Console-gaming

Two words: corrupt, busted.

I lost all my consoles in a lightning-strike back in March, and after using most of the money meant for replacement-consoles on my computer-upgrade instead; I'm NEVER going back to console-gaming ever again...

They're completely overpriced, the games are as well and games/apps get slower patching than any other gaming-platform.

Not to mention the hardware is usually 2-3 years behind current PC-hardware, and usually under-powered as fuck. Actually, current-gen consoles (PS4 / Xbone) also utilize "Radeon-based" graphics (graphic-accelerators), which is severely sub-par compared to almost any other graphic-solution.

Nope!, spank you very much...

FUCK. CONSOLES.

Nvidia graphics-accelerators

After being an AMD fanboy for a long time, I must admit Nvidia has the graphics market quite cornered.

My latest upgrade included an EVGA GeForce GTX 960 4GB GDDR5 SSC ACX2.0+

The one I had before that could barely grasp on the gaming-development cycle of it's time, yet alone the newer developments.

So, after a lot of researching and testing at friend's places, I concluded Nvidia has developed the superior gaming-tool(s). PhysX has no rival technologies (in PC hardware at least), as for the newer tech: HairWorks and GameWorks, I have no special opinions. They're there. Nuff said.

I'm rather more interested in the CUDA-cores and their hardware-accelerators, more specifically NVENC the hardware-accelerated HDV-encoder.

Not to mention all the recent "woo-haw" around VR.

quad-g5

Because of a recent lightning-strike, my gaming-rig literally spiked... and died...

But, thanks to very nice family-members I got replacement components, very quickly ;) :P since I was getting quite a few bucks in insurance (eventually, may'16) I decided to completely upgrade the whole rig.

After spending an afternoon researching (after months of contemplating on models and makes), I eventually landed on the following choices:

Component selection

• Gigabyte Z170MX-Gaming 5 motherboard
• 2 x 8GB Kingston HyperX Fury DDR4 2666MHz RAM-modules
• Intel® Core i5 6600K 3.5GHz CPU
• Intel® 535 SSD 240GB SATA 3.0 game-storage
• EVGA GeForce GTX 960 4GB GDDR5 PhysX graphics-adapter
• Cooler Master Hyper TX3 EVO CPU-cooler 

No fight to assemble the beast, at least not a lot. The CPU-cooler took some getting used to only having to screw together the mount(s), and pressing it into the motherboard (Cooler Master's *brilliant* Intel-type push-plugs -_-).

All components assembled into north+south-bridge(s)

It also helps to be prepared for a future lightning-strike, by using a 80-PLUS-Gold-certified PSU that sports: over-voltage protection, under-voltage protection, short circuit protection and over power protection.

Corsair RM850x PSU (Power Supply Unit)

Combined with a power-strip sporting surge protection, I'd say I'm much better equipped for the ominous scandinavian weather-system now, than before.

Giving a combined performance-boost of ~50% in heavy 3D and rendering cases :) and (roughly) around a 45-50% reduction in heavy-load temperatures as well as idle temperatures (Intel < AMD), I'd say I'm really pleased ;)

---

Quite the OP setup, at least compared to my earlier rig (h3x). Geekbench3-results confirm this:

• quad-g5 geekbench3 multicore-score:
  13380 ('2016)
• h3x geekbench3 multicore-score:
  8305 ('2013) 

*** FINGERS CROSSED ***

---

Update May 11th:

Added extra 92mm Cooler Master cpu-fan as exhaust-booster

Google Drive on Linux

I didn't really think much about it, but when I started using "InSync" a few years ago, all my woes using Google Drive on desktop-Linux vanished :)

It is simply the best client-side synchronization-tool for desktop use of Google's cloud-storage solution ("Drive") on Linux today. Both simple and quite configurable at the same time.

It is cross-platform compatible, i.e.: works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux!

Only drawback is that it costs a one-off fee of $20, but after that, you can use it on as many machines as you want :P

It basically works just like Dropbox (which actually has a Linux-native client! Boo Google!), allowing the user to maintain his file system and offering share options as well as other features by right clicking on files and widgets.

You can get InSync here: https://www.insynchq.com/downloads

Spare time

Yet another period of contracting-work is now at an end. It was a good, solid 10 months :) New experiences - new technology.

Being able to join the starting effort at building something from the ground up is satisfying work :) especially as a technophile setting up core infrastructure and backend(s) for mission critical services.

As with all specialization; if the competence is hard to find, the need tends to round-robin back to the starting point again.

Good fun :P

What new adventures and / or challenges awaits?

Who knows... but I bet they're right around the corner ;) they always are.

Besides, now I have the spare time to pursue hobbies and interests again ^_^

*AMP-takeover

Just another in a long line of successful *AMP-stack takeovers.

The usual suspect attack-vectors:

• a publicly open FTP-service (why, oh why do people absolutely need FTP? SSH FTW!)
• web-panel software for administration of website

The first attack took over the project's main website and replaced the installation-ISO download-links with new links to 3rd party malware-infected ones. So, beware the checksum for any ISO downloaded on the 20th this month.

Following this attack, another was also successful in getting the phpBB database for the Mint support-forum/-community.

Users of the support-community site were urged to change their passwords as the database was found (on the same day as the attack) for sale on The Dark Web.

This is not new.

Poorly maintained web-servers (or any Linux-based server for that matter) often suffer from "update-ignorance", i.e: system-operators / -administrators who fail to (or just blatantly ignore vulnerability advisories, and) patch vital system-components and / or applications on Linux-servers in good time before a so-called "in-the-wild" exploit takes place, and the evidence of such activity it removed completely.


http://news.softpedia.com/news/linux-mint-website-hack-a-timeline-of-events-500719.shtml