Any students who have previously been in GSoC. How was it and is it worth it ?

MAYDAY.
Youtube is down.
Hell entire google core apps are down. Including google itself. :O

//Haxk20 rant

Today i got probably the stupidest and fucking coolest idea ever.
And i aint joking.
So what is the idea ?
Well i was wondering when im mainlining devices why dont i build my own board
I mean could be fun right ? RIGHT ?
Why ? Well i was casually looking around aliexpress and Allwinner V3s showed up. Its a tiny SoC with 64MB RAM and some other things.
So i was like why not build board about it. Seems like it runs mainline already. Less job for me. Uboot is ported. Again less work for me. I will need to get some memory for the thing. Cause you bet i will run some crap on it.
Well i will keep you all updated on how its going. Im busy with school and other things so progress will be slow
But in the end i would like to build a board that has Wifi+BT and SDcard slot. Possibly making it into a card size you know for that sweet handing out of cards so you could so it would be a bussiness card. Yes i know about the guy who did this. But his card uses completely different SoC which is far slower.

What do you do when you are bored?
Normal People: I watch some movie while eating some food.
Haxk20: I mainline phones B)

(Yes i was bored and mainlined another phone :) )

//Haxk20 question sort of

So i have been bored today and i wanted to give Google Foobar challenges a try again. I did have access to them and i wanted to start clean from scratch on them. "Delete all your data in Foobar" Yeah sounds about right. I type deleteme. Y
Google why the F dont you tell "Hey you idiot you will loose access to this page. So dont do this"

So yeah i lost access to it sadly.

Does anyone have an invite please ?
You can generate one by going to google.com and searching for Arraylist java. I would do it but apparently google hates me.

Thanks :)

//Haxk20 going on monitor adventure.

WOW just wow.
I just bought a new monitor. Gaming one so 144Hz and all that crap. Cause you cant find a normal monitor with high refresh rate but oh well.
IPS. So i boot it up and oh good dear WTF are those colors ? Thats not white. Thats freaking shade of yellow.

Oh look FPS profile was selected.
Hmmmmmmm sRGB profile. So it must be accurate right ? WRONG. Horrible colors once again.

Im lucky enough to have a panel thats 97% sRGB calibrated so i could just by eye go and change until it fits. Truly took less than freaking 10 minutes. Worst part ? OEMs dont need to do this for every single monitor. They just need to add "Color accurate sRGB" profile based on 1 model. It wont be perfect but god dammit it wont be yellow.

Also who the freaking hell wants speakers inside monitor ? Dont pack useless shit inside to bump the price please.

But hey at least it can do vertical position and all the adjustments you would need.

All in all after calibration im very happy with it.

Asus VG294Q BTW

OK so about a week ago i got a job offer. They basically said they are VERY VERY interested. The money looks amazing. Its 50K a year (Yes not a lot for programmer but here its a LOT of money and way above what programmers here get).

But small issue. I cant be in school and work there. While its fully remote its a startup and they need someone fully focused on it.
So they asked me to pause school and work there. If i dont like it or etc i can always return back to Uni without a problem.

After some talk they offered me fully paid trial for 2 weeks or so where i can be in school. But i have to decide 100% after that.

But as you can imagine pausing school is always a big deal. So do i take it ? (I will get paid way more than i would even if i finish Uni. And if i hate it after some time i can return back to school) Or i dont take it ?

So i was just using my Mi Band 4 and while its cool i dont like having crap like that on my hand. Heck it cant even fucking run Linux kernel. AKA its useless.
Yes that means im going to build the top of the line smartwatch. And actually do the name "SmartWatch" a freaking justice. Android Watch ? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH. Android watch is shit. It can run Linux kernel but its still useless. Its not running mainline linux kernel. And to the new people. If you are going to build anything running Linux. Make sure its fucking Mainline linux or dont bother releasing it.

So while all the plans arent fully done yet. I have some parts ordered and when it all arrives you can expect some pics and probably a writeup on github on how exactly to do it all blah blah.

Obv all the files i will use will be opensource. Except the things i cant control like the firmware of the hardware which is required.

I just spent 3 hours debugging my 3D printer.
The issue was that the lines extruded werent the exact size as i needed. So the first thing. Esteps for extruder are wrong. I checked 4 times. They were spot on. So i continued searching for the issue. Some belts were looser than i liked. Fixed that. Some bolts were loose. Fixed that. I retry the print. Still same issue. At this point i had no clue what could be wrong. Then i checked esteps again with metal meter. That old ones. Not the electric ones. HOLY SHIT.
5mm off underextruding. I fix it. Reprint and its absolutely perfect.

Now how can a tool that i paid 80$ for thats supposed to have 0.01mm+- accuracy be 5mm off ?
Weird thing is that its exactly 5mm. So now i will never use those ones for precise things cause damn thats a lot of slack.

Point being triple check that the tool you are using is actually correct and precise when doing something like this.

So i just learnt that Cyberpunk 2077 will release with Proton support and it will work out of the box.

Great fucking job Valve.

37 minutes.

See you in Night City people !

Phone CPU on mainline now boosts up to 2.2Ghz. i have arch installed on it as one should and i must damn say im compiling mesa on it and snap its faster than i expected.

Haxk20 rant.

Soooo finally. Day 2 of installing gentoo cane to an end. Right before midnight my first ever freaking gentoo install booted up just fine.

Yes first ever. I did install LFS before and Arch (which i used for 7 years) but never gentoo until now.

TBH only kernel changes are needed and this system will work perfectly. I used bare minimum config i made to get it at least running without GPU first. And yeah well first boot and yeah. I love it.

Its running without GPU and its nearly as fast with it.

Thats crazy

Now i see why people say gentoo is the speed. Hell yeah it is.

But yes. The install did take me 2 days. I was aiming for that first ever boot to be a success boot. So i went slow and careful.

Did not use many guides as to learn as much as possible. And to make it more hard i did install systemd amd gnome.

Yeah thats all for today.

WARNING.

I recommend people who are running linux-next (i know there isnt many of you) Dont update. There is a null pointer dereference. If you updated then have a backup kernel ready cause it will fail to boot.

So i have little bit of time today between classes. Grabbed old Xperia P.
Tried U-boot again nothing from UART.

Friend suggested hey that kernel base adress seems not correct change it.
I do.
I boot it up.
Display says nothing as expected.
I plug in UART.
Noth
WAIT WHAT
HOLY SHIT
OUTPUT
ITS FUCKING ALIVE
I REPEAT
ITS FUCKING ALIVE

OK for those who dont know what u-boot is well.
Im not fucking google. You are programmers. Go fucking search what it is jeez.

OK with that out of the way. What does this mean ?
Well since one guy was so nice and already did most of the work for U8500 chip then well USB should work.
It doesnt exactly but thats small issue cause EMMC works.
Since EMMC works i can check all the partitions and actually flash mainline kernel on this shit.
And well once Mainline shows me some output oh BOI.

There are too many but let's see.

When I was doing xperia P development I had this issue that it would not install via TWRP cause it would not recognize the phone.
For 2 months I was releasing a manually edited zip file with the hack to fix that bug until I finally fixed it.

Or when I had to hex edit the camera blob cause it was sending a command that new HAL and driver in kernel interpreted as hard reset. I didn't know where the F and why the fuck it's doing it so for like a week I had hacked blob on my phone.

And sadly many many more.

So the bug i posted about last day has been fixed. Fucking variable had 0x465f7 instead of 0x465e7.

In other news tho CP2077 system req are out. And im gonna play it.

Well what i fucking shitty day today was.

I wake up at 5AM to go to uni to grab some papers.
I miss the bus by few seconds.
The second bus is also late by 3 minutes.
Luckily it arrived with only the 3 minute delay. I grab the papers. Go on train and i pull out my laptop. 15% battery. FUCK. I go charge it in train. I plus in the charger and laptop screen goes black. And laptop is not turning on anymore.
OK i pulled my phone out. That was luckily fine.
I get back home and had to reset CMOS because IDK how a fucking unstable power can do something like this. Like realistically. If somebody can explain it please do.
So it now turns on.
I get spammed by friends to fix a bug i was working on. I thought i had a fix but nope.
Then one of the friends. (One of the best C devs i ever saw) says hey look at this line.
It was LITERALLY 1 fucking letter typo.
I fix it. Oh the bug isnt fucking fixed.
I want to pull my hair out.
The best is that i cant really fucking debug it because its a kernel bug on a phone and there shit is 3x harder then whatever i worked with.

But i bet i will tomorrow send a rant saying that it was some fucking stupid thing i missed totally.

Who ever thought that creating WCN3980 was a good idea i hate you.
So lets see the story shall we ?
Naive me jumps on the mainline tree.
Everything goes well with the phones we ported.
We have touch and all that jazz.
Now came Bluetooth.
Then the all mighty QCOM decided that downstream they will use some shitty driver to make this piece of shit work.
While the more smart people of upstream (mainline) decided that hey lets do the driver the proper way.
So they did.
Now comes the funny part.
The BT chip isnt connected to SoC normally as one would expect.
It is via UART.
Which is fine you think. Until you take a look how downstream and upstream handle it.
On upstream we have it the proper way of assigning BT node as a subnode of UART.
On downstream ? Just define the BT node as normal node. Driver will figure it the fuck out.
Now on this SoC we have 4 UARTs.
2 of which are crashing\freezing our phones when we enable them.
So lets try the other 2.
1: It boots up which is good but ultimately fails that frame reassembly failed with -84 aka illegal byte sequence.
Yea thats not good.
2: It also boots up and now doesnt throw -84 error on me.
What it does do tho is throw at me timeout error for the chip turning on sequence. (-110)

Then i figure out that 1 vreg (Voltage Regulator) is incorrect. So i fix that.
Still nothing.
I left it like this for a while.
I got back to it week or so ago.
The vreg was wrong noticed one of the other guys im working with on this.
So we implement the new regulator type.
I pass it to the driver hoping we get BT but no. Same error.
Today i made the ultimate discovery.
That vreg we set ?
WRONG.
Yes i know by this time its getting crazy but this is making me go nuts
The downstream didnt set VDDIO they set chip power.
I looked in one place. Found the real 10000000% correct regulator for it. Turned it on anddddddd BT still not working.
OK hmmm what if i try setting all the voltages to as the chip wants them to be to be turned on.
BT still not working.

And this is where im right now. Stuck on this piece of shit thing.
I have some ideas what can be wrong. Most of them have been proven wrong by me from testing already tho.

Yesterday i said i need to make Android 11 building.
Well today i spent literally deleting and reorganizing shit because hey google once again decided that it would be AMAZING if hey LOCAL_COPY_HEADERS would be deprecated completely.
Oh hey you need that in your projects ? SIKE FUCK YOU. We are gonna deprecate it and you cant do shit.
It is building for now. If it will continue and if it will finish (Highely unlikely) is unknown at the moment.
But its building so far.

And here we go again. Lets start the work on making this piece of shit boot up.
https://www.android.com/android-11/

If you didnt get it: ANDROID 11 IS FUCKING OUT

Just 3D printer. Laptop and lot of stuff I use daily.
Wait I actually got dev C duck here. Not playing with it.

IPS
They say it's amazing and all that jazz.
I have ascended.
OLED
This wonderful thing. It's like something completely different.
I have been spoiled and I can't go back.

Can we please kill Google ?
Really please.
Android 9 was OK with the changes they did. I mean not GREAT. But OK still.
Android 10 was HORRIBLE. Broke nearly every custom ROM out there and they didnt fucking care.
TBH Android 11 isnt that bad. Its not OK but not horrible. But now we cant build kernels in android sources because google decided it so.
Yes this was android 10 change but it is slowly getting enforced and i hate it.
Dont get me wrong. I love the UI changes. They are sick. Grabbing more from Custom ROMs and bringing it to official android.
But if you didnt realize Google is making Android app and ROM developers an hell from life.

Me and mainling bluetooth on my phone.

*Implement the bluetooth node*
Driver: FUCK YOU
*Replace the regulators names with proper ones according to new driver*
Driver: FUCK YOU
*Find that one regulator is wrong*
Driver: FUCK YOU
*Add max frequency to not go over that limit*
Driver: FUCK YOU

And this my friends is kernel development in short.
Driver cant read the data from the chip because its offline. And i have no clue why.
And it has no way of telling me why.
Cause it doesnt know.

I grew up without having access to PC or internet until i was like 7-8. (This may seems weird to kids today that have internet and PC or phone basically when they can slightly think)

So when i started using PC i started playing games.
ofc they were basic and all.

But as always i started thinking. They were limited. Very limited. Like cant we do better ?
So i started looking at how games were made.
And guess what ?
I found out that it was indeed possible to create a basic game.

I knew this is what i wanted to do in life.
I mean sure i learnt C as my first language cause of 1 book and learnt C book from another book but oh well.

I mean sure i dont want to create games but now 11 years later i still work (Hobby or non paid work. I blame fucking coro*a.) in C basically every single day.

//Another 3D printer rant
So as many know im student.
And i have been 3D printing for years now.
And like 2 months ago i have decided to buy 3D touch (BLTouch shit clone).
BLTouch is like 40-50$
and 3D touch is 15$.
Yes its a clone but from what i heard the accuracy is not that bad really.
HEARD only.
I plug it in and try the accuracy test in marlin.
Standard deviation of 0.25mm
That is 1 freaking fucking layer.
Heck 0.05mm more then 1 layer.

So i read how it works.
OK its not that complicated.
Basically a hall sensor.
So i unscrewed the sensor and magnetized the screw and probe.
I put it together again but now with only 0.6mm gap between the screw and the top of the sensor. (Before it was really deep in there).

I try the accuracy test again. (Yes i have run the tests multiple times and got an average of them in the past tests and future tests too).
SD: 0.12mm.
Still horrible but better.

So i go around internet and i find one guy saying turn on debugging in marlin.
OK i mean i might just as well.
SD: 0.03mm
WOW
That is better then some old original BLTouch probes.

I hope to get BLTouch v3.1 in future but this will do for now i guess.

So would i recommed the shit cheap clones ?
HECK no
They are unrealible pieces of shit and you have to spend hours upon hours to make them work properly and even then they wont get to the accuracy of new BLTouch.

Yes there is also the point that Z motor isnt really perfect either and 1/16 micro stepping is also shit and you cant go that precise.

Oh and while typing this the fucking shit probe decided it would be a great idea to fail and failed.
Resoulting in a deep hole in my printing bed.

So if you think the 15$ is a great value NO.
DONT BUY THE CLONE.
I have learnt my lesson.

Friend bought a 3D printer.
I had friend who bought a 3D printer before and all came to me for some tips so did this one.
He got also Auto leveling probe with his printer.
And when he saw that he has like 5 choices of auto bed leveling he went nuts.
I was big fan of bilineral leveling but i have switched to Unified Bed Leveling or UBL for short and never went back.
The options you have in there are crazy. Yes it takes time to set up properly but DAMN it is worth it.
Im gonna print PETG ?
Switch to PETG leveling profile.
PLA.
Switch to PLA leveling profile.

Like if you arent using UBL go change that NOW.

I helped him set it up and he was amazed at how much better the adhesion got.

Fuck this shit.
IDK how this even makes fucking sense.
I apply for a job im fully qualified for.
I get a no
I misread a job offer. I read it as C++ programmer. They wanted C++ unreal engine programmer.
So i applied.
Not being even qualified for the job. I was thinking i was but when i read the UE part im not.
I got an offer.
WHAT THE ABSOLUTE FLYING FUCKING HELL PEOPLE ?
HOW DOES THIS MAKE SENSE.
Ofc i refused the offer as i know nothing of UE and they wanted a small project to show skills but they were very much interested.

Can anyone explain how this makes even sense ?

So this is an funny one.
Im here enjoying some good music and coding.
Editing Marlin firmware (3D printer firmware).

I checked the code twice to be sure its ok as i had to have hands near the printer while its moving.

I apparently didnt check enough as i missed 1 if statement.
Making the printer to run at firmware allowed MAX speed.
I have my hands in there with piece of paper (For leveling)
I start it the function.
The nozzle was just in so perfect height that if i had my finger under it it would grab the skin and also burning it as it was at 215C.
How do i know so specifically ?
Well cause when i started the function that was what happened.
The printer moved very fast and i didnt react fast enough.
And to add to the injury as the axis was moving at nearly 900mm/s (Yes you read that correctly) i had to replace both the motor and stepper driver for the X axis.
If it didnt hit me it would be fine but as it hit me it tried to push more power to motor. Frying the stepper driver and the motor internals got fucked.

Also yes i was OK. It was just the top level skin layer and straight line only.
It just hurt a lot.

Now when doing something like this i wear gloves and also checking the code without my hands in there first.

So me and my friend had to create a script while we are mainlining some phones.
As you can imagine you have to build the kernel a lot and test often. As a Linux user that calls for a script.
Since the friend already had one I asked him for it.
Upon reading it I saw sudo when using fastboot. That is not needed when set up properly which I know he did since he can debug with ADB without sudo.
So I ask about it.
"Well that's just so that I don't flash old build when the current one fails and I don't wonder why it's still broken"
So I played some room music and created the top of the freaking line building script for our needs. It had everything. Making back up of the old builds. Error checking if the build fails and even tells you to fix it if it fails (LOL I had to do that).

So I send him this script. He looks at it. Thanks me and sarcastically says she it's just tiny improvement over mine lol.