Paul's Tech Talk

How to build a Gaming Computer Cheaply!

PaulJune 14, 2021

Building that Cheap Desktop

Even now people are still trying to build cheap gaming desktops because it is fun to build it yourself. You can however order a gaming desktop from either your local computer store or even online such as Origin but then you will be paying more. Either way, you will probably be paying more for the labor and maybe even the price of some of the computer parts. This is why I like to build my own desktop and customize it to my liking. Each time I make a desktop for clients or even me, I ask myself what do I want to have in my system. I’m an INTEL person myself and will always go with Intel due to the fact that it works really well with Windows and other programs natively. I also ask myself some common questions before I begin my build.

Will it Be Intel or AMD? (To each their own preference)
How much speed do I want to have?
What type of HD will I most likely install it it? (examples: NVME, SSD or HDD)
What type of Graphic card do I plan to have in it if Any? (Nvidia, AMD or no Graphics card at all)
Will I want to have max memory or just the standard 8Gb or 16Gb of memory?
Will it be for Gaming or Work, or Both?
Will I need a lot of power to run this PC?
Will it be Watercooled or Air Cooled?
Will it have RGB on it or will it be non RGB? (This too is a good question because RGB will take additional power but it isn’t going to be a lot)
What Games if any will I most likely be playing on this desktop? (Each Game has minimum requirements that need to be met, so look carefully at the games)

Time to do research

This is where it starts to get interesting because most of the time, I will start with Motherboard and CPU. This is the first place I start looking for the right motherboard and cpu for my needs or at least to start off with. You can always buy a slower CPU and gradually upgrade it as you get more money. So you don’t have to always have the fastest CPU to start off with. It does help but it will also help with keeping it cheap. This is the time you decide if it will be AMD or INTEL and then look for the board that will work with the CPU. Also you will need to pay extra attention to the socket types and how many PCI Slots. If you are going to install a Graphics Card, you will need to have the right PCI slot and also if you intend to install any other peripherals which might need a pci slot.

Buy RAM

Once you’ve bought the CPU and Motherboard, you’ll know which type of RAM you will need to buy to install onto the Motherboard. This is what I usually do anyways and I start looking for RAM being sold on Facebook or other sites that sell used RAM. You’ll just want to make sure the seller is reliable and has some good ratings before buying the ram. The max speed I usually get for any system nothing more the 4000 Ghz, I usually try to limit it to 3200 Ghz because you really don’t find any more speed coming from the memory at higher rates. I think it is due to the limitations of the motherboards but that might just be something else.

Power Supply

Now is the time to buy the power supply, This can seem easy but really it is harder than most will admit to. You’ll want to buy a power supply that can be used with your system and then add a cushion of 30% or more to the power supply needs. So if you need a 500 watt power supply, I’d buy a 900 watt power supply just to be safe. If you can find one that is modular, that is even because then you won’t have cables that you aren’t using. That’s the only thing good with Power supply. Something like the one you are seeing on the left will work just fine. Most of the time it will work even better than you can imagine.

Video Card

This is essential the most expensive part of the build right now. Depending on where or who you talk to. It can be anywhere from a few 100 dollars to even a 1 thousand dollars to buy the video card new. The trick here is to find a video that will work for you right now and then upgrade it as you need to in the future or as you get the money in the future. So I always tell people to go with the Minimum requirements of games and then work your way up to recommended requirements because that way you can save up for the GPU that is recommended and still be able to play the game you are wanting to play. Just remember don’t bottleneck your CPU with getting a better GPU and not upgrading your CPU in the same the process. Look for people who are selling their GPU’s and or places that might sell you a cheap GPU that still will do what you are looking to play or do with it. Even with Nvidia announcing the Low Hash rates GPU’s, You can expect the price of them to be more expensive than what you normally will see for quite some time.

After That you should really be set to put you system and install what operating system you might want into the new desktop. Once that done you are set to start playing your games.

My Review of Subnautica : Below Zero and the Story Line

PaulJune 12, 2021

It’s not for the faint of heart

Subnautica even the original isn’t what you would want to give someone who hasn’t ever played the game because there are scare sequences that might not make for the best impression to people who has never played the game. I’ve played both Subnautica and Below Zero through the whole game and come to realize that that there is something off on the game. I wanted to talk about it and tell you my thoughts on the whole idea.

The story line

Now Let’s face it if you haven’t played subnautica original or this one and don’t want spoilers, please be warned this is going to have spoilers in it about the story line.

You’ve Been Warned!

The original subnautica, You crash land on the planet in an escape pod. Then you have to gather resources and get yourself up and about to survive the environment. Of course you need food and water and even a nice bed to sleep to make it look real and feel like you are actually living it. The storyline in the game on the original was just really well done and you had to explore and find out how to save yourself from getting even more sick and that didn’t come all at once, you found out over time that you were sick.

Finally once you figured out how to get yourself well you had to help a giant leviathan who was trapped and dying due to be locked up and all she wanted you to do is let her babies go free who will help stop the virus in every plant and fish. They seem to leak the antidote and it helps to cure plants and fish. Finally you do that and the next thing you have to do is create a rocket to launch yourself up and away to go home. This was the storyline for the original subnautica and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved the exploration of it all and being able to go really down deep and to find the resources that I might need to survive. The Base building was always the fun part, you could make big or small bases when you needed it and also make them however you liked and customized them your way.

Subnautica Below Zero

We find Robin getting off the ship with a drop pod and she wants to find out what happened to her sister(Sam). The opening sequence was well done but the voice actors were changed, I am not sure why they changed but I was playing this game in beta and I don’t know why they wanted to change the actors but it was really well done. So we find Robin trying to gather resources first like usual and building a base is something that needs to be done. You’ll come to a point in the game where you will find a distress call(in morse code) and find out there is an living entity in a cave who takes over your brain because it needed help to survive. We’ll come back to him in a second. You do the things you need to find out what happens to Sam and why she dead. You explore and find out that Sam has an antidote for the big frozen leviathan and you are to find it and administer it to prevent Alterra from using the Kharaa Bacterium for research or who knows even a weapon. Along the way you find out what happens to your sister and even some pictures and stuff that helps bond the player to want to know more and more. Anyway once that storyline is done you have another storyline to complete.

The Talking Entity

So Now you have Alan(or Allen) in your head and there are occasional times where you two are talking to each other. Either way you develop a need to get him out of your head and put him into a body or container. He tells you what you might and even shows you where there might be some at. You’ll definitely need to go deep like the last one. I figured that I’d need to go deep again, it seems to be a constant with the architects. They really do love to go deep don’t they.

You’ll get him a body but first you need to build the resources to build be able to build his body. You’ll want to bring those resources that you gathered with you to the places far down below when you’re ready to make his container or body. You make his body and he tells you the story of how he got into this predicament. He tells you he’ll go back to his home world and ask for forgiveness and try to make right what he did wrong. He offers you to join him and you do since you have no other way off the planet. I really liked the ending sequence to this because you saw the space outside and it looked really nicely made.

Ending it

I really didn’t like the fact that there were two storylines in the game and the game just felt a little bit off but it might just of been me. I do hope what we see in the ending sequence is a precursor to another part of Robin’s journey we will get to play. After all, I am really curious as to what happened to the architects. Does Robin get to help them or are they dead? I really think Unknown Worlds is going to continue this game in the coming months. We’ll probably see another game about the architects and it will hopefully be the one where we are still playing Robin and she has to help this being out to figure out what happened to his people.

Do you think they will create another game to continue off where they left or is this just the end of the game series? Let me know what you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

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How the IATA travel pass can verify USA or other countries vaccine cards

PaulJune 9, 2021

Verification of Vaccine Cards

Several countries around the world are wanting people to have a way to verify that people who are coming into their country has gotten the vaccine. There have been a number of news articles of people who have faked the vaccine card for one reason or another usually just because they don’t feel like they need to get the vaccine. Requiring vaccine cards have never been new or original in traveling around the world. There has always been countries that require vaccines like rubella or Hepatitis B vaccine to enter their countries. We’ve seen many countries who would like to proof of vaccine and proven ways to knows that it’s not forged.

Stopping the forgery

Each country is wondering how they can stop the forgeries of vaccine cards. No country wants to have take financial responsibility for someone who might get really sick due to the covid19. This is why countries are really wanting way to provide a way to know that someone has gotten the vaccine. The problem is that some people think they really don’t need the vaccine because of herd immunity, so why are they so worried about it. It’s one way to know that their immune system has been given enough protection from getting the severe version of covid19. I am sure there are other reasons and that is what I always hear.

The IATA Travel Pass Verification

When I say that IATA could verify that each vaccine cards in the USA or other countries to be authentic, is saying something that no other airline could do. If countries are looking to verify that the vaccine cards from countries that don’t want to share their vaccine data due to laws, such as the US. They can at least do some minor things while you register for a vaccine passport on their IATA travel pass app. I’m going to talk in length about this so please be patient and maybe someone will actually implement this in the IATA Travel Pass app.

There are several ways they can verify the picture of the vaccine passport to be authentic. They can have the Iata travel pass do image searches to see if there are images that are unique or close to the same exact type that is being submitted. There are several ways you can do that:

These are only two of several ways they can search the web and find out if it is not authentic or original, from the vaccine card that is being submitted.

Images not on the Internet

What if the criminals are being sneaking and keeping these cards off the internet. What options do the Iata Pass have to verify that it isn’t be used in other countries or accounts on the IATA travel pass? This is where it gets really interesting because there are several ways that can be used to verify that the vaccine card hasn’t been used in the past. They can get the Hash Value of the picture and store it in their servers for later on. Don’t worry, the hash value doesn’t save the picture on the server but keeps a copy of the hash value so they can search for that value and probably even keeps the account that it is associated with it for security reasons.

As you can see it’s is really an easy process for phones around the world to hash a picture and send the hash to server to either use it to search for a copy or to record it so no other person can use it. I really suggest you go check out the pyimagesearch site and see all the ways that can be used to search for a duplicate hash. This would be a great resource for people to authenticate if they have a unique vaccine card or not.

Examine the Metadata

Metadata is according to Google “a set of data that describes and gives information about other data.” Basically when you take pictures with your phone, your phone records what type of phone was being used and many different things sometimes including the GPS location of the image being take. So they can examine the metadata and see a lot of stuff from the submitted picture of the vaccine card is coming from and also keep record of that information also in a database for reference for obvious reasons. They can also prevent photos being used if they have been edited before uploaded, for example there is a good little photo editor like Snapseed. It’s a great little app that can be used in Android devices to edit or change a photo.

Once it has been edited the metadata would show that it was edited by snapseed or any other photo editing software and thus should be thrown out for security reasons like that. So if someone is trying to get around the vaccine authentication they probably would have a very hard time in verifying there vaccine card.

This is what I would think should be implemented when making the IATA travel pass to help governments to know that the vaccine cards are as authentic as possible. I won’t say that people will not come up with ways to still submit forgeries, that will always be a problem. It however will make it more difficult for people to do that. It is my hope that we won’t have to use this for very long and this would just be a stop gap way to get travelers back to traveling around the world.

What do you think about this idea? Do you think they did this or do you think they will do this in the future? What’s your experience with the IATA travel pass?

How Internet of Things are changing our lives

PaulJune 8, 2021

IOT Security

When we say the Internet Of Things(IOT) it really brings about a bad thought into our minds, or at least in mine. I never really understood why someone would come up with this term because it bring a bad connotation and that can bring about a lot of hesitancy to buy the devices. It can be quite hard to understand or even harder to conceptualize the use the devices in question. IOT is in its simplest form is just that a device that needs to be connected to the internet and be able to connect to a server in some other location such as an camera that is outside to watch the property, or even a wireless connection that is used to monitor the door being locked or unlocked. This however can be bad because like any other way we have seen bad people figure out ways around this technology and use it for their own devices or against the owners. The privacy and security of the devices have been almost overlooked in the past due to the newness of the technology and how companies didn’t think about how to implement it in the right way.

IOT Benefits

Security and privacy aside right now, the benefits of using an IOT device is become easier to use. Even now the technologies associated with the IOT devices are becoming more mature and more reliable. According to IOT-Analytics There are 40+ emerging technologies from the IOT devices such as Hardware, IOT Marketplace, and even 6G technologies being developed. The IOT device helps secure out homes and our properties and also help make our lives just a little bit better each day by allowing us to let them to the small jobs in our life or makes it so we feel a little bit more secure in our own little home. The benefits allows us to automate cleaning the floor or even to communicate with machine to machine which helps speeds up processing of a certain task in the house or allows us to monitor what is going around in the house. I am not sure the interconnectivity of devices is a huge benefit but it is a benefit to some and I can’t imagine our lives not getting better in the long run. I think IOT devices and benefits have a long way to go before they will make a bigger difference in our lives.

How the digital divide can be solved

PaulJune 6, 2021

The Digital Divide

Let’s begin with the simple facts at hand, that the digital divide is just that a divide again the populations around the world that have very little change to have internet. One such organization, One laptop per Child a non profit did try to do that to help bring the digital devices and educational needs to the areas with the greatest need. It however went terribly wrong. We can only identify areas that need the digital signals and try to provide for them. This is where Elon Musk’s idea of StarLink is being conceived to do just that. This will greatly help people with low income or places that has no access to wired internet to be able to get digital signals to them. In all truthfulness, I really don’t have a lot of ideas on how to address this divide but I am sure it’s only a matter time before someone else comes up with the ideas that will make it work even better than I could imagine it.

Addressing it

Some way I guess we could address this issue is simply by making it inexpensive to countries that can’t afford to pay 100$ for the internet and or pay for the One Laptop Per Child. I would think if we can get governments around the world to embrace stuff like this and help pay for the technology or even just the internet than more people around the world would be able to access the digital devices like everyone else. I can think of maybe a few ways to help decrease the amount of the device or even just the internet to people who have little or no internet. Make it free for everyone around the world but then who’d pay for it? Who’d keep our privacy safe? Who’d make sure they didn’t misuse our information? That’s the real big question when it comes to how to make a free internet, because we will always have to worry about someone using our information for bad or even making money off of us in one way or another. Still this is just one way we can at least attempt to fix the problems with the digital divide. It isn’t going to solve every problem but at least it would make it so much easier for people to get onto the internet and we wouldn’t have as big of a divide like we do today.