[Dave Rice]

Sony have pulled it for the Playstation and are offering refunds https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55359568 

[Dave Rice]

The development times are getting so long it’s no wonder new hardware trickery overtakes it.

Just looked at a buying guide from 2011, a gaming workhorse was a 2nd gen i5-2500K, 4GB ram, N560GTX-Ti and a 1TB HDD with a £100 64GB SSD for the system. Total cost £915. A Ryzen 3 3200G would keep up with that CPU.

[Dave Rice]

Behind all these is usually incompetence or an IT team stretched to breaking by lack of budget. Some COO’s are still in the if it ain’t broke don’t fix it mode of patching.

Thankfully I’ve always worked for on the ball organisations like BAE where the Security Team has governance over the IT teams in these matters i.e. if Security say do it then it’s done. That’s not to say testing doesn’t happen (these guys are also very IT savvy) but in some circumstances the risk outweighs the potential pain from breaking something that can ultimately be fixed. You also cultivate your links into Microsoft, Oracle, AV provider etc.

It’s not difficult, it was one of my duties to patch 95% of the 25,000 PC estate within a week of Patch Tuesday and that includes going through stringent change control procedures. You get a process going where everyone knows their role and is supported by senior management and it becomes routine.

I knew of another account where each patch had to be individually tested on every variation of their gold builds before they could be rolled out. My mate got hold of an old server he turned into a massive VM host but even then it’d be bumping into the next Patch Tuesday before he got anything done.

I can think of only a single occasion when our method got caught out by a nasty patch, but the way you start small and ramp up meant that <2% of the PCs had been affected.

[Dave Rice]

Isn’t it amazing that when you dig you find they have done all sorts of things that they swear they didn’t.

I used to think the Mail Centre was haunted by a ghostly hand that went around at night hitting the delete button on just the right files. Just that users files, no-one else’s mind. Then there was the poltergeist that moved files to different folders…

[Dave Rice]

I can’t believe just how much of it is on Facebook. I always call them out and TBF the posts disappear fairly rapidly when FB catches up. But by then dozens have got involved. People’s willingness to believe conspiracy crap is unbelievable and I always provide a link to a debunk site, which are really easy to find with a simple search. Then you get smarty pants people like Julia Brewer-Hartley who must know they are spreading half truths yet do so anyway.

But it’s all amateurish compared to the gigantic grift that Trump has carefully planned and executed. He must have passed $200m by now and all in a fund he can, quite legally, spend on anything and not the legal fees they purport to be for.

[Dave Rice]

Looks like a load of bollocks to me. Bandwidth throttling doesn’t work like that. Maybe it does in some weird US of A ISP setup.

I just saw their other videos about increasing your WiFi speed by 3x or 4x and even 10x. Have they told Intel? Could save them a fortune in R & D.

[Dave Rice]

Sounds OK to me.

[Dave Rice]

One for Teafie really, he knows a lot more than I do about these things, but I used a MSI Radeon RX 580 ARMOR 8GB OC GPU in the one I built for a teenage gamer. A year later and no complaints.

[Dave Rice]

I recovered a RS814 rack chassis from a job earlier this year, just got some drives for it and set it up yesterday as I would any other. Just waiting for the RAID parity checks to finish then I’ll put 7 on it.

For me Active Insite is going to be really useful. There will be a cloud console (and app) that will monitor the health of all the units I manage. I’m already using the O365 and G Suite backup apps but apparently integration is going to be enhanced. On that point G Suite is so much easier to administer than O365 in every way it’s untrue.

Hybrid Share looks interesting. Keep your data in the C2 cloud and only cache frequently used data on your local NAS. That could significantly cut start up costs as you will only need (relatively) small drives locally. That data store can be accessed by multiple NAS each with their own local cache so will be great for a small business with multiple sites. The question is how do you back it up and cost? The trial comes with a free 1TB but unfortunately needs a + model and I’m not going to commit the production box.

I can see it being very useful for one customer, a buildings surveyor. They need local files when working on the survey and then send a link for their customers to download the docs and pics. After that it’s really an archive job retaining customers data for X years just in case. Makes a lot of sense to punt that archive into the cloud, especially if no user intervention is required in the process.

[Dave Rice]

I already suffer from it Ed, my fingertips are extremely sensitive especially to crushing. Trapping my finger in a door / drawer is ridiculously painful. I will be mentioning it to the new heart outfit but it’s definitely pain worth the gain for me. However it could also be linked to arthritis rather than statins so I’ll be mentioning it to the rheumatology team as well.

Me and the Mrs decided that we need to take vitamin D supplements and started a few weeks ago. I went for the recommended dose rather than the 10x right-on-the-maximum products that dominate. It does seem to have improved my tiredness but again that is also linked to ankylosing spondylitis or even my heart so who knows?

[Dave Rice]

My MRI for my back came through quickly, it’s on the 15th.

Had a phone consultation with a new cardiologist. Wow, what a difference. There’s some new medication that will probably sort out my fluid on the lungs issues, but more importantly there is a new local group of (I’m guessing nurse based) heart specialists that will look at my whole medication. I’ve been told to expect an intense couple of months of blood tests and tinkering then it should all start to settle down. But they will be monitoring me permanently from now on.

One thing he wants to get down is my cholesterol. It’s well into the OK territory but he thinks it’s quite feasible to get it lower still. This is something I’ve always thought too but my GP has been reluctant to even tell me my count, all they say is it’s OK. It’ll largely be out of their hands now. Also he wants me to have an MRI of my heart to see if there’s been any changes.

Looks like I’m in for a busy new year, hopefully someone will squeeze a vaccination in there somewhere 🎯

[Dave Rice]

Have to say I agree. I’ve yet to meet anyone that does.

[Dave Rice]

Synology Drive is getting quite sophisticated now. Since W10 1809 you can have on demand sync, the same as One Drive. Since 20H2 Storage Sense is now aware of it and can be set to do some space saving automatically if you run low locally.

[Dave Rice]

I saw some of the comments by a Kinspan manager when they were being questioned by a customer about their suitability. Nothing will happen to them.

[Dave Rice]

Cases are dropping rapidly here, hope we’ll be in T2 soon as I could really do with an evening out in different 4 walls. A meal and a pint or two to go with it would be splendid.

[Dave Rice]

Latest from Bob last night via Messenger:

“I will be home by December 18, not cured but having care services at home. Back again in March if I make it for one last procedure. Consultant says if they have a look then, I’m either clear or into a hospice. Brutal truth!”

If there’s anyone strong enough to deal with the truth it’s Bob. I’m sure he’s going to get spoiled rotten this Christmas.

[Dave Rice]

Plenty on the local news about this, lots of Bristol workers live in the South Wales strip of Newport to Chepstow. I guess you have to draw lines somewhere on the map.

Imagine if it goes to borough level like a lot of MPs are pushing for. But what is a borough outside of London? Parishes, wards? Then there’s the unfairness of me living in a large parish that has the germ factory of the University of the West of England at one end!

I jest but it will get ridiculous if they make it more granular. If I was still working in central Bristol I would be crossing a county border twice a day, if it was at parish level, half-a-dozen? The same when I go to outpatients at Southmead hospital.

[Dave Rice]

AFAIK I’ve not knowingly used CSM for a long time. I leave most UEFI settings on default these days and it all just works.

The only things I play with are enabling TPM chips and Wake-on-LAN or the boot order. Sometimes I’ll set the fan profile, usually to as silent as I can but on a big PC case that’s just not needed with modern fans.

But that’s about it. I remember the days of tinkering and it never seemed to alter any benchmarks.

[Dave Rice]

So the experts say. I’m not going to argue with them.

Look at the energy wasted in heat from a combustion engine. There’s so much special cooling arrangements need to be made. I don’t think you can fry an egg on an EV power unit?

[Dave Rice]

I always say to my customers any problem can be solved, it’s just how deep your pockets are.

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