Technical Computer Stuff

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Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Soft Snow (?) » Wed Nov 15, 2017 2:06 am

Did Firefox get a new layout or something? Where did all my bookmarks go? What is this three button click to get to bookmarks? Why isn't there a drop down list? Where did my bookmark for this site go?
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Adiwan (?) » Wed Nov 15, 2017 4:13 am

A few weeks ago I temporarily installed Firefox 57 and I was shocked that almost every extension I have was not supported anymore.
My most important extensions uBlock Origin, Noscript, and Greasemonkey are already finished and there is a replacement plugin for my mouse gestures (Foxy Gestures).
But there are plenty of smaller plugins that are not already there like the download manager DownThemAll and tons of little user interface customization stuff and cookie managing stuff.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by SlateSlabrock (?) » Wed Nov 15, 2017 6:41 am

Adiwan wrote:
Wed Nov 15, 2017 4:13 am
But there are plenty of smaller plugins that are not already there like the download manager DownThemAll and tons of little user interface customization stuff and cookie managing stuff.
DownThemAll! is not going to port to the new Firefox add-on framework because he doesn't think it's possible with the new locked-down API. However, he did decide to do a DTA Lite.

There's only one plugin I'll miss, which is the one I used to pull videos off of Nico Douga for stuff like the Japanese pony episodes, but I can work around that. However, I also don't have any particular urge or need to use Firefox for anything except sites that need a heavy dose of NoScript. I really don't think they thought their schedule through for a move this huge.

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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Adiwan (?) » Wed Nov 15, 2017 7:38 am

Aw man. I don't use DownThemAll that often but when I do it's super convenient.
I'm a long-time user of Firefox and it makes me sad that Mozilla doesn't want to offer a proper replacement API for low-level stuff they need.
Mozilla made me switch to PulseAudio (a user-space sound server) on Linux because they didn't want to support ALSA (kernel-space audio), which has always worked and didn't need PulseAudio before. They changed that without prior notice that also surprised many users other than me.
So far I was always happy with the customization Firefox offers through their extensions and extensive settings list in about:config, in order to revert some unwanted functionality (like pdf.js).
But major changes like that are a pain in the ass.
I don't know how much longer Mozilla can keep up the goodwill of their user-base.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Venusy (?) » Wed Nov 15, 2017 2:48 pm

I mean, my understanding was that Firefox Quantum was designed for the people who used to use Firefox but had gradually switched away over the years - maybe it just became too bloated, or maybe they decided that if they were going to follow Chrome's UI design, they may as well just use Chrome.

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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Soft Snow (?) » Thu Nov 16, 2017 11:35 pm

It is kinda weird how the default buttons for Firefox are bookmark history and bookmark archive but not the actual bookmarks themselves. I had to add them in manually through customs.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Pocket (?) » Fri Nov 17, 2017 1:58 am

And it takes three clicks to get to the list of recently closed tabs now. Meanwhile they still have Cut, Copy, and Paste in the hamburger menu even though that's what context menus are for.

Funnily enough, they're still keeping the dedicated search bar, which I thought they were getting rid of. Must have been a lot of backlash during the beta.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Pocket (?) » Fri Nov 24, 2017 4:25 am

I have a hardware question for y'all.

My current power supply uses modular cables for the SATA devices that connect to the unit with six-pin (technically five-pin; the sixth is unused) plugs. There were two that came with it, each with three SATA plugs. The SATA plugs are cheap and flimsy as hell, and over the years three have snapped to the point of being unusable, while a fourth... I don't even remember what happened to it; it has electrical tape covering it so it's possible that it just plain never worked. The remaining two have held on simply by virtue of being reinforced with duct tape (which has the added advantage of keeping it from wobbling out of the socket; yes, they are really that badly made).

Looking online for replacement cables led me to the discovery that six-pin-to-SATA cables do not exist. Further digging revealed that even if I were to find any, they'd probably fry my hard drives because no two manufacturers of modular PSUs use the same pin configuration! And this begs the question: I have some old power supplies that either don't work anymore or are too weak to be useful. What if I yanked a SATA cord out of one of them and spliced a six-pin plug onto the end? Would it be as simple as checking the colors of the wires and matching the arrangement? Followup question: Two of the wires are the same color. Does that mean they're interchangeable (most likely ground)?
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Void Chicken (?) » Fri Nov 24, 2017 10:03 am

A simple switcheroo with the wires will work fine. And yes, the two black wires are both ground. (Yellow is +12V, red is +5V, and orange is +3.3V.) Just be careful that you get them in the right order again.

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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Factory Factory (?) » Fri Nov 24, 2017 3:17 pm

Pocket wrote:
Fri Nov 24, 2017 4:25 am
I have a hardware question for y'all.

My current power supply uses modular cables for the SATA devices that connect to the unit with six-pin (technically five-pin; the sixth is unused) plugs. There were two that came with it, each with three SATA plugs. The SATA plugs are cheap and flimsy as hell, and over the years three have snapped to the point of being unusable, while a fourth... I don't even remember what happened to it; it has electrical tape covering it so it's possible that it just plain never worked. The remaining two have held on simply by virtue of being reinforced with duct tape (which has the added advantage of keeping it from wobbling out of the socket; yes, they are really that badly made).

Looking online for replacement cables led me to the discovery that six-pin-to-SATA cables do not exist. Further digging revealed that even if I were to find any, they'd probably fry my hard drives because no two manufacturers of modular PSUs use the same pin configuration! And this begs the question: I have some old power supplies that either don't work anymore or are too weak to be useful. What if I yanked a SATA cord out of one of them and spliced a six-pin plug onto the end? Would it be as simple as checking the colors of the wires and matching the arrangement? Followup question: Two of the wires are the same color. Does that mean they're interchangeable (most likely ground)?
This is entirely possible, but I wouldn't do it without a multimeter for careful checking of which line is which.

Standard ATX colors: black is ground, yellow is +12V, red is +5V, orange is +3.3V. All grounds are common. The problem is, there are TONS of exceptions to this pattern that manufacturers make for reasons of cost, aesthetics, or laziness.

So as long as, using the multimeter and an existing cable, you can verify the voltages on the 6-pin side of the cable, splicing it up to a SATA line would be just fine.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Soft Snow (?) » Fri Nov 24, 2017 6:37 pm

I just bought a Amazon Basics mouse because it was cheap and I now understand why it is cheap because the design is horrible. For what ever unfathomable reason, the laser sensor is pointing directly to the left and every time I left the mouse to move it red death laser beams hits me in the eyes and it looks like siren lights are going off in my room. All my other mouses had the laser facing the back and I never noticed the stupid laser until now.

Furthermore, my new head set has a light on it that is brighter then my ceiling light and and lights up my bed room at night. I had to put to layers of duct tape over it just to make it as dim as my last one. Why does it need to be a thousand times brighter then the sun?

Who had the bright idea and said "You know what people need more of? Unreasonably bright lights in the eyeballs!"
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by SlateSlabrock (?) » Fri Nov 24, 2017 8:31 pm

Soft Snow wrote:
Fri Nov 24, 2017 6:37 pm
Who had the bright idea and said "You know what people need more of? Unreasonably bright lights in the eyeballs!"
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Pocket (?) » Sat Nov 25, 2017 2:39 pm

Back in college, I had to cover the power light on my computer with electrical tape for the same reason. I don't know why blue LEDs light up the whole room while red ones fizzle out mere inches from the source. I guess it's because blue is an inherently "dark" wavelength (compare pure #0000FF with #FF0000 and especially #00FF00) so they have to make it way more intense to look bright enough?
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Factory Factory (?) » Sat Nov 25, 2017 11:38 pm

It's the technology behind them. Super bright blue LEDs are easy to manufacture, and they'll put out more light with the same current flowing through them. Since computer LED headers are "one size fits all," different colors of LED will end up different brightnesses. Same goes for different chemistries of LED for the same color.

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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Venusy (?) » Sat Dec 16, 2017 4:39 pm

If you do happen to use Firefox and have checked your extensions list recently, you may have found one you didn't install, called Looking Glass.

A lot of people have wondered if it's malware, but it's actually Mozilla sanctioned advertising for Mr. Robot. Which is actually kind of worse, I know Mozilla needs money, but they're advertising Firefox as the consumer and privacy friendly browser, which does not work if you're automatically installing adverts into a user's browser. And they did this by using the feature that's meant to get people's opinions on future updates to Firefox, meaning that even if people stick with Firefox, they will probably turn that feature off, so goodbye to most useful feedback Mozilla could have got from that.

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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Pocket (?) » Sat Dec 16, 2017 5:39 pm

What is it that drives virtually all tech companies to commit career suicide around the ten year mark?
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Soft Snow (?) » Tue Dec 19, 2017 8:20 pm

For whatever reason Skype doesn't work for me anymore. Just one day it stopped working at all. I just started it up and it gave me an "oops, an issue happened" and an exit button. No menu options, no other error message. It worked fine yesterday. So I tried to uninstall and reinstall it. I go to their web site to try to download it. As soon as I click install a message pops up and says "you will have a better experience downloading this from the Windows app store" and it takes me to the app store. Like no option to say I rather install it this way or what not. I got to the app store, I download it and soon as it starts installing a message pops up and says "Failed to install. Try again later."

I'm trying to trouble shot this but it's not giving any error messages beyond "Sorry Out of Order." It makes me sound stupid when I go to tech support and can't tell them any details of why it isn't working beyond it just isn't doing it.

Any suggestion on what I can do?
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Fizzbuzz (?) » Tue Dec 19, 2017 8:56 pm

Soft Snow wrote:
Tue Dec 19, 2017 8:20 pm
Any suggestion on what I can do?
Is ditching Skype an option? Skype being crappy is why so many communities have moved their chats to Discord over the past couple of years. If you can't, I guess just wait for Microsoft to fix their crap.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Soft Snow (?) » Wed Dec 20, 2017 3:58 pm

Some people just prefer to use it to conduct business.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Pocket (?) » Mon Jan 08, 2018 8:00 pm

Pocket wrote:
Thu Nov 23, 2017 4:44 am
My Linux box just did the weirdest thing. The hard drive started chattering like crazy, the pointer started moving sluggishly, and there was about a minute delay between me doing anything and getting a response. Last time anything remotely like this happened to me was in Windows when I started running low on memory, back when I still had only 4 gigs. Weirdest of all, out of desperation I hit the sleep key, which after another minute caused the screen to fade out...and then right back in again as if to say "Not this time, you don't!" But then I got worried that it might be some kind of malware and didn't want it to spread to my external drive—which didn't have its light on at the time, but you can never be too careful—so I unplugged it and the computer instantly went to sleep.

...WAT. :starity:
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That sounds like the drive got caught trying to read or write from a bad sector and went into "heroic recovery mode." During that mode, drives assume that if they don't succeed on the read, the data is gone and everything is ruined forever, so it will spend up to two minutes trying over and over to read that data and rewrite it somewhere else.

Problem is, during this two minutes, it's not doing ANY I/O operations until it's finished trying to recover that sector. The OS was expecting a response in maybe a few milliseconds, tops, and it's got a whole mess queued up waiting. So, unresponsiveness, and weird behavior as you interact with programs that aren't held completely in RAM and need to read or write to disk.

tl;dr replace the drive. You could run diagnostics and I could explain why the diagnostics mean what they mean, but that really sounds like a textbook case of dead hard drive. Back up what you can while you can. Assume that every second the drive spins is a second closer to permadeath and prioritize your backup appropriately.
I was finally able to get another Linux box up and running so I could run a SMART test on the drive, and it came up all clean. So I hooked everything back up and it seems to be running fine, albeit a bit slow to boot up. I don't understand anything anymore.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Factory Factory (?) » Mon Jan 08, 2018 8:12 pm

Were there any reallocated sectors perchance? If so, that means that it was indeed a "heroic" recovery from a bad sector, and even though it's working now, statistically speaking the drive would be dead and should be replaced.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Pocket (?) » Mon Jan 08, 2018 8:18 pm

I did a full test. Is SMART not good enough to find problems like that?
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by SlateSlabrock (?) » Mon Jan 08, 2018 8:28 pm

Pocket wrote:
Mon Jan 08, 2018 8:18 pm
I did a full test. Is SMART not good enough to find problems like that?
He's talking about this part of the SMART tools output:

Image
...or current pending sectors, or any of those lines below the red arrow (which may vary by drive model). The SMART test might pass if the error was corrected, but if it had to do so, that's worrisome.

Try

Code: Select all

sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda
(or whatever device name you're looking at) to see the current details on the drive.

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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Pocket (?) » Mon Jan 08, 2018 9:33 pm

...Oh. I have a Multi Zone Error Rate of 1931. Reallocation Event Count is 0 though.

EDIT: Oh, and GSmartControl includes two more things at the bottom, Load/Unload Retry Count (87) and Load/Unload Cycle Count (8166). That... seems like a large number to me.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by diribigal (?) » Mon Jan 29, 2018 7:27 pm

My desktop is being really difficult to use, and I'm looking for suggestions/recommendations as to what to do.

Basically, I had intermittent freezes, and I updated my graphics driver and stopped using my old USB hub simultaneously, and that happened to coincide with it not freezing for a while (a couple months?).

Then I got a new USB hub and better USB cables and started running a graphics intensive game all around the same time, and it froze a couple times in one day, including once as I unplugged the extra power from the USB hub as a test so I disconnected the USB hub entirely and it worked fine for a whole day (while running a game that made significant use of the graphics card, whose temperature has stayed low always).

Since then, it decided it was not okay anymore and freezes within 15 min of successful boot, safe mode or no. And it also doesn't start up properly after it freezes, so a freeze is really like two or three hard power-offs to get back on track. This still seems to be vaguely related to USB stuff since plugging in a USB device seems to trigger freezes sometimes, but it seem it will freeze on its own no matter what I do.

I've seen parts like memory or hard drives die before, but I don't have experience with something quite like this.

Should I buy a new motherboard? Go the extra mile to use a non-USB keyboard and a wireless card to see if simply avoiding USB use altogether stops it from freezing? Take it to a shop where someone can see if it's a power-supply issue or a motherboard issue or some other kind of issue? Ask on some bigger computer forum?
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Kronos (?) » Tue Jan 30, 2018 12:12 am

diribigal wrote:
Mon Jan 29, 2018 7:27 pm
My desktop is being really difficult to use, and I'm looking for suggestions/recommendations as to what to do.

Basically, I had intermittent freezes, and I updated my graphics driver and stopped using my old USB hub simultaneously, and that happened to coincide with it not freezing for a while (a couple months?).

Then I got a new USB hub and better USB cables and started running a graphics intensive game all around the same time, and it froze a couple times in one day, including once as I unplugged the extra power from the USB hub as a test so I disconnected the USB hub entirely and it worked fine for a whole day (while running a game that made significant use of the graphics card, whose temperature has stayed low always).

Since then, it decided it was not okay anymore and freezes within 15 min of successful boot, safe mode or no. And it also doesn't start up properly after it freezes, so a freeze is really like two or three hard power-offs to get back on track. This still seems to be vaguely related to USB stuff since plugging in a USB device seems to trigger freezes sometimes, but it seem it will freeze on its own no matter what I do.

I've seen parts like memory or hard drives die before, but I don't have experience with something quite like this.

Should I buy a new motherboard? Go the extra mile to use a non-USB keyboard and a wireless card to see if simply avoiding USB use altogether stops it from freezing? Take it to a shop where someone can see if it's a power-supply issue or a motherboard issue or some other kind of issue? Ask on some bigger computer forum?
If you're having problems with booting the system, either your BIOS is bad or your Motherboard is shot. I'm inclined to believe the latter as that would also explain why the freezing happens even without USB, but even faster with USB connections.

It wouldn't be your power supply as if that was bad, the thing would just randomly shut off.

To be absolutely sure, I would go the route of asking a big computer forum as they would be able to ask for details to pinpoint the problem, but from my College educated guess, your MB is dying.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Pocket (?) » Fri Feb 02, 2018 6:17 pm

Is anyone else getting a thing where Windows 10 will lock the screen mid-login and make you essentially log in a second time? Mine just started doing this after it finally acquired the "Fall" Creators' Update.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by West Filly (?) » Fri Feb 02, 2018 6:20 pm

I have a different Windows 10 gripe.

I leave my Taskbar locked along the bottom of my screen with auto hide off. My gripe is that the bottom of my maximised windows goes to the bottom of the screen, underneath the taskbar, instead of only going to the top of the taskbar. If there's stuff in my application windows that need to click down there it's a pain in the butt.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by diribigal (?) » Thu Feb 08, 2018 7:09 am

Kronos wrote:
Tue Jan 30, 2018 12:12 am
If you're having problems with booting the system, either your BIOS is bad or your Motherboard is shot. I'm inclined to believe the latter as that would also explain why the freezing happens even without USB, but even faster with USB connections.

It wouldn't be your power supply as if that was bad, the thing would just randomly shut off.
Thanks for the thoughts. I got a second opinion, and as far as I can tell by
1. Removing the GPU and having no problems,
2. Replacing the power supply (and putting the GPU back) and having no problems,

It was the power supply maybe not dying, but not being able to handle the draw anymore. As a bonus, I seem to be getting more out of the GPU than I was able to on that day when things seemed fine.

There just seems to have been some weird quirk (separate problem?) about having trouble rebooting after a freeze, followed by holding the power button instead of pressing the reset button.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Kronos (?) » Thu Feb 08, 2018 11:44 am

diribigal wrote:
Thu Feb 08, 2018 7:09 am
Thanks for the thoughts. I got a second opinion, and as far as I can tell by
1. Removing the GPU and having no problems,
2. Replacing the power supply (and putting the GPU back) and having no problems,

It was the power supply maybe not dying, but not being able to handle the draw anymore. As a bonus, I seem to be getting more out of the GPU than I was able to on that day when things seemed fine.

There just seems to have been some weird quirk (separate problem?) about having trouble rebooting after a freeze, followed by holding the power button instead of pressing the reset button.
Ah, I hadn't thought of the power supply being too weak to support the GPU.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Erythema (?) » Tue Feb 13, 2018 9:57 pm

Not sure if this is the right place for this but here goes.

Allow me to show you a neat thing called ElectricityMap. It's an interactive map that allows you to look at the carbon footprint of a country or region's electricity generation. It' been up for at least a year now and there's even a time lapse video on it. The video only shows Europe, however.



You'll notice that some countries "flicker" quite a lot in the video while others' colors tend to remain static.

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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Jill (?) » Thu Mar 01, 2018 10:07 pm

long story short here: since yesterday my desktop has had stuttering issues. after being shut down overnight, it seemed to be working fine again until the display abruptly shut itself off. this is probably related to a component overheating or overdrawing the PSU but i honestly don't care anymore. i've had this desktop for ~9 years and gone through process of replacing an exploded PSU and removing a bad RAM stick after all the headache it took to diagnose them in the first place. i got this thing from newegg on the cheap for my 16th birthday and it has just never been all that stable

now i'm just looking for recommendations for a good prebuilt gaming PC. not necessarily a high-end one, but one that might at least go a few years without some cryptic hardware or driver fault. i don't really know anything about the hardware side of computers so i wouldn't know where to begin when there are like 8 major manufacturers trying to sell me their things

these are my current desktop's specs, which have worked fine for both playing and streaming most of the games i've been interested in:
- Windows 10 Home
- AMD Phenom II X6 1055T Processor 2.80GHz
- AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series
- 6GB RAM (formerly 8GB; bad stick was never replaced)

i don't play a lot of AAA games and i especially don't care about VR; Minecraft is probably the most taxing game i play on a semi-regular basis, so if i can still run that at 1080p alongside a few background apps (Discord, Steam, Chrome) then that ought to be more than enough

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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Factory Factory (?) » Fri Mar 02, 2018 12:35 am

What's your budget? At the lower end, you can't beat putting a graphics card into a refurbished Dell machine. That'd give you a non-overclocking quad core Core i5 or i7, 8-16 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB hard drive plus a Windows license for about $500. Add a GeForce 1050 Ti and an SSD and it'd be pretty effin' solid.

If you want it all prebuilt, Dell has a fairly new line of Inspiron Gaming desktops that accomplish much the same thing. Browsing the model list right now, $729 will get you a Ryzen 5 1400 (quad core), 8 GB of RAM, 1 TB hard drive, and a Radeon RX 570 GPU. And it's configurable: R7 1700X (the top price-performance 8-core in Ryzen's lineup) for an extra $150 (next to no markup), and a 256 GB boot SSD for $100 (you can get one for $70 but you'd have to move the OS and such yourself). For what you get it's definitely not the worst you could do, in this era of inflated GPU prices.

FWIW it's possible to flex around in price a bit if you want to go the DIY route and/or if you have a lower budget, especially if you can re-use that Windows 10 license. But for what you want in terms of gaming horsepower, I don't think you need to build a Battlestation or anything.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Pocket (?) » Fri Mar 23, 2018 6:29 pm

I'm just about at the end of my rope with this. My computer keeps waking itself up from sleep mode for no reason. Event Viewer says the cause is "unknown". Checking Windows Update shows no recent updates downloaded or need to restart. My mouse is not set to wake the computer. Neither is the UPS. Wake on LAN is disabled. The only thing left that I can possibly think of is that the motherboard or power supply is failing in a weird way that makes it think it's getting a wake signal when it's not. Is that a thing?
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Fizzbuzz (?) » Sat Apr 14, 2018 8:59 am

So, I've been thinking of getting a new laptop.

For the past few years I've been using a iMac at home, while on the go I've been getting by on a combination of my iPad and my university's lab computers. I've found myself needing more computing power on a personal machine (a handful of software development IDEs that can be installed at home but my university provides on only a few of their computers, hacking and digital forensics stuff that has to be run inside a clunky VM on a university machine, etc.) than what my iPad can provide, though, and with my iMac getting long in the tooth I figure it's time for a new machine. I've really not been pleased with Apple's macOS software quality or with their MacBook lineup as of late, so I feel it's time for me to switch away from them.

I want something with lots of ports and good upgradeability (not necessarily desktop-level, but definitely better than MacBook-level), I don't need the absolute hottest graphics (the most intensive thing I can see myself playing on this would be Minecraft), and I'd gladly carry something big and beefy if that meant a better machine. I've got a budget of about $2000.

Lenovo's T-series ThinkPads are what I've had my eye on since I started searching. I like the T580 in particular for its big screen and, since I deal with numbers often enough, its full-sized number pad. With their current prices and their student discount, I could get one pretty heavily specced out (i7-8650U processor, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, I even sprung for NVIDIA GeForce MX150 graphics just in case but maybe it's possible the integrated Intel graphics card it normally comes with would be sufficient) for $1800.

The main thing I'm wondering is, should I be waiting on any of these things? I admittedly have not kept up very well on non-Apple hardware development, so if any sort of breakthrough on processors for laptops or cheaper big SSDs or something like that is just around the corner, maybe it'd be better to get one now with cheaper components and then replace them myself where possible. I would like to have one fairly soon, as I'll be going on a school trip in May and a laptop like this would make things much more convenient for me. Since this build is well within my budget, I'm thinking I should go ahead and get it, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't wasting money or making some horrible mistake first.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Venusy (?) » Sun Apr 15, 2018 9:55 am

I'm out of things on the heavy + heavily connected high end side, but I'm not sure if I'd trust Lenovo's laptops following the security issues they've had over the past few years- though granted, most of them would be fixed with cleanly re-imaging.

If there's dual SATA ports, or an M2 SSD plus a SATA port, then depending on your needs, you could probably go for a smaller SSD as a boot drive and then a separate slower HDD.
Pocket wrote:
Fri Mar 23, 2018 6:29 pm
I'm just about at the end of my rope with this. My computer keeps waking itself up from sleep mode for no reason. Event Viewer says the cause is "unknown". Checking Windows Update shows no recent updates downloaded or need to restart. My mouse is not set to wake the computer. Neither is the UPS. Wake on LAN is disabled. The only thing left that I can possibly think of is that the motherboard or power supply is failing in a weird way that makes it think it's getting a wake signal when it's not. Is that a thing?
I had this with Windows 10 for a while on my desktop. Between a copy of running a sleep study (powercfg /sleeptstudy from elevated CMD/PS), Event Viewer, and Task Scheduler, I think it did end up being Windows Update - it was waking up just to check for updates, not install them.

My solution ended up being switching to hibernate rather than sleep for a while, or shutting down. I think I disabled the Windows Update overnight check in Task Scheduler, but it would re-enable itself after so long. Eventually, an update stopped the random wake up behaviour.

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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Fizzbuzz (?) » Sun Apr 15, 2018 10:39 am

Venusy wrote:
Sun Apr 15, 2018 9:55 am
I'm out of things on the heavy + heavily connected high end side, but I'm not sure if I'd trust Lenovo's laptops following the security issues they've had over the past few years- though granted, most of them would be fixed with cleanly re-imaging.

If there's dual SATA ports, or an M2 SSD plus a SATA port, then depending on your needs, you could probably go for a smaller SSD as a boot drive and then a separate slower HDD.
I was also thinking that I could get one with the base-level 500 GB hard drive, then buy my own SSD and put it in, as 1 TB SSDs are hovering around $250 on Newegg right now (vs. Lenovo charging $626 for an SSD of the same size installed). It's just as simple as matching the size and interface (2.5 inches, SATA 3), putting it in, and installing an OS, right? My gut says yes, my wallet says yes, but my brain is in a panic over this and is trying to figure out just what exactly I'm missing and thus would be messing up.

I'm not terribly concerned about potentially crappy OEM software, since if I did the above then I'd be starting fresh regardless, and I'd been thinking of mainly using Ubuntu and only dual-booting into Win10 if necessary (unless Windows Subsystem for Linux turns out to be really great).
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Venusy (?) » Sun Apr 15, 2018 3:17 pm

Lenovo has a guide on how to replace the drive, and it is effectively that simple.

WSL is pretty good (someone I follow on Mastodon posted earlier today about how they'd run a full X server install and got a GUI up within WSL and opened bash within that), but if you're primarily using Linux, I don't think you could do something like running a Linux program at Windows bootup (without leaving the console host window open).

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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Fizzbuzz (?) » Sun Apr 15, 2018 8:44 pm

Venusy wrote:
Sun Apr 15, 2018 3:17 pm
Lenovo has a guide on how to replace the drive, and it is effectively that simple.
I knew I was worrying way too much again. That literally will save me a few hundred dollars, so thank you for the reassurance. :flutterunsmith:
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Pocket (?) » Wed Apr 18, 2018 1:36 am

The Verge ran a couple of interesting articles recently: "Chrome is turning into the new Internet Explorer 6", and "It's time to give Firefox a fresh chance". As someone who never switched to Chrome full time, I'd lost track of where things were going with it. I especially didn't learn about the built-in ad blocker, which is all kinds of conflict of interest regardless of what exactly it does. (For the record, this is what it does, which I would consider overstepping some boundaries even if the company behind it weren't the biggest competitor to the ad providers it's targeting.)

My take on all this is that Mozilla has spent way too long doing jack-all and then playing catch-up. I'm not even talking about the performance issues they've become infamous for. The last time they rolled out a genuinely new feature I cared about was Firefox Sync. And while I'm wary of it, Chrome's ad blocker is a good example of the sort of thing Mozilla could be looking into. If not ads per se, then certain malicious things that some ads do, like spamming your history with clones of the current page to make it impossible to use the Back button, or redirecting the page (from within an <iframe>, mind you) without any input from the user. These are things that no legitimate page should be physically capable of doing, and even if it means violating ECMAscript standards, the scripts that do such things should be disabled entirely. Likewise, I'd like to see them hunt down the providers that serve such ads and start adding them to the same blacklist they use to prevent phishing, so instead of their ads you just see a red rectangle with a warning message.

In 2004, Mozilla unilaterally declared war on the entire concept of pop-up ads, not penalizing the sites that have them but preventing them from spawning. 14 years later, the enemies of the day run free, and even pop-up ads have figured out a way to make a comeback. (And really, there is no good reason for a site to spawn pop-up windows of any kind, and that includes our emoticon list. It's GeoCities-era UI design, it breaks on tablets anyway, and there should have been a team effort from the Web design community to stamp it out like they did with Flash Player.)

If Mozilla wants to compete with Chrome, they have to do more than simply be "just as good". People didn't abandon Internet Explorer because Firefox was merely "just as good". And now that they've caught up, it's time to go back to innovating.
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