Technology Random Access Thoughts

[Scott5114]

I sometimes wish someone, anyone would give each other so much as a smile and a nod at the gym—let alone actually start a conversation.  It's such an anti-social place in my eyes, with everyone wearing headphones and half of them staring into their phones.  My wife says people don't come to talk, they come to work out.  But what's wrong with doing both?

One of the things I had to get used to in Las Vegas is that people are much, much more willing to just start up a conversation with a random person than they are in Oklahoma. The first time I went to the grocery store here I had no less than three people randomly say something to me to start a conversation (one commented on my shirt, another was the cashier who wanted to talk about how much she liked my reusable bags, don't remember exactly what the third one said). It sort of freaked me out, like, was I so obviously Not From Here that I stood out somehow and was drawing everyone's attention? It put me on edge, because normally if someone starts a conversation with you in Oklahoma, it normally means either they want something from you, or something is wrong that they feel the need to warn you about.

Turns out, no, Las Vegas is just like that!

These guys at the gym I started getting to know because they struck up a conversation with me in the sauna after a workout, but now they come up and say hi on the main floor too. So maybe try starting a conversation there with someone you see regularly, if your gym has a sauna.

[kphoger]

These guys at the gym I started getting to know because they struck up a conversation with me in the sauna after a workout, but now they come up and say hi on the main floor too. So maybe try starting a conversation there with someone you see regularly, if your gym has a sauna.

Ah, that explains it.  Yes, a sauna is a place where you're more likely to find yourself in a conversation.  But no, it's Planet Fitness, so no sauna.

[ZLoth]

[kphoger]

Love it!

What's even better is that, from what I can tell, the original Twitter post with that image is from more than six years ago.

When is the last time you saw a 3½" floppy disk in actual use?

(Were there icons back in the 5¼" days?)

[JayhawkCO]

(Were there icons back in the 5¼" days?)

I don't remember one on our word processor for Commodore 64.

[kphoger]

Well, that was a fun rabbit hole...

Here's a screenshot of Lotus 1-2-3 from the 1991-1992 days:

[JayhawkCO]

(Were there icons back in the 5¼" days?)

I don't remember one on our word processor for Commodore 64.

I found the one that we used. Looks like instead of a disk icon to save, you clicked the file cabinet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Desk

[dlsterner]

(Were there icons back in the 5¼" days?)

In the late 80's I briefly had an Apple IIGS computer, which was kind of a "bridge" between the older Apple II and the new Macintosh.  Although essentially an Apple II at its core (pun intended) it had a nascent GUI which had icons for both 5.25" and 3.5" floppies.

[ZLoth]

One of my projects this weekend is to migrate my TrueNAS applications, including Audiobookshelf, Plex, and Kavita from HDDs to SSDs drives. This was possible because of the following:

• I upgraded my TrueNAS hardware to a faster processor and a motherboard that has three instead of one NVMe slots. The first slot is occupied by the boot NVMe drive from when I first built my system in 2016.
• Two SABRENT Rocket 4 1TB NVMe NVMe drives which I configured as a mirrored virtual device (VDEV).
• The 25.10 update of the TrueNAS including a feature which made migrating the .ix-apps from one drive to another super easy, although it took a little over 30 minutes.
• The TrueNAS System Dataset was also migrated from the HDD VDEV to the SSD VDEV.
• There was some post-migration clean-up to move some of the data directories of the apps over to the NVMe drives and updating the mapping in the Docker config files.

I should note that the actual media (eBooks, audio books, movies, TV shows, music) is still stored of the HDD VDEV. However, the apps are feeling much faster now with the databases on SSDs. What took several seconds (or more) for Audiobookshelf to load up a library on the web browser or phone is now almost instantaneous.

[Dirt Roads]

When is the last time you saw a 3½" floppy disk in actual use?

(Were there icons back in the 5¼" days?)

I don't remember one on our word processor for Commodore 64.

In the late 80's I briefly had an Apple IIGS computer, which was kind of a "bridge" between the older Apple II and the new Macintosh.  Although essentially an Apple II at its core (pun intended) it had a nascent GUI which had icons for both 5.25" and 3.5" floppies.

I don't recall any icons, but I was (and to some extent, still am) a heavy DOS-prompt kind of guy.  But the funny thing is that I had a cassette tape drive for my first computer (Tandy TRS-80 circa 1980), and then twin 3-1/2" floppies for my next computer (Tandy 1400LT laptop circa 1987).  After that, I moved up to desktop towers with 5-1/4" floppies (and of course, I had to install my own 3-1/2" inch floppy drives to maintain compatibility).

[dlsterner]

(Were there icons back in the 5¼" days?)

In the late 80's I briefly had an Apple IIGS computer, which was kind of a "bridge" between the older Apple II and the new Macintosh.  Although essentially an Apple II at its core (pun intended) it had a nascent GUI which had icons for both 5.25" and 3.5" floppies.

Found a screen snapshot from the Apple IIgs which shows icons for both 3.5" and 5.25" floppies (and a RAM disk as well).  I suspect this dates back to approximately 1987.

(Yes, I see that the image has a 2015 date on it.  I'm assuming that this person was running an Apple IIgs emulator on (possibly) a Macintosh much more recently.  And I don't believe the original IIgs didn't have the 8 MB of RAM as shown.  But the technology of the image is 1987-ish.)

[kphoger]

I was (and to some extent, still am) a heavy DOS-prompt kind of guy.

During internet issues, I always check for packet loss via cmd.exe ping test.  I also use cmd.exe for filename searches.  But those are the only two things I use it for.

[JayhawkCO]

I was (and to some extent, still am) a heavy DOS-prompt kind of guy.

During internet issues, I always check for packet loss via cmd.exe ping test.  I also use cmd.exe for filename searches.  But those are the only two things I use it for.

I use Linux for my job, so I'm so used to using command line interface, but I can't remember the last time I "voluntarily" used  Windows cmd/DOS prompt. I think I had to do it once or twice on my work PC to install some packages for my job, but otherwise it's probably just an ipconfig or something 7-8 years so.

[kphoger]

I enjoy the retro green-on-black look too, so my usual order of operations to check for packet loss is something like this:

Win+R
cmd
>cd\
>color 0a
>cls
>ping www.amtrak.com -n 20

[Scott5114]

I enjoy the retro green-on-black look too, so my usual order of operations to check for packet loss is something like this:

Win+R
cmd
>cd\
>color 0a
>cls
>ping www.amtrak.com -n 20

I think it's disappointing it doesn't save that preference between sessions. (Every shell program on Linux does, even the primordial xterm.)

[TheCatalyst31]

I enjoy the retro green-on-black look too, so my usual order of operations to check for packet loss is something like this:

Win+R
cmd
>cd\
>color 0a
>cls
>ping www.amtrak.com -n 20

In that example, it may be hard to tell if the packets are lost or just delayed by freight traffic.

[kphoger]

In that example, it may be hard to tell if the packets are lost or just delayed by freight traffic.

Amtrak delays tend to not be measurable in milliseconds...

[Scott5114]

In that example, it may be hard to tell if the packets are lost or just delayed by freight traffic.

Amtrak delays tend to not be measurable in milliseconds...

That depends on big the integers are on your system...

[kkt]

I wonder what the male:female ratio would be.

I have a spreadsheet of this. While the forum stats page showed something close to 15:1, it just counted registered members, many of whom haven't made any posts.

Of the 481 forum members with at least 282 posts (there are 505) where I know their gender, there are five cis women (one being a lesbian), six trans women, three nonbinary, and everyone else is male. This doesn't take into account who is active and who hasn't posted in years.

So much for a road meat

[kkt]

Love it!

What's even better is that, from what I can tell, the original Twitter post with that image is from more than six years ago.

When is the last time you saw a 3½" floppy disk in actual use?

(Were there icons back in the 5¼" days?)

Oh, sure.  Icons were on the Xerox Alto and Star and rapidly copied by Apple for the Mac, and a little later on Windows.

[kphoger]

In that example, it may be hard to tell if the packets are lost or just delayed by freight traffic.

Amtrak delays tend to not be measurable in milliseconds...

That depends on big the integers are on your system...

I had no doubt that you would say something like that...

Reply from 2001:578:2c:fe91::1860: time=3702508ms

[mgk920]

am I not the only one who can no longer make commentary on YT smartphone app video clips?

 

Mike

[Scott5114]

am I not the only one who can no longer make commentary on YT smartphone app video clips?

The commentary I've seen on YouTube videos suggests that nobody has ever been able to do that.

[mgk920]

am I not the only one who can no longer make commentary on YT smartphone app video clips?

The commentary I've seen on YouTube videos suggests that nobody has ever been able to do that.

I was until a week or so ago,

Mike

[ZLoth]

Four news bits:

From WccTech: You Might Soon See 8GB Laptops Everywhere, as Manufacturers Are Likely to Make High-RAM Configurations Unaffordable
From PCWorld: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung
From TechPowerUp: Samsung Could Stop SATA SSD Production Amid NAND Flash Shortage
From TechPowerUp: Sandisk and Samsung Delay NAND Shipments, Transcend Left Without Supply Since October

Oh! My! Goodness! Does that mean that we're going to have to make do with what we have in computers, laptops, and mobile devices until, what, 2028??? The world is coming to an END!

In all seriousness, while you can run Windows 10/11 with just 8 GB of memory, the experience will be a bit painful as memory has to be swapped to the storage device. 16 GB is a better experience although I already had my computers set up for 32 GB of memory with the exception of my main computer and TrueNAS server which is running 64 GB.

As for mobile devices, I got my Google 9 Pro last year, and my mother got a Google 10 Pro two months ago, so making the phones last is just a matter of being able to replace the battery.