Random Tech Questions you want answered.

HDCP only authenticates when the content is protected; that is, non-encrypted content will not activate HDCP. So if HDCP is the problem, the symptom would be that HDCP protected content would not play. The OS, on the other hand, would work fine because it does not trigger the HDCP authentication process. See page 5 here.

Intel appoints Pat Gelsinger as new CEO.

Intel today has released a press statement saying that current CEO Bob Swan [...] is to step down in his role, and be succeeded by Pat Gelsinger. Gelsinger, a veteran of the industry, has spent over 40 years at companies such as VMWare, EMC, and spent 30 years previously at Intel, reaching the potisition of Chief Technology Officer. In that role he drove creation of standards such as USB, Wi-Fi, he was the architect of the 80486, and played key roles in 14 generations of Intel Core and Xeon processors. As CEO of VMWare since 2012, Pat has overseen a tripling of annualized revenue to make VMWare a recognized global leader in global infrastructure and cyber security.

The missing piece of the puzzle has been having an engineer at the top of Intel's food chain, particularly one well versed in Intel's product portfolio, and for those that wanted this to happen, it appears to be so, from February 15th.

I've seen it mentioned several times here that Intel was run by the sales and marketeers, and not by engineers. So seems like a step in the right direction. I know that VMware, a vendor I follow closely for a living, seemed to take the right strategic decisions over its history at least.

I would not bet against Gelsinger. I will note that the companies he's been associated with have had... aggressive... sales approaches.

Someone over at Ars noted that he was in charge of both NetBurst (the failure that let the Athlon 64 do so well), and Larabee, their first failed GPU.

Chip companies take years to really respond to management changes, because fabs are really, really slow to build and very slow to tune. One fab CEO said that committing to building a new one was, for him, betting the company each time, but he wouldn't know for four or five years whether or not he'd just killed the whole outfit.

Swan wasn't in charge long enough to fix anything, he's a sacrificial goat. The mistakes we know about were by his predecessor, Krzanich, an engineer. Gelsinger is not going to be a panacea; there's a lot wrong with Intel, all through its structure. And we don't really know if what Swan has been doing has helped things. They're a famously insular company, and not very much leaks out.

In 2025 to 2026, we'll know if Gelsinger was a good decision or not. For several more years, it's all Krzanich and Swan.

edit: added a missing "enough". Oops.

My guess is that his effects will be related more to how he handles the engineer v sales culture, and whether he decides to change the overall approach to design (which, yes, would have an effect years down the line, but we should be able to see it coming). If he decides that the tick-tock approach is no longer viable, or that they should emphasize one type over another, that could really affect things, and perhaps even before the products arrive.

Intel engineering seems to me, from the outside, a classic "don't touch that! You don't know what it's connected to!" situation.

They are working on both Big/Little designs and chiplet based designs so at least they are evolving some. Of course other companies are already shipping Big/Little designs (Apple's M1 for instance) and chiplet based designs so they do have a lot of catching up to do.

FYI, The issue with my TV was completely rectified by using DVI to connect my monitor. Must be a weird thing with my video card not happy about HDMI and Displayport being used at the same time, either through hardware defect or just a strange limitation that nobody online has complained about, unless it's my TV not liking the arrangement. Hopefully once I upgrade to a 3070 (who knows when) this'll no longer be an issue.

Keep in mind that it could be an issue with the tv's handling of DisplayPort as well... But congrats for fixing it!

(BTW... Rectified a signal problem? Niiiiice one....)

So my razer blade....

the fans have started clicking when they spin up now... is there a good solution to this? is it just dust or is it hard to say?

if i buy another razer product somebody shoot me.

Why do some games, like Elder Scrolls Online for instance, move my open windows around when I run the game? My resolution is 1440, but at 125% scale. When I exit the game my windows are shoved down to the bottom right.

The game is set for the same resolution as Windows and I run it full-screen. Other games don't mess with the desktop window positioning at all.

FiveIron wrote:

So my razer blade....

the fans have started clicking when they spin up now... is there a good solution to this? is it just dust or is it hard to say?

if i buy another razer product somebody shoot me.

Could be dust, debris, or failing bearings. If it were me I'd just order a new fan, and plan to replace it.

PaladinTom wrote:

The game is set for the same resolution as Windows and I run it full-screen. Other games don't mess with the desktop window positioning at all.

It is actual (exclusive) full-screen, or is it borderless windowed "fullscreen"?

I'm not sure why either would mess with your window positioning, but if the game has both options, you can try switching from one to the other to try and change that behavior.

Why the hell has gmail stopped sending Promotions emails to the Promotions box? They're all going to my Inbox again (e.g. Humble Bundle stuff).

FiveIron wrote:

So my razer blade....

the fans have started clicking when they spin up now... is there a good solution to this? is it just dust or is it hard to say?

if i buy another razer product somebody shoot me.

I have the 2016 model of the Stealth and it sucks in cat hair like crazy. I have to open it up every now and then and use canned air to clean it out. I think you need a T5 Torx screw driver to open it up though.

Roo wrote:

Why the hell has gmail stopped sending Promotions emails to the Promotions box? They're all going to my Inbox again (e.g. Humble Bundle stuff).

I've noticed bullsh*t phishing emails getting through to updates and forums categories too. Same basic template, all "from" AOL email addresses.

*Legion* wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:

The game is set for the same resolution as Windows and I run it full-screen. Other games don't mess with the desktop window positioning at all.

It is actual (exclusive) full-screen, or is it borderless windowed "fullscreen"?

I'm not sure why either would mess with your window positioning, but if the game has both options, you can try switching from one to the other to try and change that behavior.

Hmm. I just tried borderless and it seems to have worked. Thanks!

In my experience, that option is the weirdest and has the most unexpected results out of any game setting ever. For me, Borderless Full-Screen instead of regular full-screen has led to v-sync not working, v-sync only working in that setting, performance being worse, performance being better, absolutely no difference, the only way to increase sound, the only way for 5.1 to work. There's even a couple of the COD campaigns where to this day you get constant audio drops during the loading cinematics that completely disappear if you run the game in Borderless Full-Screen. Must be something with how the engine and Windows talk to each other or something.

Also note that gamma in windowed or full screen windowed may not work either.

PaladinTom wrote:

Why do some games, like Elder Scrolls Online for instance, move my open windows around when I run the game? My resolution is 1440, but at 125% scale. When I exit the game my windows are shoved down to the bottom right.

The game is set for the same resolution as Windows and I run it full-screen. Other games don't mess with the desktop window positioning at all.

I think it may relate to how the game changes resolution. I'm suspicious there must be an old/early system call for changing res, because the older a game is, the more likely it is to do the mess-up-desktop-windows stuff. Newer games tend to do it less.

And, as others are saying, you can see different behavior from Windowed Fullscreen, which is displaying a borderless window on the desktop, possibly resizing the desktop while it does so (likely to cause window grief), and actual true Fullscreen, where the game opens its own dedicated hardware window. Games that do that tend to not disturb the desktop as much, although old ones sometimes still do.

One possibility is maybe that the hypothetical old call changes resolution first, and then opens a new screen, where the hypothetical newer approach opens the hardware screen first, and then resizes it.

But that's all just guessing from observing similar symptoms. I don't actually know. I can definitely confirm seeing the same behavior, quite frequently.

This one is driving me nuts and I'm probably missing something super obvious.

Google Hangouts is getting axed and google has been alerting me to move over to Chat. I downloaded the Chat app and can message single users or chats that have texted me from Hangouts. However I can't see where you can create a new chat. There is a message that says "You can only join chats and rooms that you were invited to". I get the rooms but they can't really have put the creating a new chat behind a paywall, right??

Chat is, if I'm not mistaken, more of an app for people who do enterprise stuff. You should have been prompted to move from Hangouts to Messages if you're looking to text people.

Otherwise, yes, Chat is behind a paywall.

The app page says “Currently for Google Workspace customers only”. Which means, I think, that your Workspace admin needs to turn on your ability to start a chat or open a room.

NSMike wrote:

Chat is, if I'm not mistaken, more of an app for people who do enterprise stuff. You should have been prompted to move from Hangouts to Messages if you're looking to text people.

Otherwise, yes, Chat is behind a paywall.

Their messaging is certainly not clear. It sounds like every thing is getting consolidated.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/15/ha...

Ah, so that's where the confusion is - Chat is still behind a paywall. They have not made it free yet. So I'm betting yes, that's why you don't see the ability to start a new chat.

Google is so terrible at this sh*t.

To Google, you're not the customer, you're the product. The product can shut the hell up and align itself with Google's priorities, or they won't try to sell that malfunctioning unit to their customers anymore.

If that makes life hard on the product, too bad, they don't want you anyway.

In general, I don't think it's a good idea to depend on Google's services if you have reasonable options. Buy what you want from someone that cares about keeping you happy, not stuffing you in a box to sell to advertisers.

"Free" often means "painful".

Hmm, well that is very annoying as I enjoyed being able to search the history. We don't use Google messages because it's reliance on cell signal and SMS / MMS just suck. What's app is out of the question now. Maybe Discord or Signal?

I got another off the wall question:

can cameras one day have such a high resolution that (after you zoom in) they could see skin cells from a selfie? is there something besides resolution at play in this idea?

FiveIron wrote:

I got another off the wall question:

can cameras one day have such a high resolution that (after you zoom in) they could see skin cells from a selfie? is there something besides resolution at play in this idea?

I don't see any reason why not. They have big professional cameras that let you zoom in from miles away and see individual people in windows, and skin cells are large enough to be resolvable with normal light, you just need a really good lens. I would, therefore, assume that seeing skin cells in a selfie would be at least theoretically possible. But mainstream tiny cameras would need to be a lot better than they are now.

Interesting.... I think the reason I thought of it is because I’m always dreaming of the possibility that a camera with high enough res (and apparently a machine fast enough to scan all those pixels) could auto detect something like corona in the air or on people...

i also know that you need an electron microscope to see a virus though.... so maybe a camera that also fires electrons? i give it 2 more years for that to develop with the way things are going

Viruses vary in size, but most are less than 1/100th the size of a human cell. Even if you could zoom in on cells, it would take a LOT more to zoom in on viruses.

Human skin cell is about 30,000nm in size, COVID19 is about 125nm.