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The Tech Help Thread

Discussion in 'Technical Board' started by rei, Oct 19, 2009.

  1. Binary

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    Ask away. I know some stuff.
     
  2. SouthernIdiot

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    My Chromebook is currently running OS version 112. It has never updated to 113 and now 114 is on the way. I've manually checked and it says the computer is up to date. I find this rather odd. Can updates be model specific?

    It's a new model btw. It's supposed to receive updates until June 2030. So that's not the issue.
     
  3. SouthernIdiot

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    Nevermind, I found a link and it does vary by model. 112 is current for the model I have. I guess it comes down to hardware requirements.
     
  4. downndirty

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    Is there a simply usb-powered string light that I can plug into my tv, so that when the tv is on, it's backlit.

    For fuck's sakes, everything on Amazon requires an app, bluetooth, connects to Google/Amazon/Apple/NASA/the proletariat.

    I just want the tv to look purdy from behind.
     
  5. Binary

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    If you literally just want lighting and not proper "tv backlighting" (which could be sync'd with the picture to provide scene-appropriate color), you can search Amazon for "usb fairy lights." They're super common/cheap:
    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C283FR98/

    Only catch is you'll have to make sure your TV's USB port is decent; lots of TVs output only the bare minimum power because they're only there to power a firmware upgrade USB drive or something.

    Have you considered a tramp stamp?
     
  6. jdoogie

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    I know more than a few people here on the board either have, or have asked about them, but Garmin has a bunch of their various watches on sale for Prime Day today/tomorrow, in case someone was waiting for a deal.
     
  7. wexton

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    Looking at getting a new 4k tv. Most places around here sell samsung. But there are 4 different lines. OLED, QLED, Neo QLED, Crystal HD. Anyone have one, and why did you choose it over the others?
     
  8. Binary

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    I'm not a huge TV guy but just some comments on display technology...

    OLED is generally going to be the best pure picture quality. Blacks are incredibly black and colors are very saturated - OLEDs don't have backlights, so when an OLED pixel is displaying black, it's actually off. However, OLEDs can suffer from burn-in, so they may not be the best choice if you either leave certain channels on a lot or if you want your TV to last 15 years. Also they're dimmer so they may suffer in extremeny bright rooms.

    QLED is pretty much just normal LEDs with some fancier tech.

    Neo QLED are mini-LEDs. These will be better than QLED because mini-LEDs can turn off their individual backlights, but since they are still backlit they will still likely not be quite as good as the best OLEDs. But they will be brighter and have no burn-in.

    I have no idea what Crystal HD is, sounds like branding bullshit.
     
  9. Nettdata

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    TV’s with medical healing properties?
     
  10. Juice

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    It's UHD for the poors who can't afford QLED.
     
  11. Rush-O-Matic

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    The new Microsoft agreement says,
    That doesn't seem like "my content." What are they trying to protect here?
     
  12. Binary

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    The interaction with (and subsequent output from) AI services can be personal. If I ask Bing to help me understand the interactions between my herpes medication and my crabs medication, it's probably good if that output isn't considered Microsoft's property to share.
     
  13. Rush-O-Matic

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    Totally agree! Thank you! I was misreading the notice in that part, as if it was implying it wasn't protected as private, due to being generated by AI.

    Also, sorry about your herpes and crabs.
     
  14. malisbad

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    You can run a fairly reasonably trained LLM locally on your Apple silicon machine provided it has a sufficiently large hard disk. You can further keep it away from the spais by just air gapping that PC from the internet.
     
  15. wexton

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    My inlaws want to start digitizing all there old photo's. Does anyone have one that they want to recommend?
     
  16. Nettdata

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    Send them off to a professional service... worth every penny. If they try it themselves and don't know what they are doing it'll turn out shitty. Ask me how I know.
     
  17. Binary

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    It definitely depends on the quantity and the budget. As Nett said, a professional service is often worth the price; there's a lot more than just stuffing a photo into a scanner and hitting go. Scanning slides? Negatives? Does this stuff need to be cleaned? Color corrected? Are you willing to rotate every photo that got put in slightly crooked? Crop everything? Are you aware of things like JPG compression and color space? It's a pain.

    My partner did this for her dad and it was so. many. hours. of work, and even at that there were things we didn't know in the beginning, so lots of the slides have a stray hair or some dirt on them.
     
  18. Rush-O-Matic

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    Co-sign. We have a local shop that used to be the place for cameras and gear, passport photos, developing slides, good film and all that jazz. One thing they transitioned to in the digital age was converting old photos and putting them on CD/DVD/flash drive. Much cheaper than expected.
     
  19. downndirty

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    I'm curious what this runs, on like an order of magnitude. My mom's got probably 3-4 shoe boxes full of pics, and this would be an incredible gift this year.
     
  20. Nettdata

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    Dad had 4 shoe boxes full of old slides. He tried a slide scanner but it sucked ass as it came out way too grainy and dusty. (Probably operator error).

    He then set up an assembly process where he set up his slide projector and screen in his dark office... would show the slide, then take a pic of it with his DSLR on a tripod, then import the digital pic.

    It sucked.

    I then paid for a shoe box to be done as a Christmas gift one year... wrapped up the box of slides with the DVD of digitized versions, and it was night and day. The quality was astounding, and we're talking 1970's slides.

    He then took the remaining 3 shoe boxes out to get professionally done.