1.7 billion stars now available in the new Gaia stellar map: Gaia’s all-sky view of our Milky Way Galaxy and neighbouring galaxies (links available on that page, this is not a link to the map)

Crap SyFy, cancelling The Expanse. Not news I wanted for this Sunday morning!

Good for you, Amazon, for saving The Expanse.

/me plays Last Post to the Sapphire AMD HD7870 that just died tonight. It was the videocard of the PC connected to the 42" TV. We started a Youtube video and part way in, a cacophony of sounds, a black screen and a hung computer. Rebooted into a green screen. Rebooting into the BIOS gave a severely dotted screen.

Looking at the card, the heat pipes on the heat sink have cracked copper, it's completely gone in places, showing the card has been very hot.

I've temporarily replaced it with the older HD6850, while I'll go shop for a new card.
You've done good, boy and you can rest now.

Edit: its replacement is going to be an MSI GeForce GTX 1050 2GT OCV1.
Going from 175W usage to 75W usage... that'll be a difference. :)

/me standing to attention as Last Post plays
Farewell Jord's good and faithful GPU.

Looking at the card, the heat pipes on the heat sink have cracked copper, it's completely gone in places, showing the card has been very hot.

It must of been scorching hot to crack those copper heat sink pipes. Surprised you did not get "magic blue or grey puffs of smoke" with that amount of heat!

Interesting... the Geforce 1050 comes without power connectors, so it takes all its power from the PCIe bus. At least I could remove one more cord from the PSU then. Really useful having a fully modular PSU.

As for the damage to the heat pipes, see this, that and that. I'll try to remove the fans for better shots.

ARGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's some mess - from the photos it looks more like corrosion due to flux residue than stress fractures due to over heating.

No, the 'copper heat pipes' are really steel heat pipes with a copper outer layer, which has burst off in places.

Here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/cVb9gAHqmHGbqE973
With detail shots.

No, the 'copper heat pipes' are really steel heat pipes with a copper outer layer, which has burst off in places.

Here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/cVb9gAHqmHGbqE973
With detail shots.

So bad plating job.

For when you wanted to do some cryptocurrency but cannot easily decide which: current prices of all cryptocurrency (1,628 at the time of writing, choice enough!)

Wow, that's fast. 30 minutes ago I ordered my new Internet + TV package from my ISP.

My old one was 250Mbit Internet, cable TV, digital TV, Online TV and telephone for 80 bucks/month.
My new one is 200Mbit Internet, cable TV, Online TV and telephone for 65 bucks/month. Eventually that price will go down further as they're phasing out the cable TV.

But they've just reset & turned down my internet connection already. That's fast.

Kinda glad I don't go to the workshop this coming week. Apparently the deities decided this must be the hottest week of the summer thus far. Temperatures go 30-37C here this week. Although I see that they don't expect as hot weather in Oxford, I don't feel the suits will like 27-29C either. Bring a fan, Richard.

Bring a fan, Richard.

That's a thought. I've got a fan for the bedroom, though I haven't needed to use it for the last couple of (slightly cooler) weeks. It's easier to sling it into the back of the car than it would be as hand baggage on Jet2.

Though I may get funny looks on the bus from my B&B to the conference venue...

Turns out the room has a fan, but it's nowhere near enough. It's been a long time since I felt the urge to have a cold shower before bed, but I think that might have done the trick - while bringing back unwelcome memories of boarding school. Throwing all the bedding except half a sheet onto the floor will help, too.

Hell hath frozen over: I've updated to Firefox Quantum 61.0.2 on this computer, after having kept out on Quantum for the past year. Until this afternoon, I was still on 56.something, but I've read that by September 1st the Legacy extensions are going to be discontinued. Plus the problem with the password manager I use has been solved. So no further reason not to update.

Hell hath frozen over.

That explains it then. I noticed it was a bit chilly today. And as we'll be having a bank holiday here on Monday, it makes even more sense.