You are sure that no one has heard of Homestar Runner on a website of technology savvy early adopters whose age averages in the 30s and 40s?

For the record, it was definitely on. I ended up buying a new PSU to check, and it didn’t help. I then bought a new motherboard and that fixed it. So case solved!

The luck didn’t help haha, I never got that light again, except for occasional split second flashes. I edited some info into the original post, but long story short, after lots of fluffing around in the end it was the motherboard. I got a new one and now I’m back up and running!

I think we ultimately have different beliefs about how things should work. I think companies should prove their products are safe, you think things should be allowed unless you can prove it’s not safe.

I get it, and I think it’s OK to have different opinions on this.

Yeah they only have the one trackpad option. I tend to use a mouse anyway.

Probably not much point in getting one if you’re going to build your kids a PC anyway.

By the way I managed to get a light on the motherboard, so it might not be dead after all. I’m planning to get some more thermal paste today and keep tinkering, I might save it yet.

I use a laptop most of the time because then I can sit in a recliner with my feet up. I spend the day at a desk I don’t much fancy doing the same in the evening.

I have a Framework laptop from the first ones they made, which are upgradeable and repairable. Unfortunately they don’t ship to NZ, I got mine by freight forwarding and also got parts a bit later the same way. But now they have cracked down hard on freight forwarding as I recently learned, so I can’t get any more upgrades until they start shipping here (no announced plans).

I recall that some years ago Facebook was looking into their algorithm and they found that it was potentially leading to overuse, which might be what you’re thinking of,

No, it was recent, and it was an opinion style piece not news.

but what actually happened is that they changed it so that people wouldn’t be using Facebook as much.

Can you back this up? Were they forced to by a court, or was this before the IPO when facebook was trying to gain ground and didn’t answer to the share market? I can’t imagine they would be allowed to take actions that reduce profits, companies are legally required to maximise value to shareholders.

Anyway, when you say the algorithms are demonstrably unsafe, you know you’re wrong because you didn’t demonstrate anything, and you didn’t cite anyone demonstrating anything. You can say you think they’re unsafe, but that’s a matter of opinion and we all have our own opinions.

I mean it doesn’t take long to find studies like A nationwide study on time spent on social media and self-harm among adolescents or Does mindless scrolling hamper well-being? or How Algorithms Promote Self-Radicalization but I think this misses the point.

You’ve grabbed the part where I made a throwaway comment but missed the point of my post. Facebook is one type of social media, and they use a specific algorithm. Ibuprofen is a specific type of drug. Sometimes ibuprofen can be used in a way that is harmful, but largely it is considered safe. But the producers still had to prove it was safe.

I don’t do a lot of gaming these days. When I played Baldur’s Gate 3, once I got to Act 3 I switched to streaming from the desktop to the laptop using the Steam function as my laptop couldn’t handle it. I also don’t do upgrades as frequently as you.

If you had an old mobo and CPU, you could downgrade and keep the NAS running until you had a replacement.

Good point, I didn’t think of that.

I believe it’s correct. If you sort say “A”, “AA”, “AAA” then you get

1. A
2. AA
3. AAA

Because the first character is compared, which are all the same, then the second. The first one has no second character, so it comes first. The second has no third character, so it comes before the third item.

In your scenario, you have:

1. 5
2. 5.5

The first characters are the same, so it looks at the second character. Item 1 has no second character so it comes first.

Scenario 2:

1. 5.5 A
2. 5 A

The first character is the same, so it looks at the second character. The second characters are “.” and " ". The “.” comes first in the character ranking so is shown first.

I can’t remember which article I was reading, probably one on Lemmy, but it said that we know social media algorithms are bad for people and their mental and physical health, that they are divisive, drive extremism, and just in general are not safe for society.

Drugs are regulated to ensure they are safe, so why aren’t social media algorithms regulated the same way? Politicians not understanding the technical details of algorithms is not an excuse - politicians also don’t understand the technical details of drugs, so they have a process involving experts that ensures they are safe.

I think I’m on the side of that article. Social media algorithms are demonstrably unsafe in a range of ways, and it’s not just for under 16s. So I think we should be regulating the algorithms, requiring companies wishing to use them to prove they are safe before they do so. You could pre-approve certain basic ones (rank by date, rank by upvotes minus downvotes with time decay like lemmy, etc). You could issue patents to them like we do with drugs. But all in all, I think I am on the side of fixing the problem rather than pretending to care in the name of saving the kids.

I think your advantage is needing two machines. Then you can swap stuff between them to test as well.

I gave away my previous build in whole and built a new one. No spare parts 🙁. And my SO and I are generally using laptops day to day, no need for more desktop machines and can’t swap pieces between laptop and desktop.

I don’t think having an old mobo/CPU would help anyway, I’m pretty sure one of the two is broken and swapping both out won’t help work out which one.

Is that onboard graphics or does intel do dedicated graphics cards?

One of the first things I tested 🙂. I’m almost ready to give up, buy a new mobo/CPU/RAM and then auction the old stuff off online for someone else to work out what does or doesn’t work 😆

How does everyone have spare parts to try, it seems almost every generation you have a new CPU socket and new RAM type so you can’t use the old stuff!

I’ll probably be asking for hardware recommendations soon haha

I’ve tried just directly shorting the power switch on the mobo to rule out issues with the case switch, but that didn’t help.

Well I got up to step 6, not sure how to get to the next step…

Yes, it’s the reason for the tracking. To sell more targeted ads.

If you’re up for reading some shennanigans, check out the book Mindf*ck. It’s about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, written by a whistleblower, and details election manipulation using data collected from Facebook and other public or purchased data.

It doesn’t have to be. Your browser sends the cookies for a domain with every request to that domain. So you have a website example.com, that embeds a Facebook like button from Facebook.com.

When your browser downloads the page, it requests the different pieces of the page. It requests the main page from example.com, your browser sends any example.com cookies with the request.

Your browser needs the javascript, it sends the cookie in the request to get the JavaScript file. It needs the like button, it sends a request off to Facebook.com and sends the Facebook.com cookies with it.

Note that the request to example.com doesn’t send the cookies for Facebook.com, and the request to Facebook.com doesn’t send the cookie for example.com to Facebook. However, it does tell Facebook.com that the request for the like button came from example.com.

Facebook puts an identifier in the cookie, and any request to Facebook sends that cookie and the site it was loaded on.

So you log in to Facebook, it puts an identifier in your cookies. Now whenever you go to other sites with a Facebook like button (or the Facebook analytics stuff), Facebook links that with your profile.

Not logged in? Facebook sets an identifier to track you anyway, and links it up when you make an account or log in.

The problem is that a website is generally not served from one domain.

Put a Facebook like button on your website, it’s loaded directly from Facebook servers. Now they can put a cookie on your computer with an identifier.

Now every site you visit with a Facebook like button, they know it was you. They can watch you as you move around the web.

Google does this at a larger scale. Every site with Google ads on it. Every site using Google analytics. Every site that embeds a Google map. They can stick a cookie in and know you were there.