiar with either codebases)

    I suspect some of the more profiteering members came and went.
     
    Rising cost of living.

    An increased cost of consumer electronics (esp. "competitive" hardware) and geopolitical flux mean that, you have the same number on your cheque even though your currency value has sunken (or even gone kaput entirely if you're really unfortunate to be in certain parts of the globe), while costs for everything else go up. Not as much disposable income, not as much to put into hobbies (though this could be utter nonsense, I mean, have you seen what some mechanical keyboard sets cost?). This makes small and medium contributors less likely to get involved as they upgrade to more budget options as it just isn't feasible to.

    Current international conflict and its effects on energy prices are just the most recent reason why people wouldn't find the idea of keeping their computer on for more than they have to kosher.
     
    Competition.

    The points and ranking system is supposed to make people compete and feel good about the contributions they make but... it can also have the opposite effect, discouraging people from bothering because, they feel like they're just putting a drop in the ocean.

    It took me months, if not a year of my laptop to reach 30M points in F@H (my desktop would've taken years). Two weeks with an RTX4070? Now I'm at 60M. That card isn't cheap and more importantly, it isn't mine. It is part of a build that I'm doing as a gift and I had it folding after I ran out of synthetic stress tests to run until it was the day to go and deliver it to them (sans any BOINC, F@H or other distributed computer software on it). I will let them know I folded on it.

    Stuff like that can make your 50k from 12h of CPU contribution feel like a fraction of a drop in the ocean, which is demoralizing. The folks at BOINC have started to realize it and are working on Science United (see their UI/UX goals)
     
    Making this stuff actually work.

    F@H's client is based on Python 2.x, which has been long deprecated. RHEL 9 doesn't come with Python 2 and community repos don't have it either. I tried installing it through various means but eventually found this Snapcraft package which works beautifully with NVIDIA CUDA but has problems with AMD ROCm OpenCL.

    Three days I've been trying to get this stuff to work to little avail.

    But that's just it working, the UI/UX is primitive, calling it an advanced control doesn't excuse not even giving it even minor scrutiny from someone who does UI/UX design, the web UI for F@H more than makes up for it (also big ups this extension that makes it even better) but the beginner mode for BOINC is so atrocious that I run to the advanced mode, which I don't expect Joe Joneson Average to figure out.

    If it's not plug and play, not unobtrusive, most people won't bother. For example, most people are used to OAuth based sign-ins (even though I hate it and never use a site that doesn't also offer the traditional email+password login method). Where's that?
     
    Normalization

    The number of people who sign up don't equal to the number of daily active users on the platform. Maybe we are normalizing and should re-calibrate how much engagement is too little engagement.
  2. Like
    MSMSMSM got a reaction from captaintemerity in Can we stop using "X" Twitter, for neccesary redirected Links or Giveaways   
    LTT Mastodon Instance :3
  3. Informative
    MSMSMSM reacted to CerealExperimentsLain in What made SSD burnup using Molex to SATA Adapter?   
    This is actually painfully incorrect advice based on a fun sounding rhyme.  'Molex To SATA Lose All Your Data'.

    The problem with it, as you prove, is that the rhyme is dangerous because it promotes ignorance.  There's nothing with with MOLEX, it's a big, fat, hard to screw up connector.  The problem is the SATA connector.  As in, any SATA connector.  Cheap, badly crimped SATA connectors, since the connectors are small with little pins, are where the short happens.  It has nothing to do with 'Molex To SATA', it's 'Cheap Crappy SATA'.  Suggesting PCIE to SATA as an alternative has potentially the same problems because you think MOLEX is the problem instead of the SATA connector.  You are literally giving advice to possibly repeat the same mistake.  ...Also PCIE and CPU pins have 12v only, SATA requires 12 and 5v. (Basically nothing uses the 3.3v pins), unless your cable includes a buck to convert 12v to 5v as well, it won't power the drive.

    But yeah, 'Oh MOLEX to SATA is the problem' is bad, ignorant advice.  With SATA being the problem, MOLEX to SATA, SATA to SATA extension, SATA power splitter, anything really, including potentially your modular power supply cables, are the problem if they've been badly/cheaply crimped.
     
    You've just learned to blame the wrong thing because it's a lot more fun to say.
  4. Like
    MSMSMSM got a reaction from NF-A12x25 in Can we stop using "X" Twitter, for neccesary redirected Links or Giveaways   
    LTT Mastodon Instance :3
  5. Like
    MSMSMSM got a reaction from Uttamattamakin in Can we stop using "X" Twitter, for neccesary redirected Links or Giveaways   
    LTT Mastodon Instance :3
  6. Like
    MSMSMSM got a reaction from Needfuldoer in Can we stop using "X" Twitter, for neccesary redirected Links or Giveaways   
    LTT Mastodon Instance :3
  7. Like
    MSMSMSM got a reaction from dogwitch in The slow death of citizen science - BOINC   
    There are a variety of factors which imo may have resulted in reduced interest over time
    Crypto.

    At least some of the contributors have invested significant computational resources into these projects because of projects like GridCoin (which have long usernames) and CureCoin (which require team membership)
      Source: https://gridcoin.us/guides/foldingathome.htm
     
    Source: https://curecoin.net/knowledge-base/folding-for-curecoin/how-do-i-start-folding-for-curecoin-quick/

    These projects are no longer what they used to be and the market speaks for itself (CoinMarketCap price graphs for CureCoin and GridCoin) not to mention the issues with GridCoin that were reported (I don't know if they were truly resolved, I'm not too intimately familiar with either codebases)

    I suspect some of the more profiteering members came and went.
     
    Rising cost of living.

    An increased cost of consumer electronics (esp. "competitive" hardware) and geopolitical flux mean that, you have the same number on your cheque even though your currency value has sunken (or even gone kaput entirely if you're really unfortunate to be in certain parts of the globe), while costs for everything else go up. Not as much disposable income, not as much to put into hobbies (though this could be utter nonsense, I mean, have you seen what some mechanical keyboard sets cost?). This makes small and medium contributors less likely to get involved as they upgrade to more budget options as it just isn't feasible to.

    Current international conflict and its effects on energy prices are just the most recent reason why people wouldn't find the idea of keeping their computer on for more than they have to kosher.
     
    Competition.

    The points and ranking system is supposed to make people compete and feel good about the contributions they make but... it can also have the opposite effect, discouraging people from bothering because, they feel like they're just putting a drop in the ocean.

    It took me months, if not a year of my laptop to reach 30M points in F@H (my desktop would've taken years). Two weeks with an RTX4070? Now I'm at 60M. That card isn't cheap and more importantly, it isn't mine. It is part of a build that I'm doing as a gift and I had it folding after I ran out of synthetic stress tests to run until it was the day to go and deliver it to them (sans any BOINC, F@H or other distributed computer software on it). I will let them know I folded on it.

    Stuff like that can make your 50k from 12h of CPU contribution feel like a fraction of a drop in the ocean, which is demoralizing. The folks at BOINC have started to realize it and are working on Science United (see their UI/UX goals)
     
    Making this stuff actually work.

    F@H's client is based on Python 2.x, which has been long deprecated. RHEL 9 doesn't come with Python 2 and community repos don't have it either. I tried installing it through various means but eventually found this Snapcraft package which works beautifully with NVIDIA CUDA but has problems with AMD ROCm OpenCL.

    Three days I've been trying to get this stuff to work to little avail.

    But that's just it working, the UI/UX is primitive, calling it an advanced control doesn't excuse not even giving it even minor scrutiny from someone who does UI/UX design, the web UI for F@H more than makes up for it (also big ups this extension that makes it even better) but the beginner mode for BOINC is so atrocious that I run to the advanced mode, which I don't expect Joe Joneson Average to figure out.

    If it's not plug and play, not unobtrusive, most people won't bother. For example, most people are used to OAuth based sign-ins (even though I hate it and never use a site that doesn't also offer the traditional email+password login method). Where's that?
     
    Normalization

    The number of people who sign up don't equal to the number of daily active users on the platform. Maybe we are normalizing and should re-calibrate how much engagement is too little engagement.
  8. Informative
    MSMSMSM reacted to gvidales in 2023 NAS Advice after Synology volume “crashed"   
    You are right, maybe I exaggerated. But at least I want something that can run for 6-7 years and that I can migrate easily to new hardware when the time comes. With synology at least I know I can replace drives one by one, and bring the full disk set to a new NAS.
     
    No I didn't buy SMR drives, I was cautious with that. I only have WD REDs. Synology now sells their own brand of drives, and if you buy into the new NAS models like the 1823xs+ you'll get a warning if you use any drive but theirs... Level One Techs did a good video about it recently. I guess the part I missed is that the volume went into read only mode and it started corrupting itself gradually as I started backing up my data.... After a couple days most of my folders were blank.
     
    Yes... these and many other things. Luckily I had properly set up my volumes as Btrfs and data integrity enabled.
    They do sell their own drives now... In the 1823xs+ you have to use those or you'll get a "warning" or "unverified" warning across all your drives. I heard they do this because a lot of people bought SMR drives or really cheap M.2 drives for cache and caused too many headaches to their customer service. I am super confused as to why, instead of improving their customer service, they preferred to make their products shittier or more limited. Way to go.
     
    I think I have the ability, and time spent on this is great as it's a hobby. I just don't know if I trust myself to set up the NAS properly and fill it with 40tb of valuable data, that if I have to make a change and rebuild volumes I wouldn't have anywhere to store it temporarily. 
     
    Thanks a lot to all. You've given me a lot to think about. I WAS leaning towards synology because of their synology hybrid raid, which opens the door to upgrading drives one at a time and not have to replace all of them to get incremental space (vs a RAID6 array). HOWEVER, it seems they've also removed hybrid raid from the new model.... so now I am researching Unraid. I am just unclear on what will happen once I have 8x10tb drives and need to upgrade. Will I have to spend another $2K and somehow replace drives one by one? I'll keep researching.
  9. Like
    MSMSMSM got a reaction from Imakuni in The slow death of citizen science - BOINC   
    There are a variety of factors which imo may have resulted in reduced interest over time
    Crypto.

    At least some of the contributors have invested significant computational resources into these projects because of projects like GridCoin (which have long usernames) and CureCoin (which require team membership)
      Source: https://gridcoin.us/guides/foldingathome.htm
     
    Source: https://curecoin.net/knowledge-base/folding-for-curecoin/how-do-i-start-folding-for-curecoin-quick/

    These projects are no longer what they used to be and the market speaks for itself (CoinMarketCap price graphs for CureCoin and GridCoin) not to mention the issues with GridCoin that were reported (I don't know if they were truly resolved, I'm not too intimately familiar with either codebases)

    I suspect some of the more profiteering members came and went.
     
    Rising cost of living.

    An increased cost of consumer electronics (esp. "competitive" hardware) and geopolitical flux mean that, you have the same number on your cheque even though your currency value has sunken (or even gone kaput entirely if you're really unfortunate to be in certain parts of the globe), while costs for everything else go up. Not as much disposable income, not as much to put into hobbies (though this could be utter nonsense, I mean, have you seen what some mechanical keyboard sets cost?). This makes small and medium contributors less likely to get involved as they upgrade to more budget options as it just isn't feasible to.

    Current international conflict and its effects on energy prices are just the most recent reason why people wouldn't find the idea of keeping their computer on for more than they have to kosher.
     
    Competition.

    The points and ranking system is supposed to make people compete and feel good about the contributions they make but... it can also have the opposite effect, discouraging people from bothering because, they feel like they're just putting a drop in the ocean.

    It took me months, if not a year of my laptop to reach 30M points in F@H (my desktop would've taken years). Two weeks with an RTX4070? Now I'm at 60M. That card isn't cheap and more importantly, it isn't mine. It is part of a build that I'm doing as a gift and I had it folding after I ran out of synthetic stress tests to run until it was the day to go and deliver it to them (sans any BOINC, F@H or other distributed computer software on it). I will let them know I folded on it.

    Stuff like that can make your 50k from 12h of CPU contribution feel like a fraction of a drop in the ocean, which is demoralizing. The folks at BOINC have started to realize it and are working on Science United (see their UI/UX goals)
     
    Making this stuff actually work.

    F@H's client is based on Python 2.x, which has been long deprecated. RHEL 9 doesn't come with Python 2 and community repos don't have it either. I tried installing it through various means but eventually found this Snapcraft package which works beautifully with NVIDIA CUDA but has problems with AMD ROCm OpenCL.

    Three days I've been trying to get this stuff to work to little avail.

    But that's just it working, the UI/UX is primitive, calling it an advanced control doesn't excuse not even giving it even minor scrutiny from someone who does UI/UX design, the web UI for F@H more than makes up for it (also big ups this extension that makes it even better) but the beginner mode for BOINC is so atrocious that I run to the advanced mode, which I don't expect Joe Joneson Average to figure out.

    If it's not plug and play, not unobtrusive, most people won't bother. For example, most people are used to OAuth based sign-ins (even though I hate it and never use a site that doesn't also offer the traditional email+password login method). Where's that?
     
    Normalization

    The number of people who sign up don't equal to the number of daily active users on the platform. Maybe we are normalizing and should re-calibrate how much engagement is too little engagement.
  10. Like
    MSMSMSM got a reaction from longxh in Bykski make Chinese PC diyers angry this month   
    I'll try and summarize it and let me know if I'm making mistakes
    There's a Bilibili content creator who maintains a low profile Valkyrie, a manufacturer, sent this creator its products for a review and the content creator pitted it against products by Bykski, a competitor. The video started to gain a certain amount of popularity and Bykski raises objections to the review, citing the low profile of the content creator, lack of "authorization" (this makes little sense to me so if you can provide the verbatim in Chinese alongside an English translation, it would clear most doubt because you don't need authorization for reviewing a product available on the open market through legal channels) and threatened litigation The above objections were made publicly, which made enthusiasts unhappy, which made Bykski change course and demanded the test suite be run again in exchange for an apology if the second run's results match the first run. The second run took place, which reaffirmed the results of the first run, Bykski reneges on its promise and continues with threats of litigation unless the video in question is taken down Chinese enthusiasts are unhappy because their reaction to critique from LTT was one of apology while their reaction to critique from a local content creator is to threaten them with litigation Unrelated to the above events, there seems to be a different series of events:
    Chinese enthusiasts tend to make purchases during a Black Friday-like sale, many of them purchasing high wattage graphics cards and a power supply that seems, at face value to meet the requirements of these cards These power supplies when used under high-stress workloads would shut down (implying that the power supply's abilities are misrepresented) This has created a demand for independent testing of power supplies That same Bilibili content creator has filled that demand I have not verified nor can I affirm or attest to what's being said, I don't speak Chinese nor do I know the first thing about Chinese social media, so I'm not too familiar with content creators or business practices from there, this is what I've seemed to parse from the original message.
  11. Like
    MSMSMSM got a reaction from lfmljack in Can i combine 2 sticks of 8gb and 2 sticks of 16gb Ram?   
    I mean, if installed correctly such that each dual channel pair contains the same make and model of RAM, I don't see the problem.
  12. Informative
    MSMSMSM reacted to LogicalDrm in mainly cloudflare but other things   
    Yesterday there was just too much traffic, so forum was placed in performance mode. Today confirmed DDoS, besides still high influx of traffic.
     
    If you see the checking, everything is good. If you get errords, report those.
  13. Agree
    MSMSMSM got a reaction from rkv_2401 in The slow death of citizen science - BOINC   
    There are a variety of factors which imo may have resulted in reduced interest over time
    Crypto.

    At least some of the contributors have invested significant computational resources into these projects because of projects like GridCoin (which have long usernames) and CureCoin (which require team membership)
      Source: https://gridcoin.us/guides/foldingathome.htm
     
    Source: https://curecoin.net/knowledge-base/folding-for-curecoin/how-do-i-start-folding-for-curecoin-quick/

    These projects are no longer what they used to be and the market speaks for itself (CoinMarketCap price graphs for CureCoin and GridCoin) not to mention the issues with GridCoin that were reported (I don't know if they were truly resolved, I'm not too intimately familiar with either codebases)

    I suspect some of the more profiteering members came and went.
     
    Rising cost of living.

    An increased cost of consumer electronics (esp. "competitive" hardware) and geopolitical flux mean that, you have the same number on your cheque even though your currency value has sunken (or even gone kaput entirely if you're really unfortunate to be in certain parts of the globe), while costs for everything else go up. Not as much disposable income, not as much to put into hobbies (though this could be utter nonsense, I mean, have you seen what some mechanical keyboard sets cost?). This makes small and medium contributors less likely to get involved as they upgrade to more budget options as it just isn't feasible to.

    Current international conflict and its effects on energy prices are just the most recent reason why people wouldn't find the idea of keeping their computer on for more than they have to kosher.
     
    Competition.

    The points and ranking system is supposed to make people compete and feel good about the contributions they make but... it can also have the opposite effect, discouraging people from bothering because, they feel like they're just putting a drop in the ocean.

    It took me months, if not a year of my laptop to reach 30M points in F@H (my desktop would've taken years). Two weeks with an RTX4070? Now I'm at 60M. That card isn't cheap and more importantly, it isn't mine. It is part of a build that I'm doing as a gift and I had it folding after I ran out of synthetic stress tests to run until it was the day to go and deliver it to them (sans any BOINC, F@H or other distributed computer software on it). I will let them know I folded on it.

    Stuff like that can make your 50k from 12h of CPU contribution feel like a fraction of a drop in the ocean, which is demoralizing. The folks at BOINC have started to realize it and are working on Science United (see their UI/UX goals)
     
    Making this stuff actually work.

    F@H's client is based on Python 2.x, which has been long deprecated. RHEL 9 doesn't come with Python 2 and community repos don't have it either. I tried installing it through various means but eventually found this Snapcraft package which works beautifully with NVIDIA CUDA but has problems with AMD ROCm OpenCL.

    Three days I've been trying to get this stuff to work to little avail.

    But that's just it working, the UI/UX is primitive, calling it an advanced control doesn't excuse not even giving it even minor scrutiny from someone who does UI/UX design, the web UI for F@H more than makes up for it (also big ups this extension that makes it even better) but the beginner mode for BOINC is so atrocious that I run to the advanced mode, which I don't expect Joe Joneson Average to figure out.

    If it's not plug and play, not unobtrusive, most people won't bother. For example, most people are used to OAuth based sign-ins (even though I hate it and never use a site that doesn't also offer the traditional email+password login method). Where's that?
     
    Normalization

    The number of people who sign up don't equal to the number of daily active users on the platform. Maybe we are normalizing and should re-calibrate how much engagement is too little engagement.
  14. Like
    MSMSMSM got a reaction from 220VoltsallCore in how many years more for hard disks to disappear?   
    Sweet! Can you also tell me the all the companies that'll go kaput so I can short them, all the companies that'll boom so I can long them, if society will be further polarized so I can decide if I should simply check out of it all and will he ever come back so I have even more reasons to toss and turn before sleeping due to exhaustion?
     
    Speculating on concrete prices for products without any leaks to go off, is as magic-crystal-ball-ing as you can go. There are general principles like price deprecation, newer products making the prices of older products slashed proportional to the price efficiency and parity (or improvement) in performance of the replacements which should be kept in mind when making a purchase decision.
     
    So I can't give you a specific dollar value but I can give you Backblaze's predictions for cost/GB, which seem to be falling. Though, a cost/GB (which we'll call c/GB now) number doesn't mean it'll apply uniformly throughout every manufacturer or translate into savings from every SKU (don't expect the c/GB of a 4TB drive to match a 2 TB drive regardless of technological advancement as there's a base cost regardless of capacity that is to be factored in).
     
    Like the first post said, they're not going anywhere. They're still the dominant means for readily accessible large capacity non-volatile storage. Tape drives can store even large capacities at a lower c/GB at the expense of accessibility (high access latency, practically non-existent random IO), making them suitable for archival but not editing files off.
     
    Just as hard drives are alright for storing games that aren't random IO intensive, large and/or not accessed frequently, storing your Downloads but not suitable for storing your OS, which benefits from lower latency and significantly better random IO performance.
     
    They all have their niche, it's just a matter of what you need.
  15. Agree
    MSMSMSM reacted to RONOTHAN## in how many years more for hard disks to disappear?   
    In the data center market, I doubt they're going to go away any time soon. SSDs just haven't caught up in the cost per gigabyte per rack U yet, and aren't likely to in any amount of time worth trying to predict. 
     
    In the consumer market, I'd argue they already have been phased out. The only time it really makes sense to get a HDD nowadays is when you're using 8TB+, otherwise 2TB SSDs are remarkably cheap (~$60-70 for the half-decent ones, about as expensive as the good 2TB HDDs), and 4TB drives aren't as cheaper as they used to be (they're still half the price, but it's a big shift from when they used to be 1/4 the price), to the point where for a lot of people it makes sense to spend the extra $50-70 and get a 4TB SSD rather than a 4TB HDD. When you get to the 8TB+ category for people building NASes and other data-hoarding machines, then yeah, HDDs do still reign supreme, but there aren't a whole lot of people who need more than ~4TB of space, or even 2TB that can't be accomplished by an SSD for about the same price as a HDD. 
     
    As for when they'll get cheaper, your guess is as good as mine, the pricing crystal ball only works every third Wednesday of the month. 
  16. Agree
    MSMSMSM reacted to ice_hiboy in Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity   
    I agree with a lot of GN points. All the corrections are troubling, there need to be time for reshoots, voice overs or what ever to correct a mistake, not just an annotation or a pinned comment. I see LTT as a sort of Top Gear for tech as Top Gear was to car reviews. I watched Top Gear for entertainment not for actual reviews. The difference between LTT and Top Gear is that Top Gear knew that it was purly entertainment and did not hide it. LTT talks a big game about alle the employes and all the tests Labs can do and will do. I think they should proberly decide what type of content they want to make. Personaly I love the Alex and Jake type of content. Give me more wacky builds or projects, maybe long term projects. I stopped watching LTT GPU reviews a couple of generations ago because it was rushed, typicaly only a hand full of games and not really worth my time. Now I dont watch them because they are rushed and full of mistakes.

    I wanna say I have watched LTT ever since the AMD Phenom 2 days, and will still watch them. But take the input and make better content instead of more.
    Also why did short circuit change from a quick unboxing channel to 20+ minuts? 
  17. Agree
    MSMSMSM reacted to Dominik W in Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity   
    For the large majority, GN is correct. The thing that sticks out to me has been the extremely large increase in * corrections. * this and * that. They need to let their foot off the gas a little. They're moving too fast and breaking things too quickly, catch my drift?
     
    However, in my personal opinion, part of the video, in regard to sponsorship, seemed a bit more personally driven, rather than fact-based. But besides that, LTT needs to ensure accurate data. I will 100% back that. 
     
    Hopefully, Linus and LTT will take a moment to reflect before rushing to any statements or any off-handed remarks on the WAN show on Friday. 
  18. Agree
    MSMSMSM reacted to mariushm in Looking for a decent home printer   
    Don't get the cheapest Brother printers, get something in the mid-range or a bit above the cheapest.
    Look on the brother website at the  consumables for various models , and see the rating for the drum and for the toner.
    The cheapest Brother printers may have a drum that's rated for only 5000 pages and toner that's good for maybe 800-1000 pages, the mid range ones may have a toner rated for 10-20k pages and options for toner up to 4-5k pages.
     
    Drum is that roller over which paper moves and picks up the black powder. Once you go over that number of pages you may start to get missing pixels, white thin vertical lines on the paper or a bit of toner leaking on the edges of the paper .. a drum usually costs around $100 to be replaced.
     
    Cheapest Brother toners may have chips that count the pages and won't let you refill the toner (you can get a retail toner once and then buy reset chips from eBay but it's a hassle), on the mid-range and higher end there are toners which have no protections or which use plastic gears to count the pages  - the starter toner may have those plastic gears missing so you can't refill it but you can buy the plastic gears from eBay, or you could get a retail toner once which includes the plastic gear and then you can refill that toner and open up a panel on the side to rewind the plastic gears in the "new toner" position
     
    You can figure these out by searching google  for "brother PRINTER MODEL refill procedure / instructions / tutorial " or "brother PRINTER MODEL reset chip" to see if it needs page reset chips to refill  or "brother PRINTER MODEL toner gears" to see if you can add missing plastic gears to the starter toner and refill it.
     
     
     
     
  19. Agree
    MSMSMSM reacted to BlueChinchillaEatingDorito in Looking for a decent home printer   
    I think Brother is the only manufacturer I haven't heard of being linked to such tactics. Mine happily uses third-party toner cartridges granted mine is like 15 years old so probably no longer representative. So far HP (which also owns Samsung's printer business), Canon, Epson, and Lexmark, all do some DRM shennanigans.  
     
    Ricoh, Konica Minolta, and Xerox are more enterprise-focused which their customers typically purchase supply contracts with those printers anyways so you don't hear much about them with regards to toner/ink DRM shenanigans. 
  20. Agree
    MSMSMSM reacted to Eigenvektor in The following components are required to run this program: DirectX Runtime   
    Try running DxDiag.exe (DirectX Diagnostics), see what it says.
     
    Could also try the System File Checker ("sfc /scannow") which should identify and replaced corrupted system files (https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/topic/use-the-system-file-checker-tool-to-repair-missing-or-corrupted-system-files-79aa86cb-ca52-166a-92a3-966e85d4094e)
     
    Otherwise, I'd say backup their files and do a proper reinstall of Windows
  21. Like
    MSMSMSM reacted to Jerry_Zupan in How do you know when your AIO cooler is dying or is already dead?   
    Yeah, radiator is completly cold everywhere except near the tubes. AIO block is very warm to the touch. Thank you for info, i'll try to return it to lian li.
  22. Agree
    MSMSMSM got a reaction from Needfuldoer in Can i combine 2 sticks of 8gb and 2 sticks of 16gb Ram?   
    I mean, if installed correctly such that each dual channel pair contains the same make and model of RAM, I don't see the problem.
  23. Agree
    MSMSMSM reacted to Xiee in Should I use Windows Defender combined with Avast & Malwarebytes?   
    Then I'm on the other side of the spectrum since I've had terrible experiences with it. Avast used to be installed on my Dad's and Mom's laptops and it didn't manage to catch a lot of malware/viruses. They were regularly updated as well. I had to visit my parents several times after they've complained that their laptop was so slow or something. 

    When I fired up the free version of Malwarbytes it found a ton of stuff that Avast didn't. Told them to cancel their subscription to Avast and had them use Windows Defender instead and asked them to run Malwarebytes (the free version) once a week. They didn't have any problems since then.
  24. Agree
    MSMSMSM got a reaction from Eigenvektor in Download speed is lying to me   
    Interesting choice of data point aside, it's because of a variety of reasons:
    ISPs can be engaging in traffic shaping and prioritizing speed tests (or throttling P2P connections) The speed test server can be geographically proximate to your current location (versus your P2P peer) As a general rule of thumb, speed is determined by the slowest link in the chain (i.e. the bottleneck), if your ISP-to-local machine link doesn't have the bottleneck, then it can be limited by elsewhere in the chain Also, make sure you're comparing equivalent units, MB/s =/= Mb/s, 1 MB (megabyte) = 8 Mb (megabit)
  25. Like
    MSMSMSM got a reaction from BeefSupreme in Should I use Windows Defender combined with Avast & Malwarebytes?   
    Protection from anti-malware solutions don't stack up, so to speak and running such a strat can interfere with ordinary system use (most solutions have background services, which will consume system resources and tend to hook into the operating system to be able to detect malware better, usually to be able to thwart evasion techniques used by malware).
     
    Funny thing, hooking into the OS to gain a "tactical advantage" is something better-written malware also does, it's not so common now-a-days but I remember when such solutions would flag each other as PUPs (potentially unwanted programs) if people installed and ran multiple of them. Friendly fire, essentially.
     
    Also, from my experience, many free solutions won't shut up and seem to be designed from the ground up for upselling you to a subscription plan that offers cloud services or VPNs for reasons beyond me.
     
    It could be possible that certain solutions are a PITA to uninstall, hence the "corrupt Windows system files and mess with the core" belief, but that's less to do with stacking AVs and more to do with software being written maliciously and/or incompetently (looking at you McAfee). Also, Windows has gotten a lot better in protecting key system files in recent releases.
     
    Windows Defender as your de facto AV and Malwarebytes as a portable install that you run every once a bit sounds good to me.
     
    Though if you do plan on dealing with suspicious programs in general, I'd suggest Windows Sandbox . I'd also recommend Simplewall by Henry++ if you need to block certain applications from connecting to the internet, it utilizes the Windows Packet Filter and so should work alongside your firewall (it will disable your firewall by default when enabled but you can override that), though it does have a bit of a learning curve.
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