The Skeptics Guide to the Universe Forum

Quote from: gcason on September 25, 2023, 05:02:36 PM

Quote from: Desert Fox on September 25, 2023, 04:51:49 PM

Quote from: gcason on September 25, 2023, 04:32:53 PMJust some silly LED light circle around one of the fans. Totally pointless, like putting ground effects on a minivan.    I'm quite a bit more educated than the public at large, so I knew it wasn't any kind of gaming machine. But, for the price, it was good for what we needed.

I agree that some people could be tricked by the term "Gaming Machine." But, Farmville is a game, right?

I assume the i7 already had an SSD as the boot drive? If so, one cheap upgrade is to double its. If it has a single stick of 8 Gb, increasing to 16 GB also make it run in dual channel mode and simply 16 GB of ram helps a lot. A bit more expensive, assuming that it is a full height case, but you could put a GTX 1070 in there. Can get them on eBay for about $100. There are also power adapters that you can turn sata power into video card power output.

Yes. That would help get it closer to a gaming system. But, it's about 33% the footprint of a full tower and we bought it to use as a mini-van, so to speak, so it's good to go. I do have a for real gaming machine, albeit a middle of the road one we discussed in the Everyday Driver thread.

I agree with you that people get tricked into buying these low-end refurbs as gaming machines. They definitely are going to be a disappointment. 

One should note that even older i7 CPUs are pretty damn capable even today. I know that all of the new Tomb Raiders, Horizon: Zero Dawn, and even Assassin Creed: Odyssey can be run on a 4th gen laptop i7 and GTX 980m (4 GB) decently.  Usually can be run at high settings. Very high and ultra are usually issues however. I know because that the hardware of my old gaming laptop. Still have it as a backup.

Problem is that most I have seen are not i7 but less powerful CPUs and not paired with anything equal to a GTX 980m, which is a laptop GPU so not up to the desktop GTX 980 performance. 

 

Quote from: gcason on September 25, 2023, 04:32:53 PMJust some silly LED light circle around one of the fans. Totally pointless, like putting ground effects on a minivan.    I'm quite a bit more educated than the public at large, so I knew it wasn't any kind of gaming machine. But, for the price, it was good for what we needed.

I agree that some people could be tricked by the term "Gaming Machine." But, Farmville is a game, right?

I assume the i7 already had an SSD as the boot drive? If so, one cheap upgrade is to double its. If it has a single stick of 8 Gb, increasing to 16 GB also make it run in dual channel mode and simply 16 GB of ram helps a lot. A bit more expensive, assuming that it is a full height case, but you could put a GTX 1070 in there. Can get them on eBay for about $100. There are also power adapters that you can turn sata power into video card power output.

Quote from: gcason on September 25, 2023, 11:49:59 AMI bought one for my wife a couple of years ago, but I knew it wasn't a gaming machine. My wife does some casual games on her iPad, so the mini-desktop is for day-to-day internet use such as banking, shopping, videos sometimes, etc. It was about $350 or so for a lower-end i7 CPU, decent onboard GFX for her needs, and 8 gigs of RAM. Great for what we needed, but would have been very disappointed in it as a gaming system.

Did that one have the extra LED "Bling?"
I am not against selling older computers but just mislabeling them as gaming machines?

These computers are not just sold on eBay but are sold on Amazon and Walmart.com. These are old Dell, HP, and Lenovo workstations that get a face lift. They are painted pretty colors, given RGB, etc. I have seen 3rd, 4th, 5th gen i3 or i5 CPUs. In some cases Celeron CPUs. Often their hard drives are NOT replaced by SSDs. If given a graphics card, they are often given anemic graphic cards that are no longer supported. Not even something like a GTX 970 or so.

They have effectively no upgrade path with the case unable to take a different motherboard, the motherboard itself unable to take any new CPU, and the power supplies often unable to be upgraded. Some are half height, which vastly limits what graphic cards you can put in the desktop.

I think they are pretty much a scam. They don't make clear what they actually are and sold as "Gaming" PCs. They are not what I would call a "gaming PC." Best they can do are eSports titles are ultra low settings. My guess is that they get some parent or grandparent buying then or a kid for their first computer. Without the pretty RGB, buying them on eBay for example, you will likely save several hundred dollars. Heard cases where something might be under $100 without the "refresh" but around $300 with the "refresh."

Any personal experience with buying one accidentally yourself or know anyone who did? Also, while I consider reusing computers to be the ultimate recycle, shoudl there really be some rules that let people know what they are actually buying?

Quote from: daniel1948 on September 24, 2023, 08:31:23 PMOf course it's not an actual logical rule.

I just think that G.W. Bush was a moron but not a psychopath.

Chaney?

Quote from: Harry Black on September 24, 2023, 05:24:37 PMI dont dismiss it but what would it change in a functional sense?

If we ever get such evidence, we might see the first presidential execution😍 (and to be very clear, I think multiple people from that administration should be executed from a moral perspective, regardless of whether or not they conspired to let an attack happen.)

If they had hoped for an attack, I dont think they dared to imagine anything like what happened.

With our government, who knows. . . . Might pin a medal on him.

Republicans have a habit of dismantling infrastructure that is there to protect us. Trump dismantle pandemic response teams which I don't think he wanted a pandemic. He is just a moron.  That said, I think we can at least argue that we tend to be less safe under republican leadership.

Quote from: Harry Black on September 24, 2023, 03:46:24 PMI dont think there is any conflict though or any need for a crisis.
Is it possible that they actively planned to create holes in national security in the hopes that an attack might happen?
Absolutely. The number of people required to be involved in that is actually quite small.
Is there any direct evidence that such discussions took place?
...not really.

I agree but I honestly think it is probable enough that we cannot just dismiss the possibility.

Quote from: Quetzalcoatl on September 22, 2023, 01:52:48 PMThe idea that the Bush administration hoped that there would be an attack is a conspiracy theory. Maybe not a classical 9/11 conspiracy theory (that would postulate that they knew in advance that it would happen or that they orchestrated it themselves), but a conspiracy theory nonetheless. There is also no evidence for it, and it is incredibly stupid.

The sympathy expressed for it in this thread is yet another sign that this forum isn't really a skeptic forum anymore, but a forum dominated by conspiracy theorists, denialists, and ideologues.

Part of my original argument when I started this thread was that we cannot dismiss widespread conspiracies without at least examining them closely. This is what I wrote:

I am having something of a crisis of skepticism with respect to conspiracies

Of course there is the long discussed conspiracies where police cover for each other. We only really show now with video. There are also conspiracies where it appears almost certain that the courts are covering for bad law enforcement, allowing an innocent person to be incarcerated or even executed to protect the police and prosecutors involved instead of doing the right thing.

I just recently found yet another layer on this conspiracy. I was listening to a podcast that discussed the murder of Irene Garza. The murderer, a Catholic Priest, was protected on multiple levels where the church protected him, the police obscured the case, and the prosecutor also obscured the case. The church conspired with them in order to protect the church. There were rumors and stories but nothing concrete, just as we do with other conspiracies.  It was not until the Boston Globe released their expose on the Catholic Church that some of the other priests involved broke their silence that any movement occurred.  Even then, decades after the murder, When the family pressed to get the case reopened, the DA refused.

The case also does verify the idea in spotlight that the Catholic Church has special monasteries for troubled priests.

I verified with other sources and it appears as if the podcast I listened to described the situation accurately and honestly.

Do we need to put to bed the idea that wide ranging conspiracies do not exist?

If a group of police, priests, judges, and prosecutors can all cover for a priest murdering a woman in order to protect the church, then why can we not conceive of half a dozen politicians and political appointees covering for a plan to allow for terrorist attacks. It might involve less people than the January 6th plot to steal the presidency in fact.

Quote from: daniel1948 on September 22, 2023, 06:48:02 PM

Quote from: Desert Fox on September 22, 2023, 01:22:44 PMWill it automatically copy my 3.5+ GB of videos?

If you're talking about migrating an old iMac to a new one, yes, it will migrate all your files. (I think maybe it will let you exclude files if you want to; I don't remember because I wanted to migrate everything.)

But isn't 3.5 GB only about one movie?

My computer tells me that I'm using 180 GB of storage. Most of that would have been migrated over from the old iMac.

Sorry I meant TB

Will it automatically copy my 3.5+ TB of videos?

Quote from: gcason on September 20, 2023, 10:16:06 AMThe main issue with mine is the video card. It wasn't top-of-the-line when I got it, but it's still pretty decent.

Honestly it is still a pretty good card.
I had a GTX 980 prior to the RX 6800.
If I had the RTX 3070 Super, I would likely have not upgraded.

Quote from: gcason on September 19, 2023, 02:40:46 PMIt's a desktop about 3 years old, but still getting the job done. Plays all the games I want it to, but not always on the highest settings.

Processor        AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 8-Core Processor 3.80 GHz
Installed RAM    16.0 GB
GFX Card         Nvidia RTX 2070 Super
Storage           2.5 Terabytes

My build last year has a 5800x and still one of the more powerful CPUs out there.
Nothing to complain about.   I honestly play almost every game on its highest setting although I have more ram and a more powerful video card (RX 6800)

Quote from: arthwollipot on September 17, 2023, 08:29:20 PMThere are no deer where I am, but I went for a long drive the other day and ended up having to dodge a heap of kangaroos, and in a couple of instances, wallabies, which is pretty unusual. Roos are bloody everywhere, but wobblies are usually extremely shy and don't come near the roads very much.

Deer are a similar danger to kangaroos as far as hitting them while driving. I often see deer appear from the forest in the middle of the night. 

Quote from: CarbShark on September 17, 2023, 01:01:49 PMYes, both metal.  I have both.  The air is much lighter and thinner, it also has less memory and storage and a weaker, slower processor. Unless youre doing high end video and graphics you may not notice.

I thought all new apple computers used the Apple M2 CPU?

Quote from: daniel1948 on September 17, 2023, 09:17:16 AM

Quote from: jt512 on September 17, 2023, 12:46:27 AM

Quote from: Desert Fox on September 17, 2023, 12:26:26 AMIs the "air" a lot lighter?

Yeah. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but the Air is incredibly light and thin. The Pro is heavier and maybe $200 more for the same amount of storage and memory. I'm wondering what the advantages of the latter are.

From someone who knows absolutely nothing about these things (but when has that ever stopped someone from commenting on the internet?):

Maybe the extra $200 is because the Pro is more sturdy? The "incredibly light and thin" machine might be a lot more fragile.

That could be? Does the "pro" have a metal body while the "lite" has a plastic body?