The Spam Thread!

[huckleberrypie]

And I thought that the ISP situation here in the Philippines is already pathetic enough as it is.

[cpd2009]

Apartment update...

No satellite dishes allowed, just cable TV. Which is fine, since I should be able to drop DSL and switch over to cable internet without much fuss. Expected move-in date is at the end of June. I will see if I can get an internet package added to my current package about a week or two before my move-in so I can have the modem installed either on move in day, or later that week. There is a community center nearby that is associated with the local college, and has free Wifi for guests that is secure using an Aruba Networks gateway.

But oddly, today, I get a card in my mailbox about T-Mobile offering a new "home internet" service utilizing their 5G network. Pamphlet claims $60 a month with autopay and promises no price hikes. Checked availability, and I am in the service area. You sign up for their service, receive their little Wifi gateway device and download a phone app to manage the device and your account. But how well would their 5G/4G service compare to 50mbps cable internet, or even my current DSL service?

One last thing... the apartment doesn't allow satellite dish TV. Figures.

[cpd2009]

So last year, I bought a cheap "USB 3.0" hub for my first iMac. It was limited to USB 2 speeds, but it worked fine with anything I plugged into it.

Now, with the new iMac, the same hub is acting strange. While most of my devices still work fine, my 64GB USB 3 flash drive doesn't get recognized when plugged into the hub itself. The drive will mount when connected directly to one of the iMac's USB 3 ports so I can safely assume there is some issue with the new iMac not taking a liking to my existing USB hub.

To make matters worse, this supposedly "USB 3.0' hub is actually USB 2.0, according to the System Information entry for the particular hub.

I plan on replacing the hub soon, but stay away from cheap no-name USB 3 hubs. They may not be USB 3 at all....

[huckleberrypie]

So last year, I bought a cheap "USB 3.0" hub for my first iMac. It was limited to USB 2 speeds, but it worked fine with anything I plugged into it.

Now, with the new iMac, the same hub is acting strange. While most of my devices still work fine, my 64GB USB 3 flash drive doesn't get recognized when plugged into the hub itself. The drive will mount when connected directly to one of the iMac's USB 3 ports so I can safely assume there is some issue with the new iMac not taking a liking to my existing USB hub.

To make matters worse, this supposedly "USB 3.0' hub is actually USB 2.0, according to the System Information entry for the particular hub.

I plan on replacing the hub soon, but stay away from cheap no-name USB 3 hubs. They may not be USB 3 at all....

Hey, at least you didn't end up with something along the lines of this:

But yeah that's rather deceptive as it claims to be USB3 yet it's indeed USB 2.0.

[cpd2009]

I've seen some YouTube videos that exposed those fake SSDs you can find on Wish or Aliexpress, and the build quality of these can be appalling as you shown above. Was this a drive you encountered or own? I admit, I am very leery to buying flash memory online unless I can know it's coming from a genuine seller of some sort. I've even encountered fake flash being sold in otherwise reputable retail shops.

The next three weeks are going to be rather busy. To prepare for my move, I need to start going through all of my junk. Along the way, I do hope to find some things I have lost such as the battery cover for my incredibly cheapo dollar store camcorder I got for Christmas in 2011. This was the early YouTube era and dollar stores were awash in these cheap camcorders. The video quality is rather awful even for the time, but for the occasional experiment in lo-fi videography, it works well. It still has better quality than a so-called "HD" camcorder the same dollar store sold a year later. It was just a poor quality VGA sensor blown up to 720p. But I digress...

So there will be lots to throw out, lots to recycle, furniture or knick knacks to give away. I will probably be in crazy VHS conversion mode too since I need to get rid of tapes I already transferred, or look through the ones I still have on hand.

This is on top of finalizing the move in date and finding a moving company to help out. The new apartment is in my favor, since it's on the first floor near one of the exit doors. I'm hoping I don't encounter too much noise from the above apartment, but the company I am going to rent from does have great reviews and I also consulted with friends about it and they said the same things. It's in a much better part of town too, so I do hope it all works out in the end.

[cpd2009]

It's already June, and summer feels half over. :/

Some news... I will be purchasing the RAM upgrade for the 2020 iMac this week. It already has two 4GB sticks, so another 4GBx2 will do the trick. While the iMac has been performing well for my artwork and video conversion stuff, web browsing really fills up the swap memory which is probably why DriveDX is reporting 7.8TB written data for the SSD after just a little over a month of use. This is nowhere near as bad as the MI MacBook SSD swap issues, but clearly a RAM upgrade will ease the data writes to the swap space. As for my Macbook, it's coming up to a year since I purchased it, and DriveDX only reports a 2.8TB total written data in just that one year timeframe. My video recordings don't really take up too much space in regards to it's low-compression rate. A six hour master recording (for editing down with AVIDemux) only takes around 25GB space. Not all recordings take six hours, but for most TV movies or specials, one or two hour blocks aren't that hard on the SSD lifespan.

As for my eventual move to my new apartment, making progress on sorting my stuff out, packing up things I won't really use in the next few weeks and setting up the move in date with both a moving company and my cable TV company. I plan on dropping CenturyLink DSL and adding Midco Internet 100 to my existing cable package. It's an additional $49 a month; not to far off from the price I pay for my slow DSL. This particular internet package claims to have 100mbps down/10mbps up. I will arrange installation later on move-in day so my internet access isn't cut off for too long.

[cpd2009]

Windows 11 has leaked on the internet, and there are already hundreds of articles and videos about it.

At first glance, MS is clearly taking more inspiration from Mac OS with the rounded window corners and buttons, and the centered Taskbar icons, along with more frosted glass effects. The new Start menu looks interesting, with no more Live Tiles (which I personally thought were cool) and a place where you can pin frequently used apps. Widgets are also back, but you need a MS account to use them in the leaked beta.

I doubt these changes will be enough for me to move back to PC from Mac, judging how some features like Widgets require an MS account. But I do like how the new Windows icons are becoming less flat and a bit more skeumorphic again. It appears to be a trend in UX design as of late. I initially hated the total flat aspect of Windows 8 and early Windows 10, but grew to accept it. Now icons appear to be getting some sort of dimension again.

But I still miss Windows Aero... and Mac Aqua.

[huckleberrypie]

Windows 11 has leaked on the internet, and there are already hundreds of articles and videos about it.

At first glance, MS is clearly taking more inspiration from Mac OS with the rounded window corners and buttons, and the centered Taskbar icons, along with more frosted glass effects. The new Start menu looks interesting, with no more Live Tiles (which I personally thought were cool) and a place where you can pin frequently used apps. Widgets are also back, but you need a MS account to use them in the leaked beta.

I doubt these changes will be enough for me to move back to PC from Mac, judging how some features like Widgets require an MS account. But I do like how the new Windows icons are becoming less flat and a bit more skeumorphic again. It appears to be a trend in UX design as of late. I initially hated the total flat aspect of Windows 8 and early Windows 10, but grew to accept it. Now icons appear to be getting some sort of dimension again.

But I still miss Windows Aero... and Mac Aqua.

The fact that Microsoft is aggressively pushing for users to sign in using a Live account made me a bit sceptical about Windows 11's reception, especially given the atmosphere of cynicism towards corporations and data privacy. It's no wonder why some have still clung on to Windows 7 despite it being Stone Age tech by now. Either that or just suck it up and use Linux instead.

[cpd2009]

Too bad I have such bad luck with Linux. I have an itch to give it another go on the Dell rig, but then again, it's very fiddly to get BluRay movie playback working with VLC.

Hell, there are still people out there who insist on sticking with Windows XP, using various methods of band-aid "security" to try and ward off cyber attacks. There are various unofficial builds of Firefox for such old systems like "Arctic Fox", also used in some LowEndMac setups.

After being delayed for over a week past due date (thanks USPS), the iMac RAM upgrade has arrived. Swap file usage has decreased to 4 or 5GB from the previous 25+GB. Much less TBW on the SSD. It's starting to appear that 16GB RAM is certainly becoming the de-facto minimum for any computer to perform well, and especially if you want to extend the lifespan of an SSD.

[cpd2009]

Now that's more like it.

I'm moved to my new place, and my internet and cable TV are set up through Midco. I chose the Midco Internet 100 package, which costs around $50 or so per month before modem lease and the existing cable TV fee. It's not too far off from what I was paying for CenturyLink DSL separate. While canceling CenturyLink, I did find out I was getting the 7mbps package, and I could have upgraded to a whopping 10mbps for just $60 per month! What a deal... not.

The difference of 100mbps is amazing. Pages load near instantaneously, and I can only imagine my upload speeds will also be far improved. In fact, I think my mom's old fiber internet was just 25mbps last time I did a speed test at my old home, which was about a year or so ago. Large downloads and OS upgrades will take far less time now.

Speaking of OS upgrades, there is a lot of controversy regarding MS' hardware requirements for Windows 11. Much of the criticism is targeted at the requirement of having an 8th gen Intel CPU or an AMD Zen 2 as the minimum processor needed, and the "need" for a TPM. While most of not all brand new PCs do include TPMs, older refurbs or systems that are still usable either lack the TPM, or run an older gen CPU that MS says won't be compatible.

MS claims this is all for better security, but this reeks of forced obsolescence. A lot of perfectly good PCs will be left out of the Windows 11 update, while Win10 only gets support through 2025. MS really aspires to become like Apple in terms of OS upgrade compatibility.

I will update my Dell rig to Windows 11 once it goes gold. I could try Linux again I guess and see if that weird GPU bug has been fixed, but I have come across compatibility issues running my Steam games via Wine.