Nice! I bought the XBLA Perfect Dark remake and really liked it. The Github repo is just the wrapper so I’ll have to track down the actual assets, though.

Mine was just a board in an anti-static bag. As bare bone as you can get.

Yeah, I like it after figuring out how to get it in the right modes. Bought it for playing emulators but works great with Steam.

eBay (US) like a week ago. I got it for $125 but they were going for under $100 before I heard about them.

I don’t think you can buy them new anymore. All the stock I’m aware of are from decommissioned crypto-mining rigs and being sold secondhand.

I included an eBay search link in the Resources (https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=bc-250) and just checked it. Looks like they jumped in price again and are $180+ now.

Assuming you’re in US or Canada, here’s the listing for the one I bought (same seller). It’s the least expensive at $165 with $16 shipping. Some listings include the SSD, so that may be why some cost more. Basically I think the cat is just out of the bag and now that people have found an easy way to repurpose these, demand and price is up.

Oh, nice! Yeah, I had yet to come across that project but will probably give it a try later.

Ooh, that might fit this. When I have time, I’m gonna look for a different case that’ll let me add more active cooling and incorporate something like that.

https://elektricm.github.io/amd-bc250-docs/system/40cu-unlock/#performance

I haven’t done it yet, but it seems to require a patched amdgpu kernel module and setting two values at build time. I’m content with it as-is but may explore that later. I’m also waiting until I have some more cooling before doing anything that will generate more heat. That’ll require a different case, and I just don’t feel like that right now (I’ve got games to play and all lol).

About one roll for $17-20. It used close to a full 1kg roll (half a roll of black, half a roll of red). So if you did it all in one color, you’d just need at most one roll (assuming no failed prints).

I didn’t factor that in since I already have a bunch I bought last year on sale and that money was already spent and waiting for a use.

Yep. You’ll need 25.1 (or higher) and a fairly recent kernel to have all of the drivers in mainline though it’s possible to build them for older distros if you really want to. Basically the guidance is to avoid LTS distros and use something more bleeding edge.

Bazzite has most/all you need already baked in. The only special consideration I had to make with Bazzite was installing the GPU governor. It’ll work fine without the governor, but it’s running full tilt the whole time even when it doesn’t need to.

Yep, it’s not the most energy efficient build but definitely affordable since it’s upcycling what would otherwise be e-waste. It’s not something I’m going to leave running 24/7 so I can deal with it eating some power (I’m pretty big on efficient computing since I’m installing a PV system).

A single 120mm fan is sufficient for gaming if you don’t unlock the extra CUs or overclock it, and you need to either use a shroud to direct the airflow through the heatsink fins or, like I did, 3D print a spreader tool and break the fins apart so more air can make contact with it.

If you’re gonna use it for LLM workloads or heavy sustained loads, you’re gonna need at least two fans and some airflow over the back where the VRAM is. I’ve seem some liquid cooled builds which look awesome but I can’t justify that expense haha.

It’s one of the “just bugs me” aspects of Trek in general, but they generally don’t make a distinction between sentience and sapience and use them interchangeably.

Basically, yeah, if you include all of their memories and experiences. The EMHs in the dilithium mines were EMH copies but weren’t The Doctor. I’ve also wondered if they were sentient or just good facsimiles. Part of The Doctor’s story arc was growing beyond his original EMH programming (plus B’Elanna expanding his matrix in some pretty hacky ways). So that leads me to believe that they weren’t sentient, though they had the potential to become so.

Anyway…

That said, the Doctor from “Living Witness” was, if I recall, the Backup EMH and had all of the The Doctor’s memories and was fully sentient as a result.

Essentially it would be the Will / Thomas Riker transporter accident equivalent for holographic beings.

But then what happens if you Ctrl+Z?

VOY S5E11: Latent Image

Me, too, when I used to sell my old crap on eBay. I feel like it’s just common courtesy. Basically I’d go an hour before they closed and ship out all the orders for the day.

Jonathan Frakes just seems like an all-around great guy. Combine that with a well-written character, and it’s no wonder Riker is such an icon.

Sadly plausible :(

I run Synapse currently but last I looked at Conduit it wasn’t at feature parity with Synapse (granted, that has been a while). The other two I wouldn’t touch with a 50 foot pole because of their stupid-ass names.

If it’s a relatively recent laptop, it should be fine.

Many of them will let you set custom charge limits. If yours supports that, limit it to like 60% or thereabouts. Long enough that you can get some UPS use out of it but not full enough it’s ever gonna go spicy pillow on you.

If it won’t let you set a charge limit, they’ll still kind of float around full charge but not stay at 100% all the time. Even plugged in, mine will drop down from 100% to eventually 92% before it will start charging back to 100 again. That’s over the course of several days to a week.

If the laptop is older than about 2017 or so, or still has a removable battery, you might want to just take the battery out and use an external UPS as those typically don’t have the extra charge management features newer ones do.

To run them full time, you either want to remove the screen or “tent” them because a lot of heat is dissipated through the keyboard, and it’s normally expected to be open while running because of that. By “tent”, I mean open it halfway and put the screen facing down so it’s standing up and shaped like a tent.

You should get one. I was late to the party, but it’s made a huge difference convenience-wise. Instead of dealing with (and washing) various measuring cups, I just pour directly into the mixing bowl and zero it out after each ingredient. I think a cheap one only set me back a little under $20.

“Homelab nerds” are a market unto ourselves. We get most if not all of our gear secondhand from eBay or similar, and those storefronts on ebay are run by electronics recycling companies that get their inventory from data centers or corporate offices when they shut down or do hardware refreshes.

My Need -> eBay -> [server part search term] -> Multiple inexpensive listings with large quantities available -> Buy -> My Need Met

Replace “server part search term” with full rack servers, switches, SFP+ modules, RAM, power supplies, pulled HDDs/SSDs, and/or any other part I’ve bought used that was a corporate/data center pull.