[Rant] Tech Whine Like a baby thread
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figmentPez
Staff member
When did it stop being common knowledge among computer/gaming enthusiasts that not all [prefix]bytes are measured equally?
Incorrect shit I saw posted in one Reddit topic yesterday asking "is the data usage GB the same as file size GB?":
Regardless, 1 gigabyte should be 1000 megabytes, even though it is erroneously sometimes 1024 megabytes.
I strongly suspect that a lot of the really bad tech advise I'm seeing on Reddit these days is being caused by AI, because it wasn't this flood of consistently terrible a few years ago.
Incorrect shit I saw posted in one Reddit topic yesterday asking "is the data usage GB the same as file size GB?":
- There are not different types of a unit of measure. 1 gig is 1 gig.
- A GB is a GB.
- No one measures file sizes in gibibytes.
- A gigabyte is not a gibibyte.
- Exactly the same thing. 1 kilobyte=1024 bits 1 megabyte=1024 kilobytes 1 gigabyte=1024 megabytes
- Yes, data usage GB and file size GB are the same.
- There are no “types” of gigabytes. A gigabyte is one billion bytes. A billion of anything is a billion of that thing. You can’t measure a billion miles in two different ways, can you?
Regardless, 1 gigabyte should be 1000 megabytes, even though it is erroneously sometimes 1024 megabytes.
I strongly suspect that a lot of the really bad tech advise I'm seeing on Reddit these days is being caused by AI, because it wasn't this flood of consistently terrible a few years ago.
GasBandit
Staff member
The mebi/mega dichotomy always pissed me off. In the 80s, a kilobyte just... was what we call a kibibyte now, because a byte inherently implies binary (or at most octal) counting. The split happened when hard drive manufacturers wanted to sell hard drives with less storage for the same money, so they started using the now textbook decimal definition of kilo so that they could sell "100 megabyte hard drives" when everyone, including the 99% dominant operating system manufacturer of the time, still used binary counting, and thus got less than what they believed they were paying for when they got the hard drive home, plugged it in, and windows told them it was a 95.36 megabyte drive.
"Formatted capacity may be less."
As someone who grew up in the age where "Kilobyte" was just understood by everyone* to mean "1024 bytes," the introduction of the "i" versions was (and still can be) very confusing when you don't know for sure whether the person you are talking to actually knows (or even cares) about the difference.
--Patrick
*everyone who knows the "You owe $1000? Why not just round it to an even $1024?" joke, that is.
And we're not even getting into the difference between GB and Gb.
As someone who grew up in the age where "Kilobyte" was just understood by everyone* to mean "1024 bytes," the introduction of the "i" versions was (and still can be) very confusing when you don't know for sure whether the person you are talking to actually knows (or even cares) about the difference.
--Patrick
*everyone who knows the "You owe $1000? Why not just round it to an even $1024?" joke, that is.
figmentPez
Staff member
It's been over 20 years and I still miss my Logitech iFeel mouse. I hate that haptic feedback for desktop PCs never happened.
So is using at least 4.5 Gigs of Memory while idle normal for modern Windows? I'm glad I upgraded years ago to 16 gig, it originally came with just 4.
On the subject I'm probably upgrading to 32 gigs anyway.
On the subject I'm probably upgrading to 32 gigs anyway.
GasBandit
Staff member
I agree with Pat. It's a rare day I idle at less than 10 gigs, lately. Though, usually my multiple browser tabs and running Idle Champions 24/7 keeps me around 20 gigs.
16 gigs is now the barest minimum for email-and-web-browsing-only machines. 32 is the new gamer minimum.
The OS will try to idle with less if you have less, so if you only have 8GB RAM, it shouldn't idle with the same 4.5GB, probably more like 2.5GB. Some of that is stuff like cached files and whatnot. I assume there's some part of the kernel that basically says, "Immediately reserve 25% of RAM for...reasons."
--Patrick
--Patrick
figmentPez
Staff member
What version of Windows was it where users were freaking out because the OS was consistently reporting that all of the physical RAM was constantly in use, no matter how much RAM a system had, or what programs were running, because Windows was counting all the past disk activity it had cached, regardless of it was still being actively used? Was that XP? Or did that not start up until Vista? Because I remember a lot of confusion over the matter. Both over the apparently maxed out RAM usage, and then confusion over if the caching was still happening or not after Microsoft changed the way that RAM usage was tracked.
GasBandit
Staff member
I think that was actually windows 10, around 2020. XP was pretty reliable and idled low. But starting with 7, Windows started "idling" at higher mem usage, and also started obfuscating a lot of system processes behind nebulous application names (SVCHOST for one) so that you couldn't really tell what your ram was being used by.
Everything I've seen about 11 has convinced me I've bought my last windows PC.
figmentPez
Staff member
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I want to get excited about the next gen of tech. Since Socket 7, I've always been right on top of the next CPU and motherboard chipset releases, but now it's just so...meh. Oh, you support DDR5 now? So what. x64 CPUs have kinda plateaued, and Microsoft is basically being openly hostile to anyone whose hardware is more than 5 years old. Why is that, Microsoft? Why did you decide that would be the cutoff? What was so significant about the 2017-2018 timeframe that caused EVERYBODY in computing (Microsoft, Apple, even most automakers) to significantly switch up whatever they were doing around then?
Windows 11 was obviously not created because it is better for the customer, Windows 11 was created because it would be better for Microsoft. That, right there, puts me at 40% suspicious before I've even started looking into any of its touted features and "improvements."
--Patrick
GasBandit
Staff member
Well yeah, that happens when an OS stops getting security updates. But imagine if, instead of Vista/7, Microsoft had just redone XP's paradigms, drivers, and user experiences into 64 bit, and supported that, instead of deciding to redecorate, relocate, and obfuscate every useful thing in the control panel for no reason other than to give programmers something to do? And don't even get me started on 10/11's bullshit "settings" app that I have to circumvent every time I actually want to make a change to my hardware configuration.
and now everyone is hostile to any physical media and any sort of retention of the ability to watch anything that is older than 5 years old.
YAR MATEY TIS BE TROUBLING TIMES
I was one of the most staunch supporters of physical media, until I was told to my face, my kind were just pirates in disguise.
so now I am not, and I use my not inconsequential collection to fill the gaps on the net of what hasn't made it there.
GasBandit
Staff member
And as I've always said, Copyright law as it stands, especially the DMCA, is the bane of everything. Half the headaches in my job come from bogus HDCP shit. If companies spent half the effort in just making their prices fair and their products easy to purchase and use, piracy would dry up. Steam sales still have me being 10+ years of being clean on software piracy, whereas before 2010 I was probably the biggest, most unrepentant software pirate in existence. Now I'm 100% legit. During the golden age of netflix, I stopped bothering to pirate shows and movies, too. But corporate greed put paid to all that.
HDCP IS THE DEVIL.
My A/V stack works only because of the obfuscation of running my audio through so many different analog systems that the system cant tell what the fuck is going on beyond the DAC being fed by USB and being "trusted" this also has allowed me to literally fed the signal from switch into my computer and so I can leave it docked and play god damn nintendo games while talking to people on discord. I AM NOT PROUD.
My A/V stack works only because of the obfuscation of running my audio through so many different analog systems that the system cant tell what the fuck is going on beyond the DAC being fed by USB and being "trusted" this also has allowed me to literally fed the signal from switch into my computer and so I can leave it docked and play god damn nintendo games while talking to people on discord. I AM NOT PROUD.
GasBandit
Staff member
Just so you know, there are a lot of devices available that I'm not allowed to professionally recommend, that will call themselves something like "edid minders" when what they really are is HDCP terminators with HDMI signal passthru. Sometimes they also call themselved "HDCP Bypass." 1080p ones are generally 15 bucks on amazon... 4k is a little more expensive.
Copyright law as its used is the bane of everything. If governments would remember that consumers have a personal use right to make backups of the media they've bought & told companies that infringing on that right is illegal things would be better.
Same goes for companies attempting to murder fair use whenever they don't like the form that use takes. When the world finally acknowledges me as its rightful ruler, filing copyright infringement claims on what is blatantly fair use is going to be punished with a fine of 1% of their total revenues (not profits - revenues), with the number going up following repeat infringements.
Just remember that there's nothing illegal about making backup copies of your media. The DMCA only says that it's illegal to break the copy protection on that media to make your backups. Completely different thing. Make all the backups you want. Just don't break the copy protection.
--Patrick
--Patrick
figmentPez
Staff member
Please tell me that you're posting this knowing full well the absurdity of telling people they're free to do something as long as they don't do one of the essential steps necessary to do the thing.
You can drink all of the soda you want, as long as you don't open any of the cans!
