Random thoughts.... [Tech Edition]

Well, knowing where Stihl makes a vast majority of their chain saw parts (Virginia Beach, VA), I would say go for Stihl, I've heard good things about Husqvarna as well but never about Makita. Sure they make good power tools, but a saw? It's probably fine for light duty as are the other two brands. I don't think you could go wrong with any of those brands.

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I am thinking of replacing the non-used coax cable that goes to nearly every room in my house with Cat5 or Cat6 ethernet. Problem is, PO ran some of the coax outside along the side of the house, is there any problems with doing the same by just attaching ethernet cable to the coax so that fishing cable isn't a PITA like memories with dad were?
 
sizable Makita 18V collection.

Don't exclude other manufacturers just because of the battery, I've had a good experience with the battery adapter I bought to use my Makita batteries with a Bosch 18V vacuum. Bosch make 18V chainsaws that might be worth looking at and if you aren't going to use it all the time you may be able to get away with a Ryobi saw as they're pretty cheap and the battery adapters are easy to find. The Makita one you mentioned sounds a bit steep but it may of course pay for itself in power.

Probably time to get another charger too, either just a second charger used on ebay or one of the dual chargers. The dual chargers do seem reasonably priced but I only have three batteries so have no need for one yet.

I am thinking of replacing the non-used coax cable that goes to nearly every room in my house with Cat5 or Cat6 ethernet. Problem is, PO ran some of the coax outside along the side of the house, is there any problems with doing the same by just attaching ethernet cable to the coax so that fishing cable isn't a PITA like memories with dad were?

I have Cat6 going outside for two runs, so far it's been fine. I actually replaced a coax TV antenna plate with one to make it nice and neat, another goes through a plastic window frame (European double-glazed windows are generally quite different to US windows I believe) and to a punch-down coupler. You can never be sure that water won't get in so just keep that in mind and if you don't have a punch down tool, buy one.

There are ethernet to coax adapters that apparently can handle gigabit, if your coax already goes from one place you want it to another or you have a place that you can re-splice the cables like where they would normally join to a TV antenna they may turn out to be cheaper and a lot easier. Coax was used for networking for a long time, after all.

http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/2603535.pdf
 
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Don't exclude other manufacturers just because of the battery, I've had a good experience with the battery adapter I bought to use my Makita batteries with a Bosch 18V vacuum. Bosch make 18V chainsaws that might be worth looking at and if you aren't going to use it all the time you may be able to get away with a Ryobi saw as they're pretty cheap and the battery adapters are easy to find. The Makita one you mentioned sounds a bit steep but it may of course pay for itself in power.

Probably time to get another charger too, either just a second charger used on ebay or one of the dual chargers. The dual chargers do seem reasonably priced but I only have three batteries so have no need for one yet.

I regret not buying the 199€ Makita LXT push lawnmower + 2x5Ah + dual charger combo this spring. The batteries are around 100€ each and the charger is like 139...
 
What could it be that freezes my laptop when I open Facebook in Firefox? It usually happens when I have YouTube and Discord (both accessed with Firefox) also running in background. It opens normally, but as soon as I start scrolling, it just freaks out. I am running Firefox on an external 1440p monitor, though.

My laptop has 16GB of RAM, a Transcend 500GB SSD, an i7-7500U and dedicated Radeon R5 M430 graphics with 2GB of VRAM (which are, truth to be told, crap).
 
What could it be that freezes my laptop when I open Facebook in Firefox? It usually happens when I have YouTube and Discord (both accessed with Firefox) also running in background. It opens normally, but as soon as I start scrolling, it just freaks out. I am running Firefox on an external 1440p monitor, though.

My laptop has 16GB of RAM, a Transcend 500GB SSD, an i7-7500U and dedicated Radeon R5 M430 graphics with 2GB of VRAM (which are, truth to be told, crap).

Are you sure you have hardware acceleration enabled?
 
Heat could do it, depends how hard you're working it. Seems like a beefy machine but cooling is always an issue these days...
 
What could it be that freezes my laptop when I open Facebook in Firefox? It usually happens when I have YouTube and Discord (both accessed with Firefox) also running in background. It opens normally, but as soon as I start scrolling, it just freaks out. I am running Firefox on an external 1440p monitor, though.

My laptop has 16GB of RAM, a Transcend 500GB SSD, an i7-7500U and dedicated Radeon R5 M430 graphics with 2GB of VRAM (which are, truth to be told, crap).

My first guess would be video card drivers. See if there are any newer drivers and install them.

Does your laptop have a hybrid set-up where it switches between the Intel and ATI GPU? If so, disable one of them and see if you can repeat the issue (your external monitor may not work with the Intel GPU depending on how the external display port is wired and mux'd).

Do you see anything odd in Event Viewer under "System" or "Application" around the time of the crash?
 
Are you sure you have hardware acceleration enabled?

I'm pretty sure I do. I mean, the Radeon graphics show up in Task Manager, and whenever I'm doing something graphically intensive, such as playing games, it shows activity. I also checked Firefox' settings, the hardware acceleration is currently turned on. I'll turn it off if it seems to be the cause of the problem.

Heat could do it, depends how hard you're working it. Seems like a beefy machine but cooling is always an issue these days...

I checked in Task Manager, the GPU is at around 50 °C even when under some load.

My first guess would be video card drivers. See if there are any newer drivers and install them.

Does your laptop have a hybrid set-up where it switches between the Intel and ATI GPU? If so, disable one of them and see if you can repeat the issue (your external monitor may not work with the Intel GPU depending on how the external display port is wired and mux'd).

Do you see anything odd in Event Viewer under "System" or "Application" around the time of the crash?

I installed the latest AMD Radeon Software, it didn't do much. It seemed like it solved the problem first time I opened Facebook after it installed, but some time after that, the problems persisted.

Yeah, it has a hybrid set-up. Although I think I can only disable the AMD graphics, I'll investigate further into that.

And as for the Event Viewer, it did give me this warning:

A corrected hardware error has occurred.

Component: PCI Express Root Port
Error Source: Advanced Error Reporting (PCI Express)

Primary Bus:Device:Function: 0x0:0x1C:0x4
Secondary Bus:Device:Function: 0x0:0x0:0x0
Primary Device Name:pCI\VEN_8086&DEV_9D14&SUBSYS_078B1028&REV_F1
Secondary Device Name:

Ignore the emojis, I didn't find the option to turn them off.
 
Disable the AMD GPU in Device Manager and see if the problem persists. You may loose access to the external monitor with it disabled.

I'd update the Intel chipset drivers (search for "Intel inf") and check for a firmware update for your laptop.
 
It may very well be crap AMD drivers. Now that i think about it, I noticed something similar (usually with Facebook, but sometimes with other sites) with Firefox, on my fairly beefy desktop back when I was running a Radeon HD7970. After switching to Nvidia, I don't think I've ever had it happen again.
 
Am I doing something wrong or is there no multiplayer support in Office 365? I shared an Excel file, left it open on my end and the recipient was only able to open it as read-only.
 
Is this the web version or the locally installed application? If the latter, check the file permissions.
 
Am I doing something wrong or is there no multiplayer support in Office 365? I shared an Excel file, left it open on my end and the recipient was only able to open it as read-only.

I just re-read this, when you say shared do you mean you shared the file or did you make it into a shared file. The former wouldn't allow multiple editors, the latter should.

Anyway I dusted my PC again today, now a year since I fitted the replacement AIO and almost three years since I built it. I posted a picture on Reddit without colour correction so I feel the need to post this corrected version somewhere. I probably post a picture every time I clean it but I don't have a great memory and every time I do it without breaking the glass is something to be celebrated.

IMG_6149_P-2_S1920.jpg
 
Am I remembering correctly in that there's a member or two here with a vinyl cutter and able to do custom cuts/decals? I have 4 words I need done in an orangey-yellow color fit in about a 1.5 by 6 inch size....
 
Me trying to play MFS2020 on 10k PC



Just saw a video yesterday where they tested basically a 1-year-old flagship spec computer, and if i remember right, they struggled to get 40 fps at 1080p...on a computer that could fairly easily run most AAA titles at 4K, 30-60fps.

It makes sense when you think about it, though...if they don't plan to updated this one again for 14 years like the last one, it seems they built in a fair bit of "future proofing" into the specs. Ha!
 
About my Facebook crashing issue, it really seems that if Muhammad won't go to the mountain, then the mountain must come to Muhammad, as we'd say here in Croatia. Ever since Facebook redesigned the UI (and did a horrible job on that, BTW), the issue has essentially disappeared. Actually, it was almost gone even before, once I updated the Intel chipset drivers as per @argatoga's recommendation, it's only lag occasionally, it still does from time to time, but I'll try to fix that later.

Anyway, I just found a British website that has info and graphs on phone depreciation. On the list of most depreciating phones, the first place goes to... Huawei P20. Which is exactly what I have. By a whopping 84%, compared to its value one year ago. I noticed the prices of used Huawei P20s in classifieds were really low, but this had me somewhat surprised. I don't want to get rid of the phone, because I swore I'd keep this thing as long as it works and is usable, and I know this is expected with the recent happenings with Huawei, but 84% in one year? It makes me think if I'm ever going to buy a flagship phone again, especially with mid-rangers getting so good (point in case, the Google Pixel 4a).
 
Artificial intelligence is great. Not. Especially not when it's used to cheap out on actually understanding humans' input:
These students figured out their tests were graded by AI — and the easy way to cheat

[Short version: Just give a list of keywords you expect the grading algorithm to look for, without bothering to actually make sense]

Source: The Verge article

Now, from the article, I suspect "artificial intelligence" is quite an exaggeration of what the grading algorithm of that software actually does. Even though AI is really just a fancy way of saying "statistical analysis", cutting-edge technology in this field is a bit better than just string matching against a word list.
 
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