Recent content by BlindedByScience

Windows Defender and paid for Malwarebytes. Got to tell you, I got a nasty virus off a Chinese mail order site (....stupid, I know....) and the guys in the Malwarebytes support forum walked me through the removal process amazingly well. They earned my business; the clean up was amazing and...

Really interesting article, IMHO all you need to think about is this quote: "....And yes, there will be regulatory scrutiny, but the overlap between the two is fairly small and Broadcom is now a US company. We can also hear many people arguing that "Broadcom is done with semis, they are a...

Wired > wireless, every single time. We're so used to the convenience of wireless, we forget...... Pull some CAT5A, do it right....and you only have to do it once. Mind the requirements for burying cable, do it right. Great, dependable connectivity from then on. One man's opinion........

I typically add memory or upgrade the video over time, but IIRC my last few platforms were 10+ year tools. Currently my 8700k is kicking right along. I'll upgrade at some point, but for now......

https://www.parts-express.com/Audtek-SKRL-16-50-16-AWG-OFC-Speaker-Wire-50-ft.-100-016 Comes in up to 12ga. Very ok for the price.

Backup around here means a Synology NAS running redundant drives. Running on a UPS / power conditioner. Fast, all our machines can get to it....really like it. A couple files (encrypted password database) get put on SSD's every few months, and tossed in the desk.....just in case.

I play lots of different games, but my wife and I have HOURS of LAN play with UT2003 and UT3. Capture the flag, and 'Greed' games. We laugh, swear, yell at the bots....just really have a great time. Can't tell you how many hours of laughs and good times we've had with those two.

I've used Password Safe for a very long time. Super handy; random pw generator with adjustable parameters is cool; https://pwsafe.org/

FWIW, I'm with Comcast / Xfinity, and I'm running my own hardware; a Motorola MB8600 modem, and a TP link AX1800 router / wi-fi hub. PC's and NAS are hardwired, and the rest of the house flies WiFi. Zero regrets; just checked, I'm getting 948+ down, and 42+ going up on my main PC. Happy here...

Not an unusual failure mode in solid state electronics. Burn in is supposed to capture 'infant mortality' but it happens. Seeing silicon fail after a short time in operation isn't unheard of.

I've been pretty happy with DuckDuckGo. Run a few identical searches on it and Google.....you'll see. May not be perfect, but it's pretty darn good.

I've gotten a lot of mileage out of the Ultimate Boot CD: https://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ Nothing you can't find on line if you look, but here it is in a bootable, stable, easy to use disk image.

We got our phones connected with Xfinity and love it. With all their hotspots our data usage is quite small. $35.00 / month for our two phones...very nice.

I've been very pleased with my basic Synology NAS and WD Red drives. Easy to recommend. Here's the one I bought: Synology 2 bay NAS DiskStation DS220j (Diskless), 2-bay; 512MB DDR4 https://a.co/d/aCzxH4K

My home NAS solution has 2 WD 'Red' drives in it, in RAID0. So far, so good..... Agree with MrGuvernment....putting a big drive in your computer isn't really a 'backup'. I've got a Synology NAS box, not expensive, very happy with it.