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Choosing a pc to buy.
- kids: "can it run minecraft?"
- casual gamers: "can it run overwatch?"
- serious gamers: "can it run witcher 3?"
- business people: "can it run several excel sheets?"
- me: "can it run linux?"48 -
An area sales rep once rang me to tell me his iPhone screen was cracked and was going blurry around some sections.
I told him to fetch me to look, and I will see what I can do.
5 minutes later I get a SCREENSHOT from his phone asking if I can see the crack and blurry edges.
HOW FUCKING DUMB ARE THESE PEOPLE!!!
I mean, come on. He seriously said when I called him: "But I can see the crack and blurry bits on the screenshot on my phone"4 -
" If you can put an axe through it, it's hardware; if you want to put an axe through it, it's software. " -- Unknown7
-
No, Arduino.
I'm not moving at 50km/h. Not even close. I'm sitting in my chair.
Just because I plugged a wire in backwards doesn't mean you are right.5 -
https://git.kernel.org/…/ke…/... sure some of you are working on the patches already, if you are then lets connect cause, I am an ardent researcher for the same as of now.
So here it goes:
As soon as kernel page table isolation(KPTI) bug will be out of embargo, Whatsapp and FB will be flooded with over-night kernel "shikhuritee" experts who will share shitty advices non-stop.
1. The bug under embargo is a side channel attack, which exploits the fact that Intel chips come with speculative execution without proper isolation between user pages and kernel pages. Therefore, with careful scheduling and timing attack will reveal some information from kernel pages, while the code is running in user mode.
In easy terms, if you have a VPS, another person with VPS on same physical server may read memory being used by your VPS, which will result in unwanted data leakage. To make the matter worse, a malicious JS from innocent looking webpage might be (might be, because JS does not provide language constructs for such fine grained control; atleast none that I know as of now) able to read kernel pages, and pawn you real hard, real bad.
2. The bug comes from too much reliance on Tomasulo's algorithm for out-of-order instruction scheduling. It is not yet clear whether the bug can be fixed with a microcode update (and if not, Intel has to fix this in silicon itself). As far as I can dig, there is nothing that hints that this bug is fixable in microcode, which makes the matter much worse. Also according to my understanding a microcode update will be too trivial to fix this kind of a hardware bug.
3. A software-only remedy is possible, and that is being implemented by all major OSs (including our lovely Linux) in kernel space. The patch forces Translation Lookaside Buffer to flush if a context switch happens during a syscall (this is what I understand as of now). The benchmarks are suggesting that slowdown will be somewhere between 5%(best case)-30%(worst case).
4. Regarding point 3, syscalls don't matter much. Only thing that matters is how many times syscalls are called. For example, if you are using read() or write() on 8MB buffers, you won't have too much slowdown; but if you are calling same syscalls once per byte, a heavy performance penalty is guaranteed. All processes are which are I/O heavy are going to suffer (hostings and databases are two common examples).
5. The patch can be disabled in Linux by passing argument to kernel during boot; however it is not advised for pretty much obvious reasons.
6. For gamers: this is not going to affect games (because those are not I/O heavy)
Meltdown: "Meltdown" targeted on desktop chips can read kernel memory from L1D cache, Intel is only affected with this variant. Works on only Intel.
Spectre: Spectre is a hardware vulnerability with implementations of branch prediction that affects modern microprocessors with speculative execution, by allowing malicious processes access to the contents of other programs mapped memory. Works on all chips including Intel/ARM/AMD.
For updates refer the kernel tree: https://git.kernel.org/…/ke…/...
For further details and more chit-chats refer: https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/...
~Cheers~
(Originally written by Adhokshaj Mishra, edited by me. )
23 -
When someone tells you they thought their iPhone 6 was water proof because they installed iOS 10. Facepalm 😖👋5
-
Parents:why is my iPad so slow?
Me: It's old (1st gen that came out in 2010)
P:well just clean it up and make it go faster
M:Theres nothing to clean... Theres only a browser app and solitaire....
P: well just fix it so it's faster
M:....... *turns it off and on again*
M: All fixed2 -
Also a big “fuck you” to whoever decided under any circumstance holding the power button down on a computer case meant anything other than shut this mother fucker all the way down and try the fuck again.
Gahhh. When I hold the power button I don’t what you to sleep, I want you to die! I’m electronically smothering your bitch ass. When I’m holding down the power button to restart, the computer should feel like it’s being waterboarded! Like these may be it’s last moments on Earth if it doesn’t act right and get in compliance! No it’s not nap time, it’s time to shut up or shut down...forever!9 -
So here's the new hotness... HP Envy X360.
I7
32 GB RAM
512 Gb SSD
1 TB HDD
Blows my old MacBook Pro away.
66 -
No, I don't know why your keyboard isn't working. I'm a web developer. Have you tried turning it off and on again?
2 -
So, I'm programming a control system for a prototype aerospace vehicle. You know, the stuff that needs to work to prevent falling out of the sky.
Anyway, test day was today (was -- not anymore). Wiring all the electronics, everything is actuating and works well. Except for one part, a little thruster for stability.
I spent hours - literally, fucking hours - trying to fix the problem. Wrong address? Wrong syntax? I had absolutely no clue what was wrong. Queue the hardware guy, $stupid:
$stupid: "How have you not got it working yet?!"
$me: "I don't know, everything I'm trying isn't working. I've spent hours digging through this code and nothing is fucking working."
$stupid: "Well have you set it up for the new thruster?"
$me: "What...What new thruster?"
$stupid: "Oh, the one we installed this morning, did noone tell you?"
WHY WOULDN'T YOU TELL ME THIS?! COMMUNICATION 101!6 -
Hooray for open source!
So my mother's Model M died. I didn't think that was possible but it looks like even the best ones have to die eventually.
I was one click away from ordering a replacement controller board for around the same price I had bought the keyboard for, when I duck-duck-went one last time for a service manual. Because maybe there was a error code table and maybe that flashing num lock light would tell me something about the defect. Then, I could investigate further and maybe repair the keyboard. I didn't find one.
What I did find was someone who made a USB controller board back in 2008, documented it well and published everything. It fit my Model M and I had all the parts at hand so I could fire up printer, etching bath, drill and soldering station and make that thing.
Now there's a working Model M on my table just because a guy named Ronald Schaten thought of future people having the same problem as he had.
Be like Ronald. How specific your issue might be, someone /will/ have the exact same one. Document and publish your solutions!
8 -
!rant
I once designed my own Arduino IDE compatible microcontroller, and even had the card manufactured.
Sadly I've yet to actually use it for anything, but hey, achievement unlocked, right?
15 -
Sister comes into my room
"Can you look at moms laptop, it stopped working I'm scared I broke it"
Ask why
"Idk it just stopped working, all I did was install adobe flash player I dont think that could do it could it?"
Top kek
Take a look
"EFI IPV4 0 (error code) failed to boot"
Weird. Enter bios
"Hard drive: [Not detected]"
Well, that's no bueno
Pop open back, hard drive is loose
Pfft, push that fucker back in
Boot -> works
"Mom is going to kill me I broke it im so worried" -> relieved laughter
Adobeflashplayerkilledmyharddrive.jpg
Shook.exe14 -
After 2 hours of wiring/debugging/rewiring, I have my EEPROM programmer halfway done. Currently is only able to read locations in memory. Next step: make it programmable.
(For those of you who dont know, EEPROM stands for Electrically Erasable, Programmable Read-Only Memory
29 -
So. A while ago I was on OkCupid, trying to find the Pierre to my Marie Curie (without the whole brain getting crushed under a horse carriage wheel obviously) and I decided the best way was to have my profile lead with my passion for technology. It turned out pretty unique, if I do say so myself.
At the end of it, I amassed some interesting and unique messages:
- A Java pickup line (that I never responded to. Yes I'm a very basic Devranter)
- A request to turn the man's software into hardware (to which I politely informed him that this was scientifically impossible unless a reader proves me wrong)
- Another impossible request to turn his floppy disk into a hard drive (how outdated too, why not HDD to SSD for faster speed amirite? That was awful don't mind me)
- A sincere request to help troubleshoot a laptop (Honestly I would've helped with help requests but this is a dating site...)
- A sincere request to help debug a student project followed with a link to a GitHub repo
- Another sincere request with studying for a computer exam
- And lastly, my favourite: a sincere job offer by a guy who went from flirtatious to desperate for a programmer in a minute. He was looking for *insert python, big data, buzzwords here* and asked me for a LinkedIn. I proceeded to inquire exactly what he wanted me to do. He then asks me to WRITE a Python tutorial and that he would pay a few cents per word written so he could publish it. Literally no programming involved.
Needless to say I went to look elsewhere.26 -
~rant
Today my dumb arse learned that DDR4 is a different shape than DDR3. Guess which one I spent weeks waiting for.
Guess which one my mobo supports.
Fuck.8 -
I have this little hobby project going on for a while now, and I thought it's worth sharing. Now at first blush this might seem like just another screenshot with neofetch.. but this thing has quite the story to tell. This laptop is no less than 17 years old.
So, a Compaq nx7010, a business laptop from 2004. It has had plenty of software and hardware mods alike. Let's start with the software.
It's running run-off-the-mill Debian 9, with a custom kernel. The reason why it's running that version of Debian is because of bugs in the network driver (ipw2200) in Debian 10, causing it to disconnect after a day or so. Less of an issue in Debian 9, and seemingly fixed by upgrading the kernel to a custom one. And the kernel is actually one of the things where you can save heaps of space when you do it yourself. The kernel package itself is 8.4MB for this one. The headers are 7.4MB. The stock kernels on the other hand (4.19 at downstream revisions 9, 10 and 13) took up a whole GB of space combined. That is how much I've been able to remove, even from headless systems. The stock kernels are incredibly bloated for what they are.
Other than that, most of the data storage is done through NFS over WiFi, which is actually faster than what is inside this laptop (a CF card which I will get to later).
Now let's talk hardware. And at age 17, you can imagine that it has seen quite a bit of maintenance there. The easiest mod is probably the flash mod. These old laptops use IDE for storage rather than SATA. Now the nice thing about IDE is that it actually lives on to this very day, in CF cards. The pinout is exactly the same. So you can use passive IDE-CF adapters and plug in a CF card. Easy!
The next thing I want to talk about is the battery. And um.. why that one is a bad idea to mod. Finding replacements for such old hardware.. good luck with that. So your other option is something called recelling, where you disassemble the battery and, well, replace the cells. The problem is that those battery packs are built like tanks and the disassembly will likely result in a broken battery housing (which you'll still need). Also the controllers inside those battery packs are either too smart or too stupid to play nicely with new cells. On that laptop at least, the new cells still had a perceived capacity of the old ones, while obviously the voltage on the cells themselves didn't change at all. The laptop thought the batteries were done for, despite still being chock full of juice. Then I tried to recalibrate them in the BIOS and fried the battery controller. Do not try to recell the battery, unless you have a spare already. The controllers and battery housings are complete and utter dogshit.
Next up is the display backlight. Originally this laptop used to use a CCFL backlight, which is a tiny tube that is driven at around 2000 volts. To its controller go either 7, 6, 4 or 3 wires, which are all related and I will get to. Signs of it dying are redshift, and eventually it going out until you close the lid and open it up again. The reason for it is that the voltage required to keep that CCFL "excited" rises over time, beyond what the controller can do.
So, 7-pin configuration is 2x VCC (12V), 2x enable (on or off), 1x adjust (analog brightness), and 2x ground. 6-pin gets rid of 1 enable line. Those are the configurations you'll find in CCFL. Then came LED lighting which required much less power to run. So the 4-pin configuration gets rid of a VCC and a ground line. And finally you have the 3-pin configuration which gets rid of the adjust line, and you can just short it to the enable line.
There are some other mods but I'm running out of characters. Why am I telling you all this? The reason is that this laptop doesn't feel any different to use than the ThinkPad x220 and IdeaPad Y700 I have on my desk (with 6c12t, 32G of RAM, ~1TB of SSDs and 2TB HDDs). A hefty setup compared to a very dated one, yet they feel the same. It can do web browsing, I can chat on Telegram with it, and I can do programming on it. So, if you're looking for a hobby project, maybe some kind of restrictions on your hardware to spark that creativity that makes code better, I can highly recommend it. I think I'm almost done with this project, and it was heaps of fun :D
13 -
My first personal computer in 1988: the ZX Spectrum +.
48 KBytes of memory.
The European opponent of Commodore 64. Sic!
8 -
The only keyboard i will ever need...
Https://shop.keyboard.io
Con's:
* Steep learning curve
* where the fuck are my key combo's? Ah there they are!
Pro's:
* so comfy!
* much wow!
* such openness
* da blingbling
* wood finish!
28 -
Who said programmers cannot solve hardware problems?
My router just said "Check hardware connection of your WAN port"
I took the cable out, blew in the socket and put it back in.
My internet is back in action.3 -
so here's a little story:
yesterday i decided to buy a shiny new gtx 1070 since my pc is getting very old, i come back from the store and i realize that my case is slightly too small to fit the card.
'No bg deal' i think to myself, i run out to buy a saw and after some work i made some space to fit the card in by sawing off some hard drive bays i was not using. I plug in the card, i wire up the pc, and it does not boot: after some asking around (i have never really built a pc before), i relaize i need more power to the card and wire a second PCIE connector. low and behold, i power of the pc and it works! Once logged into windows tho, i realize none of my HHDs are detected...
To cut a long story short, i **did not think to unplug the hard drives before i started sawing off bits of the case and the vibrations killed both of them!** i lost ~1TB of data in the process: a lot of it was games and programs, but i have yet to tally up the damage.
I am completely bamboozled by what the fuck just happened, i think i'll go hand myself in to the nearest police station for crimes against technology... or maybe a mental clinic would be best?...
PS: my system drive was spared since its an SSD, but i may as well re-install windows at this point since i lost 90% of my software11 -
Im trying to brute force a rar i made Long ago, sadly i have forgotten the Passwort.
This is how it looks, when you to run it on the length 8-16 at the Same time(all posibilitys).
lets see how Long it will take.
I say 7 Days at 100% cpu usage😂😂
8 -
Holy moly..
Working on my MacBook and out of nowhere: *click* dead..
Try to restart it, fan spinning for a second, then: nothing.. recovery mode. Nothing..
FUCK!!
Doing research on my iPhone.. see Louis rossmann had a case like this in which one foot of the clock on the main board doesn’t have connection.
But I don’t have the right tools to open the MB..
I turn it around, shake it shake it shake it shake it baby like Taylor swift, knock on the back, knock on the keyboard and voila.. working again😪
Didn’t think that still works with modern technology..6 -
I got a used computer case in a second hand hardware store and it still has the sticker with the specs of the computer they wanted to sell it with on it. It was going to be a moderate to shity pc. I built an absolute computing monster in it (i7 6900k, 32GB ram, 23TB storage). I like having visitors over and telling them this is the primary computer I use to do my high particle count fluid simulations and little bigdata projects with.
6 -
Just found an EPROM (Erasable Programmable ROM) from my dad's old stuff.
Yeah, there's a window for UV light, if you wish to erase your existing code/data!
Thought you people can relate.....
11 -
Fuck that fucking company three way while dozens of homeless HIV crack junkies puke and shit their diarrhea on the three bosses!
I can't put it in words how stupid they are!
Let me try to tell you the latest story while I try not to get multiple strokes.
Backstory: We are three devs, all with a TCCI certification. One has been working for us for almost a year, the other one has been working for us since one and a half year. Both are good friends of mine, btw. I have been working there for almost three years.
Fortunately, I am allowed to work on a reasonable computer. The other devs work on PC's with Windows 7 and 8!
One has just 400 MB space left on his drive and has to delete every month some shit because he does not want to be able to call up websites anymore... How awful?!
The PC of the other great Dev Crashes three to six times a day and needs about 30 minutes to start up!
We can be so productive, but...
We told that in February one of our bosses and asked him to buy new hardware. His answer: yes, of course, I understand that, it's my turn (he always says that "ich bin da dran")
We got a new colleague in the middle of this fucking month. She is responsible for conception.
She works on an old notebook, but today she gets a fucking new PC to work on while the devs are trying to weld with a sparkler! Better hardware than every other Dev PC!!!
Guess what? She is the daughter of a friend of one of our bosses!
We are the only devs at this company.
Fuck that fucking company! Fuck that fucking bosses!
I think we don't go to work for that fucking company anymore!7 -
*When your processor is left with no power to create a process to kill the process that's consuming all your processor's processing power.3
-
Never thought I will be hired by Chinese software/hardware company located in NYC to code in languages I don't know so well. Instead of lying and saying I know everything about C, PHP and SQL, I said that I suck pretty much at everything, but I'm a quick learner and will study day and night to catch up with their practices. Now I see they have no regret about me, but I still suspect them in hiring me because there is another guy who is Russian too and we all communicate well. Our current squad is 17 Chinese, 2 Russians, 1 Americans. Guess what, I learn Mandarin quicker than PHP. Sometimes a small lie is OK, but sometimes honesty is better.3
-
As a software engineer, I decided to participate in a hardware Hackathon. I went in not knowing much about the subject, but by the end of the weekend, we made a fully functioning (somewhat janky) jacket that could roll up or roll down its own sleeves depending on what your body temperature was (inspired by Back to the Future 2). We also created a remote, so you could control the length of the sleeves as well. It was the most off-the-wall, ballin project I've ever been a part of.10
-
Since everyone is posting their system, I'll do it now, too:
- Type: Laptop
- Age: about 5 years
- Weight: 2-3 kg (too much)
- Modifications: Paper below problematic keys; Samsung Evo 850 250GB SSD
- Usecase: School-Laptop with every Office-Suite I could find.
- Pros: Wrecks my PC with the boottime (Gnome > KDE); Looks really sick; Really lightweight Arch installed; Quiet when not under load
- Cons: Really heavy; Battery old and unreliable; Bluetooth stops working after closing lid
13 -
My laptop started making faint high-pitched noises - I hope I misheard and it's actually just some coil singing inside the power-supply and not one of the disks/something else - also, I seem to have dropped 4GB of RAM suddenly where there should be 8GB.
(Also, I should really wipe the messed up dual-boot still residing on disk from last semester and replace it by a fresh arch-only install. (No time and joy in debugging that right now.) Probably something for tomorrow evening.)
The device is ~8 years old by now and starting to fall apart - nothing duct tape can't fix - but I'm somewhat worried about the rest right now. D:
Meh, I really need that laptop during the next two weeks, I just hope the hardware doesn't die on me in the meantime because I can't wait for an order to arrive, let alone afford some cheap replacement.11 -
devRanters, especially the linuxers, unusual request/question, especially coming from @linuxxx!
I just found two very old netbooks which still contain windows xp (I didn't even know I still had them at all) and I'm obviously going to turn them into Linux netbooks.
Does anyone know any good looking linux distro's that run well on low-end hardware? This is not my specialty since I either deal with servers or higher-end computers :).
Please pass me some suggestions!56 -
I'm a web developer and know jack about hardware. My wife's personal laptop was going very slow so decided to upgrade to a SSD. How hard could it be?
Turns out to be very fiddly trying to disconnect and reconnect 4 ribbon cables. To get to the HD and replace it.
Restarted laptop and thought it was all good, but only certain keys worked and the mouse pad moved but didn't click?!?
Had to take it apart and reconnect twice more but now it's fully functioning once again.
Sticking to software in future. Massive respect to hardware specialists!6 -
I closed the lid of my laptop and went for a lunch. When I came back the damn machine wouldn't start and I realised I didn't push anything to github today so wish me luck recovering data from the drive.
(At least lunch was good.)6 -
Hardware of laptops today.
Displays: Glossy screens everywhere. "Hurr durr it has better colors". Idgaf what colors it has, when the only thing I can see is the wall behind me and my own reflection. Make it matte or get it out.
Touchpads: Bring back mechanical buttons. Haptic feedback dying with touchscreens/surfaces is a tragedy. "But we can have bigger touchpad area without buttons" ...why? the goal shouldn't be 1:1 touchpad vs. display ratio. It ain't a bloody tablet.
Docking stations: Some bright fucker figured out that they can utilize USB C. That thing keeps falling out with slightest laptop movement disconnecting all peripherals (guess why microUSB had those small hooks?). Also it doesn't have sufficient throughput, so the 5 years old dock can feed 3 full HD monitors just fine and the new one can't.
Keyboards: Personally I hate chiclet. And it's everywhere, because "apple has it so we must too". But the thing I hate even more is retardation of the arrow keys (up and down merged into size of one key), missing dedicated Home/End/PgDwn/PgUp buttons and somebody deciding the F keys are not needed and started replacing them with some multimedia bullshit.
My overall feeling is that this happens when you give the market to designers and customer demand. You end up with eye candy and useless fancy gadgets, with lowered ergonomy and worse features than previous generations of the same hardware. My laptop dying is my daily nightmare as I have no idea with what on the current market I would replace it.5 -
Atother story about PC hardware and being... Not so careful.
A friend complained about his PSU fan being too loud. I said "well, maybe bearings are dying already".
The next day he messaged me and asked to suggest a new PSU. Ok, I threw him some links.
Leter, he told me what happened:
He decided to clean the PSU, because he thought the noise could be because of dust. So he turned off his PC and removed PSU cover with a screwdriver. While doing this, he accidentally hit the circuit board itself. Then "Puff", black smoke and smell of sth burning. Turned out he didn't switched the PSU off. Luckily, the screwdriver handle was rubberized. I'm glad he is alive ._.1 -
> pic related
This is what I've been putting up with on my personal machine for months.
tl;dr: Suggestions for a wlan card/adapter for Debian9? My current RealTek wnic is barely functional, and my replacement (a TPLink... something) is completely incompatible.
I don't need anything super fancy, though I would ofc love support for AC/AD if at all possible.
I don't care (too much) about price, since I'm only going to buy one and very likely won't replace it for years.
------
I'm running Debian9 and have a have a RealTek card. Even when it's not arbitrarily dropping packets like in the screenie, it randomly caches them for up to 90 seconds and dumps them hilariously out of order. I can't play games like that. I can barely even browse devRant. Steam goes offline about once every 30 seconds, and therefore spams all of my friends with online/offline notifications. Streaming "works" on good days. Git works fine, however, so most days I don't notice the connection issues.
And yes, I'm using a community-patched driver (rtl8188ce) that's supposed to fix some of RealTek's more major screwups and increase the transmit power by ~20x. The driver helps, but only a little.
I've done some reasearch on wlan linux support, but haven't found anything very reassuring. Mostly just forum posts saying things like "Intel cards usually work fine!" I don't want to gamble. I just want to buy a card that will work and be done with it. :(
Suggestions? Insight?
12 -
A PCB I designed on the job over the last weeks shipped today! A benefit of hardware is the haptic element you have at the end of the design process - you made something touchable. (I am proud.)
Also, errors made earlier in the design process are permanent now. But other than on my software my design got reviewed, so I'm optimistic it'll not contain many if any.
I'm on vacation right now for moving stuff but I'm looking forward to do the "pick'n place" on monday. Soldering manually is quite relaxing for me, you should try it, too! ;)
In other news, I'm no longer sleeping on the floor in my home-office while the paint is drying in other rooms.
I already moved the most of my stuff - books and tech equipment are the worst - and I moved my furniture yesterday.
My new roommates are considerably quieter and my sleeping rhythm is slowly shifting back to normal.10 -
Client: i'd like to develop for this particular device named the hololens. And i want 2 of those to communicate over LAN as well (holo lense specific data)
Dev team: If you can provide us with 2 holo lenses to try some stuff out, we can do that.
Client: Well i only got one but i need that for my presentations to my clients. Can't you just research something and make it happen without the hardware?
And that is the story of how we now have to do something for hardware we do not have any of. FML.6 -
If only there were some previous example of a mouse with a cord in a more convenient spot Apple could've used as a reference...
At least you don't need a mouse to commit, push and stare at devRant😅.
4 -
Inb4 2 question ahead
1. So in another 2 weeks I’ll be getting a new storage to upgrade my laptop, and since I will be developing C# both MVC and ASP.net should I stick to windows or there is a linux distro I could try using. Probably will dual booth if I have to use windows, so friendly linux is nice
2. For the storage I’ll be getting 860 EVO 250gb, any feedback? Also 4gb ram for the upgrade4 -
Computers are like cars. If you're into them enough, you'll spend hours on end working on them, fixing them, upgrading them, and taking pride in them.1
-
A few hours ago I decided it was a good idea to to clean up my keyboard. I did so and took a walk leaving the keys to dry.
After I came back I hoovered the -board and decided to put back the keys. I started with the special keys since they were the easiest to find (and some required a metal thing).
Now, I was quickly made aware of something that I had never known nor noticed before. Bear with me here as I'm not a person that cares too much about hardware unless I need to. (Hardware here meaning stuff like mice, keyboards, headsets, and stuff like that). But I learned that
Not all keys are the same size. They look really similar to someone like me. But I manned up and put the keys back.
A little under 1.5 hours later and I now posses a keyboard that is in uncanny valley. It doesn't feel like it though, and it shouldn't be that big of a problem since I never look at my keyboard anyway.
Messaged one of my m8's about and this was his reply
"nope
one kind per row
usually says the row on the underside"
Now fantasize about the elasmobranch fish which is characterized by a cartilaginous skeleton of which I am the proprietor at what he said. I pulled a key out and, sure enough, "C28 R1".
Now I am not sure about the 28th column, but it did fit in the first row.
Fuck me
9 -
Life Before the Computer
An application was for employment
A program was a TV show
A cursor used profanity
A keyboard was a piano!
Memory was something that you lost with age
A CD was a bank account
And if you had a 3-inch floppy
You hoped nobody found out!
Compress was something you did to garbage
Not something you did to a file
And if you unzipped anything in public
You'd be in jail for awhile!
Log on was adding wood to a fire
Hard drive was a long trip on the road
A mouse pad was where a mouse lived
And a backup happened to your commode!
Cut - you did with a pocket knife
Paste you did with glue
A web was a spider's home
And a virus was the flu!
I guess I'll stick to my pad and paper
And the memory in my head
I hear nobody's been killed in a computer crash
But when it happens they wish they were dead!3 -
My colleague and I have 12 years of college and 10 years of experience between us. Can't figure out how to connect a fucking phone headset.2
-
When working with hardware some mistakes can be literally painful. Thankfully this was all during undergrad and I'm only around computer hardware now lol.
>Misprogrammed a software kill switch so a sensor that should not have been sending data was actually sending data which caused the system to activate a piston that went WHAM! into the face of a teammate working on replacing some part of it...
>Misprogrammed a controller so it drew too much power from the supply and the puny supply wires literally burst into flame and fell across my arm.
>Spun a 9000rpm CNC spindle the wrong way and caused an attached screw to go rocketing upwards instead of downwards and almost break the (pretty expensive) thing (uh...we were trying to use it as a power screwdriver essentially but I set the rpm to about 100x what I wanted and the direction wrong so yeah).
>Switched a -1 with a +1 in a robot's control system sending it careening into a teammate's leg... let's just say mecanum wheels are paaaainful.11 -
Hey, devs.
Does anyone use trackball mouse for everyday needs? Is it worth it?
Old one is dying, considering different options.
13 -
DON'T. INSTALL. BETA. SOFTWARE. BY. DEFAULT.
RAZER
When I plugged my $250 keyboard (Which I have had for years and love beyond measure) into my new install of Windows, it popped up with a cute little message to install Razer Synapse, which manages the lighting on Razer devices, like my keyboards (One mechanical and one not - for silence during voice chat), mouse and headset.
"Wow, this looks different", I mutter to myself, as I unknowingly and non-optionally install software which is IN BETA.
I notice that my other keyboard and mouse don't show up. I don't customize my mouse much, I leave it in spectrum cycling. Easy, works well. My other keyboard is much cheaper and does not offer very much customization (three colors. whoop. I don't touch that either much)
Since I only really touch this keyboard, I am not bothered in the slightest and carry on for a couple months. Fast forwards to yesterday when my mouse stops lighting up. Fuck, now its just a black blob. I'll open synapse tomorrow and fix that.
No I won't
After uninstalling devices, uninstalling synapse, restart restart restart, uninstall again, install again, blah blah blah, download a tool that didn't detect the device either, etc etc, for about two hours, I was about ready to accept my dark fate. But then, I saw (screenshot attached) this little itty-bitty beta tag next to the software (again) installed by default.
I about flipped my shit, uninstalled Razer Synapse 3 so hard it sent a tsunami towards some coastal country, and then angrily installed Razer Synapse 2.
That looks more familiar. Oh, there we are, all three devices. Ah, very well, my mouse is working correctly once again. I know its at the header of this rant, but let's reiterate (or, reiterage, in this case):
DON'T. INSTALL. BETA. SOFTWARE. BY. DEFAULT.
Thank you.
3 -
Q: How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb ?
A: None, that's a hardware problem.
*badum tsss* -
Spent an hour trying to figure out what was wrong in my socket disconnect detection code because it was constantly reporting disconnects when it shouldn't have... Only to find it was a pinched cable causing the problem. Meaning it actually did work the entire time.1
-
This freaking laptop.
The WiFi randomly stops working -- and by that, I mean the hardware is no longer detectable, let alone functional. It simply disappears on boot, even from dmesg.
The same happens with audio and bluetooth: on some boots they simply do not exist.
The power usage is also ridiculous: the battery dies in about two hours, and it gets soo hot. Toasty wrists unless I use my tiny bluetooth keyboard ☹ So I need to fiddle with powertop a bit more.
nVidia drivers are also a bloody pain, and having two graphics cards this is even more difficult to set up. I still haven't managed. (nvidia-driver, bumblebee, optimus, official driver messes, manual xorg configs, ...). So I have a beautiful 4k built-in display running at 4-18 fps, and a non-functional 4k external. That's fine for now, but >.>; frustrating.
In better news! I just managed to get the sound to work by backporting the new 4.19 kernel (yay!) -- I have never been so happy to hear an ad. but fixing the sound killed my bluetooth. (The `bluetooth` utility reports the adapter is present, but nothing else can seem to see it 🙄) So now I'm going to have burning hot wrists all day and want to cry because terrible sweaty awfulness.
Just. It's frustrating.
It's fast, though.
and ever so pretty.28 -
Got a back-lit keyboard and I'm blown away by how awesome it feels and looks over a normal ass keyboard! 😍
7 -
Got new hardware for my minecraft server!
Intel I7-8068K 6 Cores 12 Threads 5.1GHz
64GB DDR4 RAM 2666MHz
2x 512GB NVMe (RAID 1)
First time I have ever used a 5GHz CPU I am so excited!12 -
If you ask me, you're a bad developer if you don't know hardware. You have to know how it all works and fits together to write code for it.18
-
With every new Apple product it seems that Jony Ive's job is reading the dictionary and finding less and less understandable words to be used in the next commercial to make the production process seem more and more complex although the result is the same device over and over again.
-
I'm a bit weary of devRant being almost software-exclusive. I want to see more about hardware development here (and not just people playing with Arduinos)!
Electronics guys of devRant: Do you exist? What are you working on? Or is really everyone here a web developer?
(GIF related: My soldering irons heating up, the third one being my weekend project from last weekend. Seeing it coming in last, I'll probably have to tune its control parameters a bit more…)
12 -
Ah! The sense of achievement you get, the feeling of accomplishment you feel, the beautiful red light that glows up on board, when you repair your home's broken wiring.
I fucking ❤ hardware. Best WYSIWYG of all.7 -
When your hardware friend keeps referring to Javascript as Java...WTF I figured you would know the difference!!!!!#/###!!!#2
-
You know when you can't sleep and think, I'll just do something simple, but useful, it will only take 10 minutes..
How hard can it be to change a CMOS battery in your laptop in this day and age..
Well...
Looking on the manufacturers website, it looks piss easy according to the diagrams.
Even a YouTube video, it looks easy..
Meanwhile, in reality..
First off, the CMOS battery I carefully ordered arrives, but its the wrong wiring..
Good thing I checked first right !
So..
Soldering iron time, change those wires around a little.
Now, where did I put that solder..
FX [ Considerable time passes finding it... ]
"Ouch!" burnt my finger !
Right, that's done, now to tape those joints up..
FX [ Runs out of tape.. ]
No problem, must be some more somewhere right..
FX [ Time passes after searching house... ]
Probably some in the garage..
Who needs to get fully dressed, just pop out in your Arthur Dent dressing gown in the rain..
You find some, eventually..
So, that's sorted.
Now, lets open up that laptop and swap the battery over !
Mmm... that's odd, the battery is glued in place..
But in the video it isn't !
No problem, I'll just take the case apart a little..
Lets check that YouTube video first though..
28 screws later, and they still haven't taken the part that covers that CMOS battery..
No problem, I'll just watch the entire video, they are bound to cover it at some point, right..
No..
Ok, lets not take the entire thing apart, when all I have to do is insert a sharp knife and cut the glue away between the battery and, that thing its glued to, without damaging the laptop in a tiny gap I can't really see..
Still, its fun feeling around with a sharp pointy knife inside a laptop, isn't it..
The glue is cut, and the old battery comes out !
Hurray !
Mmm.. lets not bother gluing the new battery in, we'll just stuff it roughly in the same area and hope for the best, after all, this is a desktop laptop, it never goes anywhere, so it shouldn't jiggle loose..
Whilst we are here, lets upgrade the memory.
And try and remember how to seat laptop memory correctly..
Boot to BIOS, load defaults, reboot to BIOS, set time, and other really important things, then reboot, and we get to Windows desktop just fine.
Now change the virtual memory settings to static file, do a defrag, and reboot..
Oh I mean, wait ages for a defrag and then reboot..
That's so we can try and get that lovely pagefile all in one chunk..
Obviously, it won't be finished doing that till tomorrow, or the next day..
Oh look, its already the next day and its the afternoon and I'm still in my dressing gown !
Maybe I'll just have a snooze..5 -
Free ebook: For people who are into hardware analysis, hardware/software design failures.
Hacking the Xbox
by Andrew "bunnie" Huang
It's ofc not state of the art, most techniques apply today still.
Download: http://bunniefoo.com/nostarch/...
maybe some here have a use for such book
6 -
"it's the software that's causing the problem not the hardware (that I picked)"
*extensive research is done by technicians and senior developer*
"what's the problem?"
"shit hardware (that you picked)" -
A classmate's earphones once stopped working, I went to go look at it. After a bit of tinkering, I said, "The speakers on these are toast, you'll need a new pair." Then, some random kid grabbed the tablet mind you, and not the earphones, played in the settings, and said "Fixed." I then told them, "This is a hardware issue, not a software issue." What's worse? Some people said "So, software and hardware are the same thing."
Mississippi is just full of computer Illiterates.19 -
Hacking my first diskette reader... And I stuck gol... Cofcof copper coils...
This is actually fun... And the structure is pure aluminum :p
7 -
Why is it that software has gotten so hardware heavy these days?
I get that some things require more ram, larger screen resolutions and games.
But even calculator apps are now in the hundreds of MB when the entire Microsoft office suite used to come on a couple of floppies.
Is it laziness and relying on ever higher level languages or is there some reason that stuff gets unnecessarily large now.15 -
So my teacher wanted to play a movie cos the class got good test results, and so she asked me how to play a movie on her laptop and get it on the TV and this is how it went down...
Teacher: Sukhi, do you think you could help me.
Me: Yea sure, what do you need help with
Teacher: So I want to play a movie tomorrow but I don't know how to get it up on the TV
Me: Oh its easy just get a HDMI cable and plug your laptop into it.
Teacher: Oh yea I have like 6 of those. Ok then see ya tomorrow.
*The next day*
Teacher: Hey Sukhi, heres the HDMI cable. *Pulls out a AUX cord*
Me: *laughing and crying at the same time*2 -
Conspiracy Theory:
Windows 10 - suspiciously free upgrade and "pirate friendly."
Microsoft - really rolling with the hardware scene lately.
Windows 10 Updates - suspiciously destroyed the hardware in 4 laptops and a desktop I've worked on putting the owners in the market for new Microsoft hardware.
Coincidence?9 -
Best way to learn a subject/skill is to build projects. How about building your own computer from scratch to learn how computers work.
https://eater.net/8bit/ this tutorial teaches you to build an 8-bit computer from scratch 😍 -
I fucking hate the design and aesthetics of PC gaming hardware in general. Who the fuck do they design those things for, edgy teenagers? Give me something that looks well built and professional, damnit. Heck, most console designs are much better.13
-
Damn maintenance windows. I mean, I get that the SaaS product my boyfriend works on can't go out in the middle of the day. But he just spent weeks on a business trip, with an absolutely mad sleep schedule because he's redesigning their data center (or something. Don't ask me, it's a hardware problem...) and now he's finally coming home today and I'm super excited but all he's going to want to do this weekend is sleep. Even though I'd love to spend Sunday going to this yearly event, or finally getting another round of DnD in (everyone else in the group is available). But nope. Bloody all-hours work is taking away his (and thus my) weekend too.2
-
Friend: Is this Nvidia GTX 440 a good graphics card?
Me: idk
Friend: if i get it how do i put it in my computer
Me: idk
Friend: but you are a programmer
Me: exactly, i am not an engineer9 -
When throwing more hardware at a problem is always the chosen answer rather than fixing the performance issues...4
-
Working at my company for one year with two old 20 inch monitors. My boss asked my what would improve my productivity. I said give me two fucking huge and nice monitors. I got the approval that he ordered for all of us new monitors.
One of the support guys told me the we will get the monitors today. Yeah but that was two weeks ago..
Now all of us are only taking about new monitors.. kinda funny that you can get excited for hardware so easy. Love the IT <31 -
My laptop is screwed. The laptop's monitor doesn't light up at all. An external monitor works with heavy artifacts.
11 -
I dont think my hardware carrer will go far if I keep producing this shit. I'm laughing my ass of tho xD
6 -
Production: "Do you have [device]?"
Me: "Yes. I'm implementing the software that controls [device]."
Production: "Ok, that's the only [device] in the building, and I need to ship it to meet a deliverable."
Me: "... Does he want it to do anything?"
Production: "We'll build you another one."
Me: "When?"
Production: "... Eventually."
Software Development: The art of spinning straw into gold when you don't have any straw. -
When you boast to your dad/mom about the code write,
And they ask you to fix their washing machine.
:'( -
Sometimes I have to work with physical hardware. There are over 300 machines in our lab, split among two subnets. But for some reason, I can never access my machines by hostnames.
Every other week, there's an IP conflict on this network, requiring me to log into the active directory server and delete old DNS entries. This usually happens because someone decided to deploy 64 VMs on a huge server, all at once, didn't boot them with a delay, let alone with with a warning to IT.
Then when my superior asks how my progress has been and I respond with "I can't even get the machines to ping each other by hostname, there's something wrong with the DNS:, I get the following response: "HOW COME NOBODY ELSE IS HAVING PROBLEMS WITH THIS. YOU'RE FULL OF SHIT", from someone who spends 90% of the year abroad, working remotely.5 -
Macbooks are fast because of it's hardware ?
If so, I'm I'll install linux in my MacBook air (given by company).
What do you suggest ?16 -
What a great fucking feeling when I open my macbook in the morning and there is a huge, obnoxious scratch over the entire screen!
How the fuck does that shit even happen?! I closed it last night and it was fine! WTF :(6 -
Well paid java dev. But the HW/SW-Stack is awful.
Monitor: single 1600x1024
5yr old notebook, old i5, magnetic hdd
Forced to use windows 7
No maven server
No CI server
SVN but no git
Eclipse, no intelliJ
No sonar server
There are days where I just can't take it anymore.11 -
If you look at the "lightweight business laptops" or business netbooks section of the market you'll notice almost all of them seem to have 4gb
Bitch, thats barely enough to run windows 10.
Looks like a market opening. If I were still doing upgrades and repairs I'd blame everything on low memory (well, a lot of slowness can loosely be attributed to lack of memory) and upsell new machines with more and better ram. Target 6gb, which is cheaper than 8 and offers a minor but noticeable boost, just enough to passably justify the increased cost to whoever is responsible for authorizing the upgrade.
I don't understand whats so hard to grasp about this. It's like companies trip over dollars to pick up dimes.4 -
I will buy myself a new notebook in around 2 1/2 months and I would like to know your opinions.
I do web development and Android app development. I will most likely put arch linux on it. It will be my main workstation and I would also like to us it for university to which I will go in 3 years.
My current favorite is the Dell XPS 15.
Do you have any other suggestions or is the Dell good?19 -
So, I got an iFixIt toolkit with a gift card from xmas. Was excited to tear into my iPhone6 given that it had lasted me a long time, and not that long ago, I had the screen repaired given I didn't know how to at the time and was working stupid long hours. I haven't used the phone in about 6 months now.
Wtf.
I open the device, and immediately 2 screws and a bracket fall out of the device. The inside is filthy, and appears to have corrosion (despite the fact I've never gotten water on it, I was kinda anal with that phone).
Whoever the guy was who "fixed" my screen apparently did so in a way that involved spilling something on my phone, over torquing a screw, breaking a bracket, and the entire thing looks sketch.
All while charging over $100. I can see why he insisted on having an otterbox on the phone now, he fucked up and was worried the one screw pin wouldn't hold the screen on. Motherfucking asshole.1 -
FX [ Uses application, notes it takes 1+ hour to do a 20Mb ( Not GB ! ) file import.. ]
FX [ Complains to company that produces software.. ]
"It's your machine at fault.."
My dual SSD, 24Gb triple channel RAM 3.3Ghz 12 core CPU barely breaks a sweat doing the file import. ( As in, less than 1% SSD usage, CPU usage/etc. )
And yet their software crawls like its running on a 486/100Mhz PC from 20 years ago..
Ok, it could be my machine at fault. ( Though I've no idea what to check to figure that out ! )
On my todo list, is install their software on my backup PC and test it there to see if it runs just as slow..
There software was written 25 years ago..
But why would it be so incredibly slow ? ( Windows OS, application written in C (I think 16bit.. ) )
Could it be tied into the actual physical time, eg. 3 instructions per second kind of thing ?13 -
There's a side project that I wanted to finish for some time now:
I built a pipboy (from Fallout 3) for a close friend - 3D printed and colored the parts, made a preliminary setup.
But to this day, it's still missing a power supply and all the proper wiring. (Jumper cables ARE not.)
Apart from that, I probably want to replace the RPi in there for a slimmer version.
Development is all done, implementation needed.1 -
So I'm working our remote build/testing server, and all of a sudden my computer just turns off. No crash message, no error, just turned off. My co-worker tries to help troubleshoot the problem.
Nothing.
I take the computer downstairs to the hardware department. They plug it in and it starts no problems.
After it finishes updating, I take it back upstairs and plug it back in.
Nothing.
I suggest that it is the power cable, and my co-worker looks under his desk. Turns out he had kicked the switch on the surge protector. 😑1 -
This always gets me:
Developers complaining that their 4 year old / cheap ass computer is slow.
Get. A. New. One.
It's not that hard.
Here, let me do one for you:
https://computeruniverse.net/en/...
I just went to a site that delivers across Europe, and selected a cheap laptop with a decent CPU and SSD. Short on RAM, sure, and without a Windows License. But you can buy RAM for an additional 50$, and that brings you to a total of 550€, delivery included. And it will WORK. And it will be fast.
It's too expensive?
No, not exactly. Wherever you are in the world, if you can code decently, good enough to have the right to complain about development tools, you are eligible to at least 10$ per hour income as a freelancer across the globe. I've had such opportunities offered to me by many organizations, especially non-profit ones that need cheap employees. I actually was offered more but let's stick to 10$ per hour.
So that's 1600$ per month. Enough to buy 3 such laptops. Oh, taxes, I forgot. So you get 2 laptops. Wait! You need food and everything else. Well if you're in a country where that offer actually makes sense, then it's likely that you can live off of 400$ per month quite well. Maybe 800$ if you need to pay rent.
So that's roughly 1 month of work for a laptop that will make you not waste time on waiting for stuff.
Sweet! 1 Month! What does it get me?
Well assuming that you have no laptop, it gets you A JOB that pays you 1600$ per month.
But if you DO have a laptop, you can sell it for cheap, and benefit from the following:
1. Boot-up time from 30-60 seconds to 10 seconds.
2. Installing software - from 1 minute to 10 seconds.
3. Opening a browser - from 10 seconds to 1 second.
4. Opening an advanced text editor (Atom, VS.Code) - from 10 seconds to 1 second.
5. Searching for a file on your entire hard drive - from 1 hour to 2 minutes.
....
You get the point. Waiting is reduced by several times.
So how much do you really wait when coding?
Well are you compiling? Are you opening a new project and the IDE needs to re-index the files? Are you opening programs like a terminal emulator, browser and such? Are you using virtual machines for dev environments?
Well all of these processes become several times faster. Depending on how often you do it, you'll be saving yourself from 1 hour per day to upto 4 hours per day (my case, where a HDD would be just out of the question).
How much is that time worth? At least 10$ per day. If you're working for 20 days per month, 240 days per year, that's a total of 2400$. And for the life time of that crappy laptop of 2 years, that's 4800$ saved. And that's with hugely conservative numbers. Nobody pays 10$ per hour any more, except if you've just started in the industry. I know because I've been there.
Please, for all that's sacred to you, justify right here, right now, HOW THE FUCK can you not afford to get that 8GB of RAM, that cheap ass SSD for 100$, or even a brand new laptop (hey! it's even portable and has FHD graphics on it!) for 550$.
That's why every time I hear someone who is a professional developer complain that they don't have money for a decent machine, I have to ask: why the fuck are you wasting yours and everyone else's time?!10 -
Trying to replace the WiFi card in my laptop only to find out the ONE screw holding it in is completely stripped on the top and I can't get it out 😢6
-
First day of vacation, on a remote village cause of covid, after months of doing nothing special I made this :D
It's a keyboard to do combinations of keys (prototype) ...
Well, I made it to play sound effects in games (on voice chat)....
Ya, having a burn out fucks your motivation. At least I did something
2 -
Hey hardware hackers, just wanted to let you know that seeedstudio offers free PCB assembly. I got 5 pieces of the PCB in the picture for 30 USD manufactured, assembled and shipped (including BOM costs), the also included 5 additional empty PCBs. However I paid another 30$ for customs and DHL customs handling (I'm inside Europe) ... But still, for assembly it's a great price, took around 4 weeks. Just upload the BOM and you get an instant quote. If you are curious, it's a simple board for an ESP32 with some mosfet drivers and two DC-DC converters.
https://seeedstudio.com/free-assemb...
4 -
Years ago when I was younger than currently I got this first summer job as help in IT departament to answer calls from distressed workers.
Once this lady calls that "her monitor went black" and she cannot work, so I have to get her a replacement. They got only this big heavy CRT monitors as replacements so I had to drag it to 4th floor (no elevator) from basement.
As I reached her it turned out that her monitor is fine, only the wallpaper was changed to black, that what she was meaning :p
Well, at least I got some exercise back then.1 -
In the beginning, computers used relays on a macro scale instead of micro electronics
In the 40's admiral grace hopper found a moth in one of the relays and the term "debugging" was born
1 -
Why people think that Mac is better than pc? Im Mac user and I like Mac. I think Apple just uses better hardware and charges extra for it. If you build windows with better hardware then windows will work really fast too. On Mac gradle build takes really less time because of SSD it does not mean Mac is faster. Get SSD for windows and see the difference yourself.
- P.S. Not hater of any OS.11 -
I need new mobile hardware because my old netbook from 2010 just doesn't cut it anymore.
I've ordered this fellow here: https://tuxedocomputers.com/en/...
AMD 4700U (TDP 15 W), iGPU only, 2x16 GB 3200 RAM, 2 TB Evo 860. Delivery in November because APU-only laptops are totally hot RN.
Maybe I can install Mint on that if I go for a 5.8 mainline kernel. At least it has Intel wifi, not Broadcom.12 -
Question from curiosity:
Does anyone know of interesting things to try on unused electronics, like phones or game consoles? Does Anyone have any stories of such or something? Software and hardware wise?6 -
Wanted to do a "quick" software update on a test device for our colleagues who test the system
Here I am looking up what led indicators blinking correlates to what hardware error
Embedded development <34 -
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!
I threw out the container with all my SATA cables instead of old chargers.
Only have a 10CM one left and need a 15!
Ugh, now to wait a week for a new one to come -,-3 -
When you try and replace the hard drive in your dev machine because the replacement you bought for someone else doesn't work but works for you. You go to turn the computer back on but nothing comes on screen........
-
Question for people familiar/knowledgeable about hardware keys;
Do you know if the OnlyKey could be considered safe/secure and if not, any idea as for alternatives?
My requirements would be nearly all the features that OnlyKey has, water/shockproof and the system should at least be open source.6 -
Coding chalenge.
So... Spent almost two hours to put this little device to work with the keypad.
The device is a arduino micro, special one that can work as mouse /keyboard or any kind of input on most devices (pc, Android phone,...)
The objective is to make a macro keypad to:
- Fast insert text
- Play sounds in games over voice chat.
Think of it like this, you start a new html file, press one key and all the base code is inserted.
So... Why so long? Tought was the hardware, tought the keypad could be set differently that most, code mistakes...
My error was all here, masked from the debugger by a if:
char keys[ROWS][COLS] = {
{'1','2','3','4'},
{'5','6','7','8'},
{'9','10','11','12'},
{'13','14','15','16'}
};
Easy to figure right? Only saw it after reading all the code twice.
9 -
Worst part about being a dev.
Non-technical people see your awesome app.... and then bring their faulty hardware gear for you to fix! Wtf!!2 -
I’m living the dream. Lightweight, powerful, beautiful gaming laptops are a thing (have been for a while) and I have the pleasure of owning one.
I remember one of my college peers having a BRICK Alienware laptop in 2010. Don’t get me wrong, It was awesome at the time and I was super jealous, but it was insanely loud, heavy af, and as thick as a calculus textbook!
But now with the amazing RTX GPUs, and TB SSDs I can game on max settings, benchmark fairly well and take it with me when I travel for work alongside my work laptop all in the same bag without breaking my back.
🤘🏼 I love my Asus Zephyrus 🤘🏼
The fan is still hella loud though 😆
Maybe by mid or late 2020s we will have a revolutionary cooling system that would rid our dependence on fans for cooling. Just dreaming out loud here. It sure would be great to not have to clean the dust out.9 -
Talking to a vendor in China to source some hardware modules. The engineers don't speak any English, and the sales rep doesn't know a serial port from a monkey's ass. Shortest game of Chinese whispers 😥4
-
When I was younger I had a decision to go into hardware or software. I chose software and have loved it.
Recentily I just spent 5 hours trying install a Linux distro on an old server. I made no progress.
I made the right decision. Hardware freaking sucks! You spend hours working on outdated pieces of crap and find that to fix your problem you need to sell you kidney to finance your project. Not to mention you have to wait for literally everything! It's like gradel builds everywhere! Want to install a new distro on your USB? Bam, 5min gone. Want to boot into bios and change one setting? BAM! more time wasted...
A note to the sysadmins out there: thank you. I love you. I am so happy you do this kind of work so I don't have to.3 -
I know that not everyone here is Mac friendly; but my job just helped me purchase a new MacBook Pro, and it will be arriving tomorrow. It's the new one with the AMD 560 x 4GB, and touch bar. I'm literally shaking I'm so excited!!11
-
I am trying to reverse engineer a fingernail hardening device for rapid hardware prototyping (becoming some kind of hardware developer I guess)
Since it is a fucking mess (all cables are black) they've chosen a weird construct to operate microcontroller on 240Vac (seems to be possible and made in very low energy consuming devices) i do not find any datasheet for one of the used products. It would help a lot but no. And messing around with high voltage is no fun.
I'm unsure if this fits as a dev rant since most/all I've read so far are software-related.
9 -
So, was testing a classic Mac an old friend sent over and realized an interesting convergence had occurred in my office.
In the attached shot you can see the following:
Center: A Macintosh LC III - effectively the last of the 68k Mac line
Right: A PowerMac G5 - one of the old cheese graters, and the last major release of the PowerPC line
Left, under the monitor: A 2020 Mac Mini - effectively the end of the Intel Mac line
The LC III gives a startup chime, but I wasn't able to get a video signal out of it using the Apple-to-VGA adapter I was using. Otherwise I'd be posting a shot with all 3 up and running.
2 -
I took me the whole day of wondering and debugging to see that I was checking if a variable was 0, to set up some stuff, and the variable was only incremented after that check, but I had a return statement inside of it. So it just went in, saw that it was 0 and returned, over and over. And I was wondering why the fuck nothing happened... because that method got executed every second or so and should've moved the motor.
Gotta love your hardware programming. Either you do it right the very first time, or you spend the whole day staring at a piece of code, compiling, throwing in console prints etc.
Its 1 am, where I live btw.1 -
Am I the only one who thinks gaming hardwares are also nice developer machines with extra strips of LED?15
-
Sat for a company X, aced 2 out of 3 rounds, final round, I come to know that the company deals with Hardware and I was poaching them about my software skills.
Buh bye. We need only Hardware interested personnel.
Just before I was about to go full pro stud, by rejecting the offer, they slammed the door on me pretty soon. -
Hardware Developing.
My current school project where I build a gps thief lock for my moped had me realized one thing. I don't want to go into Hardware Developing. The first problem took me about 4 months until I finally gave up and solved it differently. And this goes on and on and on. You fixed something and the next day it doesn't work anymore for some reason. I never had this problem when coding. It's fun to do stuff with electronics but coding is just way more rewarding. Anyone else had the same experience?1 -
Google's hardware mega event tomorrow. So excited!
So what if I'm broke, I'll clap my hands instead! 😂7 -
Buy dell, hp, lenovo and any other craptop company out there and fire all the numbnuts working there so that they slowly die of unemployment in the fucking gutters where their useless asses rightly belong. Oh and castrate them too so that they don't reproduce.
I'm considering going full Lannister on them but that might be too harsh.5 -
When your team has only one shared testing device, but everybody seems to need it at the same time 😖
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My 2013 rMBP's battery just died at 56%, even though iStat reports that the health is still at 75%. May have to take it in to the shop for a new battery soon...5
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Computer at work is almost as old as the first wheel and super slow... Will they let me get a new one... Nope.4
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It was my birthday recently, so I ordered myself some PC parts and built my first PC.
Unfortunately my 350-Plus motherboard and Ryzen 1700 could not get my RAM to 3200 Mhz, only 2966 :( :( :(2 -
Great day so far. First I lose the project ive been working on for more than a week. Then my HDD starts singing that wonderful song everbody loves to hear3
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My employer really needs to invest in better machines.
My VM is still running a Windows Update that has taken 50 minutes already.
Fucking 50 minutes in which I couldn't do a fucking thing.
Either the windows update is a huge update but my guess is that I'm on a slow as fuck hard drive that gets virtualized with about 3 other vms
(we use remotedesktop to access the vms that run on the server)2 -
Second Rant incoming!
I have a Elephone p9000 (China Smartphone). Great Value for it's price if you don't mind a shit camera.
Also, this is actually my second model! I cracked my screen and tried to replace it. Somehow I managed ti puncture the battery and nearly set my house on fire but that is another story.
This rant is about how the sd/sim-card read is FAILING ME! Everytime I call someone, my sim-card ejects spontaneously, thus ending the call. It's so goddamn annoying having to recall the same person every two minutes...
I tried inserting the sim-card in the other slot because it has dual sim but nothing changed...guess I need a new Phone. FML3 -
Acer vs MSI Laptops.
Five years ago I bought an acer aspire vn7-591 laptop in Redcoon. It was the expensive laptop I bought ever in those days. My experience at the beginning was really bad because the battery laptop crashed after few months and the screen had some vague/dead pixels, but the worst was the imminent bankruptcy of Redcoon. So I couldn't use the warranty. Anyway, It didn't bother so much I have been enjoying this laptop and still doing it. However, last year the screen put me on alert since it started to fail with vertical bars and color changes.
It was time to buy a new computer and due to the problems with some of the components, I've decided to buy a laptop from a company with a better reputation than Acer in aspects as the reliability of the components.
My choice was a Msi Prestige 15 because of the thunderbolts, since the rest of specs are 'more or less similar', although it has more updated hardware, it is lighter, battery holds up to 4-5 hours etc... But... It is really noisy compared to my Acer computer. 2 CPU fans are around 3000 rpm in idle state... Acer seems to be working without using the fans if you are doing intensive work. I google it as I thought it was a factory problem, but it seems to be not a malfunctioning... In fact I found other users complaining about the same and the community proposed to reduce the fan speed through software.
Right now I have both laptops working and since the new boy is in house, Acer is working flawlessly. I am preparing the Acer for my girlfriend as a gift, otherwise it is a pitty to shut it down and store it in a wardrobe.
So, this is my impression about ACER and MSI. I m still experiencing with the new laptop, but I find weird things like the fan speed or how hot it gets in idle despite it uses a new generation of intel i7 cpu with lower consumption... I should monitor the power consumption...8 -
After 3 weekends of headaches I finally managed to get the SD card reader to work.
Now, to understand fat...
A whole different story.5 -
Favorite affordable (<$200) beginner robotics kits?
Played around with Arduino a bit in the past, and Mindstorm, and a little vex.7 -
Modern hardware is rubbish. I recently donated a load of computers from the 1970s and 1980s to a technology museum, they all worked well and could still be used and set up in the museum's displays. My more recent stuff, from the last few years, I decided to sell on eBay. Some of it just had to be thrown out, mostly due to non-replaceable batteries that would no longer charge. What nonsense is this? Why is it easier to use a 35-year-old computer than a 3-year-old Chromebook or 5-year-old iPad?5
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Surprise surprise, Atari is gonna be back in the hardware business with a new gaming console...
https://www.ataribox.com/1 -
Do I write a purchase requisition, wait for it to be signed off, wait three days for it to be ordered, wait another day for receiving to notify me it's in... Or do I pay for the $12 worth of parts myself and have them in by the next morning?3
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I bought a Mi Band 3 4 days ago and I already modified the firmware. I hate when the manufacturer limit functions of software when the hardware it's very capable.7
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The Jio phone out of India actually looks like a cheap ($10ish dollars) but worthy little option if you just want something to mess around on but don't want to drop $30-40 (plus shipping) on a pi.
Only 4gb storage, 512mb ram, 240x320 screen, dual core 1ghz, just enough to experiment if you're broke.
What do you think? Any indian programmers familiar with the Jio?
I'm not running out to buy it or anything. I stumbled across it and wonder what people's opinions of it are.15 -
DRC Hide & Seek
Me: runs DRC on finished layout
KiCAD: Unconnected nets found.
Me: fixes unconnected and runs DRC again
KiCAD: Different unconnected nets found
Me: fixes unconnected and runs DRC again
KiCAD: Differen unconnected nets found
Me: srsly?! Why can't you tell me all of them at once?2 -
So I have an important decision... Do I stay up late to watch the Google Hardware Conference Stream... I love sleep... But I want to know some of that sweet juicy hardware...
And when I can buy my pixel 2 XL boiiiiiiiiiiiiii1 -
Wait, so pressing a key on a modern system and it showing up on screen is slower than it was back in the 70s and 80s because the ratio of transistors to clock speed is worse?
https://danluu.com/keyboard-latency... -
I have this beautiful Sony Vaio C1XS ultraportable sitting around, I can't turn it on because it uses a non-standard RAM stick Sony only made in the late 90s... Such a pretty device
3 -
some old time clients finally decided to pay me, so I had a bit of cash on me (I feel rich, lol).
here's the thing: I am torn in between buying a second monitor and investing in that server i planned to build in a previous rant.
I could just save the money, I dont know if I am being extra right now, I remember when I just had half a laptop screen to work with, now i have a this used 24 inch monitor I bought for cheap now I want to expand with another 24 inch probably. this arrangement will make things a bit comfortable and faster for me but it still wont affect me if I dont get it...........ok I'm talking too much6 -
What's the software/hardware/plugins that has become integrated part of your working structure?
Stuff that immediately gets includes on any machine you use and can't imagine working w/o?5 -
!rant
It's Friday. Today I'll be soldering and testing (I really should come up with some tests now) my new hardware all the way to the weekend. Woooo!3 -
Anyone knows how to start a hard drive without power supply?
I'm hacking a few old disks and don't want to use a full power supply7 -
Let's increase my ram in my acer laptop. 1. It took me a week online to find out how many slots there are. 2. Then finding a manual with pictures for how to do it. No such thing. Technical manual from Acer? No such thing. I had to find a forum with one comment about my model.
There is no access to the location of ramslots. I had to completely unscrew everything because it's located at the bottom of the motherboard.4 -
!rant
I tend to do a lot of sketching and note taking and like to use pen on paper. But sick of tearing out notes and accumulating bits if paper that contain notes here and there. I was thinking of going digital with this specific task (for cheap) i don't own an ipad so was thinking of getting a Fire HD 8" and a Boxwave EverTouch stylus. Im all Apple so don't know android, would this hardware do the trick and what would be a decent note taking and organising app for it? Appreciate any advice comments. Other uses for it are irrelevant.5 -
Hardware dying again as of last night. Tried each RAM stick individually and my two original ones seem to be the cause so far. If it dies again with the extra sticks I had in, them I'm going to assume motherboard is packing up. Already tried a spare PSU and ruled that out.
Memtest died midway at random points several times and once it tried to boot around 10 times and died at various points along the way.
I just wish there was a more reliable way to test motherboards and power supplies on the PC itself. Also, I'll be stuck with only 4GB RAM from me new sticks 😭 -
All of our products have a 16x2 lcd. Every April fool's we make all of them say some offensive/funny stuff. One year I made an Arduino controller for one of the other engineers units it took him a few hours trying to figure out how I was doing it 'cause he couldn't fix it.
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What can I do with my spare Android devices/boards? Could I use the board with a custom OS for a Pi/Arduino analog?
I have 2 tablets that I have no use for. Googling suggestions are pretty simple and nothing that repurposes the hardware.7 -
I'm looking into buying a new laptop. I want something speak and ultrabookish, but dedicated graphics are a must.
Will be mostly for work, so a good CPU and RAM are important, but probably will do some gaming. Battery life and cooling are pretty big too. I've looked at the Aero 15X, the XPS 15, Razer Blade, etc. I just can't decide. Need to get it this year for the the tax deductions for my contracting income. Any thoughts? What's the best one out there?14 -
Spent 8 hours trying to implement a SPI slave on a Raspberry Pi before finding out it only supports SPI as master. WTF why say you support something then only support half of it! That's the kind of thing that needs a big red text in the docs! Fick this hardware bullshit I want back in to web developing.
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I would consider myself a Jedi Knight when it comes to using Visual Studio, but has anybody done any work that sounds like this description? I don't think I've ever wrote code that integrated systems like this.. I'll certainly ask for more information but I'm always surprised by the experience this community has and wanted to see if someone can scare me away from this
4 -
Hi, please advise me on your best price/quality reseller of supermicro servers, no refurbished, preferrably germany cause they are cheaper compared in belgium...1
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Today's frustration is brought to you by Mac. The hardware may look pretty, but at times, it can drive you bat shit crazy...
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Thanks to @nik123 I know have a new side project: creating an fs (or fuse) driver that hides bad blocks on block devices and makes them usable again.2
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When a new developer joins my friend's company, they have to work on such screen for trial period (3 months).
There is also no second screen.
5 -
So lately I've been thinking about building a server and running at home. I'm hoping that in the long run it would end up being cheaper than having a bunch of VPSes. Do any of you have experience with running your own machines? Do you think that consumer grade hardware will be sufficient for running at least a year?
Thanks for any input... :)13 -
Random thought:- if world is just a simulation.....
What type of hardware is running this simulation?17 -
Some hardware experts here? Looking to upgrade my PC soon, and would like some opinion on the parts I chose. I'm going for a minimalistic Mini-ITX productivity build, but gaming also.
- CPU: Ryzen 7 2700X
- CPU Cooler: AMD Wraith Prism
- GPU: MSI RX 570 8GB Armor (already have it)
- RAM: 2x 8GB TridentZ RGB
- 1. SSD: Corsair Force MP510 240GB M2 SSD
- 2. SSD: Samsung EVO 860 1TB SSD
- PSU: Corsair CX550M
- MoBo: Asus ROG Strix B350-L Mini-ITX
- Fans: 6x Thermaltake Riing 12 RGB
- Case: NZXT H200i24 -
Anyone else got the problem of a tmp36 being really fucking hot. Its really annoying.
I was just messing around with a Arduino and there is this Love-o-meter thing that uses the tmp36. And oh god something must have went wrong113 -
Question for the electrically minded.
I have a laptop with a 19v input.
I have a portable UPC with 2 voltage options in the range of this, I can undervolt at 16v (the laptop battery voltage) which works with a small firmware correction to ignore a board sensor, the other option is to slightly overvolt to 19.5v which I assume the laptop could handle through its input regulation.
Can anyone confirm if a .5v variance at charger is within tolerance? It would be an overvolt of 2.5%5 -
Hardware classes for software dev student?
Hey guys. Currently getting into second year of a 5 year curriculum to get an 'Integrated Master of Computer Engineering & Informatics' Degree here in Greece.
I'm already into software, I'm fooling around with java, go and php, making some games, web services and anything I find interesting in general. Recently, with the logic design class, I started liking hardware stuff (I didn't really like them before).
We're getting to a point where we might have to decide between picking hardware-centered or software centered subjects. I'm thinking that I can probably learn whatever is taught on the software side by myself (with a bit more studying of course), whereas hardware would be more difficult to study alone.
That said, I'm considering picking hardware, but I am skeptical. What do you think? I'll certainly miss out on the concurrent processing, data structure and how-a-compiler-works classes.
What do you think?
P.S. University here is free2 -
Looking through old photos, I found some eBay shots of the first two cellphones I have ever owned. I decided to turn those photos into a blog post, listing every single phone I've owned throughout my adult life. Enjoy:
https://battlepenguin.com/tech/...
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I find really funny how the new 13" Retina MacBook Pro with Touch Bar costs more than my BTO 15" MacBook Pro (hi-res anti-glare) did back in 2010.4
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MySQL Workbench 32-bit requires Visual C++ 2013, but all I can find is VS 2015 and later. So you need to have a 64 bit computer now to develop on mySQL databases? Well that SUCKS! A lot of devs work on commodity hardware, i.e. somewhat dated, 32-bit computers. Most devs that I know, including myself, are not interested in the latest, flashiest, most expensive hardware.17
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Anyone got any idea what hardware this is? Tempted to buy one and put openwrt on it as a credit card router... For that need to know what openwrt target I could flash.
Already found a USB step up converter to power it
https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/...
(Yes, I know I could use an old Pi but I hope the power consumption is lower)18 -
Optimal Hardware Requirements are growing drastically fast. A few years ago , when my first computer came with 2 GB of RAM , It ran pretty smooth under moderate use. A few years later , 8 GB of RAM and the computer starts choking on Running 1 Virtual Machine.4
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How mamy programmers does it take to change a light bulb ?? None!! It's a hardware problem!!! Old one but best one :D
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A friend of mine is looking for a note-/netbook to do some programming.
It shouldn't be too pricy (up to 500€ I guess)
Any suggestions?7 -
That moment when you start to hang out with a new girl, and she tries to look more intelligent & interesting and asks you:
Girl: Hey you, you know more of software, which of these devices should I buy? -
Hey I’m majoring computer engineering in one of the best universities in Turkey. But we take a lot of electrical and electronical courses. Topics are like introduction to electronics ( pn junctions , bjts, mosfets etc), electrical circuits ( mesh analysis, inductors, small signal analysis etc) . And were solving real hard problems. How is these stuff gonna relate to my software developer side? I can’t see the connection and benefits of learning the page long formulas about drain currents. What do you think about them?10
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I'm not looking forward to today, lots of hardware to send out, which means multiple trips up and down 3 flights of stairs :(1
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Hey guys, ran into some thermal throttling issues with my i7-7700k (100c basically all the time, 800-2000mhz speeds) so I'm looking for a new cpu, anyone down to help?
I'm looking to run 1440p 144hz eventually so I don't mind laying down an average sum of cash for one, just need some suggestions.
Is it worth the switch to AMD? Every forum I look at online has someone buying AMD nowadays
I've tried fixing this i7-7700k by remounting the cooler, reapplying thermal paste, changing BIOS settings, making sure the pump is working, but nothing seems to help.82 -
today is my 1 year here at work
got a new desktop last week
then yesterday bought some UPS for it then back at the office my 1year old partner (laptop) decided to die on me1 -
One reason I hate working on hardware and prefer software. Spent all weekend trying to get this Canon photo printer to work with a raspberry pi for a photo booth project. Tried multiple cables, compiling the latest cups and gutenprint, etc. Only could get it to print via wifi. Finally, I go to the store and buy a new micro USB cable and it works right away. 😠2
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!rant
Need your help!
Tldr: how do I build a system with 2 power supplies so that I can power it from either one?
I'm currently working on a "video editing van" for an upcoming project and I found awesome atx power supplies that you can use on your normal car power source. Something like this: http://powerstream.com/DC-PC-12V.ht...
Here is where it gets tricky: obvioisly it would be easy to build a dedicated system for this purpose but I want to use an existing system with an existing psu. I still want to use the pc normally at home with the standard psu but don't fell like switching every single power connector everytime I take the pc into or out of the van. Do you have any idea how to make some sort of switching mechanism so that I can leave the Hardware as it is and just power it of any of the two psus?
Thanks in advance!8 -
Want to upgrade computer for better programming resources in side projects, need $600
Want to start making side projects for dat sweet sweet ad revenue, need stronger computer
Freelance hobbyist catch-22 :(9 -
How the fuck do i make you this testing environment when I've been talking for three months that we don't have the hardware for it !!!
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Random hardware question if anyone knows: On the various types of hard drives (Spinner, SSD, M.2, etc.) does it require the same amount of energy to read and write a bit? Or do they take a different amount of power. Is this even effectively measurable? If they're the same, what about at the byte level?6
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We should stop giving fucks about what product company X made and how much they're selling it for. Buy whatever the fuck you want or need.
Those apple iPhone X rants are getting annoying. -
How in heart is possible to work with a router that randomly shutdowns itself around 3/4 times a day without any reason. Leaving me without internet for 10-15 minutes. I called my ISP and they said that they don't see any problem and they will not send any replacement. I can instead fix an appointment with their technician to have a look at the issue, but of couse, I'm paying for him.
How about no? I'm going to buy a proper modem/router next month, this shit router they give you have 1/100 of the proper configurations options you need.2 -
I don't wanna be specific today, so I'll just post a song exerpt.
I love you, I hate you, I'm on the fence, it all depends
Whether I'm up or down, I'm on the mend, transcending all reality
I like you, despise you, admire you
What are we gonna do when everything all falls through?
I must confess, I've made a mess of what should be a small success
But I digress, at least I've tried my very best, I guess
This, that, the other, why even bother?
It won't be with me on my deathbed, but I'll still be in your head
Put me on a pedestal and I'll only disappoint you
Tell me I'm exceptional, I promise to exploit you
Give me all your money, and I'll make some origami, honey
I think you're a joke, but I don't find you very funny
https://youtu.be/o-nr1nNC3ds -
Ram drives are a very good and useful thing why has no one made a nice ram drive caddy using laptop ram, the speeds on the older ram and drives out do any drive on the market and the unit is not a lot to make, I happy to put some old DDR 2 ram a new life as a USB ram drive using as a page or swop drive or Live CD Drive.
Or am I missing something and they really hiding somewhere, the ram drives I seen are stupid price and offer functions we don't need or aimed at big server companies but this would really help privacy, or better still anyone know if we can make some kind of ram drive with maybe a maker board and laptop ram ?1 -
!rant
So after having some issues with Arch, I decided to move to Fedora and I must say I'm loving it!
So this is yet another OS topic.
What you got running in your machine?
What's the hardware of you machine?2 -
when programming fails.
when I updated the firmware on this piece, something went wrong and the device broke.
Google'd and learned that the only way to unbrick is to break the other side open and remove a non-removable battery, to reset. else it will stay bricked forever
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Hi guys, what specs do your coding laptop has? I would especially like to know if your laptop has a dedicated graphic card or an integrated one.
Mine has an i7, 32gb of ram, 500gb m2 SSD and an integrated graphic chip.12 -
Kinda want to start learning hardware (Arduino, RasberryPi etc), any tips?
How it works programming languages and stuff, anyone who can lead me on into it2 -
What are the minimum PC specs you feel comfortable with for development? Of course app development and anything medium sized and up with an IDE needs decent specs, but I'm wondering about the lower end of the spectrum. Scripting things and such.2
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Has anyone experiences with hardware entropy generators like OneRNG.info? Any useful usage scenarios? VeraCrypt doesn't yet seems to support it.1
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How does my PC knows my battery needs replacement even on initial boot. What's the logic behind it?16
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Not sure if a valid cause for a rant; but my memory stick went bad after being used for just 6 months. Bought this memory kit this summer on computeruniverse. Now Windows reports that there are damaged pages on the 1st stick; though the 2nd stick is fine. Patriot Viper with small heatsinks...
What to say... In ye olde days DDR3 worked for years and never went bad 🤔1 -
I have question related to hardware -
I recently order a M.2 SSD on amazon but I don't know is it compatible or not with my system and I order it can anybody help me I am really apricate it.
My SSD link on amazon -
https://amazon.in/gp/product/...
My system link -
https://amazon.in/Lenovo-Ideapad-33... -
What Hardware specs should I focus on when buying a server which runs virtual machines using ProxMox or XenServer?4
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Need I say more?
Legacy code hell...