Tech minor victory thread
- Thread starter DarkAudit
- Start date
Upgrading to v5.34 replaces the tainted version, but it will not undo any mischief that might already have been done.
--Patrick
You were luckier than I. My first attempt ended up in disaster and I lost all the data on my hard drive* when the installer hung partway through.
Good thing I made a backup, an image of the volume, and a raw device copy before I started.
You might be interested to know there's this new weekly firmware check thing. The engineers have already said that they expect Hackintosh users may see this message, but they're not exactly going to go out of their way for Hackintoshers.
Also seems there may be complications when I get around to updating my Mac Pro. Hmm.
--Patrick
*well, didn't exactly lose it, the installer just moved it all around but then didn't move it back when I canceled the install. I could've moved it back where it belonged (I've done it before plenty with Sierra) but I don't want to take any chances the new OS puts things in places I don't know yet.
Aw man... "We’re also seeing reports of some older Macs, like the 2011 17-inch MacBook Pro, failing their firmware check after installing macOS High Sierra. Rebooting again seems to fix the problem."
Hopefully this doesn't become an issue for me, but I expect the next release of OSX to drop support for my 2011 macbook pro 17 anyway.
I pull it out among apple fans and they all gawk since Apple hasn't made a 17" laptop in years, and it's gargantuan next to everyone else's machines.
GasBandit
Staff member
Oh yeah, dude, I had an extra one or two from my old stereo... I could have just sent you one.I thought it was a silly question, and was prepared for disappointment, but TIL they actually DO make bluetooth cassette adapters. Costs just as much as one of those Belkin dual lightning connector widgets, and doesn't make the phone all bottom-heavy when in the car cradle. Sold!
Just curious, what's that used for and/or what are YOU using it for?
GasBandit
Staff member
Only thing I know of is that it's commonly used to treat potassium deficiency.
I would think that something like that wouldn't be in a "Tech" thread, but fair enough. I didn't mean to inquire about a medical issue Patrick.
It's primarily used to reduce acidity in wine, or as a substitute for standard baking soda for people who are on diets where sodium intake is being heavily restricted.
Kati has RLS. This makes it difficult for her to sleep. That makes it difficult for me to sleep. Kati also has frequent heartburn which also makes it difficult for her to sleep. As a result, she takes an elevated dose (20mg) of Famotidine nightly with occasional courses of Omeprazole to reset things entirely. These medications increase her susceptibility to muscle cramping.
She also uses baking soda water situationally to control frequent peaks and flare-ups. This will artificially boost the amount of salt she takes in (because baking soda + stomach acid => CO2 + NaCl). Earlier this week, I learned that one of the things that excess sodium in your system can cause is cramping and pain, especially in the lower extremities. Additionally, since she partakes of many sugared caffeinated beverages throughout a day, she tends to pee more often than normal.
Therefore I got some USP food-grade potassium bicarbonate to see if we could cut down on all the salt she unintentionally bombs herself with, plus replace some of the K she depletes, all without eliminating her ability to medicate any acute heartburn episodes. If she notices a difference, then we'll switch to it full-time AND we'll have discovered that ++sodium was one of the causes of her RLS.
FYI I don't care if you ask. I never care. If you ever ask me something I don't want to answer, I just won't answer it.
--Patrick
FWIW (n=1) I found Morton's Lite-Salt (50/50 NaCl/KCl) to be a great way to cut salt intake and increase potassium. That, plus some magnesium citrate in my daily pill-box, have left me muscle cramp free. Before those changes I was pretty prone to them.
Incidentally, I haven't been able to convince her to start using it yet (she first wants to do her own research as to its safety), so if anyone reading this tries it before she does and can speak to its efficacy (or lack thereof), please share.
...Science!
Also she hates the taste of iodine, so all the salt she does use is not iodized. She plans at least a handful of seafood meals/month to compensate and deliberately chose a one-a-day vitamin supplement that explicitly states that it contains iodine.
--Patrick
She doesn't really have cramps, per se. The switch is more meant to discover whether she has been unintentionally exacerbating her RLS in her attempts to fight GERD, and if so, to treat it. We (She) cook(s) almost all of our own food at home, so she's not exposed to processed salt anywhere near as often as most, so we're not really looking for salt substitutes so much as I'm trying to investigate a nonintuitive "invasive" source of salt.
...Science!
Also she hates the taste of iodine, so all the salt she does use is not iodized. She plans at least a handful of seafood meals/month to compensate and deliberately chose a one-a-day vitamin supplement that explicitly states that it contains iodine.
--Patrick
Last edited:
GasBandit
Staff member
Man, how did I get along without WinDirStat? I freed up 300 gigs today more quickly and efficiently than I ever have muddling through with primitive tools like treelist.
I've been using Treesize Free for years 
GasBandit
Staff member
I guess I never went looking, I just muddled through with treelist *.* | sort.exe > treelist.txt and went from there.
Back when I got my SSD, I also got a bunch of other parts to upgrade. New mb/cpu/video card/memory/case to be precise.
Not bad on ultra. The min fps was only a couple of jitters during the entire benchmark. I can stop running games on minimum settings now
Upgrade specs:
MB: GIGABYTE GA-Z270P-D3 LGA1151
CPU: Intel Core i5-7600K LGA 1151
Video Card: ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1070 Mini 8GB GDDR5
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB)
Case: Something cheap because my old mid-tower wouldn't fit properly in my new desk my wife got me for my birthday. So I got a cheapo mini tower.
Not bad on ultra. The min fps was only a couple of jitters during the entire benchmark. I can stop running games on minimum settings now
Upgrade specs:
MB: GIGABYTE GA-Z270P-D3 LGA1151
CPU: Intel Core i5-7600K LGA 1151
Video Card: ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1070 Mini 8GB GDDR5
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB)
Case: Something cheap because my old mid-tower wouldn't fit properly in my new desk my wife got me for my birthday. So I got a cheapo mini tower.
16gb. Edited my post to show the parts I upgraded. The benchmark is with default, non-overclocked settings on CPU and GPU.
yeah, I bought the PSU for the last machine. It's pretty awesome, so I carried it over. It's a Seasonic 80+ Gold 650W
Last edited:
Amazon has finally released a Prime Video app for Apple's ecosystem.
Took 'em long enough.
--Patrick
Took 'em long enough.
--Patrick
Cool. Now if Amazon and Alphabet could put their differences aside so Google stops taking their apps/services away from Amazon devices (especially those Amazon devices that run on fucking Android), that'd be great too.
And Amazon would allow THEIR services to run on Alphabet/Google devices too. And would SELL them too.
Basically, Amazon shot first. They pulled Chromecast and other Google stuff from their stores. And then didn't allow Prime Video to work on Chromecast either.
So yes, Google has been retaliating. Both need to calm the fuck down, but they're not.
Yeah, I'd really love to be able to use Google's superior casting technology to air Amazon's content without having to use the tab mirroring functionality built in to Chrome; because it would mean that I could let one of their clients render the video instead of constantly overtaxing my HDDs (read speed is the biggest hangup in my system right now).
I've had a 7" Fire tablet for about 2 years. Today I jump in to the Amazon world with both feet. I bought the 10" Fire. I hope it will be worth it...
The 7" was just a little too small for reading and watching video.
The 7" was just a little too small for reading and watching video.