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Snakecharmed

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Everything posted by Snakecharmed

  1. Just that I have a few lines in mine that exceed 45, and my longest is 63.
  2. Is there any way this could be increased a little more, perhaps to 64 characters?
  3. I have a palm grip. Desktop: Logitech G502 X Plus Desktop backup: Logitech MX Master 2S (P1, which I never use) Laptop: Logitech Performance MX Work laptop: Logitech MX Master 2S (P2) NVR/file server: Logitech G MX518 Legendary Spare: Logitech MX518 In a box somewhere/for office use: Logitech MX510 I swore by the wired MX500 form factor for a long time, but a wired mouse even with a USB extension cable was a real nuisance on my desk which tends to pull the mouse back due to mouse pad positioning and the cable almost immediately going over the edge of the desk, causing me to pull the mouse toward me regularly. What also doesn't help is that I have the MX Master 2S on the same mouse pad during the work day. What finally got me to look for an alternative to the MX500 family was how the decrease DPI/cruise down button becomes stiff after some time, even on the G MX518 Legendary I bought new about three years ago. I decided I had enough of that and the cord when I built my current rig and went for a G502 X Plus. I've been happy with it so far. I wanted additional customizable buttons without going full MMO style. Other must-haves after experiencing them with the mice I use for work were infinite scrolling and horizontal scrolling. The G502 X Plus and the Razer Basilisk Pro were the only ones that fit the bill, but was I really going to get on board with Razer software when it gets even more hate than Logitech G Hub? The G502 X Plus and the MX500 family aren't really full palm grip mice, but I'm fine with the heel of my palm being on the desk or mousing surface. What I really can't stand is my fingers touching while using a mouse. I once tried a cheap vertical mouse to see if I would like it and I ended up hating it and returning it because the grip area for the right side of the right hand was too short. It caused my ring and pinky fingers to touch all the time and on top of that, my pinky would rub against the mouse pad too.
  4. That looks good. I was considering a USB 3.0 solution since it's only 2.5 GbE that I'd want to support in the near future, but using the extra M.2 would be better. Here's a possibility, potential Intel I225-V issues (which I was unaware of until just now) aside. Amazon.com: Ableconn M2NW108BM 2.5 GbE Base-T M.2 B-M Key Ethernet Module (Right Angle RJ-45) - Intel I225 Ethernet Controller - M.2 Ethernet Adapter - M.2 Network Adapter : Electronics WWW.AMAZON.COM Buy Ableconn M2NW108BM 2.5 GbE Base-T M.2 B-M Key Ethernet Module (Right Angle RJ-45) - Intel I225 Ethernet Controller - M.2...
  5. I put the Noctua NF-A9x14 fan on the Thermalright AXP90. The DeskMini X300 placed next to the NUC 8, then next to my Mystichrome build. The seller included this brand new Punkston TK87 RGB mechanical keyboard. I wouldn't complain about a free throw-in anyway, but it's actually a good mechanical RGB keyboard for its retail price point of under $30. Here's the ASRock X300M-STX UEFI home screen with the rig specs. There's enough to tweak given the limitations of a small motherboard with thermal and power budget constraints, although there's not a lot that I wanted to mess with here given the purpose of this rig. I did lower the CPU power limit to 35W though. The NVMe SSD comes with an image of Windows 11 Home, soon to be Windows 11 Dumpster since I can't get past the setup without signing in to a Microsoft account that I had no intention of making in the first place because I was going to put 10 IoT LTSC on this all the way.
  6. 2.5 GbE would have been nice for sure, and given the role this PC will play in my network, it's a bit of a shame because the rest of this rig is overpowered for how I intend to use it. I don't anticipate the 1 GbE being a major bottleneck for now though, but maybe that's just me rationalizing it today because I currently don't move files over Ethernet often. As much as I'd like to have waited for the DeskMini X600, a build based around that would have ended up a fair bit more expensive than the approximately $300 I paid for this DeskMini X300/Ryzen 5 5600G/16 GB DDR4-3200/500 GB PCIe 3.0 NVMe rig. I still wanted to keep this thing relatively cheap, and it cost the same as what I paid for the NUC 8 back in 2021. If I were needing more storage than around 4 TB for the NVR, I might have gone with a DeskMeet and used 3.5" hard drives instead. I'm currently estimating about a half-dozen cameras that will be capturing at 2K resolution/15 FPS at most, which would give me around 10-14 days of footage per camera. I vastly prefer the silence over the storage capacity and as long as you're staying under 4 TB, SSD pricing isn't bad. I may not sleep in the office, and I may have music on most of the time which would mask the noises, but I would find the sound of constant rhythmic hard drive writes to be exhausting.
  7. I've been running an Intel NUC 8 Mainstream Kit with an i5-8259U for a simple WIndows SMB file share server for a few years now with the intention of also using it as an NVR. I still haven't set up the NVR, but it will be done this year. Recently, I took on the project of upgrading the i3-6100 desktop I built for my parents in 2016, but rather than decide what to build for them this time, I decided to just give them my NUC 8 instead so they can reclaim desk space and drastically cut down fan noise. That meant I was now free to upgrade my mini home server to something a bit more substantial. I was originally looking at used Dell OptiPlex Micro PCs, but at the prices they were selling for relative to their performance, I went for something better built and more customizable. I watched a teardown video of a relatively recent OptiPlex Micro chassis and thought their CPU cooling solution was pathetic. This is a new condition ASRock DeskMini X300 prebuilt from Skytech sold as the Mini PCX1. It costs $480 from Skytech right now, but I got it heavily discounted from a third-party—cheaper than building it to the same specs with used parts in a barebones DeskMini X300 chassis. I've already started making some changes with a heatsink upgrade to the Thermalright AXP90-X36. I'm still waiting for a Noctua NF-A9x14 fan to arrive so I can swap it in place of the Thermalright fan before I put everything back together and fire it up. Reviews I've seen for this heatsink indicate that the fan swap won't measurably change thermal performance, but Noctua's fans generally have lower noise levels and better acoustic profiles than Thermalright's. The AXP90 heatsink was annoying to install. If this had been my first experience with Thermalright, I might not be a repeat customer. The Peerless Assassin on my desktop was so simple to install, while the AXP90 is easily the worst install I've done with vague instructions and a dual socket LGA1200/AM4 backplate with wings for LGA1200 that hit the button cell backup battery on the back of the PCB, rendering the backplate unusable unless I took a Dremel to it. I attached the stock AM4 backplate instead, but I spent some time experimenting with different fitments because Thermalright's instructions for this cooler were so bad that I had better chances for success by going off-script. Nonetheless, I got it installed and it puts ASRock's 70mm stock cooler to shame. For network storage, I'm going with the unconventional choice of an SSD. This PC is in the same room as my office and I don't want to hear it making constant writes as an NVR. For the longest time, I planned on getting a 4 TB WD Purple hard drive connected via USB 3.0, but then I'd have to buy an external enclosure, and if I'm buying an external enclosure for a hard drive, I'm getting one with a fan, and then I'd probably be looking to replace the stock fan with a Noctua. Rather than deal with all of that, I looked into the viability of bringing it all inside the chassis. The DeskMini has space for another NVMe M.2 2280, but I wasn't going to spend that kind of money on a large storage SSD. However, it also has space for two 2.5" drives, so I went with a used 3.84 TB Samsung PM863a enterprise SATA SSD for $150. SMART diagnostic data on it shows just 7 out of a rated 5466 TBW. That's it for now. The Noctua fan is scheduled to be delivered on Tuesday.
  8. I kind of get what the head of OnePlus is saying, but I don't know if it really matters one way or another to all but a tiny segment of users. The average user replaces their phones every 2.5-3 years. The longest I've stuck with a phone is 4 years. Using the same phone for 7 years was historically excessive. Ever since battery compartments became sealed for dubious reasons, 7 years is practically unfathomable. I don't think it has much to do with software updates though. I've rooted all the Android phones I've ever had, and I never cared for having the latest version of Android in the first place. Back when I was using HTC phones, the version of Android I had them on hardly mattered because it was all about which modded ROM you were using. When I started using LG phones, debloated stock ROMs based on the factory-shipped version of Android were the best option for preserving all of the phones' unique features. Newer versions of Android always screwed up some core functionality of the phones, so I prevented my carrier from pushing updates by leaving the bootloader unlocked and unloading any services that could create any update nag screens. All that is to say despite all that I did to prevent updates, lag would always creep in over time even without updating to a newer version of Android. The only exceptions are my current phone powered by a Snapdragon 865 and current tablet powered by a Snapdragon 835. I don't know if it's because Android 10+ has better garbage collection or the SoCs since the 835 are powerful enough to overcome the degree of performance degradation apparent to the average user, much like how SSDs did that for PCs. I still have a pair of Snapdragon 820 phones on Android 7 and they are about as healthy as French bulldogs, which is to say they're a pair of lagopotamuses that are useless for anything other than playing music and having a removable battery. That puts the 835 from 2017 as the oldest flagship SoC that I still consider usable in 2024, but for a phone, I would have upgraded to something newer sooner anyway. As far as having access to the updates themselves, the last few versions of Android haven't offered anything groundbreaking. Back when it was still in the single digits and users knew them better by dessert name, every release would bring major quality-of-life improvements. Nowadays, I don't know why anyone other than the most fanatical Android goobers even care. That leaves the security aspect of having an updated version of Android. I pay as much attention to that as I do to antivirus software: I don't. The only relevance software updates have for me is that I can still run all the apps I need. Despite my previous phone beginning to lag noticeably in the months prior to getting a new one, it was a number of apps dropping support for Android 7 that really got me to upgrade.
  9. Change the source to Chinese (Traditional).
  10. I'm seeing a weird doubling of the OP/last lines in landscape orientation on mobile.
  11. First of all, don't buy electronics from Amazon that aren't shipped from an Amazon warehouse, least of all second-hand GPUs. Second, credit card payments only. Chargebacks are an invaluable defense for consumers. Finally, based on what's explained in the original video, it appears that this was plucked from a pallet of Amazon returns. That means that the GPU wasn't purchased on Amazon.com at all but from some other retailer that advertises these Amazon mystery boxes because Amazon does not sell pallets of returned crap first-party. No part of this was a good idea. Maybe you'll get a bunch of defective or nonfunctional e-waste, maybe you'll get a hazmat situation. Just no.
  12. Once smooth brains in positions of power normalized shoot-the-messenger discourse for everyone on social media, it was over. It's all damage control from here on out and why I prefer smaller forums over larger ones.
  13. Sad but true. I only got into stocks in 2017. Crypto never really entered my consciousness until later, and even then, I never took it that seriously. My peak balance was $110, and my initial deposit was something like $20 into BTC just to use as a wallet. I can't be upset though. I got in really late and all my tech stocks fared about the same or better over the same time period through the present day without as much volatility.
  14. I remember when AMD was $6 a share. By the time I found some investing guts, people were saying AMD had peaked back when it reached the 30s, so I decided to go with NVDA instead. I did hold AMD briefly for a short term, but I didn't know what I was doing with it back then. On the other hand, I've had NVDA on two separate occasions but I most recently bought back into it for the long haul in 2020. My cost basis on NVDA is $73.05. It closed at $594.91 today for an unrealized gain of 714.4%. My problem, if you can call it that, is that it's 22.7% of my brokerage portfolio now. I'd be stupid to take money out of there, so it's more challenging to backfill other stocks to balance out the portfolio better. I'm already too deeply invested in semiconductor stocks and ETFs (33.8%) to increase my holdings in this sector. Nonetheless, I still refuse to buy an RTX 40 series card.
  15. That's not right. QD-OLED is worse than WOLED for burn-in. That's why people with LG screens haven't had any issues. Longevity Burn-In Investigative Paths After 3 Months: QD-OLED vs. WOLED, LG vs. Sony, And More - RTINGS.com WWW.RTINGS.COM Our accelerated longevity test has been running for over three months, and we've already encountered some very interesting results. We've...
  16. Good food photography is clearly underrated. Can't knock your friends and family for it anymore unless their side dishes also appear upside down.
  17. I started but never finished Portal Stories: Mel. This looks interesting. I can handle an uptick in difficulty from Portal 2, but Mel made me feel stupid.
  18. Likewise with the Canadian market! I admit I don't know much about ARMs because I never shopped them before, so I'm probably wrong about the most popular ones. In addition to 5/1 and 5/5, I know there are other terms like 3/1 and also some less common ones like [5|7|10]/6 as well. The interest rates seem comparable to the Canadian 5-year, and the amortization on ARMs are typically 30 years. A US fixed rate mortgage typically amortizes at the end of the advertised term, so I was slightly confused when first reading that five years is the most typical "long" fixed rate mortgage in Canada because I figured there was no way that could also be the amortization period. Anyway, some other thoughts on the GPU-flipping subtopic: I've come to realize I don't have a need for a spare GPU to put in another rig, which is why I try to sell off the old one as soon as I get a new one. If I ever have a dead GPU, I can run iGPU while I shop for a new one. I've mentioned in another thread before that I used to dabble with eGPU setups for my laptop, but that ultimately never went anywhere. If I were to ever build a second concurrent rig rather than use a laptop or mini PC, it would be for an HTPC, which would still be small form factor and not have the space or a beefy enough PSU to run a full-sized card that used to be in my desktop. I've taken to the mentality of any compute-oriented electronics I'm not actively using are a depreciating asset, so get rid of them as soon as conveniently possible. The only time that wasn't true was the convergence of the pandemic/supply chain shortages/second mining boom.
  19. Well, I just learned something new about Canadian mortgages. You have a variety of options with mortgages in the US, but the most popular ones are 30-year fixed rate, 15-year fixed, 5/1 adjustable rate (ARM), and 5/5 adjustable, which appears to be similar to the 5-year fixed rate in Canada but it auto-adjusts the rate every five years so you're not doing any shopping around after the five years are up. Smart money treats ARMs as the option for people who move often rather than a lower upfront interest rate option. You can always refinance your mortgage to get a more favorable current market rate as long as the math works out for you. After 2021 though, the math won't work for a vast majority of people for a very long time. I refinanced twice in 2021 to get a 2.375% 20-year fixed rate, which basically ensured that I'm not moving anywhere else because that type of deal will probably never happen again and I'm happy with everything else about my living situation, the house's attributes, location, etc. I didn't need to do a second refinance in 2021 (the first one was 3.25% for 20), but with the way things were going that year in the midst of the pandemic, I had a strong feeling it was going to be a massive hedge against everything that might happen in the future. Now I can kind of sit back and ignore the chaos, although I never got the feeling of an impending doomsday resulting from mortgage terms expiring like in Canada because of the variety of mortgage options here. I always sell off my old one. I had a bit of a hiccup with reselling the 1080 Ti that I used for maybe half a year or so before the 3060 Ti because the first buyer was a weasel who invented a BS reason to return it and forced me to have to retest it, which I seriously dragged my feet on doing. I did benefit a little from the pandemic/mining pricing though because I turned a small profit from selling the 980 Ti I had prior to the 1080 Ti, but I also seriously overpaid for the 3060 Ti as well. The 3060 Ti was the first time in a long time that I bought a brand new GPU, and that was mainly out of necessity due to getting my current second monitor (TV) and realizing that I needed a GPU that supported HDMI 2.1 to run 4K 120 Hz. Otherwise, I'd rather stay a generation behind so someone else can pay the premium of Nvidia's nonsense and AMD's complacency, and I got back on that cycle with the 3080 Ti when the 40 series came out. To be honest though, I don't play games as often as I imagine myself doing, so the entire stretch of going from 980 Ti -> 1080 Ti -> 3060 Ti -> 3080 Ti is a historical anomaly for me. This time around, the problem is that the 40 series is so underwhelming that if I make any upgrade in the near future, the only GPU that might make any sense to me would be the 7900 XTX after the 8000 series comes out. I'll most likely be sitting it out for a bit since I don't foresee much gaming time over the next couple of years.
  20. If they want to be seen as the good guy, they can start by unsuckifying YouTube. After Netscape Navigator Gold, I've always kind of favored non-mainstream browsers because IE was pretty much always garbage. I use Waterfox primarily with Vivaldi as my primary Chromium-based alternate and Brave as my secondary alternate. I've never installed Chrome on any of my home rigs. By the time everyone jumped ship from Firefox, Chrome was already becoming bloated and Firefox started slimming down despite worsening their UI in the process.
  21. You need to deploy spike strips in your yard...because of bears.
  22. Wow, so that's what not getting gouged on Internet looks like. Not to say Spectrum is great, but I'd gladly just sit on the 350 for $20. Can't argue with 100 for free either. I'm paying $65 for a theoretical 1000/20 coming from 400/10 for $55. I can't downgrade plans and save any money unless I get the bottom-of-the-barrel plan below 100 Mbps which still works out to about $40. Comcast is supposed to upgrade the upload speeds from 20 Mbps to 100 for the gigabit plan I'm on now. It's already been rolled out in some areas. At the moment though, I'm getting a comically disproportionate 947/24 on Speedtest. Any competition would be welcome, but AT&T and Google are basically just ignoring us at this point. I can't remotely get excited about 20 Gbps when Google has such a solid track record of abandonware.
  23. It feels like this means very little to most residential customers. Most aren't going to have the equipment to put that bandwidth to use. In practical terms, anything above 2.5 is hard to scale up within the home as an affordable network, especially if PoE is involved like it will be for me. The other day, Comcast tried to upsell me on going from 1 Gbps to 1.2. There is no reason for me to do that right now considering I can't get past 1 Gbps from behind my current wireless router, and even when I presumably get past that hurdle with a new home network that could allow me to upgrade everything except the PoE to 2.5, 1 to 1.2 isn't worth $10 per month when I haven't noticed any practical difference going from 400 Mbps to gigabit. Likewise here with Comcast. AT&T's 25/2 (or whatever poverty bandwidth it is, I forgot) is not viable.
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