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  1. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Oh man it is so hard to explain Andor without going into spoilers. OK. Rogue One is about the successful mission to recover the plans for the Death Star prior to A New Hope. Rogue One has some pacing problems, but it has a Dirty Dozen style cast of memorable characters, particularly Cassian...
  2. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I'm feeling that as well. My household is getting ready to switch to single-income and I am not looking forward to it.
  3. Mercutio

    Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

    Speak for yourself. 😛 I live literally across the street from a national park. May is peak "hey, we can go take pictures on the beach while nobody else is out there to complain about what anyone may or may not be wearing"-time. I'm curious what makes you draw that distinction. Touchpads have...
  4. Mercutio

    Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

    From what I remember, I made the switch in about 1992. I spent about two hours getting comfortable with a trackball and it's been my primary pointing device ever since. My original reason was that my first "computer desk" was salvaged from a high school classroom, so it just had the tiny little...
  5. Mercutio

    Something Random

    AliExpress deliveries either come USPS or else some random Asian dude just pulls up in a car with my stuff. I've never, ever, ever had a shipping problem with AliExpress. I get an Amazon package stolen five or six times a year, albeit not always from my place. Most recently, a box full of...
  6. Mercutio

    Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

    I'm overwhelmingly a trackball user rather than a mouse person, going all the way back to the Microsoft Ballpoint in the early 90s. My wrists don't bother me at all and I spend actually obscene amounts of time on a computer. I buy a new trackball about every five years and just ordered another...
  7. Mercutio

    Selfhosting fun

    It's doing OK with opnsense right now, which is the only thing I really wanted it to do. I thought about trying to set it up for Plex but it turns out that the FreeBSD version of Plex lags features vs other versions and I didn't want to mess with virtualizing things and then dealing with iGPU...
  8. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I'm pretty sure that even the T6x notebooks still had socketed CPUs and I kinda-sorta remember being able to boot USB drives on a T22 or 23, IBM engineered the SHIT out of those Thinkpads. At varying points in time, Thinkpads have had some oddball configuration issues. One of my favorites was...
  9. Mercutio

    Video Cards

    I've been able to find volunteer led efforts to get drivers for "unsupported" GPUs years after official support ended. This is most often an annoyance for old notebooks where support vanishes at the drop of a hat about 40 seconds after the last system using that hardware goes out of warranty...
  10. Mercutio

    Merc's Useful Tools of the day

    rClone talks to Cloud Storage and virtualizes it for local use. That doesn't sound THAT interesting, but I am telling you that it is, because it allows for multiple account access on the same system, especially if you want more than one Google, Mega or OneDrive on your PC. This is a tool I've...
  11. Mercutio

    Video Cards

    They're 8GB and don't trace any rays, but RX 5700XTs are unicorn hardware right now because they can be found secondhand for under $100 and are fantastic for 1080p gaming. I bought a couple so I never have to spend $250 on a 3050 again and honestly they're kind of perfectly positioned to tide...
  12. Mercutio

    Selfhosting fun

    I decided to pick up one of these guys. It's not exactly the same as the Zimaboard I linked, above, but dual m.2s, 10Gb USBs and 2.5GbE ports and updated graphics cores mean it's a lot more flexible than the J1900-based, dual GbE mini PC I've been using for a router for the last several years...
  13. Mercutio

    9950X3D/4090 Watercooled Build

    That looks right to me.
  14. Mercutio

    CURRENT GAME THREAD

    My partner repurchased the Oblivion Remaster on Steam and PS5 last night. She has it through Xbox Game Pass as well. She then spent all evening complaining that she couldn't play it because she was downloading it on all three platforms. The game is $60/platform and there's no doubt in my mind...
  15. Mercutio

    Something Random

    The new season of Andor seems awfully pointed in our current political climate. Can't imagine why.
  16. Mercutio

    9950X3D/4090 Watercooled Build

    Hideous but undoubtedly a sweet PC. My systems never look good enough for pictures either.
  17. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    Exactly what programs do you think the Windows 11 Installation program should uninstall? If you want to reinstall Windows 11 you can just reinstall Windows 11. As long as you're using the same or new build version than the one that shows up when you run winver.exe, you're doing an in-place...
  18. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    As a person who is excited about lenses I will never own, Sony released a $3900 50 - 150/2 lens today. It's enormous, weighing in at 1.4kg and having a 95mm front element, but the focal range and fast aperture are lust-inducing. Knowing that such a lens is technically possible and affordable...
  19. Mercutio

    Selfhosting fun

    This little guy actually looks pretty tempting, except that it'll only have 8 or 16GB non-upgradeable RAM. 2x SATA ports, 2x2.5GbE and a PCIe x4 slot + contemporary Intel CPU/iGPU cores is a pretty sweet recipe for a such a little guy. The included OS looks like it's set up to run tons of Docker...
  20. Mercutio

    Something Random

    As I understand it, the big reasons they picked a South American pope were to shore up the rapidly declining base of South American Catholics plus finding someone with absolutely no connection to the internal sex abuse scandals that were present for more or less the entirety of Benedict's time...
  21. Mercutio

    Laptop Boot Drive Swap Fails

    Gen 4 and 5 m.2 drives probably do need at least some cooling but I don't know if it has to be a heat sink with pad. Most new motherboards have some kind of fancy, overdone cover for what's meant to be the fastest slot and it's not uncommon for me to want an fan on GPU and Infiniband HBA anyway...
  22. Mercutio

    Laptop Boot Drive Swap Fails

    What tool(s) are you using to clone?
  23. Mercutio

    Google Antitrust

    Google was just found guilty of antitrust violations related to its control over ad tech and markets in the USA. The current administration has displayed open favoritism for Apple among big tech firms, but there's an open question of whether or not Google can buy its way out of serious...
  24. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    mubs, you do not have to buy Windows 11.
  25. Mercutio

    9950X3D/4090 Watercooled Build

    Every AM5 other than the 7500F has at least enough iGPU to give video out, so no reason to involve an iffy discrete card if you don't want to.
  26. Mercutio

    .PDF software that doesn't cost 20.00 a month?

    PDFgear is free. I had a whole conversation with the developer on Imgur once upon a time and I'm a huge fan of it now.
  27. Mercutio

    BIOS Updates

    I don't know. Asus has in my experience an amazing ability to fuck up motherboards with terrible firmware. Like not offering user control over thermal warnings and shutdowns or not being able to choose which SATA port to boot from for just no reason. I know they're well regarded, but I won't buy...
  28. Mercutio

    9950X3D/4090 Watercooled Build

    The more RAM you have and the higher it's clocked, the longer it takes. It EASILY took a half hour before 96GB of DDR5-6400 posted on my system. Also I wound up running my EXPO RAM at DDR5-6000 anyway because I was seeing a bluescreen every few weeks and clocking the RAM down seemed to fix it.
  29. Mercutio

    CURRENT GAME THREAD

    Mullet Madjack is complete insanity. Doom on crack. You just run down halls. You have 10 seconds to kill somebody. You can do melee kills or environmental kills or just shoot everything, but something has to die or else you do. And it's all set to 16-bit, Patrick Nagel neon graphics with a...
  30. Mercutio

    Need a Decent Phone

    If you buy your phone direct through Samsung, you can pick up your phone at a retail partner and you'll have the option to buy Samsung Care directly along with the phone. IIRC it was like $120 for two years of coverage, which includes theft and loss protection. Repairs are USUALLY covered at...
  31. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Believe it or not, my renter's insurance policy includes the contents of my car up to a total value of $50k. I work with a lot of insurance agents and shopping for that was important to my choice of policy. A few years ago I was blamed (not actually at fault, but blamed) for police vehicle...
  32. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Yeah. I wind up hauling stuff around a lot of different places. My partner was roasting me over it until I suggested we go spelunking around her vanity next. I bet $100 I could find more expensive little tubes and jars on the floor than everything I found in my car. It's not entirely her fault...
  33. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Cleaned out my car today. There's a tendency in cold months for stuff to just get tossed in the back, and especially since I've been giving friends with kids rides all winter and car seats absolutely cause chaos in my life. The prizes for this year's spring cleaning included a shrinkwrapp...
  34. Mercutio

    Need a Decent Phone

    I got to experience Samsung Care+ service for the first time yesterday. My phone slipped out of my hoodie while I was getting gas. It hit the corner of a concrete pedestal the pump was on at just the right angle to shatter the top-left corner of my phone's screen. Yes, my phone was in a bumper...
  35. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I'm 95% sure that there were in fact 802.11g USB adapters with 9x drivers. Is that a path you've followed or is there some reason you don't want to go that route? I'm thinking you might have better luck finding USB than something using a PC card slot.
  36. Mercutio

    Video Cards

    I think Intel has already admitted that fabrication is a huge issue. They're pretty open that they're second rate, much like AMD did when they spun off Global Foundries. Not everyone needs 3nm TSMC wafers and not everybody can even compete to buy them. Intel has moved its fabs to a separate...
  37. Mercutio

    Video Cards

    It appears that there are no plans to release any higher end Battlemage GPUs. Intel didn't bring it up at all during its Tech Conference earlier in the week and I'm assuming that's not good news. A faster GPU die DOES exist and there's speculation it might be used for workstation hardware but...
  38. Mercutio

    I'm a Big Fan

    I used one of these on a case I 3D printed. The case doesn't look all that good but I like the fancy button.
  39. Mercutio

    question Which Tablets

    In a "Hey, this thing is kind of cool!", I found a Logitech G Cloud at a pawn shop on the north side of Chicago yesterday, a place I like to hit up for used photography gear moreso than anything else. It's REALLY a 7" Android 11 tablet in a shell that has game controls built around it, but they...
  40. Mercutio

    CURRENT GAME THREAD

    The games industry has sucked a lot of fun out of games in general. You might do well to look at the genre called Boomer Shooters. These are meant to be 90s shooter throwbacks, so everything is fast and the fun is finding all the new weapons and powerups. Ion Fury, Amid Evil and Dusk are some...
  41. Mercutio

    I'm a Big Fan

    No love for the Peerless Assassin 120? They're like $35, barely make noise and fit over the standard AMD mounting system.
  42. Mercutio

    Minisforum BD790i SE home server build

    HX370 is kind of a pain for Linux. Most distros aren't loading a 6.10 kernel from the base system image and don't have fully updated support firmware, in spite of these systems being nine months old. I wound up installing Rocky in text mode. It really brought me back. I'm using a pair of...
  43. Mercutio

    Video Cards

    I'm really just waiting on news of a B770-equivalent. Or an affordable RTX 5070Ti, although recent history tells me that's absolutely not going to happen. The latest thing out of the rumor mill is that AMD is going to make a 9080XTX or something simply because there's now a proven market and...
  44. Mercutio

    Minisforum BD790i SE home server build

    I can kinda-sorta understand it on notebooks, but even then I see it as an issue with form factors. If it's a problem for desktops or desktop-like systems then no, I'm not OK with it. Dell has CAMM as an updated physical standard that supports higher densities and bandwidth and if there's a...
  45. Mercutio

    Minisforum BD790i SE home server build

    Videocardz has images of a disassembled HX 395 mini PC and there's not a slot or socket to be had on that motherboard. My AliExpress HX 370 also apparently has soldered-in DDR5-8000. I might send it back in trade for that Minisforum board or something similar, but at the same time, none of my...
  46. Mercutio

    Video Cards

    I had to spend $220 on an RTX 3050 6GB on Sunday. None of Amazon, Newegg, BestBuy or Walmart could get me anything sanely priced overnight and while Microcenter did have a better $200 option with the RX 6600, by the time I factored in the time, gas and taxes, that wasn't worthwhile either...
  47. Mercutio

    Minisforum BD790i SE home server build

    I wonder what the issue is with the 395? They're meant to go on notebooks, so they can't be THAT crazy. I found myself an AliExpress-grade HX 370 mini that I'm going to trial as a VM host. I'm sure I can find a home for it if I don't like it, but with 4TB of internal NVMe and a 10GbE USB 4 NIC...
  48. Mercutio

    Selfhosting fun

    Are you using any amount of Alexa, Siri or Gemini otherwise? Amazon announced that it's going to require remote processing on voice commands from now on. I have a Hubitat for my automation control so I've never looked at Home Assistant but my guess is that everything on a phone is a bigger...
  49. Mercutio

    Minisforum BD790i SE home server build

    I can't decide if framework's pricing is reasonable for the 395. A complete Ser9 with 32GB of socketed RAM is $900ish. I see $1500 for the baseline 395 desktop with 64GB. There's a PCIe slot and that's valuable but hopefully AMD will offer these APUs on regular AM5 sooner rather than later...
  50. Mercutio

    Selfhosting fun

    I am not sure if y'all have seen this, but Plex is going to start charging people to access Remote Streaming Servers. Basically if you don't have a Plex Pass on your server instance, it'll cost you $2/month to use remote access. Jellyfin, Emby and Kodi don't do this shit but then, none of...
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