The Chat/Spam Thread

[Sazzy]

Cybersecurity is a lot like programming: if you're able to ask yourself the question "how could this go wrong?" and supply the answers, half the job is done. A very exciting field, but also a very active one where your work never truly ends. Who knows what exploit will surface tomorrow?



Ah, perspective.

I've thought about adopting a kitty and was even encouraged to do so a few times by others, but I don't know how to take care of a pet, and I don't want another living being to suffer because of my incompetence. So, yeah...

Well yeah, but the problems in cybersecurity are a lot more tricky than the ones in other parts of the field. Like, just putting a simple bearer token on your api sounds enough but then the tricky parts come like okay so where do i store it on my FE so it can't be abused but I still stay logged in etc etc. Simple/stupid example but you get what I mean.

Anyway, I've been thinking about it for a long time now. We always had cats growing up. But also the responsibility of taking care of something for 20 years scares me.

[yoco]

Does this HDD use CMR? WD 1TB SATA 6GB/s 64MB 7200 RPM Black AF WD1003FZEX
Someone said to get a HDD with CMR, but I have no idea what that means.

[Sazzy]

It's about how data is written. I wouldn't really worry about it tbh. Just get one with good reviews. WD blacks are good. Just don't get a WD Green or something.

[Sazzy]

Also here's a table: https://blog.westerndigital.com/wd-red-nas-drives/

(I'm mostly running on wd red's for my data tbh)

Your WD black is a CMR one

[yoco]

@Sazzy, what do you think about this build? Is it ok? Is 650W enough, for when I buy 3060 in future? What case would you recommend? I'm not a fan of rgb. Plus I'll get an optical drive.
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4
ASUS PRIME X570-P
Crucial BX Red RGB DDR4 16GB Kit (2x8) 3600MT/s CL16
WD 1TB
Samsung 970 EVO 500GB M.2 PCIe 3.0 NVMe, TLC V-NAND MZ-V7E500BW
Seasonic Core GM 80 Plus Gold, semi-modular - 650W

[Sazzy]

I recommend you get a fractal design case. I think they look great, they're not too expensive in comparison with similar cases. They have great cable management, the steel is thick so it's not wonky and they have a ton of padding to keep the noise down. They also have nets in front of the fan holes so no/very little dust actually makes it into the case. Best 80 dollars I've spent.

Seasonic is a great brand for a psu and gold is an amazing standard. I have the 400 watt variant for my media center. But ask yourself this: Will the money you save on electricity be MORE than the additional money you spent compared to getting a bronze one? Probably not. I once calculated that keeping my media center running a full year, 24/7, would cost me 20 dollars. That's quite a few years to actually earn back the extra money I spent on getting the gold. While counterintuitive, I personally quite enjoy getting a bronze one that's waaaay too much for my system. See the thing is, a 600watt that's running at 95% all the time will do just fine, but it's also constantly stressing and probably quite warm. A 1000 watt handling the same system will be at 50% and relaxing the entire time. The fans might not even start spinning because it's not really working, resulting in a more silent system. I'd always pick an 800 watt bronze over an 600 watt gold. I can imagine running stressed all the time will also lower its lifespan.

The ryzen cpu's are amazing, so that's a good pick. I personally enjoy having a few more cores and tend to go with a 7, but depending on budget this is already plenty. Most games won't use all the available cores on a 7 anyway (unless badly optimized ones like guild wars 2). For work scenarios, the 7 does pay off cause my tooling tends to use all my cores to their max.

Noctua really is top notch when it comes to cooling, but also $$$ . Cheaper would be a Scythe Mugen 5 PCGH which is just as good. Half the price is a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO (the one I have) which is _almost_ as good, but I did end up replacing the fan on it with a more silent one so might as well have gotten the Scythe.

As far as the motherboard goes, I'm an Asus fan, but again they're $$$ just for their name. And probably that RGB module on it that you probably won't see anyway. Depending on your needs, a lower-end chipset might be just as good, e.g. the ASUS ROG Strix B450-F Gaming or an MSI B450 Tomahawk MAX. The biggest difference in these chipsets is the added feature you get; Like more sata ports and onboard wifi. If that's something you don't need, feel free to get a cheaper chipset. Check their respecitive websites to see if they have what you need on them.

The additional money you save on the psu and motherboard can be spent on your samsung. while the 970 evo is amazing already, I ended up going with 970 pro instead. It blows the EVO out of the ballpark for only a few extra dollars. (less than you are saving on psu and mobo). The 980 pro has released as well, which is even faster and only costs a couple of dollars extra. Worth it imho.

[yoco]

Thank you for detailed explanation

I can't decide between two motherboards, ASUS PRIME X570-P, DDR4, SATA3, USB3.2Gen2, AM4 ATX 90MB11N0-M0EAY0 or GIGABYTE X570 GAMING X I'm more leaning to Gigabyte since I already have one in my current setup and it was working fine.

[Sazzy]

They're very similar and in my local store only 4 dollars apart, so definitely a hard pick. I'd say asus generally has better quality than gigabyte so I'd prefer that personally. The gigabyte has a higher version HDMI, but you won't be using onboard anyway so it doesnt matter. It only comes with an extra usb port, but I also feel like the asus has plenty already. Other than that, at first glance they seem to offer the exact same things. So for me I'd take the Asus

[anon]

I'm a C# / Angular full stack dev(ops) mostly using azure; I don't often do online courses. Instead I have a shit ton of hobby projects that I use to learn new things. I like building little useful tools where I try to incorporate something that I want to learn and screw around in it until I've got the hang of it. I mostly just read the documentation.

In my opinion, this is the best way. As a fast reader, I can't follow online courses because they feel like being stuck in a traffic jam. I'd rather read read read and then apply everything I learned, taking notes if required. The Nmap book takes this to an extreme.

Well yeah, but the problems in cybersecurity are a lot more tricky than the ones in other parts of the field. Like, just putting a simple bearer token on your api sounds enough but then the tricky parts come like okay so where do i store it on my FE so it can't be abused but I still stay logged in etc etc. Simple/stupid example but you get what I mean.

Actually a very good example of my "how could this go wrong" question... and yet, commercial software often can't answer it completely

[anon]

After asking that, I've started reading "What does the fox say" and I've been overwhelmed with feelings. Was not expecting it. I'm very new so I don't have any reference points.

Should we split this off into a dedicated thread?

Before we think of a separate thread, I'd say start with Heart of the Woods (visual novel), Lonely Yuri (visual novel; short but good), maybe Yuru Yuri (manga, also got animated). Other visual novels include Love Ribbon, Sisterly Bliss, Lilycle Rainbow Stage, Highway Blossoms. Not sure they're on the same level of thought-provoking, but feel free to check the plot summaries and decide if they're worth your time. There's also Sono Hanabira, but that's school slice of life: cute with some funny moments and some drama, yet unlikely to change your life.

Lonely Yuri actually had a strange calming effect... the rather quiet background music and NVL layout (text covers the entire screen) make you feel like you're reading a book while having tea on a rainy day. Sounds strange, but if you give it a try you'll see what I mean.

[anon]

Does this HDD use CMR? WD 1TB SATA 6GB/s 64MB 7200 RPM Black AF WD1003FZEX
Someone said to get a HDD with CMR, but I have no idea what that means.

It's about how data is written. I wouldn't really worry about it tbh. Just get one with good reviews. WD blacks are good. Just don't get a WD Green or something.

I resent WD due to past experiences, but don't see a clear winner among the other brands.

• Western Digital: has two power saving features that park the heads every few seconds: Idle3 and APM. You'll want to turn them off to prevent your disk from slowly self-destructing and avoid seeking lag; APM resets on every power up, by the way. Very good otherwise.
• Seagate: used to be my recommendation due to good performance, low power consumption vs. similar models of other brands, and least aggressive power savings... until my Seagate external crashed last December.
• Hitachi: see Western Digital; these don't have Idle3, but make up for it with more aggressive APM. Some models park the heads after 1 second(!) of inactivity.
• Toshiba: ugh. The value that should turn off APM (255) doesn't, so you're forced to use 254 and write something every minute to prevent it from kicking in. Toshiba externals also have an inactivity timer separate from the usual ATA standby timeout, which at least is disabled by default.

While counterintuitive, I personally quite enjoy getting a bronze one that's waaaay too much for my system. See the thing is, a 600watt that's running at 95% all the time will do just fine, but it's also constantly stressing and probably quite warm. A 1000 watt handling the same system will be at 50% and relaxing the entire time. The fans might not even start spinning because it's not really working, resulting in a more silent system. I'd always pick an 800 watt bronze over an 600 watt gold. I can imagine running stressed all the time will also lower its lifespan.

In theory, you should also account for the fact power supply efficiencies are non-linear, and go down with lower loads... however, the impact of this is very small and greatly offset by real power consumption, so I agree: give yourself as much leeway as you can with the wattage. Obviously it's going to cost more, but it pays off in the long run, and you'll also have room to grow if/when you add or upgrade hardware down the road. May even be able to reuse the PSU for your next build.

Also, don't buy no-name stuff and always make decisions based on sustained output ratings, not peak ones. Those tips may actually be mutually inclusive, but just to get my point across, let's see what happens when things go wrong.

[Sazzy]

Before we think of a separate thread, I'd say start with Heart of the Woods (visual novel), Lonely Yuri (visual novel; short but good), maybe Yuru Yuri (manga, also got animated). Other visual novels include Love Ribbon, Sisterly Bliss, Lilycle Rainbow Stage, Highway Blossoms. Not sure they're on the same level of thought-provoking, but feel free to check the plot summaries and decide if they're worth your time. There's also Sono Hanabira, but that's school slice of life: cute with some funny moments and some drama, yet unlikely to change your life.

Lonely Yuri actually had a strange calming effect... the rather quiet background music and NVL layout (text covers the entire screen) make you feel like you're reading a book while having tea on a rainy day. Sounds strange, but if you give it a try you'll see what I mean.

Thanks! I guess I'm mostly looking for a manga/manhua/manhwa at this point. I'll probably check out the VN at some point, but I have _so_ much to play right now that I don't see myself wiping all those off of the table to find some room for these

[yoco]

[LIST][*]Western Digital: has two power saving features that park the heads every few seconds: Idle3 and APM. You'll want to turn them off to prevent your disk from slowly self-destructing and avoid seeking lag; APM resets on every power up, by the way. Very good otherwise.

I have an external WD hdd, and when it's idle for a while it kinda goes to "sleep". If I want to open something that's on that drive it takes a few seconds to load up. Is this what you're talking about?

[Sazzy]

i feel like the external ones are worse quality than the internal variants tho. probably explains why they're cheaper? idk

[anon]

Thanks! I guess I'm mostly looking for a manga/manhua/manhwa at this point. I'll probably check out the VN at some point, but I have _so_ much to play right now that I don't see myself wiping all those off of the table to find some room for these

I definitely understand that... so much stuff, so little time. However, most yuri manga I know are either one-shots or doujinshi that won't make much sense if you aren't familiar with the source material. Maybe you can find something good by tag-surfing MangaDex and sorting by ratings.

I suggest giving at least Lonely Yuri a try though, it's short and has no branches, so it won't derail you for too long.