Tech Corner

[jaylach]

Major find! One of my favorite SNES games is Yoshi's Island and I still play it now and then. I didn't even know it existed but I just found Yoshi's Story for the N64

No, I don't still have the consoles. I use emulators for SNES, PS1 and N64.

 

[MattW]

I'm finally getting around to selling off my old pc parts, plus an old iPhone 12. I'm hoping for around £180-200 from a buyer chain store called CEX. The iPhone 12 had some issues with the charging port, as wired charging only worked if the cable was at an angle. I think I found the issue and fixed it. Turns out that the port is a spacious home for micro dust bunnies . They have been evicted, and I'm attempting a full charge with a wired charger now. My old CPU, motherboard, and GPU are also in the sell pile. I'm hoping for at least £100+ for my 2080ti. The money is going to a new canister filter for my 90L. I'm looking at the Oase FiltoSmart Thermo 100. Mainly for its compact design and built-in heater option.

 

[MattW]

Anyone else seen the news about Valve making use of the Steam hardware survey to show users what average FPS they will get in-game before purchase? Seems to be in beta right now for Steam OS systems. Knowing Valve with its consumer friendliness, I can see this being done with PC's too. An actual good use of personal data IMO.

 

[jaylach]

Anyone else seen the news about Valve making use of the Steam hardware survey to show users what average FPS they will get in-game before purchase? Seems to be in beta right now for Steam OS systems. Knowing Valve with its consumer friendliness, I can see this being done with PC's too. An actual good use of personal data IMO.

I have a LOT of Steam games and like the system. As far as FPS I don't really care as the human eye can't do much over 30 FPPS anyway. Yes, higher FPS CAN make a difference from what I've read but I haven't seen a difference as long as 30 FPS is available.

 

[jaylach]

I'm having my first experience with VPN. Since it only cost me $9.00 USD to add it to my MBAM account for the duration of my present subscription, I figured, why not check it out.

Rather interesting but not always usable. For instance I set the VPN to Calgary, Canada, and it is fine... mostly. Take MLB/TV where I stream my baseball games. I get access denied as MLB thinks I'm in Canada, not the US. Just added it late yesterday so don't have a real opinion yet but it DOES seem to have possibilities.

 

[anewbie]

I'm having my first experience with VPN. Since it only cost me $9.00 USD to add it to my MBAM account for the duration of my present subscription, I figured, why not check it out.

Rather interesting but not always usable. For instance I set the VPN to Calgary, Canada, and it is fine... mostly. Take MLB/TV where I stream my baseball games. I get access denied as MLB thinks I'm in Canada, not the US. Just added it late yesterday so don't have a real opinion yes but it DOES seem to have possibilities.

I wouldn't say it doesn't always work - it did exactly what it was suppose to do - mask your identity (location et all). The BIGGEST problem with vpn is how much you trust your provider because they have access to everything you send over the wire; and while it might be encrypted with https once stored it can be eventually decrypted. Also they have the ability to sell the list of sites you access via their vpn.

Now one presumes most vpn are 'honest' but you never know.

 

[jaylach]

Ya, I know the VPN is doing proper but I'd like to tweak a bit if I can. One thing I'd like to see is if I can setup a 'hot key' to turn on/off. I DID find that I can exclude sites from the VPN but only with using the IP, not just like mlb.com. At least I THINK that the excluded IP would turn off VPN for that address. We shall see when I delve a bit deeper.

Haven't tried yet but expect that I'll see the same thing with streaming sites such as Paramount and Prime but that is not an issue if true as I normally do such streaming sites straight through my larger display, not my computer, unless I want to record.

I DID notice that, once I enabled the VPN, site/page response seemed quicker. To really see if the VPN has an actual effect or not I'll need to try several locations as it just may be that, with the VPN set to Calgary, Canada, is routing through a better server than that used without the VPN. LOL! If that sounds dumb remember that, until around 19 hours ago, I've never used VPN.

Trust in the VPN (honesty) is a big reason that I went with the MBAM (Malwarebytes) VPN. I have been using MBAM for more years than I know and fully trust them. As to security I use Windows Defender, MBAM and a hardware firewall through my Belkin router. I like the combo and it is lite as to system resources. Still, the biggest security feature is always common sense. LOL! I always liked the old computer term 'This is a PICNIC' Problem In Chair Not In Computer.

 

[seangee]

Are you using it at device or network level?
I used NordVPN for a few years on my router, also installed on my phones and laptop but only turned on when not connected to my home network. In the end I cancelled the subscription. A few Gotchas

• Streaming providers are getting wise to it and block access, even if you are in your own country so I was constantly modifying the exception list (you don't think about the fact that TV channels suddenly stop working because many of them are now over IP)
  • Especially geo-resticted content
• Countries with censorship block commercial VPNs - this was a big deal for me cos we spend a lot of time in Turkey and both work remotely from there

In the end I used an OpenWRT router and set up my own VPN which means I can always appear to be in the UK when I am away. I also get way more control over my firewall, security polices, ad-blocking, routing, subnets etc etc.
All stuff you could do with a Linux machine (or VM). I used to do this and the setup was quite complex - now I simply have a mini-Linux box as my router, and maintenance / config is way easier.
Added benefit was I upgraded my high end (consumer) mesh system with a couple of boxes that cost £30 a pop. Perfomance is on a par with the latest high end systems, but without all the restrictions they impose.

Interesting fact: I never thought I had a lot of internet devices. But right now my router has 345 active connections, and I know that none of the IOT devices can phone home.

 

[jaylach]

Device level. My main system is the only one that is usually on-line and this is just an experiment to see if I like.

 

[jaylach]

I have made a little progress. I pinned MBAM to my taskbar so I can now turn on/off VPN with 2 mouse clicks.

 

[jaylach]

I'd like to try the VPN for some UK comedy channels that are geographically restricted. Any good advice on such channels?

 

[jaylach]

I still have a Win 10 virtual machine, using VirtualBox, that is currently doing updates while I type this that, technically, should not be happening. My second desktop also runs Win 10, with updates, but I used MS Rewards Points for that which I did not bother doing with the Win 10 VM, yet I'm still getting updates on the VM.

Any thoughts? It isn't anything important; just one of those things that makes me go Hmmmm.

My guess is that it is due to the VM using a MS pin log-in and that my using points to get updates on the second desktop associated extended updates for all systems under my account. Even though the second desktop uses a local account, not a Windows pin, it still has to be associated to my MS account for the updates.

Ahhh, forgot to post the above so I'll just add on. The VM's Win 10 update caused it to no longer be activated. This is a known issue caused by one of the updates killing the loophole that allowed the continued use of an older Windows version key code for activation. This was not supposed to affect systems already activated but, under certain situations, it killed the activation status. I also could not re-activate due to MS shutting down the Win 10 activation servers in December 2025. If this happens to you use the following...

Open Power Shell as an admin and enter the following line and hit enter.

irm https://get.activated.win | iex

The power shell script opens a command prompt with options for a legit activation via the digital footprint from previous activation buried somewhere within Windows. This works with Win 8.1, 10 and 11. Since I was previously activated via a digital license, I don't consider this cheating.

The VM is now back to fully activated with all updates included.

<edit>
Just fixed a typo where I said MS shut down the Win 10 activation servers in December 2026. Should have read, and now does, December 2025.

 

[jaylach]

Sometimes I grumble about having 6 systems and 8 OS installs... Doing updates can take some time. The last of 5 Windows installs on physical systems is in progress along with a Win 10 VM. That will just leave my Mac OS and Linux installs..

 

[jaylach]

A bit of an issue solved.

I use an Excel spreadsheet to use as a movie library where I click on a video title and it launches the movie. It worked great.

Then I dropped MS Office due to a price increase and went to Libre Office. My video library sheet still opened and all seemed fine except that movies would launch. I assumed that it was a fault of Libre Office's Calc not recognizing the 'VIDEO_TS.IFO' file from the DVD rips. On a whim I changed the VIDEO_TS.IFO file to associate with VLC instead of Power DVD and all worked fine. Apparently it was a conflict between Libre Calc and Power DVD, not an issue with VIDEO_TS.IFO not being recognized.

Never was a big issue as I just setup libraries in Power DVD for everything but it was a bit of a pain as my spread sheet is set up by types of movies and Power DVD libraries are strictly alphabetical. Since I only used Power DVD for movies I will likely uninstall.

 

[jaylach]

An issue with my MS Surface. It's comatose. It boots fine but goes totally unresponsive after a few minutes. Can't say for positive but it may have been after the June updates. Since the Surface is almost totally for reading eBooks it's not a bit issue as I can use my Mac Book for that. Still it gives me something to play with.

First step will be Safe Mode to see if the issue persists. If not it would likely indicate that it is a driver issue, most likely video. Of course it could also be a RAM failure, corrupted system file or other things.

I don't rally think it is a Windows Update issue unless the last update made a driver incompatible. The odd part is that it boots fine and works fine for some minutes then goes comatose. I would think a possible thermal issue but that should cause a shutdown. Also no part of the thing feels any warmer than normal.