general-chat

[lusty fossil]

The first article gave kg and stone. I'm not used to thinking in either!

[raw jasper]

Heh, I use the metric system in both my daily life and my work (definitely not a machinist :P), so essentially that's all I know

[fading hare]

Stones? Like, someone time-traveled from medieval Britain to tell you about weight in a measurement system that only exists in maritime realms?

[lusty fossil]

I am bad at visualizing physical size in any system so I just never know where I am.

The UK uses stone regularly

I think it's silly but I use the BTU

[fading hare]

Seriously. Use the SI system.

[lusty fossil]

So I can't complain

[fading hare]

You will be able to relate, and correlate, to a whole array of different measurements.

[lusty fossil]

I also use the horsepower

[raw jasper]

Oh, we still use BTU over here for HVAC units, so, yeah... 😛

[lusty fossil]

Probably American imperialism

[raw jasper]

We also used to use the horsepower, but we have now transitioned to kWs

[lusty fossil]

Oh good

It's a much more sensible unit

[raw jasper]

I still have no idea how to translate kWs to a sensible understanding of an engine's power

So, I typically do the conversion 😄

[lusty fossil]

You should have seen me in my thermo classes

It was unit conversions all day

[raw jasper]

Atkins' (physical chemistry) textbook used to be full of those

IIRC they have revised it

At least, the revision I saw recently was /much/ less about converting units in the first few.... units

[lusty fossil]

We were responsible for knowing both Imperial and Metric

It was hard

[raw jasper]

Being in Europe made things easy. The professor just told us to ignore the nonsense units wherever they were mentioned 😄

[wooden schooner]

it was sad to see the Purcell textbook switch to SI units in the 3rd edition (after his death). But the new author was very thoughtful about it and maintained a very detailed appendix with the CGS forms of all the equations

[fading hare]

People that hate on SI/metric are just trapped.

[raw jasper]

CGS is still sensible

[wooden schooner]

nah man you gotta set c = hbar = 1 and define all the other units to match

[lusty fossil]

Imperial is good for one thing: denoting temperatures as humans experience them

[raw jasper]

YEAH THAT'S THE BEST THING

I loved doing that

[fading hare]

lol

[fading hare]

Wait, what?

[raw jasper]

It was strangely cathartic :>

[wooden schooner]

disclaimer, I've never done it. But it sounds fun

[lusty fossil]

Fahrenheit is better for telling people what temperature it is, more gradation without going into decimals

The difference between 26 and 27 C is much greater than say 67 and 68 F

[raw jasper]

...And that's why ratios of temperatures don't have a physical interpretation (the definition of 0 is arbitrary)

[fading hare]

lol, as if it even matters... 26 or 27 is still way too hot

[raw jasper]

(Unless we're talking about temp in K, which is a different story)

[lusty fossil]

I just picked two random temps

[lusty fossil]

I think you mean Rankine

[fading hare]

Alright. So, you pick the most fragile unit in the entire metric/SI system, Celsius, to make a point that metric/SI is somehow flawed.

[lusty fossil]

Not flawed

[fading hare]

No, it is.

[lusty fossil]

Just that Imperial is not without benefits

[raw jasper]

Ah yes, the weird American sibling to Kelvin units

[fading hare]

Because you have to factor in altitude.

[raw jasper]

I think that Celsius is not a part of the SI..?

IIRC Kelvin is used as the temperature base unit

[fading hare]

yes

but, metric systems in Europe use C for a lot of things

[lusty fossil]

MechEs have whole tables (IRL lookup tables in software) full of measurements at Rankine temps

[raw jasper]

Yes, because it makes sense during everyday life

[fading hare]

If you don't know the altitude, you can't accurately measure the temperature, as the base of Celsius is the boiling temperature of water at sea level.

[umbral phoenix]

Celsius is pseudo-S.I.-ience since it's defined by its 0 and 100

[fading hare]

Which is 100 degrees.

And 0 is the temperature that water freezes at, at sea level.

[raw jasper]

Homeopathic measurements 😄

[fading hare]

So, if you don't know altitude, you cannot accurately define temperature.

[fading hare]

no, homeopathic means fake and false, Celsius is just really dumb in the way that it relies on altitude

[raw jasper]

Come on, I was just joking

[fading hare]

I mean, I didn't mean any offense. I am sure you also believe that steel beams cannot be melted by jet fuel burning. 😉

😄

I am also joking.

[raw jasper]

Why yes, I am the ultimate conspiracy theorist (not)

[fading hare]

😄

People that do not understand science: "IT'S MAGIC! BURN THE WITCH!" or "IT'S ALL A GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY TO DRAIN THE THETAWAVE ENERGY FROM OUR BRAINS!"

[raw jasper]

These days, degrees C is defined by its relationship to Kelvin

So, I don't think the altitude thing is an issue anymore

[fading hare]

I mean, it technically still is.

[raw jasper]

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". And, if you think it's magic, everything you believe is possible and real.

[fading hare]

Ha! You're only saying that because you would like for me to believe you are a rogue sorcerer of mighty power.

Kelvin doesn't rely on air pressure does it?

If so, wouldn't Celsius still be out of scale with Kelvin when you measure it at say 10,000 meters?

Or is there some kind of sensible conversion algorithm? Like, not C to F, because that's just dumb with F=(9*C)/5+32.

[raw jasper]

(The blood from an unborn cow thing is real; Look up Fetal Bovine Serum)

[fading hare]

I strongly believe in powering all my experiments with the blood of unborn beings.

[raw jasper]

I mean, it's kind of needed to trick the cells into dividing (and staying alive)

[fading hare]

true, but why cow babies? They are so cute and wobbly.

Couldn't they have used, I dunno, hyena babies or something?

[raw jasper]

I think you can figure out the answer to this yourself

[lusty fossil]

Another interesting, related fact https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks

[fading hare]

OK, so they are still kind of adorable...

[fading hare]

I know the answer, I was just being facetious.

Speaking of cows and genes. Anyone remember Belgian Blue?

[raw jasper]

I just looked them up. Missing a myostatin gene sounds painful

[fading hare]

Pretty much the origin of CJD in Europe back in the 90s.

[lusty fossil]

Oooh

[raw jasper]

Prions are... fun :S

[lusty fossil]

Yeah I remember that

[fading hare]

Yeah, it's like, "hey we can make super big tomatoes, what about cows, let's do it!"

[raw jasper]

Pretty much impossible to destroy by conventional means

[lusty fossil]

Yeah prions are the worst way to go

By a wide margin

[raw jasper]

And, once they come to contact with the folded protein, they make it into a prion, too!

Evil stuff

[fading hare]

Repent, heathens!

[lusty fossil]

Pro prion?

[fading hare]

I am merely stating that your science talk has offended my sensibilties.

[lusty fossil]

Lol

[raw jasper]

Since we talked about protein folding, please consider donating computing time to Rosetta@Home if you are in a position to do so

https://boinc.bakerlab.org/

[fading hare]

How can anyone be sure that they aren't just mining crypto these days?

[raw jasper]

Well, you could take a look at the queue and see the results, or even submit a workload yourself (though I'd recommend against doing so because the queue is long enough as things are) https://robetta.bakerlab.org/

[fading hare]

cool, I will take a look at it... I have a bunch of excess computing resources available to me.

[raw jasper]

'Sides, it's being run by folks at the university of Washington.. I doubt they'd have any interest in mining crypto 🙂

From what I can see, most of the work these days is in the rosetta python projects, which require VirtualBox and ~8GB of RAM

[fading hare]

word, OK

[fast smelt]

I thing it was about the pro-foetus vs pro-choice debate

[raw jasper]

? FBS is actually used in cell cultures

It's not a joke

[fast smelt]

I mean her being shocked in the strip

[raw jasper]

Ah yeah, possibly

[fast smelt]

and the guy kinda reminds me of Trump

[raw jasper]

OTOH learning about FBS feels kinda weird the first time

IDK, I didn't read that much into it ^^

[fast smelt]

lol, maybe I'm deconstructing things too much... again

[raw jasper]

It's from a science cartoonist, so I think it's more literal

[fast smelt]

ah, ok 🙂

[raw jasper]

The person who makes these has made a lot of comics about lab life/experimental procedures/etc

[fast smelt]

nice

[raw jasper]

https://mobile.twitter.com/pedromics

Pedromics (@pedromics)

Scientific cartoons and general scientific nonsense by @pedrovelica

Tweets

764

Followers

9295

Twitter

[fast smelt]

by the way, I love the PhD webcomic

Piled Higher and Deeper

[raw jasper]

Yeah, that's a classic one 😄

[fast smelt]

and xkcd of course

[raw jasper]

Heh, of course

@fast smelt I think the joke is about the guy saying that cell culture medium is a "well-defined" mixture, and then saying it contains "blood from an unborn cow" (FBS), which is as... not well-defined as it gets

[fast smelt]

ok 🙂

[dusty citrus]

It's probably just fine. Especially if N American (120 VAC).

The breaker will trip before the wires get very hot.

Blowing a metal fuse is less excusable I'd think.

'my' electrician simply worked on the live circuit in the kitchen to swap out an outlet for a GFCI no problem.

I'll just throw the branch circuit's breaker before changing one but I've read even that's not enough.

I would guess that a nice spark would be more definitive when it cannot be repeated.

(breaker having tripped on the first one)

[vagrant sonnet]

Do you remember what laundering error was involved? Does wool not go in the dryer or something?

[fading hare]

Wool cannot be washed in warm temperatures, shouldn't be tumbled, and definitely does not go in the dryer.

[raw jasper]

I think we all kind of learn this the hard way though..

[wooden schooner]

The candela is not defined until you specify a luminosity function, and even then, it is just the same physical quantity as power but is called a separate base unit

[wooden schooner]

What do you mean by definitive?

[dusty citrus]

@wooden schooner If it sparks once, that means it was live. Probably with a decent reaction.

idempotent in a way - second trial produces nothing new, and not even the first thing (the spark).

The spark told you it was dangerous. The lack of a spark says the circuit's been broken.

[wooden schooner]

yeah, I figured all the lights in the room turning off would have already given that signal

I was thinking the concern is the risk of getting shocked before the breaker gets flipped

[raw jasper]

Oh, now that's an unit I've never worked with 😄

[lusty fossil]

There's only one kind of platypus right? The name "duck billed platypus" mildly implies other kinds

[raw jasper]

According to the Good Wiki:

The platypus is the sole living representative of its family (Ornithorhynchidae) and genus (Ornithorhynchus), though a number of related species appear in the fossil record.

[lusty fossil]

They lied to us!

Hoodwinked! Bamboozled!

[raw jasper]

BTW, are oats and honey actually good?

I have only had oats with milk (lactose free these days 🙃 )

[lusty fossil]

I was looking at a version of cheerios called Oats N Honey when trying to make up a name
Those are good

[wooden schooner]

Honey Bunches of Oats (another cereal) are also 👌

Nature Valley Oats and Honey bars are i.m.o. ||not excellent||

[raw jasper]

IDK, I'm one of those joyless folks who eat oats as-is

[wooden schooner]

Also good. And unlike the previous things which all have way too much sugar, oats are / can be a good nutritional choice

[fading hare]

Look what just arrived. The cutest little thing.

[lusty fossil]

Are those sparkfun?

[fading hare]

Yeah, they're Sparkfun smôl

[raw jasper]

I mean, they work for me, and they haven't messed anything up in my body yet, so that's that :>

heh, smôl boards

I really need some kind of icon to put in my profile -- I have grown to hate the default discord headcrab thingy and the Bodily Fluid Yellow discord has assigned to me

[real falcon]

lol its a game controller

[raw jasper]

Really?!

[real falcon]

yeah.

[raw jasper]

Now what does this say about me? 🙃 😂

[real falcon]

lol well im not much of a gamer for years now, but easy for me because I know some of discord history

it started as gaming chats

[wooden schooner]

that's the vast majority of what it was until the pandemic, right?

[real falcon]

not sure

[fading hare]

not exactly, there were all kinds of communities run through Discord before the pandemic, but, sure, the pandemic definitely gave Discord a boost as all sorts of people sought out better ways to communicate

[wooden schooner]

I was aware of Discord having been a common tool for gaming communities and, a little later, study groups

obviously, the pandemic massively widened their audience and probably influenced their direction a lot

[raw jasper]

IDK, I still have no idea how discord really works

99% of the servers look like toxic frog pits

(the allusion to frogs is intentional)

[real falcon]

I join only focused servers, as result I rarely any bad issues

I was admin of one of servers that went bad though, and left

[raw jasper]

Most stuff on public server discovery (or whatever they call their server directory) looks very toxic

[dusty citrus]

We were issued 'electrical safety shoes' in the USAF. one inch rubber soles.

An electrician may have enough professional sources to be sure their hand tool insulation is reasonably rated.

[fading hare]

I joined one server to ask some questions, and... basically every emoticon they have is a frog.

[dusty citrus]

Protocols like not exposing tools to conductive pastes, oils and other contaminants.

[wooden schooner]

yeah that makes sense. I personally don't see why not wear gloves though

[raw jasper]

Ewww

[dusty citrus]

The power company gives thousands of hours of training to line workers.

There's a particularly good YT vid where power company techs are showing public safety people (ambulance fire &c) how to not become a statistic. ;)

[fading hare]

I've noticed that a lot of these servers with the frog-stuff are official Discords for Chinese companies. Maybe the admins don't even know the background of the frog, so they add them on user request?

[dusty citrus]

I heard a story about a pilot who sometimes flew below minimums, to get paying passengers back on the ground at the airport they paid to land at. Breaking the rules in the process. ;)

I'm guessing the electricians sometimes do something similar. ;)

[fading hare]

hahah

[raw jasper]

I have a zero-frog tolerance policy. If I see a single frog, I leave the server.

[fading hare]

That reminds me, I should make sure to leave those servers. I have a bunch of Discord servers in folders, and they're usually muted, so I forget they're there.

That one server with all frog emojis was KBDFans.

[blissful roost]

A good enough reason to avoid...

[fading hare]

yup... I purchased one of their keycap sets on Aliexpress because it was on sale, and then later was looking to replace one of the accented keys with something else and went to ask about it in their Discord...

I will no longer buy from them, obviously.

[raw jasper]

Sounds like a sensible course of action

[wooden schooner]

so ok, my hypothesis for why sound wouldn't play on the movie I purchased from YouTube: here I was, minding my own business and enjoying my home A/V setup for a few years. Meanwhile, a new version of HDCP gets invented and some media brokers move to it, YouTube and/or the media corporation that made the movie being one of them. My HDMI audio extractor (used to plug the Roku into my stereo) only supports HDCP 1.4. So hardware I bought in the past used to be Valid but it is now for some purposes Invalid. Frustrating.

oh wow, I just looked up how HDCP works and it's absolute garbage. You pay Intel to add your device to their whitelist.

[raw jasper]

Oh wow the firefox View->Repair text encoding menu item is magic

It will automatically guess the correct encoding and get rid of mojibake for you

[fading hare]

Wow. That sucks. When I upgraded my receiver I did a ton of research, and this was definitely one of the things I had to look out for.

Also, CPU temps of the Home Assistant Pi in the new case... nominal.

Passive heat sink, no fan.

[wooden schooner]

yeah. Can't buy equipment that will work with tomorrow's version of HDCP though. As they say, Defective By Design. https://www.defectivebydesign.org/

I think it would be fixed by replacing the $25 HDMI audio extractor with a new one. I don't have a convenient way to check though, other than buying one and returning it if it doesn't fix the issue.

[fading hare]

true, but I haven't seen any issues with my receiver

[wooden schooner]

idk what you mean by receiver, but if it's a component that can have its firmware updated then that makes sense. The HDMI audio extractor doesn't do firmware updates afaik

[fading hare]

this is a receiver, the one I have

full HDCP 2.2 support

1.4 is really, really old

That said, DRM sucks.

[wooden schooner]

yeah it probably existed when I bought the audio extractor, it was just a cheap product. oh well

[wooden schooner]

yeah. And the fact that the mechanism for content protection is literally "pay Intel" is just egregious.

[fading hare]

still, sucks that they changed it... I am really glad I did the research and didn't end up with a 1.4 when I bought that receiver

[fading hare]

Intel as a corporation is... not cool.

[dusty citrus]

They tied up all energy that would have been used to fight this by starting trouble on Facebook about farm animals or something like that. ;) /wild_theories

[raw jasper]

So, what's the endgame? They come up with new versions every n years and ppl are forced to repurchase hundreds of $s worth of equipment?

[fading hare]

That's been the plan of every major corporation on this planet. Make yourself indispensable. Become a utility that people cannot avoid using. Like the electrical company. Legislate around it, so even if people try to go off-grid, you can sue them into a hole and make sure they stay in line.

[wooden schooner]

also, sell subscriptions to physical products. Everything is a service.

[lusty fossil]

Key fobs on new cars are a subscription service

[wooden schooner]

True facts, Comcast sells a "subscription" modem/router, where you pay them $X/mo to have their router exist in your home.

[lusty fossil]

Like keyless entry

I'll keep my 2015 civic as long as I can

I upgraded from a '94 so it still feels like an ultramodern dream machine

[wooden schooner]

is there a no-cost alternative, or does the car just go away?

[fading hare]

Corporations as "entities" are soulless things without morals, consciences, or ethics. Sure, we can establish practices and internal parameters for how they are supposed to operate, but, the bottom line is always money. Without money, they are nothing. So, money is always more important than anything else. This is true for many major companies in the media field as well as cable, phone, and internet companies.

[lusty fossil]

Keyed entry only

[wooden schooner]

ok I was going to say, I would expect a lawsuit if there were no keyed entry

[lusty fossil]

I hope someone still sucessfully sues. It's nonsense

[fading hare]

Comcast can step on a really sharp piece of LEGO at the top of their stairs in the middle of the night.

[wooden schooner]

how many mfrs are trying to make key fobs a subscription service? One, some, most?

[lusty fossil]

Several from what I've read

[fading hare]

that's just insane

[lusty fossil]

Big names, not like niche brands

[wooden schooner]

do they tell a story about the money being for some kind of ongoing service? or do they not even bother?

[lusty fossil]

I think it's literally just a cash grab

Unrelated but there was one of these parked outside my work when I rolled up today https://www.ford.com/performance/gt/

[fading hare]

Nice!

[wooden schooner]

that looks like a freaking action figure

[lusty fossil]

It's very fancy

[wooden schooner]

I would expect the driver to be Captain Falcon

[lusty fossil]

I saw the driver....he was.....not captain falcon

[blissful roost]

Isn't that the only performance V6 that Ford make?

[fading hare]

I am still super-partial to the Lamborghini Gallardo, the looks are just so sleek.

[lusty fossil]

not sure, not a big car guy

I drive a Civic because in traffic I basically disappear into the crowd, Assassins Creed style

[blissful roost]

Definitely a very secsey car. lol

[raw jasper]

Learned something new today. I had no idea!

[lusty fossil]

Not on every car, just on too many

Literally just charge me more for this car, don't nickel and dime me with this nonsense

[honest moth]

Wait a minute

if Linux gave my Scrap-top that much of a performance boost, then I wonder...

what will happen on a newer machine...OHOHOHOHOOHOHOH boy

YA KNOW WHAT!? Why am I still hesitant to wipe the drive? Let's do this!

[raw jasper]

Have fun

[honest moth]

I will...after I finish transferring files.

got ahead of myself again...

[raw jasper]

@honest moth How are your neuro (self-?)studies going?

[honest moth]

They're going. How's life on your end?

[raw jasper]

It’s fine

[raw jasper]

New sticker?

[hasty wedge]

yup

[raw jasper]

盯！！！

Did you know 盯 is not used in Japanese?

Instead, it uses 見 for everything

[wooden schooner]

learning chinese from english, it was very surprising to see how many "different" things they use 看 for

[raw jasper]

I don’t know a word of Chinese. I am learning Japanese but I’m very interested in 漢字

In Japanese, 看 is used to mean “watch over somebody medically”

[wooden schooner]

as its primary meaning?

[raw jasper]

Yes

[wooden schooner]

well that's definitely a difference

[raw jasper]

看る (miru)=To look after medically

看護 (kango)=Nursing

[wooden schooner]

in Chinese you can "look sick" (lol) which means see a doctor. They replace the doctor with sick

[raw jasper]

In Japanese, doctor = 医者 (isha), and I haven’t learned such an idiom yet

Also, illness is 病気 which literally means sick energy (qi)

元気(genki) is used to refer to the general well being of a person, as well as their “qi flow”

[wooden schooner]

that makes sense, given the meaning of 気 that doesn't translate well to english

[raw jasper]

Yeah, 気 is just qi🤣

Also, there’s 気持ち (held qi) that means feeling

[wooden schooner]

yeah but then in english you get connotations from the western reception of qigong or whatever

[raw jasper]

https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/genki-meaning/

Related

[raw jasper]

Got carried away by 盯, forgot to say that I think it's a well-drawn sticker 😄

[hasty wedge]

[weary fiber]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/855315061286633519/942644246601670706/IMG_8701.jpg

WIP

[unkempt nimbus]

linux newb question: I want to try daily-driving Linux, but I need kernel 5.15 for drivers for my wifi card. https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-wireless/patch/[e-mail]/
Can I use a standard distro like Ubuntu or Mint and update the kernel? Or do I need to use a bleeding-edge distro like Arch to use the 5.15 kernel?

[crystal ore]

You can pull in prerelease packages on standard distros. For example: https://www.linuxcapable.com/how-to-install-linux-kernel-5-15-on-ubuntu-20-04/

[lusty fossil]

I saved my shirts!!

[honest moth]

glad to hear it! 💚

[Soooo...I decided to put Kali Linux on my spare 64 GB flash drive...]

And yes, this will be the distro to wipe my machine. Just thought about a use for this on the fly, and that idea didn't occur to me until now.

i need sleep. thinking is hard.

[dapper hatch]

It's that time of year again when I celebrate being single. 😃 Have been for 10 years now and it is ace! I am a little left of centre from the norm. 🙂 I've been able to downsize my living and don't need to take holidays I don't want. Having the time of my life. #singleandlovingit

[raw jasper]

Happy discount chocolate day, then ^^

[unkempt nimbus]

Thanks. Would I be able to test this from a live-usb environment to check that it works before I do any partitioning? I had a scare a few months ago and I don’t want to change partitions if I don’t know it’ll work

[crystal ore]

Yes, you should be able to.

[lusty fossil]

That's tomorrow!

[raw jasper]

Oh well. Chocolate is always nice, discount or not

[raw jasper]

What kind of dropbear is this guy?

Sloth dropbear-like monster?

[lusty fossil]

Strong candidate for invisalign

[raw jasper]

Thanks for the chuckle

Definitely needed it. It's been a long and tiring day

[swift hatch]

Lars is just your average workaday sloth murder puppet

[raw jasper]

I mean, sloth /is/ a murderer

[wooden schooner]

with a sample size of one, being the average is no surprise

[raw jasper]

For the mortally curious, I found its amazon link https://www.amazon.com/Fuggler-Monster-Deluxe-Stuffed-Sickening/dp/B07CM6FMDD

"Currently unavailable" 😄

[shadow siren]

did you read the box cover warning

[raw jasper]

Yeah, it's chef's kiss 🙃

In other strange plushie news, https://www.giantmicrobes.com/us/

[lusty fossil]

I'm too spoiled by adafruit, every time I find a guide that's split across multiple pages I look in vain for a Single Page button

[silver shale]

test

nice, it works

Discord yesterday was not letting me message here, with the Clyde error of not having recipient in friends list?

[raw jasper]

Perhaps you were accidentally DMing somebody?

Or maybe discord was being discord

[silver shale]

checked it in multiple channels

[raw jasper]

Discord was being discord then

[silver shale]

yes

[honest moth]

WELP

if there's anything I've learned, never underestimate an ASUS X202E with a 1.8GHz CPU.

This blasted thing has out-performed my powerhouse of a laptop time and time again.

[stoic mesa]

That's what I got my wife for Valentine's some years ago!
Believe it or not, we are still married

[silver shale]

Same experience I had with a X200 tablet. Most of my software development has been done on it.

[blissful roost]

My old Toshiba M200 is still very usable, in certain circumstances. Lol

[honest moth]

Awesome!

welp, glad to know i'm not the only one who's experiencing this level of insanity XD

[silver shale]

Also Chromebooks get much more powerful when they get something other than ChromeOS on them.

Even ARM, underestimated how powerful the RK3288 was. 😂

[honest moth]

LOL

That is AWESOME!!

[honest moth]

I wonder...how DO you swap OS's on a chromebook? I always thought it was impossible thanks to the integrated storage module, and how restrictive Chrome OS is with it's software.

...and hardware.

[silver shale]

For now it boots off from a microSD in "developer mode"

Could write it to the eMMC if I remove the write protect screw on the mainboard.

Not sure how that would work.

[honest moth]

welp, only one way to find out right?

[honest moth]

Cool

[silver shale]

yeah, I have two of the same model, because the first one I accidently broke the touchscreen glass, could barely see it in the picture. I use the first one to experiment with.

The second one I did not hack yet.

Tried to figure out the LCD panel but part of the screen was stuck...

[honest moth]

Welp, let me know how it goes! I'm genuinely curious, considering I have never owned a Chromebook before...dang, that sucks.

Ground, or just refuses to come out?

[silver shale]

Something was holding the LCD assembly in one spot and was not careful enough.

I used this image, did not trust it at first. I was almost ready to do all the kernel building, DTB editing and bugfixing myself until I found it. https://www.zutshigroup.com/doku.php/tech:c100p:x_console_debian

Work sold me the machines for $20 an unit. They have literal stacks of them.

[honest moth]

casually saves as PDF

[honest moth]

Now THAT is a steal

especially considering what you can do with them.

I might get one for myself now XD

[silver shale]

Seems that more things support ARM64 instead of ARMv7 (32-bit, in my case with the C100P). For example, OpenSCAD. The C101P has the newer RK3399. Have not seen one of those IRL yet.

[honest moth]

no idea what is what in that regard. Can you elaborate please?

Sorry, fairly new to ARM types and sub-types.

[silver shale]

The RK3288 is 32 bit, which is what the C100P uses. The RK3399 is 64 bit.

OpenSCAD is the first 3D CAD software I figured out how to use.

Still, that chromebook can still do many different things. Was able to web browse, stream video, use VNC to remotely control a server VM, SSH into servers. And now with Debian, even more things.

[honest moth]

Huh, I got it now.

Thanks!

[honest moth]

Yeah, Chromebooks, despite their limitations, can still pull off a lot.

[silver shale]

Pixelbooks have very powerful hardware for what they are made for.

[honest moth]

Though, I can't really say anything else though. Last time I touched a chromebook (which wasn't institution-issued) was years ago/

[silver shale]

One i had temporaily had, Used an i7-5600U, the same CPU I was able to play modded minecraft on without a GPU...

[honest moth]

that's awesome

[silver shale]

Work gave it to me to see if I could unlock it's BIOS

[honest moth]

Welp, that wasn't a challenge for you from what you told me. :P

I wonder if it's possible to stick Kali on those things...

[silver shale]

Kali was one of the few OSes that was ported to the C100P

[honest moth]

wait WHAT

[silver shale]

And Arch Linux

[honest moth]

you're already giving me so many ideas

Imagine: Ethical hacking on a Chromebook. The irony is real.

know any good places to find one other than ebay?

[silver shale]

I do not know, I just worked at a place that resells computers. Mostly Chromebooks since they get them in bulk.

[honest moth]

ah, ok

Still, all of this is really cool.

Kudos to you for figuring all of this out btw

i don't really have much to say other than good for you, and I hope you continue having fun with your projects! [tired, and still sorting through BCI/BMI/EEG-based Prosthetics research.]

[silver shale]

thanks

[hasty wedge]

transferred my framework ssd to my main computer

@raw jasper

you won't believe what I found on my gaming motherboard from ASRock

N76E885! A Nuvoton 8051 MCU

[raw jasper]

Yay! A wild 8051 MCU appeared! 😛

[unkempt nimbus]

https://twitter.com/Foone has entered the chat

foone (@Foone)

Hardware / software necromancer, collector of Weird Stuff, maker of Death Generators. (they/them)

ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/fooneturing

Tweets

237765

Followers

134052

Twitter

[dusk oracle]

hand is getting movement back.
that dog was removed from the area, the family that lived there was really poor and she was under a lot of financial strain.
they moved away with the dog.

can't really sue someone if they have nothing.

[lusty fossil]

I've been casually job hunting as a way to pass the time. I found a posting from a delusional company that thinks they are going to get a structural PE for $28-$38/hr. Do I tell them?

[fading hare]

What? That they're going to get some quality work done for $38/hour? 😄

[lusty fossil]

PE's can clock in 100k easy, in an area like mine? Way more.

These companies think they can do whatever they want

[tardy badger]

Lol, PE market rate is like $150/hr easily lol

[lusty fossil]

Yeah I think either they are insane or their HR rep doesn't understand that professional engineer is a designation

28 an hour for a structural engineer isn't very good either. 38 is closer to the mark

[crystal ore]

Because to design my building, I totally want to have the absolute cheapest structural engineer I can find...

[lusty fossil]

Yuuuuup

I sort of want to apply just to tell them this is nonsense.

[real falcon]

probably why so many of them refuse to tell you what salary would be

[lusty fossil]

Yeah

I ignore those in general

[lusty fossil]

Without fail, every time I get down on the floor to do situps, my dog decides she needs to sit on me

[raw jasper]

“USB is a protocol for 8051s to talk to one another” is a quote of theirs I often return to 🙂

[static flare]

Foone is great

[raw jasper]

Yup, their twitter account is one of the good things about the internet

[lusty fossil]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/02/missouri-governor-rebuffed-journalist-wont-be-prosecuted-for-viewing-html/

Sanity prevails

[real falcon]

whew

[lusty fossil]

I like to think any jury would see thru this and also that if they did convict, an appeals court would see reason, but you never know

[burnt tendon]

Yeah, that's kind of a vulnerability with the justice system. It tends to work poorly when it's required to both intimately understand the law as well as the underlying technology.

So, you have software engineers playing lawyer without necessarily a complete understanding of the history of case law, et al. on one side and then lawyers who think they actually understand what "view source" means but not necessarily.

Correspondingly, bringing in an expert witness is always weird because you can have one very persuasive liar on each side, really.

[blissful roost]

The reality that publicly-accessible information is publicly-accessible.

[lusty fossil]

There's a significant portion of the population who would be frightened by what pops up when you press F12

And frightened people make bad choices

[blissful roost]

It was bad enough having to explain all that jazz to webhosting clients. 😛

[raw jasper]

I just realized that the URL for discord server discovery is literally guild-discovery

[wooden schooner]

I'm willing to allow the politician to be ignorant in some areas as long as he listens to competent advisers. What is not acceptable is the abuse of power by using his position to push a bogus lawsuit. He should have been laughed out of the magistrate's office when he tried to file.

[wooden schooner]

In the discord API, "servers" are called guilds. Probably a combination of name changes in an API are cumbersome, and people using an API might want to reserve the word "server" for what it actually means

[raw jasper]

Discord servers are not servers and them calling them servers just hits me the wrong way

[umbral phoenix]

is there a way to make Discord URLs outside of Discord open in Discord (macOS) rather than in the browser, without pasting them into some Discord channel and clicking?

[wooden schooner]

I think they used to be called guilds back when discord was much more gamer focused

[raw jasper]

IRC servers were literal servers. These are.... (shrugs)

Slack workspaces?

[honest jolt]

if you have discord running at the time you click on the link, discord will pop up on the computer app instead of in the browser, but it still lets u continue in browser
works for me on windows

[raw jasper]

I always have discord sandboxed in the browser

[honest jolt]

oop nvm that doesn't work for messages

[umbral phoenix]

isn't working that way for me

[honest jolt]

it would work for server invite urls - sorry mistake on me

[wooden schooner]

If they are https:... then I doubt it, as afaik uri handlers are assigned by protocol rather than looking at the rest of the uri. Would be interested to hear if that's wrong

[raw jasper]

I've seen people's discord status considering Visual Studio a game, and showing it as a game being played, complete with filename being edited

[umbral phoenix]

If I find a Discord link when surfing in the browser, and click it, it opens in the browser. I mean, I could log in and 2FA and all that, but who has time for that?

maybe I could substitute the protocol

[honest jolt]

there are vs code extensions for the discord rpc
rpc = rich presence client (pretty sure)

[raw jasper]

Discord "servers", rpc != remote process call

Discord terminology is weird

[umbral phoenix]

ah that seems to do it... just change https:// to discord://

[wooden schooner]

Looks like there is a discord:// protocol
https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360051841534-Open-inserted-link-to-a-message-in-app-instead-of-web-browser-
But if other people are making the links then you can't control that

[umbral phoenix]

even works with Adafruit's tiny url redirect somehow discord://adafru.it/discord

[honest jolt]

huh doesn't work for me clicking in discord app lol (discord is opened but opens up in dm page)

also this is a first:

[wooden schooner]

The protocol handler probably just leads to electron doing the same thing your browser does

[umbral phoenix]

much of the Discord app is a WebKitView (or w/e the current incarnation of that is) on Mac

[raw jasper]

Then why would one install the app on their PC?

Sounds like yet another security risk to maintain

[umbral phoenix]

the Win app is probably not implemented that way

[honest jolt]

Want to take full advantage of Discord with better performance, in-game overlay and more? Get the desktop app!

[umbral phoenix]

I trust WebKitView more than I trust rando app. The privileges of a browser are reasonably well controlled. Apps moreso with each new release of macOS.

[raw jasper]

(appreciate the alternative text below the picture)

[umbral phoenix]

"trust, but verify"

I do try to minimze the native apps I run, and keep permissions for them tight; also run an app firewall that catches any non-standard calls to 3rd party IPs/hosts/ports.

I hate the websites that try to do skeevy UDP stuff in the browser behind the scenes

cough amazon cough

[wooden schooner]

do tell

[hard mica]

Random cat-like noises.

[lusty fossil]

nooooo, I ate the heel of my bread and now it's gonna get stale

[raw jasper]

||I clicked play expecting actual cat noises. Got synth noises instead. Now I feel ripped off :D||

[umbral phoenix]

it's just that when I navigate to port 443, I expect to be served from port 443. There may be harmless and legit reasons why components of various web sites also want my browser to connect to ports 444, 3478, etc., but why allow it?

If a website relies on a on-standard port to function, it's doing it wrong.

Also if it relies on non-least-common-denominator features, it's doing it wrong. It's 2022, we should not be getting "This web site requires Chrome".

[blissful roost]

Because APIs do that

And various other internet-related jank.

And, yes... No-one should be using Chrome.

[umbral phoenix]

I respect a person's right to use Chrome if they wish. But personally I'd rather not install tools made by surveillance capitalists.

</rant> 😉

[dusty citrus]

;)

[timid ermine]

viewing HTML is hacking and saving NFT art is theft

[blissful roost]

Ahh, sarcasm... I would miss it, if it wasn't a constant in my life. 😛

[honest jolt]

I wouldn't miss it!

||(sarcasm lol)||

[lusty fossil]

is there a way to print with leading zeroes? e.g. 0b0000_1111 prints as 00001111?

[umbral phoenix]

without?

with: print(f"{var1} {var2} 0b{var3:08b}") vs. without any padding: print(f"{var1} {var2} 0b{var3:b}")

https://docs.python.org/3/library/string.html#formatspec

[lusty fossil]

Oops wrong place

[umbral phoenix]

print(f"{var1:3} {var2:3} 0b{var3:8b}") will space-pad var3 to 8 digits ...useful for column-aligning things

[lusty fossil]

thx!

[umbral phoenix]

I 💜 string formatting, helps get high-information-density output on serial

[lusty fossil]

wowza

[fading hare]

at that point just output json and use a log parser 😉

[umbral phoenix]

Sometimes I want to see it in real-time. But for that app, all that serial slows down the app, so I have another mode that just prints summary every 100 lines, doubling the throughput 🙂

making json and writing it out would slow things down too much, I'm not interested in every line, just certain lines

[wooden schooner]

why say hello when you could say

{
  "data": [
    {"type": "char",
     "value": "h"},
    {"type": "char",
     "value": "e"},
    {"type": "char",
     "value": "l"},
    {"type": "char",
     "value": "l"},
    {"type": "char",
     "value": "o"}
  ]
}

[umbral phoenix]

exactly!

most of it is ephemeral data, to save it all would be on the order of 1.5MB per minute

[fading hare]

writing json doesn't slow it down

it's just a string, too

I didn't say to use a json lib

[umbral phoenix]

on a microcontroller it does

I don't even have time to fully parse the data behind each line at this level

true, I could serial output json to another (faster) processor to handle, but this app is basically a collector and filter, looking for patterns and some specifics and discarding the rest

[fading hare]

you have time to insert spaces

😄

what's the difference between a space and a {... I mean

anyway, I digress

what I meant, mostly, was for you to read the logs, you could use a parser, but the MCUs can talk to each other via json or whatever format...

without all the spaces and stuff

[umbral phoenix]

yes, of course, that would work

[fading hare]

then you could connect to serial and just pipe it through a parser

that's all I was saying

bUt JAyZonN iZ sO biG

[umbral phoenix]

So. Many. Keys.

[fading hare]

keys don't need to be long, just unique

you could then just map those to something human-readable in the parser

(and if you're ingesting in the cloud/edge, you could do the same there to expand the data into a more sensible format)

I mean, sure, at this point you could treat it as csv with the separator as a space, but, yeah

I do like how pretty it looks, though.

[umbral phoenix]

the serial is really just there because it helped me debug, and it's fun sometimes to watch what's happening in the ethers around me ...the serial isn't necessary for the app to function properly

[fading hare]

makes sense

How many messages per second do these things spit out?

[umbral phoenix]

50-70 per second on an esp32-s3 ...shutting off the serial (completely) doesn't speed it up, the bottleneck is elsewhere at that point

[fading hare]

yeah, that's nothing

I'm used to work with thousands of messages per second from several hundred different sources at once.

and in some cases, millions of different sources

[umbral phoenix]

on a microcontroller?

[fading hare]

no, I was just talking about receiving and parsing data

[umbral phoenix]

ah, right

[fading hare]

I wrote an analytics tag lib that was included on some of the largest fast food chains in the world. It was also the fastest compared to all the other tags (Google et al).

That real-time stream was insane.

It all started as four bare-metal 1U servers in a rack outside of south Charlotte, North Carolina. Ran a MongoDB cluster. This was in 2009 or something. Ingesting ~2000-4000 messages per second (not with safe writes on, though) and simultaneously streaming that data to other places. The MongoDB folks (back then) were like, "You are doing WHAT with our database engine?" 😄

Then we had to grow a little bit so I deployed it all on AWS, multi-region, multi-az ingestion and sync between three continents. 😉

[static flare]

I was recently asked to help with a python project for a friend, and my solution was literally one line of code

[fading hare]

Was it a reaaaaaaaaally long line? 😄

[fading hare]

and this point I was only a dabbler in the AWS... I had no idea what I was doing, but it seemed reasonable... and it worked beautifully

And it probably helped that my CTO loved to test things in production. As long as nothing went down and data was being stored correctly (because our SLAs were insane) it was free game. Did a lot of experimentation with that analytics engine.

[static flare]

No! They had a list of lists (say, [[1, 2], [3, 4], [5, 6]]), and they wanted the sum of each list inside the list, as a new list (which would be [3, 7, 11])

my solution was
[sum(lis) for lis is top]
top being the input list

[fading hare]

nice!!!

[crystal ore]

Gotta love it when the problem description is longer than the solution.

[wooden schooner]

some programming languages look like they were designed to make the solution to that question as short as possible

[fading hare]

That same job also let me experiment with machine learning and facial recognition... we created a facial recognition solution that could recognize your face through a car window in a drive through at about 5-6 feet away at night and immediately pull up your loyalty program as you were ordering food.

We used an XBox Kinect. [mind boggle]

The customer (a very large fast food chain) told us that while it was amazing, there's no way it would work because people would freak out. 😄 I mean, it was pretty Black Mirror.

[umbral phoenix]

that is truly scary (and illegal in Illinois 🙂 )

and Texas I think

[fading hare]

oh, it's illegal pretty much everywhere now, but at that time there was no legislation for this stuff

[umbral phoenix]

no, there are only two states that have restrictions on facial recognition

[fading hare]

really

[umbral phoenix]

some localities are entering the fray, for some purposes

[fading hare]

so wait... what about the Facebook thing?

[umbral phoenix]

that's Texas currently

[fading hare]

With all the facial recog that they had to scrap?

[umbral phoenix]

thre was already a class action settlement for Illinois

[fading hare]

aaaah

OK

I am not keeping up on the legal side

[umbral phoenix]

but the US is way behind... Europe has much better laws

the US is the wild west of data (un)protection

[fading hare]

Only imagine what I could have done in that drivethrough with a PROMON 502 and a Jetson AGX Xavier. 😉

oh, and for the logging, I was thinking like a light-weight version of Bunyan on the MCU that just does basic string concat and no parse/verify, and then you could read those log streams with the log parser. https://www.npmjs.com/package/bunyan

In other news, this $6.89 heat sink (with Adafruit thermal tape, not whatever red crap came with it) and no fan, ran cpuburn-a53 for 20 minutes and never went above 68.2'C. https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B08PZ39L46/

I ran stress on it for over 10 minutes, and it just laughed and never went above 45'C hahaha.

7 american dollares

that is nuts

came with the screws and everything, and was M2.5, so I just replaced them with longer M2.5s I had and screwed the whole assembly down onto the carrier board.

What's interesting is that at idle workload it just hangs out around 40'C. Which isn't great, but it's good enough. I was just surprised that it never went above 70'C.

I am not sure if I can fit a fan on top of it in the case I have, but I am going to try tomorrow when they arrive

So, @umbral phoenix, you're saying that it's "legal" in the US for me to run facial recognition software on whomever I like as long as I don't operate in TX or IL?

Uh. I'm asking for a friend. They do not own a drivethrough. Yet.

[lusty fossil]

be careful there aren't any server farms in TX or IL that ever house your data

[fading hare]

Oh, I can be careful.

😄

[umbral phoenix]

IANAL 😉

[fading hare]

I am mostly kidding. I don't have the time do do anything meaningful with anything like that. Just to set the record straight before you go calling your local representatives and the EFF.

[lusty fossil]

The best defendants got their advice in discord

[umbral phoenix]

lol

[fading hare]

lol

[lusty fossil]

me: forgets about find and replace again.
also me: could have been using it all day

[umbral phoenix]

I always get a little antsy before doing "Find and Replace ALL"

[lusty fossil]

I don't

I go one by one, I figure it's still much faster than typing stuff in

[fading hare]

I always get a little antsy before running DROP DATABASE.

I've seen people drop production databases before. It's never fun.

[wooden schooner]

I usually try to make it the case that at least one person could have stopped me.

[fading hare]

😄

"Oh yeah, I was just a janitor." But where did you work? "The Death Star." OK, case closed.

And if you don't know... you need to watch Clerks. 🙂

[lusty fossil]

I saw that

was good

[fading hare]

I was paraphrasing, not directly quoting, FYI.

yeah, it was a great movie

Mallrats was good too. A bunch of those movies were great.

I hate being old and remembering things in a decent light. I am now frantically searching the web for #metoo and anything bad said by anybody involved with Kevin Smith and others.

I somehow confused Kevin Smith with Jack Black in my head.

Also, Kevin smith has lost a ton of weight.

and gained it back... in 95 he was super skinny

this is in 2020

but it appears that Kevin Smith is untarnished. That's great, because I really like his work.

And, who would Ben Affleck be without Kevin? Not the megastar he is by now, that's for sure.

[blissful roost]

At least he wouldn't be the worst Batman, if he wasn't an actor...

[fading hare]

hahaha

Affleck as Batman is an interpretation that is... not inaccurate, depending on which Batman writer/illustrator you go with.

Smith definitely doesn't have the chin for it.

[blissful roost]

Sure, the script-writers laid up a good story...

[lusty fossil]

With Pattinson they've really leaned into the "Billionaire beats on the poor and mentally ill" angle

[fading hare]

I'm just saying... is it Frank Miller or Jim Lee?

Miller: yeah, no, can't be Affleck. Lee: could be Affleck.

Or, is it Neil Gaiman and Simon Bisley? Probably also not Affleck.

Anyway. I digress.

[fading hare]

I'm building a website. For the first time since 2018-something.

Everything has changed. Nothing is the same.

Oh, I saw a relevant tweet about this... [hunting down tweet]

https://twitter.com/i_a_r_n_a/status/1493764756380938241

Rebecca Turner (@i_a_r_n_a)

Everyone must switch to The New Thing because it'll let tooling be sooo much better.
Also it breaks all the existing tooling, often in currently unrecoverable ways.
Also also none of that hypothetical tooling has developed. https://t.co/JArQGgJRGQ

Twitter · Feb 16, 2022, 1:50 AM

Just follow the shooting star career of people like T.J. and you'll know what I mean. Dude invented a new toolchain every other week and then abandoned them. 😄 Then again, he's made massive contributions to EVERYTHING. So, much love to T.J.

[wary herald]

Cool, I like it.... Electronics based??

[fading hare]

Yup, electronics, arduino/circuitpython, IoT, OpenSCAD, 3D-printing, and various software topics.

[static flare]

I need to make my own website some time

[fading hare]

I recommend Jekyll or any other Jamstack stuff.

Static websites are extremely hard to hack as long as you don't do anything silly with tokens in your repos and GitHub Actions. Also, you can deploy them for free at GitHub and Netlify, and a bunch of other places.

I would start there, and then you can kinda branch out. Add some cool stuff with Svelte. Create a database backend with Strapi and host it on Digital Ocean for like $5/month.

Also... listening to Lorde, ||Stoned|| at the Nail Salon. This song speaks to me right now even if I have not been partaking.

[static flare]

I'm planning on hosting it on my RPi, along with a few other things

[fading hare]

How do you plan on connecting the Pi to the Intertubes?

[blissful roost]

Meh... Just use WordPress. /s

[fading hare]

WordPress. Yes. Please do. It's like installing FrontPage Extensions. If you're old enough to know how dumb that is, then I applaud you.

[static flare]

That I don't exactly know, it's a hurdle I very much need to conquer

[fading hare]

Some kid from rural Alabama can hack your WordPress site without any effort. All they gotta do is wait for an exploit. With a static website hosted with GitHub (or wherever), that kid would have to social engineer you to reveal your deploy token, or otherwise gain direct access to your GitHub account.

Or, you can be dumb and accidentally commit said token to a public repo. But, if you do that, then you will be taught an extremely valuable lesson. Use pre-commit with GitGuardian gg-shield to make sure that you never commit secrets to your repos.

[fading hare]

And, I did catch the sarcasm, but I want to make sure that any folks that are considering setting up a website for the first time aren't actually taking that advice to heart.

[blissful roost]

I've never had a WP site hacked, but I wouldn't ever seriously recommend using it.

[fading hare]

OK. Let me ask you this... What's the highest Google site ranking you've ever had on a WordPress site?

[blissful roost]

Personally, none. Lol

I never aimed for such a thing.

[fading hare]

I know, I apologize for the mic drop.

[blissful roost]

😁

To be fair, my security measures were better than most of the clients'

[fading hare]

If you keep it up to date, you're mostly safe with WordPress, but, there have been 0day exploits that literally made bot nets out of WP sites.

And, you may have been lucky in that the script didn't hit you because... I dunno... alphabetical sorting, or site rank, or whatever

[blissful roost]

Yeah, seen a lot of exploited WP sites in my time.

Thankfully, never my own.

[fading hare]

Let's not even talk about the supply chain attacks on WP plugins.

So, yeah, you might as well have installed FrontPage Extensions.

[blissful roost]

I remember using FP2000, back in the day. 🤪

[fading hare]

FPE was the biggest attack surface of all time. I mean, other than just posting all your passwords, secret keys, home address, and banking information on 4chan.

It's the dirtiest secret of Microsoft.

[blissful roost]

Before my time in webhosting...

[fading hare]

Dude. It was bad. Like, really, really, really bad.

[blissful roost]

Anyone still using that in 2013 needed a slap

[fading hare]

This was back in 2000-2003.

It was a sieve.

[blissful roost]

..and should still be getting slapped now. Lol

[fading hare]

And, basically the easiest way to own a server.

OK, so have you heard of the finger protocol?

[blissful roost]

Yarp

[fading hare]

That thing was a massive attack surface as well. Numerous DOS/DDOS/buffer overflow, you name it, it had it.

[blissful roost]

Heck, I remember taking down Win95 machines with ping. Lol

[fading hare]

So, for the LULZ I created a true-to-RFC finger "server" in Node.js. All it would do is respond with my Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn, and a few other things. I cannot even describe to you how many IP addresses I captured from China, Russia, and Africa. Sure, they were not state actors (probably), just pwned machines in some botnet running crappy, outdated stuff. Like, who tries to hack a server using the finger protocol in... I mean, ever? Since the pilgrims wore buckles on their shoes?

I remember opening the CD tray on Windows 98 machines, for the LULZ.

They all tried to send these "big" payloads and various other exploits, and I just captured them all, stored them in a database, and looked at it every now and then to just laugh. It was a very nostalgic thing.

Like, you're trying to buffer overflow me? For real? You even know what century you're in?

Then again, that's the kind of stuff that three-letter agencies from all over the world have dedicated years of work hours into getting patched into various operating systems, especially Linux. You wonder why there's back doors into Linux? Well, one of the problems could be that Linus at some point just needed to delegate some of the review process, and the people doing said reviews were not genius software developers. But, there's also the strategy of saturation. Submit enough crap and one of the exploits is bound to make it in. And, spread that out over time and you have a legitimate exploit that you can use for decades.

Most of the early patches and updates came from US state actors. Unfortunately that made its way to other states as well, such as China and Russia, and they were abusing the same exploits. Whether or not that was leaked by an internal source or if it was simply discovered, I leave up to the reader's imagination.

Some people use this as an argument against open source in their advocacy of closed source, but those people don't even know what they are talking about. They're the ones spending several hundred million dollars on bug bounties every year. Yes, I am looking sternly at you, Yahoo.

Let me know if this got too "political" or "real" and I can... uh... spit out this red pill and go for team blue instead.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

I love how media is like: "The attack came from China!" And I'm like... Do you even know how easy it is to make the attack look like it came from China, with no traces? If you were a hacker with any clout, from anywhere, would you leave a trace to your home country? Nah. So, when the government is like: "This attack came from China!" I'm like, so maybe you hacked some computers in China so you could continue the 1984 indoctrination video playing on our walls... Or maybe, someone smarter than you just decided to use some pwned machines in China, because Star OS (or modern NeoKylin) is about as secure as FrontPage Extensions.

#realtalk

Anyway. Let's get back to building super cool stuff with micro controllers and sensors!

[fading hare]

Oh, yeah, and I just made the entire Internet of frogs mad at me with a thread of tweets. I almost hope it goes viral.

[umbral phoenix]

websites really only need text, links, and images :p ...party like it's 1995

[silver shale]

imo, Google sucks, putting it simply. Ungoogled Chromium has worked good.

[umbral phoenix]

I did try that for a while

[silver shale]

Whats nice about a surveillance company making open source software. One can just make a fork and remove the tracking.

weirdly, Infineon's website seems to be the only one that crashes when I use firefox (on ARMv7).

Pocket, the detectportal.firefox.com DNS requests, advertisements for big companies such as Amazon has steered me away from Firefox

[umbral phoenix]

Flaws aside, I like the idea of Firefox, but it lacks private tabs so it's less useful for me. And this may have changed, but last time I checked, "open a new Private Window" still shares state with any other private window.

[gleaming herald]

I agree with this statement

[dusty citrus]

Bah bug bountys do seem like a sponsorship campaign frankly

Like they do pay x money for only x particular bug, while everything else is ignored, and if it's not ignored often is not paid as what it's really worth, or they fix it without even pay you

[honest moth]

weeellllllll theeeennn...

I figured out why my machine went kaplooey.

and I can confirm it this time.

And right before I got to say anything, the blasted machine overheated and kicked itself off again.

Anyways, BUSTED REGISTRY KEYS, with a HINT OF MALWARE REMNANTS.

aaaaand junk files.

i am not happy.

[wary herald]

Cool

[wary herald]

Avast??

[silver shale]

I once spotted a Windows PC with Avast scan the network for DNS servers. Saw it try to resolve three domains in the Pi-hole logs. At the time, only devices that were configured to use the server, used that server for DNS.

[honest moth]

Windows Security.

[wary herald]

Mmm, Avast's better

I highly recommend

[silver shale]

I have isolated my network since then. I would not want to imagine what all those iOS devices, FireTVs, "smart" devices have been doing when my servers and other stuff was on the same network.

[honest moth]

You can never be too careful. Good thinking!

[honest moth]

Is it subscription-based?

[wary herald]

Nah, there's a free version, but there is a sub one too

[silver shale]

Now all of that just sees this. (spoofed of course; I made it up lol)

[wary herald]

Nice

[half iris]

Avast got caught doing some pretty egregious personal data collection not long ago.

[silver shale]

A low-level software that is constantly connected to the internet...

Windows already does a lot on its own.

[wary herald]

Windows does the same tho

and Avast shut Jumpshot down, I think?

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/windows-diagnostic-data

Now, not an Avast fanboy, but it's better than WS...

[half iris]

They did, but given it's the second time they got caught with something like that, I doubt that's all.

[wary herald]

oof

[half iris]

And no argument on Windows, but given the choice, I'd prefer to have my soul collected by a tech-leviathan rather than the open market.

At least they're usually greedy enough to keep it to themselves.

[wary herald]

Yeah - what do you use?? McAfee? I am not a McAfee fan

[half iris]

Just WS.

[wary herald]

mmm

[lusty fossil]

My understanding was windows defender was among the best

[honest moth]

...full reinstall required.

there's no fixing this mess.

But yeah, idk about McAfee

the moment i saw it installed on my OS without permission, I became immediately suspicious of it.

removed immediately.

[honest moth]

Welp, if Avast is keen on data collection, then I will have to decline.

I appreciate the offer, but if this incident was recent, then I will stick to old reliable for now.

[wary herald]

Yeah....

[wary herald]

McAfee's trash

[honest moth]

Now Kaspersky though...

that one does not mess around. Used it for years.

Are they still around?

[wary herald]

I think so

[honest moth]

Awesome, might hop back onto their service if this keeps up.

sorry, still venting a little, while also realizing all the fixes and optimizations I have made were wasted.

[lusty fossil]

I just re-discovered a band I liked as a teenager. Weird mix of emotions.

They're not...great? But the nostalgia factor is real.

[fading hare]

Which band?

[wary herald]

Yes....

[wary herald]

hehe

[blissful roost]

Got home.. ready to chill.
I fumbled getting a can of energy drink from my backpack, dropped it... And punctured the can.

So, that's pretty much everything hosed with sugar/water. Lol

[fading hare]

ouch

[raw jasper]

Personally, I’ve had good experiences with MS Defender, especially in their rapid response to false positives

[blissful roost]

Wasn't too bad.. thankfully, it was just my daily things and a set of cables for the MS Surface laptop. Lol

[raw jasper]

And I’d think it would be safer to avoid running as much third party code as one can in kernel mode

Plus, third party AVs tend to come with performance issues (in my experience) and trying to push Weird Stuff into the browser

So, I use MS Defender

But, I am more than happy to revise this opinion if there is something better I could be doing

So, let me know what you think!

[blissful roost]

Yeah... Use Linux. ☺️

[raw jasper]

I wish I could

[blissful roost]

That's a whole can of worms, I know..

[raw jasper]

I kind of have to use windows on a physical box right now

[blissful roost]

I always run Linux as my primary.. Got Win7 as an option on my main.

Ouch

[raw jasper]

Win7 is dead security wise

[blissful roost]

Indeed

[raw jasper]

I am using Win11

And run my Linux stuff on WSL

[blissful roost]

Moar ouch.

Lol

[raw jasper]

It’s good enough, until you need to run a GUI app

[blissful roost]

🤮

[raw jasper]

WSL GUI is flaaaaaaaaky

[blissful roost]

Ahh, thought you meant the Win11 GUI. lmao

[raw jasper]

Ah well. It’s manageable

[blissful roost]

Hehe

[raw jasper]

I have done some registry tweaks to have instant Xmouse focus

So, accessibility wise, I’m fine

As for the rest of the GUI… Well, you get used to it

[fading hare]

Folks. You are doing it wrong. Steps to attain happiness:

1. Install a Linux distro you dig
2. Install VirtualBox
3. Install VirtualBox Extensions
4. Create a Windows 10/11 VM
5. Install all the Windows apps in the VM
6. Enjoy life

[static flare]

Planning on using Linux on my PC at my workbench

[blissful roost]

Yeahno.

[fading hare]

there's a possum on my patio... like... NOPE

[raw jasper]

rabies risk intensifies

[fading hare]

they're definitely not a starving kind of possum...

[raw jasper]

I… think they are relieving themselves?

[fading hare]

they are telling the camera person to go away 😄

Also, they are actually really good for our yards because they eat a bunch of bugs and other stuff, which helps prevent Lyme disease.

these are some lazy babies

[raw jasper]

Poor possum mama

[fading hare]

😄

she looks like she's struggling

that one kid on her head... she's like, "alright, get your foot out of my eye or I will leave you here for the hawks"

[static flare]

I love ringtail possums

[ocean sigil]

possums eat ticks...good possum--be nice to them !

[tardy badger]

Ugh, rent increases

First rent payment of my new lease submitted and it hurt more than normal

[static flare]

oof

[tardy badger]

I’m also really excited to not be able to afford federal student loans that come due in May

[hasty wedge]

more linux drawing

[tardy badger]

Oh that looks really good

[hasty wedge]

Thank you

Also, I am using a MacroPad as a hot key tool while drawing

[tardy badger]

Oh neat! 🙂

I love when home grown projects help with artistic expression

[blissful roost]

yawns loudly

Ok, that wasn't a nap... Lol

[lusty fossil]

Decided to listen to the Foundation books after loving the first season of the show. The first book so far is very similar but also very different in a number of key ways

Both good tho

[hard estuary]

@lusty fossil My oldest got me a nice edition of the first Foundation trilogy a few years back. It's time I went back and re-read 'em.

[lusty fossil]

I'm used to re-listening to audiobooks I've heard a dozen times while working. I'm having to listen to this in my off hours so it's going to take me a little while to listen. Enjoying so far though!

Google tells me that No para limpieza, es caro is a good translation of Not for cleaning, expensive, anyone who speaks Spanish have a better translation?

[honest moth]

You know what? No!!

I'm going back to old reliable, because !@#$ Windows 10 and it's fragile, oftentimes irreparable internals.

I'm coming home Ubuntu, I'm coming home..!

[fair summit]

I have been using 22.04 and it's been working quite well, despite the everyday churn

I am using it with cinnamon, don't know about the defaault desktop

[honest moth]

Focal Fossa over here!

Been there since Bionic Beaver.

[honest moth]

If you could elaborate what you mean by "everyday churn" please?

How bad is it?

[fair summit]

many packages are updated on a daily basis, on the order of a dozen or two

I only went to 22.04 because I needed a newer kernel to fix some USB problems. No reason to go there before its time. But I have had no crashes or even hit any bugs

so when it does come out, it seems like it will be pretty stable

[honest moth]

I'm looking forward to that

man, I never realized how much I missed it until we started talking.

Windows 10 has done me in as of late.

[fair summit]

i have Windows machines for when I need Windows, np. But for development, Linux is what I need

i haven't had much trouble with Win10 either, but I don't do very much

[honest moth]

Well, I would consider yourself lucky then. Even when you don't install something that doesn't agree with the system, things can break in the background and hinder your performance considerably, sometimes even overheating the CPU.

However, I also don't have the most up-to-date laptop in terms of Hardware either, but 7 years still shouldn't do what I'm dealing with rn.

[fair summit]

sorry to hear that

[honest moth]

Thanks, I appreciate that.

Long story short, I'm switching back to Ubuntu because of planned obsolescence and because I am tired of fixing Windows 10.

Speaking of that, how many new things do we have to work with over there in regards to software and utilities?

[fair summit]

I haven't really noticed that many new things: new versions, yes. The default Python is up to 3.9.x, and 3.10.x is also installed. It's not clear to me if the default Python will move to 3.10.x or not, but it seems to be in the schedule: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/jammy-jellyfish-release-schedule/23906

[honest moth]

Interesting...

[lusty fossil]

I thought I didn't like sourdough, it turns out I can stand it, if it's surrounding the right things

[raw jasper]

Support your local yeasts! 😄

[lusty fossil]

I'm a rye guy myself

Also partial to the super sweet American white bread which is basically a flour shaped sugar delivery system

[raw jasper]

You know it's American when it has HFCS everywhere 😄

[lusty fossil]

yup

I'm afraid I have an addiction to HFCS

[raw jasper]

Well, of all the addictions to have, this one is relatively benign

[lusty fossil]

Bad for my teeth

But I've got it down to a manageable level so I'm living with it

Maybe one day I'll quit for good but it's my last, and favorite, vice

[raw jasper]

Teeth, blood glucose levels, whatever

[lusty fossil]

I have a Sonicare and floss, and don't have a family history of diabetes so I'm chillin'

[raw jasper]

I found a paper where they used sucrose to alter the dielectric properties of electrolytic capacitors

So, that's one place to dump all that HFCS you guys produce! ^_^

[lusty fossil]

we prefer to dump it into every possible food product

[raw jasper]

Hehehehe

[lusty fossil]

so much so that "contains real sugar" is considered an attestation of healthiness.

[raw jasper]

(reads paper title again) Oh. They used it to alter the capacitance properties of lipid bilayers (the stuff in our cell membranes).

[lusty fossil]

ooooh, so I can turn myself into a battery you say?

[raw jasper]

You /are/ a battery

Look up "electrochemical proton gradient"

[lusty fossil]

I remember that from bio

my teacher went on at length about how the Matrix had a bad premise

[raw jasper]

That's one way to teach it 😄

[lusty fossil]

I maintain that they originally intended for humans to be a distributed computing network, but they thought that that would be less accessible to audiences

[raw jasper]

That's what I seem to remember the Wachowskis saying

[lusty fossil]

Ah maybe that's why I think it

[dusk oracle]

so i was digging about and came across a aircraft transmitter, sadly there is no receiver and it is a bit old.
i washed the battery acid out the battery compartment but it dripped on the board bellow.
i replaced the pots with a batch i had that match.
Now i was thinking of shoving a esp32 a the main board since i use the esp32 a lot in projects.
And this would make a pretty cool controller for many projects.

the esp32 should have enough ADC pins for a ton of inputs

[lusty fossil]

It's funny listening to Foundation, the little things that date it. E.g. the super advanced civilization uses microfilm! I wonder what things in our modern science fiction books will seem quaint in the future.

Non-quantum computers?

Cancer?

[raw jasper]

I hope this will be the thing

[lusty fossil]

Would be nice

[raw jasper]

I once went to a guided tour to an ancient necropolis. The guide told us of various causes of death at the time. They sound so absurd now

I hope our descendants think the same of cancer

[lusty fossil]

Agreed

I'd add to that "starvation"

[dusty citrus]

trips and falls remain the number one** cause of accidental death.

___ ** number two in some years, outdone by self-poisonings (accidental)

They do a lot in hospitals to reduce the chance of tripping and falling.

[honest moth]

guess who's window had it's crank-based gearbox grind itself into oblivion.

[real falcon]

who is window? dunno

[honest moth]

it's mine.

my window decided it didn't like life anymore.

[raw jasper]

Are we talking about this evil thing?

[honest moth]

idk what that even is

[raw jasper]

Oh, it's a mechanism that controls window shutters

[honest moth]

ah, well if that was meant to serve as continuation for the conversation about my situation, then that is not what I was referring to.

You know how some older windows have a metal hand-crank attached to open the physical window itself?

[raw jasper]

Yes

[honest moth]

yeah, that's what broke.

[raw jasper]

Ouch X_X

[honest moth]

Aye...do you know of any place that still sells those things?

[raw jasper]

I'm in Europe, so I can't be of much help

[honest moth]

darn

well, thanks anyways

...here's to hoping someone still does, because I am not looking forward to replacing an entire window, gearbox assembly, frame, and all.

[raw jasper]

I'm sure you'll find something

[honest moth]

yeah...thanks for the encouragement.

I will try at least, and if I can't find it, then I'll jerry-rig it.

I do have a 3-D printer after all. :P

[raw jasper]

I've never had a 3D printer, nor do I know how to design stuff for the third dimension

[honest moth]

There are classes online for 3-D Modelling

and they are free too!

as for the 3-D Printer, I don't blame you. They are really expensive, even for the decent and lower-priced ones.

[raw jasper]

Any recommendations for classes in particular?

[honest moth]

if only i could remember any of them rn XD

I know they exist, but I can't remember the one I've been taking right now. Busy with a lot of things at the moment.

Sorry.

[raw jasper]

I can imagine that. I'm very busy on my end too

[honest moth]

ouch

welp, good luck to you and your endeavors, I'm getting back to it.

[raw jasper]

Have fun!

[honest moth]

You too!

and stay safe 💚

[raw jasper]

Yeah... This has become especially difficult...

[honest moth]

i heavily relate

[raw jasper]

Haven't had COVID yet (as far as I know), am vaccinated and boosted, but everything just keeps getting worse

[honest moth]

Same, same, and same.

We will persevere.

[raw jasper]

I'll try to avoid rolling that particular die if I can

[raw jasper]

Yeah, at least, we will try to..

[honest moth]

Aye.

welp, peace

[raw jasper]

Peace!

[dusty citrus]

https://parts.andersenwindows.com/

[unkempt nimbus]

Tinkercad is great for the basics, but you can’t get that complex in it

[raw jasper]

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll look into it when I have more time

Also, @unkempt nimbus , your status message is way too relatable 👀 😄

[honest moth]

Thanks!

[honest moth]

91.4/237 GB's free. The last stage of Phase 1 begins...

Datavault 1.1 has endured everything thus far, though temperatures fluctuate frequently unannounced. Copper fins have been added to assist with heat dispersal.

[wary herald]

Nice

[lapis bluff]

Well, you can add me to the list. I don't really like that style of window, but it came with the house. I have several of these that have committed suicide in various ways, including stripping out various parts of the mechanisms.

[honest moth]

Ooooouccchhhhiiieeee...

yeah, same over here in regards to them coming with the house.

[lapis bluff]

However, in my case, the major problem seems to be that after leaving them open all summer for ventilation, the window frame has expanded enough that they need excessive force to get them closed. I have about 4 with the expansion problem and only 2 with the stripped gearbox, and one other with a different problem.

I actually found a sign, now hanging over the stove (aka storage), that says, "I only have a kitchen because it came with the house." 🙂

[honest moth]

lol

[honest moth]

Nice

[honest moth]

Ironically, same issues over here. I will admit though, these things seem to last forever...until they don't. This house is about either a little above or below 100 years old, and it's still standing, so I would not be surprised if more things start breaking due to old age.

But hey, it happens.

[lapis bluff]

Well, my house is only about 37, and I've lived in it for more than half that time. (I just realized that as I was typing this reply, it's a revelation).

[hasty wedge]

Progress

[honest moth]

funny how that works isn't it?

nice! 👍

[hasty wedge]

How fast can you toggle an attiny seesaw's GPIO with i2c command

Like absolute maximum

[lusty fossil]

It's going to be based on the bus speed

Which language?

In CP, bus speed I think is default 100kHz so you're going to be limited by that

[hasty wedge]

Circuitpython

RP2040 is basically "the CircuitPython chip" to me

[umbral phoenix]

you can probably increase the I2C speed

[lapis bluff]

On an RP2040 you could use the PIO to get pretty high speeds, but I don't have any numbers. Maybe ask in #help-with-circuitpython and mention you are doing it on the RP2040 and maybe ask about with and without PIO for the driver.

Wait, you first asked about attiny seesaw and then switched to RP2040, the answers to those are very different!

[umbral phoenix]

I assume it's the Seesaw board connected to an RP2040

[umbral phoenix]

just did 10_000 digital output on+off cycles over I2C Seesaw on an RP2040 in ~46 seconds with 800kHz I2C... so ~214 Hz

that's a lot slower than I would have expected ...compare to ~55kHz for direct digitalio output and ~180kHz for an empty for _ in range(0, z) loop

[honest moth]

Upload complete.

Phase 1 complete. Phase 2 initiation pending...

[slim shard]

PIO is not to be discounted.

[honest moth]

Error: Service(s) unavailable until (unspecified).

Reason(s): Time has run out. I am going to need another week before I can get the proper amount of time to wipe [nullified] and start over with a more...stable Operating System (preferably a Linux distro). Until then, I'm sorry to say that Windows 10 will remain until further notice, but feel free to treat yourself to the improved boot times as more and more background components fall apart and render themselves inoperable. You will see this as a blessing rather than a curse, given enough time. We all know how much Windows 10 LOVES it's Bloatware.

So long as it's core remains intact, Windows 10 will continue running normally on the surface. Just...don't look at the Event Logs and stress yourself out. Oh, and don't try Zipping any files using traditional methods either, it will not work unless you use 7-Zip, courtesy of [REDACTED].

[fading hare]

Bro. You need to wipe that thing and reinstall.

[honest moth]

I know. This is a personal Lore dump.

[fading hare]

In other news, I got a new laptop. It came with Windows 11. I am not sure how I feel about it, yet.

Laptop is great. Rocking an RTX 3050 Ti. Fans scream in pain.

[honest moth]

Get the highest level of software protection possible for that thing.

[fading hare]

Done.

I ran Time Spy and the CPU thermal-throttled. So, a laptop cooling pad has been ordered.

[honest moth]

Nice.

[honest moth]

What brand is it, if I may?

or model, rather

[fading hare]

Lenovo Legion Slim 7 15"

[honest moth]

heck

YES

That is awesome!

[fading hare]

Ryzen 9 5900HX - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti - 1TB SSD

it's pretty dope

Stupid word censor bot.

[honest moth]

Imagine when you have to finally put Linux on that thing, should it ever get to that point.

[fading hare]

So, it won't let me say the word H.E.L.L.

[honest moth]

Prepare ship for LUDICROUS SPEED!!

[fading hare]

Nah, this is strictly for Windows and gaming.

[quartz wren]

Hey hey folks

Gonna be a whopping 27 tomorrow

[fading hare]

I have a workstation that's plenty fast for Linux, but, it's AMD so I can't really do any machine learning on it.

[honest moth]

Very nice.

not nice for machine learning

[fading hare]

yeah, it's all NVIDIA these days

training models is the most expensive part

[quartz wren]

If anyone's bent on getting me a gift the only thing I'm actually asking for this year is an easel sized graph pad

🤣

[fading hare]

What even is that?

[quartz wren]

You know like those big pads of paper you put on an easel

But with graph ruling on it

So I can draw up complex schematics in full

I like designing on paper

[honest moth]

you don't have to tell me twice.

blimey...

Aaaahhh, those things...

"An easel is an upright support used for displaying and/or fixing something resting upon it, at an angle of about 20° to the vertical. In particular, easels are traditionally used by painters to support a painting while they work on it, normally standing up, and are also sometimes used to display finished paintings."

[fading hare]

What I liked about this laptop is that it's 4K, but it actually runs games really well in 1080p.

[quartz wren]

Yeah but I'm just gonna lay on the ground with it if I get one

[fading hare]

So, when I am in Windows and reading stuff on the web, fonts are super smooth.

[quartz wren]

I just want something with enough real estate to design a whole microcontroller or computer circuit without having to split between pages

[honest moth]

cool

[quartz wren]

And I know there's graph pads that are sized for easels I just don't have it in my budget haha

[honest moth]

I can't relate to any of that.

Next laptop I'm getting after this one finally fries, is a Framework.

Done.

Infinite reparability, upgradeability, and reusability...hopefully.