Father, author, developer, maker. Please consider sponsoring my work.
Much-needed upgrades to my PC
Earlier this year, when I built my all-AMD gaming PC, I decided to stick with AMD's stock CPU cooler. After all, if they include a particular cooler with the Ryzen 5 5600x, I should assume that cooler is adequate, right?
Wrong! I noticed when comparing benchmarks from Phoronix that my CPU was running a little slower than the average 5600x, and it turns out the 'wraith' cooler just can't keep up under load.
…Install Raspberry Pi OS's desktop environment over a Lite install
Update: I will keep this blog post up to date with future releases of Pi OS. If you see something missing, please let me know in the comments!
Almost every time I set up a Raspberry Pi these days, I use the 'Lite' version of Raspberry Pi OS. That version doesn't come with a GUI, it just boots to the console. It's much smaller in size and contains most things you'd need for a 'headless' Pi setup.
…Microsoft is still far behind: Windows on ARM
In spite of Microsoft's cryptic announcement of Project Volterra, and Qualcomm's continuous lineup of 'flagship' ARM SoCs for Windows, Microsoft is still behind the 8-ball when it comes to ARM.
Apparently, in 2016, Microsoft entered into an exclusivity deal with Qualcomm. That's why all official 'Windows on ARM' devices use Qualcomm SoCs. At the time, Apple hadn't yet pulled off its third major architecture shift for macOS, from Intel X86 to ARM.
Looking back, products like the Surface Pro X and the myriad ARM for Windows laptops, were basically built to a budget and for portability above all else. They were never competitive with Intel/AMD-based computers. Microsoft seemed to think ARM would always remain in a niche, only used for light, mobility-first devices.
…Chaos Engineer - T-shirt on RedShirtJeff.com
Like my last new shirt (It was DNS, I figured I'd mention my latest shirt design here on the blog in case you're interested:
As a parent of four, I thought it would be especially fitting on a onesie, therefore in addition to two 'normal' shirt options, there's a version for your baby (this version is out of print for now... let me know in the comments if you'd like to see it again!):
Starlink's current problem is capacity
This blog post is a lightly edited transcript from my most recent YouTube video, in which I explain some of Starlink's growing pains: slower speeds due to oversubscription, design challenges with their v2 hardware, and a major bet on much larger v2 sats and a rocket (Starship) that has yet to complete an orbital flight.
The video is embedded below, and the transcript follows:
I got Starlink during the Public beta, a little over a year ago.
…Building a fast all-SSD NAS (on a budget)
I edit videos non-stop nowadays. In a former life, I had a 2 TB backup volume and that stored my entire digital life—all my photos, family video clips, and every bit of code and text I'd ever written.
Video is a different beast, entirely.
Every minute of 4K ProRes LT footage (which is a very lightweight format, compared to RAW) is 3 GB of space. A typical video I produce has between 30-60 minutes of raw footage (which brings the total project size up to around 100-200 GB).
…