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This is kind of a horror story, with a happing ending. It contains a lot of gore images, and some porn. Very long story.
TL;DR Network upgrade
Once upon a time, there were two companies HA and HP, both owned by HC. Many years went by and the two companies worked along side each one another, but sometimes there were trouble, because they weren't sure who was supposed to bill the client for projects HA and HP had worked on together.
At HA there was an IT guy, an imbecile of such. He's very slow at doing his job, doesn't exactly understand what he's doing, nor security principles.
The IT guy at HA also did some IT work for HP from time to time when needed. But he was not in charge of the infrastructure for HP, that was the jobb for one developer who didn't really know what he was doing either.
Whenever a new server was set up at HP, the developer tried many solutions, until he landed on one, but he never removed the other tested solutions, and the config is scattered all around. And no documentation!!
Same goes with network, when something new was added, the old was never removed or reconfigured to something else.
One dark winter, a knight arrived at HP. He had many skills. Networking, server management, development, design and generally a fucking awesome viking.
This genius would often try to cleanse the network and servers, and begged his boss to let him buy new equipment to replace the old, to no prevail.
Whenever he would look in the server room, he would get shivers down his back.
(Image: https://i.bratteng.xyz/Ie9x3YC33C.j...)
One and a half year later, the powerful owners in HA, HP and HC decided it was finally time to merge HA and HP together to HS. The knight thought this was his moment, he should ask CEO if he could be in charge of migrating the network, and do a complete overhault so they could get 1Gb interwebz speeds.
The knight had to come up with a plan and some price estimates, as the IT guy also would do this.
The IT guy proposed his solution, a Sonicwall gateway to 22 000 NOK, and using a 3rd party company to manage it for 3000 NOK/month.
"This is absurd", said the knight to the CEO and CXO, "I can come up with a better solution that is a complete upgrade. And it will be super easy to manage."
The CEO and CXO gave the knight a thumbs up. The race was on. We're moving in 2 months, I got to have the equipment by then, so I need a plan by the end of the week.
He roamed the wide internet, looked at many solutions, and ended up with going for Ubiquiti's Unifi series. Cheap, reliable and pretty nice to look at.
The CXO had mentioned the WiFi at HA was pretty bad, as there was WLAN for each meeting room, and one for the desks, so the phone would constantly jump between networks.
So the knight ended up with this solution:
2x Unifi Securtiy Gateway Pro 4
2x Unifi 48port
1x Unifi 10G 16port
5x Unifi AP-AC-Lite
12x pairs of 10G unifi fibre modules
All with a price tag around the one Sonicwall for 22 000 NOK, not including patch cables, POE injectors and fibre cables.
The knight presented this to the CXO, whom is not very fond of the IT guy, and the CXO thought this was a great solution.
But the IT guy had to have a say at this too, so he was sent the solution and had 2 weeks to dispute the soltion.
Time went by, CXO started to get tired of the waiting, so he called in a meeting with the knight and the IT guy, this was the IT guys chance to dispute the solution.
All he had to say was he was familiar with the Sonicwall solution, and having a 3rd party company managing it is great.
He was given another 2 weeks to dispute the solution, yet nothing happened.
The CXO gave the thumbs up, and the knight orders the equipment.
At this time, the knight asks the IT guy for access to the server room at HA, and a key (which would take 2 months to get sorted, because IT guys is a slow imbecile)
The horrors, Oh the horrors, the knight had never seen anything like this before.
(Image: https://i.bratteng.xyz/HfptwEh9qT.j...)
(Image: https://i.bratteng.xyz/HfptwEh9qT.j...)
(Image: https://i.bratteng.xyz/hmOE2ZuQuE.j...)
(Image: https://i.bratteng.xyz/4Flmkx6slQ.j...)
What are all these for, why is there a fan ductaped to on of the servers.
WHAT IS THIS!
Why are there cables tied in a knot.
WHY!
These are questions we never will know the answers too.
The knight needs access to the servers, and sonicwall to see how this is configured.
After 1.5 month he gains access to the sonicwall and one of the xserve.
What the knight discovers baffles him.
All ports are open, sonicwall is basically in bridge mode and handing out public IPs to every device connected to it.
No VLANs, everything, just open...10 -
Storytime!
This customer comes in and practically throws a computer on the counter.
Customer: This computer isn't working. I've ran the diagnostics and it says it's software. *places a dvd case with a 32 bit Windows 7 disk in it on the counter* It had Windows 10 on it, but I want Windows 7 on it.
Me: Well, you may have issues with the drivers if you put Windows 7 on it--
Customer: I don't care, I just want Windows 7.
Me: You SHOULD care. That means no wifi, no display, no mouse... Windows 7 doesn't like Windows 10 hardware.
Customer: Then... check to see Windows 7 compatibility!
Me: Alright.... *makes notes to check for Windows 7 compatibility*
Me: So has this Windows 7 been used before?
Customer: Yes, it has.
Me: On how many computers?
Customer: I've installed it on two computers and it works just fine.
Me: That's weird because Windows license keys are for one computer only. Are both of them connected to the internet?
Customer: Yes.
Me: Well, okay then... *finishes up ticket*
Customer: I work in this field and I just don't understand why they don't come with the disks anymore. How much is a Windows 10 disk?
Me: *gives price*
Customer: And do you have any?
Me: Let me check *I go to where they are, find some and come back out*
Me: Unfortunately we're out at the moment and would have to special order some back in.
Customer: OK. So then how much to fix this computer?
Me: *price of installing Windows and backing up data*
Customer: That's halfway to the price of a new one of these!
Me: Well yes, an HP at Walmart... But you do have that option if you want to take it.
Customer: Well, why does it cost that much?
Me: Well, it's $labor1 to install Windows, $labor2 to do some basic setup and drivers, and $labor3 to backup and restore data.
Customer: Oh, well I don't want data.
Me: Okay, well then it would be $total - $labor3
Customer: ...Okay, fine
Me: *updates the ticket*
When she finally left I put it on the bench and the first message said "SMART ERROR." I then did 4 different tests that said "lol, the hard drive is failing."
If you "worked in this field," you would know that a SMART error is hard drive related.
If you worked in this field, you would know that Windows is only a 1PC license, so why are you lying about installing it with no issues on other computers?
If you worked in this field, you would know you would want a 64bit Windows on your computer.
If you worked in this field, you would know how to find a Windows 10 installation media online.
If you worked in this field, you would know that HPs are not good computers to get.
IF YOU FUCKING WORKED IN THIS FIELD YOU WOULDN'T BE SUCH A FUCKING CUNT.17 -
I feel so sorry for all the people in the world who use their phone more than their PC/laptop.
All the pitiful souls who think they're gamers because they installed lootchest simulator on their little digital skinner box. All the sad beings who just view the internet as a collection of ad-infested apps.
Actually, I don't feel sorry, because these people make the world a worse place.
Suddenly we needed websites which could render on tiny screens and need bloated cross-platform app development frameworks. Many game studios became parasites exploiting addictive behavior in humans, instead of creating works of art.
Humans spent 10,000 years to perfect their caves with expensive kitchens, and all people want is for their WiFi to reach the grill at the end of the garden. Humans created central heating, comfortable couches, wall-mounted TVs and luxurious desks -- and all people can think of is whether their phone plan covers holiday roaming at their shitty resorts.
The rare times I do actually go into this apocalyptic wasteland people call "The Outside", all I see is subway cars full of hunched addicted drudges, bus stops with clusters of enslaved automatons.
Fuck all of them.
Fuck all of you imbeciles, who ventured out of the cave and now DARE to call me anti-social, just for preferring the warmth of my comfortable protective den.
It's fucking cozy here, within the walls of my shelter, I got booze and a fridge full of food and a bunch of LSD, I can masturbate under the shower, have sex on the couch, have all kinds of GIANT displays for entertainment, with full-sized qwerty-keyboards, high-DPI mouses, even some console controllers and big TVs if I feel lazy.
You can stick your responsive websites and social-network-integrated Android apps up your rectum, just sit your fucking fat ass down in front of a workstation and desperately refresh the stream of fake attention-seeking messages there, if you absolutely must.
Seriously, why does this guy from our marketing department call me on my private phone number. Why did HR PROVIDE him with my private phone number?
And WHY THE FUCK is he asking me, a DB admin: "Our website doesn't load properly on Safari on my iPhone 7, could you take a look at it"?
No, of course I won't fucking come to the office to take a look at your miserable shitty device with its cracked glass screen.
Fuck you and your outdoorsy habits.
Stay the fuck in your cave, you degenerate attention whore, otherwise please go choke on your airpods.24 -
Dear Android:
I know I'm not on wifi. I get it. Sometimes data coverage isn't amazing or the network is congested. It's cool. You can just flash "no service" and I just won't try. or even "3G" and I'll have some patience. I rember how slow 3G was. It's okay, I'll wait.
But fucking stop showing 4G LTE if you can't make a fucking GET request for a 2kb text file in less than 5 minutes! Fucking really? Don't fucking lie to me with your false hope bullshit, just tell me the truth and I'll probably sigh and say shit and put my phone away.
But fuck you and your progress bar externally stuck in the middle. As if to say you're making progress! Wasting my time!
If you can't download a kilobyte in a 5min period, why even say I have data at all? What good does that do me?23 -
I really, honestly, am getting annoyed when someone tells me that "Linux is user-friendly". Some people seem to think that because they themselves can install Linux, that anyone can, and because I still use Windows I'm some sort of a noob.
So let me tell you why I don't use Linux: because it never actually "just works". I have tried, at the very least two dozen times, to install one distro or another on a machine that I owned. Never, not even once, not even *close*, has it installed and worked without failing on some part of my hardware.
My last experience was with Ubuntu 17.04, supposed to have great hardware and software support. I have a popular Dell Alienware machine with extremely common hardware (please don't hate me, I had a great deal through work with an interest-free loan to buy it!), and I thought for just one moment that maybe Ubuntu had reached the point where it just, y'know, fucking worked when installing it... but no. Not a chance.
It started with my monitors. My secondary monitor that worked fine on Windows and never once failed to display anything, simply didn't work. It wasn't detected, it didn't turn on, it just failed. After hours of toiling with bash commands and fucking around in x conf files, I finally figured out that for some reason, it didn't like my two IDENTICAL monitors on IDENTICAL cables on the SAME video card. I fixed it by using a DVI to HDMI adapter....
Then was my sound card. It appeared to be detected and working, but it was playing at like 0.01% volume. The system volume was fine, the speaker volume was fine, everything appeared great except I literally had no fucking sound. I tried everything from using the front output to checking if it was going to my display through HDMI to "switching the audio sublayer from alsa to whatever the hell other thing exists" but nothing worked. I gave up.
My mouse? Hell. It's a Corsair Gaming mouse, nothing fancy, it only has a couple extra buttons - none of those worked, not even the goddamn scrollwheel. I didn't expect the *lights* to work, but the "back" and "Forward" buttons? COME ON. After an hour, I just gave up.
My media keyboard that's like 15 years old and is of IBM brand obviously wasn't recognized. Didn't even bother with that one.
Of my 3 different network adapters (2 connectors, one wifi), only one physical card was detected. Bluetooth didn't work. At this point I was so tired of finding things that didn't work that I tried something else.
My work VPN... holy shit have you ever tried configuring a corporate VPN on Linux? Goddamn. On windows it's "next next next finish then enter your username/password" and on Linux it's "get this specific format TLS certificate from your IT with a private key and put it in this network conf and then run this whatever command to...." yeah no.
And don't get me started on even attempting to play GAMES on this fucking OS. I mean, even installing the graphic drivers? Never in my life have I had to *exit the GUI layer of an OS* to install a graphic driver. That would be like dropping down to MS-DOS on Windows to install Nvidia drivers. Holy shit what the fuck guys. And don't get me started on WINE, I ain't touching this "not an emulator emulator" with a 10-foot pole.
And then, you start reading online for all these problems and it's a mix of "here are 9038245 steps to fix your problem in the terminal" and "fucking noob go back to Windows if you can't deal with it" posts.
It's SO FUCKING FRUSTRATING, I spent a whole day trying to get a BASIC system up and running, where it takes a half-hour AT MOST with any version of Windows. I'm just... done.
I will give Ubuntu one redeeming quality, however. On the Live USB, you can use the `dd` command to mirror a whole drive in a few minutes. And when you're doing fucking around with this piece of shit OS that refuses to do simple things like "playing audio", `dd` will restore Windows right back to where it was as if Ubuntu never existed in the first place.
Thanks, `dd`. I wish you were on Windows. Your OS is the LEAST user friendly thing I've ever had to deal with.31 -
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
12 -
Someone just rang the IT Helpdesk moaning that outlook wasn't syncing his mail and it was because the brand new laptop he's just gotten is crap.
So first, the guy on the helpdesk asked to log into the users laptop to look at outlook.
He apparently isn't at his laptop and doesn't have time for anyone to log in!
Wtf lol
So he rings back 10 mins later when at his laptop but wont let the helpdesk log in as he has 'confidential' documents open.
Wtf, close them, why are you ringing us to look at your laptop if you won't let us log on?? lol
So helpdesk was like ok, just check cat cable is plugged in, check wifi is off, do a send/receive etc. and the user's like yes, they're all okay!
Helpdesk tells him to reboot his pc. He does so.
Doesn't resolve it.
Skip forward another 10 painful minutes while the helpdesk guy is pulling his hair out checking everything in the background, and all looks fine.
User then says "should i also turn off my iPhone?"
Helpdesk: 'No, outlook is just on your laptop'.
User: 'No *assured laugh* its on my phone too. I get emails there too'
Helpdesk: 'No, you use the generic 'Mail' app on your phone. Outlook is a separate app. We don't use it.'
User: 'But you're not listening, regardless of the app name, that's my problem, mail's not working on my phone'.
Helpdesk: '.....so why didn't you say so 20 minutes ago when i asked to log into ur laptop?'
User: 'Didn't think it was relevant. Laptop was fine. Assumed you'd know'.
...........
Why.
Why???
Why.
Shockingly, a phone restart fixed it. The user couldn't remember the last time he'd turned the thing off.11 -
Storytime
A story about an Android TVbox which decided to become an iPad
Several years ago we've bought an android tv-box.
It served me and my family well for several years.
Specs are not that important in this story, but there they are:
Android 4.4
1GB RAM
Amlogic quadcore 1.4HGz
8GB memory.
This device served us well - online TV, browsing, music, file sharing and so on. But recently cheap Chinese memory deciteed to take a break and damaged ROM. Because of that device won't boot. The only option was to take it apart and "short circuit" certain legs on memory chip and make it boot from SD card and install new firmware. After such operations tv-box worked well again.
Hoverer, memory glitched again and again and this algorithm was repeated for several months.
But that is not what is this story about.
One day memory went completely crazy and there was no way to install new firmware on it. It just hanged on install. (BTW, it was official firmware for this device)
But after countless attempts it finally worked! It installed the firmware and booted into launcher and connected to WiFi!
But now comes the most interesting part.
It was not android anymore.
It decided to became an iPad.
My dad logged in to his Google account via tv-box and got mail that someboby connected from our IP via iPad (we don't have an iPad) and using safari browser! Stock browser is not safari browser.....
"Ok, nvm, crazy glitch." - we thought.
But preinstalled play marked wont launch. Because he told us, that we're trying to connect from iPad.
And Google chrome page suggested to download chrome for iPad
And everything was acting like it is an iPad.
OK, downloaded iTunes, why not??? ._.
Tried to install elixir for android via apk from flash, but then memory glitched one more time, everything went black and tv-box had damaged ROM again...
After that we decided to not torment it anymore...
That's it. Poor Android TVbox that all his life dreamed to become an iPad. Rest in peace.2 -
I can get absolutely dead pissed by the fact that a FUCKING 1800 euro laptop can't do a fucking basic thing like connecting to a bloody WiFi ap?
so why, you wonder? oh no, the problem isn't the fucking hardware. IT'S THIS DEAD BEAT PIECE OF SHIT CALLED WINDOWS. mfw when it runs fine under Linux, BUT WE CANT HAVE NICE THINGS CAN WE ADOBE?!?8 -
Had to setup 7 HP laptops today for a small hackathon.
Install windows 10...
just shout in the room and hope all cortanas hear the same answer.
done after a couple minutes.
Windows 10 rules.
...
This story could be over but no, have a plot twist.
All pcs connected to our wifi network as we tried to install Chrome ( cause edge sucks), realized it takes hours to install.
someone drawing internet over here?!
our network wasn't that bad usually.
opens windows store on one laptop by accident.
42 downloads running.
Yep on all of them.
what were they downloading?
candy crush... bubble witch saga...mcaffee.
spent about 4h uninstalling bloatware and teaching windows not to reinstall it over and over again...
Microsoft sucks...
and I didn't even mention the "tell us why you think you don't need McAfee premium protection pl0x" and "you really sure you don't want to try edge as default browser? is really fast and stuff" dialog fields...9 -
So, there is this guy whose arguments on "How Apple is bad" are
1) "while copying files in Finder, you don't see a speed graph (like in Windows)"
2) "MacBooks don't have a Touchscreen"
3) "it's slow"
4) "you can't play games (like GTA V)"
5) "having app menus always on the top of the screen instead of in every window makes no sense"
Arguments on "why Linux is bad":
1) "it's ugly"
2) no gaming (same as point 4 above)
3)... And other biased irrelevant shit
Yet his amazing old Windows 10 computer with the most recent Insider build has only a 65% chance of booting on the first attempt. Almost nothing works properly on his hardware yet he always blames something unrelated to him.
Recently I was having trouble with the workplace wifi (for few minutes I wasn't having full speed like he on the other side of the room had), and his reaction "aha, it's your macOS, never working".
Like wtf. I don't hate Windows or I don't love Linux, but I night hate him for being an arrogant cunt and I want to punch his face.8 -
!wifi
!!anger
I bought a new wlan card to fix my infuriating wifi issues. It's a TPLink Archer T6E, supports ac, and ostensibly uses Ath9k drivers. Multiple reviews said "installed, booted, and connected! So easy."
Guess what?
I've spent the past two hours trying to get it to work. No banana.
Some other reviews have them fighting with the drivers for days. Looks like that's going to be me, too. 😡
Why the fuck is wifi so fucking difficult?19 -
So I have that custom-made wifi router I've built. And it uses a USB wifi adapter with AC (wifi5) capability - the fastest one I could find in AliExpress.
I set it up a while ago - the internet access works fine, although speeds are somewhat sluggish. But hey, what to expect from a cheapo on Ali! Not to mention it's USB, not a PCIe...
A few days ago I ran a few speedtest.net tests with my actual AC router and the one I've built. Results were so different I wanted to cry :( some pathetic 23Mbps with my custom router :(
This evening I had some time on my hands and finally decided to have an umpteenth look.
nmcli d wifi
this is what caught my eye first. The RATE column listed my custom router as 54Mbps, whereas the actual router had 195Mbps.
I have reviewed the hostapd configuration sooo many times - this time nothing caught my eye as well.
Googling did not give anything obvious as well.
What do we do next? Yes, that's right - enable debug and read the logs.
> VHT (IEEE 802.11ac) with WPA/WPA2 requires CCMP/GCMP to be enabled, disabling VHT capabilities
This is one of the lines at the top of the log. Waaaaiiitttt.. VHT is something I definitely want with ac -- why does it disable that??? Sounds like a configuration fuckup rather than the HW limitation! And config fuckups CAN be fixed!
Turns out, an innocently looking
`wpa_pairwise=TKIP`
change into
`wpa_pairwise=TKIP CCMP`
made a world of a difference!
:wq
!hostapd
connect to the hostapd hotspot and run that iperf3 test again, and... Oh my. Oh boi! My pants fell off -- the speed increased >3x times!
A quick speedtest.net test deems my custom router's download speeds hardly any worse than the speeds obtained using my LInksys!!
The moral of the story: no matter how innocent some configurations look, they might make a huge difference. And RTFL [read the fucking logs]
In the pic -- left - my actual router, right - my custom-built router with a USB wifi adapter. Not too shabby!
7 -
Our internship and placement tests start from 30th and this is message we got from our coordinators.
😤
(We do have WiFi on campus and in labs ,idk why they aren't letting us use that!!)
They are asking use to use the DONGLES ! who the hell has those, these days !
Uni's response to this : if you can't get your own internet source,then don't give the test. (Translation : we don't give a single flying fuck)
Got my self a Jiofi ,I hope it would work fine.
BUT !!!!!!!!
Often our phones catch no network in the labs ! And if they do,the internet speed is slow.
The tests will go GREAT ! 🙃
25 -
> likes linux
> maybe not even install windows on shiny new laptop?
> debian-live.iso
> y u no wifi?
> google: lol apt-get
> but i has no internets...
Why only with Debian and not with literally any other flavor of Linux I've tried, which are all Debian variants?
Halp?18 -
I haven't ranted for today, but I figured that I'd post a summary.
A public diary of sorts.. devRant is amazing, it even allows me to post the stuff that I'd otherwise put on a piece of paper and probably discard over time. And with keyboard support at that <3
Today has been a productive day for me. Laptop got restored with a "pacman -Syu" over a Bluetooth mobile data tethering from my phone, said phone got upgraded to an unofficial Android 9 (Pie) thanks to a comment from @undef, etc.
I've also made myself a reliable USB extension cord to be able to extend the 20-30cm USB-A male to USB-C male cord that Huawei delivered with my Nexus 6P. The USB-C to USB-C cord that allows for fast charging is unreliable.. ordered some USB-C plugs for that, in order to make some high power wire with that when they arrive.
So that plug I've made.. USB-A male to USB-A female, in which my short USB-C to USB-A wire can plug in. It's a 1M wire, with 18AWG wire for its power lines and 28AWG wires for its data lines. The 18AWG power lines can carry up to 10A of current, while the 28AWG lines can carry up to 1A. All wires were made into 1M pieces. These resulted in a very low impedance path for all of them, my multimeter measured no more than 200 milliohms across them, though I'll have to verify and finetune that on my oscilloscope with 4-wire measurement.
So the wire was good. Easy too, I just had to look up the pinout and replicate that on the male part.
That's where the rant part comes in.. in fact I've got quite uncomfortable with sentences that don't include at least one swear word at this point. All hail to devRant for allowing me to put them out there without guilt.. it changed my very mind <3
Microshaft WanBLowS.
I've tried to plug my DIY extension cord into it, and plugged my phone and some USB stick into it of which I've completely forgot the filesystem. Windows certainly doesn't support it.. turns out that it was LUKS. More about that later.
Windows returned that it didn't support either of them, due to "malfunctioning at the USB device". So I went ahead and plugged in my phone directly.. works without a problem. Then I went ahead and troubleshooted the wire I've just made with a multimeter, to check for shorts.. none at all.
At that point I suspected that WanBLowS was the issue, so I booted up my (at the time) problematic Arch laptop and did the exact same thing there, testing that USB stick and my phone there by plugging it through the extension wire. Shit just worked like that. The USB stick was a LUKS medium and apparently a clone of my SanDisk rootfs that I'm storing my Arch Linux on my laptop at at the time.. an unfinished migration project (SanDisk is unstable, my other DM sticks are quite stable). The USB stick consumed about 20mA so no big deal for any USB controller. The phone consumed about 500mA (which is standard USB 2.0 so no surprise) and worked fine as well.. although the HP laptop dropped the voltage to ~4.8V like that, unlike 5.1V which is nominal for USB. Still worked without a problem.
So clearly Windows is the problem here, and this provides me one more reason to hate that piece of shit OS. Windows lovers may say that it's an issue with my particular hardware, which maybe it is. I've done the Windows plugging solely through a USB 3.0 hub, which was plugged into a USB 3.0 port on the host. Now USB 3.0 is supposed to be able to carry up to 1A rather than 500mA, so I expect all the components in there to be beefier. I've also tested the hub as part of a review, and it can carry about 1A no problem, although it seems like its supply lines aren't shorted to VCC on the host, like a sensible hub would. Instead I suspect that it's going through the hub's controller.
Regardless, this is clearly a bad design. One of the USB data lines is biased to ~3.3V if memory serves me right, while the other is biased to 300mV. The latter could impose a problem.. but again, the current path was of a very low impedance of 200milliohms at most. Meanwhile the direct connection that omits the ~200ohm extension wire worked just fine. Even 300mV wouldn't degrade significantly over such a resistance. So this is most likely a Windows problem.
That aside, the extension cord works fine in Linux. So I've used that as a charging connection while upgrading my Arch laptop (which as you may know has internet issues at the time) over Bluetooth, through a shared BNEP connection (Bluetooth tethering) from my phone. Mobile data since I didn't set up my WiFi in this new Pie ROM yet. Worked fine, fixed my WiFi. Currently it's back in my network as my fully-fledged development host. So that way I'll be able to work again on @Floydian's LinkHub repository. My laptop's the only one who currently holds the private key for signing commits for git$(rm -rf ~/*)@nixmagic.com, hence why my development has been impeded. My tablet doesn't have them. Guess I'll commit somewhere tomorrow.
(looks like my rant is too long, continue in comments)3 -
26 or so hours up now. And I've got a few stories to tell :) feel free to refresh your cup of coffee and take a seat.
Last few days I've been going into this odd place called intown.irl to get in touch with its inhabitants. An odd place I have to say. But in some cases quite rewarding, even got a MILF home with me and into bed at some point. Anyway...
3 days ago I think it is now? Thursday evening I took my laptop to this local bar where I had this issue about dihydrogen monoxide with one of the bartenders earlier (you'll find that rant on those keywords). Still wanted to visit it regardless though, as I met that first woman there earlier that approached me. Unfortunately I didn't see her there that day.
Some bald guy who was clearly drunk approached me. Many people were already giving curious looks at this laptop I brought to the bar. I finally tuned it up with the stickers from FOSDEM.. I'll put a picture of it in the comments. My theme was one of privacy (central), distributions and Google's open source initiative (which aligns with the keychain token I got from them as well). But of course.. that guy.. he thought that a pimped/riced laptop obviously meant that I was a hacker.
Guy went to the toilet.. went back.. and suddenly grabbed my laptop and turned it towards him. Boy was I never more smugly satisfied that those rubber pads on the bottom are quite resilient. Could've almost damaged my screen by trying to grab it like that. But it's a CCFL display.. so high voltage. If it were to become broken.. worth it. 😈
On it at the time was a terminal, pinging Google (had network issues at that bar, to the point where one of the - I think - staff members got up to me and offered the WiFi password and got to talk with me.. more on that later), and my usual Linux desktop along with the Arch anime wallpaper with the quote of Da Vinci.. simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Of course the guy saw the terminal.. and probably reaffirmed.. yep, that's a hacker. At least he wasn't too wrong about the general term.. but the hat.. most likely he was wrong on that one.
Guy left with this question.. "you are a hacker, aren't you."
I replied to him: "No sir. I'm not a hacker. I've got no idea what you're talking about."
Guy kept looking at me weirdly for the whole night to come.
Back to that companion guy though. Mac user, yada yada.. but he told me about his backup solution. Apparently - I shit you not - he has not only the photos on his local device, he's also frequently backing them up in Time Machine (which I was really curious about whether it uses mirroring or snapshots.. he couldn't tell, lmk if you do) but not only that.. he was storing another offsite backup in that very bar, in case his house went on fire.
Now that is a proper backup scheme!!! If only more people were like that.
Seriously though.. that bald guy who took my laptop just like that... I just let it slide for that one time, but I tend to treat my machines as an extension of my very self. I think that was a very uncalled for move. Asshole...
How would you have reacted to such a thing? And.. maybe that's why we technologists don't get outside too often? Fucking everything is hacking these days if it's not Knopkes and Blinkenlights… Not every shell is a h4xx0ring console for h3kk1ng de fasbuk…9 -
tl;dr:
The Debian 10 live disc and installer say: Heavens me, just look at the time! I’m late for my <segmentation fault
—————
tl:
The Debian 10 live cd and its new “calamares” installer are both complete crap. I’ve never had any issues with installing Debian prior to this, save with getting WiFi to work (as expected). But this version? Ugh. Here are the things I’ve run into:
Unknown root password; easy enough to get around as there is no user password; still annoying after the 10th time.
Also, the login screen doesn’t work off-disc because it won’t accept a blank password, so don’t idle or you’ll get locked out.
The lock screen is overzealous and hard-locks the computer after awhile; not even the magic kernel keys work!
The live disc doesn’t have many standard utilities, or a graphical partition editor. Thankfully I’m comfortable with fdisk.
The graphical installer (calamares) randomly segfaults, even from innocuous things like clicking [change partition] when you don’t have a partition selected. Derp.
It also randomly segfaults while writing partitions to disk — usually on the second partition.
It strangely seems less likely to segfault if the partitions are already there, even if it needs to “reformat” (recreate) them.
It also defaults to using MBR instead of GPT for the partition table, despite the tooltip telling you that MBR is deprecated and limited, and that GPT is recommended for new systems. You cannot change this without doing the partitions manually.
If you do the partitions manually and it can’t figure out where to install things, it just crashes. This is great because you can’t tell it where to install things, and specifying mount points like /boot, /, and /home don’t seem to be enough.
It also tries installing 32bit grub instead of 64bit, causing the grub installer to fail.
If you tell it to install grub on /boot, it complains when that partition isn’t encrypted — fair — but if you tell it to encrypt /boot like it wants you to, it then tries installing grub on the encrypted partition it just created, apparently without decrypting it, so that obviously fails — specific error: cannot read file system.
On the rare chance that everything else goes correctly, the install process can still segfault.
The log does include entries for errors, but doesn’t include an error message. Literally: “ERROR: Installation failed:” and the log ends. Helpful!
If the installer doesn’t segfault and the install process manages to complete, the resulting install might not even boot, even when installed without any drive encryption. Why? My guess is it never bothered to install Grub, or put it in the wrong place, or didn’t mark it as bootable, or who knows what.
Even when using the live disc that includes non-free firmware (including Ath9k) it still cannot detect my wlan card (that uses Ath9k).
I’ve attempted to install thirty plus times now, and only managed to get a working install once — where I neglected to include the Ath9k firmware.
I’m now trying the cli-only installer option instead of the live session; it seems to behave at least. I’m just terrified that the resulting install will be just as unstable as the live session.
All of this to copy the contents of my encrypted disks over so I can use them on a different system. =/
I haven’t decided which I’m going with next, but likely Arch, Void, or Gentoo. I’d go with Qubes if I had more time to experiment.
But in all seriousness, the Debian devs need some serious help. I would be embarrassed if I released this quality of hot garbage.
(This same system ran both Debian 8 and 9 flawlessly for years)15 -
Trying to discover why the DB listener wasn't being called in my app for like 30min. Many log messages, no exceptions or errors, DB rules revised, DB content revised, changed constructors, simplified code and nothing worked... problem: the phone's wifi was disconnected.2
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Why THE FUCK is screen mirroring without being in the same wifi network a thing?
Why THE FUCK have all these smart tvs turned this on by default?
Why THE FUCK does the list of found devices SORT itself RANDOMLY if another device is found.
I probably mirrored my phone screen to a random tv in the neighbourhood because as soon as my finger was about to touch the name of my tv, a random tv swooshed into it's place.
WHAT THE FUCK THERE IS NO FUCKING NEED FOR THIS FEATURE IF YOU DON'T HAVE ANY ACCESS POINT AROUND, THERE WILL BE ONE IN 99% OF ALL POSSIBLE USE CASES.
I mean if I got it right, i can share porn with my neighbors now, or at least annoy them?8 -
Most succesful project was around this time last year.
A scary club of privacy haters made a 'webapp' to advise people what to vote for in the national elections.
The tool was really bad in multiple ways. For instance, if two parties would score the same amount of points, one would, at random take second place without conveying this to the user.
Oh and it also collected all the data people entered "for scientific purposes". A very sketchy practice, a non profit, funded by the government and George Soros (I kid you not, illuminatie confirmed ;) ).
The tool had this disclaimer on the bottom, saying this webapp needs cookies to function. So that triggered me to make a copy of the tool that works better and ... offline, and without cookies. You could download a html file and turn of your wifi (for the paranoid ppl among us), use the tool, delete the file. No trace.
It was a little bit of tung and cheek project, a gimick, the original was called stemwijzer, mine was called offline stemwijzer.
It was a one day build and a day after launching I got a call of the original stemwijzer project leader. Demanding to take the thing offline for infringing copyright (yeah sort of was). I tried to explain him why I made this and why privacy for such things should be held in high regard. He basicly told me I was talking shit and did not want to discuss, I told him I don't take stuff offline because of phone calls. I told him to email me a seist and desist.
So that guy prolly had a stressful day (because of the launch of his tool), had a few glasses of wine, and wrote an email. He wrote me I was a pathtic kid and I should do more useful stuff. He wrote that anyone could program a tool like that. And he wrote me I should do him a favour not share this email with my measly amount of twitter followers. Super professional email.
So I did him that favour, I did not share it with my twitter followers, I shared it with one of the largest political blogs in the country.
My tool sort of took of after that. To stop infringing copy right I changed the name and I removed their content from the script and wrote instructions on how to copy and paste in the json content yourself and "make your own tool".
The response was great, people actually emailed me job offers and I think that the current job I have is due to the succes of said project. So be balsy, challenge giants, start riots, it will get you places.2 -
Why is chromecast so stupid?
So I'm on vacation, in another country, in a hotel. I took my chromecast and downloaded offline music to be able to use the TV for at least some entertainment.
Wifi is with login, chromecast doesn't support that. And it has isolation so I was prepared that it won't work through the hotel wifi. So I used another phone to create a Hotspot, but with no internet because roaming here is crazy expensive.
I thought that would work, but chromecast simply refuses to work if there is no internet access.
Why does it need internet if I'm streaming locally anyway?
So I temporarily activate data roaming, and hooray it works, so I quickly disconnect because I have no idea what this shit of a device will start sending to Google and how much I'm gonna pay for it. It works for 10 minutes then it crashes and needs internet again.
Most useless piece of crap I ever bought.
Should have brought my RPi instead but it's busy keeping my home alive and well while I'm gone. Should have ordered in bulk.13 -
Inspired by @NoMad. My philosophy is that technology is a means to and ends. We’re a tool oriented species. As it relates to software and hardware, they should be your means to achieve your ends without you needing to think. Think of riding a bicycle or driving a car. You aren’t particularly conscious of them - you just adjust input based on heuristics and reflex - while your doing the activity.
For a long time Software has been horrendously bad at this. There is almost always some setup involved; you need to front-load a plan to get to your ends. Funny enough we’re in the good days now. In the early days of GUI you did have to switch modes to achieve different things until input peripherals got better.
I’ve been using windows from 95 and to this day, though it’s gotten better it’s not trivial to setup an all in one printer and scan a document - just yesterday I had to walk my mother through it and she’s somewhat proficient. Also when things break it’s usually nightmare to fix, which is why fresh installing it periodically is s meme to this day. MS still goes to great lengths with their UI so that most people can still get most of their daily stuff done without a manual.
I started Linux in University when I was offered an intro course on the shell. I’ve been using it professionally ever since. While it’s good at making you feel powerful, it requires intricate knowledge to achieve most things. Things almost never go smoothly no matter how much practice you have, especially if you need to compile tools from source. It also has very little in the ways of safe guards to prevent you from hurting yourself. Sure you might be able to fix it if you press harder but it’s less stress to just fresh install. There is also nothing, NOTHING more frustrating than following documentation to the T and it just doesn’t work! It is my day job to help companies with exactly this. Can’t really give an honest impression of the GUI ux as the distros have varying schools of thoughts with their desktop environments. Even The popular one Ubuntu did weird things for a while. In my humble opinion, *nix is better at powering the internet than being a home computer your grandma can use.
Now after being in the thick of things, priorities change and you really just want to get things done. In 2015 I made the choice to go Mac. It has been one of my more interesting experiences. Honestly, I wish more distros would adopt its philosophy. Elementary only adopted the dock. It’s just so intuitive. How do you install an application? You tap the installer, a box will pop up then you drag the icon to the application folder (in the same box) boom you are done. No setup wizards. How to uninstall? Drag icon from app folder to trash can. Boom done. How to open your app? Tap launch pad and you see all your apps alphabetically just click the one you want. You can keep your frequent ones on the dock. Settings is just another app in launchpad and everything is well labeled. You can even use your printers scanner without digging through menus. You might have issues with finder if your used to windows though and the approach to maximizing and minimizing windows will also get you for a while.
When my Galaxy 4 died I gave iPhone a chance with the SE. I can tell you that for most use cases, there is no discernible difference between iOS and modern android outside of a few fringe features. What struck me though was the power of an ecosystem. My Mac and iPhone just work well together. If they are on the same network they just sync in the background - you need to opt in. My internet went down, my iMac saw that my iPhone had 4g and gave me the option to connect. One click your up. Similar process with s droid would be multi step. You have airdrop which just allows you to send files to another Apple device near you with a tap without you even caring what mechanism it’s using. After google bricked my onHub router I opted to get Apples airport series. They are mostly interchangeable and your Mac and iOS device have a native way to configure it without you needing to mess with connecting to it yourself and blah. Setup WiFi on one device, all your other Apple devices have it. Lots of other cool stuff happen as you add more Apple devices. My wife now as a MacBook, an IPad s d the IPhone 8. She’s been windows android her life but the transition has been sublime. With family sharing any software purchase works for all of us, and not just apples stuff like iCloud and music, everything.
Hate Apple all you want but they get the core tenet that technology should just work without you thinking. That’s why they are the most valued company in the world14 -
Yesterday, i had to use neovim for a task on my friend's laptop. There was no WiFi and I couldn't install Emacs. This guy uses Vim a lot. He recently moved to neovim from vim. He had some Ruby codes going. I had to debug some codes(performance issues). I was reluctant to work on it but i had to. After looking at some keybindings and the plugins that guy had written, using vim was pleasure. It was fast. I could shoot up multiple terminals work on that and was instant. I wrote some plugins to indent my code which worked as it's supposed to. I used spacemacs(as it's configured properly) Emacs but there is some load time on spacemacs and there are some issues shooting up multiple spacemacs on terminals. I had just configured and started using prelude which is beautiful Emacs configuration and is fast.
After using neovim that day something hit me that i had blindly had faith in Emacs without using Vim and i use Emacs only for text editing task and terminal. I don't use it for listening music, browser and other task i can always use modern browsers and Spotify for that. Modern browsers and music players are amazing and using those in Emacs there is always a lack of functionality and UI.(modern people don't use those i think and some Emacs users i know use stripped down version of Emacs i.e. microemacs or XEmacs.
I know vi is present by default on every Linux distribution. That keybindings are same as vim and it can be configured so, it is useful for embedded devices and system architecture. I love terminals and love working on tty. That's why i guess i felt instantly tempted to keep on using vim and i loved it's performance. I checked on evil layer before but there are some issues with evil layer in Emacs like it isn't too efficient like vim. I love lisp though and clojure can be edited nicely in Vim.
Is this sin against the church of Emacs? Should i join vi vi vi? I have already dedicated my life on Emacs (check my bio). Am i tempted by the devil?
4 -
"there is no WiFi in hell"
- me, thinking about my new flat(that has no internet yet)
Still wondering why this sentence came to mind...5 -
I seriously don't fucking understand those people who like programming iDevices.
I mean, in my personal experience you have:
- iPhone not connecting to a WiFi (while working on a network project)
- Mac, while using multiple desktops on 2 monitors: I have the 3rd desktop active on the 2nd monitor, search for terminal to open it and it opens in the 1st desktop of the first monitor
- while making an app (ionic or unity), is about 5 to 15 times slower compared to the same android apps (same exact code, but gotta go throught XCode, y'know?)
- takes YEARS to download XCode, but is necessary to even just build for lastest iPhones updated
- takes years to upload to AppStore and when it's done it just tells you "oh bitch, you know what? you forgot that fucking icon for tablets, how about you rebuild it all? and NO, you have to change the build number or I won't accept it"
- App quality was so pedantic on the first publish but then always fucks it up at the second upload, like "hey we checked it the first time, now we can just 100% trust it works and doesn't use anything scammy"
- code+compiled app for iOS is like 1GB while android vode+build is like 100MB WTF do you even put in those 900MB? random trash? WHY?
- I'm not even gonna get into the forums or the amount of money you have to pay for both product and services
- MacOS works ALMOST like Linux, but takes all the worst from both windows and linux to give you the worst performance with the best graphics, but it looks cool, so doesn't matter
A good world would be a world where Apple goes bankrupt after Steve Jobs died1 -
Fuck Arch wifi handling!!! Why can’t you fucking just have the needed software in the base package!!! Because when you take YOU FUCKING USB INSTALLATION SOMEWHERE THERE’S NO ETHERNET!!! You’re FUCKED!!! What’s the point! Now I need to boot from my lubuntu usb dual boot install, FUCKING INSTALL the Arch iso, VirtualBox and then the needed wifi packages!! Fuck!4
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I'll post a rant (will be long) soon-ish on the root of the asinine problem...
TL;DR
Anyone got a better suggestion of killing a WLAN router signal than a Faraday Cage?
-----------------------
As to the point as I can manage atm...
My ISP forces a proprietary router/modem for them to script my static IPv4 block (/28, aka 13 usable). Modifying this equipment in any way or using the vast majority of tactics to modify its behaviour = Federal Felony... with my history, it couldn't be construed as mistake/ignorance of this fact, so I'd likely end up working for some branch of the gov to mitigate the costs of standard prison (on both ends... handicapped af = expensive af to comply with base human rights laws... plus I'd be a dangerous prisoner from what I've been told).
I NEED the ipv6 functionality TOTALLY off... I've written this into every kernel and every container config at kernel level.
The issue is, I don't trust their shit device (which "should" also be set to no ipv6 via gui... non-GUI = fed felony).
This horrid device, they apparently made them for home use initially (to be fair it has decent specs and tolerable RAM), so included WiFi... that comes on by itself.
Disable the WiFi!... except I cant (at least not without 'tampering').
Why? Well acc to the GUI it's not enabled in the first place. Acc to the 'tech support' it's apparently a paid feature (yes, nonsense) that I have not paid for (nor would I), meaning on their end's GUI and DBs I also don't have WiFi ability from that dev.
So... Not trusting the other settings and the dev, being something im not allowed to directly config outside of their GUI that doesn't realise it's putting out a usable signal despite registering DHCP on behalf of that non-existent signal. I NEED to kill those signals.
I realise it likely sounds extreme to make and use a Faraday Cage for a router/modem (secondary modem, it parses the initial modem's output, via script, to allow the static block to be accessed). I really dont know any other way that's legal to restrict it.
Oh, in case unclear, I have tried so many ways to get them to just allow me to use any device (pref. mine, but even their's) that i can simply script myself... it's a no-go.20 -
So I'm making an app with a classmate at school, but there's one huge problem. All the PC's and laptops at school are shit. The ICT departement at my school blocks almost everything on them. I can't install any program, open any file and I can't even open the command prompt! So I can't install Visual studio or any other IDE and basically can't do anything besides browse websites that aren't blocked. And they expect me and my classmate to make an app. Fortunately, my classmate has a spare laptop we can use, but it's really difficult for two guys to code on just one laptop. I asked my school if they could buy new laptops or if they could remove they restrictions on two laptops, but they don't want to do any of those things and now we're stuck with just one laptop. I don't know what to do. I fucking hate this!
(This doesn't have anything to do with the topic of the rant, but I just want to complain.)
There are a couple more things I hate about my school. At my school, everyone is forced to use iPads. I don't know why they don't just give us laptops instead of iPads (maybe just because there lazy). So my iPad's headphonejack and homebutton where broken for no reason and I had to get it repaired. But instead of going to an apple store or a repair shop, you need to go to the school's ICT department and get it fixed there. If you don't do that and go to a apple store or something, they will take your iPad and keep it forever! Even though you pay €200 for it every year! Also, the ICT department at my school is lazy as hell! You expect them to repair the iPad themselves, but they just send it to a repair shop. So it wouldn't even matter if I would go to the store myself! 😠 And they even do a really bad job at checking if the device even works after the repair, because I needed to get it repaired three times in a row! And don't even get me started on the bad WiFi connection.10 -
## building my own router
I hoped things would go more smoothly :)
Anyway, my new miniPC easily accepted CentOS 8 - no fuss here. And I've got to say - I love CentOS8 so far! Shell has amazing nifty tricks, UI (gnome3) is also snappy, video/audio/ethernet,.. everything works.
What I did NOT expect is hardware being off. Well okay, the price was low - it was obvious smth is not right. But still.. I decided to build my own router so that I could swap wifi card whenever I want. So that I could run my own network services in there. Turns out - the card swapping is not as easy as one might think.
I got the AX200 WiFi6 card for that very purpose. But once plugged in the OS can only see it's bluetooth module. Weird... What's even weirder is that even though the card is PCIe, the OS uses btusb module to talk to that device. What? USB?? emm.. What??
And there it is. After opening it up again I noticed that the mPCIe area is marked with a label: "USB WIFI / WWAN". USB? Does that mean this PCIe slot is wired into the USB bus? Not impossible I guess.
Googling for a "pcie wifi over usb" or smth like that brought me to one reddit (I think?) where someone wanted to build a DIY wifi mPCIe -> USB adapter and someone else adviced hime that (for some reason) at best he could only get bluetooth working (hey! just like me!). It's got to do smth with pcie channels and USB being too weak to handle all that load, or smth.. IDK, I'm not a HW guy.
Well that sucks then! I have a mPCIe slot that does not work as a PCIe. Shit! So I guess the best I could do is to plug back in the same wifi card that came with the device. It smells like 2003 - supports only g protocol. Fine, let's try that. Maybe I'll find a way to work around this mPCIe limitation later on (USB adapter or smth... except there are no USB WIFI6 dongles yet :( ). So I plug it back in and start turning it into a router. Disable NetworkManager, configure static NCs' settings, install dhcpd, hostapd, bind and others. Looks like all is done! Now it's time to start it all. systemctl start hostapd --> FAILED. wtf? journalctl says it could not initialize a driver. umm okay? Why? Forums say I should airodump-ng check and kill whatever's using that device. Fine. airodumo reveals avahi and wpa_suppl are still using it. kill, kill, GOTTA KILL 'EM ALL!! Starting hostapd again -- same shit... wtf?
iw list
My gawd... That shitty network card does not even support AP mode :( I mean.. My USB wifi dongle for 2€ supports 2x more modes, is faster, has better range and is easier to work with than this old tart!
Yeah. That was an interesting day. When enfironment engineers break my testing environments at work I'm glad I have where to spend my time now.
BTW any ideas how to bypass this mPCIe nonsense? Come on, there are USB GPUs out there.. Why can't they make a USB (or dual-USB if they really need to) mPCIe adapter?8 -
Why is it so fucking difficult for mobile OSs (Android/iOS) to revert to mobile data when the WiFi is clearly not working? It’s so annoying when my phone connects to some AP 10 fucking nautical miles away and tries desperately to get a connection to the internet when I have a data plan that works just fine. The solution would be so fucking simple: before the phone switches to WiFi connection it should simply probe the internet. Login required? Ask me if I want to proceed before showing me the fucking login portal. No response at all? Then don’t even bother going any further with it.5
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I have never understood people ranting about how Linux is incompatible with their machines. Back in 2006 what ever machine I had tried Linux on was working better with it. More than that all the drivers were working out of the box and the only problem that could possibly happen was with graphics.
FF 10 years. I am using MacBook for some time now and I did no installation of Linux for couple of years now except on bare metal servers. And have just bought my sister a new hp envy. Nothing fucking works. Not even wifi. Installation is hanging and I do not fucking know why! Her previous computer had problems with wifi. If wifi is turned on you could not turn the fucking pc off. It would fucking freeze.
Well fuck my life :(9 -
I have a rant. A genuine rant, not a funny story, etc.
I want a keyboard. I need one. It can cost €500, as long as it won't break in a year and fulfils all my needs. Make it a €1000, I don't care. What are my needs then? Well...
It has to be a split keyboard - two halves. But wireless in every aspect, ergonomic, with multimedia keys on its outer edges (preferably pointing outwards, not up) and a heavy metal trackball on the right outer edge (preferably upper right corner). That's a bare minimum.
On top of that it probably some magnetic scrolls for things like navigating pages, changing volume and fidgeting in general wouldn't hurt. Also I'd prefer it to snap back into a one-piece whenever I need it to lie on my knees, e.g. when I type while sitting on a coach (I have a coach PC setup, no desk, and there's a reason). Why do I need it to split then...?
I had an accident. Kind of broke my back when I was 11. It's mostly okay now after couple years of rehabilitation and many more years of careful living. Luckily the only two wheels I ride on are powered by a 105.97 hp @ 9,970 rpm engine. Still, I try to be careful so I tried tons of work hygiene techniques over the years and I found out anything over 2 hours is best done while lying flat.
Coding while lying flat has its challenges, mostly focused around screen and input. Ever since I got a VR headset half of them got solved but the other half - acquiring a suitable keyboard - it's very hard to satisfy. I tried that with a one-piece keyboard lying on my stomach. Turns out actively bending elbows quickly wears them out (hello tennis players). So a split keyboard it has to be. So far I tried 4 different ones and I had to modify the cable connecting both halves in each and every one of them so that it'd be long enough to go behind my back. The main cable itself I only had to modify once because usually there're extensions available.
Apart from cables, all of those keyboards had issues. Starting from some kind of de-syncing when keys from both halves would randomly register in a wrong order - I didn't know it's possible with a cable connected halves... I did try two generic WiFi keyboards (using one for each hand) and they unfortunately suffered from that very same issue but I was sure it wouldn't happen if the device was designed to be a one unit from the very beginning, right? And yet it in 2 of the tested devices.
Other than that, plugs disconnecting on their own forcing me to take off the headset and fiddle around, too high key travel that'd strain the wrists after a few hours, even the noise that would wake up my girlfriend sleeping in a separate room were all a common issue (I briefly had an almost completely silent WiFi mechanical keyboard from Logitech we both really liked, but it was a one-piece). Once I got a split keyboard that was "natively" WiFi but not only the two halves were still connected with a cable that turned out to be way too short for my needs, it also had a very noticeable lag despite the high price - a lag way higher than any of the cheap WiFi keyboards I owned in the past. So I sent it back. Now IDK what to do because AFAICT there are no more models available, at least where I live.
So yeah, I need a keyboard and I'll probably have to make one myself. Sorry, just had to vent.5 -
I did it. I switched from Android to iPhone. Why? Because they came out with a new UI and features with the iPhone X and it’s been 3 years since I’ve owned an iPhone; I don’t like to be left out of new tech.
I already don’t care for it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautifully designed phone. The clicks, haptic, and general feel of the phone is great and so is the X’s different UI. But the features? I feel like I’ve gone backwards a few years from where my Galaxy S8 got me. Facial recognition is actually great, but I could have had that with my GS8, but I preferred iris scan.
I forgot my wallet at home and wanted to buy a drink from the drug store by my work. I usually use Samsung pay which uses MFC & NFC so I can just use it with any magnetic reader; no says iPhone. I try to unlock my phone in the car, but there’s not trusted device option like in Android, so I unsafely struggle. I want to sign into my gyms WiFi, but no sign in option pops up like in Android; I’ve got to pull up safari.
I fucking love my Apple Watch though.
It’s definitely better than the Android watches that I’ve tried, and that might keep my with an iPhone much ch longer than I want until a better Android watch comes out.
I just think it’s good not to fanboy anything. Be open, find all the pros and cons.3 -
So I salvaged some computer that was about to be thrown out by IT because it works perfectly fine and would be a waste to lose.
The (current) problem is, there is no built-in wi-fi adapter so I had to order a usb adapter to plug into the machine.
Fortunately enough it supports Linux but cones with a cd with the _source_ of the driver in it and we are supposed to build it. Now what's the problem with that?
First problem: building needs all sorts of build tools, starting from gcc and make. Since it's a fresh install, though, I _cannot_ install those normally because -- you guessed it -- I don't have a WiFi connection, which is why I needed the bloody adapter in the first place, so I spent hours trying to fetch the binaries from the apt register using another computer and bringing them over via USB.
Once that was (more or less) successful, the next problem came around; Second problem: the instructions clearly state to run make, but there is no fucking makefile anywhere so that obviously fails spectacularly. What _is_ there are some bash scripts so I try running those.
Now, just when I think it's finally done (one of the scripts has been running for a while and seems to work) the compiler dies with an error: the fucking driver won't build for the current kernel version. And not just that, but it is clear nobody is using basic things like include guards because gcc kept screaming at me about the same macros being defined over and over due to header file re-inclusion. Like, seriously? Come on!
Long story short the fucking adapter is going back to the seller, let's see if the next one I order more civilized.8 -
There is no joy in life
So I finally managed to set up networking on my 3D printer's raspberry pi: now it can connect to my phone's hotspot or to my uni's wifi network, depending on which is available.
Then I set up OpenVPN, using a remote server as a middleman so I can connect to the printer remotely and start/stop/monitor prints from anywhere.
Everything works great, except for one thing: whenever the Pi connects to the uni's network first, OpenVPN fails to start and connect to my server, rendering the printer unavailable (unless I use an ethernet cable, but that's not a viable operation since I need to lift the printer, and it's heavy).
The only for it to work as intended is to either:
a) keep my hotspot active (which kinda defeats the point), or
b) let it connect to my hotspot first (so that OpenVPN can start properly) and then turn off the hotspot, allowing the printer to reconnect to the uni's wifi and reconnect to my vpn.
Why won't things just work the way they're supposed to? 😭10 -
I have a freaking cool, useless idea, but i dunno if it will actually work
1. Put a usim in the slot
2. Reads information and connects with ISP
3. Turn on mobile data
4. Turn on hotspot
5. And useas a portable wifi
Don't ask me why you don't bring my phone, there are reasons
The os will be no screen only physical buttons with stripped down aosp
Can it work? Or in other words, is it possible?11 -
Just had a so called "cyber security" seminar in college today.
The guy who claimed to be a trainer or somewhat network security guy or something behaved enigmatically with utter consistency. He obviously claimed to know facebook hax0ring though.
They were basically there to advertise their complete crap: csksrc.org
(Ethical Hax0ring Course) (also claimed their site to be 99.9% secured - GREAT!)
After obtaining a ISO*** standard cert or after taking multiple sessions on "advanced ethical hacking" if you go about telling peeps in colleges that: "The single way to hax0r a facebook account is CSRF!" "Will hack your facebook account by MITM through malicious WiFi Ap." Then, NO neither I want your shitty cert nor do I want to be in your team and create the next level of "advanced ethical hax0ring - CEH course". Reason why I get cringed when peeps start about their certs and the ISO*** value it contains. What ISO value does your brain cells contain though? -
okay, it has come to it.
Yes, I most likely have a faulty audio controller in my laptop.
Yes, I understand that that's probably why my speakers are making unusual background noises.
And yes, I realize that this might be the reason why I can't hear anything in my 3.5mm earphones.
But, why, dear Cinnamon, WHY do you have to keep me from any kind of system settings GUI? I can no longer launch the System Settings, Network settings, sound settings, etc -- no Settings at all.
And why did you have to freeze the whole Cinnamon the first time the problem appeared? The X didn't mind it, ffs! I could move the mouse around... but that's pretty much it. Apart from switching to TTYs and moving the mouse I couldn't do anything else in the UI.
That's pretty annoying. It's not like I can remove my audio controller... (I don't think breaking off the corner of my MB where the audio region is counts as 'remove the audio controller').
This first happened when I fried my wifi µPCIe card. That's alright - I could replace it and use system settings again. But now...? How the fuck do I go around that NOW???1 -
Lost 3 days because of shitstorm not knowing why my nextjs localhost app wasnt working just go the 3rd day on mongodb dashboard and have a warning that mongodb will block any connections of ip addresses that are not manually added (i have no idea how mongodb works other than just how to use it in code)
Because the shitstorm knocked me off the internet for 3 days (will probably be for over 7 days cause these assholes dont give a shit to fix it) i dont have wifi access so my localhost app cant work
However my dads android has unlimited gb of 4g internet access so i connect to his hotspot and then try to run the app but still fails. I thought i cant run the app until my internet gets fixed from shitstorm just to find out i had to manually allow the inbound IP address of the android phone into the mongodb dashboard. And now it works fine. Fuck off
6 -
Was running personal laptop on 4.10 kernel (running Manjaro).
Was having problems for some reason with an audio program I'm using and so needed to run some older kernel that is real time for better latency.
Installed that kernel and booted with it.
Attempted to remove kernel 4.10, I don't need it anymore.
Rebooted, some kernel modules aren't loading. Xorg not creating a session.
I have no input working.
Not even wifi.
I can't detect USB devices.
Tried to fix it all night.. going through a ton of forums online...
Finally I give up. I didn't have access to anther computer to get a bootable USB image to. FUCK. IM NOT SMART ENOUFG FOR THIS SHIT.
I have 3 USB drive that I carry around all the time. Why don't I have a live image in one of them?
I went to sleep.
Next day I download Lubuntu (just to boot and backup some stuff before downloading and reinstalling Manjaro).
When I was burning the ISO to the USB, turns out I actually had a bootable Ubuntu on it the whole time.
I feel so stupid.
Last week I don't remember why, but I did sudo chmod 770 /
Which also broke my system.
Took me 3 hours to realize that this was the problem and make it work.
I love Linux. It keeps things interesting..3 -
I tend to overengineer. Why? Because I had a view in JavaFX with its controller that had a bunch of key listeners which changed the UI. I wanted to change the view based on wifi connection/no connection with a server, which was managed in a Client class. The controller took the client to give it a message that client then had to send. For "separation of concerns" I created a separate view + controller for the "not connected" state.
Now the Client knew all about the connection, so I put up the Observer pattern and wanted the Main (Application) class to swap the layouts as an Observer of the Client. After an Exception on FX thread and Platform.runLater(), to solve the issue, I faced a new problem: the key presses weren't executed anymore. I still don't know why this happens. Maybe I'm missing something.🤷
Then met with one of my group partners (it's a uni project):
Let's attach the Observer to the original controller. Have only the original view that changes due to the controller updates as Observer. Let's see if that might even remotely work...🤔
It worked🤦😂 -
If I'm at the library.
And there are Ethernet ports.
Desktop computers are connected to it and working fine.
But when I try to unplug it and connect my laptop with it it's just doesn't work, as if it says there is no Ethernet connection at all.
What are some of the reasons for such thing?
Do I have to look up specific IP configuration and configure it on my laptop?
Do these windows domain system matter?
How can I get started figuring why it says it's that there's no connection in the first place?
The librarians know Jack shit about why it's not working.
And I can't find the technician contact address to ask him/her/them directly.
WiFi works fine, but slow, Ethernet connections has a gigabit connection. (I believe that should explain why I want to use that instead)3
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