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W∴ Balboos, GHB11-Jun-20 5:19

11-Jun-20 5:19

NewEgg has been (and still is) my go-to place for computer stuff and electronics. That being said, I'm concerned about how they are becoming more and more like Amazon.

By that I mean that more and more items are featured from third-party vendors and it seems every more often no one at NewEgg vet's these offers. Whether it's a US$12 item with US$18 shipping, fraudulent claims, and just general gouging, it's becoming more and more the norm.

My personal take on this is that for a couple of years now, NewEgg is now more than 50% owned by a Mainland Chinese company. As such, their promoting more and more of the local riff-raff production we've all grown to know and loath. For merchandise of some quality, the prices are less and less good all the time: I noticed I was less often purchasing what I needed from them because I could do better elsewhere. (TigerDirect went down a slippery slope - I've not bought anything from them for at least ten years).

Being out-of-stuff is certainly more common. What I can't understand is how they never seem to have re-stocked (logitec webcams, for example). Like nearly everything else, they're made in China. Could this be a new 'conspiracy' to get us into the habit of buying off-brand and no-brand junk?

Oh Brave New World!

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"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010

charlieg11-Jun-20 5:40

11-Jun-20 5:40

Concur with the assessment on NewEgg, and I've caught Amazon doing the slippery swap on me as well. NewEgg has been my go to for parts, because they are adamant in keeping gray market crap out of their supply chain. Or perhaps not so much now with the acquisition by Liaison Interactive. I haven't built a new rig in 10 years, so times change. If their quality slips, they lose their one distinguishing feature over amazon.

I was just shocked at how many new motherboards (I'm looking at a high end Ryzen 9 build) are just not available. We have processors out the wazoo.

Charlie Gilley
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W∴ Balboos, GHB11-Jun-20 6:24

11-Jun-20 6:24

TigerDirect had been my longtime supplier of barebones systems. I have since gotten one from NewEgg (I think). So far, however, high-end is not my target. No use for the power.

Lot's of processors (that wazoo thing) - makes sense if no MoBo's in which to install them!

Actually, my most recent purchase was a "NUC barebones" from NewEgg. It's my Linux box, for now. Also my Raspberry Pi 3 . Actually, also the refurbished DELL Optiplex I'm using now to VM into work (and from there, RDT to my Xeon, where I am now).

Sad - how mediocrity and even less is becoming ever more an acceptable norm.

Ravings en masse^
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010

Dave Kreskowiak11-Jun-20 5:38

Dave Kreskowiak

11-Jun-20 5:38

Manufacturers are having a hard time getting stuff out of China. There's not enough space on planes and ships to get the stuff out. A lot of space is being taken up by PPE because of the virus.

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W∴ Balboos, GHB11-Jun-20 6:26

11-Jun-20 6:26

An endless supply of shyte, Chinese brands, are making it to the US. What gets on planes, aside from PPE, is controlled by "The Party". It's called building acceptance and increasing market share.

Coincidentally, came upon this today, just after posting[^]

Ravings en masse^
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010

modified 11-Jun-20 12:35pm.

charlieg11-Jun-20 11:40

11-Jun-20 11:40

Newegg needs to cull anything less than 3 stars, but now that they are owned by a Chinese firm, meh. Amazon knowingly ships the same garbage, they just hide it better.

What I found interesting is that I could buy any processor I wanted. Intel has world wide sites, just two in China. AMD farms out all of their manufacturing, but it looks like the latest chips are coming from the Republic of China (taiwan Smile | :)

)

Dan Neely12-Jun-20 2:27

Dan Neely

12-Jun-20 2:27

Gamers Nexus covered the part supply shortages about two weeks ago; for anyone too busy to watch a 25 minute video, the TL;DW is that the Corona outbreak in China made the post-lunar new year inventory slump larger than normal. While on the demand side enough people decided to use their $1200 stimulus checks to build new PCs that demand surged from what's normally the lowest levels of the year to that of the November/December peaks. Production in China is getting back towards normal; but between the withering of air-freight due to passenger jets not flying (they carry a lot of trans-ocean cargo too) and medical supplies having priority on the available air/sea freight manufacturers/resellers are struggling to get supplies from the factories to the US. The prediction at the time was that PSU inventory would recover during the first week or two of June; but mobo/gpu shortages are coupled (both are bottlenecked on the same pick and place machines for PCB assembly) would continue for a while longer. (And the GPU in particular side will get walloped again later this year when AMD/NVidia stop production of their current cards to start building release day inventory for their new ones.)

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Build engine approach?

charlieg11-Jun-20 4:42

11-Jun-20 4:42

So, over the years, the place where I work has slowly, grindingly improved their s/w processes. In 2020, the mission is to get build engines going for all current and recent products. Right now, we're all laptop sensitive, code releases being built on individual developer laptops. So, naively, I ask IT to spin up a few virtual machines on our development server. This simple request morphs into.. oh never mind, let's say it got complicated.

So, let's say you have N products you need to do regular builds for. I'm of the opinion that unless the products are very close in their nature and build tools, they each get their own VM. In my mind, it limits the coupling between products and build requirements. I'm sure I'm going to have to explain this approach.

Thoughts and opinions?

Rick York11-Jun-20 4:49

Rick York

11-Jun-20 4:49

That should not require explanation.

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charlieg11-Jun-20 4:55

11-Jun-20 4:55

You would think. Every time I ask for a VM, it turns into a research project. I mean, it's trivial. But I'm just here to help.

PIEBALDconsult11-Jun-20 5:08

PIEBALDconsult

11-Jun-20 5:08

What color should it be? Nasal fitment?

Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter11-Jun-20 5:55

Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter

11-Jun-20 5:55

That's the problem with professional IT. They understand nothing of development workflow...
I consider myself lucky, to be my own IT...

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charlieg11-Jun-20 9:29

11-Jun-20 9:29

Truth. I get the 1000 yard stare when I tell them development will be managing the VMs.
The local IT is all goodness. I've worked with them long enough that they understand what
I'm trying to do. It's the corporate IT Borg that give me trouble.

Example:

me: "I'm sorry, 2 of the virtual machines will need Windows Xp."
IT: "Sorry, we don't use that anymore. We don't support it."
me: "Well the development tools for the product that our biggest customer uses needs Xp."
IT: "Can't you try Windows 10?"
me: "No, the tools don't work."
IT: "But we don't know how to support Xp anymore. It's a security risk."
me: "It's okay, development will manage it. Besides, we're not surfing the web here. Honest."
IT: "But...."
me: "I'll have my director call your director... What we've got here is failure to communicate."

3 months later....

nobody15812-Jun-20 12:24

nobody158

12-Jun-20 12:24

I also am my own IT and Developer where I work. It seems to be the best balance as I can spin up what I need or request one of my coworkers to do so with very little explanation if any at all.

Matthew Dennis11-Jun-20 9:32

Matthew Dennis

11-Jun-20 9:32

How about one VM running Docker, and then run your builds in Containers configured for the product?
Basically, bring the machine to the VM.

"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."

Jon McKee11-Jun-20 13:42

Jon McKee

11-Jun-20 13:42

This. Admittedly I'm late to the Docker party but it really has a ton of advantages. No need to ensure consistency between environments for the product across the organization since that's handled by using a consistent image; it makes IT's life easier because as far as they're concerned they've just got a bunch of containers; etc.

It is a significant workflow overhaul and requires some training on use though, so that's a pretty big hurdle to overcome to get approval unfortunately.

charlieg12-Jun-20 8:17

12-Jun-20 8:17

I'll have to read up on that, I was just happy to be able to get to the VMs.
Sounds useful.

Thanks for the suggestion.

When life gives you melons

Garth J Lancaster11-Jun-20 15:36

Garth J Lancaster

11-Jun-20 15:36

charlieg wrote:
So, let's say you have N products you need to do regular builds for. I'm of the opinion that unless the products are very close in their nature and build tools, they each get their own VM. In my mind, it limits the coupling between products and build requirements. I'm sure I'm going to have to explain this approach.

this, plus Matthew Dennis's comment - Docker/Containers .. if you dont go Docker/containers for the builds, at least use Docker/containers for the testing so you get a clean test environment every time, unless you keep a 'gold' image for the combinations and clone it when needed, then destroy the clone at the end of the run (we did this on a particular cloud test system).

As to 'very close in their nature and build tools', we had separate build machine(s) for language basically, C++, C# etc - even then, our C++ product had a large dependency on a third party GUI library that occasionally gave us issues, more with the paths and such

ZurdoDev11-Jun-20 3:32

ZurdoDev

11-Jun-20 3:32

You are dyslexic.

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Re: When life gives you melons

W∴ Balboos, GHB11-Jun-20 4:55