Root Access

No details of course. I'm unclear if complaining about some wierder hardware practices is covered by my NDA, and I'm not doing that outside a job interview ;p

qasdfdsaq

Heh.

oldmud0

Once you EOL it, it either stays in an inventory or ends up in some e-waste shantytown, right?

qasdfdsaq

For some reason our managers have a policy of not generally liking anything that's beyond it's warranty.

Journeyman Geek

@oldmud0 or sold

qasdfdsaq

12:29 AM

The day the machine's warranty expires it's like they disown it. Except when there's no money to replace it

Journeyman Geek

or in some universities...

"hey, we need to get rid of some hardware. Want it?"

qasdfdsaq

Nah, we're not allowed to give away or sell second hand gear in our sector -_-

Thanks to some obnoxious regulations we have to directly ensure delivery to a certified recycling company.

Course they're then allowed to sell it, at a profit... after we pay them to dispose of it

oldmud0

"certified" "recycling"

Journeyman Geek

:(

You should start a certified recycling company

then undercut them

then ... ;p

qasdfdsaq

But yeah, that's one reason you rarely see those £30 server pulls on Ebay UK that you see all over the US

12:30 AM

@qasdfdsaq my SGI used to belong to a university ;p

qasdfdsaq

Oh we used to give out stuff, in the old days

Journeyman Geek

ahh

:(

qasdfdsaq

There was a corridor where IT would dump old hardware and it was just a free-for-all for students to grab

I think these new regulations came in mid-late 2000's

Journeyman Geek

which is how shit should work.

cheaper and less wasteful.

:(

Probably EU regulations

I think I was there early-mid 2000s

qasdfdsaq

12:32 AM

Well the rules are there to guarantee no environmental impact from waste

oldmud0

Well my friend got a free TI-84 from his dad who is a prof., I guess nobody claimed the calculator

qasdfdsaq

But it just makes things a pain for both staff and consumers.

What's worse is some of these "green" recycling companies have been caught shipping the waste off to toxic waste dumps in Asia where child labour is used to recover saleable parts.

Journeyman Geek

and ugh. I have plans for today and I can't seem to get started

qasdfdsaq

That's like me, every morning

oldmud0

In the summer, I had to write a really short literature review on e-waste, and I cited this: oversight.house.gov/hearing/…

qasdfdsaq

12:36 AM

@oldmud0 Lol

oldmud0

It basically talks about how the US government needs to improve its post-life asset management but it also has some testimonies that can be applied generally

qasdfdsaq

I can do you a video of unboxing 6TB of RAM tomorrow if you want.

Yeah the plus side of the U.S. regulations being so lax is I can get second hand gear off ebay for 1/10th the original price or less

oldmud0

@qasdfdsaq Do it pl0x

qasdfdsaq

But since it's not permitted here, most of my purchases end up being imported from the U.S. and then getting taxed again on import -_-

So we pay someone here to use up energy turning our old kit into chemical mush while simultaneously paying someone else in the U.S. to ship the same thing over the atlantic ocean cause we can't sell it locally.

Real. Environmentally. Friendly.

oldmud0

Don't get me started on e-waste, it's really obvious how little most companies care about disposal and post-life

How the heck do you "recycle" 400 million iPhones every time a new one gets released?

The answer is easy, you sell them to developing countries or you destroy them and put the residue in a constantly expanding landfill.

By the time we colonize Mars and the moon we'll have Earth's landfill dumped to the sun.

Don't worry guys about trash, we'll hurl it at the sun before we suffocate ourselves.

Don't worry guys, Elon Musk will be there with a crazy plan.

4

Journeyman Geek

1:11 AM

toyland.gizmodo.com/…

Bob

1:41 AM

:S

bwDraco

Is @BenBrocka around? I'd like to continue a discussion from Twitter.

Smartphone "evolution" is pathetic. Brand new Nexus 5x doesn't noticeably beat a 2 year old, well-used nexus 5 in screen on time

Tweeted by BenBrocka on February 11, 2016 at 9:28 PM

Michael Frank

@bwDraco I have a Nexus 5 that will prove him wrong! ;D

Journeyman Geek

ooh

what-dog.net/#results

Of course, it identifies the baroo photo as a Petit Basset Griffon Vendeen. DO I LOOK FRENCH TO YOU?

bwDraco

The Android platform is such a huge mess.

I hate iOS but I'm jealous of their vertical integration and all the perks it brings.

I suppose that's the price you pay for openness...

Android simply doesn't match iOS. Apple has complete control of their platform and therefore can optimize for every last byte of memory usage, every last instruction in their OS and apps, every last milliwatt of power on their hardware...

...but all this comes at the cost of a closed platform.

When you have just a few processors to optimize for and these processors are your very own design, you can afford to squeeze every last drop of performance from a slow-clocked, dual-core, and incredibly power-efficient SoC.

Sadly, "vertical integration" and "open platform" are mutually exclusive in practice and so Android will never match iOS in efficiency...

The price you pay for openness.

Google can't optimize Android exclusively for the Cortex-A57 or even just Snapdragon processors. Qualcomm can't simply optimize their SoCs exclusively for Android.

Aug 29 '15 at 2:30, by DragonLord

As much as I hate Apple's closed approach, this is one of those things I have to admire: their ability to squeeze every last drop of performance out of the hardware. Sadly, this is only possible precisely because Apple runs a closed platform...

It's a sad fact in the world of computing that building an open platform that anyone can build on makes it infeasible to optimize for the best possible performance.

Journeyman Geek

2:13 AM

Not really

Apple's big advantage is a narrow product line

bwDraco

Well, that's the point. You can optimize for just a few hardware platforms instead of having to make it work for any device with a processor that implements ARM, x86, or MIPS (as is the case for Android).

Each platform for which Android needs to be optimized for incurs an additional cost in funds and resources, so attaining this level of optimization for every platform is untenably expensive. Apple only needs to target a few specific hardware platforms.

Sure, cooperation among Google, SoC manufacturers like Qualcomm, and device manufacturers like HTC helps, but there is no substitute for total vertical integration.

Bob

@bwDraco That's... not how optimisation works.

You don't do that specifically because it's near-impossible and typically has negligible impact. That's the very definition of premature optimisation.

You optimise algorithms. Not instructions.

Where a better instruction choice may be available, the optimisation should be implemented in the architecture-specific compiler. Not in the code.

bwDraco

I meant figuratively.

Bob

The only place you'd ever bother with individual instructions is if you embed assembly, which is vanishingly rare.

Typically in very low levels of the HAL, and that's very hardware-specific anyway.

Journeyman Geek

more specifically you can test the shit out of your OS, and only include/work on the things you need.

Unrelatedly I have too many 2.5 inch hard drives ._.

and most of them are too shitty to bother buying an enclosure

bwDraco

2:26 AM

Get a hard drive dock.

Journeyman Geek

'most of them are too shitty....'

bwDraco

One dock can serve a bunch of drives and you can hot-swap them.

Journeyman Geek

I'm down to the possible Zdoid, the 40gb spare, and a 160gb drive off a Dell Mini 10...

@bwDraco that assumes I have a use for em

like doiding or transient storage ;p

Bob

@JourneymanGeek Yes, that's the one.

Journeyman Geek

Samsung has what...

20 models at a time?

Bob

2:29 AM

IME there's an interesting correlation between number of devices available and general reliability/performance.

Then again, TouchWiz is just shit regardless.

Journeyman Geek

and very few companies have the discipline to focus

Moto did (with 3 phones) and their phones were fantastic.

(Lenovo will mess that up)

one plus might pull it off

Bob

One thing to note: Android, as in AOSP, is not optimised for a specific platform but that doesn't matter.

It's the device manufacturer's job to do that.

bwDraco

Wrote this a while back: pentaxforums.com/forums/14-general-talk/…

Material design fixes many of these issues, though.

> Menus in Android are more difficult to navigate than those in iOS. iOS menus are well-structured and have clear delineations between groups of items, while Android menus don't separate groups of items well, making them harder to read. In iOS, groups are visually shown as rounded rectangular containers with headers outside these containers. In Android, menus are little more than flat lists of items, making it difficult to find a desired item.

This is no longer an issue these days as it is addressed by material design.

Bob

And yet iOS puts all kind of shit in funky places.

Oh, why not put browser settings in the OS settings app? That makes sense! /s

bwDraco

Under iOS, settings for all apps are supposed to be in the OS settings app.

Bob

2:37 AM

@bwDraco Yes, because I find it so very easy to have to jump around apps to toggle a setting.

As you may or may not have guessed, I'm being frustrated by said experience daily.

bwDraco

One thing I hate about Android is that for a common operating system, different devices can operate in very, very different ways. Notifications, app drawers, Recents menus and settings differ so dramatically across different brands of Android devices.

Journeyman Geek

@bwDraco that's not android's fault

Michael Frank

@bwDraco Kinda like Linux!

bwDraco

Samsung's TouchWiz UI is so different from the stock Android UI that there's a significant learning curve to go from a Nexus device to a Galaxy device.

Michael Frank

What kind of timer stops when the screen locks? :/

Yea, like their stupid clock application.

Bob

2:42 AM

@JourneymanGeek Exactly.

Journeyman Geek

hm

Bob

If the base OS (as in AOSP) is inconsistent with itself, then you can complain about it.

But as it is I just see blame being assigned for, what? Not preventing derivatives from modifying the OS?

bwDraco

I'd probably have trouble using a Galaxy S-series phone and would need a week or more to learn it.

Bob

You're equating "Android" to "iOS".

bwDraco

(Again, all my Android devices run CyanogenMod, which is not much different from AOSP in terms of the UI.)

Bob

2:44 AM

A more apt comparison might be "Samsung's Android derivative" to "iOS" to "LG's Android derivative" to "HTC's Android derivative".

@bwDraco Then if CyanogenMod is inconsistent within itself you can complain about that.

If its UI is inconsistent with Samsung's UI then you might as well be comparing different OSes.

Really, you are comparing different OSes.

For a more extreme example, consider Fire OS.

bwDraco

Fire OS is an incompatible fork of Android.

Bob

It's also based on Android, but it's quite obviously a different OS, and a different experience.

@bwDraco And? 'Compatibility' is the choice of the author of that derivative, like just about every other aspect.

bwDraco

From a user's standpoint, Fire OS is not Android.

Bob

I'm also not entirely sure how you define "compatible" and "incompatible".

@bwDraco Users equating all Android devices with each other is a marketing failure, not a technical failure.

Actually, outside of more tech-adept people I'd say many, possibly most, people don't even know or think of Android.

They talk about their "Samsungs" or "Galaxies".

bwDraco

The APIs differ in non-trivial ways. While Android apps can be easily ported to Fire OS, the reverse may not be true.

Fire OS is not CDD-compliant.

bwDraco

3:03 AM

> Fire OS is intentionally designed to be incompatible with Google's official Android compatibility standards

Fire OS

Amazon FireOS is an Android-based mobile operating system produced by Amazon for its Fire Phone and Kindle Fire range of EReaders, and other content delivery devices like Fire TV; the tablet-version of the Kindle Fire is the Amazon Fire HDX. It is forked from Android. Fire OS primarily centers on content consumption, with a customized user interface and heavy ties to content available from Amazon's own storefronts and services. While the Kindle Fire line has always used customized distributions of Android, particularly 2.3.3 (API level 10) (Kindle Fire) and 4.0.3 (API level 15) (Kindle Fire HD...

Journeyman Geek

facedesk

I'm completely confused to where this drive is from

erm. Yup.

@Bob the DOID lives again

Bob

3:26 AM

 0:10.12 Reticulating splines...

Part of the FF build process :P

Michael Frank

@Bob sims.wikia.com/wiki/Reticulating_splines

Bob

@MichaelFrank I know the reference. Just found it funny that it's in the build.

Seth

Windows can boot from logical partitions now right?

Or is that still an issue?

Michael Frank

Journeyman Geek

I seem to think you still need a primary partition

Seth

3:40 AM

:/

Journeyman Geek

@MichaelFrank MOAR ROTORS

Seth

okie dokie. Next time I should really just reformat with GPT.

Wait, can Windows handle GPT? -.-

Michael Frank

It's smaller than I thought. :<

Seth

I was gonna say, perspective on that one ;p

Journeyman Geek

TWSS

@Seth on 64 bit

Seth

3:42 AM

cool. Thanks!

allquixotic

4:15 AM

i.imgur.com/FKOeh60.gifv

i.imgur.com/d04bT6X.gifv

Journeyman Geek

aww

gsds are doofuses

allquixotic

5:11 AM

So my mom is usually more computer literate than the average person. Knows how to plug in (VGA/DVI/HDMI/DP) monitors and set up dual monitors. Master at MS Excel, advanced formulas, pivot tables, etc. Can connect to company VPN with complicated procedure to connect. Can autonomously enter WiFi SSID/WPA2 key and connect.

Manages favorites on the favorites bar in Chrome. Uses uBlock Origin. Etc.

She tells me tonight that she was going to have to print 100+ pages of a document tomorrow at work and scan them.

This set off alarm bells in my head. Whoa, wait. You have them digitally. You're printing them, then scanning them back to digital. WHY.

Journeyman Geek

0_0

allquixotic

Reason? They want it in multiple PDFs, they want to remove a few pages, re-order pages, and put different pages in different files.

Apparently never occurred to her that software can do this. PDFs aren't immutable.

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic PDF SAM works great for that

allquixotic

I personally prefer Foxit PhantomPDF (I bit the bullet and bought the highest-end, expensive version they have), but she can't put any licensed ($) software on her work box

PhantomPDF 7 Business is basically a cheaper version of Adobe Acrobat Pro with 99% of the same features

way, way cheaper

bwDraco

5:35 AM

...and since PDF is an open standard, compatibility is not really an issue.

Journeyman Geek

@bwDraco there's remarkably few tools for editing it especially on windows

Bob

6:15 AM

@allquixotic If you just want to fiddle with pages, pdftk would probably work.

Journeyman Geek

6:25 AM

installed the DOID in the brix

All my most unreliable hardware in one place.

DrKumar

6:49 AM

hey, how come hard drives never partition equally? It's always a megabyte or two off

Bob

@JourneymanGeek POID?

Journeyman Geek

POSID?

@DrKumar rounding errors

Bob

@JourneymanGeek ?

Journeyman Geek

Piece of **** of impending doom?

DrKumar

How...how did you know that

How does everyone on the internet know so much

Journeyman Geek

6:54 AM

@DrKumar cause someone else has asked the same question ;p

More specifically hard drive manufacturers use 1000 mb gigs, while computer scientists use 1024

Which is why the prefixes are actually different

DrKumar

Right...

But if the software is calculating the space in GiB or whatever, shouldn't it split equally anyway?

Journeyman Geek

nope ;p

Also, I think I got the mini install going faster yay.

@DrKumar software always uses 1024, hardware manufacturers always use 1000

Bob

@JourneymanGeek Not always.

Journeyman Geek

TYpically use? ;p

DrKumar

but when it makes the calculations, isn't it splitting it completely equally...it's just displaying it on the GUI in 1000, which appears unequal...?

Bob

7:08 AM

@DrKumar What do you mean "equally"?

Journeyman Geek

hence me saying "rounding errors"

Bob

What are you trying to do?

Split a disk into two halves?

DrKumar

I think I get it now. @Bob

I was

Journeyman Geek

I think he's asking why they arn't splitting the difference between 1000 and 1024?

DrKumar

just trying to wrap my head around disk partitioning

Bob

7:09 AM

Oh evenly

DrKumar

oops. Yes, evenly

Bob

You had me confused for a bit there...

Journeyman Geek

And me ;p

DrKumar

you can never choose your words carefully enough on the internet... :(

or maybe, you can...I am just tired

Journeyman Geek

We can stilll blame software devs for that ;)

Bob

7:16 AM

@JourneymanGeek Oi! :P

Journeyman Geek

hm. this is going wierdly.

ahh. Bloody plymouth

DrKumar

7:44 AM

hey, Disk Utility on OSX uses the program diskutil yes? So why would the GUI refuse to format one of my drives, and the CLI would do it without hesitation?

so weird

although, it did format without a partition map

Maybe it's a safety thing so users don't screw up their drives like I almost did

I had a flash drive formatted as UDF for some reason, Disk Utility didn't like that. So I used diskutil eraseDisk and it formatted it like nothing

Journeyman Geek

@Bob looks like lxd has centos images too

Michael Frank

8:01 AM

@bwDraco here's my FF collection.

bwDraco

The FFVII package is very valuable; take good care of it.

Journeyman Geek

heh

lxc is niiiice

Bob

8:17 AM

@JourneymanGeek would be nicer if it worked on debian -_-

Michael Frank

@bwDraco Yea, I think that was my second copy. The first copy I had froze as you got on the airship at the end of one of the discs.

Journeyman Geek

@Bob as a host?

and meh

I run it on an ubuntu minimal install ;p

Bob

@JourneymanGeek Ya.

All my servers run Debian.

Journeyman Geek

ahh

fedora and ubuntu for me

Bob

And I'm not willing to switch to Ubuntu just for an unstable lxd.

Journeyman Geek

8:30 AM

guess which system I had this installed on ;p

Bob

If it were stable-ish and (still) Ubuntu-only I might've considered switching.

Maybe.

Hennes

9:06 AM

Daily vote limit reached. Bah

Michael Frank

Whoa... Apparently with HDMI device link, I can control my PS4 with my TV remote! :o

Hennes

9:30 AM

Finnished spamming with edits

Burgi

is this off-topic?

0

Q: how to take backup of broken screen android device?

Android phone's screen is broken. I want to take a back from the same device. I tried to connect it with computer using USB but drive is not showing on computer. My phone is connected to WiFi. please help me to take a back up of my data

android

Michael Frank

@Burgi Yea... It's probably more suited for Android.SE.

Burgi

It seems like a borderline case but I have flagged it anyway.

Journeyman Geek

@Burgi and probably has dupes

Nate Kerkhofs

9:59 AM

Okay, time to try and patch my BIOS again

Looks like I indeed have to patch my BIOS one patch at a time, they're incremental

Oliver Salzburg

10:36 AM

So, I have a laptop here which the client wanted me to reinstall. I upgraded it from 7 to 10 and the touchpad stopped working. Support told me that I need to update the BIOS, which I did, the problem persisted. They told me that I now need to reinstall Windows with UEFI support, otherwise the touchpad wouldn't work

And they were right...

Why does Legacy/UEFI have an impact on the touchpad working?

Journeyman Geek

10:52 AM

._.

Burgi

that emoticon always makes me think of marvin

Journeyman Geek

11:17 AM

You've not seen a grumpy wauzer ;p

qasdfdsaq

Woof?

Hennes

Woof!

Journeyman Geek

11:33 AM

woof

4

meow

wow... 3 in a row on late answers all "thanks" type answers

which queue do NAA flags go into?

Journeyman Geek

11:50 AM

mod queue I guess

Burgi

last night my sister needed help to save her CV on her boyfriends macbook. she wouldn't let me teamviewer on to it saying she didn't trust me!!!

she wanted me to drive round and show her

i'm actually really angry that she said she didn't trust me

qasdfdsaq

Maybe that's not the only thing she wants you to "show her" ;)

Burgi

dude... wtf?

Journeyman Geek

If someone dosen't trust you, they don't need your help

qasdfdsaq

Maybe she wants some illegal things done to her boyfriend's laptop, and doesn't want to talk about it over unencrypted communications channels.

Burgi

12:01 PM

i doubt it

Journeyman Geek

speaking of which. Anyone know of a jabber client that does proper windows 10 notifications?

(trying to rig up something that will send messages to my PC when I have a completed torrent download)

sounds like india

4

12:28 PM

12:53 PM

@qasdfdsaq if a girl replied with this to me i'd marry her

qasdfdsaq

@Burgi Really? That's all it would take?

Burgi

yeah

qasdfdsaq

Well there's plenty of them, I know a few IRL and come across several ladies here on StackExchange who might come up with something like that.

But apparently stalking them is bad, and hitting on them is not allowed, so...

Burgi

heh

i have discovered that internet dating is more depressing than irl dating

qasdfdsaq

Apparently the trick is to invite them to private chat rooms and not be reported.

Apparently statistics show men approaching women on online dating sites send an average of 72 messages before they get a meaningful response.

And for women it's like 1 in 3.

Burgi

1:00 PM

how do you convince them to get in a private chat?

hypothetically speaking, of course...

i'd agree with that stat

qasdfdsaq

No idea. I've only managed to get them to send me private moderator messages telling me off for being "kinda gross".

2

Burgi

LOL

DavidPostill

@qasdfdsaq Nice pussy ;)

Burgi

#flagged! ;)

qasdfdsaq

Urgh

I suck.

Journeyman Geek

1:11 PM

lol

qasdfdsaq

This sucks.

Everything sucks.

I need some ketamine.

Journeyman Geek

internet romance is overrated. I am told.

qasdfdsaq

s/internet//

Journeyman Geek

I donno

;p

I've not actually gotten in a situation where I'd be able to give an informed opinion

qasdfdsaq

google.co.uk/search?q=romance+is+overrated

Let the internet decide for you!

Bob

1:26 PM

@allquixotic I've learnt more about the FF Android app than I really wanted to know -_-

Burgi

i actually had a date last saturday... odd girl

qasdfdsaq

She didn't tell you her MAC address then?

Burgi

she didn't speak then tried to break my fingers by bending them all the way back

she didn't have a favourite movie, book, band or food

she didn't like art of any sort

qasdfdsaq

Sounds like me!

Burgi

THEN she wanted to meet me again

@qasdfdsaq you don't have a favourite food?

qasdfdsaq

1:31 PM

Nope. I like everything.

Burgi

lol

she said she was 25 but acted like a child

qasdfdsaq

Yup. Sounds like me.

That explains a lot

DavidPostill

@Burgi The only way this relationship will succeed is if you are a masochist :|

Burgi

lol, agreed

i told her to grow up a bit

she hasn't replied

qasdfdsaq

Give it time. Growing up isn't quick or easy.

DavidPostill

1:46 PM

@Burgi So what did you talk about then? Did you just ask lots of questions and she said "no"? :/

Burgi

basically

yes

weirdly not my worst ever date, lol

DavidPostill

Hmm. There must be something wrong with the water in Manchester ... ;)

Bob

Hmm.

Burgi

HA

Bob

Ok. Time to set up ownCloud.

qasdfdsaq

1:48 PM

@Bob Yup

Bob

First thing's first ... what to do with file storage? Hm.

I don't want it to live inside the VM.

I can share it from the host via NFS.

Or I can use 9p virtio.

Anyone here used either? Both? Experiences to share?

DavidPostill

@Burgi Perhaps she checked out your website. You need to work on that ...

tereško

> "Unix is very user friendly. It's just particular about which users it's friendly with."

Journeyman Geek

ugh

sendxmpp seems to be buggy

Bob

I'm leaning towards 9p - less overhead, probably easier to set up.

Burgi

1:54 PM

version 2 has been in development for about 6 years, its just finding time to do it

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