Thread For Tech Quickie Video Suggestions

[hammerquill]

D-Star. I ran across references to ZUMstar and D-Star recently, and had difficulty finding basic info about it from a techie, computer-savvy, internet-savvy, but completely Amateur-radio Noob perspective. All the info seems to be for people who are already into Amateur Radio and know what they're talking about. Since it seems D-Star is intended to integrate with computer and internet communications, I'd like to know more about it, and it might be of interest to some of the LTT audience looking to broaden their geekdom.

 

One question that doesn't seem to be answered easily in my research so far: If it is primarily low power and uses repeaters and the internet to reach distance, how useful is it for emergency applications in large-scale disasters? This is one of the places Amateur Radio shines, but is this system capable of being useful when grid power and local internet nodes are off?

 

More broadly, the info I want is: why do I want this? What does it enable me to do, apart from acquire an expensive new geeky hobby, that I can't do on the internet? And how does it complement things like open community based wifi?

 

[SegueMan]

4 hours ago, hammerquill said:

D-Star. I ran across references to ZUMstar and D-Star recently, and had difficulty finding basic info about it from a techie, computer-savvy, internet-savvy, but completely Amateur-radio Noob perspective. All the info seems to be for people who are already into Amateur Radio and know what they're talking about. Since it seems D-Star is intended to integrate with computer and internet communications, I'd like to know more about it, and it might be of interest to some of the LTT audience looking to broaden their geekdom.

 

One question that doesn't seem to be answered easily in my research so far: If it is primarily low power and uses repeaters and the internet to reach distance, how useful is it for emergency applications in large-scale disasters? This is one of the places Amateur Radio shines, but is this system capable of being useful when grid power and local internet nodes are off?

 

More broadly, the info I want is: why do I want this? What does it enable me to do, apart from acquire an expensive new geeky hobby, that I can't do on the internet? And how does it complement things like open community based wifi?

 

 

@hammerquill, besides D-Star, there's also EchoLink.  I'm a total beginner with amateur radio even though I have my General Class (Level 2 of 3) license, but I'd imagine these protocols wouldn't be good in "grid down" large-scale disasters since they rely on the Internet backbone infrastructure.  So I guess it depends on how extreme the disaster is -- if the Internet is down (say, major war, EMP, zombies, etc.) then yeah, not good.  If the Internet is up then systems like EchoLink and D-Star do extend the range or your gear.  So maybe take a disaster like a huge forest fire (e.g. like what's happening in your area) or an earthquake or hurricane -- regional disasters.  As long as the Internet is up, these will be useful.

 

Ultimately, I don't think they're silver bullets and don't replace amateur radio infrastructure (including repeater towers) that is independent of the Internet.  I think those are more rugged for disasters.

 

So stick with your entry-level 2-meter and 440MHz bands for local comms, and hook into local repeaters to expand your range to 100-200+ miles.  Or stick with HF and expand to worldwide communications that doesn't need the Internet.

 

Again disclaimer:  I'm a noob with little experience (just haven't gotten around to it!) but have my General Class license.  I'd look into reading up on your local Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) and see what they recommend as far as best practices during disasters.  Heck, train with them, before the zombies come and it's too late.

[hammerquill]

You clearly know a lot more about it than I do, @dahoff. The disaster we think about here is the Big One, meaning a magnitude 8+ earthquake nearby. I would expect no local internet nodes active, except possibly via cellular in some areas, in the immediate aftermath, unless there's some much better protected infrastructure than I think there is. And that's when the radio hams (with generators) come into their own.

 

But I'm also interested in the idea of providing other means of internet and communications access in normal times. There's a local project - sudomesh - working with volunteers and donations to create a local, publicly available, non-commercial wifi mesh covering as much of the local area as possible - all volunteer, gift economy kind of thing, and it strikes me that amateur radio like D-Star and EchoLink and whatever else could add some value and functionality to that. Maybe? Dunno. Want a better primer on the whole thing to start figuring out if it's even worth doing more research. I want that "why do I want this?" video.

[SegueMan]

1 hour ago, hammerquill said:

There's a local project - sudomesh - working with volunteers and donations to create a local, publicly available, non-commercial wifi mesh covering as much of the local area as possible - all volunteer, gift economy kind of thing, and it strikes me that amateur radio like D-Star and EchoLink and whatever else could add some value and functionality to that.

Interdasting, I've heard of volunteer, community mesh Wi-Fi networks.  I think ArsTechnica covered an island community in Washington or Oregon that has their own mesh Internet.  Honestly, if it's still TCP/IP, I don't see why IP protocols like D-Star and EchoLink and other amateur protocols couldn't piggyback on top of that.  But I guess the point of all that is to extend range.  Even on 2-meter/440 with amateur radio and a repeater, that alone would cover the entire Bay Area, 100+ mile radius easy, especially with a repeater on a tower.  A community mesh network would have to be pretty expansive (lots of volunteer nodes) in order to have greater range than that.

 

In the end, it's good to have options.  The more redundancy the merrier.

 

If you're looking for a starting point, buy The ARRL Ham Radio License Manual on Amazon and get your Technician license (Level 1 of 3), which opens up a whole new world of opportunity.  The exam fee itself is about $15-20, it's a multiple choice test written at about a middle or high school level, and the first one is super easy to pass -- even teenagers pass just fine.  The entire question pool is freely available for practice tests.  I studied for about a week.  The license lasts 10 years, and you can renew for free for the rest of your life.  And you can operate internationally when traveling to most countries.

 

Whether you're thinking about emergency communications during a massive "big one" earthquake or the zombie apocalypse, Amateur Radio is definitely the way to go to keep in touch with family, FEMA, and civilization, and you'll be an asset.  None of the peasant FRS/GMRS/CB stuff.  And definitely not cell phones.  Even the Technician license allows for 2-meter/440MHz local communications, so you're good to go.

 

The reason I got my license (even though I'm inactive) was because of emergency preparedness since I learned just how rugged (and nerdy!) amateur radio is, sometimes even more rugged than your local police/fire/EMS communications.

 

To be honest, I don't see Internet systems like D-Star or Echolink as resilient in major disasters since they still require either Internet or intranet infrastructure (routers, switches, access points).

[Orin]

I want a Tech Quickie on the different Sizes for Rackmount chassies? width/height/units etc.

[zornzilla]

ARM processors and their future in hardware like ipad or notebooks. and how software now has to code around arm processing 

[zornzilla]

ARM processors and their future in hardware like ipad or notebooks. and how software now has to code around arm processing 

[ImActualTrash]

how does the RTX 2080ti do in SLI, with an overclock!

[Cereal5]

I would like to see a video specifically about USB type C, and why it's become so popular over the past couple years. I don't understand why USB type C in particular is so popular, especially for things like fast charging, thunderbolt, and even display. I understand that USB type A and B are different kinds of USB, just different form factors, and 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, and 3.2 are all different revisions of USB that allow for faster speeds and such (similar to different versions of HDMI/DisplayPort). If it's just another type of USB connection, why can't USB type A have the same features? Or USB micro B, since that was the popular choice for non-apple phone charging up until about a year or two ago. It's my understanding that USB type C is basically the same as thunderbolt (or has grown to accommodate thunderbolt), but at the same time is classified as a standard of USB... Well if that were the case, why does thunderbolt exist? (conversely, why does USB type C exist if thunderbolt exists, since thunderbolt was all the rage before USB type C?) Also, why would USB type C have to exist at all if the same protocols were available in all other forms of USB? (ok that last question was kind of a repeat).

[hirata]

Mesh wireless networking vs traditional wireless networking

[Bomberman00]

Image Stabilizer software and hardware

[skine]

Could we get a video on how to clean a USB-C port?

 

I know you can use a pin to get the compacted lint out of there, but there has to be a better method than poking around with a piece of metal. Some people suggest a toothpick, but they don't fit.

[Cereal5]

22 minutes ago, skine said:

Could we get a video on how to clean a USB-C port?

 

I know you can use a pin to get the compacted lint out of there, but there has to be a better method than poking around with a piece of metal. Some people suggest a toothpick, but they don't fit.

I don't think that would make for more than about 25 seconds of content. Just unfold a paper clip.

[Watching]

This is more of a update to a regular video - An update on this <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-90qEJAVkU> now with the RTX cards out as it will and does impact:  Redshift, Houdini, Maya and UE4.

 

The solidworks was great last time but that is a small portion of the industry and misses all of the games and film developer audience you have.

[BananaInSandals]

Tech Quickie for kids plz? Been trying to find vids about computer parts and IT for my young cousins whose parents (i.e. my uncles and aunts) are all boundary computer illiterates...  

[Prakhar1998]

About Kai-Os

[MattStar]

Hello Linus,

try this: Upgrade a PS4 to 8TB (or more) of internal SSD Storage with a M.2. to 2.5'' Sata case with two 4 TB M.2 SSDs. Performance, of course is limited to Sata III, but I want to have 8 TB in my PS4 Pro, without having thousands of cables.

I would try it myself, but I can't afford two 4 TB M.2 SSDs :D.
Perhaps the Xbox One X can also be extended?

 

You can include it into a video about, let's say "Premium Upgrads for Consols by Linus".

Here's one adapter, but I think there are better one's with 4 M.2 slots perhaps.

https://www.amazon.com/Dual-M-2-SATA-Adapter-RAID/dp/B018AOZ9QM/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1544533717&amp;sr=8-4&amp;keywords=sata%2Braid%2Bm.2&amp;th=1

[Mr. Mobius]

In your latest video( https://youtu.be/bfrQ1_X6gS4 ), you mentioned how some windows computers get bogged down by not javeing files in the most appropriate places. Maybe a tech quirky on what should go where and why?

[0mniscient]

multiplatform games explained

[Kevin2]

Title: Why does CGI look fake?

 

Questions to be answered:

·         What makes CGI look fake?

·         What are the often-missed points?

·         Why haven’t we achieved photorealism?

·         Why are things like hair and skin so hard to animate?

·         How will CGI improve in the future?

 

Resources:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-most-common-cgi-screw-ups-explained/

• “Skin looks like plastic”, meaning “Sometimes they mean faces are rigid and motionless, as if they were made of hard plastic like some kind of creepy doll, which is usually a rigging problem, which I'll talk about later. Sometimes they mean the skin has the texture of plastic, like their face has been shellacked.” It’s important to know that “The person responsible for this is the person who writes the shaders. When a character is modeled, or "sculpted" in 3-D, at first it has no color. When modelers show their work for approval, it usually looks like a statue made of dull gray clay” because of this, better shaders are needed like ones that use subsurface scattering. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYHaarxQTFk

• Bad modeling, rigging, and animation: “a character moves around when you move a skeleton, which is pretty much what it sounds like -- imagine a bunch of joints connected by wire, and then you sculpt soft clay around it. You bend the joints, and the sculpture moves. There's two ways of making the model move. One is that you say it's pretty much like clay that's attached to the skeleton. This is called "skinning." When it goes wrong, you get melty faces and Gumby elbows.”

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=VA0Ch2_2o7I#t=132s

• Jibo! Make a death scene! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSGXERUKBj4

https://www.rocketstock.com/blog/opinion-10-reasons-why-cgi-is-getting-worse-not-better/

• “The move to HD and 4K make CGI less convincing … CGI is far from perfect. But when the delivery format was celluloid and SD, it masked the imperfections of CGI and made everything look more realistic. Filmmakers furthered the illusion by purposely compositing CGI into poorly lit scenes and behind elements like smoke and rain. Now with the stunning clarity of 2K and 4K (and even more so with HFR), we’re starting to see the cracks in the pavement. As resolution increases, CGI is becoming less convincing.”
• “Stylized grades and CGI don’t mix … The over-saturated color scheme blooming with every conceivable tone of orange and teal is ruining CGI. CGI needs all the help it can get when composited into a scene. When you splash a hyper-realistic grade over the top, it makes everything look fake including the CGI. This is why Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Jurassic Park look incredibly real. They incorporated CGI into scenes that had realistic lighting and color.”
• “There’s no restraint.” “CGI encourages lazy filmmaking.” “CGI is paralyzing the film industry. It’s taking over production time, budgets, story, and even replacing real characters. It’s making films worse. If we allocated the amount of resources we spend on CGI toward hiring better writers, creating cooler set designs, and minimizing post production, we’d have better cinema. Because of the damage done by CGI, Hollywood can only finance CGI-fest films with bloated budgets. The people demand CGI and the only way to keep the demand up is to increase the dose of CGI.” “CGI has made us complacent.” “CGI has put us in a state of denial.” “CGI has transitioned from a complimentary dish to the main course.”
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaIhQFDdcJM – Resident Evil afterlife rooftop landing
  Notice how when the plane is somewhat out of view, up until about 0:38, it’s totally rock solid. This is okay and kind of expected behavior as the plane is flying through the air. When it lands though, after the 0:38 mark, it remains completely still as it barrels through rough gravely terrain, bashing through objects, almost out of control.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL6hp8BKB24 - RocketJump explanation CGI sucking

• Discusses more of how the content itself is often quite good, the usage can make it seem like it’s actually bad.

https://graphics.pixar.com/library/CurlyHairA/paper.pdf 

• Pixar had to create a new mathematical formula to even begin to model and render hair as realistically as they wanted to.

https://vimeo.com/237568588 - Goodbye Uncanny Valley

• Provides a good view as to the implications of current and future CGI technology

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgI_oMMIU0E - Twilight Sequel CGI Baby

• With the huge success of the original Twilight movie and book series, and the huge budget of the movie, why did the director opt to use a CGI baby? The baby in this scene just looks like it’s in a whole other universe than the rest of the characters, its movements are just totally smooth and free from even the slightest jitter. At the same time, it almost seems low def, like at a lower resolution than the rest of the shot.

Related LTT videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W6JfiC-QBk - The REAL Reason we spent $140,000 on 8K Cameras - ft Corridor Digital

• Useful shots of color grading comparisons, mentioned on the second point of the rocketstock.com resource.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa_VZISu6fc - History of Video Editing As Fast As Possible

• ‘Video editing has come a long way, and you can learn more about the history of it up here’

 

I’m by no means experienced on this subject, so I don’t claim credit for the contents, I only put this post together.

Edited December 16, 2018 by Kevin2

[Betahuman]

What is rendering and why is it important?

[Shogunluffy_1982]

 do one on small form factor itx pc builds and price to performance to compared to atx ones witch in the end should be about the same but only one way to find out.

[germgoatz]

CPU process nodes

[PhysicsGuy]

Long time follower of LTT but new community member. Figured I'd share a little project that might be cool to expand on or demonstrate.

 

Something that I got to working on was inspired by Linus's rack mounted personal rig. My desktop is pretty loud and I hate wire clutter so I really wanted to tuck my PC away where I could still enjoy the benefit of a power PC but without some of the clutter and noise. Using moonlight, along with a local network switch, and some dummy plugs for the monitors, I was able to get my gaming rig completely headless with just my ethernet and power chord. On the receiving end I had two monitors, logitech g603/613 wireless mouse and keyboard, and my ethernet into a small thunderbolt 3 dock on a macbook pro (I know its a sin but I use it for software development). Used really short cables so I couldn't see anything but the cable going from the macbook to the dock. Thanks to the network switch, latency was under 2ms and was able to stream at 60fps with no compresson artifacts even when my roommate was maxing out our local bandwidth. I think a cool video, albeit possibly not a tech quickie, would be showing the advantages of using a local network for in home "streaming" for those of us with wire OCD or anyone with a jet engine sounding pc that would rather tuck it away in another room. Also doubles for a nice NAS since you have the 10 gigabit connection (100 gigabit if you're feeling frisky).

 

Sorry if someone else has posted a similar project, been very excited about it and couldn't find much on in home streaming between the forum and the channel. Closest I could find was a video from 2014 talking about in home latency.

[Falco5150]

Connect as many usb hubs and devices to a single motherboard port as you can. use hubs with external power so it's not power limited. it would still be limited by the port bandwidth, but i think it would be pretty interesting to see just how many devices a single port could recognize and communicate with at the same time, and to see how it manages data transfer if you were copying stuff to multiple flash drives at the same time while trying to complete other tasks, even just trying to move the mouse or type. this may not be a tech quickie video, but its an original idea and I think you guys could have some fun with it and it would be an interesting watch. google says you can connect 127 devices to 1 port, but I don't think anybody has ever actually tested it. Please do it!

Love your videos, keep up the good work!