The Computer Thread

People have said that about every new technology since the dawn of time.

First it was books, then it was the Television, now it is the Internet.

Well, Facebook did bring a lot of stupidity to the surface.

Nothing infuriates me more than taking a look at the comment section and seeing all the vicious bile, bigotry and ignorance being spread. Sure it is on the internet but behind every post there is an actual person behind that, spouting all that bullshit.

Twitter and Facebook worst contribution was giving the idiots a platform to spread their bullshit. Otherwise things like the flat earth believers, anti-vaxxers, alt-righters, rape/crime/bigotry apologists wouldn't have the means to reach so may people.

Same argument was made for Radio and TV though.

People will always be dumb assholes, and have always been dumb assholes. ._.;

Each leap in technology just makes it easier each time.

It's gotten to the point where I avoid looking at comments sections on all but the most innocuous things. And even then I sometimes see really offensive and stupid shit.

The biggest downside of the Internet is the way it's enabled the Dunning Kruger Effect on a massive scale.

edited 12th Dec '17 6:51:24 PM by M84

Makes me glad I don't use Facebook and only use Twitter to follow a few people that I know.

TBH, I never saw the appeal of either. I've never used my Facebook account for anything, never opened a Twitter account, never used Snapchat, Instagram, etc.

...Does this make me a hipster?

I just use twitter to follow artists I like, (it is where most Japanese artists share there work).... and dispite my defense of it, I personally very much dislike Facebook and the like.

....

So if your a hipster I am too.

To be honest, I would have avoided Twitter entirely, but a few close friends of mine use it plus some furry artists only post their art on Twitter, so I kinda had little choice.

...So does this mean I should switch to horn-rimmed glasses and start wearing plaid?

The primary issue with "self-publication" sites, be they Facebook, You Tube, Blogspot, or whatever, is that they bypass the editorial process that has traditionally filtered the junk out for the mass market. Sturgeon's Law has always existed, but publishers acting as the gatekeepers can prune out the worst of it before it hits shelves. There's no such process for these sites; in fact, they explicitly avert it.

I use social media, but I don't obsess over it. It has its value as long as you maintain appropriate skepticism.

edited 13th Dec '17 5:42:25 AM by Fighteer

I don't use facebook more than following a very close group of friends and mostly to follow news websites.

Though, the bile fascination and using it to understand what drives people to be jerks or show their unhinged prejudice can be revealing if you want to understand how the minds of other people work.

I barely use Facebook sometimes I would post there to communicate with friends.

How do guys merge two partitions to together into one single harddrive? I am trying to refomat an old XP computer so that I can sell it off/recycle to someone else to use that new one.

If you don't want to keep the data, just delete the second partition and expand the first one.

How do I do that without breaking the machine?

Without using a hammer to select the options for one.

It's disk management or something in Windows. In the hardware part of the Control Panel. Just make sure you're deleting the partition without the Windows folder and it's good.

This, if you are using Windows 7 or newer you can also just hit the Windows-button and then type in "Disk Management".

It can happen that expanding the C: drive with the freed up space of the other partition does not work. This tool helped me with that, it can merge partitions in situations where the Windows disk management doesn't.(though try it with Windows' tool first)

edited 22nd Dec '17 8:49:41 PM by Kiefen

Does anyone know where they sell recovery discs for old computers? I am looking for one for an old Compaq Presario 4406rsh.

Ok, for gits and shiggles I started looking around at upgrade options for my current hardware... which isn't very "current" even not considering "current" in computer terms, dating back to 2013.^note See Weird Al's "All About the Pentiums", and its lines "I have a new computer with the clocks, that rocks/but it was obsolete before I opened the box" Looking at the choices, I have no idea what's good and what isn't.

Current system, for the record:

• AS Rock 970 Extreme 4
• AMD FX-6300
• 16GB DDR3 1333 RAM
• EVGA GeForce GTX 750 Ti (2GB GDDR5)
• Samsung EVO 120GB SDD (primary drive, data drive is a Maxtor 320GB HDD)
• Windows 7 64-bit

Other than "please don't bankrupt me" (read: aiming for under US$500, the more "under" the better) and preferring to stick with AMD chips, I have no idea of where to start. Any suggestions?

edited 28th Dec '17 8:10:09 AM by Nohbody

Check out Logical Increments. They've got some highlights for end of year sales too.

For that price, honestly, you'd have a hard time making a major improvement anywhere—a new CPU means a new motherboard and most likely, sticking to the idea of a better but cheap CPU, you'd end up with one needing DDR 4 RAM.

Honestly, the site above has a good breakdown of it, but I'd also advise comparing any possible new GPU with what you might buy on here for a general idea of how much improvement it might actually be.

Personally, my advice would be to see how much it would cost to get 16GB of DDR 4 RAM, a Ryzen-compatible motherboard, and a 1TB HDD (and make sure the motherboard has 3+ SATA ports) or the like to expand storage. Then factor in the cost of a new windows license, or even just upgrading to 10—the license key is motherboard-tied once installed, so a new MB means new drivers. Then just get the best Ryzen CPU you can—probably the 1500X or 1600X. You've got the case and peripherals, which should really help.

Leave upgrading the GPU until later. The 750ti is fine, and you don't need to replace the GPU with everything else. Better to do that at a later point when you can budget more just for graphics and get a bigger boost.

I'm thinking about future upgrades and needed some info. Right now I have an AMD 8350 fx for my cpu and an nvidia 1060 for the gpu. 16 GB of ram is installed. Let's say I go for a 1070, would I get a significant boost or do I have a bottleneck that would hold me back?

CPU.

1060-1070 wouldn't be a huge upgrade. At this point, what's going to be limiting you in normal operation—before the GPU—is going to be the number of CPU calls that have to be made alongside running whatever else you might be using. Direct X 12 helps a bit, but that's not widely supported and only available through Windows 10—though it's starting to show up. The CPU will be particularly limiting in something like the Total War games, where there's lots and lots of things on screen moving at any one time.

So you'd need to replace the CPU, Motherboard, RAM (new motherboards and CPUs are intended for DDR 4, so you'd not be able to use the old RAM due to slot incompatibilities) to really get a distinct upgrade.

That's what I figured. Thanks!