The Computer Thread

I have a large HP ENVY, cost north of $1,000. And it. Was. Worth. It.

Intel and Nvidia do play well together. My old HP lappy was an AMD machine and all kinds of graphics issues would happen. It ran hot and nosy.

My new laptop is an Intel C Ore i7 with Nvida GEFORCE 940M. Runs like a dream, graphics are nice and no more video issues.

HP is very strict on their subcontractors. The only bum laptop I got from them lasted 3.5 years before it died. My first laptop was dropped and the casing cracked - it still ran. My second laptop (the bum one) was moved 11 times, flew on a C-17, flew to Korea, was carried in a backpack to and from open WI-FI ports, and still lasted 3.5 years. Lappy #3 had a broken DVD drive, ran hot and is still running - giving it away to my cousin. My current laptop is awesome.

HP - they make good kit.

All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be a case on The First 48

As long as you don't cheap out and buy the least-expensive model; but then again, that's an issue with almost all brands.

My Core i5 and motherboard came earlier than expected, so I spent most of my day installing it and Windows. Holy shit, this is so much better than AMD, why did I even bother with the Athlon? This processor idles cooler than the Athlon did under a Cooler Master Hyper TX 3 on stock cooling, and doesn't get nearly as warm under load either. Now to just upgrade my GPU soon, I'm still using my GTX 950 for the time being.

Well that was weird. My computer's web connections were timing out to just about everything that wasn't Facebook, Google, and TV Tropes. Eventually I came up with trying to disconnect from my wifi and reconnect, and that did it.

I've had issues before where my computer couldn't connect to the internet at all when my phone could (on local network) that I've fixed like that, but I've never found it locked out of everything but the main servers I connect to (I didn't try Tumblr but Tumblr probably would've worked too).

Fresh-eyed movie blog

I ran into similar problems yesterday and today. Rebooting my router was a temp fix but didn't solve the problem entirely. Finally I called my ISP and they said that Windows 10 computers were having issues connecting to their network and should reboot. That fixed it. /shrug

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Switch to Google's DNS. As much as google loves to snoop, their DNS is fair. I've had issues with random DNS's either taking to long or doing sneaky re-directs. One tired to send me to Myspace when I first got on Facebook. Since then I've always switched and never had issues.

All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be a case on The First 48

That's not a DNS issue; it's a routing issue. The system was simply refusing all traffic to certain sites. Some sort of ISP - operating system configuration issue that was solved by rebooting everything.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Well yuck, given that most are going to switch to Windows 10 in the coming months does your ISP have a plan?

All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be a case on The First 48

That I don't know. All I know is that I called the service number and got a recorded message telling me to reboot my PC if it was running Windows 10. I assume that most PCs running Win10 will reboot at some point, so it won't be a permanent issue.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

So just now I looked into the Windows Media Player settings and found an option to change what columns are displayed in the playlist view. This is great because I have a lot of files where the title doesn't match the filename and I'd rather see the filename.

The thing is, after I set the columns to what I wanted, the display only updated for the playlist I was looking at and (apparently) one other playlist. The rest show the same as they always did. I'm not sure why Microsoft imagined that I would not want those settings to automatically apply to every playlist, but in any case, how can I make that happen? I really don't want to go through and adjust each one manually.

I checked Google but the Web seems to have absolutely jack shit on this particular problem.

edited 21st Dec '16 1:12:47 AM by Meklar

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The A.I. revolution may be closer than we think. Google Translate's latest iteration showed self-learning improvement over the course of a single day that was greater than in its previous incarnation's entire lifespan.

This post may have been written by an AI. Now that's some Paranoia Fuel for you.

edited 21st Dec '16 6:20:30 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Does it still mangle the syntax?

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

A bit, but it's to the point where only a few little quirks give away that it's a computer doing the translation.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

R.I.P. Google Translate Sings.

From what I gather, the fact that so much improvement happened in a single day is not because their ML algorithm has learned something new, but because they chose that day to switch over from their older algorithm to the new ML-based algorithm. The actual rate of improvement of the ML algorithm itself may not be that great (indeed, it could very well already be close to its own limits).

It's great that Google has been improving Google Translate, but let's not read too much into this.

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Would it still be worth pursuing previous-generation Radeon graphics cards? I'm looking into getting a Radeon R9 380X to replace my GeForce GTX 950, especially since prices for even the RX 470 have skyrocketed again due to short supply. I know the 380X uses quite a bit more power than its newer counterparts, but from what I've seen, it still seems to be a lot quicker than my 950.

edit: Whoo, got an unexpected Christmas windfall; looks like I'll be getting that RX 470 after all.

edited 26th Dec '16 1:56:04 AM by DemonSharkKisame

Huh.My PC has started completely shutting down at random intervals.Sometimes it takes a minute,or a few hours.Any ideas as to why?

Secret Signature

Usually that can be traced to overheating. Open the case and blow out all the dust you find in there. See if any fans aren't working and replace them.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I'll try that as well as I can.Bit of a walking techbane here.

Secret Signature

Have you checked your eventlog? It might tell you what exactly happened during the crash.

Kinda hard when it crashes rather quickly.Seems to take longer to crash if I leave it some time to breathe,will check it then.Thanks.

Secret Signature

While it's likely overheating, I would also (if it's a desktop, not a laptop) look inside and make sure all plugs are secure (24-pin ATX, 4/8-pin CPU power in particular); I had a previous build that would randomly crash while playing Overwatch, and it turned out the 24-pin ATX power connector had worked itself loose somehow.

edited 26th Dec '16 10:48:37 AM by DemonSharkKisame

Got my new graphics card a few days ago (chose the XFX Radeon RX 470 RS XXX OC Edition), and speaking as someone who previously only used either Intel integrated or Nvidia graphics: Radeon is where it's at right now. This 470 runs everything I've thrown at it on at least High settings at 60+ FPS at 1080p, and I've yet to see any problems regarding heat/noise/bugs, something that I cannot say is true lately for Nvidia (You Tube would constantly lock up on my old GTX 950 due to Nvidia's currently-crap drivers, for instance). I can even record Overwatch using OBS Studio (I've yet to try Radeon ReLive, but I hear it's really good) and maintain solid 60 FPS video.

So I'm having issues with Autosizer.

Undertale is supposed to display at a 640x480 resolution. My computer by default stretches it out to fit the screen and Steam has no options to fix that. That leaves Autosizer.

Ideally the screenshot should look something like this.◊ But even with Autosizer up the screenshot looks like this.◊

The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.

Your display adapter settings should have an aspect ratio control on it if you are on a laptop. Set your resolution to 800x600 and explore around. If you are using a monitor, you only need to twiddle your monitor settings.

Anyway to do that without changing the resolution for the whole computer?

The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.