February 2024 - Talk - lists.gtalug.org

anyone have this bell item?
by Karen Lewellen 06 Mar '25

06 Mar '25

hi all, Layered times, leaving me reading more than commenting. My landlord wishes to provide, but cannot seem to successfully secure from bell, the box below. it's a basic bell cable box vip2502 https://www.bellmts.ca/support/tv/fibe-tv/installation-and-setup/arris-vip2… Anyone have this sitting in a closet? Might be wise to confirm the idea will work. This entire property, even outside, has bell fibe for home coverage including internet..But my on going issues with them have me a bit scared. Thanks, Kare Who has not given up on Over The Air, just gauging offered options.

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Feature Highlight - Wayland Compositor Hand-Off
by Scott Sullivan 24 May '24

24 May '24

http://blog.davidedmundson.co.uk/blog/qt6_wayland_robustness/ This is a robustness improvements that let Wayland clients (applications/programs) gracefully survive and reconnect with the Wayland Compositor after a crash / restart or even complete replacement with a different Wayland compositor. X11 Server, from what I understood in my old explorations, architecturally it would not have been possible to get there from within the limits of X11's design. As someone who daily drives KDE Plasam Wayland, I'm really looking forward to this coming down stream. I've at various time suffered the pain of loosing my whole session over crash bugs. A frustrating, but thankfully brief example was a combination of PrusaSlicer and the QT file dialog triggering a compositor crash. It really takes me back 15 years, when the same level of instability was in X11's ecosystem. But I switched to KDE's Wayland compositor because there are meaningful parts that are already surpassing the prior art, and competing with what the commercial OSes are putting out. -- Scott Sullivan

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.local question
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 03 Mar '24

03 Mar '24

I used to give all my machines permanent IP addresses and added entries in my domain for them. (I have /24 globally routable IP addresses.) I then got lazy and let most be assigned dynamically. But not servers. Now I'm even more lazy. I'm starting to use .local. So machines declare their hostname and mDNS / bonjour gets to resolve name.local. Neat. Tonight I'm creating an experimental NextCloud server. Let's say it's hostname is nc. - ping nc.local works - ssh nc.local works - host nc.local works - Firefox and even links cannot see nc.local. Why is that? Firefox is set to use the default DNS, not Firefox's own. If I give Firefox the actual IP address, Apache balks because it cares about the DNS name used. But that's further than nc.local got. I guess Firefox doesn't do mDNS. Why would that be? Or am I making a wrong guess? Clearly I could give to computer a real DNS name, but I'm kind of stubborn and want to understand what's going on.

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Air Canada claims its chatbot is liable, not AC!
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 27 Feb '24

27 Feb '24

<https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/air-canada-chatbot-lawsuit-…> There's surely more to this story. A customer sued AC for the consequences of bad advice AC's chatbot gave. In an argument that appeared to flabbergast a small claims adjudicator in British Columbia, the airline attempted to distance itself from its own chatbot's bad advice by claiming the online tool was "a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions."

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War Story: adding RAM to a laptop can increase the speed
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 21 Feb '24

21 Feb '24

I bought a very inexpensive laptop from costco.ca. Dead deal: <https://forums.redflagdeals.com/costco-ca-hot-299-99-hp-15-6-touchscreen-la…> Unlike most laptops these days, it has two sockets for RAM. Only one was occupied. It had an 8 GiB stick of RAM. - two stick should perform better: allow dual-channel memory access - many consider 8 GiB too little RAM these days. I'm not sure that's true but more cannot hurt I bought another 8 GiB stick with the same specs from Amazon for $25.99 and installed it. <https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B08P3KJRM5> I ran passmark benchmarking software before and after the upgrade <https://www.passmark.com/baselines/V11/display.php?id=202729010710> <https://www.passmark.com/baselines/V11/display.php?id=202835509345> The Passmark Rating (whatever that is) went up about 20%. You can see that the laptop still has modest performance. I'm glad the HP included one 8 GiB stick instead of two 4 GiB sticks. That made it cheap for me to upgrade (add one stick instead of replacing two) but it made the off-the-shelf performance worse.

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Gooood aftermorning everyone!
by Eric Renfro 15 Feb '24

15 Feb '24

Hello GTA LUG! I'm Eric, newish to Canada, Permanent Resident now for alllmost a year, but living in Canada going on 2 almost 2 years now. I'm from Florida prior so, yeah. Hadn't seen snow in something like 20 years, and now seeing two whole seasons of it! haha I've been using Linux since back in the stone ages of SLS, just over 30 years now. I'm on IRC, Discord, and Matrix regularly. Kind of preferring the real time communications over the email list method, because email just isn't the same as it was back in the days of BBS's, which I ran one, up until just late last year, Decker's Heaven. So, hey hey! Hi hi! I missed this month's meeting unfortunately, but I plan to go to future ones. Eric

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meeting idea: AI Explorers' Reports
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 15 Feb '24

15 Feb '24

AI is an exploding field. Lots of stuff is new to us. Many of us are trying things. I think that it would be interesting if those of us that have experimented would chat in a meeting about their experiences. For example: - what were you trying to do? - how is it working out? - what approaches are you thinking might be interesting or productive? - what approaches have you tried and how did they fail? - did you have fun? I would love to hear explorers tales.

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I asked Google's Gemini to compare iGPUs
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 14 Feb '24

14 Feb '24

In the last message, I described how ChatGPT 3.5 confidently gave a wrong answer to my prompt "compare igpu in i3-1005G1 and i3-1215U". Now I'm trying free Google Gemini. New this month! It's answer is much better. But that makes its serious mistakes more difficult to catch. First of all, I blame Intel. It really doesn't describe the differences in iGPUs when showing the difference between the processors: <https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/compare.html?productIds=196588,…> Gemini incorrectly says the i3-1005g1 supports DirectX 12.1 whereas Intel says 12. Gemini says the i3-1005g1 supports OpenGL 4.5 whereas Intel says 4.6. Gemini says that the i3-1215u's iGPU has 80 Execution Units whereas Intel says 64. I'll stop here. Gemini has wasted my time. If I were less careful, it would have mislead me. This is the comparison that I trust the most (but it could be wrong too) <https://www.notebookcheck.net/i3-1215U-vs-i3-1005G1_14098_11413.247596.0.ht…>

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I asked ChatGPT to compare iGPUs.
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 14 Feb '24

14 Feb '24

I have two models of dirt-cheap notebook. One was $300 for an "open box" not quite two years ago and the other was $300 ten days ago. It's easy to google on the web to compare the CPUs but not so easy to find out the difference between the integrated GPUs. So I asked ChatGPT 3.5 (the free one). "compare igpu in i3-1005G1 and i3-1215U" The answer looked OK but I'm quite sure that it is very wrong. It thought that the i3-1005G1 was newer and more advanced than the i3-1215U. The first clue is that it thinks that the i3-1215u is part of Intel's 8th gen Core processors whereas it is part of the 12th gen. I then asked it "why do you thing i3-1215u is 8th gen?". It appologized and said that that processor was part of the 10th gen "Comet Lake". It is not. I wonder if this is due to its training date being before the i3-1215u's launch (first quarter of 2022). It sure would be nice if it knew what it didn't know. Note: I'm not cherry-picking this example. This is the first prompt I've given in weeks. ======== ChatGPT output: When comparing the integrated graphics processing units (iGPUs) of the Intel Core i3-1005G1 and the i3-1215U, there are a few key differences to consider: Architecture: The i3-1005G1 is part of the 10th generation Intel Core processors, codenamed Ice Lake. It features the Gen11 graphics architecture. The i3-1215U, on the other hand, belongs to the 8th generation Intel Core processors, codenamed Kaby Lake Refresh. It features Intel HD Graphics 615. Performance: The i3-1005G1 generally offers better graphical performance compared to the i3-1215U due to the newer architecture and improved integrated graphics in the Ice Lake processors. The Gen11 graphics in the i3-1005G1 typically provide better support for modern gaming and multimedia applications compared to the Intel HD Graphics 615 in the i3-1215U. Features: The i3-1005G1 supports newer technologies such as Intel's Adaptive Sync, which helps reduce screen tearing during gaming or other graphic-intensive tasks. The i3-1215U may lack some of these newer features and optimizations found in the 10th generation processors. Power Efficiency: The i3-1005G1, being a part of the Ice Lake architecture, benefits from Intel's advancements in power efficiency, resulting in potentially better battery life and lower power consumption compared to the i3-1215U. In summary, while both iGPUs serve their purpose for light gaming and everyday tasks, the i3-1005G1 generally offers better performance and more advanced features due to its newer architecture. ================ second prompt User why do you thing i3-1215u is 8th gen? ChatGPT I apologize for the confusion. It seems there might have been a mistake in my response. The Intel Core i3-1215U is actually part of the 10th generation Intel Core processors, codenamed Comet Lake. Let me correct the comparison between the iGPUs of the i3-1005G1 (Ice Lake) and the i3-1215U (Comet Lake): Architecture: The i3-1005G1 features the Gen11 graphics architecture as part of the Ice Lake processors. The i3-1215U, being a part of the Comet Lake processors, features Intel UHD Graphics. Performance: The i3-1005G1 with Gen11 graphics generally offers better graphical performance compared to the i3-1215U with Intel UHD Graphics due to the architectural improvements in the Ice Lake processors. The Gen11 graphics typically provide better support for modern gaming and multimedia applications compared to Intel UHD Graphics. Features: The i3-1005G1 may support newer technologies and features compared to the i3-1215U, although both are part of the 10th generation Intel Core processors. Power Efficiency: The i3-1005G1 might have an advantage in power efficiency due to the architectural improvements in Ice Lake, potentially leading to better battery life compared to the i3-1215U. So, to clarify, both the i3-1005G1 and the i3-1215U belong to the 10th generation Intel Core processors, but they differ in their graphics architecture and associated features.

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Odd Ethernet Behaviour
by Peter King 13 Feb '24

13 Feb '24

Hello all, I have a computer located in the University of Toronto network which shows some odd network behaviour. For one, I have run speedtest-cli on it numerous times at various times of the day, and it consistently returns around 93Mbit upload/download. For comparison, a laptop in the same LAN seems to get 700Mbit, while a computer in a different part of the UofT network gets 900Mb/570Mb. The NIC has a RealTek chip and uses the r8169 kernel module. Ethtool, which gives a live report, does list the card as running at 1Gb/s. But that sure isn't the speed I am getting. This same slow computer also has problems if I reboot it remotely: most of the time it doesn't come up, though dmesg has the card detected. If I start from a cold boot rather than restart, it comes up correctly most of the time. In either case just typing in #netctl start <ethernet> starts it up just fine. I was trying to solve this problem and saw that there are several complaints along just these lines having to do with the r8169 module. Some people suggested downgrading to r8101 but that module is even older. If the module isn't working well, that might account for the slower speeds. Is there any way to tell? Obviously I can buy another NIC with a different chipset but don't really want to go to the trouble if there is an easier way to diagnose the difficulties. All advice appreciated! Thanks. -- Peter King peter.king(a)utoronto.ca Department of Philosophy 170 St. George Street #521 The University of Toronto (416)-946-3170 ofc Toronto, ON M5R 2M8 CANADA http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/ ========================================================================= GPG keyID 0x7587EC42 (2B14 A355 46BC 2A16 D0BC 36F5 1FE6 D32A 7587 EC42) gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 7587EC42

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