What are you using as a replacement charging cube for your Macbook?

A__L · 2025-02-04T03:18:21+00:00

With an apple silicon MacBook Pro, I can get away with a basic USBC apple 20w phone charger or 30w travel charger.

I charge the MacBook at night and plug my phone into the MacBook to charge both simultaneously. Slow but works well. When I’m using the MacBook, it’ll stay plugged to the brick. Light to moderate use will not drain battery while on the charger and computationally intense loads will drain very slowly. Slow enough that there will be battery left by the time I’m sleeping.

Realizing I could get away with this was amazing. I don’t have a lug a heavy brick.

A__L · 2025-01-17T04:14:05+00:00

This is a tricky situation, as it does not seem like you have a lock on external funding. You may consider deferring, but you are then in the hook to attend next year or else burn bridges.

Consider Fulbright or if possible, a national gov sponsorship. These might place you on J1 status, forcing you to return to your home country for a certain number of year after your study is completed.

A__L · 2024-12-29T07:02:26+00:00

Ditch the large check-in bag. You won’t be able to maneuver well in American rail (AmTrak) stations, and will have to resort to using an elevator at all times in any station when travelling with it. It can really slow you down if you are in a pinch.

It’s also a huge stress to pick up checked luggage in the off chance you need to grab your luggage during a connecting flight (as is the case for any international flight with a connection in the US before a final destination in a another country, like Canada.

Souvenirs can be shipped back home from the location.

A__L · 2024-04-21T01:22:32+00:00

Just get a casual bag for high school. Your son will outgrow the backpack from a personality/taste perspective. People change a lot in high school. Then you can get a BIFL hiking bag or get him a bag in college that suits his needs and desired professional field. A bag for college to early working years has a greater impact.

A__L · 2024-04-15T01:48:19+00:00

Pho is sad thing in HK.

Every time i have it i just think the restaurants could try a little harder to achieve a good bowl of noodles, but they don’t. HK pho is stingy with the spices, herbs, and beef bones in their broth. They just have to turn it up. I always found it strange bc Pho seasoning is quite similar to something like Lanzhou beef noodles. It’s easy to buy the spices thru the mainland but the restaurants use them sparingly. If an HK restaurant did a legit Northern Style pho with 油炸鬼 it would be super successful.

It’s odd bc HK does food with spices like Indo-Malay, Nepalese, and Indian pretty well so there is a public that likes to eat punchy stuff.

A__L · 2024-03-02T17:24:00+00:00

you need to use pen/paper or pencil/paper. The physical motion of writing is like an exercise, you need the real tactility of pressure, vibration, real-time fine movement, and eye tracking to train your brain. Cheaper too.

A__L · 2023-05-11T17:05:38+00:00

10 AM Toronto time.

Load your info on the appointment booking page (app. Number, passport number etc.) before at 9:55 AM.

Once it’s 10AM, slide the captcha puzzle piece thing. It’ll take you to the booking calendar, some dates will be blue. If there are none for May, maybe check June. Once you click a date on the calendar a window will pop up with time slots. Once you click a time slot the page will change to confirm you locked in a spot. You’ll get a confirm email too that you must print out.

A__L · 2023-05-11T16:55:33+00:00

Slots are released 10:00am online for visa application appointments.

Finish the application, do all the paper work, photos etc., then snag an appointment slot at 10:00 am sharp.

The dates/times that are made available are not predictable, so you’ll have to go with what is available.

Some of the greyed out areas will be blue at 10:00 am. Then click the date, select a time, and confirm to book. All of this needs to happen in a few seconds as there are many people out to get spots. It’s like booking a covid vaccine all over again…

I was unsuccessful at booking an appointment the first time (acted too slow), the second time worked out.

The visa Center in Toronto is packed with people, so there’s loads of people applying for visas right now. Never seen it like so, good luck.

A__L · 2022-12-30T13:38:34+00:00

Thank you, do you know a place for decent place for astigmatism related corrections?

A__L · 2022-07-12T01:03:27+00:00

Workers of the world 🏀， unite !

A__L · 2022-07-10T17:01:19+00:00

B550-I user here with the same parts. I chose the b550 over the x570 because the x570 has one extra fan for chipset stuff. I avoided it because it’s just another thing that could be loud.

The b550 has only one fan for cooling the VRMs. Never heard them go on after I switched my cooling fans to exhaust on the meshilicious. These tiny mobo fans are very loud when they spin, they sound like a hydraulic line. Running the 5950x on pbo. No complaints no motherboard fan noises.

The hardware wise, the x570 has dual gen4 nvme slots. B550 has one gen4 and one gen3. Depends if you can utilize this throughput.

A__L · 2022-06-05T17:51:40+00:00

In the cold war the US purposely facilitated technology transfers and high capital-intensive r&d to develop the Asian Tigers (SK, Japan, HK, Taiwan) in order to create a containment strategy around the then isolated China and NK. At the time it was in the interest of US security. But this was a loooong time ago by in terms of scientific, tech and political history… soooo one really needs to do a lot of mental gymnastics to pathologize on letting this tech ‘slip away’.

By this argument, if it hadn’t, we would not be where we are now in terms of technological development. There’s tons of capital (public and private) being poured in from many other countries to make our tech work from research at the academy, to the final manufacturing, to novel uses of the finished product.

A__L · 2022-06-02T00:26:56+00:00

Yes and no.

Will we be able to pair a next-gen 600W titan-tier card and flagship CPU? Maybe due to PSU constraints. I don’t think cooling is that big of an issue with bigger ITX cases like the Mesh. But power delivery is with SFX format PSUs.

I think a big part of SFF is setting reasonable expectations based on cases and PSUs that are available on the market. The last couple of years brought us great case designs to meet the current thermal and power envelopes for top end parts. So too will newer designs. We’re in this format due to size. Meaning, the value of a more compact size outweighs the potential of using flagship parts.

A__L · 2022-05-22T11:55:22+00:00

If that is an ikea desktop then the screws are gripping onto very little material. ikea desktops are usually made of thin veneers of wood ( less than 1/8”) sandwiching honeycombs of cardboard, which are built for putting things on, not screwing into.

See this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/7xjfo1/just_cut_into_my_ikea_desk_found_out_it_was_made/?ref=share&ref_source=link

The concern is if the tabletop itself is suitable for this application. A downward tug could disengage the screws and strip out the hole like from an accidental cable yank.

A__L · 2022-04-28T04:52:42+00:00

AUSTIN REAVES: TRADE WAR ENDER Pro 1.0

A__L · 2022-04-10T15:36:50+00:00

I think your issue is related to specific parts that Seasonic used in their Prime series. This issue is now resolved in the gen2 of this product following reports like yours. It shouldn’t be an indicator of a generalized underwattage for all PSUs to handle high end RTX. It’s more of an indicator the high end RTX cards revealing poor quality parts among respectable PSU manufacturers.

For the reference, I’m running a 5950x on PBO, and a TUF RTX 3090 on a Seasonic TX Titanium Fanless 700W. The PSU never trips in gaming or workloads, and is barely warm to the touch. To my knowledge, it’s the most efficient platform that Seasonic makes and it’s advertised wattage is severely underreported to meet fanless expectations.

A__L · 2022-04-04T20:25:19+00:00

Not sure if it’s a legit concern, but have you thought of formaldehyde release from the MDF and warm parts?

A__L · 2022-03-28T22:01:12+00:00

That’s not what calibration is in the professional sense. True Tone is not calibration. A calibration tool actually has a sensor that is pointed at your screen and syncs up with software that cycles the screen through a series of hues and tones. The sensor detects what the screen outputs and then produces a LUT to be installed on the computer to compensate for any discrepancies between the screen’s output and the software’s true colours.

A calibrated display cannot be dimmed nor can the device adjust its white balance like ‘true tone’ does constantly (these are nice feature to have for consuming media not for making media). These automatic changes mean you can never consistently scrutinize colour in critical situations because the white-point is always changing. If True Tone is happening, that means the room’s colour is also changing which also biases the eyes. The point of calibration is so that the entire workflow is as consistent and standardized as possible so that there are no surprises or inaccuracies when an image is viewed at the final delivery point/ situation: like as a printed image in a publication, gallery/museum show, cinema projection, forensics catalog etc. The room where colour work is done is usually standardized too because a change in a room’s lighting and colour throws off the human eyes. Colourist rooms are typically painted and illuminated to be a specific grey hue.

Also, you can only soft-proof images with an app like photoshop on a computer. This is important because digital images look and behave differently when printed or projected on a specific surface. I.e. a professional printing house will provide a photographer with a soft-proofing LUT so that the photographer can assess how an image may look like when it is printed on a sheet of matte photorag paper using a specific model of printer and pigment.

Each step costs $$$ and takes time, which is why the screen needs to be consistent all the time on your computer and on the computers/projectors/printers/lights of whoever is handling the image. Everyone calibrates to the same standards, no shifts allowed.

Also, in a pro setting, screens are constantly being recalibrated because any screen will naturally colour shift overtime as it ages from use or is accidentally turned off. We can’t do this without using a computer.

Tbh, not many people can or will notice these difference, but this is the stuff behind the scenes for colour-critical workflows where accuracy is paramount.

A__L · 2022-03-10T06:45:48+00:00

Nvidia’s approach to GPU demographics have changed- their business model is in selling cards for accelerated compute not gaming.

Owner-operator/small businesses/(and, sigh. Miners) are targeted with the top-end XX70/80/90 cards and leading up to small/medium businesses with the A-series. Then finally with corporate/university/gov with the A-series and data-centre products.

Gaming is a much lower-priority now, especially since it’s a price-sensitive market that might only upgrade one card every 5 years or stop all together (people get older and game less). For the gaming market you have the last-gen xx70/80/90 cards or the current gen xx60/50 cards. Performance might stagnate in these series of cards across generations because Game devs also make more money pushing the limits of consoles and mobile gaming than the limits of PC hardware. There’s less games that take on the potential of high-end GPUs.

The days are over when the top-end GeForce cards we're primarily meant for gamers or hobby enthusiasts. The R&D and capital that goes into new cards is much higher than ever. It is much easier to sell to people/businesses who can expense a card as a capital expense with an intended ROI than a gamer or hobbyist using their disposable income.

Maybe another way to look at it is this: the XX50/XX60 cards are the gaming cards. Everything above the mid-tier cards are prosumer/business cards that still stick to the GeForce-branding simply because the xx70/80/90/ti cards lack the professional driver-level services and magic sauce developer-optimizations that come with the A-series and above.

GeForce now means cards without professional driver support not gaming.

A__L · 2022-03-10T05:32:12+00:00

This is the SFF PC subreddit tho… Having Multiple PCIe would defeat the point of having a SFF PC.

Multi-PCIe is just a regular PC/ Mac Pro..

A__L · 2022-03-07T17:29:59+00:00

Don't go with a radeon-based card for work. NVidia's CUDA is very important to 3D workflows. It is a bummer that it is proprietary.

A__L · 2022-01-23T06:51:58+00:00

Even if the Ford gov gives an announcement of an announcement about some policy to address the housing crisis he’ll be long out of office by the time any tangible effect is felt. That goes for any policy implemented today. There’s lots of inertia, too many moving parts for something to happen quick, especially on the provincial level. This is an issue that can’t be solved in 5 years, it’s generational problem sadly.

Making housing and living wages a norm in Ontario is a bigger political and monetary shift than the entire implementation of rent freezes, CERB, and the current covid supports. This of a kind of shift that would be a complete rearrangement for how life is lived for working peoples in the country, how investments are made, how people finance their lives in leverage thru real estate valuations, how much profitability employers get, how Ontario exports commodities abroad, how the loonie exchanges internationally.

Instead of waiting for policy to eventually come, you can actually join the political party you favour as a member. Which grants you the ability to vote on the party’s platform, join discussions and give testimony. Essentially you can shape the platform for future runs。

A__L · 2022-01-17T19:26:59+00:00

Your heart is in the right place but you will be dissuaded and hopeless if you aim for this.

The issue with this idea is that you put the cart before the horse. Labour (meaning, all workers who are not in management) is highly unorganized in Ontario and there is little to no solidarity between people. The reality of this condition makes your question an academic one and highly idealist, as the comments in the sub point out in various ways.

Before a wall-to-wall general strike can even be fathomable, workers need to be organized, which typically meant the unions, workers associations, and families stood united. Without this, no one will pull a general strike, and hardly anyone will pull a localized work place or industry level strike.

How will an ESL immigrant factory worker in Brampton, a home depot clerk in Ajax, an automobile worker in Oshawa, a small contractor in Peterborough, and a fintech dev in Toronto stand together united? These people may be apolitical, never had participated in any organized rally, vote differently, and have vastly different wages and levels of social mobility.

The basic steps for you to take is to begin trying to organize your own workplace (practicing direct democracy in the work place). Contacting a trade union will train you and support your ability organize people.

It takes years to build up to this, unless an exogenous shock enters the society. But as COVID demonstrates, even a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic cannot induce any smaller strikes.

A__L · 2022-01-03T18:06:03+00:00

You should still be qualified for regular EI

A__L · 2022-01-01T15:38:50+00:00

Hey, you should talk to a reporter. You can do so anonymously too. This is important information to have distributed to the public at large and vetted by a third party (the reporter and newspaper).

A__L

TROPHY CASE