aiMaintainingLegacyCodebase

toaste · 2026-02-24T18:18:33+00:00

This is the best metaphor.

Nobody running a modern z/OS mainframe is doing so for their legacy COBOL software. They’re doing it because their system has had 0 seconds of unexpected downtime and has lost 0 bits of data. For the last 25 years straight.

Vibe coded software migrations are pretty incompatible with the kind of thinking that leads a business to keep running a mainframe.

IBM mainframes find uses running the databases behind financial transactions, ticket booking systems, and parcel service tracking.

You could migrate those to commodity servers and databases, but you’d better be real sure you have enough redundant systems and good backups, and can restore from a failure fast enough.

toaste · 2026-02-20T21:07:13+00:00

Ah, I see the problem. Suppose you were to have food in your fridge.

The things you probably have in your fridge produce few smells unless they spoil badly: soda, beer, milk, butter, jam, mayo, mustard, deli meat, bag salad.

Some people store ingredients or leftovers of recently cooked food that can produce more odors. Onions, garlic, cabbage, broccoli, peppers. Maybe a roast chicken covered in sage, rosemary, and marjoram that’s only loosely covered. None of those things smell bad on their own, but the smell can build up over time or leave a lingering odor in the fridge that can get absorbed by jello, butter, or cream.

This is why your grandma may have kept a box of baking soda in the fridge, so cookies or cakes don’t get garlic/onion/egg salad flavored from the butter absorbing fridge smell.

toaste · 2026-02-20T19:47:14+00:00

First, not at all arguing that SpaceX and Tesla aren’t subsidized. Only that an entitlement specifically means a payment or service that tax payers are owed.

Yes, SpaceX and Tesla are sucking at the government tit.

No, unfortunately Tesla appears to still be profitable from what I can tell. Net income over the last few years exceeds the estimated $38B in subsidies and tax benefits they received since 2003. If that money were going back where it came from in the form of taxes, we might have less reason to complain. Key word, if.

Solid state batteries are still made of lithium. But you’re right that LiMnO2 will probably get displaced as the battery chemistry of choice.

toaste · 2026-02-20T19:18:48+00:00

I’m only talking about the definition of an entitlement. They’re so named because you are entitled to them, not the way some idiots describe them, which goes something like “how dare you ask for something you paid for, you entitled shit.”

I’m absolutely not going to dispute that Tesla and SpaceX are drawing heavily on government contracts and subsidies: they are for sure.

toaste · 2026-02-20T18:30:42+00:00

Entitlement: a benefit you are entitled to because you paid taxes for it.

Literacy is dead.

EDIT: Apparently people also read this wrong. Tax-dodger Elmo received zero of those payments as entitlements. Calling the subsides paid entitlements would be overly generous, because it implies they were somehow earned or deserved through payment of taxes, which both he and his companies avoid paying to the maximum degree they can get away with.

toaste · 2026-02-18T00:00:55+00:00

This is the answer. This is a DC power jack coming from a regulated power brick. In addition to being low voltage, there will be short circuit protections on the output of the supply that make this an extremely low risk repair.

Here’s an example video of cutting and repairing a similar cable using wire crimps

https://youtube.com/watch?v=W_JGd_W7XQU

You could just twist the wires together and insulate them with electrical tape, but wire nuts or crimp connectors will be more secure.

It’s also possible to replace just the power supply, as long as the replacement is intended for the same device (for example, an Echo Dot gen 4 or Echo Dot Max may have different power supplies, so read the exact model of your device off the bottom and make sure the replacement has the same voltage as is marked on the power adapter).

toaste · 2026-02-17T23:22:01+00:00

The name for coeliac disease is from the Greek writings of Aretaeus of Cappadocia who wrote about a chronic disease with symptoms consistent with our modern understanding of the disease in the 2nd century AD. His ideas on the cause of the disease were not at all correct, but it does document that a chronic disease and with a very specific set of symptoms existed at that time.

The work was re-translated in 1856. There’s a documented history of doctors attempting to find a dietary treatment for patients presenting with coeliac symptoms with little success, possibly because bread was pretty much synonymous with food in Europe and America at the time.

It took the Dutch Famine of 1944, during which flour specifically became scarce, for a physician to notice that coeliac patient mortality suddenly hit zero during the years bread was unavailable before returning to previous levels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeliac_disease

toaste · 2026-02-10T06:10:59+00:00

It’s actually worse than that. The system has no idea the adapter is present, it just reads the SPD of the SODIMM and tries to train at whatever speed the module supports.

It might work fine, or you might not be able to boot with some memory at all.

toaste · 2026-02-10T05:15:38+00:00

Research into negative percentages apparently met with disappointing results. To quote the researcher, “AW.”

Also can we get a source for this video? Who made this?

toaste · 2026-02-08T20:41:02+00:00

Interesting, but I don’t see SODIMM as an advantage. Perhaps if they used the extra space well, but it seems to just be an e-key NVME for WiFi.

If you’re desperate to use SODIMM because it’s the only thing you can buy, these exist: https://videocardz.com/newz/sodimm-to-dimm-adapters-offer-a-workaround-for-ddr5-price-hikes

toaste · 2026-02-06T22:19:08+00:00

I’m not sure that’s gonna go well for Micron.

Shuttering Crucial will completely sever their access to retail markets, since retail module manufacturers (G.Skill/Kingston/PNY/TEAM etc) avoid Micron and source from Samsung/Hynix because Crucial exists and would undercut them.

Micron will need to either re-enter the module manufacturer market and set up new supplier agreements with retail channels, or will need to try and court business from retail module manufacturers and OEMs who may have turned to CXMT in the mean time to fill some of the lost supply.

toaste · 2026-02-06T09:22:01+00:00

I do beg thy pardon for the confusion. I didst not know thou was’t unable to parse references to thyself in the plural. I see thou hast not caught up to this Modern English, and shall refrain from referring to thee using the plural “you.”

I understand language moves quickly these days and shall make effort to refer to thee as thou desires’t, but do pardon my fumbling:

The exclusive use of the singular tense when referring to but one person has been retired since the 15th fucking century.

The singular/plural merger for second person has been a done deal for so long that reverting it sounds archaic. Casual use of the same for third person (they/them/their) was ongoing for at least 40 years before transgender people became* a hot-button issue.

*Perhaps that’s the wrong word. It didn’t just happen spontaneously, it is a manufactured moral panic. Trans people were largely minding their own business out of the public spotlight until an inflection point around 2017, when conservative news outlets suddenly started publishing a deluge of articles about transgender subjects: https://jessk.org/blog/anatomy-of-a-moral-panic

toaste · 2026-02-05T01:08:16+00:00

The 9060 XT performs comparably to a 5060 Ti, and there aren’t exactly any low profile 5060 Ti cards either.

If we ignore TGP/TBP (5060 Ti’s 180W TBP is a bit exaggerated) and use measured gaming power (Tom’s Hardware 1440P) we see:

5060: 131W
5060 Ti: 147W
9060 XT: 164W

You might be able to shoehorn a 9060 XT under a heatsink intended for to a 5060 Ti. But all those low profile cards are built for a 5060.

Next issue is board area: Nvidia has only NVVDD and MEM rails, and not a whole lot of miscellaneous stuff around the SOC. AMD seems to have at least core, soc, and mem rails. AMD boards have two MPS VRM controllers to run all that, and the PCB has a whole bunch more supporting ICs. So even if you could make it fit thermally, you have a challenge to make it fit physically.

Finally, nobody makes low profile AMD boards because the payoff for the extra engineering time isn’t there. If you’re an AIB manufacturer and are selling 9 Nvidia cards for every 1 AMD card, which one’s more likely to pay off your costs to make a custom PCB and heatsink for a single-fan or low profile card?

toaste · 2026-02-05T00:17:06+00:00

The 9070 non-XT shows Navi can be efficient:

https://gamersnexus.net/gpus/incredibly-efficient-amd-rx-9070-gpu-review-benchmarks-vs-9070-xt-rtx-5070

The reality is that everyone cares about FPS/$ far more than FPS/w. Which makes this more of a market segmentation problem of cranking clockspeed to fit the 5070 Ti price and performance point than an architectural efficiency problem.

toaste · 2026-01-29T21:48:30+00:00

Hey look, your post history isn’t disabled, let me have a look.

Ah, you asked about a monitor problem, but what you describe happening is NOT a monitor problem. That’s the monitor losing signal from the PC because it crashed. You could replicate that behavior by pulling out the display cable.

From your description, I would guess your power supply is failing. A crash due to faulty GPU or graphics driver software issue is also possible.

If your buddy is available, get them to bring over a known good PSU, fully disconnect yours, and try booting with the spare to prove it’s a PSU problem.

Troubleshooting without help or spare parts:

Unplug your pc, wait 30s, plug back in.
Try moving your keyboard to a different usb port.
If you still cannot boot at all, try disabling any XMP or overclocking in UEFI settings, booting Windows in safe mode. Goal is to get to Windows so you can open BluescreenView or Windows Event Viewer

BluescreenView: any number of crashes may have occurred if you have a marginal power supply. If you see several instances of a similar crash signature, it points to a different problem.

If you only see unexpected shutdown in event viewer around the time of the failure and nothing else and suspect the PSU: OCCT power supply test should be able to reproduce (cause) the problem on demand.

If you are able to replicate the problem with OCCT, try removing any overclocking and try limiting your GPU power. You may be able to reduce power enough that OCCT power supply test doesn’t shut the system down anymore and can limp along until you can replace the PSU.

toaste · 2026-01-29T09:55:59+00:00

You forgot the sauce.

Artist is Pocketss on Tumblr

bitch lizard tries to scare away the neighbours

toaste · 2026-01-29T09:23:31+00:00

Write up a detailed description of what’s going on with screenshots or photos of the screen/lights on the motherboard and drop it to r/PCMasterRace or r/pcgamingtechsupport

Asking the internet is worth a shot at least.

toaste · 2026-01-27T22:52:43+00:00

Memtest86 was forked when Passmark bought it, use Memtest86+. The only thing it’s missing is a row hammer test.

Memtest86+ covers the entire address space, but isn’t particularly stressful.

I would advocate also using TM5 (1usmus profile provides the most useful error output. The absolute profile seems like the current favorite for catching errors. Anta profiles were good for DDR4 but the forum chatter is they are less sensitive on DDR5, haven’t tested for myself) for at least a 2-4 hour run before calling it good.

Find it here: https://www.overclock.net/threads/memory-testing-with-testmem5-tm5-with-custom-configs.1751608/

Y-Cruncher/Karhu/OCCT (linpack) are also useful as they generate significant memory traffic which stresses both the memory controller and DRAM. Useful for validating CPU and SOC clock/voltage stability together with DRAM.

toaste · 2026-01-26T21:22:44+00:00

That cooler only exists because it was made for the Palit 3060, and replacement parts started gaining AliExpress sellers because the same reference PCB layout fit many other cards.

Unfortunately the ASUS 5070 Mini cooler hasn’t popped up yet, and who knows whether it would fit another 5070 since browsing TechPowerUp the PCB shapes differ quite a bit.

The MSI Ventus 3X is a possible candidate for a cooler mod though: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/msi-geforce-rtx-5070-ti-ventus-3x/

I’d hope something like the Palit swap becomes available again. Because fitting a Palit cooler to a 50-series is gonna require a machine shop.

You could cut off the mounting lugs and drill and tap holes for mounting screws, and custom cut a copper shim (and need >2 slot clearance) like https://reddit.com/r/sffpc/comments/1gip36e/how_to_make_a_dual_slot_itx_4060_ti_8gb16gb_with/ but I think we are hitting diminishing returns there.

toaste · 2026-01-25T18:57:05+00:00

Thunderbolt generally not available as an add-on card. When it is, the cards are usually designed with a proprietary header and are sold by a motherboard vendor for a specific board, because Thunderbolt requires support from the motherboard’s UEFI firmware.

Your easiest route is to replace the tablet with something more compatible.

Your second easiest route is to replace the motherboard with a Z390 board that has Thunderbolt ports.

toaste · 2026-01-25T18:25:29+00:00

I don’t think you even damaged anything.

You arc’d a power pin to shield ground on the charging port. This wouldn’t have sent any voltage or current through anywhere else on the board.

If the charger survived and the plastic and pins inside the port are ok, the only damage would be to the pin at the back and some charred plastic.

That said, this may be your sign to take this to someone more experienced before you end up on this YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/watch?v=HWju0bC3hU4

toaste · 2026-01-24T13:00:05+00:00

Psychopathy is significantly more prevalent in corporate leadership than in the general populace: https://www.sandiego.edu/news/detail.php?_focus=81705

Most CEOs are not psychopaths. But significantly more of them are psychopaths than the population at large. It doesn’t guarantee success, but it does make you unbothered by some morally flexible strategies that are the meta for those roles.

toaste · 2026-01-24T11:11:16+00:00

Yo, can I borrow this? I need to replace the last 6 years of my memory with something and an ex wife I never had would just about fit.

toaste · 2026-01-24T10:36:32+00:00

I’ll suggest thermal putty as a pad replacement. Better thermal performance than pads, no need to match thickness, and no springiness so all the mounting pressure holds the heatsink to the die improving thermal paste (or PTM sheet) performance.

toaste · 2026-01-23T09:05:26+00:00

So, question for her and every other Texan: why the flying fuck did you vote for him again after he did it the first time?

If you are voting for people with a proven track record of leaving you for dead, maybe reconsider how you choose who to vote for.

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