Questions | Answers |
---|---|
What is a typical day in your life like? | I get up at 4:30. I watch some YouTube, do some email, work on my writing or similar. I head to the gym at 7, shower and start my day around 8. I work in my home office or shop/lab, code and work on stuff, throughout the day. I could be busy all the way through to 8-9PM if I'm wrapped up in something, but not usually that busy. |
the below is a reply to the above | |
You get up at 4:30 AM? Wow. Have you always been a morning person? Are other people on your team morning people so you decided to start early? I’m asking this because it seems like a lot of successful people wake up very early and work out before starting their workday. | No, I never was until my neck injury. While recovering I couldn't sleep more than about 4-5 hours max and just got into the habit. Since it was so productive for me, I just kept it up! |
the below is a reply to the above | |
Thanks for sharing. I wish you good health. | Thanks! |
Did you create Robocopy, or know who did? I use that very regularly and much more efficient than using the GUI. | The secret dirt is that Robocopy was first written by MS colleague Kevin Allen, and he started sharing copies around in 1994ish. From there, and after many iterations and heavy-duty real-world feedback, robocopy ended up in the Windows Resource Kit, and then later merged into the core Windows package. In the beginning, Kevin was a very experienced programmer, but new to the Win32 API; so robocopy was one of his projects to educate himself about Windows programming. Later on, ITG used robocopy to routinely transfer many gigabytes of data around MS global offices, every night; it became very robust and battle-hardened. It is a long time now since Kevin was involved in the robocopy source code at all; it is maintained by the Windows team. |
Did you create Microsoft Clippy? Will Clippy ever make a come back? | Noooo... but I was around at the time. We have Clippy now in the form of Siri and Google Assistant and Cortana, but there's no picture. That's all it was though, an early digital assistant. |
I read on a Microsoft devblog that when windows got ported to 64bit pinball 3d was not ported because of bugs and the developers not being able to understand the code/not having enough time. It's a shame, because it was such an awesome game and I spent many hours playing it as a kid. Was the code messy due to being ported from Sam and do you think it could have been ported given enough time and expertise? | Basically what I did when I ported it was to maintain the central code "logic" loop of the game unchanged so that it would play just as it did on other platforms, and then "hooked" functionality coming out of it and going into it. So I rewrote the drawing code that did the actual drawing, but not he original code that wanted to do the drawing, if that makes sense. I changed the how, not why. |
That meant, though, that at the very core of the game was a big bunch of code that we didn't touch or monkey with, because it 'just worked'. Apparently sometime after Vista, in 64-bit, there was a collision detection bug in Pinball. | |
From what I read, Raymond Chen looked at it and got the general idea of what was wrong but didn't want to touch the fragile old code. Raymond's one of the best debuggers I've met, so it wasn't a question of expertise but of time and resources. | |
Anyone on the team could have trivially fixed it I'm sure, but it sounds like no one "owned" the game anymore after I left, and it was more than just a random little bug to fix, it would have required a dev to be assigned to it, and there likely was no one free. | |
What is your favourite colour please? | Well, I have four cars with blue interiors and I'm wearing a blue shirt and a blue watch and blue jeans. So probably blue. |
If my son expresses interest in serious computer programming, where is a good place to start? C for Dummies? (I'm joking and I know terribly little about the topic, only enough to know backend is where it's at) | Python, then Javascript. Build a website! |
Hi! Just wanted to say, I still use MS-DOS regularly, on many of my older machines in my collection. Also Win3.x, Win9x etc How do you feel about computers becoming extremely dependent on 'cloud' services? I can still set up an old machine, install an old OS, install old software and have it all up and running within an hour or so, while modern software essentially requires cloud services for literally everything. What happens to that software once some random person out there decides that they don't want to support it anymore? Those cloud services go away? Are you concerned that future generations will not be able to experience anything from this era of computing? Considering computers were designed to be able to continually run the same software over and over as necessary, how can that apply if the bulk of this is lost when the cloud disappears? Or maybe this isn't a concern at all, and I'm just crazy...? | I already have hardware that refused to work because the cloud service that backs it has been abandoned or the company has gone out of business. |
I worry that things become dependent on externals that aren't reliable long term, and I know what you mean... but fortunately Windows, once activated, runs perfectly well offline forever, really. | |
I'm a fresh graduate with some experience and reading the knowledge you all have in the comments has made me feel very inferior. I only started coding in my university and I don't do it in my past time. Am I doing something wrong? I do enjoy programming but I try to keep a work life balance. Is that a thing in software development? Also did you ever approve a pull request by Bill? | No, as long as you DO enjoy it when you're doing it, you're fine. There's an entire "spectrum" of people in the world and some of us have "special interests" with which we're a little obsessed, and tend to "hyperfocus". I'm one of those people but it's by no means the only way to do it! |
I knew many great programmers who (a) didn't program in their spare time at home and (b) didn't continue to program recreationally after leaving it as a job. | |
If you can work regular 40 hours a week as a productive programmer, you'll be set! | |
the below is a reply to the above | |
Thank you so much for this! Are there any tips you'd like to give to fresh graduates like me? | If you get a job at a large company like Microsoft, and decide you're not happy, try moving INTERNALLY before looking for another job. You could work for 5 different companies over your career and they could all be Google, for example. Culture goes through and through, but every team has its own. |
the following is a later reply | If you can put in a 35-40 hour week of solid work, you'll be fine. There are three buckets: the obsessives, like myself, who work as much as they can. Then the solid pros, who can turn out a ton of quality stuff in 40 hours. And then you have the slackers who surf Facebook at work and read reddit when they should be coding. As long as you're not in that group you're fine, and a balance is important. It is indeed a thing the successful people achieve it. It's not about how much code you write, it's about how much MORE time you spend coding than you want to, and that should be zero! |
Lots of people are in careers they don't practice in their free time, in fact most. So it's a bonus if you're that way, but most people are NOT, so don't despair! You're normal! | |
If you're still answering, how much of the original Task Manager still lives in the modern Task Manager? Anyway, thanks for the AMA! You're a legend! | I don't know for sure, but from looking at the app, and not the code, I'd expect about 60-70% of it? |
Hopefully you’re still taking questions. I get a lot of crap by my peers about command line. Power shell is badass but I’m a cmd guy myself. I know we can do pretty much everything that cmd does in powershell and more, but idk. I like what I like, you know? Where do you stand on this? | Honestly I'd be a CMD guy as well, but I'm really starting to lean towards using bash under WSL. |
Have you ever looked the help for SET and FOR under CMD? It's where we put every piece of extra functionality, since you can't add keywords that might collide with people's script names, etc... | |
I didn’t use windows after windows 7 for about 5 years. Back in august 2019 I finally rebuilt and upgraded my old PC and installed windows 10. The task manager in windows 10 is so amazing and powerful. I would imagine it’s something you wanted to implement in the 90s but didn’t have the tools or time. Right? | Indeed, I'm a big fan of the current task manager and what they've done with it! I wish there was a Dark mode, I wish it handled file lock tracking, and I've always got wish lists, but they've done a great job with it! |
CIA_grade_LSD: Why does the file transfer time remaining progress bar start at like 15 hours and then drop to two minutes and then stick at 99% for five minutes? (An exaggeration I admit. I know you and your colleagues do your best, but I am curious why this hasnt gotten much more accurate over the years.) androidethic: Yes, we need a justification as to why the windows file operation estimations are so random/inaccurate! | They're the worst estimate out there, except for all the others. |
Mac is just as bad. It's a hard problem. I worked on it briefly, and to help solve it I kept track of the average time it had taken for a whole range of operations, like creating, moving, deleting, renaming a file, or moving a block of N bytes, etc. Then multiply by the number of those operations that remain. But even that can be wildly off in degenerate cases. | |
Do you ever get laid? | Not since your Mom kicked me out. |
Why has windows task manager never had a true force quit? | End Process is a true force quit. |
What was your team's opinion on linux at the time? And what's yours opinion too? | I like it a lot, I was an early adopter back in 1993-1994 and tried to contribute some code for parsing IIDs, though I don't know if it's still in there. I hope it is, becaue then I'd have code in Windows, Mac Office, and Linux. I'd be everywhere :-) |
Now that we have WSL 2, though, I do most of my Linux work under Windows! | |
How much of the original DOS code is still in modern OSs? | None whatsoever. In fact, the only commonality at all would likely be the PGM header on disk still traces its original layout to MS-DOS. |
But rest assured there's NO code from MS-DOS inside NT, for example. It was a complete clean-slate design. | |
Was it you responsible for the atrocious naming conventions in WIN32? | Your username is dhbt12 :-) |
What current developments in the world of operating systems are you watching with eager anticipation? File systems and LLVM seem to be the rage right now, at least from where I sit. | Containers are cool to me, like Docker! That's really the biggest development of recent years I think! |
the below has been split into two | |
* What's your compensation? | - Zero, since I'm retired and there's no pension. |
* Have you met Bill Gates? | - Yes, a number of times. When I was first hired he had me and a few other recent hires over to his house for burgers and beer and it was quite nice! |
What's your opinion of free and open-source software? Broad, I know. I saw your response about WinRAR saying you like to license your software, but do you hold a similar sentiment in tossing a coin to the devs of foss software you might use? | I love it, I just don't have any illusions that making a piece of code open-source somehow leads to higher quality. It makes it more available to me, which is great, but in reality, on a typical project there are going to be 1-5 people who really look at the code and then a dozen the sort of know it to make changes, and then consumers of the code who just call it. I don't see that those 1-5 people are any brighter than the people who'd be responsible for a product in a proprietary environment. |
Now at a certain scale, like the Linux kernel maybe, you've got enough eyeballs looking at it that it makes a difference... that I could see! | |
What's the idea behind SYSKEY? | As I understand it, its function is to encrypt something called the SAM (Security Account Manager) database. This database stores hashes of user passwords, and is used to authenticate users when they supply their password. |
Hey Dave, what do you think the future of the windows OS will be? Is a cloud-based OS possible, potentially limiting computer hardware? | As a total guess, I imagine our experience will eventually be just a UI device locally and everything else happens in the cloud on server hardware. So as you say, at some point your client hardware is "good enough" and then companies compete on the merits of their back-end services. |
Do you know Mike Toutonghi? , he used to work at Microsoft, now he started a new blockchain project called The Verus project. | By name and email but not well enough to recognize him at the mall today, I'd say! |
If you had to redo windows, what would you most like to change? What do you regret most? What do you like most? | The Format dialog needs to be redone! And Task Manager is likely my favorite... |
Android or iPhone? Beer or wine? Ginger or Mary Ann? | iPhone. Beer. Can't it be both? It's an island, after all. |
the below is a reply to the above | |
I figured the iPhone since you have Mac's in the lab. I figured beer also since you can't shift a 4 speed with a glass off wine between your legs. Nice garage BTW. However i wasnt ready for both, it's an island after all. Touche. I tired to compile my first bit of code from GitHub today. I failed miserably. It would install but wouldn't run. I'll keep at it. | Make sure you're in a clean empty folder. Try the code from Episode 11, I just used it so I know that works! Clone it and build it in PlatformIO with no changes, and that'll tell you if your dev environment is set up and working properly. |
I cant connect to my cloud, can you download it for me? | I'd love to, but I'm out of paper. Can you fax me some? |
What amazes you the most when you compare technology from the 90's to now? | GPUs! |
Is it wrong of me to only ever end task manager with itself? | Software Seppuku. |
Probably too many comments and very late to the game, but here it goes! I teach Comp Sci at an international school. Would you be willing to give a small webinar talk to my students? They would just be so happy to hear from you as would I! Anyway, regardless, thanks for the many, many hours of enjoyment! | Maybe after Covid, but I'm not a big fan of Zoom lectures! I just did one for the U of R, though, and if you check my channel there are two that I have done for the University of Regina that you might find useful for your students... |
You can email me at [email protected] with info about the school and what topic you would like, etc, and I can see if it's a good fit for schedule and topic! | |
What computers do you personally at home? Windows? Linux? Mac? | All three! |
Why are processes able to hang to the point that task manager is unable to kill them? | At that point there must be kernel corruption or something going on in a driver or well below the surface, I guess. If TM can't kill it, no one can, and it's truly hung. |
Did you ever meet the genius who wrote the Space Cadet Pinball theme song? | No, who wrote it? Matt Ridgeway? |
Hi Dave, loved the videos on task manager Do you have any thoughts on modern C / C++ replacements like Zig and Rust (respectively)? | I think its cool if memory access is indeed provably safe but you get code nearly as optimal as C, but I've got to learn more about them! |
Did you like the windows phone? | Never had one, started after I left, but I heard nice things about the very last one before it went away... |
Hi Dave, Why doesn’t File Explorer automatically refresh to show new files in a folder, such as downloads? Seems such an obvious glitch! Also, how do I get the login screen on Windows 10? I push space, esc, mouse clicks, enters... and nothing happens. Then poof, it shows up. Why is this so unresponsive? | It does. |
In fact I know it does, because I have a patent on some of it! | |
Not sure why yours wound't be working, your system might have a third party piece of software that has broken File System Change notifications. | |
Was the time on Microsoft fun? | It really was. I miss the people and the environment, and I especially miss lunch! |
i’ve found 15+ 0-days in the shell32 API when doing a vuln analysis of explorer.exe. You can read my work at https://hyp3ri0n-ng.github.io! What’s it like to write really buggy code :P? | I sense that high school was hard for you socially. |
I’m sure I remember owning the pinball game as a separate standalone title before it was in windows? Can you explain the deal with that? Or am I misremembering | Plus Pack! |
You're a legend, can't believe I missed this. I'll post this here, if you don't answer it I'll have a good copy/paste for later. What are your thoughts on the sethc.exe / accessibility exploit? It's worked as far back as XP, and still works today in Windows 10, last time I checked. Windows Server 2003 and 2008 as well. Is checking the integrity of OS files before they're executed just not a priority? | https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/222193/description-of-the-windows-file-protection-feature |
Why ctl+alt+delete? | An IBM engineer (David Bradley, I think) picked that combination to serve as a hardware reset. You can't fake it, you can't get around it. The PC knows it's really C_A_D when you do it. |
Why that particular combination, you'd have to ask him! | |
What's the furthest you've gotten into a project that ended up not panning out? Was it something you really wanted to get working or were you relieved to move on? I'm a student studying engineering right now and reading these answers is extremely motivational; your passion for computers is awesome! Thanks for doing this. | I spent about a year on an early prototype of Media Center that I was attached to but got killed. They did do a Media Center later, of course, but I had started 2-3 years ahead, but couldn't get funding. |
Why has the Windows she'll been so bad for so long? | I don't know, but I'll see you in he'll. |
Do you still work at Microsoft? Do you still use only Microsoft stuff? | No retired in 2003. I use a lot of MS stuff, but my main laptop is a MacBook and I use a Mac for video. |
Do you own any Apple products or use them for work? | I own all the Apple products except the new headphones, pretty much! I'm retired now though! |
Is the workculture of Microsoft at the time very different than now? How much does Bill Gates' leadership impact the company? What changes had his departure bring? | It is indeed very different under Satya than Bill, and the changes are widespread. But I left before Satya started, so I'm not really qualified to speak on them! |
What are your thoughts on the age old trick of "Opening Task Manager to stop programs from freezing or being slow", is there some merit to doing that or is it just a simple coincidence? | Total coincidence, honest! Task Manager, at that level, is just a windows app with a message pump. It's existence doesn't do anything that solitaire or paint would not also! |
No, but there's a great meme with the Star Wars general about how apps work better with Task Manager open because "fear will keep them in line". | |
It's purely psychological, though. TM doesn't do anything by running the calc or paint wouldn't also provide! | |
Did you work on Windows ME? If so.. What the hell happened to that OS that made it so terrible? I had kernal errors every week. | Nope! My work on the shell would have been backported to it, but I didn't work directly on 98 or M3, other than they used our NT version of the shell code by then I think. |
Did you make any contingency for when Task Manager stops responding? | Yes, lots! Check the video the "Secret Life of Task Manager" for more dirt, but there are MANY things it does to help prevent you ever being stuck with no task manager: |
https://youtu.be/f8VBOiPV-_M | |
If not asked yet If this is correct, as posted in Regina awhile ago iirc I saw a post saying you’re from Regina, Canada Is that true? If so that’s awesome to hear that someone from my local area made one of my favourite no internet game and the basic fundamentals of the most used OS for computers | Yes indeed, that's me! |
Why is the documentation for WPA so bad and scarce? I have to refer to Bruce Dawson's years old blog to decipher some of the columns names. Are there any plans to add a comprehensive manual for it? | Windows Product Activation? Columns? Sorry, are you using WPA for something else? |
Can I intern for you? | If you know how to write a Material-themed admin-style Dashboard in React, can consume a REST api in doing so, and have some experience with iPhone apps an Unity, then maybe yes! |
I was actually looking for an intern this past summer to write a phone and web app... | |
how did you assured code quality and readability? did you use static analyzers/ unit tests or what? | Check out the "Secret History of Task Manager" video for a description of "NTStress" and how we nightly tested, but there were professional testers, every line of code was code-reviewed, and so on. |
My understanding is it's quite different now, though! | |
When you say you worked on Windows activation, was it for more than a day? | That's an odd question. Can I ask why you think it might have just been for a day? Clue me in to what you're hinting at and I'll fill you in on the rest! |
Why do I need to press 3 buttons and 1 click to open task manager? | Because you choose to fail! |
You can do it with two clicks or one simultaneous multikey press! | |
Do you think WPA was a success? | I think so! It helped stem casual piracy, wasn't "cracked" for at least 18 months after we released it, and didn't unduly inconvenience users too often, I hope. |
We were really aiming for the 95% case. Trying to catch the 95% of piracy that is people sharing keys, reusing their own keys on too many machines, getting keys off the web, that sort of thing. I think it accomplished that. | |
How did you feel about windows 8? | Same way you do. |
Who invented the blue screen of death? | John Vert. He said: |
"Back in 1991 I wrote the original code for Windows NT 3.1 that put the video screen back into text mode and the routines to put text on it (and a truly gnarly bit of code it was!). I used the white on blue colors for two reasons. | |
* The MIPS workstations we were using for the MIPS port had firmware that presented a boot option screen in white on blue, so it made sense that the bugcheck screen would match. | |
* I (and many others) were using SlickEdit as our text editor and at the time its default color scheme was also white on blue. | |
I believe Mark Lucovsky wrote the original code that dumped a bunch of text to the screen. This was a bugcode and a stack dump, resulting in a bunch of useless hex numbers which product support would occasionally dutifully transcribe from the customers and include in the bug report. | |
There was no "typesetting" as we used standard VGA text mode on PCs. | |
I don't know the history of the Win3.1/Win9x blue screens, I think the fact they were the same color is just coincidence." | |
But can you make sick stick figure death match animations in QBASIC? | No, but I do a mean Bill the Cat ascii art! |
How could you? | Sometimes you just gotta say WTF. |
https://youtu.be/a0p7rJsYisw | |
What are you working on these days? | Mostly on programming tutorials and nostalgic "Windows War Stories" on my youtube channel: |
http://www.youtube.com/c/davesgarage | |
[removed] | That's me! Went to Miller high, worked at ISM and SaskTel during college, etc! |
Here is my question. Im a cuban teenager (17) and my dream is work is be a developer. What kind of mini works i can do for learn programation before University? | Do as many little program tasks as you can, and make sure you complete them, and SAVE them for the future so you can look back! |
Try writing a little program to convert back and forth between roman numbers and regular numbers. Or fund the next highest multiple of 32, or count the number of it bits set in a byte. Or the real difference in seconds between two dates, that sort of thing. Real problems that you have to solve will help a great deal as they act as sort of a "forcing function" to make you get to the very end. | |
Do you like macaroni & cheese? | Kraft Dinner all the way. And I eat with little packets of designer ketchup. |
Wait...you didn't built paint? I'm out. | Nope, sorry. But I owned calc for a while, back when we were adding infinite precision math to it! |
Hi, If Microsoft wanted to, they could make it impossible to activate a pirated copy of windows using 3rd party software. So why aren't they making it impossible? | Not sure what you meant by 3rd party software. Are you saying Windows can actually be activated even if pirated? That'd be news to me, but anything's possible. |
What was the criteria for “tilt” on space cadet pinball? I played that game for hours as a kid. | Spacebar would add a little "action" to the table, if I recall, and you could strike a balance of adding so much so often... but too much (ie: smash space too much) and it'll tilt. |
Did you ever have to interview anybody at Microsoft? If so, what types of questions would you ask back then? What was your interview like going into Microsoft? | Oh yeah, I've interviewed dozens or hundreds I'd bet. I'd like to ask "calibrating questons" like "Give me a funtion that takes a number and returns the next highest multiple of 32" or "count the number of bits that are set in it" to see how their basic coding skills were. |
Then I usually liked to give a problem I was working on to see what it'd be like to actually work with the person. | |
I interviewed three times, once as an intern, once as full time, and then once to move to the Shell group. Each as an all-day affair, and very arduous. You have 2-3 hour long interviews in the AM, then a lunch interview, then 2-3 more hour long interviews in the PM, then a supper thing, etc... it's a long day! | |
ImRandyRU: What have you done for me lately? Edit: it was a joke... dabigchina: NT is the foundation that all modern windows OS's build on, so a lot. Zeusifer: I guarantee some of OP's code still exists in Windows 10. | Most of it, to be honest. As a guess I'd say 75% still there. |
Hey man, I had a wicked dump this morning and now my toilet is blocked. Any idea's? | More roughage in your diet. |
It was so satisfying to push the 3x5 disks into the slot and have the button pop out, and make a vroom vroom sound. Ah, the old days. What's your favorite MS-Dos game from the 90s? | I actually came to the PC after MS-DOS, so I wasn't a DOS gamer... I suppose in those days it was primarily C64 and Amiga games. I do remember being fond of Sim City, like everyone, but also of a game called "Seven Cities of Gold"... |
Questions | Answers |
---|---|
What would you say is the biggest "bottleneck" for the site right now? Thanks for all that you do. | Like code-wise? It's kinda spread out right now balanced across things. Every time traffic doubles, something architecturally breaks. I think next to break would be our cache infrastructure, then the number of db queries we make. But we survived Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so architecturally we're probably fine until next year. |
the below is a reply to the above | |
out of curiousity how hard is it to redesign these things when they break? | Depends on what it is. First version of the site ran everything on a $20/mo single 256MB RAM instance. Then we had a traffic spike the same time processing a large Newegg catalog and it ran out of RAM. Just paid more money for a 768MB RAM instance which bought me another year. Then that migrated to a separate db from frontend. Then separate offline task/feed processing. Usually you see the issues cropping up months before they break, so you have time to prepare. Our current pricing architecture was years worth of work and iteration though. |
the below is a reply to the above | |
How much of this did you learn on the job? Or were you already proficient in designing scalable systems before starting PCPP? | There are a lot of articles that talk through different sites and their architectures. Those often provide some good info on why they chose what they did, what broke, how they fixed it, etc. For smaller stuff like ours there are pretty standard patterns. Eventually you'll hit a point where some aspect of that starts to fall behind. That's when you can adjust your setup to your particular performance needs. So I guess what I'd say is it has been a mix of reading how larger players do it, and then using that to guide our architecture. |
the below is another reply to the original answer | |
What arch are you using? AWS? Azure? Other? | AWS |
the below is another reply to the original answer | |
I'm assuming you're the AWS Arch, SysOp, Dev? | Yep. |
the below is another reply to the original answer | |
Very nice. How long have you been doing AWS? | About five years I think? It's not the cheapest but it's been great for us. |
the below is another reply to the original answer | |
The resource costs more, but you save in not having to have more people on staff to support it. Did you switch from On site? Datacenter? | We were at a different (smaller) cloud provider. Before when that provider would go down, people would harass on twitter telling us to fix our stuff. Now when AWS goes down, half the internet goes down with it so people blame AWS and not us. That's been kinda nice lol. |
How formal is the required attire at The Eggies? | Hahahahaha. I'll never forget what you told me - that everyone probably thought I worked for intel because I wore a suit. The card said evening/cocktail attire! That event was an interesting experience. |
What has been the weirdest PC you have seen in your life? | There was a guy who brought a grill PC to QuakeCon several years ago. As in, grill on wheels. Flip open the grill and the monitor was on the top half, and the components were in the bottom half. That thing was so awesome. |
I think it might be this | Yes! That's it! |
Can you guys add the NZXT H1 to your cases? | We hope to soon. We need to incorporate some modeling for cases so that we can list them with integrated cooling first. |
What are your thoughts on things like Stadia and online/cloud work environments where having high-end computer parts don't matter as much as a solid internet connection? Do you see the relevance of PCPartPicker waning in the near future or do you think building PCs will still be a thing a generation or two down the line? | I'm not too worried about it to be honest. If it becomes prevalent, that's ok. I think there will always be a DIY side of things even if latencies reduce enough to make cloud setups viable. |
Hi Phillip, about 8ish years ago I was learning how to code web applications and was a total noob. I sent you an email with beginner questions and you answered. Just want to call out how much of an impact that made as now I’m a Staff Software Engineer at a tech company. | That's awesome! Congrats! |
What's your favorite cheese? | Eh, maybe Parmigiano Reggiano? |
Do you sometimes get items to review/test or to thank you for your website? | When we were filming content for youtube we'd get stuff to review/test. But we never really pushed hard for it. Some manufacturers would let you keep the stuff, others would ask you to send it back. I think if we had started doing product reviews we could have opened up the review sample floodgates but we never went there. |
Do you use PCPartPicker yourself to pcpick parts? | Yes. |
? | Correct - all the components are entered manually. There's a team of people who do that, and I do very few these days (mostly the CPUs). We don't scrape for that data but we have some tools/dashboards to make it a bit easier. |
Umm hi Pc Part Picker, I'm a huge fan! When I watched some yt vids on pc building back in the day, I was lead to your site where I discovered a platform to share lots of cool builds and ask questions to others when I was making mine. While this has been said before I'll say it again, your site has been massively helpful and had been a cornerstone in the pc gaming community because of how good of a resource it is, so thank you so much. So anyway... 1. Who chooses which builds get featured? I love hopping on and seeing what creative things people do with their builds. Is there an upvote criteria for it/do some just get recommended? 2. What got you into custom PCs and gaming? It'd be super cool to hear your story and what got you to make this site in the first place. ty! | Alex already mentioned #1 - Ryan picks. (I'll also second the good photos. For me great photos of a good build will win out over bad photos of an epic build.) |
2) - Growing up the last family computer we had was a commodore 64. The IBM PCs and clones were too expensive. Later after my brothers went to college I'd borrow my dad's work laptop to play warcraft 2 over a serial cable with friends. My first PC was scraped together as cheap as I absolutely could because I didn't have a lot of money. I think my first build was ~$350 minus OS but including monitor (bought for $100 at an auction) and a bunch of secondhand parts. I upgraded that PC to a Celeron 300A running 450MHz my junior year in college and it was so stupid fast for me. But that too was a budget upgrade at the time. I ran that build for another 4 years I think? By that time I was out of college with a full-time job, so I had a bit more discretionary income to spend on PC stuff. So long story short, custom PCs for me started out of budget necessity. Later when I had more money it shifted to being able to get exactly what I wanted. | |
What's your stance on RGB? | My kids love it. I like it if it's subtle and not distracting. |
What’s one feature most people don’t know about/use? I’ve only ever used pcpp a couple times, but I’d love to get more familiar with it! | Probably parametric selections. |
ok, so first of all, thank you so much for this service. Without it, I would have been lost on my first PC. Secondly, the question. What were the specs of your first build? | AMD K5-133. 80MB hard drive. I think it had 2MB RAM, but I can't remember. |
Idk if this has already been asked and answered, but did your ever expect it to become so widespread and popular? | Not even close. I thought if I was lucky it'd make enough for my wife and I to go get coffee. I had planned to work on it for about a year, learn Python and Django, and then move on to something else. |
No questions at this time - I just wanted to use this as an opportunity to thank you for contributing to KBMOD's Extra-Life campaign over the years. Literally, tens of thousands of dollars, all of which you didn't have to donate. What Extra-Life does for kids is great, and you are a big part of that. Thank you. :) | KBMOD was one of the first groups that started using the site. They had me on their podcast waaaay back. I had a newborn who barely slept so I did that interview in my car parked in my garage. They're great guys, and I'm more than happy to contribute to what they've done for Extra Life. |
Have you ever thought about stopping work and stepping down from owner of PCPP? If so why? | Like if I could retire? Selfishly and honestly, yeah, all the time. I don't because I feel like PCPP is only about 10% of what I want it to be (feature/functionality-wise). Too much unfinished stuff. |
the below was split into two | |
You have done me and my friends countless benefits with this tool. We definitely take it for granted and I give you my gratitude. Your compatibility notes have saved me more times than I’d like to admit! Anyways, here are my questions. 1. If you could travel back in time to 2010, and give yourself advice for the future, what would it be? | 1) - great question. Had to think about it for a bit. Mostly I wouldn't say anything at all, because my naivety early on kinda helped? There were some problems we'd have to solve later that I didn't really know how hard they were when I first started. Had I known (like how terrible most retailer price data quality is) I may not have ever tried to do it? |
One of the things that was really hard for me the first several years was the emotional roller coaster. When I left my job to work on it full time, it was a heavy weight of responsibility. What happens if it fails? What happens if I screw up royally? The highs were higher and the lows were lower. And I could go from the highest high one day (just got mentioned on website X or Y) to the lowest low the next day (retailer Z cut commissions by a factor of 4, or a new competitor popped up cloning all our features and data but with better UI). The emotional swings were really hard to deal with. Over time I've learned to temper that, so the bad days aren't as bad and the great days are good. I'd tell myself that when it gets a little crazy to just take a breath, slow down, and take it all one bit at a time. | |
2. Have you ever thought of expanding beyond computer hardware and doing something else? For example, another program. Have a great day! | 2). We've looked at other niches. We launched a cycling site similar to PCPP. We learned a lot along the way but unfortunately it just didn't work out. The concept might be viable in other niches, but it's not something we're going to consider pursuing for at least another year. |
Are there brands who tried to pay you guys for higher rankings? | Yes. But we don't do that. I guess it's pretty common other places because we get asked for that a lot. Essentially paid placements or people wanting to pay to win the buy box price - which we don't do. |
Thanks for all the hard work! Could you expand on the issues you faced when trying to make MTB part picker work? Remember the project being unfeasible and closed but would really love to hear you talk more about it. Is MTB another one of your personal hobbies? | Our cycling site was pretty hard to shut down. That one hurt. We ran into a couple things: people build new PCs ground up every few years. Bikes on the other hand are usually bought pre-built and are rarely ground-up builds. PCs are economically viable to build ground up, where bikes aren't unless you're $5K+. And at that price point, you're probably buying from a local bike shop you've got a relationship at rather than our site. So most of our traffic/sales were cockpit or weatear oriented. Lots of tires. Data entry for compatibility for full bike builds was really expensive because it needed really intense domain specific knowledge. So the site basically wasn't profitable where it was actually referring sales. |
I'm not a MTB guy, but I do enjoy bikes. I don't ride that much though. I converted an old hybrid to a 1x drop bar setup for commuting to the office, so I'm super excited to be able to ride that once COVID goes away. | |
What was the hardest part? | Work-life balance. |
First off, thank you so much for creating what has become an integral part of PC building for not just myself but for all my friends as well. I always tell anyone who is new to the PC scene to build their rig or check for compatibility using PCPartPicker! My questions is, I feel it's become second nature to me and so many others to check the price history as well as set alerts for any potential components that do go on sale in the future. PCPartPicker is an awesome site to do this on but I feel like there could be more to it. For one a PcPartPicker mobile app would be awesome along with notifications of sales on components one wishes to be alerted on. Are there any plans to do bring an app to the market or maybe even go further with price alerts for components that users want to be instantly notified on? | We hope to launch a PWA version later this month that will support push notification price alerts (on platforms that support it). |
Hello pcpartpicker love your website, you are a god among men. Question: How fast does your crawler work? In an era like now where RTX 3000 series and Ryzen 5000, Radeon 6000 disappear in an instant, do you think your crawler could be fast enough to "catch" and display stock before they get sold out? | We can run very fast - < 10min latency on full product catalog updates, or < 1min latency on select product sets.... if we had that kind of availability from retailers. Only one offers that though. The rest have data feeds with latencies too high to use for catching GPU stock right now. (If you watch closely enough, you'll find that even retailers have caching latencies between product pages and product category pages. The category page pricing can be out of sync with the product page pricing. If they can't get it the same on their own site there isn't a chance we'll get better latency from their feed.) |
What is the future of PcPatpicker? I know you added Cycling Builder but that seems to be discontinued. Are you planning on expanding into any more fields similar to Cycling or was that a one-off thing? | For now we're going to focus solely on PC. We learned a lot trying to launch Cycling Builder. I don't plan on going after other niche markets for a while, if at all. |
Hey Philip and team! Two questions: 1. How do you handle low quality data/data integrity issues from your partners? For example duplicate listings made by marketplace sellers on Amazon 2. Would it be possible to add RGB compatibility to cases and related components, or would that be hell? I think it might be helpful for me builders to know that their Asus Mobo isn't going to support their MSI RGB controller, for example. :) Thank you!! | We generally only list the buy box winner. In the past we've had to do some validation on marketplace sellers that would show low base price but exorbitant shipping. But Amazon seems to have filtered that out a lot more than what we were seeing 5-6 years ago. |
Do you have the hammock up at the new office? Serious aside, big congrats on yout progress over the past decade. Its been great to see first hand how this community has evolved since you made pcpp your fulltime gig! | Thanks Jappetto. :) I had the hammock is up in the back of the office but Jack took it down to make room for the reno... :(. One day, one day. |
I know this is such a small feature to ask for: but would you be willing to make the line on the price history graph “hold” and slidable for mobile users? For example, on my iPhone in safari, I can tap different points on the graph and prices pop up. But I can’t tap and hold the line on the graph and slide it left or right (with the idea being the prices would change dynamically with the hold and slide method). Regardless, I really enjoy your website and all the work your team has put into making it such a great tool for the pc building community. It’s the first place I send friends who are new to building and want to get an idea of what’s required. | Can look into this for sure. Probably a touch/drag event I'm not handling. |
What was the most difficult technical challenge you faced? | We've since removed the feature, but doing lowest-price calculation on a part list with parametric part selections and combo deals was probably the hardest problem so far. The general algorithm itself isn't bad, but rather it's doing it hundreds of times a second across hundreds of thousands of prices, and getting an answer back in < 100ms for each. That was hard, but fun. |
Have you considered cooperating with userbenchmark website? I liked to check my pc parts there before i purchased and they have sophisticated database, maybe some kind of collaboration could boost both websites, what do you think? | We're working toward sourcing our benchmark data internally where we can control every aspect of the process. |
Hey, I have a question: Your price history software is probably the best implementation I've found so far, with specific retailers and the like (in comparison to say CamelCamelCamel which just shows Amazon and 3rd party), is there any possibility to expand this to maybe more tech related products? Maybe even a whole new site, because it's *really really good* | We could. We have the price tracking across retailers already. But it'd be a bit different of a site - just price comparison. It requires a bit different workload to populate that stuff. On the PC side, the data entry is pretty expensive because we model all the bits for compatibility. For general purpose price comparison though, it's more just aggregating pictures and random specs that don't have specific meaning. There are data sources for that available, but from what we've found the quality is really low. I'm not sure if that's something we'd want to do (listing stuff with spec data we don't source ourselves, and with filtering that wouldn't be as detailed). |
Thanks you guys rock. Would love if there was a way to do rebates through pc partpicker, and letting you guys get a cut. Any chance you can add in bundle sales? Sound like that could be complicated but super useful. | We ran bundle sales listings for a few retailers for several years. We ended up removing them because they were often unreliable. One retailer even had bundle deals listed that were more expensive than the sum of the parts. It was a huge hassle both on the implementation and data quality side, so we ended up removing it. |
PCPP, Jesus Christ, thank you so much. You helped me make my first build, and now my second one. You have helped so many people, and I hope you understand how much everyone cares about the resource. For my question, what was your first experience with technology? | Computer-wise my grandparents gave us a TRS-80 color computer growing up. Had minesweeper some submarine game can't remember the name on the cassette tape drive. Later we got a commodore 64. But I was more into audio than computers until I got to college. |
Not sure if the AMA is over now or if this has already been asked. If so, no worries. Thanks for making pcpartpicker. Its been imparitive to pc gaming and pcs. But what are your hobbies and passion outside of computers and gaming? Do you have any other pet projects like pc part picker? And do you have any pets? | I love building stuff. Anything really, but electronics and lately 3d printing. Used to do a lot of woodworking but that stopped when I had kids (no time these days). Love swimming, and picked up running again when COVID hit. |
Hey, thank you so much for what you do! Its really cool! If i had one thing to suggest, it would be to improve the estimated power consumptions as i've had some issues with that before But i'd love to ask -- what was the biggest hurdle you had to jump to set up your system? | The biggest hurdle was probably convincing retailers we were worth working with early on. When we were small no one knew who we were, and so when we'd ask if we could list them they only saw us as another price comparison site. |
Might you have any plans to open source/license your part search engine for other hobby projects? I can think of several "assembled from standard components" type things that I really wished I could use PCPartPicker on. | We tried it out for cycling, but it didn't click like PC did. We've had suggestions for a number of other niches. The challenges are partially product modeling, and partially getting part numbers for everything. The latter is surprisingly hard. |
Considering that the idea literally spawned from relevant work at the time, was there ever any intellectual rights issues? Was that ever a worry in your mind? Appreciate the work and due diligence with the AMA. | I talked with the company about it to confirm that there wouldn't be any overlap or competing interests. I had an appendix/page/whatever-the-name-is added to my employment agreement saying it was ok to work on it. |
Replying again in this thread because the OP deserves it...my experience 7 years ago with him... https://www.reddit.com/buildapc/comments/17c031/big_thanks_to_this_sub_and_especially_to/ ...and now my son is studying computer science in college. I kinda like to think this helped...thanks Phillip, you are the MAN! | Awesome! I'm happy that we got to be a small part of that. |
What are your thoughts on the shortage of hardware, bots, scalpers, ebay listings, and so forth? | It stinks. Everyone has different opinions on who should get their cards first. Or whether different approaches (scalping, scraping, etc) are ok or not. So personally I'm just sitting back while supply catches up and then I'll try and get a card once it all settles down. |
What are your other hobbies aside from PC stuff? | I got my first filament 3d printer last year and absolutely love it. I love electronics in general so anything involving that. (For instance here's the beginning stages of a motorized minecraft chicken alarm clock for my son: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C15NKLbUFdo. I absolutely love tinkering on stuff like that.) |
Regarding cases, I know we can sort by full/mid/itx etc., however I wanted to ask if there were plans to add dimension sorting, like by width. Is that just a lot harder to pull off? | We're really constrained width-wise on that category view and how many columns we can show. We could put it in there, but we'd have to drop other columns to make it work. |
What is your favourite Christmas movie, and Christmas time food? | Elf. We watch it every year. My wife made me watch it every year after we got married, now we both make my kids watch it every year. |
Not really Christmas food specifically but around Christmas time my wife makes a certain Chex mix that I love. That or the scones she makes. | |
Thanks for building a truly useful site with no extra crap. My question...What are some of your favorite retailers, and why? | I wish I could answer this. I've had some really great retail experiences - both with pre-sales help and super easy returns / RMA service. If I retire from this one day I'll be happy to say who those were from. |
What’s your favorite console? | My kids really aren't that into consoles, so we don't have a PS4/5/Xbox here. Tried to get them into the Switch but they don't play that either. The last console I spent significant time on was a Panasonic 3DO that I won in a competition and had Street Fighter for. |
Thank you for everything with that website. It's been a godsend as I build PCs for friends and friends of friends. I only have one question. Why doesn't Amazon appear in the price history graphs? | We only show price history for the retailers when we have permission to. |
Thanks for helping me build my first PC this spring. If I have to ask a question... what's your favourite pizza? | Pepperoni from Via313 (Detroit style). manirelli is from Chicago so I'm sure he's a bit opinionated on this question. |
Pcpartpicker but for bikes? I heard this almost happened. Im in the market for a new bike and a site like that sounds so awesome! | We launched a cycling site, ran it for roughly a year, and then decided to shut it down. It just didn't work out unfortunately. |
How many times have you built your own PC? | For myself personally? Lots of little odd systems here and there for linux servers, experiments and whatnot, so probably a couple dozen. For work related stuff, both at my old job and via PCPP, several dozen more. |
What do you think was the break trough point in your sites history. When did you really get things going? | I'd say the inflection point happened probably April 2011. That's the point where I realized that this might not be a side project after all. |
Avid PCPartPicker user here. What are your plans for the future of PCPartPicker? | PWA version later this month, benchmarks and youtube content again next year. Those are the main things. Otherwise lots of small things here and there. |
Thanks for the help for years! How do you guys feel about newegg attempting to implement pcpartpicker like software internally on their own website? | I figured it was inevitable, and I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner. |
1. Is it still coded using Django? 2. Any thoughts on making parts (heh) of it open source? | It's written mostly in Python and uses a lot of Django, yeah. No plans to open source it right now. |
Would you consider becoming a stockist for pc parts in the future? | No plans on selling stuff ourselves. We have no real expertise in that and the margins are super tight. |
u/pcpartpicker just wanted to ask, how are you? | Doing ok. Feeling like I'm finally starting to come out of a year's worth of development burnout. |
Any more info on development for the app? | Hoping to release the PWA version this month. |
What’s your favourite food Mr. Partpicker? | Sushi, but rarely get to eat it. |
the below is a reply to the above | |
I’m assuming that’s because of your location relative to the closest ocean | Oh I'm no connoisseur. I like just the simple stuff and it doesn't have to be on the coast or at a fancy place. The issue is that it's expensive, my kids won't eat it, and I don't want to eat at a restaurant because of COVID (and I've never been big on sushi takeout). |
PWA PWA PWA! | Hopefully by the end of the month. |
[deleted] | https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/june-15-1992-dan-quayle-misspells-potato-48017343 |
the below is a reply to the above | |
Oh no. I'd never seen that. It hurt my soul. | And they all applaud at the end too, like a real life emperor has no clothes moment. |
What kind of revenue do you make? | Slightly more than expenses. |
First, Thank you for this wonderful tool. For suggestions, PCPP works pretty good in America and Europe, but when it comes to Asian countries, most of the times it's not very helpful as it shows very high prices. So, kindly see to this! | manirelli: If you have suggestions for retailers you can always send a message on our contact page: https://pcpartpicker.com/contact/ |
the below is a reply to the above | |
For example - pcpp shows me a price, but if I directly go to the official site, it's very less. Like in amazon, most of the time, it's due to difference in sellers. So, is there an option to automatically select the cheapest option? | We have some special rules in place to prevent unreliable listings from showing but the default is to show the lowest price based on the information provided from the retailer. If you have a specific example I can take a look. |
the below is a reply to the above | |
Specialist-Hippo9328: Ok, thx. I got that. I don't have a specific example right now FUS_ROALD_DAHL: Maybe see if you can find one. It's not every day you have a developer offering to look at your specific issue. | ThoughtA: You're not wrong, but we see every single piece of feedback like this and devote time to them. For example, if you send us a ticket about it via our Contact page, you will get a human response 100% of the time. |
oh, man. how blessed are you? that websites doing great. lol. is awesome. | manirelli: Very blessed and thankful every day. |
I was hoping you'd shed some light on what you consider to be current gen PC specs for an AMD build. Think in the $1000 price range. Maybe something like the 3600 CPU and the rx 5700 GPU ect? Thanks! | manirelli: We've got a number of guides at and around that pricepoint: https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/ |
I really like your site, im sure it has helped countless people, including me, and saved us countless hours of researching. Theres not enough good things i can say to express our appreciation, so im gonna be real and talk about areas that need improvement. For me, that is price availability updata, at least for canada. i find it not as useful as its intended to be, half the time it doesnt show the store and their price. And its not even a small store, its big ones like amazon, canada computer, bestbuy! I mean i dont expect real time updates for every store, but i remember x570 tomahawk being available in many stores, different prices, but on pcpp, it showed no price no stores for months! And there were quite a few items that i found in regular big retailers that just simply didnt show on pcpp. So ultimately, i could only use pcpp for 3 things, keeping lists of diff builds, compatibility check, and if i dont know where to start looking for a component, i could use filters to narrow it down to get a few models, and google to compare and look deeper. I cannot rely on it for price alert anymore, i had to manually set up wish list with every retailer, and check them individually, which i believe is one of the problems pcpp was designed to resolve. I really wish i can start trusting pcpp on prices again. | ThoughtA: If you have any examples, now or in the future, we would very much appreciate you reporting them. Usually it's because there's an issue with the merchant's data (even the big ones), but that doesn't mean we necessarily wouldn't be able to do anything about it. |
You can send me a message on here, post in our Request Additions / Corrections Here forum section, or send us a contact request. | |
First of all, thank you so much for PCPartpicker. And for a question, what is your favorite feature in the works and/or one that is already in PCP? (Sorry if that made no sense.) | manirelli: Oh that has to be [redacted] |
Probably got to this late, but I'll give it a shot maybe somebody gets to it. What parts should a long-term, sort of "layaway" build focus on first in regards to price changes? Meaning, what products fluctuate in price the fastest and/or most substantially? Also what parts should an amateur builder obtain first without worrying too much about compatibility/obsolescence if the rest of the build takes a bit more time to piece together? Might be a little vague I know, but basically I got a new job in tech where I will sometimes need to work remote and the work I do isn't going to be possible on the budget laptop I'm rockin' these days. My goal is to put together a PC powerful enough to remote my new job and hopefully a strong enough GPU to handle my gaming hobbies as well. Dual purpose, but I won't be able to buy it outright, was a tough year. It will be a build I slowly pay for and piece together over the next year hopefully. This might not be the type of question you guys are fielding but thought I'd give it a shot. Love to hear what the pros think. I've used PCPartPicker in the past to help friends put together their monster gaming stations when they first got started, I have a lot of faith and respect in this tool. | ThoughtA: If you don't have a use for the component before the build, I'd largely hold off on buying piecemeal over a long time. There's some wiggle room when it comes to parts that don't directly impact performance such as the case or PSU, but even there there will be advances made, aesthetics changed, and preferences evolved. Better to have a beefier emergency fund than a video card collecting dust on the floor when that video card could be cheaper later (current stock issues notwithstanding). That being said, if you're fight stock issues, see something in a particularly deep sale (if it impacts performance), or see something on a decent sale (and doesn't impace performance), then it's not so bad to have at it. Additionally, if you do have use for the component, such as throwing the GPU into your build that you plan to replace later, then any part is fair game. |
Why don't you make the various flags and data points required for items as they're entered? Fans, for instance, not every one lists a decibel rating. | ThoughtA: We do have a number of data fields that are required for entry. However, requiring certain data fields would create more problems than they'd solve it. This is often the case for specs that are not always listed. If case fans required decibel rating to be added, there would be fans that are just never added to the site because that spec data is missing for them. |
If the data is there, we will always add it regardless of whether it's a required field. The data field required status mostly just helps with human error, which we try really hard to cut down as close to zero as possible. | |
Much doubt you will see this but ill drop it anyway. Pcpartpicker has helped me an insane amount. I have friends, friends of friends and other people who want to build PC's and I always use Pcpartpicker to ensure im not buying the wrong parts. This site has been one of the most useful sites and has helped me make some cash on the side (from building PC's), and I will be forever thankful for this (not to mention that the user compatibility is one of the best i have ever seen and so simple). I did want to ask a question however, all the prices accessible are always in american dollars (which I take is where most your customers are from) but has it ever been thought to move it to a more world wide option and show prices in the selected countries. In each country in the world there are places where people buy from. I feel this would add on to make things quicker and simpler. For example: South Africa has a site called evetech.co.za Switzerland has a site called digitec (Of course there are many more, but these are the primary ones) | manirelli: We currently support 37 different countries. The country dropdown is in the top right corner of the site. If you have additional retailer recommendations please send them via our contact page: https://pcpartpicker.com/contact/ |
Bruh this is cool. 1. Will you ever add micro center as a price option? 2. Do you think you will ever make a dark mode for the website? | We’d love to work with them. We had some discussions with them but then they stopped responding. |
On desktop the switch is on the top right corner of the site. On mobile, tap the profile icon and then the switch. | |
Philip, Brent, Jenny, everyone...thank you so much. I'm a longtime lurker here, but my brother and dad are the engineers in the family; I'd never built a PC. When my old prebuilt started to slow down last year, I decided to give it a shot. I built the whole thing through your website; it's an AMD build with an RX 5700. In total it cost me just under $900, way less than I expected to spend (though I later sprung for a fancy 1440p monitor, also found through your site). Four different retailers delivered my stuff over the next week, I inexpertly threw it together, and it runs like a dream. I can't imagine trying to do it without PCPartPicker. Now I'm playing Cyberpunk smoothly on Ultra settings while the internet implodes about it not working on their machines. All thanks to you guys. So I guess my question is...do you feel the love and appreciation for what you do every day? Because we're sending it your way. | Thanks for the kind words. :). Definitely feel appreciated. Definitely. |
Yo! I used your site to build my first rig a few months back. What do you think the new Intel series of CPUs will look like? | manirelli: Visually? The same as the others :) I try not to crystal ball too hard on future components. Build with what is available unless there are solid releases dates (and reasonable supply). |
Hi Philip! I LOVE what you built. about five years ago, my son was getting interested in pc's and wanted to build one. I was clueless and found you site. I was able to learn how to ask my son the right questions by reading the forum, and then got suggestions and critiques on my virtual build. I ordered the parts directly from your handy dandy list of pricing and availability, they came in and we built his first pc. He was off and running and has been using your site to help classmates build their own machines. I don't have a question, just want to thank you for developing a useful and easy-to-use tool for people who are not computer inclined. I hope that this venture has served you well and you continue for as long as I might ever need your help. Best wishes, Mike | That's awesome! |
I think all one needs to know the least number lives you've made better is to look at the number of subscribers just on this sub. Thank you! Question: 1. One of the things I noticed is that whenever there is a new price for a product that is listed on the retailers the website tracks, there is a delay before the information is updated. Sometimes that delay is significant such that the listed price won't last before your websites starts to reflect it. Do you have an strategies to minimize that to the point that all we need to do is just visit your website for all of our purchase needs? 2. Will you allow users to submit links or embed video links to products review so that people can just watch it on your site as they browse? | On 1), most of the time there is a lag is from how long it takes for the retailer to send us the price data. We push for updates as frequently as we can get, but some retailers only update their price data (for us) once a day. On fast moving products that can mean that we show stale prices. 2). We can certainly look into that. I've seen a few other people mention linking to other product reviews, so that's something I can chat with our team about. |
Why do my fans never turn off? Running an old ASRock motherboard with an AMD Phenom II processor. BIOS is updated, latest update of Windows 10, all updated drivers, etc. 2 fans plugged into a splitter to the fan header on my motherboard + 2 more plugged straight into my power supply + the cpu cooler fan all stay running when my computer goes to sleep (on it’s own, or when forced to sleep). Monitor still goes to standby after 10 mins. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I already tried a clean install of Windows with no background apps running and fans still stayed running. | manirelli: The fans plugged into your PSU molex will run at 100% - that is a limitation of molex. Modern boards can control fan speeds on some 3pin headers but one that age may not be able to. It will depend on the specific hardware (mobo/fans) involved. Feel free to stop by our discord and ask in the troubleshooting section. Pictures will be helpful. http://discord.gg/pcpartpicker |
Were you looking for a new game to kill hours during the coronavirus pandemic? Look no further than your beloved iPhone. You see, iOS offers many games that are centered on tablets. Fans of iOS games will find a game library comparable to any game console. submitted by Smith_appdeveloper to u/Smith_appdeveloper [link] [comments] But how many of these thousands of gaming apps are worth your time and money? You're in luck; we hunt down hundreds of apps, including game apps, every day, and this time, we're talking - the best gaming experience. For your convenience, we have listed the game apps to play on iPhone in 2021. List of The Best iPhone Game Apps for 2021https://preview.redd.it/qurtkagdfua61.jpg?width=1800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d2f8f7f42c0818afdc55640a3292598c4c986fc2 If you think, Hire game developers to jump into the game development arena. So, go through the list we mentioned below before proceeding further. Here, we list out the top games to play on your iOS devices in 2021. Age of RivalsIf you like deck building, Age of Rivals is the game for you. Each new level starts with the construction of a deck, and in the end, the player has to earn as many points as he can.The card game splits into five segments; End, Build, Conquer, Score, and War. At the start of each element, players start with four cards and move up to eight cards in hand. The winner is determined by the number of attack points he accumulates throughout the match. Features Overview:
HearthstoneThis is an excellent mobile game for digital card enthusiasts. Hearthstone has been developed in line with World of Warcraft. There are nine classes in the game, each having its own WoW equivalent of different play styles for the user. Some iOS developers stated it has the option to play in single-player and multiplayer modes.The gameplay is very versatile, allowing the different user ways to adapt while playing the same thing. Hearthstone is so attractive that it keeps users on their toes. It's almost impossible to imagine a perfect way to have a digital experience. Features overview:
SilverSilver is one of the most popular Android games made by Bezier Games and powered by artificial intelligence. The game is free to play and especially generated to promote the board game of the precise name. Made by veterans, this game is fun to play, has incredible details, offers a realistic AI experience, making it one of the best gaming apps in 2021.While there are no dual or multiplayer options, it works well to introduce other Silver games like Silver Bullet and the multiplayer Silver Dagger. Features Overview:
SummaryThe world of game applications is enormous, but its advantages still revolve around some gameplay. That's because this game app is targeted with the right set of features, coupled with exciting elements.Appstudio makes a list and mentions game apps that can make you feel the thrill of playing the game and quickly test your gaming skills. So buckle your seat belt and let this gaming app give you an adrenaline rush. It's all on our list of the best gaming apps. If you feel we missed a leading gaming application or anything else like that, contact us, we would like to hear from you. |
Event from Friday Oct 9th 8am PST submitted by daffy_ch to RenderToken [link] [comments] His tweet: https://twitter.com/carlosmarcialt/status/1313876065543229440 Bio: Carlos Marcial is a crypto artist based in Mexico City. Carlos first discovered Bitcoin in 2012 and became a major proponent of the currency. It led him to eventually discover crypto art in 2019 and he has not looked back since. Today, he is one of the only crypto artists to fully support himself through sales of his rare digital artworks. Can digital art or crypto art made with the help of Artificial Intelligence be (or become) sacred? Does it help if the AI (Style Transfer GANs) is trained and informed with art from various ancestral indigenous communities of Mexico that saw art as a way of portraying the sacred, and as a gateway to the sacred? In a world evermore defined by our digital practices, the fact that these artworks were created using a mix of 3D animation, blockchain-based distributed GPU rendering, and Artificial Intelligence for the textures and materials, makes them certainly rare, unique and special, but can it make them "digitally sacred"? There are the questions that "Sacred Artificiality" is trying to raise and bring into the crypto art/digital art debate. All of the (4) animations presented in this collection were animated inside a 3D software, rendered out using the Render Token (created by Octane, one of the most important players in the CGI industry) and the blockchain, and then textured using Artificial Intelligence. (source: https://niftygateway.com/collections/carlosmarcial) Profiles: https://www.instagram.com/carlosmarcialt/?hl=en https://twitter.com/carlosmarcialt?lang=en https://niftygateway.com/collections/carlosmarcial Recommended for reading:
Nvidia GTC 2020 Fall Presentation by OTOY: NFT for RNDR Nvidia GTC 2020 Fall Presentation by OTOY: NFT + AXR for RNDR Q & A from the AMAQ: I’m just not sure the art world has a problem with artist studio using certificates of authenticity and conditions of sale. There are lots of issues around the sale of works, one that always concerns me is the conditions of display, and possible conflicts of interest with secondary sales.Carlos Marcial: If you are referring to copyrights, those will always stay with the artist. You sell a token with a digital artwork attached to it, not the rights to it's reproduction, although that is something that could be settled also using the blockchain and smart contracts. - Q: I always want to specify what hardware videos files are played on, the size of the screen or projector for any public display. Carlos Marcial: One of the most interesting things about cryptoart is that you can attach metadata to your work on-chain. That means that the display directions for your work can exist on the blockchain forever together with your NFT. - Q: Another interesting statement. 3D models for RNDR’s partner project Decentraland are the next market for NFTs? Do you see a market for 3D models? Can 3D models also become crypto art, not only commodity to place in games? https://twitter.com/dclbloggestatus/1313939338648907776?s=21 Carlos Marcial: Yes, I totally agree with this. I got on the 3D interactive NFT bandwagon as soon as a platform like SuperRare made the integration. Not a lot of people have caught with them, but I think it's just a matter of time before more collectors realize the potential of having digital artworks that can exist on virtual land, but also through augmented reality apps or any kind of mix in between. Here is an example of a GLB file I did that was put up for sale as a NFT on superrare.co - > Authentic Digital Art - What is Art? pt. II | SuperRare My first artistic collaboration with ROBNESS. Let's keep this ongoing ontological dialogue about art open. 3D Interactive File (GLB) - Q: Do we have examples of "large projects" sold as NFTs ? How can we trust a website that does the bridge between the user and the blockchain ? What about stolen work put in blockchain ? Carlos Marcial: If by "large", you mean projects that have sold for considerable amounts of money, then yes. Even though we're in the early stages of these marketplaces, there are have been NFTs already sold for more than $50,000 USD. This is similar to having an art gallery represent your art; you have to be able to trust a gallery that others trust. This is the problem that close and curated platforms resolve. On open platforms, is up to the community to to denounce scams and stolen artworks - Q: At some point something will slip through the system and someone "registers" work that is not theirs into the blockchain..... what will happen then? What if someone steals random artstation images and trys to upload them again and again and at some point they manage to go through with it? As I understand you can't delete an artwork from the blockchain. The argument is, that the adress of the person who "stole" it is forever linked to the NFT and people will know that, but what happens when they don't give a fuck and just re-sell it again and again, because it's valuable and worth alot? I can see a scenario in which a NFT becomes so valuable that people buying it just don't give a damn if its source is "conflicted", just like some people dont give a damn if they buy conflicted diamonds and rare earths. Here is a very recent case: https://twitter.com/kidmograph/status/1314610456892518400?s=21 Carlos Marcial: This has happened already on open platforms like Rarible. It seems to be the price to pay for having open NFT marketplaces where absolutely anybody and create NFTs. The best example here would be Rarible. The good things here is that I have noticed an active participation from the NFT community in finding the scammers and denouncing them to Rarible's admins. And I've also seen how well and promptly Rarible's admins have dealt with these cases. I would advise all digital artists to make an effort to get verified by as many curated platforms as possible (you can even get verified on Rarible now). - Q: Do fan-arts mean anything to this system? Carlos Marcial: All fair-use precedents in art should apply in crypto art too, IMO. - Q: Do you have to apply for all platforms as an artist, like the case with https://superrare.co? What are the major pitfalls for such an application, any major tips and which of the official tips from the platform do you think matters the most?
Carlos Marcial: Yes, you have to apply for all crypto art platforms, except Rarible. I think the most important point here is that of being able to prove your identity, as this seems to be the aspect that worries most artists. The good thing of having your digital identity proved and established on the blockchain, is that it's impossible afterwards for anyone else to falsify one of your artworsks, since they would need to have access to your private keys to be able to upload a digital artwork to the blockchain using your same Ethereum blockchain address - Q: If a stolen work is on the blockchain, how can we possibly remove it if the website service is abandoned? Some user request a takedown and some random people agree to remove it from the future blocks?... Carlos Marcial: Yes, that's a possible scenario. That is why it is important that on the open platforms, the admins take seriously every claim of stolen IP that they receive, and that they swiftly and thoroughly investigate each one of them Rarible's goal is that the platform becomes a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization), which could mean that a lof this "policing" might end up being done by the same users (with some kind of reward or incentive system put into place) - Q: would we need a fork of the blockchain to have a new possibility of accessing the blockchain, and what would happend to the value of previous works? Carlos Marcial: I'm no expert on this particular subject, but I think a lot of these issues might get resolved by interoperable protocols or blockchains like Polkadot - Q: Someone took a picture of a famous french painting and animated it using a plugin and it was approved. https://opensea.io/assets/0x9d060a74befd28c6431f86171cd5982bcce1bbab/98 How are the rights of the unaltered work are respected? What's the threshold of acceptation? Just a filter on an artwork is not ok, but animated is ok ? Carlos Marcial: In this particular case, it was the same mural painter Pascal Boyart who created also the NFT. He's a well known French street artist. He's also famous for including a QR with his Bitcoin wallet address for anyone wanting to donate money to him. - Q: What is the most successful type of content for crypto art and why? Carlos Marcial: Oh, I've seen all types of digital art content be successful on the NFT marketplaces, but it's noticeable how much more attention animations get. - Q: Who is buying crypto art in general? Who did you experience is buying your crypto art? From the linked video at [45:00] "How did the art market develop in the renaissance? It was the patrons, the Medici's, the rich guys. Because they had so much money and were the "whales" of that time they basically sponsored the arts for their personal pleasure. And it created an artistic boom and then created a new industry because more people got into it due to the money." In general a good interview starting at 25:00 with Yat Siu (REVV, SAND). Highlights the NFT space from a gaming perspective.
Carlos Marcial: I'm going to guess that the first wave of crypto art whales is mostly comprise of people that got rich from investing and trading cryptocurrencies. But I think this is going to change, as more people inside the traditional art markets discover crypto art. - Q: I heard that the buyers are reselling the artworks again for profit. Who are the 2nd level buyers and are they also just buying because they want to flip it later for more money? PantherModern: Yes! and I encourage it with my works because I established a 20% royalty rate on all future sales in my Smart Contract - I ALWAYS get a cut. Carlos Marcial: I always say that what really got me into crypto art wasn't my first sale, but my first resold NFT. It was so exciting to get a royalty payment for the very first time in my life! I think there's a mix on the secondary market between real collectors that want to own an NFT that was maybe impossible to acquire on the primary market (like what happens with collections on Nifty Gateway, that can sell in a matter of seconds or minutes... it's crazy!) and those that see potential in flipping the artwork again for some profit - Q: When I buy an artwork, say on SuperRare. Can I print it on a t-shirt? Can I sell the T-shirt? Can I sell 1000 T-shirts? Carlos Marcial: No, the collector does not own the license. The collector only owns the non-fungible token and because of that is only in a position to resell the non-fungible token to another potential collector. Even if you own an artist's NFT, I would advise to check with the artists if it's OK to make a print for yourself. - Q: What's your thoughts on the flood of low effort/stolen art on sites like Rarible? Carlos Marcial: I don't mind the low effort art. I think that open and more decentralized platforms like Rarible are excellent entry points for a wider audience. Specially since we're talking here about blockchain technology, which is suppose to be decentralized. But I do have a problem with stolen art, of course. I think this is something that we need to tackle as a community on the open marketplaces. - Q: What's your opinion of "digital twins" - NFT's that have both physical & digital counterparts, I'd love to hear if you've found any interesting examples Carlos Marcial: I think they are great! The best example for me here would be Trevor Jone's art. He combines real life paintings with augmented reality and NFTs in a very skillful way! I also think it's a good way of creating a bridge between the traditional art world and the digital art world. - Q: Have you seen any interesting examples of ERC-998 Composable NFT's which can contain and sometimes react to ERC20's and other assets? Carlos Marcial: I've been exposed to this new standard by Sean, the CEO of Cargo.build. He's really pushing forward that type of NFT. And I'm really excited about all the creative possibilities that it might open up. - Q: How do people find you, and artists like you, to request commissions? I've told my artist friends about NFT's but they don't know were to begin. Carlos Marcial: People usually reach out to me asking for commissions through Telegram or through Twitter (twitter.com/carlosmarcialt). I have my DMs open on Twitter, so that anyone interested in my art can reach out to me. - Q: My problem that happened today, a gallery in the US has my work on their website for an online screening program. Another gallery I’m working with has ripped the video and produced a promotional video for Instagram. They did ask me before posting it, which I refused to give permission. I don’t understand why they would not have contacted me for a file, and given me the opportunity to have a conversation. I guess the point I’m making is I want control over digital files I send to people, where they appear and for how long. My work is for the most part not available online. I sent a password protected Vimeo link, download turned off. When I send the work for public display it’s encoded on a Brightsign media player, which is plug and play. The gallery technicians never touch the files. This is more for quality control of encoding rather than safety. It is possible to extract the files, but at least it’s not as easy as a .mov on a USB stick. Brightsigns can also play encrypted files, even though I have never got round to making this work. For public display something similar to how cinema works with encrypted DCP and an expiring KDM license, but that could be played on less high end hardware would be ideal. I’m not sure if NFT’s can help with these sort of distribution and license control issues? Carlos Marcial: Unfortunately, I think NFT tech mostly helps with the licensing and provenance side of things, and not so much with the distribution issues. A piece of digital art, turned into an NFT, will almost certainly be able to be shared freely on the internet, but at least, and like many other public artworks, everybody will be able to see it but only one person or institution will really own it. - Jules Urbach (OTOY): the idea with attaching NFT to ORBX (or even the rendered output of an ORBX from RNDR) is that we have the full hash chain for every asset in the package - and can have artist metadata per asset and per render dictate how it gets re-rendered, re-mixed or validated in any RNDR module (including a free ORBX viewer for mobile and eventually web). We also have ORBX->glb as a render function. But with ORBX rendering working with Octane X on iPhone and even with AR, we can come up with a live, verified RNDR output, similar to the offline work now done on RNDR. For example, we could make it so ORBX files are encrypted (more or less same as data going to RNDR client) but more importantly we can package it in a way where only certain pins or nodes can be connected or changed (i.e this orbx only exports the flat render target, not the geometry node for scene remixing, or post / camera/environment/materials for re-lighting, re-rendering) - THANK YOU SO MUCH Carlos Marcial!!! We are so pleased with great community members. Thank you for taking over one hour of your time to reply to the questions! please give him a follow! https://www.instagram.com/carlosmarcialt/?hl=en https://twitter.com/carlosmarcialt?lang=en https://niftygateway.com/collections/carlosmarcial |
Price: Free with ads/ Offers IAP. Plants vs Zombies 2 is one of the best offline games for iPhone and iPad, with addictive gameplay, fun graphics, and increasingly difficult to stay occupied for hours. This a Tower Defense game with the objective to defend against zombies. Best Offline iPhone Games You can play fun games like Fallout: Shelter or Grand Theft Auto without the internet. Or enjoy Kraino, Minecraft, Altos Adventure, and more. Free iPhone games have a reputation for being rubbish and full of IAP. But whether you've got an iPhone 12 Pro Max, an iPhone SE (2020), or any other model, loads of superb free titles await your ... The best iOS games you can play offline on your iPhone and iPad Best iOS games you can play offline By ... It’s free to play the first part of the game, but the rest of the game will cost $5. ... Best free games for iPhone (iOS 9 and below) ... Levels range from easy to hard for all adults to enjoy – accessible on-the-go, offline and online. ... Don’t worry, you can play Word Connect anytime, anywhere even without a network connection! • Multiple Choices! Supported on iPhone, iPad and iPod. The games listed above are our top 20 picks of best offline games in 2019 for Android and iPhone devices that you can play without having an active internet connection. The list is based on the strategy, action with high-end missions & amazing HD Graphics that will put you right in the middle of the action and give you an immersive gameplay ... In a nutshell, it presents a unique gameplay experience next to Temple Run and Subway Surfers. Overall, Sonic Boon is one of the best offline games for iPhone that you can’t miss to play offline. 6. Alto’s Adventure. Alto’s Adventure costs 4.99 USD. If you are ready to spend for an offline iPhone game worth your time, this should be the one. / 20 Best Offline iphone (iOS) Games to Play Without Internet (2020) I may earn a small commission if you buy through the links in this website without any extra cost to you. My Recommendations however are not biased in any way. When it comes to modern mobile games, it appears that a constant internet connection is always a must. However, you sometimes want to play games offline for various reasons. And for those moments, we have the solution for you: a list of the best offline iOS games you can play without WiFi in 2020. Usually, […] All in all, it’s one of the coolest free offline games for iPhone and iPad you can play. Install: ( Free, offers in-app purchases) 2. Jetpack Joyride. If you are on the lookout for an action-filled endless running game that can keep up and running all the time, Jetpack Joyride is for you.
[index] [1422] [7513] [2415] [6764] [6137] [3230] [3708] [2539] [4273] [3627]
Copyright © 2024 m.bkingz.online