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  1. Mercutio

    Here is a thread to talk about gaming

    I'm pretty sure I have all of Nintendo. Maybe it's because they're so litigious, but I found massive collections of everything but Switch at some earlier point, and I was able to get the .NSP files one at a time when I was asked to. The headache for me has been that limited numbers of seventh...
  2. Mercutio

    Apple Jack

    I'm not sure how it is right now, but for a very long time there was no supported browser addon for keychain sync to Firefox, which makes me think it's not exactly an Apple priority. And the minute you mention Linux to most commercial software vendors, you're probably SOL. Have you looked at...
  3. Mercutio

    Here is a thread to talk about gaming

    I wasn't previously familiar with vimm.net, but but it is indeed where one can find absolutely all of the console video games. All of them. Every single one. 99.9something percent of all released titles for everything up to the PS3 / Xbox 360 / Wii. Apparently, the site has been around for 20ish...
  4. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Oh no, you can absolutely see the impact of color grading in movies, even on an ancient CRT. It's the reason everything in Marvel movies is shifted toward blue and why the Matrix movies show everything with a greenish cast. The most common grading is toward cyan and amber, which works very well...
  5. Mercutio

    Merc's Useful Tools of the day

    Maybe try Desynger? I have it installed on my tablet but I can't remember whether or not I've used it to edit anything since that's something I usually do on Windows with PDFgear.
  6. Mercutio

    Something Random

    My partner kept one and the other got swapped for a miscellaneous collection of parts since I couldn't in good conscience sell it. These monitors are decidedly less impressive, though they're nicer than what I typically buy, 27" 180Hz QHD. If I wind up with extras, I'll definitely be able to...
  7. Mercutio

    Something Random

    UPS just delivered a pair of monitors I reported lost almost a month ago. The boxes look like they've been through hell but both the monitors inside worked fine. The funny part is, I have another pair of them coming tomorrow, the replacements for these. If this sounds familiar, it's because I...
  8. Mercutio

    Merc's Useful Tools of the day

    This web site can generate a script to turn on whichever of the Windows Defender Attack Surface Reduction tools you might wish. They're a pain in the ass to handle otherwise, but if you're relying on Defender for primary protection, it's probably a good idea to turn some or all of these features...
  9. Mercutio

    Laptop time?

    If somebody is using Outlook, I'm not supporting them in the first place. Outlook is right up there with iTunes on my shit list as singly incompetent for its stated purpose. They're Google Workspace and actually do use GDocs. I'm not sure if anyone there has ever created a spreadsheet. It's just...
  10. Mercutio

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    You CAN just plug a bunch of 7.6TB u.2 drives into the NAS you have right now. Just like how m.2 drives can be addressed as SATA drives (sometimes), so too can u.2s be addressed as plain old SAS. 7.6TB u.2s are fairly easy to find but in my experience they're going to be priced nearly the same...
  11. Mercutio

    Laptop time?

    Insurance agency. Systems are Beelink SER5s (Ryzen 5800/16GB). All they use are Chrome (or Edge, for one guy) and NitroPDF. They don't even have MS Office. Average RAM in use on clients, at least among the systems I checked, was just under 7GB.
  12. Mercutio

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    I actually can't believe prices on 8TB drives haven't fallen any more than they have. It seems silly that a refurb 8TB drive is $100 when I've found 16s for $140 in recent memory. At least your Synology unit probably does support SAS (mine does and mine is ancient) so you have the option of...
  13. Mercutio

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    Amazon is doing a buy two, get one free sale on Silicon Power 4TB TLC 2.5" SSDs. I'm not sure if anyone needs 12TB of 500MB/sec storage but on the other hand, that's an absurd bargain for $360. This post will be hilarious in about five years.
  14. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Hey, I was a working professional through all of that as well.
  15. Mercutio

    Something Random

    My internet service was out most of the weekend and a Comcast tech couldn't come look at it until Sunday. Turned out that wasps had built a massive nest in the cable junction box that only I use and the solution was for the tech to put on what amounted to a bee-keeper suit to remove all the nest...
  16. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I have Arch installed on an Ideapad Slim 3 and it also doesn't have working internal audio. Bluetooth audio works and I'm reasonably certain audio worked in the past, but since I use this thing about once a month, I have no idea when it quit working. This thing has a fairly common for...
  17. Mercutio

    Something Random

    The 2000 to XP crossover was a weirder time period than you'd probably guess. A lot of big organizations weren't just switching their Windows version, but also going through a tough but necessary switch away from Netware to Windows Servers and NDS to Active Directory. AD needed a different level...
  18. Mercutio

    Something Random

    The Windows News widget is giving me air quality alerts today. We really are living in the worst possible timeline.
  19. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    I don't have a KillAWatt but specs say it tops out at 55W if you crank up all the performance settings in the firmware. Extremely reasonable, and I suspect you wouldn't be doing that much, anyway. It has OcuLink, a second m.2 and an honest to god USB 4 port on it, so it really does have at...
  20. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    I gave up on using my HX 370 mini desktop as a VM host and I've changed it into a sort of ultimate fat client PC and even my main daily-user system. I have a couple minor gripes with it, but this thing is for the most part an absolute dream. I can assign 8 or 16GB of its DDR5-8000 RAM to the...
  21. Mercutio

    Something Random

    No harm done. At least you didn't misconfigure sendmail or accidentally alter routing tables to point to the tertiary backup ISDN line or something.
  22. Mercutio

    Laptop time?

    If I remember right, that site uses 10th gen i3 NUCs with 8GB RAM. Very modest systems but entirely capable of doing day to day work. They're on a domain but with very minimal management. Next time I remote in to a site with newer clients I'll check what their desktops are doing but my general...
  23. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    Also in the name of BS no one asked for, MS365 users are getting a bunch of new widgets to do things like Mail and Calendar, replacing the apps that Windows used to ship with, I guess, and a file search tool specifically to deal with all the places where people trapped in Microsoft's ecosystem...
  24. Mercutio

    Laptop time?

    That is a configuration I'd like to see. Are the enforced GPOs/Intune Policies absolutely absurd somehow? Shit tons of compliance auditing? I don't ever have to deal with Teams and I've been pissed at Outlook since before you were born but I'm looking at a pretty normal client system in active...
  25. Mercutio

    Laptop time?

    8GB is absolutely acceptable for a low-spec client device, even with a half dozen browser tabs and Excel. Don't ask me about Outlook or Teams because those are things I don't have to deal with, but even with Gmail absolutely eating 1GB RAM all by itself, I spend enough time on 10+ year old...
  26. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Sometimes the order that OSS projects does in fact seem pretty goofy. Guessing Chromebooks have funky sound to skip out of paying somebody a licensing fee on a low cost device. Sound is something I absolutely expect to work but I might not notice on if it doesn't on a Linux PC. One of the...
  27. Mercutio

    Laptop time?

    As a counterpoint, the fact that millions of mainstream notebooks (not Chromeboos) with deeply crappy Celerons still get sold for more thab $250 suggests that to some degree OEMs are insensitive to actual performance. I saw a HP something or other Windows PC with an N100 and 128GB of EMMC but...
  28. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Yes, we used to segregate /var, although one of the biggest reasons to do so was that mail spools live there if your system was running any kind of mail server. Chromebooks are kind of goofy on Linux in my experience. I always seen to run in to headaches with either touchpad gestures or the...
  29. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Segregating /home from your other data is a pretty good idea regardless. It's a lot easier to switch your OS when you know your user data is on a completely different drive from the one you're installing to. I wish the Windows installer would make user folder location a standard part of the...
  30. Mercutio

    Laptop time?

    Something I have just realized is that there really aren't contemporary, budget Intel notebooks any more. There are some Celeron-grade options, but it's almost impossible to find a sub-$500 laptop with a current Core-series CPU in it. Even the modest Core 5 120U mostly lives in $500+ models. I...
  31. Mercutio

    Something Random

    It's easier to remote in to a session that's on a single coherent system than to try something like that. I've never had good luck with true portability.
  32. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    I picked up a Meike 35/2 lens for my A7iii for $160. I am actually shocked how well it works for such a low cost camera lens. It has an ultrasonic motor so it works really well for video and it focuses quickly. My Canon RF 1.8 is still a better lens overall but as a native lens for my Sony, I'm...
  33. Mercutio

    Basic, non-subscription software for Windows 11

    Libraries are full of woke and thoughtcrime and if you can find a librarian under 50 who isn't at least secretly a blue-haired queer (he typed, noting his own hair choices) commie socialist antifa with a crippling addiction to merino wool yarn and subversive board games, you clearly found the...
  34. Mercutio

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    There's a giant "it depends" that's based on your expected workload. Do you need fast burst transfers or sustained IOPs? I bought 4x Acer GM7000 2TB drives for $115/drive yesterday. They're somewhat above average in terms of performance but at the price, I couldn't find anything better. The...
  35. Mercutio

    Merc's Useful Tools of the day

    Rufus, my favorite way to make bootable installation media, is in the Windows Store now. I don't know if it's any different for being in there, but since some of its key features involve disabling and ignoring Windows installation requirements, but I'm happy to see it there if only to keep from...
  36. Mercutio

    Something Random

    sed, have you ever actually used OS/2? It really was a great idea for its time, especially if you were looking at it versus Windows 3.1 or even NT 3.5. The big down side at the time was just getting a PC with the resources to run it alongside the DOS and 16-bit Windows software you probably...
  37. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Man, I don't think anything Compaq made deserved a decent reputation even into the mid-90s when 486s started to become mainstream. I should note that was the point when product lines started to segregate and we got consumer and business systems, but Compaq was always one of those companies that...
  38. Mercutio

    Basic, non-subscription software for Windows 11

    ~$10/month to get a Fax-enabled number from these guys. This is pretty reasonable. Efax wants $25/month so screw that. Apparently most of the demand for Fax still exists because Faxing was straight up excluded from a lot of compliance regulations. One of my customers lives and dies by a $25...
  39. Mercutio

    Basic, non-subscription software for Windows 11

    Email. Faxing is just a print driver on everything made this millennium. There are services like eFax if you don't feel like using a land line just to deal with faxes.
  40. Mercutio

    CURRENT GAME THREAD

    Give GoG some credit. They're the people who let you keep installation media for your purchases and install them anywhere you want. Probably a better deal for your Hentai Furry BDSM Clown Porn title than the service where most people have their badges and game play activity available for public...
  41. Mercutio

    CURRENT GAME THREAD

    As of this writing, there isn't much time, but as a protest over the recent actions of Steam and itch.io to de-list certain adults-only game software, Gog.com is giving a bunch of those games away. Many of the games in question are X-rated visual novels but Postal 2 and Agony aren't.
  42. Mercutio

    Laptop time?

    I have both an AMD Thinkpad P14s (Ryzen 7 8845) and Intel (Core Ultra 165H) for the weekend. They both came from Amazon and I bought one of each just because. For having the same name, they're NOT the same computer. The AMD version is a little bit lighter and has a smaller screen, while the...
  43. Mercutio

    Selfhosting fun

    I've tested it over OpenVPN, Wireguard, Tailscale, Hamachi and Zerotier. They all work fine, though Tailscale seems to be the fastest option, at least for moving the same 15MB .CR3 file back and forth. I'm hesitant to try access over a Cloudflare tunnel since they do tell free tier users...
  44. Mercutio

    Selfhosting fun

    It took me about 90 seconds to get Copyparty running and about ten minutes to get it running with what I feel is a reasonable config with limited security and correct volume mapping. The main advantage I see to it at this point is that it's much, much faster for access on my Android, ChromeOS...
  45. Mercutio

    Basic, non-subscription software for Windows 11

    For the next two weeks (middle of August 2025), Humble Bundle is offering CorelDraw Suite (functionally Photoshop + Illustrator for the Adobe-inclined) for $70.
  46. Mercutio

    Selfhosting fun

    Copyparty looks all kinds of interesting to me. Especially for the media controls and ability to deduplicate content. I haven't deployed it anywhere yet but it's on my agenda for this week.
  47. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    Apparently, one of the updates currently being tested in Windows 11 25H2 is an update to the Mixer application that will allow sound output from multiple devices simultaneously. Android has been able to do sound to multiple bluetooth devices or output to both speaker and bluetooth for years, so...
  48. Mercutio

    Something Random

    We're old. Except sed.
  49. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I have to watch sugar too much to have a popsicle-filled life. 😭
  50. Mercutio

    Something Random

    The main value I have for the X1 is as a tablet that can be taken apart without destroying the damned thing. I have an old Surface Pro that I had to chip the screen off completely to get to its drive, so I usually show those systems off side by side as a teaching aid.
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