[Rant] Tech Whine Like a baby thread

DarkAudit

DarkAudit

More complainy than the Random Crap thread. Post your little frustrations here.

I have an 120 GB Intel 510 SSD i bought in 2011 as I was assembling this PC. I paid ~$320 for it. Today I went down the components aisle at my local Best Buy. A 120GB SanDisk SSD was under $60. Even a 240GB was under $80. :cry:
 
Squidleybits

Squidleybits

I try not to look at flyers and sales after I buy a big ticket item because it can be pretty depressing. Back when I got my good camera, I went to Future Shop and I negotiated a deal on it from the guy we had just bought all of our appliances from and I still haven't seen it on sale for that good of a price all these years later. That's the only thing though. Everything else drops like the next day. The next hour maybe :)
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

I took that first surplus optiplex and installed Gentoo with full disk incryption as a "because I can" exercise. Now all I'm doing with it is compiling Chromium updates every other day.
 
fade

fade

Staff member
In my experience, Gentoo isn't worth the compile time. Unless you took the time to craft the compile flags for your machine instead of just straight up using "emerge" with no flags, then it's exactly equivalent to an x86 RPM anyway. Except you have to wait for the build.
 
Eriol

Eriol

fade said:
In my experience, Gentoo isn't worth the compile time. Unless you took the time to craft the compile flags for your machine instead of just straight up using "emerge" with no flags, then it's exactly equivalent to an x86 RPM anyway. Except you have to wait for the build.
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I'm surprised they don't try and detect your processor and change the build flags appropriately. You'd think that wouldn't be THAT hard. An absolute BITCH to test, but possible I'd think.
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

Eriol said:
I'm surprised they don't try and detect your processor and change the build flags appropriately. You'd think that wouldn't be THAT hard. An absolute BITCH to test, but possible I'd think.
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That's what things like march=native are for. There's also a tool to detect what use flags your particular processor uses. I found that one when I wanted to build Plasma and emerge complained to no end about what wasn't set right.

And then once I decided Plasma sucked, I ditched it, cleaned out the debris it left behind, and installed XFCE instead. :p
 
fade

fade

Staff member
Yeah, but the other thing is that the efficiency of most of those core packages even with the processor-specific flags on is not really going to be significant compared to a release (O2) build anyway.

I mean, it's a fun exercise. But I wouldn't do it more than once.
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

fade said:
Yeah, but the other thing is that the efficiency of most of those core packages even with the processor-specific flags on is not really going to be significant compared to a release (O2) build anyway.

I mean, it's a fun exercise. But I wouldn't do it more than once.
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That's all that box is right now, an exercise in "because I can." It's not even the tertiary PC in the house. I've got the 2500K box in the bedroom as the "main," this hackintosh in the living room (mainly for movies on the TV and to keep the cats company during the day,) and my laptop. All come before the Gentoo box.

And that doesn't count the PC I built for mom. Since chances of her overcoming home are practically nil, it's going to languish unused from here on out. And finally the i3 from the last surplus Optiplex I bought for it's PSU. that CPU needs somewhere to go. Although the i7 in the hackintosh would get first pick of any motherboard I managed to scrounge up.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

You can run them out slowly over and over and it will get better at estimating, but this takes time and patience.

--Patrick
 
strawman

strawman

PatrThom said:
Yeah, well saving a voicemail in iOS is trivially easy, too.
I figured the success of this method was a function of battery chemistry (equalizing the cells, maybe?), not the OS.

--Patrick
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Apple has a really, really good battery algorithm. They've clearly put significant engineering into it, and it Just Works. However, as you suggest, it has a lot to do with the specific exact hardware, including the battery, charging circuitry, and power conversion circuitry. Buy a dodgy replacement battery and you may find your phone's power bar inaccurate. One of the many reasons Apple doesn't make it easy to replace the battery - and the main reason you rarely have to replace the battery.

Android requires the hardware manufacturers to provide drivers to deal with the hardware differences, and the hardware manufacturers simply follow industry practices. It's good enough, but there's a lot more they could do and don't, and since it's a close integration with the hardware google can only make recommendations, they can't write everyone else's drivers.

I expect the google designed devices to be better about this, but I don't know.
 
Dei

Dei

I guess that must be a recent thing, because the main reason I switched away from Apple is because I always got terrible batteries.
 
strawman

strawman

Dei said:
I guess that must be a recent thing, because the main reason I switched away from Apple is because I always got terrible batteries.
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I'm sure usage patterns play into this. I charge my phone every night whether it needs it or not, and my iPhone 3GS I got and used years ago is still going strong on its original battery. Same with the iPads, MacBook, and the various other iPhones I've used through the years. Only rarely do I allow them to go below 50% charge when I'm their primary user.

My wife charges her phone intermittently and only when it needs it, and rarely gives it a full charge - always just enough to keep it going. I've had to replace her batteries occasionally.

Lithium prefers staying charged, so if your phone spends a lot of its life below 50% then it's unlikely that you'll get your full life (800+ charge cycles) out of your battery. If you routinely hit 10-20% then you should simply plan on replacing your battery yearly - and this goes for both iPhone and android.

That said, this is anecdotal and I know people who've kept their phones charged just as I have and still need replacements. Other patterns of usage must be at play here.

As it is my iPhone 6+ is three years old, lasts me all day, and I still rarely go below 50%.

So while we tease @GasBandit about his fear of low battery, my guess is he gets great battery life and rarely replaces his battery before he replaces his phone.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Word is, if you want the absolute maximum lifespan from your lithium rechargeable battery, you keep it between 20%-80% for its entire life. This is what satellites/probes/etc are designed to do, since changing their batteries is impractical or downright impossible, so lifespan is prioritized over runtime.

--Patrick
 
strawman

strawman

PatrThom said:
Word is, if you want the absolute maximum lifespan from your lithium rechargeable battery, you keep it between 20%-80% for its entire life. This is what satellites/probes/etc are designed to do, since changing their batteries is impractical or downright impossible, so lifespan is prioritized over runtime.

--Patrick
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Yes, and in fact Apple devices will report fully charged before the actual battery maximum capacity is actually reached. They'll continue to charge but much more slowly to reduce heat damage, and because it's only another 5-10% anyway.

Up until that point they do the fastest bulk charge the charger permits (up to 2.1A on current iOS devices) because that's what the consumer wants.

In theory charging with a slower charger will increase battery life. Fast bulk charging isn't particularly destructive, and o don't know that the difference is significant enough to care about, but my understanding is that it does make a difference.

I use a 2.1A charger in all cases, though, and if the iPhone 8 has the option of faster charging I'll probably use it, I don't think the difference is big enough to give up fast charging.
 
strawman

strawman

:ninja:

Haha, I wish. My phone is hitting the three year mark, so I'm probably going to upgrade this year.

The rumors of a $1,200 price tag, though... oof.

Maybe I should put that towards a sawstop instead, it'd be like a gift of the magi otherwise. I may be able to afford the phone, but without fingers it's useless... :p
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

I feel ya. I'm still on my 5, waiting to see what happens since even though there are rumors galore, Cupertino is still maintaining radio silence.

--Patrick
 
Gared

Gared

Windows decided it absolutely had to update Sunday night, so it rebooted my computer. Since then, Chrome has decided that all of my most frequently visited sites thumbnails need to be reset to sites I haven't visited regularly in months. Why did you get rid of the option to pin thumbnails to the start page, you fuckers?!
 
Dei

Dei

Last night my computer rebooted itself saying there was a surge in the power supply. It started back up again fine and since it was late I said I would look at it in the morning. Can't even get it to turn on now. I haven't had this computer for a year yet so I'm pretty annoyed.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

...how would it know there was a surge in the PSU? Computers usually can't tell that sort of thing (unless you're using one of those fancy-schmancy "smart" power supplies).

--Patrick
 
strawman

strawman

Interesting! I hadn't heard of this feature Asus is adding to their boards. A quick google suggests that it may not be very helpful, and a lot of people simply turn surge detection/protection off.

That said, a new power supply is cheap so it's probably worth replacing it just in case.
 
Dei

Dei

stienman said:
Interesting! I hadn't heard of this feature Asus is adding to their boards. A quick google suggests that it may not be very helpful, and a lot of people simply turn surge detection/protection off.

That said, a new power supply is cheap so it's probably worth replacing it just in case.
Click to expand...
Well, when my husband gets home from work tonight we're going to swap his power supply into my PC to see if it boots. Clearly something is wrong in there since 6 hours later the PC won't power on any more.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Hopefully this doesn't end up being the board's fault. Usually this means SOMEbody's caps are failing, but without inspection you wouldn't know if it was the board or the PSU. Or both.

--Patrick
 
Dei

Dei

So my power supply was dead as a doornail. For the lols we unplugged everything from it, then plugged things back in one at a time and flicked the power between each one and it just came back to life with no indication that anything was ever wrong. My husband is now having fits about this. He's leaving everything open until it either randomly dies again or he can bring home the power supply tester tomorrow.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Dei said:
So my power supply was dead as a doornail. For the lols we unplugged everything from it, then plugged things back in one at a time and flicked the power between each one and it just came back to life with no indication that anything was ever wrong. My husband is now having fits about this. He's leaving everything open until it either randomly dies again or he can bring home the power supply tester tomorrow.
Click to expand...
Maybe you need to get one of these power supplies.
redundancy.png


--Patrick
 
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