Root Access

Journeyman Geek

00:06

> I AM INSTALLING SOFTWARES ON MY PERSONAL COMPUTER WHICH I OWN AND CARE FOR AND DEARLY LOVE AND WOULD NEVER EVER ALLOW TO BE MOLESTED BY THE COLD EVIL TENTACLES OF The Internet!

Burgi

o.O

Ben N

(source: Shog9)

Journeyman Geek

yup

@djsmiley2k That hard drive lifespan question? Mission accomplished.

DavidPostill

Damn. I've just realised I can't get "The Hatter" for my post on meta.su (the upvotes don't count) :/

Ben N

Unless specifically said, hat participation has to be on a site with rep

i.e. either a main site or MSE (which is simultaneously a main and a meta for hat purposes)

You got progress toward the asking badges on MSU, FWIW!

DavidPostill

00:16

@BenN Yeah. I realise that now. I might still get "Loungin' Around" for it as I posted it from the Android app - I was hoping to get double hats for the same question :)

Or maybe that won't work either ...

Ben N

Probably need a main question for that too :/

DavidPostill

Plenty of time left :)

Journeyman Geek

I'm brainfarting over a term

yanno those TV screens they have in officies with statistics like downtime, and other things?

Ben N

The best I can currently think of is "instrumentation"

Or just "monitor"?

Journeyman Geek

no no...

blaaaah

DavidPostill

00:23

Nagios calls it monitoring

Burgi

KPIs?

Key Performance Indicators

Journeyman Geek

status board?

dashboard!

Burgi

dashboard works too

if you drop "KPIs" into the conversation they will think "OMG WE'VE GOT A SALES GUY HERE!!!"

i drop KPIs into all my interviews, middle managers love it

DavidPostill

status feed?

@Burgi Or support. When I was a support team leader it was all KPIs

Call length, Wait time, blah blah blah

Journeyman Geek

its dashboard ;p

Bob

00:42

@JourneymanGeek "shiny stats"

Journeyman Geek

lol

DavidPostill

01:09

@Burgi Thanks for the tick :)

Burgi

should help you on your repcap mission

Bob

dblohm7.ca/blog/2016/01/11/…

-_-

this might explain why FF often misrenders the window border on my laptop...

bwDraco

...and it looks like I will earn the Populist badge for the first time.

DavidPostill

@Burgi Yeah, it makes up for the weird unaccept I've just received on an old answer ...

Journeyman Geek

heh. I don't think I'll be getting that hat

DavidPostill

01:22

@JourneymanGeek Which hat?

Journeyman Geek

the repcap one ;p

I've not really hit a HNQ lately

DavidPostill

@JourneymanGeek Ah.

Journeyman Geek

(but I'm still not actively hathunting. )

._.

this question annoys me superuser.com/questions/1162691/…

DavidPostill

01:37

Hmm. Why is superuser.com/questions/972501/… such a popular question then?

Journeyman Geek

@DavidPostill the term 'spy patches'

DavidPostill

@JourneymanGeek lol. Maybe he's using a pirated copy of Windows and meant to say "Eye Patches" :)

Journeyman Geek

MS has had some flavour of telemetry for years

And I'd argue that the benefits of updates outweighs ms spying on your shitty obsolete machine ;)

DavidPostill

Yeah but there are no more updates for XP :)

Hmm. Weird question

Journeyman Geek

hence the mention of POSready

DavidPostill

01:44

0

Q: Windows 10 not responding

I'm having trouble getting my computer to not jump start my Acura. I've tried rebooting the system and I've tried a different program. This computer will not upload.

windows-xp

Are you referring to an Acura car? What does jump starting a car have to do with a computer? — DavidPostill 1 min ago

Journeyman Geek

basically a bunch of people reghacked their XPs to keep getting updates

actually, I'm curious to how useful you could make an XP box

I might dig one up from the spares pile

back in the day, I set up my brother's windows 98 era thinkpad with win2k and basically beat whatever usable software that I could into it

Bob

@JourneymanGeek As in, literally running XP? Or just XP-era hardware?

Journeyman Geek

@Bob the former.

not as a day to day use box, duh

DavidPostill

@JourneymanGeek Where are they getting updates from?

Bob

I found a couple old motherboards in the closet yesterday.

One P4, one... older?

And a 9500GT :P

Journeyman Geek

01:48

@DavidPostill essentially, they convince their XP box its a still supported embedded/POS version

with compatible updates

Bob

@JourneymanGeek ...in that case, a VM would probably be nicer :P

Journeyman Geek

@Bob gotta have shitty hardware for the full experience

Bob

videocardbenchmark.net/…

o.O

Journeyman Geek

I could use the R60, but apparently haiku won't boot on partitions...

so I'd have to HDD swap

Bob

The good ol' 9500 GT still potentially outperforms a Haswell/Atom iGPU? o.O

DavidPostill

01:51

@JourneymanGeek Sneaky

Journeyman Geek

zdnet.com/article/…

Bob

I can't remember, didn't XP update via ActiveX?

@JourneymanGeek Yea, the whole idea is iffy at best.

DavidPostill

"If you're still trying to get your money's worth out of Windows XP, you may think you're really clever and playing with house money. If you get away with it, good for you. Know that you are taking a big risk, one that is getting bigger every day." from the updated version of the article :)

Journeyman Geek

yup

Bob

!! s/still trying to get your money's worth out/far too stubborn or dumb to change/

ChatBot John Cavil

02:04

@Bob "If you're far too stubborn or dumb to change of Windows XP, you may think you're really clever and playing with house money. If you get away with it, good for you. Know that you are taking a big risk, one that is getting bigger every day." from the updated version of the article :) (source)

Bob

dammit, s/of/away from/

cause, "money's worth", really? of a 15-year-old OS?

2

Journeyman Geek

People hate change ;p

Only reason I got my dad to upgrade his old laptop to windows 10/ssd was cause he borrowed my upgraded ssd/win 10 box and he was like "why is this so much faster than mine"

and he dosen't want my SB laptop

Bob

@JourneymanGeek "Because I made it faster. When I asked you if you wanted faster, you said no."

Journeyman Geek

yup

then I was like

"I have another SSD. I can get windows 10 on it for no additional cost. Let me do this"

and I did.

Bob

"for no additional cost"

Journeyman Geek

02:10

had a spare licence

Bob

=> and how much time do you (he) waste waiting for the damn thing to respond?

=> and how much frustration?

Journeyman Geek

Lots

oh, the current build is actually pretty snappy

Bob

If it's something used often... totally worth the money

Journeyman Geek

I mean, it was from school, and in theory I don't think dreamspark keys are meant to be used that way....

Bob

Using a 10 year old computer is like using a 30 year old car...

Journeyman Geek

02:11

meh

to be fair, a c2d isn't that much worse than a modern low end 'atom'/celeron netbook

Bob

@JourneymanGeek there are no atom laptops

unless you mean celeron

Dog

!!s/cel/crap/

ChatBot John Cavil

@Dog unless you mean craperon (source)

Journeyman Geek

>_>

Bob

been a while since I used c2d but I'd still take the celeron. if you're talking that range it's a <$300 laptop.

Journeyman Geek

02:13

better?

ah, but bigger screens

and emmc vs sata

and more ports

Bob

@JourneymanGeek I got a 15.6" core-i3 (haswell?) laptop for <$400

full-size, basically

was 1080p too

Journeyman Geek

also see "I can't convince dad to upgrade"

so I take the wins I can take

Bob

@JourneymanGeek eh, at that point I'd give up and wait respond to most 'support' requests with "it's just too old, no can do"

Journeyman Geek

@Bob right. I do that with his phone

post upgrade the r61 has been entirely troublefree

I think its once again - we're power users. We have different usage patterns from muggles

Bob

they can waste their time if they want

it's when they start wasting my time that I get annoyed

Journeyman Geek

02:17

lol

meh, I waste more time on other things

Bob

@JourneymanGeek I waste plenty of time. That's not a problem.

Journeyman Geek

"GEEEEK I NEED HELP WITH LAUNDRY. GEEEEK I NEED HELP CUTTING VEGGIES.... GEEK! THE ROOOMIE IS STARING AT ME"

Bob

It's also not usually wasted on waiting for a prehistoric pile of crap to respond to the apparently-difficult task of opening the start menu.

allquixotic

Sabaton - Hearts of Iron (Lyrics English & Deutsch)

►

Journeyman Geek

lol

the r61s are pretty snappy now ;p

Bob

02:19

@JourneymanGeek see, that's different. that's at least doing something productive, annoying as it might be.

there's nothing at all productive about staring at a spinning cursor...

Journeyman Geek

eh. That was xp, pre upgrade

Dog

Urgh I wish laptops were faster

Bob

and then getting asked why it's so slow

and then getting asked if you can make it faster

for the 346th time

Journeyman Geek

@Bob it works differently

"My laptop is slow" "Its old. Can I replace some parts?" "No, I'll replace it when it dies"

Dog

Apparently 6-core or 8-core laptops will be available this year

Journeyman Geek

02:20

.... about twice a week

Bob

@JourneymanGeek fiftythree.org/etherkiller

ok, it "died"

Journeyman Geek

"I want to throw it out a window" "Good." Dosen't happen

UGH "Borrow my spare"

WHY IS YOUR LAPTOP FAST?

Bob

@JourneymanGeek well, my dad is actually decently good about updating his stuff. and doesn't usually need help (though, could be less so cause of distance...). my mum.... eh, I eventually got her on to the previously mentioned <$400 lappy.

Journeyman Geek

I'd note, I have a x220, upgraded to an SSD and 8gb of ram. Screen's 1366x768, and it needs a new battery.

Dog

GTX 1080 is so slow

Journeyman Geek

02:22

@Bob my dad also has a galaxy ace 3 he's been waffling on updating.

Dog

Who wants to come to CES with me?

allquixotic

@Bob at my employer, they stopped doing laptop repair and regular upgrades; now you only get a new laptop if the one you have breaks

that thing might be getting very popular with people in my company

Bob

@JourneymanGeek hackaday.com/tag/usb-killer problem solved

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic personally, I'm a fan of having planned update cycles + some old machines as spares.

Bob

@allquixotic what's this about regular upgrades?

Journeyman Geek

02:24

@Bob lol. Are you personally having trouble with this? ;p

Bob

they're all on request here :P

Journeyman Geek

@Bob eh, dad's ready

but he's not quite yet recovered from having his chest carefully ripped open.

Bob

@Dog when was it?

@JourneymanGeek nah, dad was on... hm, I think he went from an iPhone 5 to a S7 Edge, actually.

Dog

@Bob Jan 5th

Bob

mum is... uh... oh, S3 mini to a Mi4 last year

Journeyman Geek

02:25

@Bob I think the gadget geek gene skipped a generation

Bob

btw, Mi4C is like 120 USD

Journeyman Geek

mom has a redmi 1s

Bob

@Dog ...yea, that's far too soon O_O

allquixotic

@Bob if they had to do it based on requests, people would constantly request them, because none of their systems, even the highest-end ones, are able to cope with the layers of virus scanners and security they have

like 3 separate on-access scanners that make the system barely usable with an 850 Pro

Dog

@Bob It's the same date every year...

allquixotic

02:26

and they don't ship with any SSDs, ever

Dog

And this year apparently there'll be a lot of shinies

Bob

@Dog I meant far too soon for me to go

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic eh. I think part of the issue is the suits took over a lot of IT management ;p

Dog

@Bob It's the same date every year!

Bob

@allquixotic ...maybe I should be glad I "only" have SES throwing a hissy fit now and then...

@Dog that assumes I planned to go before 2-days-prior :P

Dog

02:28

@Bob Or you plan to go 9 months prior

Because it's the same date every year... It's not like they announce a new date 2 days beforehand... -_-

Bob

sure, lemme just hop into my time machine

*gets stepped on by stegosaurus*

Dog

Damn fox vs. stegasaurus

Didn't see that coming

Kaby Lake, new Pascal laptops, Zen, and Vega...

Bob

hm

@Dog Kaby's pretty known. Pascal too. Zen will be interesting. Vega... hm.

allquixotic

@Bob It worked! My time machine worked!

Dog

@Bob Quad-core mobile kaby hasn't been announced yet.

Same with desktop AFAIK

@allquixotic :-o

Bob

02:34

@Dog Are we expecting it to be much different from Skylake?

Dog

@Bob 10% more clockspeed and 30% better GPU perf

A Kaby iris part could probably beat them 930/940M/MX GPUs they keep shoving into laptops

I just wanna be able to buy a new laptop that's faster than my desktop

Bob

@Dog They're still doing that? :(

Dog

@Bob Yup

Someone just announced a new 15" laptop with a 920 last week -_-

I was like Dedicated GPU => Yay

920m => facepalm

Bob

@Dog ow. at that point it's purely (crappy) marketing :\

and does more harm than good

Dog

Yup pretty much.

That said there are no low end or even midrange Pascal mobile parts yet. The lowest Pascal chip out right now is the 1060 which draws as much power as the 970M

IOW there are no Pascal replacements for anything between the 920M to 960M

Bob

02:45

@Dog I wonder if they're trying to bring back the 'high-end' brand image

@Dog Wait, isn't there the 1050?

or was that Maxwell?

Dog

@Bob flogging 950MX's to Microsoft at bargain basement prices doesn't seem consistent with that

@Bob 1050 is desktop only for now, has leaked for laptops but not available to buy yet

Bob

Ah.

Dog

There'll probably be a Dell XPS with a 7700HQ and 1050 at CES

Bob

@Dog well, it's comparable to a desktop GTX 960, so... I'll take that :P

dammit why doesn't the XPS 15 have an active digitiser :(

Journeyman Geek

boingboing.net/2017/01/02/star-wars-episode-iii-redubb.html

allquixotic

02:55

I'll settle with the Skylake Iris in the MBP 13" for the next while.

Bob

5

Q: What do you call a mixture of 2 herbal drinks?

What do you call a mixture of 2 herbal drinks? For example, butterfly pea extract and pandanus juice.

single-word-requests phrase-requests

A herbal confusion? — John Lawler 11 hours ago

@allquixotic Y'know, you could have waited for the next version :P

Maybe when they've polished that touchbar of theirs a bit more.

eh, resale value next year should be decent enough...

and I'm definitely not one to talk about waiting :P

allquixotic

@Bob yeah, but if they just released a new gen, and they only release a new MBP every year and a half, that's a long damn wait

Journeyman Geek

lol

@Bob the same is true for my razer

they doubled the ram on the next varient. Released about 2 weeks after I got mine

Its a sweet system still

Bob

@JourneymanGeek there is the "there's always something better coming up" argument, but the MBP this gen ... wasn't received well.

Journeyman Geek

03:14

@Bob well, cause people were expecting somewhat more than a gimmick

Bob

@JourneymanGeek afaict the reduced functionality (dongles!) and lower max RAM annoyed more people

Journeyman Geek

@Bob ah

Bob

though I did see some complaints about the touchbar being harder to use than F-keys

Journeyman Geek

yeah, there's that

Bob

and I'd agree there

touch basically requires you to look at what you're touching

no tactile feedback :\

allquixotic

03:32

meh, I'll get used to it :D

dat touchpad doe

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic eh, the current set of windows precision trackpads are pretty good

Bob

*goes back to his touchscreen*

Journeyman Geek

which my current laptop has

and I'm using it sometimes

Bob

I'm honestly not sure when the last time I used a touchpad on my (touchscreen) laptop was

three years ago, I thought touchscreens on laptops was a gimmick, but it's integrated surprisingly well into my workflow with win10

win7... rather more meh

win8 was alright-ish

also helps that laptop/tablet touchscreens don't really require exotic drivers anymore :P

Journeyman Geek

oh lol

turns out I can borrow a thermal camera

Bob

03:39

that said, typing on a touchscreen still sucks

for probably the same reason the 'touchbar' would be hard to use

it's just not great for quickly (and blindly) pressing a button (or a bunch of buttons)

oh, having the pen helps too

otherwise the touchpad would be more necessary for precision stuff

> VMware advocates the use of USB and SD (SDHC) boot devices for ESXi. It was one of the main reasons the smaller footprint ESXi was developed (versus the older ESX).

o.O

@allquixotic ^

that might be the main reason OVH offers flash drives :P

@JourneymanGeek I had to check this question wasn't asked by our favourite travel.se guy :P

Journeyman Geek

03:56

lol

Nick Alexeev

04:21

Should I migrate this question to SuperUser, or shall I let it rot where it fell?

0

Q: Suspected faulty component on laptop motherboard

I have a Lenovo yoga 2 that has been making an electrical arcing like buzzing noise, like a faulty high power switch would. The outcome of this is that when buzzing it does not supply enough power to run and charge, therefore depleting the battery at a slower rate when plugged in rather than sup...

power-supply inductor identification failure laptop

Journeyman Geek

Eh. Not an end user question imo

Dog

04:53

!!caaaaaaaat

ChatBot John Cavil

Dog

!!taytaytay

ChatBot John Cavil

Bob

05:10

@JourneymanGeek but is it a middle user question?

Dog

06:14

So Eurocom claims they will start shipping laptops with i7-7700K desktop CPUs starting tomorrow... I want one.

Bob

@Dog at about 100W TDP you get... less than an hour on a standard-ish 60Wh laptop battery

(well, assuming you're saturating the CPU)

oh, 91W. close enough

wait. i7-7700 is only 65W? o.O

oh crap, I'm gonna have to buy a cooler too won't I

...gah. something else to research

@Dog wait, will that be in 17"?

ah, found it eurocom.com/ec/benchmark(160)ec

O_O i7-7700k and GTX 1080 in 15"

ha, 75Wh battery is up to 130min

4cm thick, 3kg

beefy laptop, but for the specs...

@Dog So, basically, everything you want except maybe size/weight?

Thunderbolt 3 too

Journeyman Geek

06:42

@Bob eurocom's been making these 'desktop in a laptop form factor' boxen for a bit

terribad battery life , huge, but... yeah

actually, that's sleeker than I'd expect

Bob

Hm. Firefox hardware report: metrics.mozilla.com/firefox-hardware-report

Interesting.

Still 10% of users on NT 5.1 o.O

NT 10.0 has nearly doubled from 17% to 25% over the last year. But it was mostly between May and Aug for some reason...

Most of that increase was at the expense of NT 6.1

I'm surprised 32% of users are still on a 32-bit OS, though a third of that is probably XP.

> Note that this metric likely undercounts non-Windows OSs, seeing as it relies on the environment.system.isWow64 Telemetry field.

Journeyman Geek

@Bob a lot of early 4gb ram/win 7 corporate machines came with 32 bit

Bob

ah, so the other 20% is probably largely non-Windows that got misreported

Journeyman Geek

and less

Bob

@JourneymanGeek nah, the 68% 64-bit is only for Windows

Journeyman Geek

06:47

actually I wouldn't be surprised if a good chunk of windows 7 systems were 32 bit stock

Bob

Actually I'm not sure if the 32-bit count includes non-Windows, or if they're excluded from that graph entirely.

Excluding them would be the smarter thing to do.

Journeyman Geek

gm

Bob

@JourneymanGeek Yea, corp was my guess.

Journeyman Geek

coulda sworn I had an old hard drive here

Rahul2001

Hi!

Bob

06:48

And also the cheap tablets from a couple years ago.

@JourneymanGeek I'm scared that 6% of (reporting) Firefox users have 1 GB of RAM O_O

Journeyman Geek

@Bob >_>

Bob

also the 7 GB is just weird

Journeyman Geek

I have a reasonable number of systems with 1 or 2 gb of ram

o0

Bob

1.25% have 7 GB

how do you even get 7 GB of RAM

Journeyman Geek

4,2,1?

Bob

06:49

4+2+1?

that's still pretty weird

Journeyman Geek

throwing whatever ram you have spare in?

Bob

@JourneymanGeek and there's enough doing that to show up here?

Journeyman Geek

clearly.

Bob

even 3 GB is weird enough

Journeyman Geek

or 8 -1

Bob

06:50

@JourneymanGeek sure, lemme just put my anti-RAM in

Journeyman Geek

8gb installed, 1gb for integrated graphics

Bob

@JourneymanGeek I would've thought they'd report installed memory, not available memory.

Journeyman Geek

idonno

just guessing

Bob

the plague of 1366x768 is still going :\

there was even a minor spike in mid 2016

whyyyyyyy

Journeyman Geek

lol

netbooks

Bob

06:53

"Other" has jumped a few times, I assume from 4k

the 7% on one core make me sad

maybe some from VMs

Interesting that no single modern Nvidia GPU appears often enough to be explicitly listed

why is there stil so much GMA 4500 :(

and wtf is Ironlake

oh, Nehalem-era on-board graphics

GMA 950. really.

2005/06...

must be all the XP users

I wonder what hardware Chrome is used on

Journeyman Geek

lol

I think I have some x3100s

Intel GMA

The Intel Graphics Media Accelerator, or GMA, is a series of integrated graphics processors introduced in 2004 by Intel, replacing the earlier Intel Extreme Graphics series and being succeeded by the Intel HD and Iris Graphics series. This series targets the market of low-cost graphics solutions. The products in this series are integrated onto the motherboard, have limited graphics processing power, and use the computer's main memory for storage instead of a dedicated video memory. They are commonly found on netbooks, low-priced laptops and desktop computers, as well as business computers which...

quite literally the crappiest usable graphics adaptor for windows 10

Bob

@JourneymanGeek you sound almost proud :P

Journeyman Geek

07:08

@Bob that's on my dad's system and the loaner PC

which I need to fire up for updates at some point

allquixotic

the oldest laptop still in my house (currently: disused) has Intel 965GM (X3100)

Journeyman Geek

lol

allquixotic

it works extremely well for basic 3d desktop compositing and effects like Zoom, minimize/maximize, etc. on Linux and Windows

it has a WDDM 1.0 driver that continues to work on Windows 10 (32/64)

Journeyman Geek

the oldest I have right now is 855GME

disused, and kinda too old to bother with

the oldest laptop in use is an r60 which is set up to run lubuntu off a USB key or haiku

the R60's a 954GM

but its got some of the modern conviniences

(I like me my obscure OSes, and oddly enough, for basic web browsing and such, haiku flies on that machine)

allquixotic

945GM you mean? ugh, I had one of those too, that was horrid

Journeyman Geek

07:21

yeah

allquixotic

the 965GM is much less bad

Journeyman Geek

lol

I don't bother with windows with anything older than a 965

I have plenty of newer hardware than that, and the r60's mainly a "I want to keep an eye on chat while gaming" screen

Journeyman Geek

07:34

heh

I come across something on a question. Google search. Find terrible question from superuser. I close

0_0

allquixotic

Revive your old laptop

►

Rahul2001

> Satan once said, "don't stress too much about life, you're not getting out of it alive anyway."

Bob

crap it's raining

Rahul2001

Credits: A friend who shall not be named

Bob

allquixotic

07:48

@Bob lol

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic funny thing is I watched that and was all "eh, been there done that."

allquixotic

@JourneymanGeek same

Journeyman Geek

But for some reason most tech youtube channels bore me

(other than LGR, but its mostly for the thrift store dives)

Rahul2001

@JourneymanGeek Me toooo. I learned a lot from them initially, but I can't bear most of them now

Journeyman Geek

@Rahul2001 I'd rather read than watch

Rahul2001

08:01

YES!

AWWWWWWWWWW imgur.com/gallery/raVSp

Journeyman Geek

aww

Rahul2001

Also, imgur.com/gallery/IsL9P :((

Burgi

08:59

morning

Aibobot

09:52

woof

Bob

flop

@JourneymanGeek's doppelganger is here

Burgi

cylon dog

Aibobot

woof

yeah, got a game running on the main screen. ;p

bwDraco

anandtech.com/show/10960/…

Talk about timng...

Transcript for