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  1. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    A 28-70/2 could replace more or less all the standard primes from 24 - 85mm. I'd be giving up a very modest amount of speed vs the primes for a faster standard zoom. It's pretty unusual for me to shoot wide open on my R6, even in pretty crappy light. It's just a ton of value and utility. The R7...
  2. Mercutio

    Mini PC

    I found 4x2.5" 5.25" Icydock enclosure in my car that suddenly made a BitFenix Prodigy with an Asrock X570 and a 6xSATA to m.2 adapter a pretty sweet tiny NAS setup. It doesn't help me with my 1U NAS needs, but it DOES have 5x3.5", 4x2.5" and 1x m.2 drives and it has an open 16xPCIe slot if I...
  3. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    I'd really like to hear about a longer zoom with f/2, myself. I LOVE my 135mm but I almost never carry it. I keep thinking that I could sell all my primes (Canon EF 24/2.8, RF 35mm/1.8, Sigma 50/1.4, Sigma 85mm/1.4, Canon 135/2),and Sigma 24-70/2.8 and get a 28-70/2 for a reasonable amount of...
  4. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    There is a $10/month plan gets someone Photoshop and Lightroom (Stupid version) and Lightroom Classic + mobile versions. That's the one I tried.
  5. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    In Adobe-land, there's a product called Adobe Bridge that passes all the edits from PS to LR or LR to PS, basically using DNG as the intermediate format for everything. Lightroom doesn't do layers as such, but it has more editing features without even dipping in to Photoshop via selection masks...
  6. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    There's only one control, which is a noise reduction amount. When I was playing with it, I was working on images taken at 12k+ ISO and mostly comparing the result with Topaz DeNoise. Lightroom AI is flatly better every time, but the restrictions it places on editing means that you're forced...
  7. Mercutio

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    They're supposed to be high capacity budget drives. TLC NAND makes me a little nervous, but with 30TB of flash to work with, it's not like most applications are going to get anywhere near writing so much to have to worry about wear within the warranty period.
  8. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    The AI Noise Reduction is its own process, separate from export. Everything so denoised comes out as a DNG.
  9. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    IIRC, Lightroom Classic wouldn't work from TIFFs, only RAW or DNG files converted directly from RAW. I want to say that the full run for a 32MP image on my laptop was in the ballpark of 12 - 15 seconds, with my Threadripper consistently being ~2 seconds slower. It's not enough to complain about...
  10. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    Half a terabyte-ish is definitely asking a lot for a remote sync. I'm not sure what the best case is for mobile hardware content creation right now, but photo applications definitely do a lot less with GPU than they probably could. Could be that Intel with Iris Xe (12/13th gen Intel +...
  11. Mercutio

    WD 18TB and 20 TB

    WD says it'll have a 28TB drive without any of that weirdo HAMR stuff by next year. Not as exciting as a 32TB drive with laser beams in it, but CMR is decades-proven technology and that probably has some appeal as well, even though I weep for the poor bastard who gets stuck with WD's version of...
  12. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    My laptop is also 11th gen Intel and has both Intel and nVidia GPUs. Capture one doesn't seem to ever stress more than four cores and never seems to use more than ~30GB RAM, even though I have 64GB. I'm under the impression that photo processing apps are all roughly similar in this regard and...
  13. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I never drove the thing but they DID put some kind of limiter so we couldn't go faster than 85mph, once we found a place to safely try that. I didn't feel that impressed with it. I'm REALLY not a sports car guy, but I've been Rolls or Bentley cars a few times. THOSE I can see where the money...
  14. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Having been in it, I don't get the appeal. We're going to drive up the shore of Western Michigan a way tomorrow and we took some photos in a parking garage and at a car wash last night, but we found the self driving feature to be SCARY in city traffic, which is the only time IMO you really need...
  15. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Yesterday's episode was absolutely complete mood whiplash, too. I can think of one episode of DS9 or Voyager that showed the reality of terrestrial warfare for the Federation and here they were make Dr. M'benga a stone cold killer with Rambo in "First Blood"-grade PTSD. You don't hear "I wasn't...
  16. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    Remember that your Mac's RAM is 32GB - whatever the GPU is doing. Run a 3D game with enough complexity and maybe the CPU only has 16GB to work with. PC gamers are complaining about GPUs with only 8GB RAM, so it doesn't seem terribly far fetched there there will be some workload that will be an...
  17. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    The $120 5700Gs are a lot of computer for the money, especially as a last upgrade for an A320 or Bx50. They're not quite on par with a 13100 with DDR5 but it's really hard to complain when they work with seven year old hardware. As far as getting new Apple SoCs, it really comes down to being...
  18. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    Has anyone else been just loving the ~50% price drop on 5000-series Ryzens? I sure have. Linus Tech used his Scrooge McDuck money vault to buy an M2 Mac Pro to see what can be done with it. The short answer is that it'll take Network and Disk HBAs and possibly proprietary accelerator cards for...
  19. Mercutio

    Something Random

    The Lower Decks / Strange New Worlds crossover episode was released last night during San Diego Comic Con, five days ahead of schedule.
  20. Mercutio

    Something Random

    ... and then it turned out that the early access version of BG3 doesn't work very well with controllers, which is what Steam Link led me to believe I needed to use. Now I'm just annoyed.
  21. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I have three or four that I can try. I know that an Asus USB NIC works with 2022 server and I'm PRETTY sure I have some generic USB hubs with Ethernet that work as well. My roommate won't let me play BG3 without her, which has led me to something weird and disgusting: I need to set up a...
  22. Mercutio

    Intel NUC Discontinued

    Fleet needs. Sometimes it's useful to buy a bunch of $150 PCs that I can resell as $300 computers.
  23. Mercutio

    Something Random

    It might be possible to mod the install.wim with drivers with the automated deployment kit or possibly just a little fun with powershell. Honestly, I'd probably still try the USB NIC first. Seems like less work. Or make someone pay for a real NIC if you don't already have some sitting around.
  24. Mercutio

    Intel NUC Discontinued

    Apparently, Asus is going to handle design and manufacture for future NUC products. I don't have a good history with Asus but I'd probably trust it more than I would Beelink. Lenovo M715q are the tiny units I like best. They have 2nd-gen Ryzen mobile CPUs, (and thus Vega-whatever graphics)...
  25. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    Personal computers are traditionally single-user desktop or laptop form factor devices. A Mac or Amiga has just as much claim to that description as something with a Pentium chip. PCs typically have a multitude of ports for inputs and outputs and use a keyboard as a standard interface. That PC =...
  26. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    A MAC is a Media Access Control address. A Mac is a semi-functional PC with all the upgradability of a pocket calculator.
  27. Mercutio

    Something Random

    These are more or less the steps I follow to add unsupported NICs. I've also found that Windows Server doesn't have a problem with USB NICs. I have a bunch of those sitting around that are good for 1GbE so they're not a bad option, either.
  28. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    There are definitely ways to get an inexpensive and valid Windows Server license and I really don't care if buying one that way is hurting Microsoft somehow.
  29. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I do not remotely get the love for shitty Bethesda games using that engine but my roommate loves them. Fallout 3 and 4 and Skyrim are all unplayable messes to this day if you're playing the game as it was delivered, even on the extra-special diamond uranium game of the decade edition. This is...
  30. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    You use Storage Spaces using ReFS, something that's available with Windows Server. You can create a double-parity volume using a pool of seven drives minimum (plus a cache tier if you want faster drives for that). Storage spaces are kind of weird because there are fewer tunable parameters than...
  31. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    Basically the same thing. I don't actually want the HBA doing RAID calculations. I'm perfectly happy to let software do all the RAID calculations and use something that's well understood and portable to other hardware without needing an extra $900 controller. Plus it gives a couple of the 48...
  32. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I don't know how much you know about this, but Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 edition branched off down two paths. One of them is the TSR-WotC-Hasbro IP that is currently 5th edition D&D. The other is a continuation of the 3.5 edition rules and completely separate lore and now a newer but VERY SIMILAR...
  33. Mercutio

    Something Random

    This part of the USA primarily has tornados and ice storms. When I was little, I experienced a near miss from a tornado. It traveled through a corn field that was less than a mile from my house. The same tornado wiped the next town down the road (all ~three dozen houses, church and school) off...
  34. Mercutio

    Something Random

    The event my roommate is working this weekend, Windy City Smokeout, physically blew away event areas from wind gusts, has been damaged by hail and is also dealing with an expanding sinkhole in the United Center parking lot. She's a plague of locusts and a sea of blood away from full on Book of...
  35. Mercutio

    Something Random

    ORD is a pain to get to if you drive. It's not a big deal at all if you take trains.
  36. Mercutio

    Laptop time?

    I'm usually looking for more for wireless connectivity in dicking stations, but big kudos if someone manages to work Thunderbolt into the name of theirs. re Surface: I like them as devices for students and that is how I am most familiar with them, but I do think an individual needs to pay for...
  37. Mercutio

    Something Random

    There's a whole lot of nothing out by Cicero but you can ride the Orange Line in to downtown if you want to get downtown. I don't mind going to O'Hare myself, but as obnoxious getting there can be, I have actual mental scars from going to Midway: my father decided the perfect driving lesson for...
  38. Mercutio

    Intel NUC Discontinued

    I have a lot of NUCs in service. Those and Lenovo SFF systems are the majority of what I've deployed over the last several years. I have nothing bad to say about them. They're the very definition of vanilla. Lenovo's m700whatever systems can have pretty impressive configurations as well. Those...
  39. Mercutio

    Something Random

    There's a twitter or tumblr or something post from the spouse of a NASA engineer about how thoroughly space wants to kill humans in space, and the exhausting efforts needed to keep the ISS running. This is something that makes the billionaire hobby of building rockets and, in some conjectures...
  40. Mercutio

    Something Random

    They bragged about not seeking regulatory compliance. There is a global standard for submersibles, but it doesn't have any specific rules for super-deep dives. They called their craft a research vessel and all passengers were said to be employees conducting research. A dead billionaire's family...
  41. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    I used to have developer environments on VMs that were secured separately from whatever the rest of their PCs were doing, but running locally. Now the virtual desktops run on the same physical hardware as the servers where their code winds up and they just get a software defined VPN for their...
  42. Mercutio

    Private MAC Addresses v.s. Parental Sanity

    Google Photos has private albums even if the underlying version of the OS does not and TECHNICALLY Snapchat is an app that supports dual logins, which allow a user to quickly switch from one account to another. Snapchat only grants the ability to log in on more than once for a single account at...
  43. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    For a lot of people. Gaming is the most significant use case for a typical PC. If things like Geforce Now and Stadia are acceptable in general, there's not much of a case to be made for having fat client systems on the vast majority of computers. Apple's version of this argument is contained in...
  44. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    Apparently not even Microsoft is asking its employees to transition to Windows 11 if they're happy on 10. Maybe they know the "every other version is decent" pattern is real? Maybe it's even deliberate. Microsoft is REALLY pushing 365 hard for end users and the current corporate messaging is...
  45. Mercutio

    Private MAC Addresses v.s. Parental Sanity

    Attractive people have been using looks to their advantage since forever, LM. No generation has a monopoly on it. With the GenZs, the fact that there are sexy pics around somewhere is absolutely taken for granted. They grew up with cameraphones and instagram and they've been taking racy pictures...
  46. Mercutio

    Private MAC Addresses v.s. Parental Sanity

    Funny parental sanity story: My domestic partner is still a part-time stripper. She doesn't dance very often and summer and fall are the busy times for her real job but every once in a while, say for example when she manages to get a championship-grade traffic ticket (22mph over in a...
  47. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Apropos of absolutely nothing, I downloaded the demo and then almost immediately bought the full version of Amid Evil (It's probably on Steam if that's your thing). It's a bit like Heretic or Hexen from the early days of FPS shooters, with a fantasy vibe, fast character movement and no...
  48. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    It's not that difficult? The addin board runs $3 - 500 and unless they update the u.3 spec again, it's portable to whatever PC you need it to be in. It's acceptable to get access to the 16TB Enterprise SSDs that aren't being made with quality NAND in consumer space.
  49. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    You can absolutely move to U.2/U.3s HBA to get a high endurance/high capacity disk interface if you feel the need. The reasons for doing so now are very similar to the reasons SCSI was an option 25 years ago. Such HBAs do not require bifurcation support, and there's nothing wrong with using...
  50. Mercutio

    Private MAC Addresses v.s. Parental Sanity

    Disney Circle is still a pretty decent option if you don't want to spend that much time faffing around with it.
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