'No Stupid Questions' (NSQ) Internet & Technology Edition

Trigger Me Timbers said:
Question: should I update to windows 10?

backstory; I am on windows 7 and have been since win7 was a thing, I always told myself I would move to 10 but it kept getting shitty headlines, first the metro UI was a mess, then it was some games won’t work due to the weird walled garden HTML5 crap, then it was updates you cannot stop and lastly it’s the fucking huge backdoor that was found a few weeks ago.

FYI this for my gaming rig, I have a MacBook for srs biz nez
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If you're only playing games and not doing anything sensitive I wouldn't worry about it until the games you want to play no longer support Windows 7. If a huge Windows 7 exploit is found sometime in the future and Microsoft shows no intention of patching it you should upgrade.
 
Some time ago, I met a farmer and he had this kind of ziplock-style, transparent soft-plastic or vinyl pouch that he put his smartphone inside. It let him see and use the touchscreen of the phone while keeping the whole thing waterproof when he was out and about in the field. Then when he goes home for the day, all he has to do is unzip the pouch, take the phone out, and it's all clean and ready for use at home and overnight charging. The pouch had a built-in lanyard too, so he didn't have to worry about putting the whole phone/pouch in his pocket if he needed both hands all of a sudden.

It looked like a pretty handy accessory, and I was thinking of getting one, but I don't know what they are called!
 
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XYZpdq said:
is there a way to clean usb ports?
Mine are going weird and seems like the easiest thing would be to clean them
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Datavac or can of air. Maybe an air compressor. If you're feeling like taking risks, a vacuum or leaf blower. Might introduce static, so only do that if you like risks or have no other options.

Can of air is likely the safer choice. Datavacs might be a bit too strong for this task.

Might want to check the connections inside the computer if it's a desktop. The USB ports are most likely connected around the row where those annoying power and reset nubs are. Just look for the cable labeled USB otherwise. Pretty much everything is labeled in there.

While in there, may as well check the connections for everything else. And do a little dusting if you haven't in a year.
 
Aberforth said:
Datavac or can of air. Maybe an air compressor. If you're feeling like taking risks, a vacuum or leaf blower. Might introduce static, so only do that if you like risks or have no other options.

Can of air is likely the safer choice. Datavacs might be a bit too strong for this task.

Might want to check the connections inside the computer if it's a desktop. The USB ports are most likely connected around the row where those annoying power and reset nubs are. Just look for the cable labeled USB otherwise. Pretty much everything is labeled in there.

While in there, may as well check the connections for everything else. And do a little dusting if you haven't in a year.
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turned out the mouse was dying, but thanks that reminds me it's been a while since I've taken a vacuum attachment hose to my shit
 
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??? said:
What I heard is you should do a clean install to Win10, rather than updating.

Unrelated: How would you use very cheap used server hardware to produce an absurdly overpowered CGI, Android programming, and gaming workstation?
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You wouldn't want to use cheap old server hardware for gaming. For games IPC is much more important than a large number of cores. IPC stands for "instructions per clock[cycle]", server CPUs run at a low frequency so the number of instructions a single core can execute in a second will be lower than a desktop PC. LinusTechTips made a youtube video where they played games on used 64 core server.
quadserver1.JPG

It did not do well.

www.youtube.com

$650 64-Core Quad Socket Gaming Workstation!

Retired server hardware is always in ample supply, so why not reduce e-waste and build a MONSTER budget workstation? For your unrestricted 30 days free trial...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com


For rendering just google "[name] distributed rendering" and see what you get. Don't get hung up on that just yet, I don't know how experienced you are with 3D software but for a very long time Maya have had a system, pre-pixel shaders, where you could preview and tweak your shaders without having to render all the time.
The new realtime version looks very cool:
www.youtube.com

Maya 2019 – A beautiful viewport with Arnold updates

Updates to the Arnold Standard Surface Shader in Maya 2019 make the Viewport 2.0 preview look much closer to the final render. And area lights now show refle...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
 
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I've got an LG G3 for about 4 years now, and I believe soon I will have to buy a new phone. The problem is, the market is full of phones with elements that I despise, such as rounded screens with notches, no headphone jacks, excessive cameras and glued in batteries. Is there any affordable phone on the market right now that somehow doesn't have any of those elements in it?
 
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Slav Power said:
I've got an LG G3 for about 4 years now, and I believe soon I will have to buy a new phone. The problem is, the market is full of phones with elements that I despise, such as rounded screens with notches, no headphone jacks, excessive cameras and glued in batteries. Is there any affordable phone on the market right now that somehow doesn't have any of those elements in it?
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May I suggest Motorola's Moto G5? Perfect midrange phones with good screens, batteries, price. If you want to save a few more bucks pick something from ZTE's Blade series, which have slightly lower specs.
 
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The Empirical Bogey said:
May I suggest Motorola's Moto G5? Perfect midrange phones with good screens, batteries, price. If you want to save a few more bucks pick something from ZTE's Blade series, which have slightly lower specs.
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These seem to be only available second hand these days, but I guess that's what I have to deal with if I want to get a simple phone on the current market.
 
Slav Power said:
These seem to be only available second hand these days, but I guess that's what I have to deal with if I want to get a simple phone on the current market.
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There are other Moto phones. Moto X is the high end, Moto G is mid range, Moto E is low end. Looking at Wikipedia, the latest Moto X isn't bad at all.

Moto X4 - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org
 
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If I'm just some random dude with other skills, should I really even bother learning code?
What uses does coding knowledge have in everyday life that doesn't involve trying to make money? Or if it's about math, that you can't just do by hand or on a calculator?
 
@CivilianOfTheFandomWars, if you're just a rando it can make some technical mysteries easier to understand. For instance a girl I knew was curious why games took longer to port to Mac, and if she knew how much of a pain building software across multiple platforms was she wouldn't even need to ask.

If you have technical troubleshooting or some tedious software shit you'd like automated it can help to know the very basics. Compiling an emulator was my intro to debugging random software problems, and automating clicks and key presses with AutoKeyTool(?) was my intro to power user scripting.

If you want to learn to think like a programmer, read books on logic or audit the philosophy class, learn advanced Google-fu and open source intelligence tricks, and get used to applying the process of elimination (aka binary search in CS lingo) to everything you troubleshoot.
 
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CivilianOfTheFandomWars said:
If I'm just some random dude with other skills, should I really even bother learning code?
What uses does coding knowledge have in everyday life that doesn't involve trying to make money? Or if it's about math, that you can't just do by hand or on a calculator?
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I run a small business that's not tech related at all and I use windows powershell to script all kinds of stuff. Emailing employee paystubs, renewing registration on vechicles, etc. It's really useful shit. You spend a week or two pulling some late nights to set everything up and then on the back end it saves you from 2-3 hours of tedious shit you'd usually have to do every week.
 
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Slav Power said:
I've got an LG G3 for about 4 years now, and I believe soon I will have to buy a new phone. The problem is, the market is full of phones with elements that I despise, such as rounded screens with notches, no headphone jacks, excessive cameras and glued in batteries. Is there any affordable phone on the market right now that somehow doesn't have any of those elements in it?
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Mid range Samsung phones have decent specs, headphone jacks, no notches and removable batteries.
I would consider them usable and about on par with an LG G3

Or go with a Google Pixel (1), which only have a glued in battery, but no notch and a headphone jack.
 
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Never Scored said:
I run a small business that's not tech related at all and I use windows powershell to script all kinds of stuff. Emailing employee paystubs, renewing registration on vechicles, etc. It's really useful shit. You spend a week or two pulling some late nights to set everything up and then on the back end it saves you from 2-3 hours of tedious shit you'd usually have to do every week.
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Yeah, learning some programming is adding another tool to the toolbox. Many people could benefit from learning some basic programming, just like most people benefits from knowing a bit about carpentry, home repair, sewing, cooking, car repair etc. Not having to rely on others all the time creates peace of mind.
 
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I want to configure part of my website to have some sort of bare link list like http://www.kiwifarms.net/archive but I have no idea what that's even called, nor how to configure an S3 account to do it for certain directories.
 
So I just got a standardized message from my ISP on my browser, apparently they are pissy i yarr harr'd a little to hard over the past month. Is there anything using a decent VPN (like Proton) will NOT guard against when it comes to that kind of thing?
 
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