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[Frumple]

It shows up in SC2, too, for what it's worth. Couldn't tell you the context there offhand, tho', I'm mostly aware of it from custom maps. Also haven't played anything blizzard since the goddamn disaster that was the reforged launch, so memory's probably a little fuzzy there anyway.

[Reelya]

My understanding of a reverse vampire was a creature that pumps blood into its subjects.

Or people who drink vampire blood, like immortality-greedy adventurers in DF.

Reverse vampires sleep at night, cough up blood, and are the exact opposite of immortal. It's also called having tuberculosis. It spreads by them not biting you (coughing).

EDIT: I'm just imagining a guy called The Vampire Hunter who's like The Crocodile Hunter.

"Crikey, we got a live one here"

[pisskop]

What springs most readily to my mind when I think of 'reverse vampires'

[methylatedspirit]

I was poking around in an Alienware laptop to see what was wrong with it (if you're wondering, it's just a slow hard drive bottlenecking the whole system). I went into the BIOS to check what hard drives were in there, and I saw this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This thing has 3 2.5" drive bays and 2 M.2 slots, which is a bit excessive in my book. Who's gonna use that many drives? Is this solely for the sake of being able to brag about how many drives you have?

[wierd]

Depending on the configuration, being able to stripe several drives together into a RAID could result in better performance, and reliability.

But again, depends heavily on the configuration, and the devil is in the details.

More appropriately, it should be set up so that the system drive is on the M.2 slot, especially if that slot supports NVME. Then, put games, applications, and the swap file on a reasonably fast spinny disk (that is *NOT* SMR).

The other two slots could be set up as a RAID0, with the other devices respectively, so that data loss is mitigated-- etc.

[methylatedspirit]

(that is *NOT* SMR)

I've read some news articles on this recently, but I didn't quite get what the big fuss was about. Why is SMR bad for RAID? for this application? I thought SMR is still fine for single-drive configurations. (Oops, misread what you wrote).

[Reelya]

SMR has poor random-seek capabilities, so for things like applications and games it would be bad.

A big cheap SMR disk would be great for movies however.

[wierd]

SMR works by having the write head occupy essentially 2 data tracks at the same time. One is offset 50% from the other, so that it writes essentially like this:



The idea is that the data track can be "thinner" than the write head, if the writes are offset this way.  The issue is that for random writes, (such as with disk swap, or RAID data), the write operation has to first read the data on the overplapped track(s) for however many overlapped shingles there are, then re-write them all again, so that data is not wiped out by the update operation.  This is slow, makes a flurry of disk activity, and wears the drive out terribly fast.

For data that gets written once, and then read a lot but not changed, (such as archival), it works JUST FINE.  For data that changes frequently, it is GAWD AWFUL. 

Swap space changes frequently.  Stick with CMR drives for use as swap.

[Akura]

Went to a gaming/electronics store, surprised to see that it was still somewhat open(they have an internet cafe-like area that was closed), bought a new screwdriver. Got one screw out of my joycon, but the rest I can't really turn. One is particularly badly stripped, though I almost got it out. It might not be that the screwdrivers were bad, it might be that Nintendo uses very shitty screws in its products.


I did learn of a trick to use a rubber band in between the screwdriver and screw, but there seems to be not one single rubber band in my entire house.

[Dunamisdeos]

Got atoy for my kid, the screw head instantly disintigrated upon contact with a  screwdriver. Had to drill it out.

[Akura]

Found a rubber band. Didn't work. Almost got the screws out, but I can't turn them that last little bit to free them. At this point I'm considering just breaking the damn casing and getting a replacement shell. It's still cheaper than replacing the joycon outright(over $100 for a replacement pair, wtf Nintendo) and on the plus side I get the choose the color.

[Dunamisdeos]

I used a very thin bit on a power drill and got it out that way.

If you use one thin enough you can do it without permanently detroying the casing.

[Lord Shonus]

You can also try gripping with tweezers/pliers to twist out the last little bit.

[McTraveller]

The toy industry is definitely in a consumer-non-friendly mode.  Poor quality screws with a head-hardness of butter so they strip but self-tapping (or use glue?) so they stick like mad in the things they are holding.

Also related: the increase in use of FRICKIN WATCH BATTERIES in toys.  And where there aren't watch batteries, they are all AAA so they last like 3 minutes.  And it's not because the toys are too small to fit the space of even a AA or C - they are just probably colluding with the battery manufacturers.

[MrRoboto75]

You say that like watch batteries are as easy to find as the usual AA or AAA.  I can't remember a single time I got a watch battery replaced as a kid, as we'd never run into them at the store, and usually my parents would forget to buy/look for them.