English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

12:39 AM

@AndrewLeach in Harry Potter, males are wizards, females are witches. Now you know the rest of the story.

Andrew Leach

Oh. Jolly good. I can earmark those years for something else.

(The question's still off-topic, though.)

And now to bed. It really is the time you think it is in the UK.

Cerberus

12:59 AM

Greetings, all!

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 So instead of a progressive modular phone, Google introduces a phone costing €800 or so, and an additional €120 for extra storage.

Is Google Applifying?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus yeah I have no idea

I'm glad they finally have a camera they believe is worthy of being called the best

I'm glad they have AMOLED again

I'm glad they still have a headphone jack

but otherwise, meh

Cerberus

I've heard good things about the camera, although, to be honest, I've heard that about so many new phones...

...and two years later the camerae of said phones were called "bad".

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

well, Nexus cameras have improved dramatically over time, but they've never been great

but this phone now costs twice what the old nexus phones cost

Cerberus

And is this camera truly good, i.e. does it make acceptable photos in low light? I've never seen a phone do that.

Yes, it is far too expensive.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus supposedly it's been tested by some camera rating agency and it is literally the top rated camera, beating even some actual cameras

Cerberus

1:11 AM

I saw it got a rating of 89.

But some other phones have ratings of 88.

And I've never heard of a phone that could produce acceptable photo's in low light.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I guess, given a choice between this phone and everything else, I'd probably still choose it, but that's because the phone market is so homogenous now

Cerberus

Or choose a cheaper phone...

Incidentally, Tasker often complains about "low memory" on my phone in its logs.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus most of the cheap phones are too cheap for me

Cerberus

Android really needs a ton of memory, if you have a few apps installed.

Oh?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

but then, that was when nexus was s thing

@Cerberus for one thing, I insist on getting a phone that will receive security updates in a timely fashion

I like that Google pushes out monthly OS updates now.

Cerberus

1:13 AM

Do you know many people who had actual malware on their phones?

It's good that Googles tries harder, I suppose.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

no, but then, I also don't really talk about that with people

it used to be, I was the techy person everyone knew, so I'd hear all that stuff

but now they bother other people with it

Cerberus

I've never met anyone who had malware on his phone. So I don't worry about it too much, besides having Xprivacy block the loading of libraries by apps I don't trust, and of new libraries after a trusted app has been set up.

Why have they stopped bothering you?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

malware is rampant in some parts of the world

Cerberus

Last week, I had to help someone whose Iphone was out of storage (5GB total available).

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I dunno. I guess most people just don't ask me for tech support anymore.

only one person does, my neighbour across the street.

Cerberus

1:16 AM

Hmm.

And your wife?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

well, yeah

but she has a recent Nexus, so, her only problem is running out of space

Cerberus

How about unknown or new vulnerabilities?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

and that's because she refuses to delete videos and photos she's taken

@Cerberus She rarely installs things.

Cerberus

It really sucks that not all phones have 64GB standard.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That's good.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

yeah when I bought the N5 (her current phone) it was over a year old and the carriers only had it as a cheapo phone so only 16GB was avail. But my N4 was broken, so a new phone was urgently needed.

@Cerberus Also, she's a bit like you, she doesn't like to install app updates

Cerberus

1:18 AM

Yay!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Hey, so I bought a new PC. it's really really fast.

Cerberus

I'm sure we'd get along.

Oh!

What kind?

What colour?

What brand?

<deliberately asking stupid questions>

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Intel i5 something or other.

Asus mobo

Cerberus

That's a nice colour.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Samsung 950 Pro M.2 SSD... which is ridiculously fast. 3x faster than all previous SSDs

Cerberus

1:19 AM

i5 6500 perchance?

That's a nice SSD.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

lol. I totally forget.

I'm so old

I used to care about this stuff SO MUCH

Cerberus

I was thinking of getting its brother.

Hah.

It comes in waves for me. When I'm busy researching stuff for a new computer.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I can still tell you about the chipsets and CPU specifications around the days of the first Pentium MMX processors

But now by the time I've finished installing Steam on my new PC I forgot what CPU it is

Cerberus

Tsk!

So you did not research the options very much?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

oh, I did

I wanted to keep the price down

which is why I went with the i5

and it's the latest generation of i5, with a chipset name like sandy lake, or snowy river, or something stupid

Cerberus

1:22 AM

The 6500 is now recommended by people as a balanced choice.

Skylake!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

see? I already forgot.

Cerberus

I see it.

Did your previous computer have an SSD?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I did remember the M.2 connection for the SSD though, because that's a totally new thing I'd never seen before

no

Cerberus

I'm pondering what SSD to get myself.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I am so pleased with my SSD

except it's only 512GB and I could really use 1TB

but it wasn't available

Cerberus

1:23 AM

How much does the jump from a read speed of 500 MB/s to 2000 MB/s matter in actual usage?

And the much increased IOPs.

Will large things really load faster?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

It's hard to say. But the computer boots so fast now that I just leave it powered down all the time.

Cerberus

And that was not the case with your previous SSD?

Oh, you said "no".

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Wolfenstein: The New Order was playable before on my HDD/ancient i7 but the load times were really really horrendous. like, 60s or more every time you died and restarted from a checkpoint.

Cerberus

From what I hear, OS boot times are not affected that much from 500 to 2000 MB/s.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

now it's really fast

Cerberus

1:25 AM

Right, but you used to use a hard drive, no?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

My OS boot times are so fast now it's hard to imagine it getting faster

right, it was an HDD

Cerberus

So should I get a really fast SSD like you, or should I get a standard, still very fast one?

That's my dilemma.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

it costs about 2x

Cerberus

Yeah.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

the SSD was almost the most expensive component

Cerberus

1:27 AM

What video card did you buy?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I was trying to get the nVidia ... 960? 950? something like that. But it was sold out everywhere. I guess the 10-series just came out relatively recently? I dunno. So I got the low-end 10-series

or mid-range?

frig who knows

let me turn it on so I can answer these questions

Cerberus

Ah, the 1060.

Which is much better than the 960, I am told.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

yeah supposedly it is

Cerberus

Why are you not using your computer now?

The 1060 is indeed quite recent; it's still above its "recommended" price, and I'm waiting for its price to come down.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

my work PC was on and my home PC was off

so yeah, the 1060, and it's a core i5 6600

Cerberus

1:30 AM

Ah, you have a work PC at home?

Ah OK.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I work from home

Cerberus

OK.

And it makes sense to use two different computers?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

yes

one is for work

the other is for non-work

until recently, the work pc was much more powerful anyway

Cerberus

I'd be too lazy to switch...

Is web browsing also faster on your new computer?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

maybe

web browsing hasn't stressed computers much in the last decade

ironically, the first thing I did with the new PC was buy the Sierra classic games humble bundle, and play King's Quest 1

which is from 1987

my daughter was like "why is it making that noise"

I said "It's playing music using the PC Speaker"

oh, neat trick it can do: the USB-C connection on the motherboard provides power even when the computer is off. So you can charge your phone.

THAT was what happened a few minutes ago which reminded me to tell you about the computer

Cerberus

1:40 AM

Oh huh, can't my computer do that?

Perhaps I've never noticed because my computer is always on when I'm home.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It has always stressed my computer.

Both memory and CPU.

Not all the time, but regularly.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I've never known a computer to do that.

Cerberus

Hmm.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus well, in my experience browsers get slower and slower over time, but they were still plenty usable on my old system.

Cerberus

Usable, certainly, but "not stressed"?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

It wasn't really a problem for me

how many tabs do you normally leave open at a time?

I like to close them all

Cerberus

1:47 AM

Many.

But they're not loaded in memory.

Still, they slow down the browser.

But an html5 Youtube video may also stress my CPU.

And a very large image just fails to load in Firefox.

As in, when it's like 10 or 20 MB.

And the browser will take up 1500 MB of memory when it is playing a long video in HD.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I guess I don't watch many long videos in my browser on that computer very often

Cerberus

Like a Starcraft tournament.

Or an opera.

But your old computer had an i7.

So it must be far better than mine.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

it was an i7 but it was from 2010

6GB ram

AMD something or other video card

5330? maybe?

who friggin' knows

I looked all this shit up, recently, you know.

But poof, gone

Cerberus

I know.

We're getting old...

But that computer was much better than mine.

Robusto

My i7 is from 2012 and I still think of it as new ...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

1:59 AM

yeah the tech hasn't advanced as fast as it used to

Robusto

My brother-in-law, who is a Comp Sci dept. head at Georgia Tech, says there haven't been any real advances in chip speed/density since 2005. All the speed improvements have been about multiple cores.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

yeah more or less

Robusto

@Cerberus Are you still using XP?

Cerberus

Greetings, Robbie.

I am!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

remember when the pentium 4 reached 4GHz?

that was in the early 2000s

Cerberus

2:02 AM

I will switch to either 7 or 10 when I build my new computer.

Robusto

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Hey, I'm way older than that. I remember when 128K of RAM was sizable.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

it was so buggy they redesigned the architecture to make it more efficient and clock speeds dropped

@Robusto right, but I mean, peak CPU advancement

was around then

that was the end of brute-forcing speed

Robusto

Oh, I see what ya mean.

Cerberus

From what I hear, the actual performance of a CPU core can be improved greatly by other things than clock speed.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

now the big advancements are things like the big.LITTLE architecture in ARM space

non-symmetric multi-core

it's pretty neat

great for phones

Robusto

2:03 AM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That's about the same time that they reached the theoretical limit of what caching could do, IIRC.

Cerberus

Also in what a CPU core can do in once clock cycle.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus well, they greatly improved on throughput per clock cycle right after the P4 with the Core2

Cerberus

But also afterwards.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

but since then speeds haven't been increasing much

Cerberus

What's much?

Robusto

2:04 AM

@Cerberus Get your copy of 7 now then. Microsoft hates 7 because it's the new XP: a tried-and-true OS that people who don't want all the spyware gravitate to.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus compared to how quickly speeds were increasing

in 2004 it was very unlikely that someone would be happily running a 6 year old computer

in 2016 I was running a six year old computer and it was okay. fine.

not great, but still.

Robusto

@Cerberus They generally don't waste their time on ultra-clocking, I think.

In fact, my i7 Ivybridge clocks in at 3.5GHz or 3.9GHz.

Depending on which figure on the same line that you believe.

Cerberus

@Robusto Yeah, stupid MS. But why "now"?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 True.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus typically MS stops selling the old OS once the new one is out and established. And Win 10 is a year old now.

Robusto

Which figure is right?

Cerberus

2:09 AM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 But why would I buy it from MS? It's widely available on e.g. Ebay.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I'm running 10, I like it actually. I don't like how much it phones home or that updates can't be disabled though, but the customer-facing usability is not bad.

Cerberus

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus will an ebay copy have a working license key that MS allows you to use? it requires activation.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 There are ways to block the auto-updating, though, as you no doubt know or suspect.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, or you can get a refund. And it's cheap anyway.

@Robusto I think the other is the turbo speed.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus the best I've found you can do is have it ask you if it's okay to install. But the UI doesn't allow for not installing an update.

Cerberus

2:11 AM

Which I think the processor cannot sustain for very long, but which can still be very useful.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 You can tweak the registry, or the HOSTS file to block it.

And there are probably other ways too.

From what I've heard.

Like blocking the update service itself.

I'm sure there are easy tools that can do those things for you.

Robusto

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yeah, they give you a bit more usability and remove a lot more control over your own information.

Cerberus

At least you can still take back control.

Robusto

Not with 10, I think.

Cerberus

There are ways to at least block the auto-updates and the spying.

Or I wouldn't even consider it.

Even a few days ago, many people's computers were botched up because of some failed update of Windows 10.

And many people complain of how updates can reboot their computer when they're not using it.

And you can't use the computer when it's updating, so you may be forced to wait from time to time when you really can't afford to.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

yeah so I set a registry flag (which supposedly only works on Win 10 pro) that prevents the auto-install of updates (and hence auto reboot)

Robusto

2:17 AM

@Cerberus The thing I really hate to give up most is my freedom. It's almost enough to make me build a Linux box.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

You can dual-boot

Robusto

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Pro is supposed to have that feature, or so I was told.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Sharing the same file system?

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Oh, I thought you were unable to block auto-install. Good!

@Robusto Agreed.

But I think you can still have enough freedom as long as you tweak Windows a little bit?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Robusto sharing the same disk. They don't have any main filesystems in common, but Linux can read/write NTFS volumes if it has to.

Robusto

If I went to 10 my Win 7 Ultimate would automatically get me 10 Pro.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 But how slow is that?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

2:19 AM

@Robusto well, you would only want to use NTFS for data files, not for OS files or user home directories

you definitely wouldn't want to run linux from ntfs. it probably wouldn't work.

Robusto

I could get a 1 TB SATA III drive for < $300 and put Linux on it, I suppose. But files I would want to use I'd have to copy over, and then I'd have dupe files all over the place, which I hate.

What's a good, reliable, not-high-maintenance Linux distro these days?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Robusto I solve this problem by storing that sort of file on a NAS

Robusto

Hmm ...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Robusto I use Fedora. It's reliable, but it requires updates. each version is supported only briefly, so if you care about security fixes, you need to stay current.

You could use CentOS, which is a free clone of RHEL, which has a longer support lifespan

Lots of people use Ubuntu, which used to have long-term support releases, but now I don't know what they do.

Robusto

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Is that some clone of Red Hat?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

2:24 AM

Debian is king of long-term support, however, they're also king of old software.

@Robusto Fedora is like the development playground for RedHat

Robusto

And from what I hear, Debian is King of Pain as well.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Robusto depends on if you need something new or not.

I haven't installed CentOS before but being a RedHat kinda person I would probably choose that or Fedora.

but if you have no allegiance then maybe Ubuntu is for you.

There are other distros. They have less mindshare.

Robusto

Hmm, I should ask my friend who's a Linux administrator or whatever his title is.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

For me Fedora works, I set it up, and after a few days all the software I need is installed, and then it just works

then a year and a half later I realize I haven't seen any updates in a while

then I realize it's out of date

then maybe half a year after that I cave and install a new one

if I kept on top of it, every 6 months I could probably do the live upgrade which would roll me over from one version to the next

I've never tried it though.

Robusto

That sounds high maintenance to me.

Færd

2:31 AM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 If we lived a thousand years that'd be tiresome.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

that's the only maintenance though. It's not like the old days where you constantly needed to screw around with drivers, xorg.conf, kernels, blah blah blah

anyway that's why I suggested Centos. Most of the tech in Fedora ends up in Centos eventually

and it has a longer support period

Robusto

Hmm.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

anyway, I'm off. cya later.

suməlic

-2

Q: The answer of the equation is what equals physics!

The Einstein equation of physics is EMC2 but how do you solve this of math?

expressions

I have no idea what's going on here. But this user's posts are all nonsense.

Færd

Funny that they chose EL&U as their only SE outlet for their nonsense. I wouldn't have picked any other one either.

> Basically she moved in with me and I never get alone time.

You can use alone attributively. I didn't know that.

Maybe it's not acceptable with any noun other than time.

Cerberus

2:54 AM

It's very informal.

And often criticised.

Færd

I thought so. But it's not uncommon.

(According to COCA)

Cerberus

Indeed not.

suməlic

@Færd I would interpret "alone" in this expression as a mention, not a use. "Alone" time. After all, it doesn't describe the time itself, it describes what the time is for.

@Færd I think "alone" can be used attributively in some circumstances after the noun phrase. "I alone see what is to be done."

Færd

@suməlic Like "being alone time"?

@suməlic Ah.

suməlic

@Færd Something like that. I was just looking in the Ngram Viewer to see if there are any comparable cases with other a- adjectives. It looks like "asleep state" is somewhat common.

Færd

3:02 AM

Hmm. Yes, they don't describe the noun next to them. Thanks.

Tonepoet

9:26 AM

@suməlic Maybe he meant to ask on Mathematica S.E?

RegDwigнt

11:09 AM

@MetaEd cuz im an certifeid h8or myslef.

It takes Juan to know Juan.

@Robusto hahaha. Good one.

I'd rather go back to XP than use any Linux distro that was released in the last ten years, or will be released in the upcoming ten.

And I am in a position to know that because I've been pretty much forced to use every Linux distro that was released in the last ten years. All dog shit. All of them. No exceptions. And the more dweebs tell you X is good, the worse dog shit it turns out to be.

Starting with WIn 2000 I could get away with not rebooting a machine for like a year. With Linux, any Linux, I have to reboot it once a week lest it explodes in my face, like literally literally.

I am typing this under SuSE, BTW. And I have to be quick before it stops registering half my keystrokes. Again.

Rubisco

2:50 PM

Now what do you think three (removed)s make us think, @Ter?

terdon

That I thought better of replying to obvious baiting.

RegDwigнt

Nope not baiting.

Just look no further than the transcript of this very room to see just how often my keystrokes stop registering.

If I were baiting, I'd head over to a Linux site. This here is a site for linguists. People here don't even know what a computer is.

Rubisco

I do I do

RegDwigнt

And yeah, people keep telling me I'm just unlucky, but they only do that until the exact same thing happens to them. Then they are suddenly conspicuously silent.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@RegDwigнt Maybe you have a hardware problem

RegDwigнt

2:57 PM

Oh bugger off with your hardware problem lol.

We've had this conversation for what, six years now?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I had lots of issues with certain generations of Fedora, back in the early 2000s. But lately (last 6 years) it's been very stable

RegDwigнt

I've been through five machines and four Linuxes in this time.

Just sayin.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

weird.

RegDwigнt

No, dweebs.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I have linux on practically every computing device in my house. it's fine. I have to reboot my win 10 machine a lot though. But that's because of the shitty vpn software.

RegDwigнt

2:59 PM

I did have a burnt out RAM bar once and let me tell you that's not something that you put up with for years. That shit is straight in your face noticeable. You will know it, and fix it, within minutes.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

my coworker has this weird issue where his mouse un-clicks whenever he's clicking and dragging.

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