malada

There's an old saying in computing: garbage in, garbage out. Most AIs are simply sampling programs with fancy algorithms attached to re-stitch things back together. Right now, the Large Language Models have thousands of years of human experience and culture to mess with. Then they can generate far greater quantities of 'product' in minuted than any poet, painter or musician could several lifetimes.

The problem I see is what happens when they run out of human input and start sampling 'AI' 'product'. It has to start happening soon as places like the internet is being flooded with 'AI' content. With deep fake audio, video, images being created - how is the 'AI' supposed to distinguish between human and artificial 'product'? Will there be a feedback loop until the only thing left will be 'AI' product being sampled by other 'AI's to create more 'AI' product? Will everything soon degenerate into the 'gray ooze' of 'product'?

Garbage in, garbage out.

Things accomplished yesterday night and so far today:

Towels done in the laundry last night. Nice. Sheets done this morning. Nice. Early winter jacket in the dryer and my older but fluffier winter jacket out of the closet. It's not as fluffy as it used to be but it's still warmer than the early winter jacket.

Resurrected my housemates old Windows 7 machine with a BIOS update. Upgraded said machine with a M.2 SATA drive, and installed Linux Mint. The M.2 is faster than a solid state SATA drive so it flies. I'm not a big fan of the graphics card that I've got in there but the machine is up and running. It's off the bench and set aside.

Diagnosed The Craiger with a dying graphics card and swapped in what I had on hand. It's no longer crashing after 15 minutes. Not happy about the graphics card I put in there but it works. I'll want to do more software updating on it. I want to update the OS to Ubuntu Studio but not use the main distribution, but start with Xbuntu (already installed) and adding the Ubuntu Studio package. I've been using the main Studio distro but it uses KDE instead which looks pretty but I just don't care for it. I prefer XFCE which is lighter and cleaner. This will be a test machine to see how the Studio package works before upgrading my main editing rig. Off the bench and set aside.

On the bench presently - an old Win 7 machine that I played with before and had some kind of Linux on it. I'm hoping to reload Windows 7 on it because you never know when you'll need a Windows 7 machine. The graphics card is appropriate to the age of the machine and I don't really care. The bench is now occupied.

Vacuumed the house.

Mopping the floors and cleaning the toilets will have to wait a little bit but it's on the to do list today.

Pausing for lunch now.

And because I wanted to resurrect the (Windows 7) system *now* I spend a little extra to have Amazon ship it NOW!

And I plugged in the adapter... turned on the system ... and it failed to boot. No display.

Arrrggggg.... do I have a bad video card? Multiple bad video cards? Checked and swapped out the power supply - power supply not the problem.

Finally, I worked it out. The system was replaced because of display problems. So I tried a whole bunch of graphics cards and it went like this:

AMD RX470 - no display. no boot

Nvidia GTX750TI - no display, no boot

Nvidia GT720 - display, slooooow boot

Nvidia GT220 - display, slow boot

Using built in graphics - display, immediate boot!

I buttoned up the system and tossed it aside. It works as it is and maybe that's good enough for it.

Then I tested all the graphics cards on a known good system - and THEY ALL WORK!

So it was the Win 7 motherboard that was wonky. That's okay. If I feel rich I can just replace the mobo, RAM and CPU with something modern and zippy. At the moment... I'd rather have the working graphics cards.

I recently found a computer that had been tossed in the garbage. The motherboard was dead, some of the RAM was bad, the power supply weak, but the graphics card was fine! Free case, free graphics card! Since the card was better than some I'm already using I've been swapping graphics cards among my systems: my daily driver, my editing rig, one I planned to flip but found no buyers, and my basement spare which was once my daily driver.

Everything was going well when until I was pulling the graphics card out of my basement spare when one of the screws holding the card in place slipped off the screwdriver and fell... somewhere.

Ooops.

Thinking that it had fallen into the case I turned it upside down, shook it, started removing cables, shaking it some more, removing the power supply.... eventually I had the motherboard half unplugged and still - nothing. The screw had completely vanished. I decided I needed a small break and cleared some more space on the table. I moved the graphic card I just removed...

*rattle rattle*

...it was in the graphics card all along.

Ooops.

I removed the long lost screw, put it safely aside and began reassembling the system.

I'm still not done - I need to reconnect all the power supply cables - but I need a break. I just hope I didn't break anything horsing the system around. It's not a new system or a great system, but it has worked just fine for 14 years in one configuration or another and I'd hate to lose it.

UPDATE:

It's all re-assembled and back in action. The motherboard layout wasn't designed to take larger graphic cards and the RAM slots are too close to the graphics card for comfort. It's too easy to unseat the RAM which happened multiple times. The card swap failed as it needs an eight pin power connector and my power supply only has six.

I think I'm going to avoid trying to upgrade this old box - it's a pain in the neck.

The last of the first snowfall melted away and now we have a fresh snowfall to shovel. It's colder out so it's coming down as light, flurry, powdery stuff which is easy to move around.

I didn't realize how much had fallen when I stepped outside for my morning walk. Seeing the amount of snow I ditched the walk and started shoveling. I would have cleared everything in one go but I wasn't wearing my back brace and my gave give me a gentle reminder to take it easy. So, no backache today.

Sunday I was vacuuming the house when I tripped on the power cord. My head was heading right for a corner of a wooden cabinet and I managed to twist myself and merely thumped on the floor. No damage done but it was a scary moment.

The pile of e-waste MacBook Pros is shrinking as I swap out the old hard drives for SSDs and use Open Core legacy patcher to upgrade them. I'm not quite halfway through. One of the problems with Open Core is that for every change in Apple Firmware you need to create a new boot USB disk. And if you want to install a different version of Mac OS you'll need to make a different USB disk. Since I'm working with older Macs this can take up to 2 hours. In the pile there's four different firmware versions. However, most are either 9,2 and 8,2 so two boot USBs will cover most of them. The 9,2 are handling the latest Mac OS (Sonoma) fairly well although the 8,2 are acting cranky. I might have to make a new boot disk with Monteray or Ventura for the older systems. I need to pause soon because I've run out of SSDs to install.

Work nonsense reared it's ugly head yesterday. The Big Honking Remote Video Server barfed a few months ago and ate a bunch of our files. The operators claimed to have discovered which files got
hosed and we've dealt with the most important missing files. There's still a pile of little stuff which isn't important at the moment.

Until yesterday.

Hey! Guess what! They found another file that was missing! Lucky for us I logged into my work email on my day off and discovered the notice. I was able to remotely replace the file with something close enough to keep us on the air for the moment. I don't *mind* a little extra cash for the overtime but this is annoying. First of all - they never told us there was a server failure that ate our video files. They used sneaky language to kind of avoid telling us. It wasn't until I had to replace multiple files that I demanded to know what the heck was going on. They finally coughed up a explanation and after I bothered them some more they reluctantly gave us a list of missing files.

Apparently, those chuckleheads missed at least one.

When this system of remote video servers was introduced (I was in the Room Where It happen - but my objections and those of many engineers was ignored) I strongly suggested that we have local backups. Well, the bean counters nixed that idea although I've been keeping some backups informally. I got little support from our local engineers who either couldn't be bothered or were too busy keeping us generally on the air.

We've got new engineers now and I'm hoping to get some assistance on this. I'm also hoping that some of the other missing files are stashed away on other drives that I don't have immediate access to.

As I like to say, if you want to work in broadcasting there's something *wrong* with you.

The Big Closet of Unwanted Computers is a mess with things scattered everywhere. After taking the six unwanted Lenovo Chromebooks I found another Lenovo, so I casually grabbed it and took it home.

it looks almost exactly like the S330s I rescued. Ah... except for the Windows sticker on the back.

Windows 11.

I *don't* think that was meant to be there. I'll be returning that puppy today.

And I don't think I'll be taking the big 'cheese grater' Macs. Even with handles I'm not sure I can heft them. The All-In-Ones? I'll schlep them out the door. I just can't reach most of them right now. The one I could reach had a sticker on it that said, "Bad Drive".

*side look* Is that all? I inserted a USB with a Linux boot image and *boom* up it came. It looks pretty sweet.

Work is busy with things going wrong. The problems are deeper into the system and my work depends on things going correctly in other places. So I have to sit and fret about things going south that *I can't fix*.

Frustrating.

Create bootable USB drive for installing Mac OS (High Sierra) - done!

Upgrade RAM in Mac Mini from 4 to 8 gigabytes - done!

Upgrade original hard drive in Mac Mini for a fast SSD - done!
(The online guides make it look easy - but the fit is very tight and fussy.)

Install High Sierra on SSD for a fast new(ish) Mac experience - done!

Next on the list: create Open Core install USB for installing new but officially unsupported Mac operating systems. We're going for a slightly older OS: Monterey so what I have at home will match what I have at work.

Then I will get my engineer at work to install all the programs I need for work. Working at home is going to be *much* easier afterwards.

The back rooms at work are being cleared out! Although I missed the HP laser printer (it was a big old one) and a 32 inch flat screen TV (it got broken when it landed in the bin) and I did *not* take the 8 old desktops from the Windows XP era.

Instead...

I rescued 6 Mac Minis (2011) and about a half dozen Macbook Pros (2010). After discovering *all* the Mac Mini's still booted I gave best two to a real Mac head. Yeah, he was gobsmacked.

The Macbooks... are going to need a little TLC. Maybe a *lot* of TLC. They'll all need new drives (replacing spinning rust with SSDs) and new OSes installed... but they're only officially approved up to High Sierra - 10.13. I want to try Open Core which will let me update them to Monterey - which is 12.

If they clean up nicely I'll see about donating them. They're nice laptops and very easy to use.

-m

There's the old Novell server room at work. The order has gone out that it's to be cleared out and everything in it thrown away. The Novell system was ditched around 2012.

They let me have dibs.

What I've already looted: operating system DVDs and manuals, lots of loose CAT 5 cables, two desktops and a Mac Powerbook from 2010, some loose hard drives, two 4x3 flatscreen monitors and some odds and ends.

What I *won't* be taking is the 3 or 4 old Novell servers and the off-line data server. I don't take equipment that I can't lift and I definitely can't lift those puppies. I won't be taking the boxes of backup tapes that went with the servers or the APC battery backups - they're probably dead and I can't lift them.

I'm leaving the two - eight port KVM switches. The older ones can't handle resolutions over 800x600.

However, there is a pile of around two dozen USB IOmega external hard drives. I've tested a few of them and they're usage dates between 2011 - 2012. They have one terarbyte hard drives in them. So, they're over ten years old but have fairly low usage.

I can still look at the data - it uses some program called VERITAS to back up things. I haven't tried reading them.

I'm not sure what I'd do with two dozen external 1 terabyte hard drives but I'd hate to see them just go to the dump. If I take them I'll DBAN them, create new partition tables and format them - probably in NTFS (Windows). Most are missing their little power supplies and USB cables so I suspect that they were either tossed or there's a stash of them... somewhere.

Thoughts?