Search results

  1. Mercutio

    DNS issues?

    I suspect that a physician doesn't have much time to mess with this stuff even if they want to. On an unrelated note, I mentioned SmartTube up-thread. SmartTube's primary developer had his Github key exposed over the weekend, so he revoked his signature for the application, which should disable...
  2. Mercutio

    Personal Hardware Survey 2025

    What are you doing with the server? Is it just running file services or do you have the *RR stack operating or? I'm kind of curious to see where people have landed on Windows 10 vs 11 or if we have any consensus on Linux distros. I haven't seen any mention of contemporary Intel on SF other than...
  3. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I never thought I'd get one either. Instead I have a few now. They're small, personal and in places where only one person might see them. Each one relates to someone special in my life. A couple of my close friends and my partner likewise have tattoos to represent me. I feel like it's an...
  4. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Yes. Tattoos are hideous. A direct quote that was in fact repeated multiple times. That one I'd at least prepared my partner for, so it mostly just turned in to eye rolling. My mom grew up in a house where time stopped in about 1960 and she just kind of doesn't understand the world outside the...
  5. Mercutio

    DNS issues?

    There shouldn't be much more than enabling it and telling it to use Unbound or Unbound Python mode. You can add more block lists if you feel like it. Easylist et al. There's a nice guide here.
  6. Mercutio

    DNS issues?

    uBlock on Firefox and uBlock Lite on other browsers + some form of network-level blocker everywhere I have control over the network. I use DNS66 for Android, which functions as a VPN but exists entirely to redirect DNS queries. I like this better than Samsung's built-in DNS redirector, which for...
  7. Mercutio

    Something Random

    re: Phone plans. I switched to US Mobile this morning. They're offering a year of service for $167 until the end of the day today (10PM EST). They're primarily a Tmo MVNO, so the only major issue I can see from switching is that my data service might be deprioritized in an emergency...
  8. Mercutio

    DNS issues?

    PfSense supports pfBlockerNG, which is as good or better than running PiHole. It's just a service you can enable in DNS configuration on your appliance. In theory you can use both by making the Pfsense DNS the upstream provider for Pihole but that's needless complexity IMO.
  9. Mercutio

    Personal Hardware Survey 2025

    I'm just curious what PC systems y'all have that are in active use in 2025. Some of you guys have a PC in their signature, but I'm curious to get an idea of what's out there being used, and what they're used for. The oldest PC I'm still actively using is a Thinkpad T420 with an i7 2640 in it...
  10. Mercutio

    DNS issues?

    Is it possible that you have computers with significant time drift?
  11. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I don't drink and I'm about to start. Sed, something I've found to watch out for is that some MVNOs don't support RCS chat yet. STILL. Also I am almost positive there are degrees of deprioritization, based on some experiments I've done between Tmo, Mint and US Mobile and a (gross!) iphone 13...
  12. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    Rather than improve overall Windows Explorer performance, it looks like Microsoft is going to set up File Explorer to preload on low-end systems. Something that actually endlessly pisses me off is that the 9950X I use for a desktop hitches for a couple seconds when I launch an Explorer window...
  13. Mercutio

    Something Random

    This is the first year my partner is coming to Thanksgiving. We did not talk about her doing this and I just found out maybe 10 minutes ago. She's going to meet my family, who will no doubt have many opinions about her tattoos and piercings and many questions about her ovulation cycle. I am...
  14. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    Here's a set of directions to switch back to OG notepad, if you don't want the increasingly stupid one Windows 11 is using now. Also it's winget install microsoft.edit If you want a normal-ass text editor and somehow can't be bothered to set up Notepad++.
  15. Mercutio

    Laptop time?

    One of my customers brought me this thing, asking why it was weirdly slow. They didn't realize it's a Qualcomm SoC system. Once I explained how it works, they were happy with it; it has a very nice screen and better construction from any consumer HP I've seen and the price, $450, is about right...
  16. Mercutio

    Firefox extremely slow

    Yes. A new Windows account. Firefox puts crap in a bunch of different places under %appdata% and it's hard telling what's left behind after a reinstall. I don't think your PC is slow, but there could be a weird addon or setting causing you problems.
  17. Mercutio

    Laptop time?

    Consumer notebooks are hard. My Ideapad 1s came from visiting a Walmart and a Best Buy to see what's acceptable at less than $350, because so very often, that's as much as people are willing to spend. I have a prejudice against 17" models and their breaky, breaky screens, and the moment I bring...
  18. Mercutio

    Firefox extremely slow

    I'm thinking that the fresh (Windows?) user account is a good idea just to avoid the possibility that there's some accumulation of cruft from past installs generally. Maybe even sanity check from a bootable Linux ISO or something.
  19. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I have the additional aggravation that my health care is non-traditional, so my meds are at least partially selected for what can be obtained for cheap.
  20. Mercutio

    Firefox extremely slow

    This does not align with my experiences with Firefox. Even on something deeply pathetic like a 4th gen i3 with 4GB RAM, Firefox and Chrome are subjectively similar with Chrome being maybe a hair faster generally (with the caveat that it also isn't blocking as much, either). What if you try...
  21. Mercutio

    Firefox extremely slow

    As an aside, Firefox and Brave are the only two mainstream browsers with ongoing support for thorough ad blocking. I've found no combination of settings on Chromium derived browsers like Chrome or Edge that actually work to provide the same level of safety. Of course I can put an ad blocking...
  22. Mercutio

    Firefox extremely slow

    Look under Settings --> Privacy & Security --> DNS over HTTPS. Try turning that on or off to see if that makes a difference.
  23. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Just blood pressure management. Both my parents needed blood pressure medication by my age so it's not surprising that I do too. I'm still having a hard time with the idea that a common medication would be in short supply nationally, but I did finally get some overnighted to me.
  24. Mercutio

    Something Random

    There's a stray I've been feeding for the last few years. She's had a litter of kittens every June like clockwork. She kind of nests with her babies under a car that only moves a few times a year; the guy who owns it can't drive it any more, but his son uses it maybe the second week in August...
  25. Mercutio

    Laptop time?

    Decent CPU and nice screen is an extremely solid recipe for almost everyone's day to day needs so long as they aren't doing gaming, engineering or content creation. Which kind of explains why Macbook Airs are somehow seen as acceptable. A couple months ago, I observed that I couldn't get a...
  26. Mercutio

    Nvidia 50xx

    I'm more than a little concerned that an entire generation of educated people and actually untold natural resources have been diverted to work on this instead of doing something that helps humanity as a whole. Between this and the commoditization of every system and resource on Earth by Fintech...
  27. Mercutio

    Nvidia 50xx

    Ed Zitron just published some leaked internal revenue data from OpenAI. This company that wants $70 billion this year from VCs and partners to build itself spent almost $9B on running its models on revenue of $2.3B. They're spending $3 to make less than a buck and apparently lying to everyone...
  28. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    New Steam Deck thing was announced today. It's a 30W Zen4 6c/12t CPU with 16GB RAM and either 500GB or 2TB of internal storage. That sounds to me like a less powerful version of the HX 370, although I suppose it'll have newer and fancier GPU cores than that. It will purportedly be able to...
  29. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I lost a cat to breast cancer at the beginning of 2024 and a kitten to brain cancer in 2020. The kitten absolutely killed me, because I spent so much money and went through so many different diagnoses that offered varying levels of hope for improvement. He literally passed while he was on the...
  30. Mercutio

    Nvidia 50xx

    Softbank announced that it is divesting itself from nVidia, currently the most valuable enterprise in human history, to fund OpenAI, a company that seems to do nothing but spend money on nVidia GPUs and datacenter construction contracts. Softbank is literally taking its holdings in nVidia to...
  31. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    It's been brought to my attention that it's possible to buy an Asrock BC250 SBC for around US$100. These things are 6c/12t Zen2 APUs with somewhere around Radeon RX580-class GPU cores and 16GB of all GDDR6 RAM. They're crypto-mining hardware and they don't have a bunch of traditional PC ports on...
  32. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Tiny baby roommate is finally gone. I don't know how parents do it. I've never letting one of those things in my place again.
  33. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    The Canon R6 III was unveiled today. The new one has a 32MP sensor, a CFexpress slot and the ability to shoot video horizontally and vertically at the same time. I'm definitely intrigued.
  34. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Chris Thile was the replacement host for Garrison Keillor on A Prairie Home Companion, which was a very gentle and Midwestern part of my Saturday afternoons for around 40 years. It was more or less the last thing I made it a point to hear on the radio every week.
  35. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    Flyby11 works by using the Windows Server 2025 installer to unpack and run the Windows 11 .wim file. All the hardware checks are in the Windows 11 setup. You can also use the Windows 10 setups file to do the same thing. Those products are already out in the world, so short of constantly checking...
  36. Mercutio

    Empire in Decline

    I have a milestone birthday in a month-ish. The plan was originally to spend a week in Jamaica or Cancun, but my partner forgot to renew her passport and my best friend can't get away from her job for more than a three day weekend anyway. So we're now talking about New Orleans, where even the...
  37. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    I don't know if anyone caught this, but AMD has started calling mobile Ryzen 6000s "Ryzen 100 series" and mobile Ryzen 4000/5000 series Ryzen 10s. There's no change in the actual hardware. They're just naming them differently to match their high end branding. Thanks, guys.
  38. Mercutio

    Here is a thread to talk about gaming

    I'm still trying to figure it out. I think the Xbox brand will still exist for software and maybe input devices. It sounds like Microsoft doesn't want to be in the console business. Maybe it'll be branding on Asus or Dell PCs? Just not a dedicated-function gaming device.
  39. Mercutio

    Here is a thread to talk about gaming

    Apparently the next Xbox will just be a PC. It will have access to the full Windows desktop and compatibility with all Windows desktop software, meaning that it can run Steam et al. They're framing it as "compatible with Playstation-exclusive games" by which they mean that it'll run Playstation...
  40. Mercutio

    Empire in Decline

    I think the next step in the decline is when the dollar stops being the currency of global finance. I think it will happen during Trump's turn and it truly will be the end of American global power.
  41. Mercutio

    Here is a thread to talk about gaming

    Apparently the big news now is that Microsoft is expecting its gaming projects to hit 30% profit margins, which is somewhat unprecedented by past performance and on top of that, with the acquisition of Activision, there's no longer a non-Microsoft gaming company big enough to buy the Xbox brand...
  42. Mercutio

    question Which Tablets

    For what it's worth, there have been supported Microsoft OS releases on ARM since Windows 8. They might not be well supported and they certainly didn't have the massive engineering push that came with the new Snapdragon Elitewhatever, but the Thinkpad x13s pre-dates the "PC-spec" SoCs by a...
  43. Mercutio

    Empire in Decline

    A happier thought for just a moment: If Trump is allowed to run in 2028, the Democrats could potentially nominate Obama. He's not History's Greatest President by any stretch of the imagination, but we can remember a time when a sane and competent administrator (who isn't kissing 80 years old)...
  44. Mercutio

    Hard drive Failure Rates

    Backblaze data seems to suggest that the bathtub curve for drive replacement is getting wider. Big drives really do seem to be lasting longer than old ones did. The article links to the most recent Backblaze data dump if anyone needs to see it, but the important detail is that they're still...
  45. Mercutio

    question Which Tablets

    I know that Marine tablets are a thing. I've been out on Lake Michigan and seen them in action, but I can't say for sure that it's not just a fancy case over a regular tablet.
  46. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Someone asked me this morning to remote in and connect his second monitor.
  47. Mercutio

    Empire in Decline

    I went to protests on Saturday in Valparaiso, Indiana. There were around 1000 people there, which is about 950 more people than these things usually have when they're in Indiana. We had a bunch of idiots in "Roll Coal" trucks gun their engines or try to drown out our chants and I'd say support...
  48. Mercutio

    question Which Tablets

    I'm also on the lookout for one of those things, just to satisfy my personal curiosity. I know one person who has an Asus Snapdragon X Elite something or other, but 80% of her job is just being in meetings and taking notes about meetings. I don't even think she knows the difference between what...
  49. Mercutio

    Something Random

    The application I support is still largely Visual Basic. We need to move our development to C# and two of my three developers are in their mid 60s, so I'm guessing modernization efforts are gonna have to wait for some meemaws to retire.
  50. Mercutio

    Something Random

    The Better Offline podcast has a 100-minute long interview with the guy from Gamer's Nexus today. There's a lot of discussion of non-public aspects of running an outlet dedicated to reviewing PC hardware.
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