Something Random

[CougTek]

Warning : this is a junk post.

Since I had nothing better to do, I ended up on Sploid and saw this. Not being an RC pro, I believe this is fake, like the bear running after a biker video. Why? Despite being quite well made, how can the guy filming the mini-chopper follow it so accurately almost all the time? He would have to be connected to the mind of the pilot to do that.

Do you think it's fake or genuine?

 

[LunarMist]

1) Who's working New Year's Day?

My work day starts at 6pm so that barely counts. I'm also not doing any type of celebration on New Year's Eve that would prevent me from making it into work later in the afternoon.

2) What New Year's traditions/resolutions do you do, or try to do?

I don't do New Year's Resolutions, as I never follow thru with them anyways. No party/celebrations. I have, for the last 30+ years, watch my digital wrist watch flip from: 23:59:59 & 12-31 to: 00:00:00 & 1-1 and listen to gunfire.

I attended a dinner and New Year event last night for the first time ever.

 

[ddrueding]

Warning : this is a junk post.

Since I had nothing better to do, I ended up on Sploid and saw this. Not being an RC pro, I believe this is fake, like the bear running after a biker video. Why? Despite being quite well made, how can the guy filming the mini-chopper follow it so accurately almost all the time? He would have to be connected to the mind of the pilot to do that.

Do you think it's fake or genuine?

Whilethecameraworkisexceptional,itisn'toutoftherealmofpossibility.Also,thatpilotisonlyabout10%betterthanotherpilotsI'veseen.

 

[CougTek]

No working spacebar or just intoxicated?

 

[Stereodude]

I'd say unlikely it's fake. There are lots of videos on YouTube of similarly crazy RC Heli flying. Random example:

 

[CougTek]

I didn't know a chopper could be so agile. It's worrying to think what I drone-like chopper with a fast integrated AI could do.

 

[ddrueding]

Drone manual piloting looks like this:
[video=youtube_share;RBc_KnC2dgs]https://youtu.be/RBc_KnC2dgs[/video]

 

[Stereodude]

Anyone else at CES?

 

[Handruin]

I would have liked to have gone. The few headlines I've read have shown some interesting new things.

 

[ddrueding]

Has anyone had any luck finding a ROG MAXIMUS IX EXTREME motherboard? The monoblock that incorporates the M.2 would be great for an upcoming project. Too soon after CES?

 

[Handruin]

I haven't been looking at something that high end to really know about availability. It looks very nice but is it worth having the all in one water block as apposed to building out your own water cooling and block configuration? Could you use some kind of RAM water block to cool an NVMe m.2 SSD?

 

[LunarMist]

A motherboard is Something random?

 

[ddrueding]

Didn't want to make a whole thread looking for one motherboard. m.2 SSDs are generally too close to the board to have the sandwich-style waterblocks fit.

Minimizing the number of connections to help reliability is a good thing.

 

[DrunkenBastard]

Didn't want to make a whole thread looking for one motherboard. m.2 SSDs are generally too close to the board to have the sandwich-style waterblocks fit.

Minimizing the number of connections to help reliability is a good thing.

Is U.2 form factor in a drive bay a consideration?

http://edgeup.asus.com/2016/06/06/m-2-ssd-throttling-tests-vindicate-asus-motherboard-designs/

 

[DrunkenBastard]

800 GB Intel 750 2.5" drive for U.2 for $480

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B011HYVOY8/

 

[ddrueding]

Nope, no room for U.2 in this install. M.2 only.

 

[sedrosken]

I never really did any work on that FreeNAS build besides the initial putting together of the hardware and leaving it to rot next to my desk, so I decided to do the next best thing with it and install Windows 7 x86 on it for the sole purpose of running the Lockdown Browser my university forces on me for taking tests and quizzes. I don't trust it on my main machine, it acts too much like malware for my tastes, so I threw it on there. It works admirably in this role, much better than a Pentium Dual Core E2140 with 1GB of RAM and the integrated GeForce 7150 has any right to. I also use its' 1TB HDD as a backup spot for my user data.

 

[LunarMist]

Nope, no room for U.2 in this install. M.2 only.

Is that U.2 connector the new standard? I'm out of the loop, still on SATA/SAS.

 

[DrunkenBastard]

Easiest way to think of U.2 is the speed of an M.2 slot but with a cable to a 2.5" drive. Both can deliver 4 PCIE lanes. Advantage of the 2.5" drive is much better cooling potential and sustained speeds without the slowdowns M.2 drives suffer from due to heat build up. Many motherboards with an M.2 and U.2 connector share the same bus and only allow you to choose one or the other. Not really a replacement for SAS/SATA as such, but good for a very fast boot drive.

http://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2405-u2-vs-m2-vs-sata-express-best-for-ssds

 

[Stereodude]

So, are most of the SD and uSD cards priced under Amazon pricing on eBay fake? It sure seems that way. Some are obviously fake where they are selling something that doesn't even exist, like this. That person has at least two accounts selling the same fakes. Their other listing.

Others are much more subtle like this. This last one more troubling since that model card has been available from legitimate sources for less than that price in the past.

I guess you've got to stick to reputable stores, and that excludes Amazon (since they mix inventory from different sellers for the same items).

 

[ddrueding]

I guess you've got to stick to reputable stores, and that excludes Amazon (since they mix inventory from different sellers for the same items).

I'm currently under the impression that you can still choose which seller you want to buy from? If you don't choose they will choose for you, but if I say I only want to buy from the seller Amazon.com I'm pretty sure those items are sold by Amazon themselves?

 

[mubs]

But Amz has been dicey for some items. Like Eneloops, for instance. And SD says for memory cards.

 

[Stereodude]

I'm currently under the impression that you can still choose which seller you want to buy from? If you don't choose they will choose for you, but if I say I only want to buy from the seller Amazon.com I'm pretty sure those items are sold by Amazon themselves?

You can choose the seller, but you don't necessarily get something from that seller's inventory if it's fulfilled by Amazon. Amazon treats inventory for any particular item as interchangeable regardless of where it came from (unless there is something unique about it). Effectively (in terms of order fulfillment) they dump the inventory from all the fulfilled by Amazon sellers and their own into the same bucket. So, all it takes is one seller to send fakes to Amazon and you could get a fake no matter which seller you buy from, even Amazon themselves.

Of course they're not really all mixed in a single location. But are spread out in warehouses all over the country. Amazon will generally ship from the closest warehouse to minimize their shipping cost which means you get inventory from one of the sellers who has their products in the closest warehouse to you (or from the warehouse where other items in your order are so they can ship it all in one package).

 

[LunarMist]

But Amz has been dicey for some items. Like Eneloops, for instance. And SD says for memory cards.

I avoid the memory cards, but I've ordered the Eneloops a few times. They seem fine to me.

 

[Stereodude]

I avoid the memory cards, but I've ordered the Eneloops a few times. They seem fine to me.

Most of my Eneloops came from Costco. A few packs came from Woot. I did buy some from Amazon as Christmas gift this past year though. I hadn't heard of any issues with Eneloops from Amazon. :scratch:

 

[LunarMist]

Most of my Eneloops came from Costco. A few packs came from Woot. I did buy some from Amazon as Christmas gift this past year though. I hadn't heard of any issues with Eneloops from Amazon. :scratch:

I try to buy a large variety of colors to keep groups easily identifiable. Amazon has some of the more unusual ones.
At this point I have plenty of AA cells which last practically forever in my limited use. I buy the Eneloop Pro for the flashes and 330V power supplies.

 

[Stereodude]

So, apparently Sandisk's 200GB microSDXC cards aren't really 200gB, and I'm not talking about 200GiB vs. 200"GB". They're only 196,865,949,696 bytes. I guess selling a 196GB card just didn't have the same cachet.

In contrast, Lexar's 200GB card is 200,788,672,512 bytes. I noticed the two were different sizes when looking at CDM benchmarks for them. After some searching I found reviews for each that gave byte counts and it all made sense why I was seeing a 4GB capacity difference between them in the CDM screenshots.

Frankly, I'm a little surprised no one has noticed and brought in the lawyers yet.

 

[Chewy509]

So, apparently Sandisk's 200GB microSDXC cards aren't really 200gB, and I'm not talking about 200GiB vs. 200"GB". They're only 196,865,949,696 bytes. I guess selling a 196GB card just didn't have the same cachet.

My guess, they figure they can get away with it, since the public are quite happy to acknowledge that 4K TV don't actually display 4096 pixels wide, but 3840 pixels, because you know, it's close enough to be called 4K... So 196GB is close enough to 200GB...

 

[mubs]

From stuff I've read int he past (Eneloop thread on CPF, etc.), Thomas Distributing is the safest place to buy Eneloops from, original stuff guaranteed. For the reasons SD mentioned a couple of posts above, buying from Amz is dicey.

I buy Eneloops from Thomas, photographic stuff from B&H. Except this time, I got the Breakthrough Photography X2 CP filter from Amz because I was buying a bunch of other stuff at the same time, and they're an authorized retailer according to BP.

 

[Stereodude]

My guess, they figure they can get away with it, since the public are quite happy to acknowledge that 4K TV don't actually display 4096 pixels wide, but 3840 pixels, because you know, it's close enough to be called 4K... So 196GB is close enough to 200GB...

In the US all the "4K" sets have a little * after the 4k with fine print somewhere that it's really 3840x2160 so they don't get sued.

 

[LunarMist]

From stuff I've read int he past (Eneloop thread on CPF, etc.), Thomas Distributing is the safest place to buy Eneloops from, original stuff guaranteed. For the reasons SD mentioned a couple of posts above, buying from Amz is dicey.

I buy Eneloops from Thomas, photographic stuff from B&H. Except this time, I got the Breakthrough Photography X2 CP filter from Amz because I was buying a bunch of other stuff at the same time, and they're an authorized retailer according to BP.

BH sells Eneloops, memory cards, etc. that are legit.

 

[sedrosken]

So my uncle put me on his wireless plan so regardless of my income status I have access to a phone. Rather than just using the phone I already had with a Verizon SIM kit, he just bought me a new phone. I don't know where he's getting that I need anything as flashy or powerful (or expensive!) as a Moto Z Droid Force, and in fact I briefly tried to talk him out of what I see as a grossly large waste of money (Verizon has it at $720 to buy outright, but he may just be taking the monthly plan), but that's what I'm ending up with -- I'll probably buy a Verizon kit for the Turbo and give it to Dad, he'd appreciate the bigger screen of it if nothing else. As of right now the stock ROM is recent enough and I don't do anything that needs root, so I'm not bothering with a custom ROM for the moment. I plan on obtaining the battery mod for it at some point to make what is already an impressive battery for the dimensions of the phone positively massive.

 

[Stereodude]

:cursin: So the 200GB Lexar Micro SD card I bought is bad right out of the package. The first thing I did after getting it was to run FAKEFLASHTEST on the drive. It came back with this nice log:

FAKEFLASHTEST v1.1.1  [SSi]
DRIVE 2 -  186.9GiB Lexar microSD RDR              
FFT - Quick Size Test (destructive)
D:     (no label)    DRIVE 2 -  186.9GiB Lexar microSD RDR              

Writing marker blocks to drive 2
5% complete  - 2 min 13 sec  remaining
10% complete  - 8 min 15 sec  remaining
15% complete  - 12 min 57 sec  remaining
20% complete  - 16 min 56 sec  remaining
25% complete  - 19 min 39 sec  remaining
30% complete  - 20 min 42 sec  remaining
35% complete  - 19 min 21 sec  remaining
40% complete  - 16 min 3 sec  remaining
45% complete  - 14 min 21 sec  remaining
50% complete  - 13 min 23 sec  remaining
55% complete  - 12 min 47 sec  remaining
60% complete  - 11 min 58 sec  remaining
65% complete  - 10 min 56 sec  remaining
70% complete  - 9 min 3 sec  remaining
75% complete  - 7 min 19 sec  remaining
80% complete  - 5 min 55 sec  remaining
85% complete  - 4 min 35 sec  remaining
90% complete  - 3 min 9 sec  remaining
95% complete  - 1 min 37 sec  remaining
100% complete  - 0 min 1 sec remaining
Reading back marker blocks...
5% complete - 0 min 38 sec  remaining
10% complete - 0 min 36 sec  remaining
15% complete - 0 min 29 sec  remaining
20% complete - 0 min 28 sec  remaining
25% complete - 0 min 24 sec  remaining
30% complete - 0 min 24 sec  remaining
35% complete - 0 min 21 sec  remaining
40% complete - 0 min 20 sec  remaining
45% complete - 0 min 18 sec  remaining
50% complete - 0 min 16 sec  remaining
55% complete - 0 min 14 sec  remaining
60% complete - 0 min 13 sec  remaining
65% complete - 0 min 11 sec  remaining
70% complete - 0 min 10 sec  remaining
75% complete - 0 min 8 sec  remaining
80% complete - 0 min 7 sec  remaining
85% complete - 0 min 5 sec  remaining
90% complete - 0 min 4 sec  remaining
95% complete - 0 min 2 sec  remaining
Memory tested in blocks of 25600 sectors.

BAD MEMORY from sector 47514 (23.2001MiB) to sector 7369114 (3,598.2001Mib)

WARNING: no memory detected at one or more locations.
Test took 2301 seconds.

                         *** FAILED ***

DEVICE HAS DUPLICATE OR BAD BLOCKS!

Recommended maximum usable partition size: 10.7001Mib (approx. Last good Sector=47514)

Unplug and re-connect the drive, then reformat it using Windows or RMPrepUSB.

A subsequent format and attempt to write data to the drive (like copying a file with Windows Explorer) result in nothing happening. I tried the card in another reader and got the same result. A second attempt to run FAKEFLASHTEST on the card results in FAKEFLASHTEST running very slowly compared to the first run. ARGH!!!

 

[Stereodude]

:scratch: No idea on this one. The second test apparently passed.

FAKEFLASHTEST v1.1.1  [SSi]
DRIVE 2 -  186.9GiB TS-RDF5 SD  Transcend          
FFT - Quick Size Test (destructive)
D:     (no label)    DRIVE 2 -  186.9GiB TS-RDF5 SD  Transcend          

Writing marker blocks to drive 2
5% complete  - 43 min 42 sec  remaining
10% complete  - 41 min 24 sec  remaining
15% complete  - 56 min 46 sec  remaining
20% complete  - 65 min 20 sec  remaining
25% complete  - 68 min 9 sec  remaining
30% complete  - 67 min 42 sec  remaining
35% complete  - 63 min 12 sec  remaining
40% complete  - 54 min 33 sec  remaining
45% complete  - 49 min 30 sec  remaining
50% complete  - 46 min 57 sec  remaining
55% complete  - 43 min 42 sec  remaining
60% complete  - 39 min 57 sec  remaining
65% complete  - 36 min 1 sec  remaining
70% complete  - 30 min 27 sec  remaining
75% complete  - 24 min 27 sec  remaining
80% complete  - 19 min 16 sec  remaining
85% complete  - 14 min 44 sec  remaining
90% complete  - 9 min 59 sec  remaining
95% complete  - 5 min 16 sec  remaining
100% complete  - 0 min 1 sec remaining
Reading back marker blocks...
5% complete - 0 min 19 sec  remaining
10% complete - 0 min 18 sec  remaining
15% complete - 0 min 17 sec  remaining
20% complete - 0 min 20 sec  remaining
25% complete - 0 min 18 sec  remaining
30% complete - 0 min 17 sec  remaining
35% complete - 0 min 15 sec  remaining
40% complete - 0 min 14 sec  remaining
45% complete - 0 min 14 sec  remaining
50% complete - 0 min 12 sec  remaining
55% complete - 0 min 11 sec  remaining
60% complete - 0 min 10 sec  remaining
65% complete - 0 min 9 sec  remaining
70% complete - 0 min 8 sec  remaining
75% complete - 0 min 6 sec  remaining
80% complete - 0 min 5 sec  remaining
85% complete - 0 min 4 sec  remaining
90% complete - 0 min 3 sec  remaining
95% complete - 0 min 2 sec  remaining
Test took 6641 seconds.

Device quick test was OK    *** PASSED ***

NOTE: Drive filesystem has been erased - please partition and format it, and then test with H2TESTW for thorough test.

INFO: This device is classed as a Removable Disk by Windows.
Unplug and re-connect the drive, then reformat it using Windows or RMPrepUSB.

However, the card isn't exactly usable. It's super slow. Like 10's of seconds to copy a sub 200k file to the card. A CDM benchmark literally was 0.000 for all the tests using a 50MB test amount.

 

[LunarMist]

Maybe this is why I didn't receive the stands yet. :lol:
Do you know where your package is?

 

[Stereodude]

Do you know where your package is?

Yep, ready to be delivered back to B&H on Monday.

 

[LunarMist]

Yep, ready to be delivered back to B&H on Monday.

That micro SD card? It would float away.

 

[Stereodude]

That micro SD card? It would float away.

Still, I decided to use UPS rather than carrier pigeon or attaching it to a helium balloon.

 

[ddrueding]

We missed the 15th birthday of SF, but yay!

 

[LunarMist]

We missed the 15th birthday of SF, but yay!

:b-day:

I missed the first year due to the SR.