[Rant] Tech Minor Rant Thread

My husband's job is giving everyone an extra $25 a month for internet expenses since everyone is mandatory work from home until at least January. We decided to upgrade out home Internet to gigabit, which actually saves us $3 a month because how the plan worked out. Being locked in to a new contract hardly matters because there's not likely to be another better option in the next year. But the actual rant is that the setup of the new plan claimed out current modem was fine, but that turned out to be a lie, as it can only pull 600/5 and not the up to 1000/35 we are actually paying for. (And there is a 600 plan, so they can't even try that nonsense) We can't open a ticket on it online until our current order goes through, and neither one of us has the desire to be on hold with comcast right now, so I guess when we go in to swap the TV equipment, we'll just bring the router too. The closest office is in Longmont anyways I think, and those guys never have anything to do because everyone there uses Nextlight anyways. :p
 

GasBandit

Staff member
My husband's job is giving everyone an extra $25 a month for internet expenses since everyone is mandatory work from home until at least January. We decided to upgrade out home Internet to gigabit, which actually saves us $3 a month because how the plan worked out. Being locked in to a new contract hardly matters because there's not likely to be another better option in the next year. But the actual rant is that the setup of the new plan claimed out current modem was fine, but that turned out to be a lie, as it can only pull 600/5 and not the up to 1000/35 we are actually paying for. (And there is a 600 plan, so they can't even try that nonsense) We can't open a ticket on it online until our current order goes through, and neither one of us has the desire to be on hold with comcast right now, so I guess when we go in to swap the TV equipment, we'll just bring the router too. The closest office is in Longmont anyways I think, and those guys never have anything to do because everyone there uses Nextlight anyways. :p
FIVE up? How the fuck have you been streaming?
 
comcast is famous for shitty upload...its shocking they haven't offered something non-business for people who want higher upload speeds...everytime i have asked about getting a better up ratio they suggest maybe i should switch to business >_>
 
everytime i have asked about getting a better up ratio they suggest maybe i should switch to business >_>
That's because the ONLY reason you could possibly want faster upload is because you are running some kind of web/file server, and they more or less mandate you be on a business plan if you're running a "server" machine.
 
That's because the ONLY reason you could possibly want faster upload is because you are running some kind of web/file server, and they more or less mandate you be on a business plan if you're running a "server" machine.
I realize now that I have obviously made a mistake by my previous comment, wasnt expecting a "no shit, you idiot" response. guess thats my bad for feeling like we deserve more than 5 Mb up when we are paying for 500 Mb down.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Unity is so retarded.

I literally have to install a different version of it for every thing I do.

Making beat saber avatars? That's 2017.1.4.

Making VRChat avatars? Whups, better install 2018.1.2.

Making vtuber avatars? Welp, download and install 2018.20.2.

Jeesh.
 
I realize now that I have obviously made a mistake by my previous comment, wasnt expecting a "no shit, you idiot" response. guess thats my bad for feeling like we deserve more than 5 Mb up when we are paying for 500 Mb down.
I think Pat's comment had at least some amount of sarcasm in it.
 
I realize now that I have obviously made a mistake by my previous comment, wasnt expecting a "no shit, you idiot" response. guess thats my bad for feeling like we deserve more than 5 Mb up when we are paying for 500 Mb down.
Oh, this is definitely not a "no shit, Sherlock" kind of answer.
It's me railing at ISPs because they're using the excuse of "you must be a business trying to sneak by on a residential plan" as a way to push customers up into more expensive plans, even when they already subscribe to "unlimited."

--Patrick
 
Oh, this is definitely not a "no shit, Sherlock" kind of answer.
It's me railing at ISPs because they're using the excuse of "you must be a business trying to sneak by on a residential plan" as a way to push customers up into more expensive plans, even when they already subscribe to "unlimited."

--Patrick
oh, my bad, I read it as a serious response, I asked them the last time about something with more upload speed, maybe 50 Mb up as I back up a large amount of data to cloud storage regularly and also upload media to major sites like youtube. the agent just laughed at me when I asked about the possibility. I was willing to pay a bit more money(20-30 bucks a month more) for more upstream speed.

ive also been threatened with legal action when i inquired under the same idea that im trying to do something illegal, and my usage would be investigated for wrong doing.
 
ive also been threatened with legal action when i inquired under the same idea that im trying to do something illegal, and my usage would be investigated for wrong doing.
Yup. To hear them tell it, if you want more than whatever paltry upload speed they give you, then you must either be a dirty illegal torrenter, or else you're a cheap-ass business. Remote backups? Large family? Power user? Work from home? "Ha ha what are those myths? Also would you like to see our business-class plans? The ones that don't have data caps? They start at $129/mo for 50down/50up..." And then you get a faster upload speed, but they slash the download speed to make up for it. And if your business is a bar/restaurant/apartment building, well then it starts to get even more complicated.

I DON'T CARE how many flavors/colors it comes in. Just. Give. Me. Internet.

--Patrick
 
Hilariously, even though online setup said we needed a new TV box and not a new modem, they sent us a modem, not a new TV box. So I guess somewhere in the pipeline after online setup is a person who actually makes sure everything is correct.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
My download speed is still no where near where it should be, but woo @ my upload speed.
View attachment 35765
That's common for gigabit. It's the old "UP TO 1000mbit!" charade that means you can't get mad when you don't get it. Mine's the same way, I usually get around 600 as well, down. But man, that 50 up is what I really am paying for.
 
That's common for gigabit. It's the old "UP TO 1000mbit!" charade that means you can't get mad when you don't get it. Mine's the same way, I usually get around 600 as well, down. But man, that 50 up is what I really am paying for.
But there's a separate 600mb charge, so we're probably going to call to see if someone will come uselessly check it.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
But there's a separate 600mb charge, so we're probably going to call to see if someone will come uselessly check it.
I know that. That's just what happens with gigabit. Sometimes, during peak hours, you'll get 400mbit or less. I don't think I've ever actually gotten more than 700mbit on my gigabit.

This is just how cable modems roll. What are you gonna do, get some OTHER gigabit cable service?

 
I know that. That's just what happens with gigabit. Sometimes, during peak hours, you'll get 400mbit or less. I don't think I've ever actually gotten more than 700mbit on my gigabit.

This is just how cable modems roll. What are you gonna do, get some OTHER gigabit cable service?

The point is more one of trying to get Comcast to concede something on price, because they are actually worried about towns trying to follow suit with Longmont. Either way it doesn't matter, it still ended up being cheaper in the short term.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
The point is more one of trying to get Comcast to concede something on price, because they are actually worried about towns trying to follow suit with Longmont. Either way it doesn't matter, it still ended up being cheaper in the short term.
Even with your proximity to Longmont, I'll be VERY surprised if Comcast does anything at all about your speed (or price).

Cable companies are notorious for this stuff, and Comcast is renowned to be the worst of the bunch.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
So I'm working today on site... commissioning a big combined classroom. I get up to go to the bathroom, and lock my laptop naturally.

I come back to see a mother fucking windows 10 update in progress.

I had a bunch of shit open and unsaved >_<

Fuck. You. Microsoft.

NEVER. UPDATE.
 
A few days ago, Windows 10 wouldn't shut down. I'd tell it to shut down, it would, and then it immediately started up again. At first I thought I'd accidentally selected "restart" instead, but nope, it was starting itself back up after shutting down. I was mildly spooked.

I had to disable something called "fast startup" to get it to stop doing that. I didn't even know I had fast startup enabled. My computer had never done anything like this before. Not sure if this was due to a recent Windows update or something, but it was a bit annoying and creepy.
 
It's time for my annual "Let's try Linux". I wanted to test the performance of emulators in my pc with linux. I have three screens. The icons appeared in one screen, the menu in another, and the main screen was empty. I can't find how to correct that. Also my pc needed to reboot after updates. I thought that didn't happens on linux.
 
Last edited:
Also my pc needed to reboot after updates. I thought that didn't happens on linux
Certain things, like some drivers and especially kernel-related updates, require a reboot. It's far less often than with Windows, but it happens.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Network admins will fight tooth and nail and sandbag for hours to avoid doing one task that would take them 90 seconds.

Also, I get griped at for e-mailing them directly. I have to e-mail someone else so they can put in a request to someone else so they can assign the task to the network admin. Because that way it takes 2 hours to get something done instead of 5 minutes.

Whatever, I guess. I'm paid hourly.
 
Looks like Phision and Silicon Motion are finally releasing native (i.e., faster & lower-power/heat) PCIe v4.0 NVMe controllers instead of the less efficient 4.0-interface-bolted-onto-a-3.0-controller method they’ve been doing.

...which is great because the specs for PCIe 6.0 are on track to be released next year. Starting to wonder if anyone is going to bother using v5.0 for anything.

—Patrick
 
The D:\ drive on my laptop has vanished. So now I'll probably have to open this sucker up and fiddle with the cables, see if that fixes it.
 
Oof, I just watched a teardown video for this. I can see myself accidentally breaking a couple of things within the first three steps or so. Maybe I should send it in for repairs.
 
This thread is now about scalpers.
Ok, so is this one.
I know we had a discussion about Apple's new headphones, and how a price point of $550 seemed... high.
But apparently there's plenty of people willing to spring that much for them, since they're apparently being scalped on eBay for $1500... and up.

Scalping is the new Bitcoin, I guess. Instead of hashrate, we're going to see people start rating their GPUs by their scalprate, by how many times a second that GPU can reload a webpage to try to submit a purchase order.

--Patrick
 
Playing Crossout on my PC tonight (yes I still play it), when my gaming computer suddenly makes a sound like you hear when someone throws a branch into a wood chipper, and I immediately exit the game mid-match and shut it down to find out what is causing the loud VRRRRRRRRR it is now making. Pop the side off and look around and, near as I can tell, the front intake fan either had a big ball of lint break loose and get sucked into the fan blades or else it was one of these bastards getting mulched while looking for a cozy place to wait for Spring.

Stupid Arthopoda.

--Patrick
 
Playing Crossout on my PC tonight (yes I still play it), when my gaming computer suddenly makes a sound like you hear when someone throws a branch into a wood chipper, and I immediately exit the game mid-match and shut it down to find out what is causing the loud VRRRRRRRRR it is now making. Pop the side off and look around and, near as I can tell, the front intake fan either had a big ball of lint break loose and get sucked into the fan blades or else it was one of these bastards getting mulched while looking for a cozy place to wait for Spring.

Stupid Arthopoda.

--Patrick
that is why my case has screens, fuck that on ice.
 
Top