Random thoughts.... [Tech Edition]

I don't know how we used to manage with slower internet, currently staying at my brother's house for a while and wanted to play some games on my laptop. Most of my Steam library is only downloaded/installed on my desktop however. So I need to download first before I can play, haven't seen the download speeds go any higher than 7MB/s so it will probably take me an entire day of downloading before I can start playing at these speeds...
 
kalf said:
I don't know how we used to manage with slower internet, currently staying at my brother's house for a while and wanted to play some games on my laptop. Most of my Steam library is only downloaded/installed on my desktop however. So I need to download first before I can play, haven't seen the download speeds go any higher than 7MB/s so it will probably take me an entire day of downloading before I can start playing at these speeds...
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We had to rely on shiny circles with data on them to install games, a DVD would've been 21MB/s flat out. Sometimes I miss just being able to load from a CD, DVD or BD as it was pretty much 100% reliable, didn't rely on someone else's server not being overloaded and you could actually go back to a base state for a game before it was patched to within an inch of its life. This is basically a way of me saying that I at least have ISOs of all my old PC game discs, some are in a wallet with all of the PlayStation, PS2 and Xbox 360 discs...

As a software deployment tech, I value not having to sit and install everything manually though.
 
With the added bonus of being able to own a game, play it until completed or you got tired of it and then simply sell it again if you had no intention of playing it again.

On the other hand, being able to decide any time of day or night "I want to start playing that game" and just buying a code and download it without going to a brick and mortar store can also be handy.

Game file sizes are getting ridiculous though, but faster internet speeds and the normalisation of bigger files go hand in hand I assume.
I'm quite sure that even with current graphics it could all be a lot smaller in file size, but that would require extra optimalisation and thus investing more time and money which makes no sense if most people don't really care about downloading 250GB+ games.
 
Oh yeah, not having to buy/carry/keep/maintain physical media is a big advantage. Trying to repair scratches on DVDs was not fun. :p
kalf said:
Game file sizes are getting ridiculous though, but faster internet speeds and the normalisation of bigger files go hand in hand I assume.
I'm quite sure that even with current graphics it could all be a lot smaller in file size, but that would require extra optimalisation and thus investing more time and money which makes no sense if most people don't really care about downloading 250GB+ games.
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I think textures are a big part of this, as games are pushed to higher resolutions. Plus higher quality audio recordings.
 
Forgot to to plug in the wall plug side of my charger while leaving my laptop to finish the download :wall:, so still not ready. Continued with The Witcher III where I left months ago since it was the one of the two games on my laptop (the other being Age of Empires II) and now I feel like I won't be playing much of the other downloads anyway 😅.
 
kalf said:
Forgot to to plug in the wall plug side of my charger while leaving my laptop to finish the download :wall:, so still not ready. Continued with The Witcher III where I left months ago since it was the one of the two games on my laptop (the other being Age of Empires II) and now I feel like I won't be playing much of the other downloads anyway 😅.
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Ah yes the stacking IT problems, it's never just one. I've genuinely wondered if I should back up my games disk. Pretty sure it's a waste of about 1.1TB on the server, when I swapped out the 1TB for a 2TB SSD I reloaded it all and it took an annoyingly long time. I didn't actually load all of the games though so I'm barely using more than the 1TB I had before. :-|

Work have just bought me a 1TB SSD for my work machine to replace the 500GB that was completely full of Hyper-V snapshots, so I can begin working on the Windows 11 23H2 golden image. I can't delete the old images because they want tweaks of those, so a new disk is the only option. I'm going to leave it copying over the weekend and I'll install it next week. The USB 3.0 enclosure is only writing at 36MB/s, hopefully it doesn't die on me.
 
I'm thinking of getting a used Apple Watch. I had Series 5 in mind, as I found a really great deal on one (€50), and I need a fitness tracking device.

Obviously, that wouldn't be the only use for it, I've heard you can look at lists through the Notes app, and use them as shopping lists. There's obviously the watch function (and Series 5 is the first one with an always-on display AFAIK), and I'd discover some other uses for it, too.

I kinda don't like the design, I think it's just a bit too plain, but then, that goes for pretty much all the smartwatches on the market. Should I go for something else? I kinda want an Apple Watch for the sake of integration with my iPhone, and possibly a Mac at some point in the future.
 
Tram said:
I kinda don't like the design, I think it's just a bit too plain, but then, that goes for pretty much all the smartwatches on the market. Should I go for something else? I kinda want an Apple Watch for the sake of integration with my iPhone, and possibly a Mac at some point in the future.
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I have a Series 5, the 44mm black stainless steel. I chose that because I was never a massive fan of the square design, having the screen and body blend together with glossy black helps make it look better IMO. It's a great watch still, tracking my walks is one of my main uses.

It integrates well with the phone, although I did have to reset it after it wouldn't play nice with my new iPhone 15 Pro.
 
I went ahead and got it. Now I need to learn how to use it. :D

S5, 44mm, black, but aluminum model. Kinda shows wear marks more, but I don't care, as long as it does its job. Also, the battery could do with a replacement, but for the price I paid, which turned out to be so low I'm ashamed to reveal what it ended up costing me, I'm not complaining.
 
Welcome 😉 hope it holds up well for you! I only ditched my s4 because I was annoyed by being locked out of certain software features. Apart from that it was perfectly fine, although after those years it could’ve done with a new battery. The double (more like 2.5x actually) battery life of its replacement is quite nice though, I have to admit, since I did have the odd run not being fully recorded because the battery died on me (gps+bt).
 
Speaking of Apple watches, I have been very happy with my old handed down S4, which I got in September 2020, I find it very useful for tracking activity, workouts and walking trips, and as an accessory to my iPhone having that always silenced, as well as using it as an alarm clock to get me up in the morning. Vibration on my wrist wakes me up right away, that never fails.

About a month ago I was upgraded from my S4 Apple Watch to an S6 Titanium Edition. My brother bought an Apple Watch Ultra 2 at launch and asked me if I wanted to have his old S6 for the same €50 he was offered for it to return it to Apple, and I went for it. Battery health is at 77 %, so I will most likely go and hand it in somewhere for a new battery. Biggest change is the always on display, despite that it has the same or better battery life as my old S4 which did not have that, and that had about the same battery health when I upgraded.

IMG_0295.jpeg
 
www.tomshardware.com

Canon's Nanoimprint Litho Tool Could Disrupt Wafer Fab Equipment Market

Could make it cheaper to manufacture advanced chips
www.tomshardware.com www.tomshardware.com

Canon has introduced a new nanoimprint lithography (NIL) tool designed for 5nm-class chip production, which could compete with ASML's extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography tools. Canon's NIL tool is expected to be priced significantly lower than ASML's EUV machines, potentially by an order of magnitude, making advanced chip production more accessible to smaller chipmakers. This development could democratize the advanced chip production market, which has been dominated by companies with significant resources.
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This is pretty exciting news. 5nm is going to be relevant for a long time.
 
awdrifter said:
This is pretty exciting news.
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for sure! Everyone talks about Intel AMD Apple etc processors being done in 3nm or whatever, but the majority of chips, the ones that nobody ever talks or mostly even knows about, are being made in the low-mid double digit nm today. Hell, the big chip fab currently going up in Germany from that chip JV (tsmc, Bosch, Infineon, someone else) is very transparently targeting 28-12 nm processes.

If the canon system can deliver on quality and quantity while maintaining that price advantage ( 1/10th vs asml is insane), they should really do something for availability and, I hope, a stated in the article, make smaller fabs more competitive (and thus make it more viable to have them in more places in the world).
edit: another hope here, is that canon can actually make and deliver enough of these to satisfy demand.
 
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This video does a pretty good job at explaining it. Seems like nanoimprint will be slower in terms of throughput, and there are more wear on the masks. But still, for lower volume processors that can't afford to be produced on EUV 5nm, this could become an alternative.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UdNB3ZY4Ks
 
Well, I guess I'll need a new graphics card...

I don't really care if it's new or used, I prefer AMD over NVidia and don't like Intel at all. I think the best bang for the buck should be an RX 6700 XT for just under or an RX 6750 XT for just over 300 Euros used, right? I have a Ryzen 5 5600G, should be plenty enough for the game I mainly play, namely Wreckfest.
 
Hmm, who would have thought that almost quadrupling* the resolution would impact the framerates? Before I replaced the monitor I had stable 60+ fps on Ultra settings at Wreckfest, now I have to lower the settings to medium and still struggle to achieve a stable 50 fps in situations with lots of wreckage. According to HWInfo "just" two of the CPU cores were at 100% max, the third one at 90% and all the rest below 50%. Of course the GPU was at 99% max so the bottleneck is clearly the GPU. Why the GPU fan PWM was at max 50% even though the GPU hotspot was at 99°C ("edge" at 80°C) I have no idea, but the fans weren't obnoxiously loud (unlike the infamous Geforce FX 5800 cooling solution :ninja:). It seems having two huge fans for a not so powerhungry card (nominal board power 130W max which according to HWInfo the card really drew) plays dividence...

Oh well, let's wait for people throwing their "old" cards out after today's single day or Black Friday at the end of the month, I don't care that much about the prettyness of the game...

*Before that I had WUXGA (1920x1200) instead of the traditional FHD (1920x1080) so the factor is 3.6

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Hmm, the screen occasionally goes blank, I have no idea why. I don't think it's the graphics card since it's on the Windows desktop as well and an RX 5500 XT should have no problem displaying 4k on the desktop. There is a "monitor reset" option in the OSD, I just did that, tu that didn't fix the issue, it went blank again about 30 seconds after the reset...
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I remember posting here a while back that I thought that having more than 1 screen/device per person was ridiculous and overkill and not needed.
It's been many years since then, and my household of 4 now consists of 23 seperate devices connected to wifi at the same time.

I dunno if that should make me happy or sad?

For anyone that wants the list
3 tvs
6 phones
3 tablets
5 laptops
1 raspberry pi
1 TV decoder
1 smartlight
1 smart plug
1 Playstation
1 Nintendo Switch

This means that at any time people are using 2 screens simultaneously, and if this continues I fear we may end up à la Wall-E
It seems people agree with this. Thoughts people? Massive exaggeration/being a baby about this, or is there something to this
 
Sometimes I would like to have more that four watching a race.

The 1 screen/device per person people are probably small screen people too. Don't understand 32 inch plus, grimly hanging to their 17 inch!
 
NooDle said:
I remember posting here a while back that I thought that having more than 1 screen/device per person was ridiculous and overkill and not needed.
It's been many years since then, and my household of 4 now consists of 23 seperate devices connected to wifi at the same time.

I dunno if that should make me happy or sad?

For anyone that wants the list
3 tvs
6 phones
3 tablets
5 laptops
1 raspberry pi
1 TV decoder
1 smartlight
1 smart plug
1 Playstation
1 Nintendo Switch

This means that at any time people are using 2 screens simultaneously, and if this continues I fear we may end up à la Wall-E
It seems people agree with this. Thoughts people? Massive exaggeration/being a baby about this, or is there something to this
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You think that's overkill? Cute :p
Another household of 4...
3 desktop PCs
6 laptops
6 smartphones
5 iPads
2 Android tablets (not in active use yet, probably some smart home duty)
2 Nintendo Switch
1 Steam Deck
1 Smart TV
1 Nvidia Shield TV
1 Dell PowerEdge home server

Oh and some smart home shit:
5 wifi switches
27 Zigbee devices
1 Raspberry Pi sharing zigbee stick using ser2net
1 ESP8266 hooked up tp my smart meter for power consumption monitoring
Doorbell and chime
Solar panels
Car charger
Washer, dryer and fridge
 
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