The Tech Random Crap Thread
- Thread starter DarkAudit
- Start date
I dunno. I'll admit my bias here having worked with their tools for over 10 years, but their support of their developers is fantastic and Visual Studio is arguably leaps and bounds better a development environment than anything else on the market, especially when it comes to C/C++ development. And for single-person development, the Community Edition (which is fully-featured in most respects) is free, even for applications that you sell.
So I'l admit that this is a bit odd an acquisition, and could have bad consequences down the road if they're assholes with it, but for now there's nothing really "wrong" here considering MS themselves moved to Git internally a year or two ago, and so acquiring the biggest repository host around doesn't seem like it's by-definition a bad thing at all. And this isn't the bad-old 90s with them for their behavior IMO. I'm much more worried about Google or Facebook or Amazon than I am of MS these days.
Oh, that's not what I was referring to:
And with good reason:
Big Tech has established a "kill zone" of business ideas that startups can't get funded to try
I'm guessing Microsoft had an "Oh, shit!" moment where they suddenly realized how much of the influence they used to wield has been eroded, and so they've decided to try and circle the wagons before they lose too much to be able recover.
--Patrick
Regular liquid cooling with oil, water, or even Flourinert too pedestrian and mamby-pamby for you?
Then how about using <devastator_voice>LIQUID NITROGEN???
Guaranteed to get you the fastest overclock, the highest stability, and the most FPS in whatever you're doing. We showed it to a nun, and she agreed it'd keep your computer from BURSTING INTO FLAMES.</devastator_voice>
--Patrick
Then how about using <devastator_voice>LIQUID NITROGEN???
Guaranteed to get you the fastest overclock, the highest stability, and the most FPS in whatever you're doing. We showed it to a nun, and she agreed it'd keep your computer from BURSTING INTO FLAMES.</devastator_voice>
--Patrick
Silly me, I forgot the link:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12891/evga-roboclocker-a-water-cooling-loop-for-liquid-nitrogen-
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12891/evga-roboclocker-a-water-cooling-loop-for-liquid-nitrogen-
GasBandit
Staff member
I once made a dry-ice based cooling system for *myself*, on hot Texas summer's day. Trying to save on AC bills, you know?
I had a cooler full of dry ice that I put a copper coil in, inbetween the bricks of dry ice, then ran it with plastic tubes to another copper coil that I zip-tied to the back cage of a fan. Used an aquarium pump to circulate water through it.
Turns out, it went through so much dry ice there wasn't actually a monetary difference.
Shoulda just done what my HS chemistry teacher did, and got yourself a VW radiator from a junkyard, mounted it to a window box fan, then ran tubing to his faucet and started putting maybe 1/2gal/min through it from the cold water faucet. Not amazing performance, of course, but better than nothing.
—Patrick
GasBandit
Staff member
Open a window in Texas in the summer? You're insane.
No, no open windows. Cold water enters the radiator, the heat from the room air is absorbed by the water traveling through the radiator, the warmed water then goes down the drain. No air need come in from outside, the fan is just there to increase the amount of air going through the radiator.
—Patrick
figmentPez
Staff member
I'm not sure that tap water is cool enough in Texas during the summer for this to work. When I'm washing lettuce I have to add ice to the water to keep it from wilting.
An interesting counterpoint. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/201...ying-github-needs-to-offer-a-better-solution/
I read that article, but don’t use Git, so felt I had no standing to comment.
And my amusement was exactly how the quoted comment related to the video I posted.
—Patrick
Texas doesn’t have to bury their water pipes very far down to avoid freezing, so by late spring the water is warm going into the house.
Here our pipes are 42” or deeper, so water coming into the house is rarely above 60F.
A bit of geothermal cooling, if you’ve got cheap water.
If you draw from a well, you get a few more degrees off.
Come to think of it, I'm surprised Legionnaires' disease isn't more prevalent in warmer climates of the US. It's an issue in Michigan when your hot water heater is set too low, as it reproduces in tap water pipes between 77F and 113F.
Well, Michigan isn't really the benchmark for water quality, is it?
It IS, actually. The Detroit water system is among the top, if not THE best in the nation. It was some gvt official with $$ for eyeballs that decided to eschew Detroit’s water and go all “locally sourced is better for us” and start this whole Flint fiasco.
—Patrick
I was going for funny, not true.
I oughtta point out that I wasn't pointing fingers either. My province has it's own shorthand for water mismanagement tragedy: Walkerton.
There were a lot of failures in the flint crisis. If they had chemically buffered the water like they were supposed to, it wouldn’t have happened. If they had notified the public the moment they realized, it wouldn’t have been the nightmare it was for so many people, and probably would have been like the other hundred local water source failures a year that are under reported.
figmentPez
Staff member
More tech for people with more money than sense: A CPU cooler with a built-in full color OLED screen, that can play GIFs.
Hey, @figmentPez here's some more info on that Intel demo system and what they had to do to get it going:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12932/intel-confirms-some-details-about-28core-5-ghz-demonstration
One of the most interesting lines from that article:
--Patrick
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12932/intel-confirms-some-details-about-28core-5-ghz-demonstration
One of the most interesting lines from that article:
--Patrick
figmentPez
Staff member
"We were told that on stage the presenter was actually meant to clarify that the system was overclocked, however the specific wording was not stated as it had been prepared. "Hey, @figmentPez here's some more info on that Intel demo system and what they had to do to get it going:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12932/intel-confirms-some-details-about-28core-5-ghz-demonstration
One of the most interesting lines from that article:
--Patrick
I'm not buying for a second that they wanted people to know that it was overclocked. One of the standard axioms of a business presentation is "Tell them what you're going to tell them. Tell them. Then tell them what you've told them." If they meant to convey that the system was overclocked, it would not have been "specific wording" that could be flubbed. They absolutely wanted to imply that they have the capability of putting out a retail product at 5Ghz.
To be fair, they totally DO have the ability to put out a 5GHz retail chip (on air cooling, even!), but the sacrifices they would have to make to do so mean its performance would be crap.
—Patrick
Ok, so per Tin's recommendations, I've been using MakeMkv to rip our DVD collection to my external drive so I can actually watch DVDs again. Is there decent audio level balancing software out there for videos? I read through the handbrake manual and it doesn't seem to have anything about changing audio levels, and MakeMkv doesn't have anything built in, obviously. Even if I manage to get a stereo system hooked up to the TV, it's unlikely to solve things like the intermission concert footage on Tom Petty - Runnin' Down A Dream, where there are four sections of video. The first section is documentary about becoming TPatHB, then two concert clips, and then the rest of the documentary. The issue is the intermission concert clips are 30 TV volume settings louder than the surrounding video. It's like that on the DVDs. It's like that ripped. The first time I was listening to it I had to rip the headphones off my head it was so sudden and loud. Netflix apparently got around the issue by just skipping the intermission section.
Since I obviously can't trust professional audio engineers to even attempt their jobs anymore, it looks like I'm going to have to do it for them. Any software recommendations for this one, or am I looking at getting a recording studio?
Since I obviously can't trust professional audio engineers to even attempt their jobs anymore, it looks like I'm going to have to do it for them. Any software recommendations for this one, or am I looking at getting a recording studio?
Sadly, my truck is being watched by the FBI.
Most any audio software will let you do this, the tricky part is finding one that'll let you take the audio out and then add it back in again, which is essentially reconstructing the DVD. And since DVDs are steadily falling out of favor, stuff like that is getting harder to find.
--Patrick
I found out when my puter got it's upgrade to a SSD what the problem was: CCleaner. It was deleting a lot of "reference points" that Windows Update now uses to figure out what my computer needed for drivers, and as a result, it hung my computer on updates.Me (From Before The Purge) said:
figmentPez
Staff member
Handbrake allows for at least some form of dynamic range compression, but only works if the source is AC3 audio.
I was going to say MediaCoder, but that's gone from freeware to nagware, and I'm not sure what other changes that has brought with it. Still, from what I've used it for in the past, it should be fully capable of taking your MKVs and mess with the audio without having to do anything to the video. I think it has some sort of dynamic range compression, but I can't remember for certain.
You also might want to consider dealing with the audio issues via your playback software. VLC has options for dynamic range compression, so you should be able to make some settings that will keep the volume from jumping to unreasonable levels.
And the @NSA