High End Gaming PC for This?

I've recently gotten my hands on a High End Gaming PC and was surprised by how many games actually struggle to run decently using the bells and whistles found at the high-end spectrum. While not all games caused crashes I found that some didn't handle being played at their highest settings very well. This could always be an hardware/driver issue from my side, of course, but since the issues seems to be occurring for some games under some specific conditions, and not others under similar conditions, It seems to me like the issue is with the game rather than anything else.

The 2 items that seems to be causing the most problems for me are:

• RTX - This newish technology doesn't seem to work well for some games as using the highest RTX settings directly impacted the stability of some of the games tried.
• Refresh Rate - Some games gives the option of a higher refresh rate than the standard 60hz but stability seems to be taking a hit whenever choosing anything beyond 60hz for some games.

I would argue that the reason why some games have bugs at the higher end settings is because not as many people play games using high-end parts. Most gamers likely use mid to low range systems and games work fine with lower configurations.

I'm not ruling out the hardware/driver issue entirely. This is my first high end gaming PC and I thought everything would run without any issues. The reality, however, seems to be that high end gaming still has some, different, issues than my experience with lower/mid range gaming PCs.

The Struggle to Remove McAfee is Real!

One of the ways to protect yourself against computer viruses is by having an anti-virus. One anti-virus company decided that it was a good idea to include itself as bloatware when buying a brand name computer and this company is McAfee. I'm using the term bloatware heavily here because those that don't want this anti-virus will have a very difficult time in removing it.

Weirdly enough, the folks at McAfee knows about this hence they create a software to uninstall their anti-virus... you saw this correctly - you need to download a software to delete another one. It makes no sense but that's what you need to do.

Not only does it make not sense but it also doesn't really work properly because to uninstaller won't uninstall software while its in use and it's very difficult to disable this anti-virus.

I curse you McAfee!

I don't know if they're a good anti-virus but I know for a fact that they would make a very good virus themselves.

What's Epic Games' Strategy With the Online Store?

When it comes to online gaming stores on PC steam is pretty difficult to beat as it evolved to be more than a simple store. Steam is, in a way, a social media platform with an emphasis on buying/playing games and people love that about it. It went from a simple storefront to include chat, forums, workshop (mod support), streaming ... it's a behemoth of a storefront.

Epic store, in comparison, is quite light on functionality and they're trying to lure in shoppers by giving away free games every week. Everyone loves free games but how many people have actually purchased anything from that store? I doubt it's anywhere near what steam is making.

Steam has shown that an online store can be much more than just a place to buy game. Steam is a place for gamers to play games, chat, share, keep track of achievements... I'm not saying that the Epic store needs to be a copy of steam but it does need to bring additional functionalities to the table. We have to remember that EA, too, had an online store that only sold games and where is Origin now?

Death of the Graphic Card

Whether we like it or not cloud gaming seems the way of the future as it renders accessible high quality content to anyone, anywhere, with a high speed internet connection.

Obviously, Graphic card companies, such as Nvidia, knows this as they are trying to diversify their portfolio into the cloud gaming sphere. Unfortunately for the, however, they're not as successful as it as the major competitors such as Microsoft and PlayStation.

Is it that difficult to see a future without the need of high end graphic cards? I mean, what would you rather have? A 2000+ computer or a 20$/month subscription to a cloud gaming service? The choice is evident to me - the cheapest option wins.

I've mentioned this before but my prediction is that Microsoft will dominate the cloud gaming space as they seem better prepare for it than other companies.

What are you going to do? Are you going to keep buying computers/console or are you going to surrender the the cloud gaming world?

The KFConsole is Going To Fail

The KFConsole is apparently a thing and let's get straight to the point … it's going to fail. It's not that I want it to fail but the first reaction gamers have when hearing about this is "is this real?" which, we have to admit, isn't a good sign. The reason why we have this reaction is because KFC is a fast food restaurant and, while it did dabbled in games before, it's not known as a video game company.

Another unlikely problem is with the chicken warmer. Sure, it's a good way to use the heat the console will generate but who in their right minds will be using this feature for it's intended purpose? One of my biggest pet-peeve is to have my controllers nice and cleaned and having my console greasy certainly doesn't sound appealing to me.

While the KFConsole seems to be checking all the right boxes, such as 4K/240FPS, to compete in the next generation war it is very unlikely that Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo are loosing sleep over the release of this console. They definitely need a better "carrot" if they want someone like me to purchase something like this.

Is Playstation's Dominance here to Stay?

Sales of the PS4 were vastly superior than those of the Xbox one and the trend seems to be continuing for the new generation but is PlayStation's dominance here to stay in the long run?

The future of video games seems to be in streaming and if we approach the dominance question with this in mind then the answer becomes a bit more blurred out as Sony is definitely facing stiffer competition in that realm than with physical consoles. While it's true that Playstation has better first party games, everyone else seems better fitted to offer a gaming library on the go.

Stadia can be played in Chrome, the most widely used browser in the world, and requires a gmail account which is, also, one of the most used email service in the world. Stadia feels like a natural progression of Google services while it feels like we have to get out of our way, a bit, to get PlayStation now to play on our devices as we're required to download an app. Sure, it's a little thing but in this competitive market it's the little things that counts. 

The downside of Stadia, currently, is that it's "only" a streaming service - there are no way to download the games and play them on PC, for example, with weaker internet connections.

I've mentioned this before but Xbox Gamepass is, hands down, the best gaming library rental service on the market today as they offer streaming as well as the ability to download games both on Console and PC. They have a foot in today's reality, where not everyone has warmed up to the idea of game streaming, and another foot in the future where streaming is set to become mainstream. I believe the big Xbox executives when they say they don't really care about consoles sales because they're already setup to win the market 10 years from now.

PlayStation is dominating today but I believe they will be the next Blackberry story at least as far as gaming libraries are concerned. It doesn't matter how good your console's sales are if the world has changed in such a way that you don't even need a console anymore. 

You'll note that Nintendo wasn't mentioned in this "Sony VS Microsoft VS Stadia" article and the simple reason for this is because they are a bit more difficult to predict. Sony, Google and Microsoft seems to like playing it safe by taking advantages of current, and future, trends while Nintendo is known to be more of a risk taker and, in some cases, end up creating their own trends by taking advantage of something no one else thought about. Nintendo doesn't look like it took any steps towards the future of game streaming but we can't really count them out of it just yet ... they may end up taking everyone by surprise and end up dominating the market.

What ever happens, it sure is an exciting time to be a gamer and I can't wait to see what the next 10 years will look like. Game on, my friends, game on!

Xbox Series Vs PS5 - Which One To Buy

I'm planning on getting both consoles, eventually, but if I had to choose between only one of them I would go with the Xbox Series X and here's why.

• Backward Compatibility - Both the PS5 and Xbox Series are backward compatible with the previous generation but only the Xbox Series goes as far back as the original Xbox generation.
• Hardware Compatibility - The Xbox Series controller is compatible with the Xbox One - useful is you intend on keeping the Xbox One as a secondary console.
• External Controller Battery - Society loves intergraded rechargeable batteries but I've always hated it because the device lifespan depends on it. I own both the PS3 and Xbox 360 - I can still pick up and play with any of my Xbox 360 controllers but need to keep my PS3 controller plugged in because the battery doesn't last as long anymore. If you intend on keeping your console for a long time then it's best to pick the device with a controller that doesn't have an integrated battery.
• Airflow - It's no secret that both the PS5 and Xbox Series X are generating a lot of heat. The Xbox Series X design isn't the most esthetically pleasing but it works well at keeping the eat away.
• Storage Management - I'm only speculating here based on my experience with the PS4 and Xbox One... There was nothing more frustrating to me than to have my PS4 tell me that my 60gig remaining wasn't enough to install my 40gig game. It's unclear to me if this issue is fixed with the PS5 but it did leave a bad taste in my mouth and I really doubt this will be an issue with the Xbox Series since it wasn't for Xbox One.
• Home Screen - There are things I hated with both home screen offering in the past generation but I've always ended up liking Xbox's a bit more.
• Storefront - The PS4's storefront was a pain to go through as it had too much junk (themes/avatars) outside of games. 

Do you agree with my decision? What console are you getting?

A.I. VS Regular Program

Regular programs are on their way out and in its wake will come A.I.. After all, why wouldn't you want every facet of technology to be able to learn and determine the best courses of action for each scenario? Why wouldn't you want a piece of software that becomes better, without changing the code, over time?

The first thing that is important for us to understand is the difference between a "regular" program and an A.I.. A program is code with a verify specific purpose. The code will never do things it wasn't design to be doing. 

The A.I. also is designed with a purpose in mind but it gets to make its own decisions based on its experience. The more experience it as, the better it will be at making the decisions related to his purpose.

The biggest strength, and also the biggest weakness, of A.I. is in its data set. The bigger it is, the more scenarios it has, the better it becomes at the task at hand.

How much data does an A.I. require in order to become proficient at something depends on what that "something" is. Alphago, the A.I. developed by Deepmind to play the Go strategy game, had hundred of thousands of professional games in its data set before it could start beating the top professionals Go players Xray4all, an A.I. designed to figure out diseases from X Ray pictures, only needed a few thousand X Rays of a disease before it could start identifying it in new pictures.

Some A.I. companies, like Deepmind, have found ways to create A.I. that are not dependent on existing dataset. AlphaGo Zero is the successor of AlphaGo and learned the Go game via trial and errors instead of through analysis of thousands of games.

The problem with the "rise of the A.I." is that changes are occurring faster than we can process it. Those technological companies are building A.I. that doesn't consider a user's privacy and some of them are just now paying for it. As I mentioned before, the more data an A.I. has the better it is and there doesn't seem to be much limit of the type of data those big tech companies are allowed to store on us.

While many countries are in on the A.I. race I think it's safe to say that countries with a Dictatorships form of Government, such as China, have an edge over countries where the populace have rights. The reason being is that privacy policies, in Countries like China, are non-existence which gives tech companies the green-light to do what ever they want with the data they gather and they can accumulate a lot of it.

The future is in A.I. and I just hope that we won't become one of those dystopian societies so often depicted in science fiction.

Pandemic - Internet Connection Lost

These times are difficult on everyone and can be especially taxing on such things as internet service providers. Two weeks in the lock-down and my internet connection isn't as stable as it was before everyone started watching Netflix for 12 hours a day. This is a big problem for me because I'm one of the lucky few that can work from home - assuming I have a stable internet connection.

What can be done to help remedy the situation?
According to theverge.com, Netflix and Youtube have reduce the video quality in order to help alleviate internet traffic.
This is a good first step but I also am of the opinion that internet service providers should do more to limit the amount of traffic on the network by reducing the speed at which people can access the information. Most people have high speed Internets at this point, which is great, but the infrastructure in place wasn't designed to give everyone high speed, at the same time, for days at a time. This is made evident by the increase of disconnect that some people have seen in recent weeks.

Sure it's not an ideal situation but it's better to have a slower internet than to have no internet at all. A slow internet connection would still allow those that work from home (like me!) to do a lot of things. Who knows how long this lock-down is going to last... we better have something in place to have the internet working in the longer term in these circumstances.

Pandemic and Technology

Most of the technology available today has made the Pandemic situation a little more bearable. Some people have the ability to work from home and chat with their work peers via all sorts of software. We can entertain ourselves with all sorts of online services. We can buy pretty much anything we want online and either pick it up in store or have it delivered to us.

Sure this Pandemic has slowed things down but if something like this would of happened 30 years ago (and it has happened in our history) things would of been brought down almost to a standstill. The IT field I'm in right now didn't even exist 30 years which means that I wouldn't of been able to work from home.

Remember to stay home during these tough times as much as possible. We need to get through this!

Stop Using Your Cellphone Number for Security

Do you use your phone number as added security for a online service? Then it may be time for you to consider going towards two factor authenticator rather than to use your phone number. A news article recently came out about a person that lost his phone number and lost access to a bunch of services as a result.
Apparently, the hacker was able to transfer the phone number to another carrier and then use that number to access online services that was setup with the phone number.

What I got from that story is to not use the cellphone for online security. Google authenticator is a pretty good app for this purpose and works with many online services.

Clean Up Your Online Presence in 2020

Do you know the extend of your online presence? Do you still stand by what you said, in that one obscure forum, 10 years ago? If you're like me, you don't even remember all that you've done online but the internet remembers and it will for as long as the servers are kept alive.

Make 2020 the year where you review and become mindful of your online presence. The below is a few things you can do:

• Go through your old Facebook posts and delete what is no longer relevant.
• Search for your account names, emails or other type of aliases you've used in the past and see what comes up. Delete the accounts that you no longer use or update the password of those that you still actively use.
• When making new posts, subscribing to a new online service or site, think about the trail you're leaving behind.
• When deleting an app be sure to also delete the account associated to the app (when ever it applies).

We're a few weeks into 2020 let's make this year the year we're mindful of our online presence.

We're Not Ready for Self-Driving

We will see a future with self-driving cars but now is not the time for us to be sleeping at the wheel while the car is driving itself - it's too soon.

The main reason why we're not ready for it is simply that the technology behind it is still in it's infancy and prone of making errors when faced against the unpredictability of humans. Basically, there are still too many humans on the roads driving "the old fashion way". Once, however, that enough self-driving cars will be on the road; the self-driving feature will be much more reliable as the car will be able to determine where every other self-driving vehicle is from kilometers away which would greatly reduce the chances of collision between them.

We haven't heard much of this yet but I hope to eventually see a centralized database that will keep track of all self-driving vehicles, in real time, regardless of the make. When in self-driving mode, the car would connect to the database to figure out where all the other self-driving cars in the vicinity. Maybe the technology could still be implemented to vehicles that do not have self-driving features as to further increase the security/reliability of the self-driving cars.

As far as I'm concerned, once the technology will be ready I'll be replacing the typical car seat for a bed so I can sleep during my travels. That 10 hour commute doesn't seem as bad if you can just sleep most of the way doesn't it?

Foodvisor A.I. App is the Future That I Want

Ever wanted to have the nutritional information of what you're eating just by taking a picture of it? This may soon be a reality with the recent investment Foodvisor received to develop the technology.

The idea is pretty simple - take a picture of what you're eating and let the Foodvisor A.I. app estimate it's nutritional content. While it wouldn't be possible to accurately determine the nutritional content of food, just with a picture, it's still nice to have a "best guess" estimate for those of us that are food conscious.
This would be especially useful to those that are looking to loose weight but don't want to track everything they eat manually. Instead, just take a quick picture and let the app make the calculation for you to review later on during the day.

This will not be an easy feat for Foodvisor because for an A.I. to be able to recognize anything it must have a "memory" of images of said item. In the world of food, where there are hundred of ways to cook an item, it could be difficult for the A.I. to recognize items, such as Chicken, if it's cooked in a way that app doesn't recognize.
The important thing here, however, is that we are start developing the technology. This idea is in it's infancy and it can only get better with time. Maybe in the future we'll be able to buy sensors to connect to the app to help it make even more accurate estimates.

Time will tell how good this will be but I am pretty exited about this as I'm not particularly good at keeping track of such things as calories. If this could help with that, then I'm definitely downloading you yet to be released Foodvisor A.I. app!

Don't Buy Extended Warranties for PC

Extended warranties that only promises to fix what is broken in your computer, for the next 5 years, are pretty much useless. Insurance companies are betting on the fact that you will upgrade which ever part that breaks rather than simply replace it with the same one.
Computer parts also decreases in price over time. Your fancy Ge-force Titan card may be more than a thousand dollars today but it won't be in 3 years - which gives an additional reason for insurance companies to push their extended warranties to you.

This happened to me a few years ago where I had bought a brand new, top of the line, computer. The extended, 5 years, warranty would of costed me about 500$ for the entire PC. I refused to take it and after about 4-5 years my graphic card started acting up. Obviously, after all this time my top of the line graphic card wasn't really worth much anymore and I could find it for about 60$... but if you need to replace something in your PC why wouldn't you take this opportunity to upgrade it instead? This is what I did and then entire thing ended costing me 80$.
Since I hadn't bought the extended warranty, and nothing else broke, I ended up saving 420$ over that 5 year period.

This is when I realized first hand that extended warranties are not worth it. The computer parts looses value so fast that by the time they need to be replaced they cost only a fraction of the original price - often that price is lower than the total cost of the extended warranty.
Keep in mind that most companies will offer a 1 to 2 year warranty out of the box so if there are any defects with the components then they should show up within that time frame.

Stay away from extended warranties.

Wordpress Impress

I was recently helping a friend get started with her blog. When she asked which service to use, I quickly replied "you should give Blogger a try" since I had been using the service for roughly 10 years and it had served me well for all this time.

Her experience with Blogger was nothing short of frustration. Everything she did with her template didn't look right. She would try to change the text to a different color and it wouldn't change. Her website looked off on mobile devices as well ... She quickly dropped the service and tried Wordpress and she managed to make a beautiful site within mere minutes. It was so pretty, infact, that I decided to fiddle around the tool myself.

I was blown away at how easy it was to make things look right. Blogger - I still like you bud but you need to get your head in the game. You are loosing big time to the competition.
This is only one of the many services available. I didn't even try the likes of "Wix" or "Squarespace" etc... Maybe it's time for me to switch gears and move on to a new service?

Eventually that will happen but for now I'm just fiddling with the tool see what I can do with it. If you're curious, have a look at my Wordpress site here!

The Beginning of a New Era in Gaming?

Xbox Pass, Stadia, Playstation Now ... all those streaming services are trying to be the Netflix of gaming. The idea is sound and if it gains traction with consumer it will revolutionize gaming as we know it. Why would anyone pay thousands of dollars for a gaming pc or console when a simple, bottom of the barrel, device could fill our gaming needs?

We're not talking about old games here but newer ones that would make any top of the line gaming pc sweat. Folks from google have recently partnered with Ubisoft to bring the latest Assassin's Creed game to the streaming world via the chrome browser. This experiment, which is sure to be successful considering the company behind it has unlimited funds, may just be the spark this idea needs in order to initiate a major overall in the gaming industry.

Whether we like it or not, this is what is coming for us and I don't know about you but I'm not ready for it. I still love buying most of my games in a physical format. I'm still curious of the direction this will take though.

Alt Text & Facebook

According to WhatIs, "Alt text (alternative text) is a word or phrase that can be inserted as an attribute in an HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) document to tell Web site viewers the nature or contents of an image. The alt text appears in a blank box that would normally contain the image."

If you been posting pictures to Facebook, it is interesting to note that Facebook has been using an automated tool to write the alt text of your pictures for you and it's scary good. The below are a few examples of the alt text that was automatically generated on some of my pictures.

"One or more people, phone, beard and selfie"

"1 person, smilling"

The above are but 2 examples from my Facebook account but every pictures I've seen had one and the accuracy of it is borderline scary.
I'm not very comfortable about having applications scan and understand my pictures. This technology, in the hands of the wrong people, could be used to find incrementing pictures of you online or on your personal computer.

Perhaps this is, again, a reminder of being careful what we post online or what we keep on our computers.

Product Life Cycle Must Include "Recycle"

In today's high consumption world, most product life cycle ends when it reaches the customer. The mentality seems to be that once the product reaches the customer; it's out of the companies hands.
This has to change. The life cycle of a product must also include recycling. Why is it that in today's world, we can't easily do simple maintenance on 80% of the electronics with buy? You got an old iPhone? Sorry, you can't change that battery on your own - you have to go through an "approve" store and pay excessive fees to have the battery replace.

I understand that the customer also plays a part in all this. I mean, do we really need to change vehicle every year? Do we need the latest and greatest gadgets? Probably not.

Some companies are becoming more mindful about how they build their products but we still have much to do. Why can't we recycle, or re-use, part of old televisions? We still have much to do. This is a crisis that requires our full attention so that we can maximize the use of our limited resources on this planet.

Medical Field need A.I. & Robots

We're often afraid that robots will take our jobs but some fields would actually benefit from having them. The medical field, which cost close to 228 billions in Canada, is not only expensive but requires so much of its employees that many change career paths altogether.
I thank every person that chooses a career in the medical field. Thank you for the sacrifices to keep us from enjoying our life. I know a few nurses, doctors, and other health practitioners and see the struggle they are going through.

As I mentioned before, many are not able to handle the sacrifices required for the job and leave to pursue other careers. Those jobs are not easily filled and the population is aging; which in turns mean we need more health personnel... it doesn't look good.

The medical field is one where we actually need to have A.I. to take some of the work. Why not have a machine do hearth surgeries? Why not have an A.I. assist a doctor in a diagnosis? Why not have a robot move a patient from one room to another?

The demand for health is ever increasing and we're not currently able to handle the demand. The Healthcare needs to seriously consider the A.I./Robotic route if it wants to continue being able to provide good service to all.