Sumatra is also my go-to. It’s also what many computer security experts recommend. Small, simple, light-weight, and open source, pretty much all you need for most PDFs.
I use Google Drive for that myself for things that I care about having on all my devices.
Thing is, you never really know if you are downloading a weird shady ass PDF or not. You may think you’re downloading the manual for your washing machine or something, but you have no way of knowing if your washing machine company’s been compromised and had their PDFs trojaned as a result. Better safe than sorry.
Then again, a lot of the security experts who urge against using Adobe’s Reader probably also spend a good amount of time reverse engineering shady ass PDFs, so that could make them extra sensitive to the issue.
So, I’m working on getting documents together to apply for dual Italian citizenship, and I’ve hit a snag. Apparently my dad (who was born in Rome) automatically became a US citizen when my grandparents naturalized in 1981, and according to an old law that means that he might have technically lost Italian citizenship. His last Italian passport from before I was born was issued in 1980 and expired in 1985.
I was born in 1990, and he applied for a new Italian passport in 1992. The Italian government asked why he was living in the US, so he told them he was also a US citizen, but he didn’t have any documents attesting to that (because it was automatic). He had to get a US Certificate of Citizenship (which said he’d been a citizen since 1981) before the Italian government would issue him a new passport, which they did in 1994.
The problem is, I’m not sure what documents the Italian government used to make the decision to grant him a new passport (thus confirming that he was still an Italian citizen). According to Italy’s 1992 law that explicitly allowed dual citizenship, one of four scenarios may have happened:
He never lost Italian citizenship when my grandparents naturalized, because he didn’t voluntarily renounce his Italian citizenship.
He lost his Italian citizenship, but somehow regained it before I was born (there are multiple different avenues to do this, some of which don’t necessarily leave a paper trail).
He lost his Italian citizenship, but regained it after I was born. There’s a clause of the 1992 law that would automatically give me Italian citizenship when he regained it.
He lost his Italian citizenship, and every passport they’ve issued him since 1981 was in error. There’s a danger that if I ask the consulate about this, they’ll simply revoke his citizenship.
I’m in the process of requesting documents from Agropoli (where he lived in 1981) to see if there’s anything that shows that he was an Italian citizen (or regained it) sometime between 1981 and 1990, but, well, Italian bureaucracy.
Wow, you’re pretty close to being me, but I think you may have it easier. My Mom was born in Italy but voluntarily renounced in the 70s making that entire line of the family a no go, however my father is second generation Italian.
If I wanna get citizenship through that path, I need to retroactively get it for everyone on my fathers side up to my great grandfather. In practice it means, birth, death and marriage certificates for paternal parents and grandparents and great grandparents. Submit it all at an embassy and hope.
Honestly I think it may be easier just to move there and apply like everyone else.
Oof, yeah. As far as I can tell you’d only have to live there for three years rather than the regular 10 (or work for the consulate for that long, I guess).
Supposedly (according to an immigration person I talked to) the consulate will probably be very lenient with my application since my dad’s still an Italian citizen, and I might just need to give them copies of his passports (1980, 1994, 2004, and when he renews this year) and a document from the town he’s registered in that says he’s an “Italian citizen living abroad,” but we’ll see.
Yeah, moving there was already a goal of mine, and heaven knows I have a lot of family out there who could help out with the miscellania that’d come up . The job is my stumbling block right now.
My desktop PC’s Motherboard apparently died the other day, went to turn it on last night and I am getting no post code beeps at all. Even if I try to boot with no RAM. Swapped PSU and that didn’t help either. Currently waiting to hear back from Gigabyte since it was still under warranty.
I second the idea that it might be the PSU. My last desktop had a bunch of issues with USB ports shorting, and I thought it was the motherboard, but it turns out one of the PSU rails had failed. Of course it wasn’t the one I had used to test the PSU, so it was very tricky to diagnose.
I had a user unplug her desktop and bring it to my office so I could reset her domain password. The hardest part was not laughing as I turned around and reset her password while she was still holding her tower.
That’s rough man. I just had my htpc die I think. I only saw it on my way out and only had a chance to give it a quick look. Based on what little I saw, I think the power brick kicked the bucket. The little light wasn’t on. Either that or the specific outlet on the powerstrip is bad. Sigh, I meant this htpc to be a decent one. I don’t really wanna make a new one so soon after the last one.
I can’t actually say anything about whether or not this is a failure, maybe it’s the greatest thing ever, but I’m not paying $250 to try it. I’ll leave it up to the actual audio nerds to talk about external dacs or whatever.
Lol, any audio processor that’s worth that much money would produce way too much heat to be internal. Either that or be a recording interface which should also be external for interference reason. This is a trap for people with too much money.
It’s probably better than an onboard audio solution in most motherboards if you are running higher end headphones. It might deliver better power and have some unique gaming options people like. But don’t know if it’s any better quality than an equivalent SoundBlaster card. Nor is it probably better than onboard for most people and their normal gaming headsets.
I don’t know what Audio-Grade means anymore than I know what “Aircraft-Grade Aluminum” means without any other qualifications. It’s the primary red flag for me.
If it does deliver any sort of improved experience or cleaner power, then cool. For audio gear, $250 is not even that bad.
I think if someone is building a hot-ass gaming rig and does also use quality proper headphones that they spent $200+ on, this might be a cleaner, more integrated, and acceptable alternative to buying a stand-alone DAC/AMP like a JDS labs or Schiit or something. There are downsides: I like the proper size headphone jack but being in the back of a case makes it a pain to use for quick swaps. And no physical volume knob.
Now, I don’t think the heat is an issue: enthusiast PCs are already generating lots of heat that they are loaded with fans to dissipate. I’ve not seen a low-end AMP that had fans, just passive cooling. Mine gets warm but hardly the sort of temps that a motherboard might see, as long as it’s in a case with good flow I’m sure it would get plenty of cooling.
Now, isolation and noise being inside the case could be a concern. But it can’t be any worse than anything else onboard, right?
I’m not saying anyone should go buy this, but I’m thinking there are a few cases where someone could, see it as an appealing alternative that it’s neat to see EVGA put it out there.
Back in the day motherboards did not have sound cards built in. Now they do. Separate sound cards largely exist because of this legacy. They rarely offer any features than the on-board cards don’t have.
The only time a separate sound card is needed these days is if the on-board one is particularly shitty. For example, the work laptop I’m using right now is AWFUL. You plug headphones into it, and it sounds like poop. I’m not talking audiophile nonsense. It’s night and day. Like listening to music through a tin can on a string.
Thing is, even if you do have a legit reason like this to get a sound card, an internal PCI sound card is almost never the right answer. You are going to want some kind of external DAC.
I agree with getting external solutions if you are really serious. And an internal upgrade solution is a heck of a compromise. But it still may offer some benefit. The only way to know if it’s nothing but a money hole is wait for some audiophile people to review it and determine if it actually does any better than your average enthusiast Mobo, and if it’s any worse than an external setup of comparable cost.
Basically, does it stand up to the JDS El2+ODAC combo? If it’s even close, the benefit of being inside the case might be worth looking into for some people, despite the drawbacks.
