Ask Us Anything! That's Right, It's L1 AMA time! (2022)

Level1Techs INBOX.deb
21

How much of a pain in the dick is it for W to procure, sell, and tech support the KVMs

8 Likes
22

Where is Level 2² techs?

5 Likes
23

When can we expect more collaborations with other channels?

More Wendell and other TechTubers, or some of his other interests but how about Krista and a gardening channel or hiking blog, or Ryan and a Car or Gun channel?

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24

How often do you upgrade your personal PC? I just recently upgraded from a 3570k.

25

We will probably record the answer session after the holiday weekend sometime next week, so there’s plenty of time to add questions. We may split the vid up this time as well to make it a little more digestible (instead of one giant long video which is what we’ve done in the past).

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26

What is poised to be the next paradigm shift in hardware, software, ecosystem etc.

Also, why are you so afraid to make Boilersnake Merch and send me first dibs on the samples???!!

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27

SSD’s have a rating of MTBF, usually in TB written. When an ssd fails due to wear, do you know what is the main cause of the failing? The controller, nand cells, or something else entirely?

An example use case where this is very relavant:
You have a 1TB ssd being used a whole lot. If you pre-allocate or partition the drive to only use 500GB and continuously use only that portion, would its expected lifetime decrease or remain approximately the same compared to if you had used the entire space instead? Keeping amount of reads and writes constant of course.

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28

Why don’t older games like dota 2 and cs go utilise 100% of new gen graphic cards? what are the reasons that make game developers holding back on improving gpu utilisation to their games?

1 Like
29

A long time ago Wendell and co. recommended getting a large monitor as a ‘dumb’ TV and using a roku/shield/chromecast as a input.
Is this still a viable alternative? Did everyone cave and get a smart tv?
What are your recommendations now given the improvements in display technologies?

10 Likes
30

What have you been watching lately?
(TV/Movies etc)

1 Like
31

I’d like an update on Wendell’s home automation and security setup. It has been a while since he’s spoken on the subject so idk if he finished it or just lost some steam on the process.

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32

@wendell Now that you’ve gone through the Orange soda supply of Kentucky what new Soda rating content will you deliver with the news?

@kreestuh What colorful post video processing do you think would make Wendell’s Soda rating portion oh so much better?

For Ryan: What semi serious food rating would you like to to do as your portion of this minor segment of Level One News?

1 Like
33

When do you think the current trend of “shove everything in the cloud” will reverse on an enterprise level?

EDIT: for elaboration; I’ve noticed trends of centralization → decentralization → centralization, wash, rinse, repeat. They aren’t identical, but they’re definitely relatives.

We’re currently pushing everything to be more centralized. Even though we’ve got regional failover and whatnot, it’s not “throw the servers in the branch offices and hire a NOC tech to manage the hardware”

I don’t see this really changing in the near future, but it’s been bothering me lately to consider if/when this might revert back.

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34

(P)YNUHAMFOAGB^Y fgab8o6vy afEBG(P&RQ#GN(P)B&GFQ{HN*) MGWH U)Bawesgg b97puyqfwe

Now that I’ve got that out of my system… @kreestuh, Ryan, and @wendell
If you have one, what is your most liked keyboard of all time?
What about your most hated keyboard of all time?

2 Likes
35

This question is for Ryan: Favorite member of the Wu-Tang Clan? Ghostface is a legit contender for top 5 MCs but I really love ODB because he was completely insane. I also think people sleep on GZA, Liquid Swords is a hell of an album.

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36

I will be horribly disappointed id ryan does not answery question after drunk tubs new years :joy:

37

While I personally long for bare metal technology—where 100% of compute is spent on the task at hand, without untold layers of emulating, abstracting, and virtualising—in a world where untrusted proprietary code must be run for games and other popular applications, I can see the need to rely on virtualisation to increase security through isolation. Maybe there is no avoiding an eventual future where under-the-hood everything mist be a QubesOS-like environment, because nothing else is safe enough to use.

Q: What are Wendell et al.’s thoughts on this?
Do you view virtualisation as a necessary wasteful evil? no opinion at all? preference for virtualising things?

I have the same disappointment in the wide use of virtual desktops; securing or configuring applications/devices has frequently been abandoned in favour of carting bitmaps of virtual screen data. In a way, I miss the days of slower internet where this kind of clunky approach would have been impractical.

Q: I understand that virtual desktops can be an interesting problem to work on, and may have prompted good and widely useful research into compression technology, but am I alone in disdaining the regression to a mainframe↔terminal approach to computing?
Q: Do Wendell et al. have any other philosophical thoughts on the overall trend towards thin clients?

Whether or not this trend will persist is a different, more concrete question, and one which @SgtAwesomesauce has already asked.

Thoughts on Starlink’s place in planetary telecom

I will mention my thoughts on this since it somewhat ties into my thoughts above, of what feels wrong or correct regarding certain technologies, and hopefully might fuel a more interesting response:
SpaceX’s approach, especially currently, mainly provides a last-mile bounce to space; you are talking to a ground-station that may as well be down the road, just out of WiFi range. It really seems like a waste of resources and spectrum when used,

  • on populated land - where a fibre connexion should be used
  • on moving vehicles in populated areas - where a cellular/mobile connexion should be used

That a satellite system is competitive in either situation is more an indictment of the incumbent telecom providers than anything else.

//oops. Posted before I finished writing; check back later

Summarised,

  • in an ideal world, would we really need Starlink if we have widespread reasonably priced fibre, cellular/mobile, and Iridium?
  • will we eventually see space-based Internet routing, where individual satellites run the equivalent of BGP, or maybe even have individual AS numbers?
38

Because you need a CPU that can churn out a million FPS, take a look at our video on the 5800X3D

1 Like
39

What would Apple have to change to make a Mac an appealing option for you?

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40

Hi there. 3 questions:

  1. Internet speeds and prices at home?
  2. Is torrenting a thing in US?
  3. Do you hang out sometines after work, or is the office the only interaction you guys need?
    Keep up the good work!
    Also Brian, the darkness inside you, I love it.
3 Likes