All I know is that it sucked power like a $10 street hooker sucked... on a crack pipe... 

Wed Jan 20 2021 10:05:00 EST from LoanShark

You mentioned IA64 but I don't know anything about that ill-fated
design.  I know it required a special compiler so I would have to
assume it had at least some RISC-like design elements.

It was a lot like VLIW. Essentially more RISCy than RISC: not only were the instructions simpler and fixed-length, but it left all of the superscalar instruction scheduling to be handled by the compiler. I assume this means it was a superscalar, but *in-order* design.

From the outside, it looked like it had a lot of promise.  But that x86 problem .. 

I know it was a pig, we had to have it on a WIP on an isolated circuit, because when it shared circuits with the row of racks it was in on the DC, it would brown out those systems when we powered it up. Because we were Intel black-ops, we got them when they were still in a very developmental phase - but they never got much further than that, to be honest. 

Tue Jan 19 2021 16:49:25 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

 

You mentioned IA64 but I don't know anything about that ill-fated design.  I know it required a special compiler so I would have to assume it had at least some RISC-like design elements.

I recall hearing this too at some point about modern Intel x64 being RISC. I don't remember details though. For a long time I understood all of the generations but since IA64, it has gotten really difficult to keep track of. 

Well, yes and no.

x86 CPUs do have patchable microcode layers on them, which are used to break down complex instructions into smaller instructions.  That makes the inner core a bit more "RISC-like" but in my opinion it doesn't exactly qualify as being called a true RISC architecture.

They also use patchable microcode to apply bug fixes and upgrade existing chips to be identical to newer steppings.

Uncoincidentally, mainframe CPUs have been like this for at least 40 years.  We were applying microcode updates to the Waldenbooks mainframe back in the 1990s when I worked summers there.

You mentioned IA64 but I don't know anything about that ill-fated design.  I know it required a special compiler so I would have to assume it had at least some RISC-like design elements.

Well, might explain the problems i was having about that time.  On services that have ran fine for over a year. Suddenly inaccessible ( or intermittent ). But worked fine locally.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TOR/comments/kualce/all_v3_onion_addresses_down_after_attack_on_the/

I recall hearing this too at some point about modern Intel x64 being RISC. I don't remember details though. For a long time I understood all of the generations but since IA64, it has gotten really difficult to keep track of. 

Sun Jan 17 2021 07:36:48 EST from Nurb432

My understanding is x86 IS RISC under the hood.  Has been a while, but it emulates, in effect. the old style CISC.

Funny that ARM is considered an underdog, there are more ARM chips out there than anything else now ( mobile ) and they have been around almost as long as x86. ( i think late 80s compared to early 80s for intel ). I kjnow its a different market now they are fighting, servers and desktops, but just seems funny to me. Sort of the hare/turtle race. 

Some of my fondness is being an EE i like the better architecture, but i have also grown to dislike intel over the years. Sure, part of their problem has been maintaining a level of backwards compatibility over the decades, which makes it hard, but it goes beyond that, i dont trust them any more.( vpro anyone? ) Back when i DID trust them they had a few alternative architectures that were great, but didn't keep around long. One of them was the ( you will like this ) was the i432. Ya, where 1/2 my name comes from. Was far superior and forward thinking than x86 but silicon of the day wasn't up to the challenge. 

And of course they had the i960 which was true RISC.. but fell out of favor due to the bread and butter x86.  Or even strongarm.. licensed ARM architecture..

 

And while it has a long way to go, i hope RISC-V makes it. While i can see vendors mucking with the ISA and making those pieces proprietary, I hope the market avoids those vendors and keeps it 100% open.

 

Early DEC processors where you had external microcode.. wonderful stuff.  

 

Sat Jan 16 2021 16:11:06 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

I think we're fine with keeping it here. Remember that there are busy and not-so-busy seasons on a BBS.

I have to admit, one of the reasons I want ARM to succeed on the desktop is because I love an underdog. And although ARM is technically a proprietary architecture, it's more "open" in a multiple-suppliers sense than x86 is.
And of course, the whole world *should* have been RISC by now; it's only because of the chance selection of the 8088 by IBM forty years ago that Intel became the goliath it is today.

 

My understanding is x86 IS RISC under the hood.  Has been a while, but it emulates, in effect. the old style CISC.

Funny that ARM is considered an underdog, there are more ARM chips out there than anything else now ( mobile ) and they have been around almost as long as x86. ( i think late 80s compared to early 80s for intel ). I kjnow its a different market now they are fighting, servers and desktops, but just seems funny to me. Sort of the hare/turtle race. 

Some of my fondness is being an EE i like the better architecture, but i have also grown to dislike intel over the years. Sure, part of their problem has been maintaining a level of backwards compatibility over the decades, which makes it hard, but it goes beyond that, i dont trust them any more.( vpro anyone? ) Back when i DID trust them they had a few alternative architectures that were great, but didn't keep around long. One of them was the ( you will like this ) was the i432. Ya, where 1/2 my name comes from. Was far superior and forward thinking than x86 but silicon of the day wasn't up to the challenge. 

And of course they had the i960 which was true RISC.. but fell out of favor due to the bread and butter x86.  Or even strongarm.. licensed ARM architecture..

And while it has a long way to go, i hope RISC-V makes it. While i can see vendors mucking with the ISA and making those pieces proprietary, I hope the market avoids those vendors and keeps it 100% open.

Early DEC processors where you had external microcode.. wonderful stuff.  

Sat Jan 16 2021 16:11:06 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

I think we're fine with keeping it here. Remember that there are busy and not-so-busy seasons on a BBS.

I have to admit, one of the reasons I want ARM to succeed on the desktop is because I love an underdog. And although ARM is technically a proprietary architecture, it's more "open" in a multiple-suppliers sense than x86 is.
And of course, the whole world *should* have been RISC by now; it's only because of the chance selection of the 8088 by IBM forty years ago that Intel became the goliath it is today.

All true. 

Hurricanes from butterfly wings. 

Sat Jan 16 2021 16:11:06 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

I think we're fine with keeping it here. Remember that there are busy and not-so-busy seasons on a BBS.

I have to admit, one of the reasons I want ARM to succeed on the desktop is because I love an underdog. And although ARM is technically a proprietary architecture, it's more "open" in a multiple-suppliers sense than x86 is.
And of course, the whole world *should* have been RISC by now; it's only because of the chance selection of the 8088 by IBM forty years ago that Intel became the goliath it is today.

I'm not sure about THAT - but I am amused that on a BBS where so many people are rooting for that future, there isn't a dedicated ARM room. ;) 

Fri Jan 15 2021 11:25:33 EST from Nurb432

Well, ARM is the future.  Until it isn't :) 

Fri Jan 15 2021 10:46:21 EST from ParanoidDelusions

 

Well, ARM is the future.  Until it isn't :) 

Fri Jan 15 2021 10:46:21 EST from ParanoidDelusions

On Processor Rooms - I suppose so - but there have been so many vaguely off topic discussions that were more about ARM than about the name of the machine they're in - it seems we do end up discussing ARM specifically a lot on this BBS. :)

 

Well... things are still up in the air... but we'll see how the bricks fall. It seems to be mostly a matter of if I decide to throw them at anyone or not, at this point. ;)

But I'm not really great at holding back - as you may have noticed. :D

To celebrate the economic uncertainty - I just bought a $680.00 FPGA Amiga (Vampire V4 Standalone) from Germany. Because... obviously I'll have a lot of free time to kill once I am unemployed - and what better way to do so than absorbing myself in a 30 year old dead-end platform?

On Processor Rooms - I suppose so - but there have been so many vaguely off topic discussions that were more about ARM than about the name of the machine they're in - it seems we do end up discussing ARM specifically a lot on this BBS. :)

Fri Jan 15 2021 08:20:00 EST from Nurb432

Ack. sorry to hear you are out hitting the bricks. This is a bad time to be looking :(

 

While an ARM room isn't a bad idea, where does it stop? I want a RISC-V room, Moe wants a x86. Jerry wants FPGA...

Ack. sorry to hear you are out hitting the bricks. This is a bad time to be looking :(

While an ARM room isn't a bad idea, where does it stop? I want a RISC-V room, Moe wants a x86. Jerry wants FPGA...

Evidently not. 

Wondering if the best room to rave about the Pi400 would be this room, the Linux room, or if maybe Citadel needs an ARM room. 

In any case... for $100 USD... the Pi 400 is a pretty competent little computer. I probably should have gotten the 8GB model - if it is available, but 4GB is performing solidly so far. I'm on it right now. 

It is a particular good little computer if you want to introduce your rugrats to computing, I'd think. The default build is very education oriented. I wish I had one of these when I was 10-12. Scatch3 is an interesting introduction to programming concepts. Who knows, maybe this will be the thing that helps programming finally click for me. 

Also... I'm kind of in the job market... 

Anyone ever hear of this before?

https://onionbalance.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

None of them are *intolerable*, anymore... 

But when I was getting Citadel up and running on the Dell OptiPlex - I was rebooting Debian *a lot*. :) 

Thu Dec 24 2020 14:24:12 EST from Nurb432

What i should do is get one of those Lenovos and pull it out of the cluster then load different OSs on it. That way its fair by using the same exact hardware ( and loading the same app software ). They are new enough to have video drivers for widows, and i know people have been putting OSX on them, ill have to look into how that is done these days,

Not that it really means anything, just an interesting diversion over the holidays as i'm bored and dont feel like doing anything constructive ( i did that today . the great purge of 2020 started as im dumping nearly all of what is left of my dead tree books, and all my 'electronics' supplies ( resisters, transistors, bla bla. component stuff )

hu Dec 24 2020 12:07:29 EST from ParanoidDelusions

I've been reliably taking Citadel rooms off topic since I discovered the software around 1987. 

I'll do some times on my machines and report them here with specs. Debian is slower than OS X or Windows in my house - by a significant margin. 

 

Thu Dec 24 2020 07:31:05 EST from Nurb432

To continue a pointless topic that was in the wrong place :) 

 

 

 

 

What i should do is get one of those Lenovos and pull it out of the cluster then load different OSs on it. That way its fair by using the same exact hardware ( and loading the same app software ). They are new enough to have video drivers for widows, and i know people have been putting OSX on them, ill have to look into how that is done these days,

Not that it really means anything, just an interesting diversion over the holidays as i'm bored and dont feel like doing anything constructive ( i did that today . the great purge of 2020 started as im dumping nearly all of what is left of my dead tree books, and all my 'electronics' supplies ( resisters, transistors, bla bla. component stuff )

hu Dec 24 2020 12:07:29 EST from ParanoidDelusions

I've been reliably taking Citadel rooms off topic since I discovered the software around 1987. 

I'll do some times on my machines and report them here with specs. Debian is slower than OS X or Windows in my house - by a significant margin. 

 

Thu Dec 24 2020 07:31:05 EST from Nurb432

To continue a pointless topic that was in the wrong place :) 

 

 

 

I've been reliably taking Citadel rooms off topic since I discovered the software around 1987. 

I'll do some times on my machines and report them here with specs. Debian is slower than OS X or Windows in my house - by a significant margin. 

Thu Dec 24 2020 07:31:05 EST from Nurb432

To continue a pointless topic that was in the wrong place :) 

 

 

To continue a pointless topic that was in the wrong place :) 

Daily Driver:

_____________________________

Older Intel I5 ( 7260U ) + average speed M.2  + 32G ram ( not that it would effect boot times unless its so low you are swapping at start )

Debian 10 ( with all updates )

From "boot timeout"( which is graphical-ish ) to X11 ( LXDM in my case )  login ~ 5 seconds.   Displays about 3 lines of text for about a second then Debian logo the rest of the time.   Non stock services: Docker ( 1 auto start ) MySQL, PostgreSQL, Apache.

From login to desktop, under a second. Assuming i can type my dammed password right :)

For average end user id say pretty acceptable both in speed and appearance. If they blink they would never see the text. Windows is noticeably slower to boot on the same box. A lot more? No. just enough that a person would notice and grumble. "is it done yet"

Couple of ARM boards to follow.   

_____________________________

LOL

Thu Dec 17 2020 10:42:20 EST from Nurb432 @ Uncensored

"will this ride ever end"   " are we there yet"  

 

No. 

 

"will this ride ever end"   " are we there yet"  

No. 

Wed Dec 16 2020 23:45:10 EST from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored

My daughter took a Senior trip with a few friends from Phoenix to LA on the dog. 

We let her. Figured it was a valuable learning lesson. It certainly was. :) 

 

My daughter took a Senior trip with a few friends from Phoenix to LA on the dog. 

We let her. Figured it was a valuable learning lesson. It certainly was. :) 

Wed Dec 16 2020 19:34:24 EST from Nurb432 @ Uncensored

I knew exactly why i was there, at first. And what i was running away from. First year is a total blur. I know i went and did stuff.. but that is about all i can remember. Year 2, i looked around, in an 'school' apartment with 3 other guys, some 5 hours from home with a broke car and thought, wtf am i doing this is serious, i gotta get things in order, like right now.   Ended up on deans list, and teaching others before i left. Most of them got honors too. 

On the car thing: So as not to bother my parents and look like an idiot, i decided to take a greyhound home to gather my other car and work out how to get the other home.   NEVER again will i do that. it was a 9 hour ride. I remember the dread that i felt when they turned the opposite direction from home.. 'arrgh'. and stopped at EVERY DAMNED town between....  i should have just rented a u-haul and a car trailer, but the thought never crossed my younger and stupid self. Been a lot nicer and far shorter trip, and no return trip later that summer to bring the broke car back home to work on ( which was an adventure all on its own. Man i was stupid.. so were my friends, but we didnt die or goto jail.. ). But i guess the trip gave me a long boring evening to reflect on what the hell was going on in my life.  

 

Wed Dec 16 2020 09:42:51 EST from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored

 There are a lot of kids in college who really just don't know why they're there yet. 

 

I knew exactly why i was there, at first. And what i was running away from. First year is a total blur. I know i went and did stuff.. but that is about all i can remember. Year 2, i looked around, in an 'school' apartment with 3 other guys, some 5 hours from home with a broke car and thought, wtf am i doing this is serious, i gotta get things in order, like right now.   Ended up on deans list, and teaching others before i left. Most of them got honors too. 

On the car thing: So as not to bother my parents and look like an idiot, i decided to take a greyhound home to gather my other car and work out how to get the other home.   NEVER again will i do that. it was a 9 hour ride. I remember the dread that i felt when they turned the opposite direction from home.. 'arrgh'. and stopped at EVERY DAMNED town between....  i should have just rented a u-haul and a car trailer, but the thought never crossed my younger and stupid self. Been a lot nicer and far shorter trip, and no return trip later that summer to bring the broke car back home to work on ( which was an adventure all on its own. Man i was stupid.. so were my friends, but we didnt die or goto jail.. ). But i guess the trip gave me a long boring evening to reflect on what the hell was going on in my life.  

Wed Dec 16 2020 09:42:51 EST from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored

 There are a lot of kids in college who really just don't know why they're there yet. 

 

Interestingly, a lot of the people who had it together in high school and thought I was a loser who was going to end up in prison, showed back up on Facebook and told me privately, 

"Once I got away from home at college I went totally off the rails, and it set me back," and they all seemed kind of humbled that I had achieved not just so much more than they expected of me, but so much more than they had achieved themselves. 

So... I guess a LOT of it depends on the individual. College was a very positive thing for me - but I did it while well established as an adult. I guess it is possible that we do college too early. Maybe let people get calloused by some real world experience and do college because they *want* the goal, rather than they are expected to. That could be the problem. There are a lot of kids in college who really just don't know why they're there yet. 

Wed Dec 16 2020 06:15:06 EST from Nurb432 @ Uncensored

I donno, personal development ( maturity ) that many of us sort out during college helps all aspects of our life.

Perhaps the most important part of college, a buffer between high school and real life, a last chance for us to get our heads on straight. 

 

I donno, personal development ( maturity ) that many of us sort out during college helps all aspects of our life.

Perhaps the most important part of college, a buffer between high school and real life, a last chance for us to get our heads on straight. 

Tue Dec 15 2020 11:14:19 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

I don't regret going to college. I did a lot of personal development there, I met my wife there, I had a lot of fun there. I did not, however, learn anything in the classroom that benefited my career development.

Where did I learn the useful skills? Screwing around with computers at home.
Standing behind a television camera at the local cable company studio. Playing an instrument in a band. Drinking coffee and bullshitting with someone with experience. These are the things that make us who we are.

Going to college is just another one of those things. Sitting the quad debating an issue from class with a student, working through the system to figure out the best course to completion, meeting instructors who inspire and excite you about a topic... figuring out what you are best at, and enjoy the most, and want to do for the rest of your life - all of these experiences are just another set of experiences that make you who you are. 

I learned useful skill smoking dope on K Street with my head shaved. I learned useful things in Sacramento Community College. I learned useful things at MCI, Intel, and EMC... 

I don't know that I can disqualify anything I've ever done as a "waste of time" *or* a "waste of money," least of all, my incomplete college education. 

But maybe it comes down to outlook and perspective - if you dismiss an experience as useless and a waste - I suppose it probably is. 

Tue Dec 15 2020 11:14:19 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

Where did I learn the useful skills? Screwing around with computers at home.
Standing behind a television camera at the local cable company studio. Playing an instrument in a band. Drinking coffee and bullshitting with someone with experience. These are the things that make us who we are.

While i dont doubt id have landed somewhere else, i am sure it would not have resulted in the same life path. Often times, just a little change in what seems trivial at the time can make things turn out totally different.  Could have been better, could have been worse, but i dont expect it would be the same..

Mon Dec 14 2020 21:56:14 EST from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored

If you are smart, you would have found a different break, and probably the same career path, with some company more interested in practical ability and proven skills than paper degrees. 

 

 

If you are smart, you would have found a different break, and probably the same career path, with some company more interested in practical ability and proven skills than paper degrees. 

Mon Dec 14 2020 19:17:50 EST from Nurb432 @ Uncensored

In practical terms mine is too, BUT it got me my first interview, with EDS, and that would not have happened without ( no degree, we dont talk to you ), and that is what set me on my career path.

 

 

 

In practical terms mine is too, BUT it got me my first interview, with EDS, and that would not have happened without ( no degree, we dont talk to you ), and that is what set me on my career path.  ( other than some DUMB mistakes i never fully recovered from a few years later )

Mon Dec 14 2020 13:06:45 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

My college degree was useless, 

For much of my life, I would have agreed with this. I got very far with an 8th grade education - which is when I basically stopped going to school. Despite that by my early 20s I was in a technology job making significantly more than most of my peers who had graduated High School, and honestly, by my mid 20's I was making more than most of the teachers who had told me the only place I was going was prison. Without doing things that could have sent me to prison. 

But what I got from college was more intangible than the actual things I gained knowledge about. It sharpened my critical thinking skills. It introduced me to broader concepts, and challenged my biases. It gave me better skills to complete complex projects. It gave a framework to my raw abilities that I don't think a trade school would have refined in the same way. 

I think trade school is an awesome plan for some people - but I think what we really need is a return to college campuses creating critical thinkers, instead of

Mon Dec 14 2020 13:06:45 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

There is a growing school of thought which acknowledges that the traditional liberal arts degree is no longer useful. Many are now moving towards the idea that vocational training is much more desirable than a fluffy college diploma. Camille Paglia called for this a long time ago; she called it the "revalorization of the trades." More recently, Mike Rowe began some outreach programs to push the same idea and actually get kids into training for useful jobs.

I'm all for it. My college degree was useless, even though I studied for an actual skill, and that was 27 years ago. My career was far more enabled by the stuff I learned in my spare time.

As for industry certifications, specifically in IT ... back in the early 1990's I went to classes from time to time. I worked for a VAR and some of our vendors would request that we get someone trained on their stuff. The classes were informative and the tests were easy, usually in open-book form or in a lab with fully w

Same sort of problem with degrees, regardless of skill set it can be a requirement for entry. 

I was fortunate. I lost a lot of money along the way - but I came out ahead in the end, and it allowed me to get out of the corporate IT rat race and focus more on doing things that I wanted to do. I suppose I left a lot of money on the table - but it wasn't an environment I enjoyed. I've basically been semi-retired since about 2014. I do a little side gig that allows me to buy all the technology I want... and I can still pay the bills and have a few luxury cars in the garage. I never got further than a MCP in Windows Workstation 4.0 and a handful of other silly little certs like Dell/EMC SAN and Checkpoint Firewall - and I never really used them professionally. But we came up in a different time for IT - where applied skill and proven ability were all that hiring managers had to go by - and we were established professionals by the time the Cert game really got rolling. When I managed the IT shop in Ohio - the network guy was a real paper tiger. His cube was plastered with certs, and he was constantly get

Sat Dec 12 2020 16:16:45 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

I don't know about that ... maybe I'm just exceptionally talented, maybe I'm just lucky, or maybe it's just because I handed my career path over to God a long time ago ... but I'm about 2/3 of the way through my working years, and lack of certifications has never been an obstacle to my upward mobility.
I've never been turned down for a promotion for not having this or that cert, because my work speaks for itself.

Maybe if I was coming in cold at a big company it would make a difference.
I can't imagine ever wanting to have that kind of job. One of the reasons I stood out as a candidate when I was interviewing for my current job is because the hiring manager was familiar with my work on Citadel. And also because I use the vi editor. emacs users need not apply.

Funny, even back in college i would have never dreamed id have a story like that.  All the different positions, companies, the toll it takes on you, of a 35 year career when you have been burnt out for perhaps 30 of those years.

Figured id get a job, work then retire.  But no, between business decisions i had no part of, or just deciding i didnt like the position, change has been the only constant. At least until the last 19 years or so..  Same basic employer ( different departments as reorgs happen ) doing the same basic work.

I guess no one really knows the future...

When i left EDS back in the late 80s ( was a COBOL developer/project manager ) i ended up doing field service work for a good chunk of the 90s. It was pretty common practice back then to have your senior tech get all the vendor certs so the shop would get paid for warranty work. ( technically you cant work on a machine unless you have taken the tests, or you void the warranty ). Even tho i was assigned to a major client and remained onsite as a 'teamlead' type, I still racked up 100's of 'service' certs back then. Left there after the people i was working for started making some stupid business moves, and the client i was at got cut loose from corporate, making staying with them unattractive ( they were gone 2 years later )...   Then after a stint of being the 'resident network expert' for a financial company. ( lots of travel.. 2000+ car miles a week... i was over it ). The network certs i had ( novell, cisco, etc ), pretty much were required to even get the interview.

When A+ came around back in the 90s, it was directly stated "if you dont get this, you no longer are employed here" ( or anywhere else in the area )   Didn't matter how many years you had, or how good you were, it was just a 'job requirement" of being a tech. i dont have a clue if that is still important or not, i stopped caring around 2000 when i decided to get a job as a 'working' CTO. There we had various ISO certs we had to have as a business, or we couldn't ship product, but i didnt have to worry about any 'personal' certs.  ( iso certs in the automotive world is another scam, once you are 'in the club' you can only deal with other members in the club or you lose your standing.. its insane )

I got out of management couple of years later, and back into development/project management/itsm/bla bla  and once again the damned "if you dont have certs, you dont qualify" came into my world again.  Not as bad due to who i work for now but its still there. As i have helped with some interviewing,  i have seen many people denied entry due to lack of certs, regardless of their true qualifications. Here lately i have seen a push internally for certs to legacy employees.. not 'required' but 'highly suggested' ( i guess if the winds change and we lay people off, that will factor into who stays and who goes as on paper you are 'more valuable'. ). Some of our other BUs do have to have certs and stuff.. ( not all IT related, we support a plethora of other business units  ). There are a few cases were we have no choice, due to state and federal regulations.. but its not a lot.

Ok done rambling incoherently.. . i'm tired :)  But you get the point of where i was coming from i think .. its been a drain on me forever :) 

Unfortunately, certs are still relevant in my line of work ( at least as far as management is concerned, not 'reality' ). And without them it greatly hinders your career, or can torpedo it totally. 

I'm just glad its about over for me. 

It was pretty good to me, and I still love my hobby. I got far in part because I'd work 16 hours straight, come home, and unwind by spending a few hours tinkering with my systems at home. 

I mean, I kinda *like* that Citadel is such a bitch to set up. I like trying to bring Macs back from the dead (but I hate them when they die again)... It gives me weeks of diversion - it is like a crossword puzzle or game of chess or jigsaw puzzle, I guess... 


It helps keep my mind stimulated. 

Thu Dec 10 2020 20:43:57 EST from Nurb432 @ Uncensored

The certification treadmill  ( in most any field, not just IT ) is an obscene scam.

I'm so glad i can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and will get to flip the bird to the industry as i exit, stage left, and never have to care again. It cant come soon enough, after 35 years of doing this crap, i'm over it.

 

"make your hobby your job and you will never work a day" they said. They lied. It ruins your hobby and makes your life miserable.

The certification treadmill  ( in most any field, not just IT ) is an obscene scam.

I'm so glad i can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and will get to flip the bird to the industry as i exit, stage left, and never have to care again. It cant come soon enough, after 35 years of doing this crap, i'm over it.

"make your hobby your job and you will never work a day" they said. They lied. It ruins your hobby and makes your life miserable.

I came up in San Jose. I have burned all my technology bridges - as have all of my friends who were still hanging on to the West Coast IT scene. 

We've all been replaced by brown women from East Asia. 

But the brown guys from East Asia are starting to replace the white liberal guys from San Jose who got that ball rolling. So... Karma, I guess. 

Wed Dec 09 2020 21:59:44 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

Yeah - guys like you are why I have a career in IT. I actually picked

Well you'll be disappointed to hear that I am not a hiring manager anymore.
I left management to become a senior engineer and eventually an architect.
It's a great gig. Lots of brainy stuff and very little grunt work.

I am winning bigly right now. But if it ever comes to an end for whatever reason, the same person who originally hired me nearly 20 years ago would be eager to hire me again. (He's reading this but I'll leave names out so no one starts pestering him for a job.)

Yeah - guys like you are why I have a career in IT. I actually picked up a job at a Linux consultancy in Ohio after I left management for the Windows hosting healthcare company. 

Everyone there was dubious about the bosses decision. Within about 6 weeks, they were like, "you're gonna end up the manager here." One thing that I aced that everyone else was afraid of was SAMBA setup. 

But, I've always run into skeptics in my professional career. My thrashing about in the Citadel Support room makes it clear why. :) 

Tue Dec 08 2020 13:37:19 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

I've turned down a lot of job applicants who can't think outside the book.

Me too. I lost a job once because the guy doing the interview expected me to be able to snap answers off the top of my head in these abstract scenarios. I find that I'm actually far more successful at resolving issues than my peers who are encyclopedic in their knowledge of what works. They tend to do it by the book, and when that doesn't work, they do the next thing in the book, until they run out of book and ideas. 


Meanwhile, I'm over here *thinking* about the issue and trying to understand what is going wrong - and it might be a messier process - but in the long run, I often figure out what the problem is - often by breaking the rules and doing things you're "not supposed to do." Then the encyclopedia guys look at what I did and how I did it and go, "Oh! That shouldn't work. You're not supposed to be able to do THAT! That must mean THIS is broken..." and fix the actual problem, and then the "by the book," way works and they go, "I *fixed* it! Good thing, because that other guy was re

Mon Dec 07 2020 18:07:28 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

 I'm a thinker not a memorizer.

yay

Sat Nov 28 2020 20:06:58 EST from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored

 

There is a good chance that everything I bitch about over the next week or so will be operator error. 

Sat Nov 28 2020 19:35:35 EST from Nurb432 @ Uncensored

Easy install, and never tried using packages since they always lag behind.

For x86, it looks like its Buster for the latest install i just did ( to bring back an install i thought i had saved, but apparently didnt. Always back up before you blow away VMs and never assume :) ) But the install i lost, was on stretch.  On arm64, i suspect it was stretch as buster was still sid at that point. 

I did a bare os install, only base tools and SSH server, so i had to add wget first, but other than that,  easy install just 'worked'...

 

Sat Nov 28 2020 18:37:53 EST from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored

 

 

 Did you do the easy install? Which verison? Buster or Stretch? 

 

Give details. :) 

 

 

 

Its sort of inferred by the instructions. The file retrieved is being piped into bash..

4616169@Uncensored

Is this how it is supposed to work, and it is just inferred that you know it? That you download easy-install then run "bash install", or is it supposed to be that you just download easy-install and it auto-executes the script and you answer some questions? 

Because the current document isn't totally clear about that - if you're not familiar with Linux. 

Now if I can just figure out how to export my current Citadel to this install - I'm in business. Well, I'm at least setting up for business. 

Yeah, I'm an idiot. I was going to say in my last post that I had been drinking so I was done effing around with Linux tonight. Then I logged off, drank some more, and effed around with Linux some more. Uninstalled the package, and ran the easy install script again. Wondered why I was getting those weird messages, and looked at the "install" file that the easy-install downloads. Everything looked right, and not at ALL like the error message I was getting... 

So I thought, "maybe I need to run this install as a script". I had tried before... and I seem to remember scripts needed to be in the format ./script to run, or something like that... traditionally. That wasn't working. So I looked at the install repositories, and I have BASH installed - so it wasn't that I was trying to run a script for a shell I didn't have installed. 

"Am I running the script wrong?" 

"Google, how do I run a BASH script?" 

"Bash script.sh" 

Hmmmm... 

bash inst

There is a good chance that everything I bitch about over the next week or so will be operator error. 

Easy install, and never tried using packages since they always lag behind.

For x86, it looks like its Buster for the latest install i just did ( to bring back an install i thought i had saved, but apparently didnt. Always back up before you blow away VMs and never assume :) ) But the install i lost, was on stretch.  On arm64, i suspect it was stretch as buster was still sid at that point. 

I did a bare os install, only base tools and SSH server, so i had to add wget first, but other than that,  easy install just 'worked'...

Sat Nov 28 2020 18:37:53 EST from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored

 

 

 Did you do the easy install? Which verison? Buster or Stretch? 

 

Give details. :) 

 

 

Sat Nov 28 2020 17:49:19 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

Didn't answer this. Yeah, they use Cisco routers that are
preconfigured and locked down to open the VPN connection to their
end. If I were Ig, I could probably get around this - but I'm not,
unfortunately - so, that router has to be there. 

Right ... as previously mentioned, I did a password recovery on my router, and I moved the VPN-tunneled network off the router's LAN port and onto a separate VLAN of the WAN port. So on my server machine, the untagged VLAN is on the "regular" network while the Internet-facing servers are on a VLAN-tagged network.

If you are brave enough to attempt a password recovery on your router, I can supply the configuration changes you need for the rest.

Nurb432 -- I wanted to do exactly what you're suggesting, and move the router to a VM running on the host machine. They said it's too difficult to support, but I assured them that I would not ask for support so they gave me the tunnel credentials. They believe that the reason their configuration is difficult to support with software is because they use separate credentials for the L2TP and PPP layers. I was able to get that taken care of no problem, the tunnel came up and I was able to ping the far-end interface ... but for some reason it

I feel like I could probably handle cracking the Cisco... I've done my fair share of this kind of thing generally - unsupported Android ROMs, jailbreaking iPhones, Hackintosh systems - and before it was *easy*... and back in the 80s, phreaking and cable black boxes. But I don't know that I want to get that deep into this, compared to, "I'm going to put this on a spare Pi and throw it on my home ISP with DDNS and it is what it is..." which is how I started out. I've already gone way beyond that point simply by signing up for the Ace VPN IP service - and then the OptiPlex Tiny was another $125, plus $25 for an SSD. 

I'd like to get that up and running, because I think it will solve some of the problems I've got with my Pi and Raspbian, in particular file attachments and uploads - but... it is proving to need more mental cycles than I want to invest right now. The resource cost to get it all migrated to an Intel box is more expensive than I had foreseen. 

Maybe I'll play around with Proxmox and VMs on these NUCs for a while and get myself back up to speed with being comfortable with Linux first. 

I mean, a month or two ago, I was investing a ton of time in learning how to get AmigaOS working with a Parallel to Ethernet adapter and using CF and SD cards as emulated SCSI drives - and really getting back up to speed with THAT OS. By the end of it, I was feeling quite the Amiga expert. Now after a month away, I sat down and couldn't remember which drawer my web browser was in. It takes just a little time NOT using a platform as your daily driver before you forget the tricks that it is capable of. But, that was 25 years since I last used it - and I was feeling pretty competent after a month of using it every day. It isn't quite like riding a bike, but you still pick it up faster the second or third time around. 

Networking is something I just never had a lot of professional training in - my career path was always focused more on systems support. I mean, as SANs got popular systems guys had to learn more about mesh configurations and VMs also required a little more understanding at the systems level - but I never put much into advanced networking concepts. I read about a vlan and I get the general idea - but the application is a little abstract. 

Sat Nov 28 2020 16:38:29 EST from Nurb432 @ Uncensored

Donno about preferred, but i have had zero issues installing it on x86 Debian, using easy install.  ( worked on arm64 Armbian for me too, but only did that once )

Sat Nov 28 2020 16:21:14 EST from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored

 

 

Is there a prefered distro for Citadel? It certainly ain't anything Debian derived. I'm a big fan of Debian and its variants - but as this is going to be just a server, I'm not really afraid of CentOS or other Redhat distro. A little more headache upfront for me... but once it is running, I don't plan on doing much with it but letting it run. 

 

 

 Did you do the easy install? Which verison? Buster or Stretch? 

 

Give details. :) 

 

Donno about preferred, but i have had zero issues installing it on x86 Debian, using easy install.  ( worked on arm64 Armbian for me too, but only did that once )

Sat Nov 28 2020 16:21:14 EST from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored

 

 

Is there a prefered distro for Citadel? It certainly ain't anything Debian derived. I'm a big fan of Debian and its variants - but as this is going to be just a server, I'm not really afraid of CentOS or other Redhat distro. A little more headache upfront for me... but once it is running, I don't plan on doing much with it but letting it run. 

 

 

ya, that would works too. i was just thinking from the wireless angle. But ya a usb/wired adapter works too ( just gotta watch drivers there too )

And i dont think you were sounding stupid, none of us are experts :)

Sat Nov 28 2020 16:23:40 EST from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored

 

Sat Nov 28 2020 01:00:48 EST from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored

Would this work better if I just didn't use the WiFi and instead plugged in a USB ethernet adapter and hooked that up wired to the regular household ISP provider's router and plugged the built in ethernet into the Cisco? 

 

Also, I've been feeling teh $TuP1dZ the last few days. I haven't been able to verbalize very professionally what I've been running into. Just kind of bouncing off walls and not making a lot of sense describing my issues. I feel like I'm finally getting a handle on explaining it so I don't sound like a complete noob, here. I'm not a pro in this area of the enterprise - but I know enough to have a fairly intelligent conversation - even though some of my recent posts might lead people to believe otherwise. :) 

 

Sat Nov 28 2020 10:22:35 EST from Nurb432 @ Uncensored

a thought. could you run the VPN to your IP provider on a VM? do you need it to be on the router?

That would open up some options too. 

Didn't answer this. Yeah, they use Cisco routers that are preconfigured and locked down to open the VPN connection to their end. If I were Ig, I could probably get around this - but I'm not, unfortunately - so, that router has to be there. 

Same service Ig uses for Uncensored. It works awesome - and acts basically like an appliance. You plug it in, you plug your device into it, Give your device their public IP address, and you're on the Internet. 

Sat Nov 28 2020 01:00:48 EST from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored

Would this work better if I just didn't use the WiFi and instead plugged in a USB ethernet adapter and hooked that up wired to the regular household ISP provider's router and plugged the built in ethernet into the Cisco? 

 

Also, I've been feeling teh $TuP1dZ the last few days. I haven't been able to verbalize very professionally what I've been running into. Just kind of bouncing off walls and not making a lot of sense describing my issues. I feel like I'm finally getting a handle on explaining it so I don't sound like a complete noob, here. I'm not a pro in this area of the enterprise - but I know enough to have a fairly intelligent conversation - even though some of my recent posts might lead people to believe otherwise. :) 

Sat Nov 28 2020 10:12:18 EST from Nurb432 @ Uncensored

Ok, so 2 separate networks. WiFi as mgt and wired for vm is what you really want.

What they described is sort of what i was talking about with more than one mac on WiFi blowing things up. Not being a network expert, while i see what they suggested would work for outgoing, i dont understand how its going to route back inside and keep your interface off the public at the same time. It 'seems' like a simple Nat, and exposing your host to the outside directly. But it seems simple enough so you have zero to lose by trying it.

Is there any way to get to your outside via wireless ? My thought was you have a pi, you could do a Ethernet to WiFi bridge ( internal ) and the host would never know. Then give your vm control of the internal WiFi to connect outside ( as you can install any driver you want .. ). Of course if you *have* to be hardwired for the guest that a no-go.

What i do here with only 1 IP: i have nothing in DMZ, and do port forwards from the outside into my internal network to VMs that might need it. Since its all on my 'intenral' network I figure that is safer than exposing an entire device and makes it simple to maintain.  At one point i had a reverse proxy ( tiny proxy ) parsing url requests so i could run 3 on a single port, but that was temporary during some testing to see if i could get it to work.  This works for me as i only have 2 ports exposed ( one for VPN and one for guacamole ). Everything else i do is via VPN into my network from the outside or guac...

On a customer site, its the same deal, its all via VPN unless they want a public website, then its a port forward to that VM.

Yes, i do have the issue if they break into the exposed VM and get root they have access to my internal network. But that is a really low risk since i'm only exposing a single app.  PVE does have a built in firewall you could wrap around a VM. Lock all ports from any traffic in or out, but the one you are exposing. Do all mgt from the console ( i have not used their FW yet.. i just know its there ). Its on my list of things to look into for a couple of the vms. 

 

 

at the office we dont put anything outside on the DMZ either. its all via reverse proxy.. 

 a thought. could you run the VPN to your IP provider on a VM? do you need it to be on the router?

That would open up some options too.

 

 

Yeah. 2 Separate networks. But, I was thinking, it gets more complicated than that with the bridged interface. So... I think what happens is I give the bridged interface that holds the wired ethernet as a slave the current public IP address that resides on the wired NIC on the Pi. We'll call it 72.x.x.x for now. Then I give the VM running Citadel whatever I want. It bridges through the real 72.x.x.x subnet on the physical, wired NIC. 

That is all good. But I agree, I think that there is no way to turn off the MANAGEMENT of Proxmox on that NIC. You just have to block 8006 with the firewall built into Proxmox if you want to prevent the management console from being accessible over the public network. 

But if you want a management NIC on a different, internal, non-routable subnet... we'll call that 192.x.x.x - I can't find any instructions on how to set that up. I *think* you might just set up

 

a thought. could you run the VPN to your IP provider on a VM? do you need it to be on the router?

That would open up some options too. 

Ok, so 2 separate networks. WiFi as mgt and wired for vm is what you really want.

What they described is sort of what i was talking about with more than one mac on WiFi blowing things up. Not being a network expert, while i see what they suggested would work for outgoing, i dont understand how its going to route back inside and keep your interface off the public at the same time. It 'seems' like a simple Nat, and exposing your host to the outside directly. But it seems simple enough so you have zero to lose by trying it.

Is there any way to get to your outside via wireless ? My thought was you have a pi, you could do a Ethernet to WiFi bridge ( internal ) and the host would never know. Then give your vm control of the internal WiFi to connect outside ( as you can install any driver you want .. ). Of course if you *have* to be hardwired for the guest that a no-go.

What i do here with only 1 IP: i have nothing in DMZ, and do port forwards from the outside into my internal network to VMs that might need it. Since its all on my 'intenral' network I figure that is safer than exposing an entire device and makes it simple to maintain.  At one point i had a reverse proxy ( tiny proxy ) parsing url requests so i could run 3 on a single port, but that was temporary during some testing to see if i could get it to work.  This works for me as i only have 2 ports exposed ( one for VPN and one for guacamole ). Everything else i do is via VPN into my network from the outside or guac...

On a customer site, its the same deal, its all via VPN unless they want a public website, then its a port forward to that VM.

Yes, i do have the issue if they break into the exposed VM and get root they have access to my internal network. But that is a really low risk since i'm only exposing a single app.  PVE does have a built in firewall you could wrap around a VM. Lock all ports from any traffic in or out, but the one you are exposing. Do all mgt from the console ( i have not used their FW yet.. i just know its there ). Its on my list of things to look into for a couple of the vms. 

at the office we dont put anything outside on the DMZ either. its all via reverse proxy.. 

I mean, ultimately what I want is a dual homed machine - with the wired NIC hooked up to the Cisco, acting as a switch... and the VM assigned a public IP address on that network... 

The wireless NIC hooked up to my internal network, for management from the console. 

I don't really want the wired NIC bridged to the wireless one, and I don't care if the VM is accessible from the wireless, internal NIC. 

I'd prefer that the Proxmox console not be reachable over the public, wired network, either. 

Just the Proxmox console via the internal WiFi. If I can connect to the Proxmox console over the internal network - then I can open a shell and telnet to the VM, or open a console on the VM and just connect to localhost. 


Would this work better if I just didn't use the WiFi and instead plugged in a USB ethernet adapter and hooked that up wired to the regular household ISP provider's router and plugged the built in ethernet into the Cisco? 

Maybe I'm overcomplicating this. 
vmbr0 is currently... 

I'm too tired to think this through tonight. But basically... right now I'm building the Proxmox machine on an internal, non-routable subnet. 

I've assigned vmbr0 an ipp address, gateway, subnet and dns on that internal network. 

And what I want to do is put it on a different internal, non routable subnet where the Pi is currently connected, so I can do ctdlmigrate from the Pi to the VM on Proxmox. 

If it were bare metal, it would be a piece of cake. I'd set it up just like the Pi. The external wired network would have a public IP address, the WiFi would be connected to the same internal non-routable network as the Pi is connected to wirelessly. 

Is this what I need to be doing? 

3.3.5. Routed Configuration

Some providers allow you to register additional MACs through their management interface. This avoids the problem, but can be clumsy to configure because you need to register a MAC for each of your VMs.

A common scenario is that you have a public IP (assume 198.51.100.5 for this example), and an additional IP block for your VMs (203.0.113.16/29). We recommend the following setup for such situations:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eno1
iface eno1 inet static
        address  198.51.100.5
        netmask  255.255.255.0
        gateway  198.51.100.1
        post-up echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
        post-up echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/eno1/proxy_arp


auto vmbr0
iface vmbr0 inet static
        address  203.0.113.17
        netmask  255.255.255.248
        bridge-ports none
        bridge-stp off
        bridge-fd 0

Fri Nov 27 2020 21:22:13 EST from Nurb432 @ Uncensored

If you are trying to have multiple systems using the same WiFi interface as a bridge, its going to be problematic.  It requires a router that can support that sort of connection for starters, and a bit of funny business on the other side too.  Most commodity routers dont like promiscuous mode on incoming wireless i have found. Security risks and all i guess.

I was in a similar boat when i was doing some testing (  I dont have wire running to where my lab is back to my 'network closet'.  Long story. ). And after being frustrated for an afternoon I ended up just digging a WiFi USB dongle out of the bin and attached that to the VM.  it was just a short term experiment anyway, so i didnt need a 'full bridge',  and didnt care it was a slower connection, being an older dongle that pretty much everone has drivers for out of the box. 

Later i broke down and bought a couple of those Ethernet over power-line adapters for when i was wanting to do bench testing and WiFi wasn't available for some reason. ( but i figure your situation is different )

Ok... so... that isn't what I'm trying to do - it seems like what most people are trying to do, though. 

I'm trying to assign the management console for Proxmox to the Wireless NIC. The Ethernet will host the VM's public IP address. 

I might be unclear on how this would work. 

So... to understand this... I've got a regular ISP provided router. From one of the ethernet ports, it goes to an Cisco router. That Cisco router tunnels by a VPN to my Public IP provider (who is different than my regular ISP). An ethernet cable hooks the router up to my Raspberry Pi - and the Pi is configured with a public IP address. 

The Raspberry also connects to the WiFi on the REGULAR ISP provided router. That gets an internal DHCP lease. 

In this way, I can connect to the Raspberry Pi internally through the WiFi, or come in to it externally from the public IP address, and each IP is hosted on a separate NIC. 

So it isn't actually a bridge. The external IP

3: wlp3s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state DOWN group default qlen 1000

    link/ether hex

    inet ***.***.0.6/24 brd ***.***.0.255 scope global dynamic wlp3s0

With the internal IP address assigned - but state is DOWN, and ifup returns....

 ifup wlp3s0

ifup: interface wlp3s0 already configured



Actually, after an ifdown and then ifup - now I'm able to ping the gateway, but the vmbr0 bridge isn't able to see the wlp3s0 interface.  

And it can't be edited, either. I added wlp3s0 to Ports/Slaves in vmbr0 manually. 

Keep in mind, I know just enough to be dangerous here - as if you hadn't already figured that much out. :) 

If you are trying to have multiple systems using the same WiFi interface as a bridge, its going to be problematic.  It requires a router that can support that sort of connection for starters, and a bit of funny business on the other side too.  Most commodity routers dont like promiscuous mode on incoming wireless i have found. Security risks and all i guess.

I was in a similar boat when i was doing some testing (  I dont have wire running to where my lab is back to my 'network closet'.  Long story. ). And after being frustrated for an afternoon I ended up just digging a WiFi USB dongle out of the bin and attached that to the VM.  it was just a short term experiment anyway, so i didnt need a 'full bridge',  and didnt care it was a slower connection, being an older dongle that pretty much everone has drivers for out of the box. 

Later i broke down and bought a couple of those Ethernet over power-line adapters for when i was wanting to do bench testing and WiFi wasn't available for some reason. ( but i figure your situation is different )

Fri Nov 27 2020 18:10:24 EST from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored

 

The only problem I seem to have is that Proxmox doesn't want to see the non-free Intel WiFi in my Optiplex 3020. I added the non-free Deb repos - and attempted install with apt update && apt install firmware-iwlwifi but that errors out - and seems to have to do with the way Proxmox handles management of the NIC. To install iwlwifi wants to uninstall the managed NIC and Proxmox is warning that this is probably a really stupid idea and I shouldn't continue. 

 

 

I see lots of people having trouble with this - but everyone is approaching it from wanting to share the WiFi as a slave for use as VM interfaces - and evidently, Proxmox can't do this. 

But I just want it available to Proxmox for the management console. The VM itself can connect solely to my public network, as long as I can remote in to the Proxmox console over WiFi on my internal network. Does that make sense? 



 

Fri Nov 27 2020 17:29:31 EST from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored

 

Fri Nov 27 2020 12:38:28 EST from Nurb432 @ Uncensored

I'm just playing around right now trying to see what fits. So far, this is going fairly swimmingly. 

The only problem I seem to have is that Proxmox doesn't want to see the non-free Intel WiFi in my Optiplex 3020. I added the non-free Deb repos - and attempted install with apt update && apt install firmware-iwlwifi but that errors out - and seems to have to do with the way Proxmox handles management of the NIC. To install iwlwifi wants to uninstall the managed NIC and Proxmox is warning that this is probably a really stupid idea and I shouldn't continue. 

Fri Nov 27 2020 12:38:28 EST from Nurb432 @ Uncensored

There is a way to install PVE onto an existing Debian. But honesty, its not worth the trouble.  Far easier just to do the supported thing and follow the bouncing ball from the installer ISO.

 

I suppose if you had some sort of setup you didnt want to lose so you *had* to retain your original OS its an option, but if that is the case, personally dont feel you really should be installing anything more than simple KVM on it..   In my case my desktop is setup like that, just 'raw kvm'. Reason being is I *have* to run a windows for work, so i run a VM.  Only have it on when i need it. And since its my daily driver desktop, I really dont want to create a server out of it at the same time. And if i ever go back to the office again, the VM just gets copied over to a laptop. ( been home since march.. last wild ass guess from management is perhaps late spring to return, on a 50% rotating schedule )

I'm just playing around right now trying to see what fits. So far, this is going fairly swimmingly. 

4615481@Uncensored

Oh, and really i'm an *bsd guy,  and have been, but i will always choose the best tool for the job.  Debian was/is still one of the more traditional Linux distributions out there, so when i need a penguin that is the one i choose.  However, since they decided to go down the sysD rabbit hole, i'm looking seriously into Devuan 

( and sorry for all the typos today, migraines do that to me )

There is a way to install PVE onto an existing Debian. But honesty, its not worth the trouble.  Far easier just to do the supported thing and follow the bouncing ball from the installer ISO.

I suppose if you had some sort of setup you didnt want to lose so you *had* to retain your original OS its an option, but if that is the case, personally dont feel you really should be installing anything more than simple KVM on it..   In my case my desktop is setup like that, just 'raw kvm'. Reason being is I *have* to run a windows for work, so i run a VM.  Only have it on when i need it. And since its my daily driver desktop, I really dont want to create a server out of it at the same time. And if i ever go back to the office again, the VM just gets copied over to a laptop. ( been home since march.. last wild ass guess from management is perhaps late spring to return, on a 50% rotating schedule )

Fri Nov 27 2020 07:55:13 EST from Nurb432 @ Uncensored

Its a bare metal installer. Its just they based their core OS on Debian, not that you have to take a Debian install and stick it on top of that. Most people dont care what the OS is, but i like that its based on something open, and something im familiar with if things go sideways. ( in the Linux world, i prefer Debian. Both technical and political reasons, even tho they did finally cave to the abomination of sysD .. grrr  )

With PVE, if you dont know its Linux, unless you care to know.  Nearly everything is done via a GUI, so its really just an 'appliance' and the core OS is totally hidden.  Might be a few obscure things that need CLI now, like dropping servers out of a cluster, or adding certbot, or changing repos if you dont buy a subscription, but daily life, does not.   Dropping hosts, was a slight pain, had to run 4 commands :) Changing repos, a simple edit of a text file and they tell you what to change.  

Really, dont let that it runs on Linux put you off. Most likely yo will never have to worry about it.

Actually, I'm a Debian guy. I was at my peak back with Sarge and Potato - compiling and making my own kernals to add WiFi and sound support for Non-Free laptops and doing other things that got me pretty far into the internals of Linux. 

Here is the thing for me - a lot of the obscure commands - most Linux users are also programmers - and scripters - and they love all the advance programming oriented features of the various shells. But for someone more on the engineering side, like myself - those don't matter a lot and there aren't a lot of use cases for me to learn them. So a lot of time, as more of a system engineer/architect/admin kind of guy - I don't know where to even start looking in Linux to get what I want to need done, done. The other thing is - the kind of people who love Linux write the WORST technical documentation. They assume a ton of prerequisite knowledge and tend to use very technical formats and language. This has improved as Ubuntu has made Linux a more end-user ac

Thanks for pointing me in this direction. At this point, I've got the Pi burned as an image, I've tested the image onto a different SD card - so I've got good redundancy if something happens to what I am running right now. I'm going to take the upgrade and migration pretty slow and methodically - and will probably try a few different test environments before I push one to production. 

Its a bare metal installer. Its just they based their core OS on Debian, not that you have to take a Debian install and stick it on top of that. Most people dont care what the OS is, but i like that its based on something open, and something im familiar with if things go sideways. ( in the Linux world, i prefer Debian. Both technical and political reasons, even tho they did finally cave to the abomination of sysD .. grrr  )

With PVE, if you dont know its Linux, unless you care to know.  Nearly everything is done via a GUI, so its really just an 'appliance' and the core OS is totally hidden.  Might be a few obscure things that need CLI now, like dropping servers out of a cluster, or adding certbot, or changing repos if you dont buy a subscription, but daily life, does not.   Dropping hosts, was a slight pain, had to run 4 commands :) Changing repos, a simple edit of a text file and they tell you what to change.  

Really, dont let that it runs on Linux put you off. Most likely yo will never have to worry about it.

Thu Nov 26 2020 14:01:29 EST from Nurb432 @ Uncensored

Yes, PVE has advanced much over the years. I moved to it a few years ago for both myself and clients when citrix started yanking features out of 'free' xenserver.   A 3rd party company that sells management tools did take all the bits and pieces and inserted all the features again, but as i liked PVE more anyway once i got into it, i didnt go back. ( built in web management, both fat vms and containers, and ceph native support won the day. AND is basically Debian under the hood )

They now have an integrated backup solution for PVE, was just released this summer. 

 

Thu Nov 26 2020 00:01:22 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

ProxMox VE was awesome when I used it, and that was about nine years ago.
I ran a five node cluster with shared storage. I can only assume it's gotten better since then.

If you want to dedicate a host computer to running Internet-facing servers on virtual machines, the setup is easy, just plug the VPN router into the computer and go. If you need to have it on both the Internet and the local network, you can do that with two Ethernet interfaces; just make sure to disable IPv6 on the bridge or it *will* pick up an address and use it, when you probably intended for your client-side web surfing to use the local network.

As previously mentioned, I run the Internet side on a separate VLAN instead of a separate interface. It works great but it requires enough knowledge of Cisco IOS to know how to configure subinterfaces and move L2TP tunnel endpoints around ... oh, and also how to reset the administrator password without wiping the config or bricking the rout

 

So, does it install as a stand alone VM manager at the bare metal, or do you install Debian and then install it? 

I'm at an impasse right now. I've got to take my Cit down to back it up, then if the backup works I have to upgrade it, so that I can Citadel Migrate it from the Pi to the i5. 

Plus, I've got to get Linux installed, or this... and configured before I do all that. 

While relearning all the *nix things I've forgotten as I go. 

It is a bit overwhelming. I've got a lot of pre-reqs ahead of me that mean a lot of reading before I get to the doing. 

I imagine this might take a few attempts before I'm actually ready to go live on the i5 with the results. 

Yes, PVE has advanced much over the years. I moved to it a few years ago for both myself and clients when citrix started yanking features out of 'free' xenserver.   A 3rd party company that sells management tools did take all the bits and pieces and inserted all the features again, but as i liked PVE more anyway once i got into it, i didnt go back. ( built in web management, both fat vms and containers, and ceph native support won the day. AND is basically Debian under the hood )

They now have an integrated backup solution for PVE, was just released this summer. 

Thu Nov 26 2020 00:01:22 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

ProxMox VE was awesome when I used it, and that was about nine years ago.
I ran a five node cluster with shared storage. I can only assume it's gotten better since then.

If you want to dedicate a host computer to running Internet-facing servers on virtual machines, the setup is easy, just plug the VPN router into the computer and go. If you need to have it on both the Internet and the local network, you can do that with two Ethernet interfaces; just make sure to disable IPv6 on the bridge or it *will* pick up an address and use it, when you probably intended for your client-side web surfing to use the local network.

As previously mentioned, I run the Internet side on a separate VLAN instead of a separate interface. It works great but it requires enough knowledge of Cisco IOS to know how to configure subinterfaces and move L2TP tunnel endpoints around ... oh, and also how to reset the administrator password without wiping the config or bricking the rout

Thu Nov 26 2020 00:01:22 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

ProxMox VE was awesome when I used it, and that was about nine years ago.
I ran a five node cluster with shared storage. I can only assume it's gotten better since then.

If you want to dedicate a host computer to running Internet-facing servers on virtual machines, the setup is easy, just plug the VPN router into the computer and go. If you need to have it on both the Internet and the local network, you can do that with two Ethernet interfaces; just make sure to disable IPv6 on the bridge or it *will* pick up an address and use it, when you probably intended for your client-side web surfing to use the local network.

As previously mentioned, I run the Internet side on a separate VLAN instead of a separate interface. It works great but it requires enough knowledge of Cisco IOS to know how to configure subinterfaces and move L2TP tunnel endpoints around ... oh, and also how to reset the administrator password without wiping the config or bricking the rout

Yeah... CCSE/CCSA was something I skipped. ;) 

But I've already got the Pi Multihomed. The NUC has built in Ethernet and WiFi... so that is simple to set up. 

I'll play around with it. I do like the idea of having things in a VM and having them take snapshots and having live backups. 

Wed Nov 25 2020 12:18:41 EST from Nurb432 @ Uncensored

For what its worth, i run proxmox on my cluster.  The overhead is minimal, and its got a great enterprise ready web GUI. ( and other features like integrated ceph.. )

I checked out their webpage. I'm going back and forth with the idea of running it in a VM. Lots of advantages... 

But a learning curve for me if I put it on a Linux box. If I put it on Windows - then if there is some sort of power outage or system crash/BSOD - I'm not sure how easy it is to get everything automatically up and running again. 

I start making it more robust - I start adding a lot of administration overhead to it. The problem with running your own servers is that you become your own IT department. 

One thing I can say about the Pi - it has been rock solid. If Citadel crashes, it just restarts - the OS is super stable - and it is *simple*. Not a lot of maintenance or administration necessary. 

For what its worth, i run proxmox on my cluster.  The overhead is minimal, and its got a great enterprise ready web GUI. ( and other features like integrated ceph.. )

Wed Nov 25 2020 09:08:40 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

And any suggestions on a very inexpensive NUC that would be a good
replacement? 

If all you're running is Citadel you can use almost any of them. I have an old Celeron-based NUC that is absolutely atrocious as a desktop in this era, but it runs server workloads like Citadel just fine.

Also keep an eye out for Jetway fanless computers. They have a more "industrial control" vibe to them than the NUC but they are good computers too.

Or you could bring your game up to the state-of-the-2010s and run virtual machines :)

OoOooh. 

With the i5 I set up, I could totally run a virtual machine running Linux and run Citadel within that. Which would make backups and moving the machine around dead simple. 

That isn't a terrible idea. 

Tue Nov 24 2020 14:29:53 EST from Nurb432 @ Uncensored

Only gotcha i ran into was i didnt read the specs on a batch of 2 i bought, so i got the lower end I5.  Still an ok CPU and nothing wrong with them, but now they are mis-matched to my 4 others in the farm is all.  Ended up with 4570T on that 2nd batch instead of 4590T  Totally my fault, as i went back and read the description of what i ordered, and bigger than hell, it was correct and i was just careless. 

Also be sure the include power packs, that series uses a proprietary plug on the computer side.  They are as common as dirt, ( even on Amazon ) but it means you cant scrounge one out of the parts box if you forget.  

Not all modes have wifi/BT ( but they all have the socket ). So again, if you need it, just be sure to read closely or have a spare card somewhere.

I bought with minimal ram and added 2 16G modules, and bought them diskless so i could add 2TB SSD. I did not go for the ones with the CD caddy.. pointless for me.

For such a cheap machine, i have been quite pleased with them. 

 

I found someone locally selling off a bunch of NUCs they had hooked up to LCDs in their offices. $125 for an i5. Not sure what generation, how big the storage, what amount of RAM. Doesn't really matter. It'll be more powerful than the Pi without a much bigger physical footprint. 

Only gotcha i ran into was i didnt read the specs on a batch of 2 i bought, so i got the lower end I5.  Still an ok CPU and nothing wrong with them, but now they are mis-matched to my 4 others in the farm is all.  Ended up with 4570T on that 2nd batch instead of 4590T  Totally my fault, as i went back and read the description of what i ordered, and bigger than hell, it was correct and i was just careless. 

Also be sure the include power packs, that series uses a proprietary plug on the computer side.  They are as common as dirt, ( even on Amazon ) but it means you cant scrounge one out of the parts box if you forget.  

Not all modes have wifi/BT ( but they all have the socket ). So again, if you need it, just be sure to read closely or have a spare card somewhere.

I bought with minimal ram and added 2 16G modules, and bought them diskless so i could add 2TB SSD. I did not go for the ones with the CD caddy.. pointless for me.

For such a cheap machine, i have been quite pleased with them. 

Mon Nov 23 2020 21:59:05 EST from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored

 

My ISP is actually absolutely having problems today. A persistent ping just returned 19% dropped packets pinging google.com, *after* a router reboot. 

So... maybe the Pi has been doing a decent job - because it only really has bothered me today. 

But that Lenovo does look like it would do the trick. Looks like going rate on Amazon is about $200. Any gotchas with these things? I've got a *small* Lenovo running something like a Centrino or Atom - but it isn't this small. The Tiny seems a little bigger than a true NUC - more like a Mac Mini - but that would work... and I don't want to sink a lot of money into running a Citadel... but I've got to find the balance between stability and performance that will encourage users to keep calling and keeping as much money in my pocket as possible. 

Mon Nov 23 2020 19:22:34 EST from Nurb432 @ Uncensored

I'm partial to the plethora of "thinkcentre m93p tinys" out on ebay. They are small, run cool, cheap.. decent specs.  ( and ya this is coming from the 'resident ARM fan' around here :) ).  I have several in my closet running a PVE cluster.

Just watch which CPU you get ( more than one generation of i5 went into those things so some are better than others, but none 'bad' ).  Or if you want to get silly, some xeons will run in there too.

 

 

Sun Nov 22 2020 18:02:44 EST from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored

So... I've noticed my Citadel runs a little slow - and I imagine that is on account of it running on a Pi. 

Also - it feels like the issues that I encounter with setup, file sharing, attachments, etc. are related to Raspbian. 

I'm considering an Intel NUC as a replacement. I considered a Pi 4 - but I get into the same problem - Raspbian - a non-standard ARM specific distro of Linux. 

Thoughts? 

And any suggestions on a very inexpensive NUC that would be a good replacement? 

 

 

 

My ISP is actually absolutely having problems today. A persistent ping just returned 19% dropped packets pinging google.com, *after* a router reboot. 

So... maybe the Pi has been doing a decent job - because it only really has bothered me today. 

But that Lenovo does look like it would do the trick. Looks like going rate on Amazon is about $200. Any gotchas with these things? I've got a *small* Lenovo running something like a Centrino or Atom - but it isn't this small. The Tiny seems a little bigger than a true NUC - more like a Mac Mini - but that would work... and I don't want to sink a lot of money into running a Citadel... but I've got to find the balance between stability and performance that will encourage users to keep calling and keeping as much money in my pocket as possible. 

I'm partial to the plethora of "thinkcentre m93p tinys" out on ebay. They are small, run cool, cheap.. decent specs.  ( and ya this is coming from the 'resident ARM fan' around here :) ).  I have several in my closet running a PVE cluster.

Just watch which CPU you get ( more than one generation of i5 went into those things so some are better than others, but none 'bad' ).  Or if you want to get silly, some xeons will run in there too.

Sun Nov 22 2020 18:02:44 EST from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored

So... I've noticed my Citadel runs a little slow - and I imagine that is on account of it running on a Pi. 

Also - it feels like the issues that I encounter with setup, file sharing, attachments, etc. are related to Raspbian. 

I'm considering an Intel NUC as a replacement. I considered a Pi 4 - but I get into the same problem - Raspbian - a non-standard ARM specific distro of Linux. 

Thoughts? 

And any suggestions on a very inexpensive NUC that would be a good replacement? 

 

 

So... I've noticed my Citadel runs a little slow - and I imagine that is on account of it running on a Pi. 

Also - it feels like the issues that I encounter with setup, file sharing, attachments, etc. are related to Raspbian. 

I'm considering an Intel NUC as a replacement. I considered a Pi 4 - but I get into the same problem - Raspbian - a non-standard ARM specific distro of Linux. 

Thoughts? 

And any suggestions on a very inexpensive NUC that would be a good replacement? 

I think he offered a kit but provided the schematic for free on the website.  

Or you can simply order clock from Heathkit!*

Fran demonstrates how it (sort of) worked.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Muby4GDf9E8

*No you can't simply order one of these from Heathkit

Precision Clock, works with GPS.  It has no controls.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNqm5T5syTM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNqm5T5syTM

Kits available on the website.  

but but it doesn't have an alarm.

Here's the initial sketch of my "The Perfect Clock" project.  The low-voltage AC supply is clipped by a zener diode and then referenced to ground by a regular diode, and then sent into the microcontroller as a 60 Hz reference clock.  The rest of the circuit is pretty much off-the-shelf.  The microcontroller will be programmed using an Arduino but then removed and placed directly onto the board (the crystal clocks the microcontroller itself, not the clock).  The display will be a TM1637 module which has the latches and decoders/drivers on board with the 7-segment displays.  Then we couple it with either a WWVB or GPS receiver.  I haven't decided which, yet.

4469033@Uncensoredhttps://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Techie%20Talk?start_reading_at=4468989Mon, 22 Jul 2019 14:27:35 -00004468989@Uncensored 2019-07-20 09:10 from IGnatius T Foobar >Digital watches are a pretty dumb idea once you have a smartphone in >your pocket ... and I'm going to be a curmudgeon and say I don't ever Then why the eff do we have the Apple Watch, Arthur Dent? ]]>https://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Techie%20Talk?start_reading_at=4468802Sun, 21 Jul 2019 21:35:06 -00004468802@Uncensoredhttps://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Techie%20Talk?start_reading_at=4468754Sun, 21 Jul 2019 16:46:30 -00004468754@Uncensoredhttps://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Techie%20Talk?start_reading_at=4468494Sat, 20 Jul 2019 22:12:59 -00004468494@Uncensored

I've got a Galaxy Smartwatch. It is convenient for telling time, date and temperature without having to fumble in my pocket to get my phone out - and it tracks my exercising. I very rarely use it for any of the other functions it is supposed to be good at. After wearing it for a while, I now once again feel kind of naked if I happen to leave home without it. 

Watches are coming back in style, however they are huge, far too big to have on your wrist.  They are larger than smart watches without the functions of a smart watch.

Tue Jul 09 2019 10:45:00 EDT from fleeb @ Uncensored

I don't use my phone as an alarm clock, either.

Mostly because I don't use an alarm. I just wake up early. 

At present, I don't use mine that way, either.

I don't necessarily wake up early on my own...I have an elderly Beagle who acts as my alarm clock between 4:30 and 5:30AM, daily.

Step one:  Eliminate the Daylight Savings Time switch.

I am under 60.  

Here is an ardunino clock kit, but it has alarms.
https://blog.arduino.cc/2019/06/19/intuitive-arduino-clock-has-seven-alarms-and-three-led-displays/

Did big clive demo a clock kit a while back?

Thu Jul 04 2019 03:56:03 PM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

2. No alarm. Seriously ... everyone under 60 uses their phone as an alarm clock.

I don't use my phone as an alarm clock, I know others that don't. Not everyone has to check their facebook page at 3am.  I keep my cell phone on my desk most of the time, that is where it charges.  I have no reason to keep the phone by the bed.  People that need to sleep next to their phone are either on call for work or fans of Windows and Zuckerberg.  No other person should keep a phone next to their bed.

I wake up between 5am-5:30am on my own, if not I have a fur alarm as a backup. 
My CPAP machine has a clock and an alarm, rarely use it.  Newer CPAP machines have eliminated the alarm clock. 

I found this old photo of my computer-filled basement from 2003-2004 or thereabouts.

[ http://photos.citadel.org/spaghettisburg/spaghettisburg0019.jpeg ]

There's all sorts of wonderful stuff in there.  Top left: a cheap wireless router (used only as an access point) and my DSL modem.  The machine beneath it, between the stack of tapes and the UPS, is that era's iteration of uncensored.citadel.org.    My phone system is there too, along with a dumb terminal I still have.  My actual desk with the main screen is off to the left and just out of the shot.   In the center are my printers and a thin client I used from time to time.  Under that desk you can see stuff that was useless even then: a CB radio, a dot matrix printer, and a Mac.

I'm still a server hugger, but everything now fits into a single 2U rack server thanks to virtual machines.  I know people who still maintain home labs but I don't know why.  This was a lot of fun but I don't exactly miss it.

POE level 3 (I think that is what it is called or something like that), puts out a maximum of 13 volts.   So you could just run cat 6 everwhere, and hook up POE  injectors and run it that way.  Then if you need to later you can use them as regular network, or what have you.  

Correction:  Again, I'm ***NOT*** very knowledgeable about electricity.

Mm.  I don't know the answer, but doesn't low voltage have difficulty traveling very far unless the wire is extremely thick?  I'd think that resistance would eat up the low voltage.

Again, I'm very knowledgeable about electricity.  I only know that in the house I'm building, the power company wants to step down its high voltage near my house, not hundreds of feet away at the street even though that would be a lot less expensive.

It might have.  My experience with the platform doesn't go that far back.  I did a couple of consulting gigs building LAN gateways for 5250 emulation, but once the logon screen appeared I was done.  Also I began my career in the early 1990's so most of those shops were already in the process of upgrading to AS/400 (or downgrading to Windows NT).

SNA gateways ... pfft ... it's amazing that it took the IBM world so long to just LAN-attach everything natively.

...and of course i/OS (née OS/400) kinda-sorta runs that way natively.

But to be useful it has to be implemented on mainstream platforms like Linux and Windows, preferably in a consistent manner.

That's because you're not supposed to sort files into directories anymore.  You're supposed to just "tag" everything and search for tags later.

(At least that's what they've been telling us for the last 20 years ... it's the future!)

So you tell it what its job is, and it keeps modifying itself do to the best it can at that job with whatever resources it has available.

That's kind of cool ... and it does have a sci-fi kind of feel to it.  One can easily imagine it going wrong and turning into V'ger, for example.

https://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-circuits/

The article is about Adrian Thompsons experiments with a FPGA board that he trained to discriminate between high and low tones.

"What he then discovered changes everything"... Go read for yourselves, it is pretty funny.

Clearly not the best article, other sources:

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolvable_hardware

2) "An evolved circuit, intrinsic in silicon, entwined with physics" <- Thompson's own paper about it, appropriately technical.

IBM branched out to romania here, for near shore support. Because there are lots of transylvanian saxons there so they speak acceptable german. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transylvanian_Saxons ) Some of them don't speak any german but understand it. All of them speak rather good english. I can understand a bit of their language, because it resembles french/latin a bit.

And yes, vampire jokes are mandatory!

This one day, I see a new guy sitting in one of our offices who came over from romania. Wearing typical emo black and I think to myself "Looks like little dracula", with his goaty and short hair and ear rings, etc. Later that day, he comes to my office and introduces himself with a thick east european accent "Hi! My name is Vlad!". Think of Blah from Greg the Bunny.

It took all my self-discipline for the next 5 minutes not to break out laughing my ass off. 

Exactly.  And now that I'm fairly far removed from tech supp, some of them haven't a clue when I use it.  Which only goes to prove the point, sadly.

My personal favorite when working techsup was code ID10T.

Fri Nov 17 2017 09:53:45 AM EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored Subject: PEBCAK

Most of us have heard the tech support diagnostic code PEBCAK, which stands for "Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard".  Here are a few more.  Happy Friday everyone!

LUBE: Lacks Understanding of Basic English

BIOS: Basic Intelligence Operator Subnormal - knows what a computer looks like: can't start it.

EULA: End User Lacks Ability - knows what a computer looks like: gets as far as "Enter Password"

RAM: Read Ability Missing - this for users who classify an issue as "Critical: Department Dependent" (something nasty will happen to the whole department if this is not solved!) but fail to respond to IT requests that they answer their phone/email. This means that someone has to physically go to that office.

SCSI: "Can someone please Solve/Complete this Stupid Idiot's ticket?" - see RAM above

CAMEO: CAse Made for Extermination of Operator

I came up with one a while back:

PEBRALE: Problem Exists Between Right And Left Ear

Most of us have heard the tech support diagnostic code PEBCAK, which stands for "Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard".  Here are a few more.  Happy Friday everyone!

LUBE: Lacks Understanding of Basic English

BIOS: Basic Intelligence Operator Subnormal - knows what a computer looks like: can't start it.

EULA: End User Lacks Ability - knows what a computer looks like: gets as far as "Enter Password"

RAM: Read Ability Missing - this for users who classify an issue as "Critical: Department Dependent" (something nasty will happen to the whole department if this is not solved!) but fail to respond to IT requests that they answer their phone/email. This means that someone has to physically go to that office.

SCSI: "Can someone please Solve/Complete this Stupid Idiot's ticket?" - see RAM above

CAMEO: CAse Made for Extermination of Operator

*checks over shoulder*

LOL

Fri Jul 28 2017 10:06:04 AM EDT from fleeb @ Uncensored

Heh. hehhehheh...

*considers it some more*

*laughs a little*

*cries a bit*

*falls out of chair*

Did that take you through stage 2 of Grief...or stage 3?  :-)

OTOH,  you could probably partner with a cyber sec consulting firm and make it a consultative offering.....then they may even sell it for you.  

Or rather, my old team.  :/

No argument with that.  My team would likely be a lot smaller without those Hot Sh1ts, tho, since fixing their "good works" makes up about 1/3 of our business.  :-D

<laughs>  Will have to introduce you to QRadar.  :-)

yeah - my parents bought the simplest American (Maytag) machines in 1998, and they're still in working order. 
DH and I have been forced to buy the European machines (which heat their own water.) because we didn't have the opportunity to bring from the US, nor did we have the space for an American machine (they're much bigger).
We've been married 10 years, and we're on our second washer and 4th dryer. Fortunately, we managed to score an old American dryer now (like older than my parents' machine) which is loud as hell and overheats on the top setting, but otherwise a great machine.

 

Ah, yes anti-wrinkle and a sensor for dryness might be nice. But I guess that energy saving margin does not justify building and buying a new one.

Our dish washer is a new, energy and watersaving one. Takes 3h to complete a wash in eco mode. The watersaving is done by reusing the water from the previous run. If you do not use it regularly, I guess that opens an opportunity for ugly stuff, like maybe legionella.

Yes dryers have sensors and "anti-wrinkle" where they rotate the tub every few minutes to prevent any clothes left in them from wrinkling.  

The new washers are "high efficiency" which uses less water.  You can buy top loaders with this as well.  I don't know how much water they save vs how well they clean.

My mother in law uses the exact same dryer model we had in our house when I was a child. It might be around 35 years old.

And I doubt there are ways you could have made drying clothes more energy efficient in the meantime.

I know, it just seems wasteful to throw away a working appliance just because it doesn't match another one.  Most homes don't have them on display in a high-traffic area of the house.

This is what my laundry room looks like when no one is doing laundry:

 (text client users, go to https://goo.gl/photos/mgy56qsvScUmVayPA )

And this is what it looks like when we are actually using the machines:

 (text client users, go to https://goo.gl/photos/iTLhioZbywGqDgea8 )

So there's our 1995 dryer next to our 2013 washer.  When we bought the new washer and I told my wife that I hope she wasn't expecting the matching dryer to go with it, she looked at me like I was crazy, why would we replace a perfectly good machine.

Our LG washer still washes fine, the motor is rather silent because of this "direct drive" feature.

But the support insulted me, mocked me, was condescending and in general full of the most vile assholes I ever witnessed on any support place. It was as if their sole purpose was to piss off customers even more. And a quick research revealed, that I was not the only one with this experience.

I have a LG bluray player, which died shortly after being purchased, too. That might have been caused by a weird power circuit in the living room, which I then fixed. The "repair" of the bluray player took over a month, but they just send me a new one. It was replaced with a Marantz UD5005.

So, while the products are ok from the feature point of view and they last a bit, I solely hate them for their shitty support and the time I "lost" while dealing with them. I try to make up for my anger by giving them a bad reputation.

The expected life span of an appliance is seven to ten years now.  Gone are the days of things lasting.  We are a consumerist society. 

With the short life spans I can not understand why someone wants to purchase a high end model.  They have all these foolish features that don't justify the price/lifespan.  I laugh that they have clothes dryers that mist the clothes as they dry.

My mother is looking for a new refrigerator.  The current one works, it has issues.  She wants a new one before it fails.

Ten years ago during a hurricane we lost the roofing at our work building.  The building had a cement slab roof that was covered in tar and paper.  Once a weak point was found, the paper lifted up and the water flowed between the cement slabs.  There was an attic but water still made it down to the work area.  The damage in the work area wasn't bad but it was damp.  We purchased a LG (Lucky Goldstar, not Life's Good) dehumidifier.  The thing worked great, ran constantly for a while, then failed.  We called service and they replaced it under warranty.  I was very happy with LG.  My parent also purchased the same model for their house and that has been running with no problems.

My parents had an LG washer and dryer set.  After the warranty expired it started to have problems, however having a good salesman convinced them to get an extended warranty, so it was fixed.  About a month before the extended warranty expired the washer developed a major problem.  The washer was several years old at this point, they went nuts trying to find a replacement part so they didn't have to give us a new machine for free.  They found one, "that would work" and it lasted but another small problem developed with the dryer and my mother replaced both units with another brand.

I was not disappointed with LG and had a better experience, however I have heard of others having a problem with LG.

Sears on the other hand, I wont do business with... which is nice because they closed the store in our city.

As a general advice: Don't buy LG. It is cheap shit and their service is even cheaper and shittier.

I do not buy LG anymore, after I had a phone/mail odyssee with the LG support in southern germany for a replacement part (small rubber hose) of our washing machine. They refused to believe the part number I told (and send as a picture) to them and behaved like total Untermenschen. If I ever happen to come to that part of germany, I go all Ramsey Bolton over them.

I also stopped selling LG screens, cdroms, etc. to my clients and tell anyone not to buy any of their products.

Many years ago at work we had a computer monitor that failed the same way. I don't remember if it was an LG, I think it was.  I tried fixing it but it didn't work.  Good luck to you though, anybody that can grab a soldering iron and fix electronics in this day of disposable units is good to me.

I am experiencing my first old age hard drive failure.  "Disk is likely to fail soon." and " reallocation sector count errors."  I have drives that are over 15 years old that I power up every now and again, they still work. I believe they are Maxtors.  I have data on them but nothing that I would miss or that has not been backed up elsewhere.  I have never had a drive fail because of old age until now.

I did have one drive in a raid system that failed.  Two 1T drives on a USB connected raid box, used for back-ups. As I moved the enclosure one day I hit the the level that ejects the drive.  The ejected drive now has an extremely low capacity and the other drive experienced data loss.  Apparently the lock to prevent accidental ejection of the drive failed.  I know somewhere it said it was hot swapable but that didn't work.

I've revived my Cherry G80-5000 using a soarer converter:

https://deskthority.net/workshop-f7/teensy-2-0-alternatives-atmega32u4-t4253.html

If you google around a bit around that, they also do a diy keyboard.

Just the opposite, actually.  3-D printing is going to be great for *small* manufacturing runs.  Custom designs for a single job where you only need half a dozen pieces are now practical.

Think about the processes currently used to manufacture circuit boards.  I have an engineer friend who is regularly faced with the same choice for any particular board: fab it himself, or send it to China.  Even at a small quantity, the 11 year old girl in China can fab the board cheaper than he can with his own tooling.  But he has to wait for it.  If he needs it "now" he gets out the materials and does it in his own shop.

Advanced 3-D printing will do the same for pieces and parts of any type.

As for machine-manufactured fast food ... that's a politics problem not an engineering problem.

Mon Apr 11 2016 03:35:32 PM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

The truly useful applications of 3D printing will appear when they can print at a molecular level, or at least multiple materials at a super fine pitch.
Until then ... injection molding machines operated by factory workers at $0.11 an hour in China are still a more viable option.

Apparently you think 3D printing can only be and should only be used for mass production.

They have 3D food printers, but that is more artsie-fartsie food fantasy.  Of course soon all fast food will be made by machine.

Here is an example of that put to use.
http://www.thingiverse.com/make:4195

A plastic knob on my mother's mixer broke, the metal screw was fine. I found this, printed it, and fixed it for less than a dollar.  I heated the screw, pushed it into the new knob, the plastic melted and snugly sealed around the metal screw.  I see other people had the same problem.

I have printed small one time parts for a few things.  Cheaper than ordering the replacement from the manufacture.  I have also found the files and printed some good household items that are used daily.   

3D printing is super for prototyping, creating molds for small runs, and little bits and bobs. It won't be the future of manufacturing until it hits some big jumps in the tech :) 
The advantage of being able to self-print instead of having to manufacture and then ship.

I have not logged into Thingieverse in a while, I had several things in my "too make" section that I forgot about.  Somethings I designed but really don't have a use for, such as a pasta maker/roller for a blender.  There is a lot of "good idea" items but just never think about printing them, a wall mount for my electric shaver.  

What brand of printer did you get?   I like the idea of the kits, they send you the minimal hardware, you use another printer to print the needed parts for your machine.  Yes 3D printers can print 3D printers.  

I will disagree on the knob for my mother's blender.  To purchase and ship the replacement part was expensive.  To print it was cheap.  

There are different types of plastics, different types of printers and resources for files to print many objects.  You can print Raspberry Pi cases to custom drone housings, to smart phone cases, etc.  You could even print out 20 sided dice because I know you played Dungeons and dragons as a teen.  They are great, but I don't know how often they will get used at home.

One source (of many)
http://www.myminifactory.com/category/electronics-computers

Now that I think about it, I created a few things that have been useful to me.

I was going to the library and using their 3D printer, and from the items that were being printed, I will have to agree.  I created or wanted to print some things of practical use, I entered a contest in design but for most part it was kids printing toys they wouldn't play with.  Maybe after the novelty wears off.

I did print a replacement knob for my mother's blender/food grinder attachment, printed some ice grips for shoes, but it was a mild winter so I didn't get to try them.  I "designed" some game pieces for a game but it didn't take much effort.  A round token with some words on it.  

There is a lot of useful things you can do with it, but I think it is few and far between.

VMWare catches up with Kimchi.  Who would have thought.

https://github.com/kimchi-project/kimchi

I do think that it is good that they have found reason once again.  I won't be switching either I.G., but it is good to know that they do occasionally look at git projects :-)

In case anyone cares...

VMware recently released ESXi 6.0 update 2.   I normally don't get excited about hypervisor versions, but there's something new about this one, and those of you who use VMware will understand why this is a welcome change.

This version no longer requires the fat client, to manage a host running in standalone mode.  They now have this thing called the "embedded host client" which is pure HTML5.  This is obviously the framework they're going to use to build the next version of the vCenter web client, which everyone hates because it's clumsy and written in Flash.  But for now, the new version is for managing a single host.  You can do everything through it -- create/modify/delete virtual machines, manage networking and storage, and even run virtual machine consoles -- all without browser plugins.

And it's a lot less clumsy than the old web client.

Probably still not enough to switch my main server away from Linux+KVM, but $WORK is fully committed to VMware so this is a welcome change.

well, nowadays you just put it into the monitor, which makes more sense imho?

They were really the first mass-produced microcomputer sold as a retail finished product.  No one really gives them credit for that.  Microcomputers in the 1970's were largely a product you bought as components and built into a finished computer yourself.  Even the Apple I was just a motherboard; you had to add all the other parts (like a keyboard) and build a case to put it all in.  A "real" microcomputer would often consist of an S-100 card cage with an 8080 or Z-80 CPU in one slot, some RAM in another, and you'd add your 8-inch disk drives and other things from there.

The initial TRS-80 was basically a cut-down version of that typical design, stuffed into an integrated mainboard/keyboard with a video character generator replacing the RS-232 console port.

So the idea of a microcomputer as a retail finished product was not Apple's innovation.  The genius of Apple was the level of integration packed into a few small chips and 8K of ROM; it was, basically, Steve Wozniak.

And I still wish the desktop computer industry would return to the practice of putting the whole computer into the keyboard.

another representation of that dataset:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZA25anWAAANb2v.png:large

didn't know that the TRS-80 was such a popular system when it was relevant...

hm, still more windows phones shipped per year than macs?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZAHATYWMAAArMl.png

and... it seems the ipad needs a refresh.

This is interesting.

[ https://letsencrypt.org ]

It's a "free, automated, and open" certificate authority.

They've already got their root cross-signed by a CA that existing browsers trust, and they're working on getting their own root trusted too.  Sponsors of the project include big names like Cisco and fecesbook.

The idea is that it is both open and gratis, so everything is completely transparent, and the automation removes the need for humans to manually validate applications for certificate signing.  The new piece is that they've written a protocol and a client to automate the process of getting your CSR to them, proving that you own the domain, and getting the signed certificate back.  It appears to be designed so that web server software could potentially be set up to automatically handle the enrollment, with the site operator only needing to enter their domain name and contact information.

The low end of the certificate market keeps getting lower and lower.  This could be the piece that makes the bottom fall out.  And really, that's ok.  The place for big expensive certificate authorities really ought to be to provide high end certificates that come with insurance and other value added services.   Very basic encryption -- or, as the rest of us call it, just make the browser warning go away -- needs to be freely available to all.

Yeah, pandoc is really slick.  I've used it to do things like convert from one wiki engine to another, convert HTML to LaTeX, etc.  Very nice tool.

It is written in Haskell, but as a Haskell fan myself, I see that as a benefit ;-)

Remember that Competition Pro with the C64 in its socket?

How'bout an XBox controller with a pi zero inside?

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2015/11/raspberry-pi-zero-hidden-in-an-xbox-controller/

hm, pandoc would seem as a nice alternative to all that java cruft for indexing... wouldn't it be written in haskell and didn't offer a library version...

However, one could use that by shell exec and pipe stuff in/out of it...

Mon Oct 12 2015 12:21:58 PM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

...It also makes anyone running VMware on non-Dell hardware a second class citizen.

Raises hand.  Not that I would ever upgrade.  It is only in place for a "special" VM for some Cisco wireless gear.  I would love to V2V it to a KVM setup if I had the time.

hm, we will see whether regulation authorities like that?

Damn hover cup must be broken.  Time to imagine another one.

domain specific troubles:

https://pbs.twimg.com/tweet_video/CQlA8w5U8AAZSK4.mp4

I am awaiting animated emoji to come to the www.  I think I will have to do it for gopherspace first for the win.

hm, I think the first prominent colored font thing was the candybar that apple added...

None of my screens showed the blue background (Chrome in webcit, Linux console, or MobaXterm on 'doze), but the wheelchair rendered properly on all of them.

What's the deal with emoji anyway?  Are they Unicode characters, or something else entirely?

The future invades the past.  News at 11.

oh, theres a wheel-chair in unicode: ♿

Nice, I give it a 1 out of 10, but, you can dance to it. /paper bag over head

cute throbber:

http://s.imgur.com/images/loaders/ddddd1_181817/24.gif

That's very cute.  All boards should look like that.

I knew people adding their logos in unused corners of PCBs, but this is...

https://twitter.com/Swaps4/status/595146519432536064

awsome.

(ok, you need to disable .js to get the full picture ;-)

whew, thats the best webdesign i've seen in ages:

http://linuxphile.org/post/show/integrating-tinymce-with-laravel

(not... if you mark the code to improve readability it completely vanishes ;-)

Yea, sadly miracast seems to be cumbersome to implement, and not fast enough...

X11 still seems to be the way to go...

Lua's fame is as an embeddable language.  I don't think anyone actually builds Lua stuff because they like Lua.  It's just so easy to embed the interpreter.

JavaScript is picking up a lot of steam in that space.

http://bocoup.com/weblog/pushing-nodebots-into-the-future-with-tessel-2/

Transpiling js to lua? nice idea...

https://github.com/tessel/colony-compiler

but it seems they abandoned it with this relaese.

heres the guy holding a talk, and its printing while that ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihR9SX7dgRo

cool stuff.

If I read it correctly, they have a layer of oxygen on the floor of the basin; which in combination with UV-light makes the solid parts.

whew, once these are affordable I need one.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150316006482/en/3448395/Carbon3D-Introduces-CLIP-Breakthrough-Technology-Layerless-3D

lol java.

http://thevarguy.com/open-source-application-software-companies/030415/marvell-eyes-iot-developers-open-sourcing-kinomajs-code#comment-260511

KinomaJS because of its Kinoma Java Something? ;-P

I miss the days of leafing through digi-key catalogs (before PDF's were common).  I kinda miss wasting time flipping through Computer Shopper back in the day as well.  I guess I do have more shelf space these days for other crap to build up :-)

whew, nice catalogue:

http://www.eevblog.com/2011/02/20/eevblog-146-digikey-postage-fail/

So I learned today, there are two kind of micro hdmi: one plug which is the same as micro usb, which should be provided by some mobiles (including my sony Z2 - however it didn't work...)

and Micro hdmi which has about the same size, but a full pinout as the odroid C1 and friends bring it.

yea, had the same over here in germany with the Schlecker markets - the boss would be the one to know last, since whenever he would come into a store they would know before, and polish everything.

So, the lower management layers were cloaking lots of information in the direction upwards.

That's kind of how everyone is feeling.  Like I said, the reason for Radio Shack's decline seems to be obvious to everyone except Radio Shack.

Thanks for the ping back IG.  Sad to see them go as well.  Not for myself, but more for my son and daughter.  I am already having a tough time showing them how to things at home without the need to go online and research what you already would be able to do from the parts bin of a well stocked electronics parts store.

Thankfully I have one around the corner with a full line of ECG / NTE and Jim Pak parts as well as kits and other fun bits.  Hope they stay around, if not, I can order from DigiKey (or day trip it to the city desk), but that would not be as fun as browsing the isles of what RS used to be.   I guess I am spoiled by having an old time Radio Shack in the neighborhood that is not tied to the corporate one :-)

http://www.aeielectroniccenter.com/

I have that 10M mobile (HTX-100).  Nice rig actually.  I did packet radio contacts with BBS's in Germany and keyboard to keyboard contacts with other hams in Surinam and Mexco and all over the US on a regular basis with that rig and a TNC and an old 8086 computer (Amstrad) and a COCO II.

 Before all of that, I liked the fact that you could get schematics for most of the items they sold. I found satisfaction in being able to see the schematics to the item I purchased.  I loved to to read up on electronics back in the 70's from books from the library.  When I made my first purchase (from Radio Shack) of a 3 channel 11M hand held radio, I was hooked.  From there, I made kits from what I had learned from an old 100 in 1 kit and bought parts from Radio Shack.  Even before all of that, I had a battery of the month card.  Fun times.  It is a hole for me, but they lost their way.

Looks like it's pretty much the end of the line.  We all expected this.

[ http://gizmodo.com/farewell-radio-shack-and-farewell-to-the-twentieth-ce-1683513865 ] [ http://www.pcworld.com/article/2878815/radioshack-is-gearing-up-to-sell-or-shutter-its-stores-report-says.html ]

Radio Shack is being delisted and is getting ready to close its stores.  Rumors are flying that some of the stores may be taken over by Sprint or even Amazon.

Surprised?  Me neither.  How many of us could write the obituary that's already appearing nearly identically everywhere.  It seems that everyone knows what killed Radio Shack except for the people who ran Radio Shack.  The iconic store had no hope of surviving as a competitor to big box stores and online retailers, and refused to embrace its roots among true electronics enthusiasts.  I'd like to say farewell, but Radio Shack has already been dead for nearly two decades.  It's amazing that the zombie stayed animated for as long as it did.

I'll go out on a limb here and suggest that Best Buy is next.  They may appear bigger and stronger, but they are already widely known as "Amazon's Showroom."

If you've got access to a Fry's or Micro Center, you're among the lucky ones who still have a local place to go to for those quickie parts and gadgets.  We're willing to pay a bit of a premium for that convenience, but when RadioShack (note the name was converted to CamelCase around the time they zombified) was charging five times the price for that premium, even that became unworkable.

Someone's got to be a friend to the maker community.  There's an opening for someone to do it right.

That's probably the seventh circle of clickbaiting hell, this SFG page!

I like the morphing, too, but I can not see it making sense here. However, this minimalistic design is what I tried in layout_rework branch. Which I will resume at the end of this year, I hope.

fun with 3d printers:

http://fb-25.sfglobe.com/2015/01/14/3d-printed-sculptures-look-alive-when-spun-under-a-strobe-light

(I realy like the morphing of the SFG title something similar would be nice for us ;-)

hm, nice whats possible meanwhile:

https://stackedit.io/

Ok so really I'm just 20 years out of date on this subject.  (The last time I ordered from Digi-Key was May 1993.)

Looks like Digipee and even Mouser quit doing the minimum order thing:

http://www.digikey.com/en/terms-and-conditions

"7. Handling Charge. There is no minimum order or handling fee."

Not that I have purchased much from them in a while.   I have come close, but usually try another parts house locally or give up on a project these days.

Better than the one I listen to in the car anyway.

how the non-techies try to grasp internet related terms:

http://mashable.com/2014/09/16/media-explains-internet/

usb to vga assumes a bit on the server end of things (drivers, etc).  I kind of wanted to keep it as non-intrusive as I could (like a kvm).  It seems like an IP kvm is probably the cheapest option.

Sun Aug 03 2014 00:13:56 EDT from ax25 @ Uncensored

Thought about that and could not find a cheap single port ipkvm either.  Not to bother further, but if anybody has a way to cheaply convert the plethora of vga only (i.e. no IPMI - servers I have, I would appreciate it).

how'bout usb vga? you can switch it with that, and for the machines itself its like plugging it in/out...

Thought about that and could not find a cheap single port ipkvm either.  Not to bother further, but if anybody has a way to cheaply convert the plethora of vga only (i.e. no IPMI - servers I have, I would appreciate it).

Interesting piece of tech! I didn't even new such things existed, but I think it is a lot more mobile than your keyboard and display approach.

Computer extensions like these seem overprized in general, your average usb docking station is 150€ or more.

Somebody should use a raspi or something else to reimplement it cheaply.

Sidenote:

I went to our local art high school/university, lots of artists use raspis today for various funny and creative things.

Has anybody found a cheaper way to convert a laptop to a crash cart than the StarTech NOTECONS01?

It seems to be hanging out at around $330 (Newegg).  For that kind of $, I would be better off buying the cheapest / smallest usb keboard and monitor and putting them in every rack I visit (as it seems to be a dying way to make a living - ipmi is more fun and all).

Thu Jun 26 2014 11:24:52 AM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

Running their 3D walkthrough demo and then comparing it to the JavaScript original shows just how much overhead Brython introduces. Dragging an entire meta-layer along just so you can write a bit of code in a familiar setting sounds like a poor choice to me.

Hmm ... does aIEeee still support client-side vbscript?

Yes, it is.  I am glad they could settle on a "standard", but if you want to write for aIEeee, you might be pushing too far with that Q-Tip and be damaging your brain (and not thinking the traction behind the folks that optimize Brython have not overcome quite a few optimization hurdles before.  They are thinking bigger than most die on the vine projects that I have seen in that space recently.  They have fixed many performance killers and have optimized the code on the old side via the tickets.  Not sure why they moved to BitBucket recently, but there used to be quite an active group list.   Much can be done when many folks have shovels.

Python to js:

http://www.brython.info/

Slow and incomplete, but fun.  Check source on some of the examples for more fun.  No more eye-bleed on view source.

Wed Jun 18 2014 16:38:40 EDT from dothebart @ Uncensored

nodejs shows howto integrate VP8 js... however, I think python is much more easy.

which one can look at in collectd.org, which supports python plugins.

nodejs shows howto integrate VP8 js... however, I think python is much more easy.

Can't remember which room it was with the ISEE-3 stuff, but here is a nice link with aggregated info: http://spacecollege.org

Mon Jun 09 2014 12:13:10 PM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

If I were rewriting it today it would be in Java or Python.

Yes!!! *minus the Java :-)

Gotta start over with a clean slate once in a while anyway.

Might be a bit dangerous, but some days, it might be considered more fun :-)

Roulette Rousse for Admins:

http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2014/05/16/roulette-russe-2/

yes - the gardena stuff is for garden hoses...

http://pix.echtlustig.com/1403/adapter--hdmi-zu-gardena.jpg

a raspi clone with an allwinner A20 SOC:

http://linuxgizmos.com/sbc-mimics-raspberry-pi-has-faster-cpu-adds-sata/

(cheaper as other a20 boards...)

hm, anybody heard of speed reading so far?

http://xmodulo.com/2014/04/speed-read-linux.html

sounds interesting...

That would be awesome to visit when I am passing through the area in July this year.

Tue Mar 11 2014 18:05:43 EDT from ax25 @ Uncensored

Not reliable enough.  It seems they are able to pick up the RF already and are making plans on what to do:

http://amsat-uk.org/2014/03/09/radio-amateurs-receive-nasa-isee-3ice-spacecraft/

http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/articles/G3RUH/

more about the dish used (no, not an umbrella sprayed with some alloy ;-)

link kindly provided by a friended radio amateur

Not reliable enough.  It seems they are able to pick up the RF already and are making plans on what to do:

http://amsat-uk.org/2014/03/09/radio-amateurs-receive-nasa-isee-3ice-spacecraft/

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/02070836-isee-3.html

When I last reported on ISEE-3, I wrote:

A big question is whether we even still know how to communicate with the spacecraft. It was built in the 1970s, at the same time as the Voyagers. But we've been in continuous communication with the Voyagers since their launch; the same isn't true of ICE. So the first step is for a team at Goddard Space Flight Center to research that question. Can we figure out how to talk to ICE? What will those communications cost?

well, I wrote it ;-) the qubie board with the A10 soc.

these days you get A20's for around the same price...

and now that we have fine uploader, I can upload the remaining pics ;-)

oh, and WHEW, one can even select more than one, and you see progress bars during the upload *bouncebouncebounce*

Nice.  What kind of guts did you put inside it?

Love that case still.  Kinda boxy, but a nice shade of blue.

hmz. file upload is broken with files > 140k (its even less if you have apache / nginx proxy)

so, here are the pics small enough from the Qubie board --> Cobalt Qube transplantation

After waiting a long time to have me find time to finished it, I finaly made it last weekend.

NNTP is the transport layer for usenet. I find it amazing how this guy enlists building connections to it (using NNTP) in the same row as "pirating" videos.

I get a fair amount of e-mail from readers asking how a person could do "questionable" things due to limitations imposed by DRM. Whether it's how to strip DRM from ebooks, how to connect to Usenet or how to decrypt video, I do my best to point folks in the right direction with lots of warnings and disclaimers. The most frustrating DRM by far has been with Blu-ray discs.

NNTP s.b.?

http://www.itworld.com/open-source/398889/are-chromebooks-hurting-apple-as-well-as-microsoft

Sun Jan 05 2014 23:38:08 EST from ax25 @ Uncensored

 

Sun Jan 05 2014 11:40:09 AM EST from dothebart @ Uncensored

maybe not by what he wrote there... but the Snowden leaked documents clearly show he was right.

The leaked docs seem to have items that are to clumsy and easy to detect.  A bit to obvious.  I don't think Snowden exists in reality, but the "leak" is in reality just a diversionary tactic for something else.  Not sure what just yet.

maybe to "burn" the outused technology so everybody and his granny has a detector for it so the others who stole it can't use it, and some more billions are spent to develop more new stuff to replace the old clumsy shit.

Sun Jan 05 2014 11:40:09 AM EST from dothebart @ Uncensored

maybe not by what he wrote there... but the Snowden leaked documents clearly show he was right.

The leaked docs seem to have items that are to clumsy and easy to detect.  A bit to obvious.  I don't think Snowden exists in reality, but the "leak" is in reality just a diversionary tactic for something else.  Not sure what just yet.

maybe not by what he wrote there... but the Snowden leaked documents clearly show he was right.

Yes, thats exactly what I was wondering: Why all the remote crystal-balling, why don't they drive over to his lab and get their hands dirty. Or have him come over.

I still think it is an elaborate prank by his lab staff.

Sat Jan 04 2014 07:04:26 PM EST from the_mgt @ Uncensored

...

Now I do understand perfectly well that it is a logical fallacy to assume badbois is true because the total surveillance seems to be true. But then again, I despise skeptics more than complete nutters. ;)

Future take on dealing with a nutter.  Just take him at face value and investigate all his hardware at a microscopic level ala:

http://visual6502.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_reverse_engineering_process

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5miMbqYB4E

Should be easy enough to root out the culprit hardware for the "bug" :-)

From a psychological point of view, this badbios denial is funny. All these years the tin foil hatters claimed "they" are watching us all, everywhere. Now Snowden actually leaked that they do and how they do it and yet the next tinfoil hatter is mocked about because he has this ridiculous claim about a malware doing all kind of crazy stuff, which noone believes any of "them" could actually be making. Because it is too complicated, resource intensive, hard to achieve or whatever.

Now I do understand perfectly well that it is a logical fallacy to assume badbois is true because the total surveillance seems to be true. But then again, I despise skeptics more than complete nutters. ;)

Tue Dec 31 2013 12:51:39 EST from Sig @ Uncensored

The article makes a pretty good point that while any of those things are within the realm of the possible, all of them combined are pretty ridiculous. People are spooked by stuxnet and recent NSA disclosures, but NSA isn't full of magic wizards. The realm of the possible is greater than we know, but it's not infinite.

I think that if this were an NSA initiative, Asshole would have leaked it by now. It's becoming clear that there isn't a hell of a lot that he didn't have access to, and this has supposedly been going on for years, long enough that something should have been briefed to someone. The desire to gloat about one's capabilities in PowerPoint seems to be a universal corporate phenomenon, and in an era of tightening budgets all over, I can't see not trumpeting something like this to higher echelons.

you didn't read the spiegel article i've posted?

they have tiny chips which if you iluminate a room with radar waves modulate their data on. (which is exactly what those wave pics are about in your article)

these data pcbs are about the size of the plug from the USB-Cable, batery usage is less a concern then battery self discharging.

they have those to put inside monitor cables (red signal...) so they live inside the shield stone.

Viruses overwriting motheboard or hdd bioses are also readily available able to understand vfat, ntfs and ext3.

and, none of that is science fiction, that catalogue is from 2009.

"A common theme that is present throughout the first-hand reports of badBIOS operation, is the assumption that the malware exists. "

Heh.  Love it.  :)

Sun Dec 29 2013 12:55:14 EST from Sig @ Uncensored

Cogent analysis of badBIOS claims made so far:
[2~
http://vafaburg.com/2013/12/22/taking-a-closer-look-at-badbios/

having a look at the NSA catalogue, it seems more then just possible.

http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/interaktive-grafik-hier-sitzen-die-spaeh-werkzeuge-der-nsa-a-941030.html

(sorry article in german but clickeable image maps with english product descriptions)

so this seems to be the standard toolkit deployed to this guy.

I guess you can search him somewhere in quantanamo or so nowadays.

http://alturl.com/mib6p

Shortened version of same.

I would guess S^3 is at play, but have not done extensive research.  For others (SPOILER ALERT):

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCsQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fphysics.umd.edu%2Flecdem%2Fservices%2Frefs_scanned_WIP%2F3%2520-%2520Vinit's%2520LECDEM%2FD202%2F4%2FPTE000290.pdf&ei=XX6yUriWD-m0yAGvxoCADw&usg=AFQjCNGIBnfxSX2xGAJ0M01J9P6LmIAufw&bvm=bv.58187178,d.aWc&cad=rja

two tins or bottles of coke, shake one, roll them down a ramp (i.e. lift a table a bit on one side)

which one will run faster?

well... if you live in a wooden house...

else hose-lan has proven to be much more reliable then the other. have a NAS, want gbit..

hm, I think i'm falling in love with collectd.

https://collectd.org/wiki/index.php/Plugin:Tail/Config

maybe missing some basic features to hack there, but SO CUTE!

Jesus H.! That is a nice case!

But also Jumping H, $110 US?  We need to come up with a way to make the rack of bits cheaper than that.

[ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/11/review_raspberry_pi_fuze_case_and_kit/ ]

 

http://linuxgizmos.com/open-sbc-runs-linux-and-android-allwinner-a20-soc/

finaly found it ;-)

Mon Nov 11 2013 17:00:27 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored Subject: ultimate Pi case

Well here's the best Pi case I've seen so far:

[ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/11/review_raspberry_pi_fuze_case_and_kit/ ]

They've built it out as an old-skool keyboard console, like from the 1980's.  The Pi fits in the back, has all of the ports fitted to nice receptacles on the back of the unit ... and then they've got a breadboard up top with the GPIO pins available right next to it.

This has to be the ultimate setup for any nostalgic fortysomething geek!

probably the cables to connect everything to the back of the device is as expensive as an olimexino costs more than a pi - and it has all important sockets on one side, plus it features the olimex UEXT connector which you can find lots of open expansion designs for.

Well here's the best Pi case I've seen so far:

[ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/11/review_raspberry_pi_fuze_case_and_kit/ ]

They've built it out as an old-skool keyboard console, like from the 1980's.  The Pi fits in the back, has all of the ports fitted to nice receptacles on the back of the unit ... and then they've got a breadboard up top with the GPIO pins available right next to it.

This has to be the ultimate setup for any nostalgic fortysomething geek!

Mon Nov 11 2013 02:09:14 EST from the8088er @ Uncensored

I've been thinking about getting a Pi but I don't know what I'd do with it and I already have a host of other UNIX/Linux machines that run 24/7 and do nothing.

That's unlikley to stop me in the long run, though.

the pi or the olimexino or qubieboard can do the same for a much smaller footprint on your electricity bill.

http://about.psyc.eu/XMPP

entertaining read. I like at most:

Dave Cridland writes:

"You're correct in your assertion that framed data would mean clean binary transfers, but that isn't a goal of XMPP - anyone shipping binary data directly through XMPP is simply doing something inefficient. If you do want to ship large binary objects, it's more efficient to send them either via email, or send a URL via XMPP, and ship the data by a more suitable protocol."

Binary, Email and efficient in one sentence, that could only be said by an XML-Zealot.