Aaron44126

Twitter has been profitable before (which makes me seriously question Musk pitching his deep cost cutting as "necessary"). Of course, all of the advertisers that have been leaving the platform probably aren't making things look good for this year and next... Since Twitter is private now, we might not even get to see good numbers. Oh, plus Twitter owes $1 billion per year in interest payments now, that'll surely eat in to any sort of profit they manage to generate...

Because he's doing such a great job of that himself... The new "no linking to other social networks" policy (linked above) has been deleted, as were the "official" tweets announcing that policy change. Now, the Twitter Safety account has taken to posting polls asking about potential changes to the rules... https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1604657989977260033

This is normal. The DGFF connection between the GPU and the motherboard is just eight lanes. There are not enough pins for 16 lanes. This was also the case for prior-gen Precision 7X60. Some older systems did run at 16 lanes with an extra DGFF data connector. PCIe4×8 has the same bandwidth as PCIe3×16, so I think that Dell took the opportunity to free up some board space rather than increase bandwidth when the PCIe4 upgrade came along. Ampere doesn't really need 16 lanes of PCIe4 to reach full performance (especially when you consider how power-starved the GPU is in this case). This is also normal. Under standard configuration, the PCIe link speed will change dynamically, you won't normally see it running at PCIe4 speed unless the GPU is doing work. (You can override this behavior with Windows advanced power settings... but there's no real reason to.)

Maybe this will be over soon? (Ha.) Elon Musk proposes stepping down as head of Twitter in poll https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/18/23515764/elon-musk-head-twit-poll-tesla-doxxing-moderation Here's the poll. As of now, the vote to remove Musk is ahead at 58% vs 42%. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604617643973124097 [Edit] Musk also says that they're going to tweak the policy above blocking links to Facebook, etc.; they will only do suspensions when the account's "primary purpose" is promotion of a competitor. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604615711036407809 [Edit 2] I haven't been following the Tesla side but it looks like he's under pressure to move back over there (at least if he wants to keep his CEO title), so this poll might be the perfect excuse for him to get out...

https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/social-platforms-policy https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/18/23515221/twitter-bans-links-instagram-mastodon-competitors Twitter users are no longer allowed to post links to rival platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, ...), or reveal their handles to other platforms in their Twitter bio or tweets. [Edit] What determines if a platform is "prohibited" or not? I notice that TikTok is not on the list...

I don't think the power adapters will be cross-compatible. A1297 has the original MagSafe connector and MacBook Air 15 has MagSafe 2. You don't need install media for macOS. The system BIOS has the capability to pull it down on-demand over the Internet. Hold the "Command" and "R" keys while you power on the system and you will get to a recovery mode where you can reinstall macOS. (You may have to select a Wi-Fi network and enter the password if you do not have the system connected via Ethernet.) https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904 Once macOS is installed, you will be free to upgrade it to the latest version supported on the system using the regular online process. (Newer systems are upgraded through the "Software Update" component in system settings, but older ones actually had you pull down the new OS through the App Store.) ...I looked up the model information. A1297 is rather old, that model was released in 2009. The latest officially supported OS is Mac OS X 10.11 "El Capitan", released in 2015. You might be able to upgrade to a later release "unsupported", this site has some information on that. http://dosdude1.com/software.html

It doesn't necessarily run the CPU at maximum power just because it's running at the maximum clock speed. (...Though, it would use less power if it were allowed to clock down.)

Alright, here's some more. Elon Musk is offering the generous opportunity to invest in Twitter at $54.20 https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/16/23513407/elon-musk-equity-investment-sucker-born-every-minute (After admitting that he "obviously" overpaid for Twitter, he is offering up the opportunity for other people to hop in and overpay as well!) Twitter stiffs software vendor with $8 million left on contract, lawsuit says https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/12/twitter-stiffs-software-vendor-with-8-million-left-on-contract-lawsuit-says/ Elon Musk re-enabled Twitter accounts for several journalists banned over @ElonJet https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/17/23513620/elon-musk-suspended-journalists-twitter-reinstated-elonjet (After running a poll, no less...)

I feel like the OS support timeframe for Macs is more like 6-8 years (depending on the model, you might get lucky and land on the longer end of that timeframe). This has typically been an advantage for Windows, where you could expect to be able to upgrade "forever"... but look at Windows 11. They dumped support for all PCs older than three years (at the time of its launch). Who knows if they will try something like this again whenever Windows 12 rolls around...

NVIDIA puts GPU+laptop model ID together in their driver INF file. If you're running an "unsupported" GPU+laptop model combination, you'll have to do an INF modification in order to get the driver to load. https://www.nbrchive.net/forum.notebookreview.com/threads/precision-7530-precision-7730-owners-thread.820539/page-253.html#post-10937563

That’s the same as mine. I’ll have to double check what power limit I am observing. Pretty sure I was seeing 130W when this system was new.

Huh, if there is a different vBIOS version floating around, @MyPC8MyBrain can you report what vBIOS version number you are seeing?

Ha ha ha ha... Elon Musk temporarily suspends Twitter Spaces after being confronted by banned journalist https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/16/23512930/elon-musk-twitter-spaces-washington-post-new-york-times-banned Last night, Elon Musk popped into a Spaces chat discussing his move to ban a bunch of journalists’ accounts from the platform. Confronted by Buzzfeed News’ Katie Notopoulos and The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell (who was one of the banned reporters) on how he can claim to support free speech while also ejecting journalists who report information about him that he does not like, Musk stuck to his refrain of “you dox, you get suspended.” (The banned users had not, in fact, doxxed him.) He dipped out when pressed further. Within hours, Twitter Spaces was at least partially removed from the platform, with users saying they were unable to access it on iOS or Android. Musk claimed that the feature was removed to fix a newly identified bug: that banned users like Harwell were able to join a Spaces chat, which is genuinely an issue that Twitter ought to remedy. But under normal circumstances, it’s easy to imagine this bug being quietly updated when the fix was ready. The swift and extreme response of removing the vertical until it is fixed feels personal. Recording of the exchange -- https://twitter.com/ForeverEversley/status/1603612770892918784

Twitter now blocking all links to any content on Mastodon? That could be seen as anti-competitive. https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/15/23512113/twitter-blocking-mastodon-links-elon-musk-elonjet Apparently the journalists that have been blocked (see above) are just suspended for seven days.

BIOS update 1.8.0. https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=JG0V9 - Firmware updates to address security vulnerabilities including (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures - CVE) such as CVE-2022-3365 and CVE-2022-30339. ————— I am also seeing WHEA events. They seem to come in "bursts". The most recent I have is a batch of 15 which occurred within 20 seconds of each other, about two days ago. They don't occur often. I see a few bursts on December 13 and 14, but then I have a break all of the way back to December 2. (My system is powered on 24/7.) I haven't noticed any actual problems timed with these events, so I'm just going to ignore it.

BIOS update 1.18.0. https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=XHMM6 - Firmware updates to address security vulnerabilities including (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures - CVE) such as CVE-2022-3365. [Edit] Updated, no issues so far.

On past systems, performance was slightly reduced when using dock power only. You can avoid it by attaching a 240W power adapter directly to the system in addition to the dock cable.

Musk bans live location sharing, says he’ll sue creator of plane-tracking bot https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/12/musk-bans-live-location-sharing-says-hell-sue-creator-of-plane-tracking-bot/ But more critically... Elon Musk starts banning critical journalists from Twitter https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/15/23512004/elon-musk-starts-banning-critical-journalists-from-twitter Freedom of speech, right? [Edit] Hitting more mainstream, non-tech media as well. https://www.npr.org/2022/12/15/1143291081/twitter-suspends-journalists-elon-musk-jet

I feel like 4000/5000 cards have had the same power limit (& roughly the same performance) going all of the way back to the Pascal cards in the Precision 7X30 line (2018), which I think was the first time that the 4000-level card hit 100W. Since then, there's been no reason to get the 5000 card, really, unless you need other capabilities that it provides. (Until this generation, they had different vRAM amounts at least...) Benchmarks have shown the performance difference otherwise to be pretty consistently less than 5% off. This is reflective of the "low" power limits that NVIDIA is putting on these power-hungry desktop GPU dies that they are shoving into laptops. Because they have the same power limit, they have the same performance, with the higher-end GPUs getting a very slight nudge up because they are able to run more cores at a lower clock speed (a little bit more efficient). Actually, I sort of suspect that the A3000 GPU would be competitive against the top-end cards as well, at least if you are not pushing vRAM above 12GB. NVIDIA says it supports up to 130W TGP so it should have the same power limit as the A4500 and A5500 in these systems (or at least in the Precision 7670). I'd love to see some benchmarks on this. Regarding undervolting, previously the pro/Quadro/RTX line has been locked down, but starting last year with the pro Ampere line, NVIDIA seems to be allowing undervolting in the pro GPUs using tools like MSI Afterburner. (I have not tried it yet, but other users did report being able to undervolt the GPUs in the Precision 7X60.)

Elon Musk offloads about $3.6 billion in Tesla stock. (Twice so far this year, he has said that he is done selling Tesla stock.) Up to around $23 billion since the Twitter purchase stuff started. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/12/elon-musk-offloads-another-3-6-billion-of-tesla-stock/

With 3080Ti, I got 399. I think the GPU power limit is going to be the main limiting factor in a test like this, if you're just comparing various Ampere GPUs... You'd definitely want a 17" system for best performance, but if you want to push the GPU power limit any higher than what you get in the 7770, you'd basically need a gaming-focused laptop 😕.

Twitter invents a new policy to explain the disappearance of @ElonJet (which is now unsuspended, though the operator’s main account is now suspended). https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/14/23509817/twitter-elonjets-ban-creator-jack-sweeney-links-trackers

It seems like U.S. authorities spent a few weeks gathering evidence and preparing the list of charges, and waited until they had a pretty overwhelming list before filing everything and asking authorities in the Bahamas to do the arrest (which they appear to have carried out without delay). What they have against him right now seems insurmountable. This guy is going to jail. Listened to this piece yesterday while running errands in the evening; the second half dives into his parents' connection to the whole thing a bit.

Elon Musk is apparently interested in not paying out the three months' severance that he promised employees facing termination. (Plus, issues just managing his legal team.) https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/12/musk-brings-spacex-lawyers-to-twitter-as-layoff-lawsuits-mount-report-says/

About the same as mine then. I wonder why the fan speed is so restricted... (I guess they are a bit larger than the older fans.)