[X] My Assistant

One of their engineers has fucked up bad.

Not watching the video; did they actually show what part combusted?

And if people say, "Easy, I'll just buy KYC BTC and then swap for Monero", if they don't want you going anywhere near a mixer, they'll start banning accounts for swapping for XMR.

So, what happens if online banking finds ways to stop money going to sites that aren't approved by PRIVATE online companies such as Verizon, Warner, Comcast, AT&T, all banks, Paypunk, all funds, all instruments, and all debit cards? They aren't public utilities, so they can ban payments that go to e-hentai, fakku, irodori, doujins.com, and onlyfans. oh hay, they already started picking upon onlyfans already.

Easy, just buy one of their "overpriced" items in the "non-affiliated" online shop. For example, future online companies can have shops selling "Can of Spam 12oz" for $25. The actual monetary amount varies, but all Spam 12oz costs over $2.50 which means it is over 10% of the purchase, thus it will satisfy the strictest state laws for non-profit charity. I believe the load factor in my crooked state is 1% which implies to me that the politicians (and their family members and friends and family non-profit foundations) are participating doing similar things (aka clinton foundation) but to avoid taxes. Or "Package of Life cereal cinnamon flavor 24oz" for $50. A convenient checkbox is provided to have them donate the food item to a local food bank or charity. Obviously, the site keeps the monetary difference. To ensure this is a legitimate store, the checkbox must be Positively checked (not the default) to donate to charity. The purchase must normally by default in an online shop go to the purchaser. Naturally, all "purchasers" want to remain anonymous, so they would click the box to donate the overpriced food item to charity.

Not watching the video; did they actually show what part combusted?

I believe its usually the mosfets but in this example a large cap went as well.

One of the problems is due to supply shortages that they are using different parts all over the place and also their overpower protection was set way too high.

Easy, just buy one of their "overpriced" items in the "non-affiliated" online shop.

Almost anything will work if you're trying to run a tiny speakeasy for people who are already in the know.

We want to run a scalable big business. Customers get to checkout and you have to say, "There is no way to pay for your purchase." Your conversion funnel just hit a brick wall. Companies do anything they can to reduce abandoned carts by 1%.

Nobody is going to pay $50 if they aren't better than 99% sure they're going to get what they paid for. How are you going to get that level of confidence in an unaffiliated site? Armies of scammers are going to set up pretending to be that site's new address. The payment processors will make an account, confirm that they get credited, and then cut off service to that site too.

And how efficient is CPU mining on pre-TPM legacy hardware?

And the whole point is that they want to make it illegal to drive a 1991 car.

What politicians are trying to do these days specifically is closing the net. That's what "accelerate" and the mad flurry of legislation and executive branch actions are about. They want to remove every way to just go around. People's old habit of thinking, "Well, I'll just go around" is not good enough any more.

This post has been edited by Necromusume: Aug 26 2021, 19:37

supplies are doing weird things again things I ordered from lcsc are arriving quicker than local suppliers.
also the chip shortage is still going somehow, and random things like workgloves are impossible to stock too now.

what caught fire this time around

Discovered one of my CRT monitors is worth a fuckton.

Fuck people. Seriously. No TV is worth that much. I don't care if it's multiscan.
BTW they aren't true multiscan since they won't display in 24khz horizontal frequency, so they're useless for the X68000, PC-9801, etc..

I got mine free a few years ago.

Also, for average lighting conditions my little Panasonic set looks much better because it uses P-22 phosphors instead of SMPTE-C ones. P-22 phosphors are darker when unexcited than SMPTE-C ones and are also brighter. The 20L5 only looks good in complete darkness, and even then it seems to display some of my consoles' video signals poorly (my genesis for instance looks a lot blurrier in RGB on it than on any of my other RGB CRT's; I'm wondering if it's a ground problem, or if the RGB signals are out of spec or something. My Amiga 500 and SNES both look fine on it, as does the Wii).

Meanwhile the 14 inch equivalent to my set is $800 (still way too much, but what a price difference for a few extra inches).


This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Aug 26 2021, 23:58

Idea: if you ever have a similar image again, edit it to include a microwave in the middle of the screens, and see if anybody catch on (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

Discovered one of my CRT monitors is worth a fuckton.

Fuck people. Seriously. No TV is worth that much. I don't care if it's multiscan.
BTW they aren't true multiscan since they won't display in 24khz horizontal frequency, so they're useless for the X68000, PC-9801, etc..

Same, one of the small ones I could have repaired has gone way up.

Its a shame I didn't pick one up a couple of years ago when they were $50.

Plasma tvs are cheap as chips though.

I realized that computers are getting more and more powerful, but that power is losing meaning, also, the consumption of a high-end PC can exceed 800w and that is a problem

Same, one of the small ones I could have repaired has gone way up.

Its a shame I didn't pick one up a couple of years ago when they were $50.

Plasma tvs are cheap as chips though.

That's a true blessing. I've said it before, but plasmas are great. I like them more than OLED's.

And honestly, for most purposes, they're better than CRT's as well.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Aug 27 2021, 18:07

I realized that computers are getting more and more powerful, but that power is losing meaning, also, the consumption of a high-end PC can exceed 800w and that is a problem

the only real worthwhile gains at this point are efficiency, that said stopped caring about upgrading around 2012.
only new thing I've gotten are ssds.

also found out my crt didnt become worth thousands:


This post has been edited by cate_chan: Aug 27 2021, 22:40

the only real worthwhile gains at this point are efficiency, that said stopped caring about upgrading around 2012.
only new thing I've gotten are ssds.

also found out my crt didnt become worth thousands:

Unless its a professional CRT monitor its probably not that good.

The Sony Trinitrons are bank.

the only real worthwhile gains at this point are efficiency, that said stopped caring about upgrading around 2012.
only new thing I've gotten are ssds.

also found out my crt didnt become worth thousands:

If yours is multiscan and goes to a reasonably high frequency, I'd love one for that price. I bet it has a decent tube as well, but PC monitors don't usually scan at low enough resolutions to be usable for old video game consoles that ran at TV frequencies, and that's where I think most of the market is (well, that and the really late Sony PC monitors).

Oh, I should mention that by "decent" i mean "can display at least 800x600 clearly, or maybe even 1024x768."

But yeah, mine's a professional display I got from a PBS station when they were retiring their CRT's around 2013/2014 (pretty late, I know). And since it's Sony (a trinitron/aperture grille tube) it's instantly meme-tier and worth $$$$ to people apparently.

It's also one of a handful of pro sets they made that could do 480p and 720p as well, which seems to raise its value even higher. That and it's a 20" diagonal, so it's somewhat large. About as wide as a 24" 8:5 display.

Ironically I prefer my pro shadow mask JVC/Panasonic screens and my Commodore monitor over the Sony for older games. They just seem to look better on them. Sharper, and with less prominent black space between the scan lines in 240p. I basically only like the Sony more for higher definition signals (480p, 720p). Also see the aforementioned SMPTE-C phosphor thing. P-22 phosphors are still really close to I don't mind much.

I mostly wish I had a 19/20" Matsushita or Ikegami monitor.

Unless its a professional CRT monitor its probably not that good.

The Sony Trinitrons are bank.

You know, oftentimes low-end PC CRT's use similar CRT's to high-end TV monitors, since TV signals are lower resolution and they can get away with more.

The primary differences lie in:
a) Different phosphors, sometimes, and
b) Pro monitors often have better deflection circuitry/power regulation to prevent or reduce things like blooming.

If someone could figure out a new way to make some configurable "universal tube/deflection yoke driver" board, and could make new flyback transformers to power them, then suddenly a ton of those old random PC monitors would become fantastic retro gaming displays. I think the deflection yokes would not even need changing; just the circuitry to drive them.

The main blocker to using PC CRT's like that right now is that most of them aren't designed to scan that low, and probably need to be fitted with a different flyback and possibly other control electronics inside. But the tubes have so much potential.
I've even swapped some random old Magnavox/Philips PC monitor tube (by Chungwha Picture Tubes, CPT) into a pro broadcast set (using the deflection yoke from the broadcast monitor), and the resulting image was great. The broadcast set in question had already been using a Chungwha tube with a similar (but not identical) part number. My guess is the difference in the part number denoted the anti-glare finish on the screen face, and possibly also different phosphors. To get a really great image out of it I'd probably need a colorimeter or spectrometer to re-balance the red/blue/green guns for the new phosphors if they are different.

I realized that computers are getting more and more powerful, but that power is losing meaning, also, the consumption of a high-end PC can exceed 800w and that is a problem

Yeah, I get by quite comfortably with my old ones, as I've said before. Even with my inefficient crappy power supply I'm still using less energy than a lot of modern ones and I can still do the graphical stuff I want to do.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Aug 28 2021, 04:15

Thought: I'm impressed; the ehg file search thing returned results when I queried with a mirrored image. Good thinking.

Just zip tied a fan to the outside of my PC case to act as an exhaust for my PSU.

I was thinking maybe I could make it run cooler this way, since I bet it was designed with bottom-of-case mounting in mind. My case is an old style and mounts the PSU at the top. The PSU only has one fan, a 120mm one that sucks in air from inside the case.
It wasn't running particularly hot, anyway, but I'm paranoid and this PSU is getting a little old now (it's 6 years old, and was an old design even then). And I remember most top mounted PSU's I ever owned had the two fans so I don't think it could hurt.

My PSU has worked fine for years like that, but hey. I bought a pack of five fans and it's always annoyed me a little that there isn't a fan actually blowing air out the back (even if it comes out regardless).

Also, thought: I'm really glad my PSU is top-mounted since my PC case sits on a carpet. Not 100% sure what people were thinking when they started putting the PSU's on the bottoms of vertical cases. Especially since dust settles and gravity means things like pet hair could accumulate in the PSU (though filters help somewhat).
Thought #2: I fucking hate EXIF rotation.
Since JPEG's can be losslessly rotated, cameras should do that on their own.


I still want a horizontal full-height ATX case.

Oh yeah those white and green wires are what I jump to turn my PC on. The button's busted.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Aug 29 2021, 02:04

so I woke up today to having bought a server last night, apparently

edit/discovery: apparently comes with two of those cpus, possibly two of those 16GB sticks of ddr3 as well. not sure about network, might be integrated?

on one hand, great cause I could never find people just actually selling servers, it always redirected to some stupid site configurator that made you pay hundreds for anything.
on the other hand, wouldve liked to look more into what to actually get, and I dont really have space for this atm.
not the worst drinking purchase I've done I think.

also on a side note no clue about these older gen amd server cpus.
anyone got any experiences with them? they dont look that horrible on paper

This post has been edited by cate_chan: Aug 29 2021, 11:44

so I woke up today to having bought a server last night, apparently

edit/discovery: apparently comes with two of those cpus, possibly two of those 16GB sticks of ddr3 as well. not sure about network, might be integrated?

on one hand, great cause I could never find people just actually selling servers, it always redirected to some stupid site configurator that made you pay hundreds for anything.
on the other hand, wouldve liked to look more into what to actually get, and I dont really have space for this atm.
not the worst drinking purchase I've done I think.

also on a side note no clue about these older gen amd server cpus.
anyone got any experiences with them? they dont look that horrible on paper

At that time (2011-2012) the Xeons were better, even so it seems that the Opterons are scarce since they do not appear in CPU recycling pages like Aliexpress

Even so, this can serve more or less as a reference:

also on a side note no clue about these older gen amd server cpus.
anyone got any experiences with them? they dont look that horrible on paper

On paper they do not stand out so well vs Xeon, its value rather highlights that it is difficult to find an operational one

Something interesting could come out of there, but you will need to do the tests yourself

Today I discovered that Energy Star provides datasheets for listed lightbulbs; [www.energystar.gov] example of one I bought from Costco.

That's really nice, because they give exact CRI and R9 values (which basically determine some key factors of a bulb's emission spectrum - important for good colors), something that manufacturers seem pretty shy to put exact numbers for on their boxes.

All but one of my LED bulbs currently in my house were listed on the Energy Star website. Definitely going to have to remember this one. They even have a nice public API I think I can probably use to make lookups easier. So yeah, that's a government program I appreciate, I guess.

so I woke up today to having bought a server last night, apparently

Oh boy, this is gonna be good.

edit/discovery: apparently comes with two of those cpus, possibly two of those 16GB sticks of ddr3 as well. not sure about network, might be integrated?

Probably? If this is it, it should have four integrated ports. [support.hpe.com] https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDis...docId=c02191764

on one hand, great cause I could never find people just actually selling servers, it always redirected to some stupid site configurator that made you pay hundreds for anything.

I just gaze longingly at retired POWER6 through POWER8 servers on ebay. And the POWER9 Talos II.

on the other hand, wouldve liked to look more into what to actually get, and I dont really have space for this atm.

That's my problem, too, but at least it's a 1U rack thing, so you could probably just stack a monitor on top of it for compactness, 90's Sun pizza box workstation style.

not the worst drinking purchase I've done I think.

also on a side note no clue about these older gen amd server cpus.
anyone got any experiences with them? they dont look that horrible on paper

Ah, it's a Bulldozer part.
If the legends are true, it's pretty much AMD's Netburst equivalent, but with more cores per package. And still not as bad as a Pentium D in terms of cost/performance ratio. I hate netburst much, much more than I hate bulldozer (which is basically alright but just runs hot; netburst was almost outclassed by Intel's own Pentium M's).

They're focused more on multithreaded computing, so they're actually pretty good for multitasking/threaded workloads. Not quite as strong for monolithic programs, but servers usually benefit from lots of threads so I don't think it's a problem as long as you can keep it cool.

I'd say it's a decent purchase, and an excellent one at 75 EUR for 16 cores per package (I think this one actually has 16, not 8-but-we'll-call-it-16 like AMD sometimes used to do) and 32GiB RAM. 115W TDP, 80W average according to cpu world. If I saw one for that price I'd likely snap it up, too.

BTW I ran dual 3.2GHz netburst Xeons in an IBM tower server for years (until 2016 or 2017); this thing could probably still run laps around it despite the lower clock. I'd love one for compiling bloatware (Blink, Gecko, Webkit).

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Aug 29 2021, 18:19

reply wall was imminent, refer to bottom of post for thought alone.

At that time (2011-2012) the Xeons were better, even so it seems that the Opterons are scarce since they do not appear in CPU recycling pages like Aliexpress

Even so, this can serve more or less as a reference:

On paper they do not stand out so well vs Xeon, its value rather highlights that it is difficult to find an operational one

Something interesting could come out of there, but you will need to do the tests yourself

as long as people are listing parts of what I bought for more than what I paid for the entire thing I cant be too remorseful.
and yeah I did notice its a more 'budget' system by how many of the hits for it are some east block country.
It'll for sure outperform the non server hardware I'm running currently, probably enough to finally throw proxmox on it and do some more 'proper' server stuff.

All but one of my LED bulbs currently in my house were listed on the Energy Star website. Definitely going to have to remember this one. They even have a nice public API I think I can probably use to make lookups easier. So yeah, that's a government program I appreciate, I guess.

seems real nice, wish government managed product info would be presented like this.

Probably? If this is it, it should have four integrated ports. [support.hpe.com] https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDis...docId=c02191764

seems to be the case, gigabit as well by the looks of it and I dont need anything special beyond that so seems all good.

I just gaze longingly at retired POWER6 through POWER8 servers on ebay. And the POWER9 Talos II.That's my problem, too, but at least it's a 1U rack thing, so you could probably just stack a monitor on top of it for compactness, 90's Sun pizza box workstation style.

I was thinking of tracking down one of those storage/transport military server boxes, or [wiki.eth0.nl] ikea table for easy staking things ontop of usage.
could double as heated footrest too in winter.

Ah, it's a Bulldozer part.
If the legends are true, it's pretty much AMD's Netburst equivalent, but with more cores per package. And still not as bad as a Pentium D in terms of cost/performance ratio. I hate netburst much, much more than I hate bulldozer (which is basically alright but just runs hot; netburst was almost outclassed by Intel's own Pentium M's).

They're focused more on multithreaded computing, so they're actually pretty good for multitasking/threaded workloads. Not quite as strong for monolithic programs, but servers usually benefit from lots of threads so I don't think it's a problem as long as you can keep it cool.

I'd say it's a decent purchase, and an excellent one at 75 EUR for 16 cores per package (I think this one actually has 16, not 8-but-we'll-call-it-16 like AMD sometimes used to do) and 32GiB RAM. 115W TDP, 80W average according to cpu world. If I saw one for that price I'd likely snap it up, too.

BTW I ran dual 3.2GHz netburst Xeons in an IBM tower server for years (until 2016 or 2017); this thing could probably still run laps around it despite the lower clock. I'd love one for compiling bloatware (Blink, Gecko, Webkit).

reading into it a bit more they dont seem that bad, and plenty cores to mess around with things like proxmox properly. been meaning to have a remote xp machine for some old software, along with the regular linux setup for mediaserver.

I'll definitely try DistCC on it again when I get it to see if it'll help soften the gtk pains a bit. last time the overhead of DistCC with my current mediaserver and some laptops meant it was slower than just compiling on a single cpu.
if that works out I might even let some other people use it, have always wondered about how viable and useful that'd be when I see people complain about how slow things compile for them.
given version mismatches and network latency are pretty critical to getting anything worthwhile out of it.

also current thought: man these trays are expensive, just filling it up with proper trays(no drives or anything) would set me back another 40, and thats with the cheapest chinese garbage trays that exist.

This post has been edited by cate_chan: Aug 29 2021, 19:52

My drunken eBay buys tend to be radios and accessories, have yet to buy a computer that way.
Speaking of, why they hell are dell optiplex so expensive on ebay as of late? Everbody wants $150+ for a pentium 4 optiplex before shipping...