Search results

  1. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    AI companies more or less bought out the entire year's production DRAM production from Samsung, SK/Hynix and Micron, the NAND Flash production from everybody who does THAT (fuck you if you wanted a thumb drive or SD card, let alone a new SSD) and also every spinning drive from Seagate and WD...
  2. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    I am currently thanking my lucky stars that I've been pulling RAM and SSDs out of e-waste systems any time I'm asked to dispose of things. It doesn't help for DDR5 but 2 or 4GB DDR4/2666 and 240GB 2.5" drives I have a'plenty. Mostly, if I need some of either, I probably have it in a bin in my...
  3. Mercutio

    Something Random

    As a follow-up, Namecheap does not allow me to edit TTLs on my records myself, even though I paid extra to be able to do so. Their DNS API will fetch no more than 50 records at a time and any update handled programatically is treated as a complete zone update. There's no way to set an index...
  4. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    I'd have concerns about keeping the area around the 9850X3D cool. The Peerless Assassin is a fantastic HSF and it's rated to handle bigger thermal loads than a mere 8c12t CPU should drop, but there really isn't any such thing as a roomy and well ventilated ITX chassis, either. Especially not one...
  5. Mercutio

    Something Random

    My sites were down for about 14 hours between when I approved the transfer out and when Namecheap TOLD me they got whatever approval they need on their side, the whole time insisting that transfers can take up to a week. This is about 13.5 hours longer than I've seen any other name transfer take...
  6. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I have two sets of China now, because my mom somehow wound up with six. They're all still in the boxes I got them in, but the main reason I have them is because my mother didn't want her sister to get them. I agree that my aunt is multiple forms of evil, but I have no earthly idea what to do...
  7. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    Some retailer in India apparently listed the 10th Anniversary 5800X3D for US ~$310. The 9700X is ~$350 and only 3 - 4% faster and obviously restrictive because of the platform requirement for DDR5. AMD could make an absolute killing if they return that chip to production. Gamer's Nexus posted a...
  8. Mercutio

    Something Random

    It definitely helps that most of the people I know have pickup truck/small U-Haul quantities of belongings rather than moving van amounts. But there's always a sofa or extra-firm mattress or something to make sure I know I'm not 25 any more. I will definitely say moving day is the moment I...
  9. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Also the Namecheap thing was kind of a debacle but at least it's over now.
  10. Mercutio

    Something Random

    It always seems weird to say happy Memorial Day, but if you're in the US, at least it's a day off work for most people. I spent my morning helping a friend move and now I'm going to proceed to the not-moving-until-someone-makes-me portion of the day.
  11. Mercutio

    Here is a thread to talk about gaming

    Since the gaming thread is where I complain about Wayland, a client's system that was been upgraded to Ubuntu 26 and completely lost its entire GUI configuration, which was removed because it had been set up with Xorg in 25.whatever and the upgrade manager marked all the Xorg stuff for cleanup...
  12. Mercutio

    Selfhosting fun

    Not that it qualifies as "fun" but if you didn't fall all over yourself signing up for Plex Lifetime at $250, it's going up to $750 in July. Which makes me think maybe Plex won't be around much longer.
  13. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I'm dealing with this right now, actually: Namecheap supplies a bunch of wildcard SSL certs I have. The certs generally have between two and four years remaining. My normal name registrar doesn't support API access for updates and it doesn't support wildcard SSL at all, so I can't just set up my...
  14. Mercutio

    Something Random

    One of my co-workers had stuff on Godaddy. They were telling me all the shit they just can't do. All their stuff is on Dreamhost now.
  15. Mercutio

    Here is a thread to talk about gaming

    Everything in my house is now running on Xorg. Rustdesk magically works. Displays stay the resolution I tell them. Bliss. Wayland can eat my entire ass. I've never complained about systemd even though it also occasionally pisses me off, but Wayland is dumb beyond words for dumb things and has...
  16. Mercutio

    Selfhosting fun

    After playing with it for a bit, Zentyal (I spelled it properly this time) is just some smartly-configured options on an Ubuntu 24 LTS base, or a package you can overlay on a Debian/Ubuntu system already in place. The DC config is just Samba, but it is REALLY easy to set it up as a DC. The...
  17. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    The Aorus B650i isn't silent. It has one of those stupid chipset fans, but you'd never know over a fan noise from a midrange GPU at full blast. I built in a Fractal Terrra with a 9700X with a Be Quiet Purerock LP and an Asrock Radeon 9070, and honestly I'm giving serious thought to keeping it...
  18. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    IIRC AMD has committed to AM5 for at least one more generation of desktop CPUs, so your Ryzen 10whatever should be an option on a motherboard you buy right now. If you haven't been keeping up, Intel really pulled off a coup with the Arrow Lake Plus refresh it released a month ago. If you're...
  19. Mercutio

    Selfhosting fun

    I have a couple customers who insist on buying home PCs from Costco or something instead of standardized client systems. These are the jerks I can never talk in to setting up anything else just so I can centralize authentication. I'm about to donate a couple old Lenovo mini PCs so I can quietly...
  20. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Just wait for the forthcoming MASSIVE FUCKING INFLATION because every single thing needs just in time delivery and Diesel is 33% higher than gas. For the most part, once prices on something go up, they generally don't come down. We should really be out with pitchforks and torches over all this.
  21. Mercutio

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    Replacement Intel P4510 showed up just now. It's the only drive in a box meant to hold 24 2.5" SSDs, which is hysterically funny to me given that I shipped it out in in one thin layer of bubble wrap and a paper envelope. It took me just over a month to get back everything I shipped for...
  22. Mercutio

    Selfhosting fun

    I just found a particularly interesting Linux distro, Zentayl, which is made as a drop-in replacement for old-ass Windows AD or Small Business Server setups. It's Ubuntu-based and there is a free edition, although the paid system doesn't seem terribly expensive to me either. The sales pitch IMO...
  23. Mercutio

    Empire in Decline

    I just BARELY remember the tail end of the 1970s,, but that also means that I do remember the '79 oil embargo, albeit mostly as something that was shown on the evening news. The Iranian embargo back then resulted in the loss of about 5% of the global oil supply and resulted in rationing and...
  24. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    Microsoft has an internal Windows build focused on improving Windows 11 "pain points" including overall Explorer and GUI responsiveness and a de-emphasis on AI components. No, we can't see it. But they're working on it. Maybe it'll make its way to public testing. Maybe they'll turn the whole UI...
  25. Mercutio

    Disk Issues

    If you happen to have some old ass but not suspect SSD, maybe you could transition your Windows setup to run on that instead? You can always relocate your user folder to the dodgy Samsung.
  26. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    I feel like motherboards are getting more affordable. That's probably not too surprising given how few people are building PCs right now, but my overall impression is that things are 15 - 20% cheaper than they were a year ago. I remember not seeing any AM5 ITX boards for less than $200 and I saw...
  27. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I was celebrating my first weekend of not having small human houseguests. June - early September, yes, I probably do have some intoxicated young ladies who might be in bikinis visit a couple times a week. This is definitely a point in favor of my beach-adjacent apartment. I actually spent...
  28. Mercutio

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    Crucial got me back just fine. Teamgroup did get me a replacement 2TB drive. It's a newer model than I sent in that uses QLC, but at least I did get a drive back. Silicon Power has informed me that, while it cannot ship me a working drive, it is willing to refund me the pro-rated purchase price...
  29. Mercutio

    Disk Issues

    Samsung's normal failure mode is to make the drive read-only, which can result in lock-ups or other strange behavior. Even if Samsung Magician says the drive is OK when the software is being used, that's probably a drive that should be replaced.
  30. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    Apparently, Microsoft is now saying that 32GB is the baseline for "worry free" Windows Gaming PCs. That does actually make sense, but I'm seeing NUC-type client systems shipping out with 4GB RAM than I did 10 years ago when that might've actually been acceptable.
  31. Mercutio

    Here is a thread to talk about gaming

    KDE also has 'working' RDP. It just only actually works when you're using Xorg.
  32. Mercutio

    Empire in Decline

    Regarding the White House Correspondents Dinner event, apparently, Homeland Security was notified by the shooter's family more than a day ahead of time, and nonetheless allowed him to travel by two trains and to stay overnight in a hotel in the DC area under his own name before letting him get...
  33. Mercutio

    Here is a thread to talk about gaming

    OK new reason to bitch about Wayland: It seems to just ignore my directives to run at 1080p on 4k panels.. It's a lot easier for my game clients to run at 1080p, but seemingly no matter how I write config files or configure settings in KDE, it flips back to 4k every time I reboot. On either AMD...
  34. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    As I mentioned in the Gaming thread over in the Pub, CachyOS is really fuss free, especially for something based on the normally extremely fussy Arch Linux. I had to do one entire thing to enable GoG, Epic and Amazon game support and controllers and bluetooth both worked out of the box on...
  35. Mercutio

    Here is a thread to talk about gaming

    The steps to get CachyOS running were extremely straightforward. With the handheld edition, it boots to Steam Big Picture. Controllers just worked in that mode. I needed to do some nonstandard configuration to make things work, but if I just wanted to use Steam on Linux, it's done at that point...
  36. Mercutio

    Here is a thread to talk about gaming

    I have a large main room that's meant to be a living and dining room, a very small kitchen, and two bedrooms with two walk in closets. The dining area normally hosts a desk for streaming and is typically the best-looking part of the house. My back bedroom is the tech room, where I do whatever...
  37. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Everyone's favorite of my cats, Hiro, was dumped right in front of me on December 22, 2006. Someone threw him out of a car. A nice car, even. A Lincoln or Caddy. The new guy is very friendly and entirely too talkative to not be someone's. The oldest of my cats might be eight years old, so I'll...
  38. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I had another stray enter my life. We've decided that his name shall be Ladle, although Soup was also a strong contender. Ladle was clearly someone's pet. He's entirely too affectionate to be feral, but around a week ago, he managed to get in my apartment building and he's been mooching door to...
  39. Mercutio

    Here is a thread to talk about gaming

    Here we go: My place is about to be turned into a PC gaming cafe. One of my friends is in what I'm going to call a housing transition, which is to say she's couch surfing. She has three kids over five, and there's a 10 and 12 year old who also show up at my place regularly as well. One of...
  40. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    Blackmagic Resolve, my video editor of choice, just added full digital darkroom support. It does Lightroom/Capture 1 stuff now. This is particularly interesting to me see it's also very good at using CPU and GPU resources it's given, which isn't always the case with non-destructive photo...
  41. Mercutio

    Merc's Useful Tools of the day

    I've gone ahead and applied the fix to make sure even Windows Home systems I work with have Gpedit and I've scripted the GPO imports I even have a script that specifically sets up non-GPO-able Registry changes that I can set up to run from the Windows Startup Script because there are that many...
  42. Mercutio

    Merc's Useful Tools of the day

    Here's a fun thing you can do if you never want Windows Search to send you to Bing ever the fuck again: Open Regedit HKLM > Software > Microsoft > Windows > CurrerntVersion > Search Create a 32 bit Dword called BingSearchEnabled Set it to 0 Bliss
  43. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    Today I wish to celebrate my sole remaining Ryzen 2700x, which I can stick in any AM4 motherboard and upgrade to support arbitrary Zen 3-whatever. It has been a real Bro for enabling upgrades to Vermeer-class CPUs even on crappy A320 boards. I did not know there were so many AM4 Athlon systems...
  44. Mercutio

    DNS issues?

    You can just assign 192.168.100.2 as a secondary IP on whatever workstation and access the administrative interface. In Windows, it's a lot easier to do this through ye olde Control Panel, in Network and Sharing Center, Network Adapters, whatever, Properties, IPv4, Properties, Add. You can also...
  45. Mercutio

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    I have a number of SSDs large enough to bother to RMA. 500GB and smaller? I'm not going to mess with them, although I have several I know aren't working. Crucial just let me make an RMA on a pair of 1TB drives. No big deal and they're already on their way back. TeamGroup accepted a RMA on 2TB...
  46. Mercutio

    DNS issues?

    Many ISP modems have a home router mode and a bridge mode. Bridge mode doesn't try to do anything besides forward packets to the internal interface(s). Home Router mode will have NAT, DNS and Firewall functionality. You may want to look to see if you can access the management interface on your...
  47. Mercutio

    $800 used to be enough?

    I run a PC building class for my local community center once a year. It's happening Mondays all through April. I have a dozen people for it. I have some e-waste systems I'll have them put together, fine, but explaining to everyone that there has never in my life been a worse time to build a PC...
  48. Mercutio

    Selfhosting fun

    I've been looking for an affordable USB to 10GbE solution for a while and this is looking really appealing right now. They're $80, work from USB4 or Thunderbolt and are from an OEM I've actually used before. There are some less expensive options on AliExpress, including some that say they can...
  49. Mercutio

    Reading PDFs in dark mode on Android?

    Google Play Books will invert easily if the documents are smaller than 100MB total. 100MB is a bit light for my needs because I often have giant role playing manuals open, but that's answer A. I also a Komga back-end with Moon+ Reader as a client as a self-hosted solution since, as I said...
  50. Mercutio

    $800 used to be enough?

    I did a "$1000" build with a Ryzen 5700, 16GB DDR4-3200, a 1TB SATA SSD and a secondhand RTX 4060 on Sunday. I already had the RAM and drive on hand and I'm not proud of the chassis and PSU I wound up putting those parts in, but based on fair market value, that's a $1000 PC right now. If RAM...
Top