Photos Latest Purchases Thread: v2.0

Just bought myself a pair of these...




http://www.fizik.com/uk_en/men/shoes/road/r3b.html

 

Reads hover around 250-300MB/sec, 130-150MB/sec for writes.

Makes it an awful lot more useful than the OMGSUPERSPEED stick I've been using, that tops out at around 30MB/sec writes.

 

No, I don't want to!

 

I was thinking of doing the same - I have a 128GB USB3 stick. Reads are ok, but writes are crap.

 

Hm, that's not bad. I expected real world USB-C to be really restrictive in this kind of application.

I might have to keep an eye on things like that for the inevitable rise of C-type devices.

 

Ah, but by USB-C do you mean USB 3.1 Gen 1 or USB 3.1 Gen 2? Whoever came up with the naming convention(s) for the USB standards needs to be given a damn good slap!

 

Vmug Advantage Membership for 12 months at $200 worth it to get a licence for my ESXi box at home as now i can use proper backup solutions that communicate via the api

 

Final bits for my GPU loop.



X1..



X2.





And this.





X2.

 

To keep Alexa company...

Unless you really hate having to say "Hey/okay Google" or need a tie-in that only the echo has, the google home is the one to go for as far as I can see.

Few observations so far:

• I use the G home to listen to radio at night, controlling the volume by touch is clumsy. handily you can ask for 5% volume.
  
• The chromecast audio connect chime can't be turned off on the google home like you can with the chromecast audio puck.
  
• G home does context better. I was asking the age of various royals. On one question Alexa miss heard me, hearing "how old is queen". I was then told about the rock band whereas when I repeated the questions to G home and deliberately dropped the "the" from the question it correctly gave me the queens age.
  
• G home seems hear better. This isn't a fair test since they are in very acoustically different rooms and my echo is the older (possible dust build up?). However I can't help but put it down to the two microphone holes up top on the G home and having googles voice recognition behind it.
  
• Hue lights integration is more polished on G home too. Asking it to turn off all lights results in just that, echo on the other hand... "Alexa: sorry I could not find a device or group called all lights".
• on the subject of hue G home can also do colours including "day light" and "sunset" which my echo can't yet (apparently there is an update out, but I don't have it).

 

I actually prefer saying "Hey/okay Google" to *insert slightly odd girl's name here*.

As clever and as friendly as AI gets I'd much rather be reminded each time that I'm asking a private company with their own interests for a solution, rather than that I live in some strange infantilised dystopia.

I like to think I got over any need to give my computer assistant a friendly name with Clippy and Bob. Heck, they didn't even feel the need to do it in Star Trek.

 

Alexa now responds to "Computer..." (Not sure if you need a Scotty accent though!)

 

It's not that odd, I went to school with an Alexa. And you can change the wake word you know, you can have: Amazon, Echo, Alexa, or Computer.

 

My aunt is called Siri

When I say odd I mean slightly to very obscure/unusual, i.e. Alexa, Cortana and Siri*.

If one of these named voice services becomes ubiquitous like google is to search then it's going to be very annoying for people who already have that name.


*Apparently a name meaning "beautiful woman who leads you to victory", but I suspect it means "Your plastic pal who's fun to be with".

 

My niece's name is Lexi, so when they bought an Echo recently, had to change the name sharpish!

"Your plastic pal who's fun to be with" - I though she was called 'Vinyl Vera':
Errr maybe I'm confusing it with something else

 

AS wolfticket linked, that's the company motto of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation from "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (The company that built Marvin - The Paranoid Android)

 

Recently I bought a Stihl 261 (with a 15" bar) as a replacement for my old smaller saw. It's a lovely saw, which I wholeheartedly recommend.

 

Having an Alexa in our house, we use "echo". As do most of our friends, because it's weird otherwise. We've ruined it for everyone

I'm still waiting for "Jarvis".

Does it have room context for the lights? I hate having to say "bedroom/lounge/kitchen/whatever lights" when I'm in the that room, talking to an echo that's also in that room. If I don't specify the room, there's pretty good odds on me being talking about the room I'm currently in!

 

Seeing as the petrol one went back under warranty, 18V mower an strimmer bundle for less than a new petrol mower. plus I can abuse the battery in my drill etc

 

Good point, I didn't even think of that, I tend not to use brand names if I could use a generic term instead. Obviously I break this rule all the time, but I resent being forced too.

Nope, it just says it doesn't know which light I want to turned on.
During setup I selected the room the G home was in, so it's called "Master bedroom", and of course there is a room in my home app called "Master bedroom" with a bulb assigned. - it is good enough to know that's the room I mean if I say "bedroom" though since that's the only bedroom on the system.