>>28076
It's a good question.

Personally I would think about buying a little M.2 drive and putting it in a USB case - that would rock.

Most decent-quality USB 3 flash drives will approach hard drive levels of performance, which may or may not be acceptable to you. Do be careful about where you buy from, because Amazon and eBay are full of counterfeits.

The better (but more expensive) option is to go with an external SSD. The Samsung T5 500GB is available for under £70 and has all the performance and durability you'd expect from a Samsung SSD.

If you've got an older laptop with limited storage, I'd recommend just installing a decent-sized SSD. It's not all that difficult, SATA SSDs are cheap as chips these days and you'll see a huge increase in responsiveness if you're still booting from a hard drive.

>>28069
No, they use liquid fuel.

>>28071
He means to plug his phone in.

There is absolutely no reason to not use your phone and cheap Bluetooth earbuds.

>>28070

This is pretty much the sort of thing I'm looking for. What kind of battery life does it have?

>>28073

I've given several already in the thread, but if you want to add the 7 gazillion remotely exploitable bugs in the Android bluetooth stack to the list....

Very definite sage for infosec autism.

>>28066>>28065
Thanks, I'll check those out.

>>28068
Agreed, I suppose I thought .gs was full of boomers like me who wouldn't care for using their phones. Which I can do, but like you said the bulkiness and battery life really aren't ideal. I liked MP3 players because they were tiny, lasted a long time and did a single thing very well. There was no real reason for that tech to change.

>>28070
I'll take a look - it's not really snobbishness that's motivating my choices, I'm just wary of getting a dud. The quality of Chinese tech has undoubtedly improved in the last decade anyway. So I might give it a bash and report back.

>>28074
Stop pretending to be me, ladchapm7.

>>28053
What about the parts? I've been planning to build my own PC out of fancy new pieces for several years now; my current one is 11 1/2 years old but it runs just fine. If this is a time when I can be confident I'll be at home to receive a fat new case and motherboard and other bits that won't fit through the letterbox, perhaps I might finally take the plunge.

>>28055
Everything I've heard about PC parts at the moment is that crypto and chip shortages have rendered a lot of things way more expensive than they should be.

>>28055>>28056
A lot of PC parts are cheap at the moment - I bought one of my kids an i5 processor for hardly any money compared to the RRP. But graphics cards are absolutely fucking mental. You'll pay 400 quid for a card that would have cost 100 pounds a year back - I don't know what to do about that other than wait. 3090 cards are over two grand now, which is just a mental amount of money to pay.

>>28057
That's wonderful; that's exactly what I wanted to hear. Thank you very much. Now I just need to wait till Monday for those parts to drop even further in price, and soon I'll be tearing around with my brand new 64GB RAM, 12-core CPU, and 3dfx Voodoo 2 graphics card.

>>28058
>Voodoo
Those fuckers are expensive nowadays m8

>>28040

Am I misreading you or are you saying an extension like the one pictured would be preferable?

>>28043
Yes, that's far preferable.

>>28043
Not him, but they're definitely preferable. Just make sure the lead is unwound, or at the very least not forming loops. Self-inductance isn't anywhere as near as dangerous as one of those old blocks potentially blowing, but it can potentially reduce the amount you're able to usefully draw.

I wouldn't use one of those old blocks because most plugs have some kind of USB charger attached to them now and their irregular shapes mean you can only plug one thing into them at a time.

>>28045
It's not an inductance thing, it's just resistive heating. If it's all coiled up, there's nowhere for the heat to go. As I have failed to explain to my beloved when she tells me yet again that the pressure washer is broken, having been using it on the 100m extension lead still on its spool, smelling of hot pvc. Fuck's sake. /101/ worthy.

>>28025
?
I mean the air movement relies on wind alone. The fan is simply a mechanism to turn the generator.

>>28026
Perpetual motion.

>>28023
A kW PFC stage isn't terribly expensive, as it's the front end of a moderate PC power supply. I could then PWM the output of that (which is basically 450V DC) into a series pair of regular elements.
Probably have horrible flicker & harmonics, but fuck it. Hm, I could just use the whole PC PSU, and switch in and out power resistors mounted to a massive blown heatsink, fed from 12V. That would be relatively sanely priced, not too offensive to the mains supply, quiet and reliable.

You're all right (except jumper lad), I should ditch blown air and get a panel or a convector. If I can rest my feet on it, so much the better.

>>28024

It would, but the need for it to be windy to stay warm seems impractical.

>>28028

IIRC the Dyson Hot + Cool fan heater does have continuously variable output, but it's also £400.

I went with an X3 Pro because I wanted a bit of extra RAM and storage (8 GB RAM, 256 GB storage). I spent about 250 GBP on it, all in, with a couple of fancy outer cases. I could have probably spent less if I'd waited for the right sale day, but regardless, I'm very happy with it.

Also, to clarify, I purchased the phone from a Swedish vendor for delivery within the EU, and I haven't encountered any UI-based ads. There was an option for "Personalised ads" when setting up the phone that I turned off.

Thanks for the recommendation ladm9s.

You almost tempted me too with your Chinese knockoff but I just ordered a Pixel 6. Spent an extra £200 to stay with EE to boot. Oof.

>>28015

The X3 isn't perfect, I will say. It's a bit heavy, unnecessarily big, and plastic feeling, but in terms of hardware crammed into an affordable package it's the best phone I've ever had.

>>28015
>Spent an extra £200 to stay with EE to boot
Same. 3 and O2 might have better prices, but I enjoy being have a phone signal.

>>28017
Just got it. I did a speed test and while EE don't rate the indoor 5G coverage as good at my house, I can get around 400 Mbps download. Very impressed.

>>27464

I went a similar route with scaffold planks. So very easy to do.

I guess this thread is as good as any. I need to fund a home office setup, ideally as cheaply as possible. I'd like to replicate the setup that I will be giving back to my old employer, which is:-

2 x Dell E2214Hb monitors.
1 x Logitech 1080p HD webcam.
1 x Dell OptiPlex 3050.

Amazon have 22" and 24" Dell monitors for £90 each and a similar webcam for £58. It's the base unit itself where I'm most likely to come unstuck; it's primarily going to be used for online meetings and typical office work, so it won't need to run anything intense, but I may need to reign myself in.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dell-SE2422HX-Monitor-FreeSync-Warranty/dp/B0957LFHTM/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Logitech-Webcam-Calling-Recording-Stereo/dp/B07PL9XPYQ/

https://www.dellrefurbished.co.uk/item/dell-optiplex-3050-sff-000020/dell-optiplex-3050-sff/1.html

>>27987

You can get an identical machine on eBay for well under £200.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=optiplex+3050

Those monitors go for about £40.

>>27988
Thanks lad. There's a mini tower for £200 with a 15% off coupon so I may go for that one. I've never had a mini tower before, are they any good?

>>27989

SFF systems are fine if you avoid the slightly gutless T-series processors. You can run dual monitors, but you'll need adapters or suitable cables because you only get one Displayport and one HDMI port. You lose the option of installing a full-size graphics card, but you can still whack in a half-height card like a 1650 Super if you want to do a bit of gaming. They're meaningfully more compact than full towers, but unlike the micro systems they have proper desktop CPUs and a small but useful amount of expansion options.

Make sure to get one with an SSD, because booting from a hard drive is unacceptably slow.

>>27981
Yeah, it has 2 PSUs (700W, ffs, in a 1U server), but I idly only fed power into one, and am now too chicken to only power it from the other one. Replacement coming from ebay, for a tenner.
I hadn't seen how cheap whole machines are now - so yeah, if I have to, I'll get one and play swapsy. Dunno if the raid configuration is held on a disk or on the raid card, though, so could still be a pain. With any luck it will fire up fine with the new PSU, and I can pull it all into a VM and flog the box for a pittance.

>>27982
>and am now too chicken to only power it from the other one
Just do it. The worst that'll happen is that it will crap out in a similar way.

I have an old DL360, but given you're talking about 2.5" drives, I think you have the model or so after mine. I believe mine is a G3, which is a 1U server with 2x5.25" hard drives. It is actually brand new, only run for 2 hours, despite being almost 15 years old.

If you get stuck, and it might help, would happily send it or parts.

>>27984
Thanks, all. Cheap ebay PSU sourced, machine fired up and filth harvested and backed up then wiped, no harm done. Box shoved in a rack to be ignored for another decade. It's not even worth provisioning as a VM server or anything, so much power and noise for only moderate grunt.

>>27985
>so much power and noise for only moderate grunt

I have two DL585s and a couple of Sun Sparc's that are in exactly the same category. If I thought there was any gold in them, I would probably recycle, but it seems a shame to just scrap/throw them away.

>>27972
As you're that big, you should really try some out first. I would spend the money with these guys, have used them, and if you're lucky one of their stores is near you.

https://www.backinaction.co.uk

I've recently stopped using my Aeron and now use a Varier kneeling stool, or have the desk at standing height. I know this is heresy.

>>27972

The Size B and C Aerons are suitable for users up to 158kg. You'll probably want the Size C, which has a generous amount of extra width.

>>27973
Unfortunately all those shops are in the SARF. My arse isn't wider than any standard office chair I've sat on so far, but it's close. I intend to lose the weight again (I lost 35kg 2014-2016 and kept most of it off until 2019), but I've been saying that, well, since 2019. Anyway, that's a conversation for /emo/ and /fat/.

I'll have a hunt round ebay and the like and see if there are any local.

>>27975
Well, it went from 'starting to go' to 'gone' in short order. Since I need to work I went to the local furniture recycler and got a standard office chair dealie for £40 delivered. It's fine.

Someone's been listening to my phone calls - only today i was complaining about this standing desk.

>>27960
It gets worse. I've got no way of proving it because I don't want to allow everything, but I suspect that if you decline, you get re-prompted more often. I also notice that frequently if you open the "legitimate interest" section (which is a hilarious bit of fiction", even though it remembers that I've opted out of the consensual ones it's "forgotten" that I objected to the LI ones and I have to object again.

>>27966
>I think a lot of the warnings you see are added by JavaScript, as well, so if you block all JavaScript you can get rid of a lot of paywalls and cookie warnings. Don't do it everywhere, though, because JavaScript is a whole new monopoly unto itself and blocking it will destroy a lot of websites.
I keep telling people that JavaScript was a mistake.

>>27968
Javascript is a reasonable Scheme that is a victim of it's naming and syntax that mirrors Perl but worse in its life cycle. The proliferation of languages that offer type safety and saner syntax which compile down to JS is both proof of a lisp's adaptility and this particular implementation's failings. The post-hoc standardisation of the language based on how brosers implemented it, much like SGML and then XML parsing became a compatibilty issue. But it's here to stay, in it's multiple incarnations, and the dream of the universal VM is one step closer

>>27969
Or, in other words, JavaScript was a mistake.

>>27970
No argument there.

>>27954
That or they're not using it and just put it on the list of ones they posted here to get a response.

>>27955
Which is what I'd assume, considering some people have proven themselves very sensitive to such things on here. And it worked, so good for them.

>>27956
It only took three months but yes.

>>27953

Which one in the list does that?

>>27958

Emoji Now Emoji Keyboard.

>>27944
The only thing I've heard about repairing phones that are wet, that is reliable, is storing them in a bowl of uncooked rice; I guess you could get the same result with a plastic container and loads of silica gel packets.

>>27944

Someone posted before that as water has crap in it, even when it's dried it can cause problems/short circuits, so you have to wipe it down with alcohol to remove that. Though, now you've turned it on it may be too late.

>>27945
Cat litter crystals are supposed to work better than rice. Worked for me when I dropped my phone in the toilet.

>>27947
A bag of silica gel packets will be a lot cheaper than the minimum amount of cat litter crystals you can buy.

Lads, you're being daft. Water isn't magical, it makes a circuit where one shouldn't be - a bag of rice or cat-litter can damage your device far more for the same reason you don't use your laptop in the sandpit at your local playground.

Like >>27946 says, after resisting the urge to turn it on while it's drying you have a problem of mineralisation. A wipe down is needed but it's probably fucked.