I run 16 Bit Virtual Studios. You can find more reviews from me on YouTube youtube.com/@16bitvirtual or other social media @16bitvirtual, and we sell our 3D Printed stuff on 16bitstore.com

  • 14 Posts
  • 89 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • Don’t vote, don’t get to complain.

    Not saying that you have to vote when you dislike the options given. But you do have other options. Like spoiling your ballot, or nullify your ballot.

    Yes the results are the same, but by voting this way, you are actively participating in your democratic process. While not voting at all you are not. And if you do not participate, in my view, you cannot complain about the results.

    Oh and if you don’t know how, on election day just ask the poll workers. They should’ve been trained on how to handle it.





  • When I was in Uni, we had the opportunity to apply for co-op at Black Berry when they still made phones with their own OS.

    I was getting into mobile dev at this time and applied and got an interview.

    I didn’t know what I was expecting but what I got was a 10-20min sales pitch for their phone and I wasn’t asked a question… I don’t think. From what I gathered afterwards they just wanted to hire/rehire one guy and had to interview others to be in the co-op program.

    Believe it or not I wasn’t sold on black berry after that.






  • While the safe bet with Linux is AMD, it’s not like Nvidia or Intel are bad options for Linux. (,running RTX 3050 and 12100f).

    It just depends on your platform and how comfortable you are with tinkering.

    From my testing, Ubuntu based, is the easiest to get up and running while Fedora and arch can take a bit of work.

    For my recommendation, look at the games you wanna run and see what they recommend for hardware. An in general safe bet, 12th gen Intel i3/i5 or 3rd gen Ryzen is a good bet for cheap hardware still in stock in stores or online. Upgrade is good (12-14th on the same socket & 1-5th gen Ryzen on the same socket).

    Graphics cards works on both, and AmD and Nvidia works on Linux, though Nvidia is behind on support, but not by much games will be stable.




  • Because printing in Linux both works and is supported and not supported and hope that there are drivers and they work.

    For example, I have a brother printer and in both arch and Ubuntu/mint the printer worked out of the box. But I was missing features like double sided printing. So I had to download drivers for it.

    In arch the drivers were on the AUR, so I was printing is seconds.

    In Ubuntu/mint they weren’t in my package manager, so I had to go to brother’s website and hope they had drivers. Brother did and while it took a bit it did work too. No worse than windows.





  • For me I was looking for reliability, so I ended up with Prusa. But I ended up with them thanks to a few simple rules I followed.

    1. Can the machine and it’s parts be replaced with off shelf components?

    2. Does it use, or is the platform compatible with open source slicers (Prusaslicer/Cura)?

    3. Does the community support the device with mods on 3D model repositories (Thingiverse/Printables)?

    4. Does the manufacturer have a track record for support (or the lack thereof)?

    Before I got my Prusa, the Creality Ender 3 was the goto, and it was a really reliable machine. For my printing needs I need a direct drive print head, and a better auto bed leveling routine. But the Ender 3 s1 looks pretty good as an alternative.






  • Pro: Price, Convenience, Looks

    Cons: Much like buying an “iPhone” from Temu, the price is usually reflected in the quality.

    Don’t get me wrong, there are cheep smart watches if you look for them or go second hand. But what you’ll find advertised on Temu isn’t it.

    Build quality is usually the first to suffer, but you’ll find mislabeled battery info a 500mah instead of the promised 1000mah. Or an LCD instead of an OLED.

    But those are things we can adapt too. The biggest problem is software. That’ll do and close enough has been the name of the game for years now. And sometimes “smart” just means it can (badly) track your steps and pretend to check your heart rate with a led pretending to be a sensor.


    Alternative

    If you are looking for any budget electronics try looking for last years or a few years ago models. I got a Garmin Forerunner 235 in 2022 for 1/5 of its asking price because I found a deal on eBay.

    I’d also look into the landscape of the market you are buying into and seeing who is actually making these things, and what is running on it.

    For smart watches I found the answer was

    Apple

    Android with Watch OS (Samsung google and many more)

    Garmin

    If the watch isn’t running android watch os or is made by Apple or Garmin. Assume its good too be true and look into it more, or look elsewhere.

    Good news China is lazy and one clone usually is made by many factories and someone else made a video about it. Might not be the same name, but it’ll be close enough.