Root Access

A: Is it possible for some "Too Broad" questions to be exceptions to the rule?

Hmm.

21

The question we're talking about here is an interesting and unique question. It is a question to which giving an answer requires thought, and from those answers the reader can learn a lot. It teaches you about machine code, compiler optimizations, and everything that the C(++)/ASM guru might dr...

^ despite being targeted at SO, that's pretty much exactly what I feel about a lot of SU questions

heh, go figure - two random powered USB hubs (Belkin 7-port USB 2.0 and j5 create 4-port USB 3.0) work perfectly, cold boot or hotplug, with my new rig

"best-selling" items on Amazon don't always use the best chipset, apparently

12:25 AM

@allquixotic could also be age

@Bob in which direction? I highly doubt that, if these two random hubs I picked up on Best Buy are VIA chipsets, that they're newer than what Anker sold me in 2015?

Anker had the latest and greatest and even advertised upgrading the firmware on one of the two hubs I had. VL812-B2 is supposedly the latest as of now

@allquixotic How long it's been used for. That kind of aging. Not design/manufacturing age.

1 year?

shrug

although if the VL812 chip just plain sucks and older chips were more stable, then I may have the older chips. Best Buy never, ever carries the latest and greatest

12:29 AM

I did mention before that I've had issues with a mwave one - issues that only really started many months/years in - but a new AmazonBasics one (~5 months?) is still perfectly good.

Best Buy is where they charge premium prices for second-rate kit, usually a few years old as far as design age goes

I forgot to check what chips they had, actually... whoops.

sometimes you even get open box kit that they have sold as new/unopened

@allquixotic I'm not saying the design is older or newer. I'm saying they might degrade/have issues with use.

I think this says everything you need to know about Best Buy. Their "premiere" headphones that get advertised up and down the store? Beats

@Bob fair enough but it seems like a mighty short lifespan for a solid state device

unless they simply run too hot and slowly commit suicide that way

the first powered USB hub I ever owned was a 7 port Belkin USB 2.0 hub my dad bought, and IIRC it lasted like 5 or 6 years

12:33 AM

@allquixotic It does. But that's just based on my very limited experience with my own hubs...

it might be in a drawer somewhere; I don't even remember it dying - the only reason I'm not still using it is USB 3.0 came out and I damaged some of the ports through repeated insertions and removals :P

@allquixotic They do run quite hot.

No heatsink either afaik.

Bulk data transfer really stresses them.

it's mostly this new wave of USB hubs that have run uncomfortably hot, in my experience

old-school hubs ran very cool

@allquixotic Old-school USB 2.0 or 3.0?

2

12:34 AM

Cause we're talking ~10x the data rate...

That could certainly cause issues, especially if the thermal management hasn't similarly evolved.

actually the data rate is rather irrelevant; what's extremely relevant (that I had in the back of my mind but just remembered) is that USB 3.0 allows much more current to be passed into the connected devices, and current == heat

Maybe get one of those tiny RPi heatsinks and glue it to the chip? :P

@allquixotic Eh... I don't think that's an issue, at least for powered hubs.

I think the power just bypasses the controller/hub IC entirely.

personally I would rather pay $80 - $100 for a hub instead of $20 - $50, and have a company actually test these things under heavy load and make sure it's rock solid, and install a superior thermal management solution for worst-case power draw

(yea, in theory there's negotiation, buuuuuuut...)

@allquixotic I've been using only powered hubs, and on separately-powered external HDDs...

So I highly doubt that there's significant current going through the hub.

oh, so you're saying the power brick that you plug in supplies DC 5V and it just gets passed onto the power pins of the USB connectors plugged in, with no interaction with the USB (data) circuitry?

12:38 AM

@allquixotic I think so.

I know some cheaper designs definitely do that

But that's like the $5 crap you order from China

Anker/Amazon/etc.? Dunno.

Entirely possible. I know a lot of USB hosts don't bother with the negotiation part.

Anker's batteries have been fine for me, but their hubs were atrocious... I seem to recall that the white one (VL812-B2) never even really worked as a data hub on my old desktop (and it never worked as one on my current desktop) - I assumed bad motherboard USB controllers because it worked as a USB 2.0 hub for my laptop at one point

the black one (regular VL812) ran like a champ for at least 6 months connected to an Asmedia USB 3.0 controller on my P8Z77-V

hm

both hubs consistently worked fine as power hubs though

I ended up doing battery powered device charging on the white one and data devices plugged into the black one, before the black one stopped working reliably / at all with my new box

hey, remember that guy named Ken who's like a hardcore EE who wrote a bunch of reviews of wall warts? I bet the DC adapters you get with USB hubs have similar problems - after all, they work the same, right? it's 120VAC to 5VDC.

the only difference is that 5VDC power plugs for hubs don't have to contain any USB circuitry or logic, nor a USB port; they only deliver power through a cord with one of the standard circular jacks

@allquixotic They are. But the difference is where you source them from.

The previously mentioned $5 one from China? (actually purchased at a dodgy local store) -- that had one of those dodgy adapters

The Amazon one? The mwave one? I can only assume they follow the relevant safety specs.

Especially the mwave one cause it's carried by some pretty big retailers here

haven't opened them up though

righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-is.html

12:48 AM

@allquixotic And they're all decent except the fakes

I would assume any kit you buy from a "non-dodgy" upstanding store is at least as good as the worst non-dodgy one from that list; but if you read the details, some of the official ones aren't even that great... not unsafe, just perhaps either inefficient (wasteful) or potentially damaging to devices over the long haul

not too worried about getting shocked through a decently sourced USB hub. worried about the power quality

@allquixotic most electronics is built by the lowest bidder? ;p

Ok. THAT was wierd

bwDraco

@allquixotic The only real answer is to probe the power output with an oscilloscope.

@JourneymanGeek I tend to have that effect

ahh, ok. google reminder chime. My hearing is a little messed up today so I thought the sound came from my desk

A: How to get more than 100mA from a USB port

12:51 AM

2

I that it differs from motherboard supplier how good the power supply for the USB is. Some cheap B-brand manufacturers may just link the +5V of the power supply down to the USB port. Some better ones may actually include the whole package for overcurrent protection etc. I got a sweex 4-port (e...

@bwDraco correct! or have someone else do it for me on a like-model unit :D

1:10 AM

that right one is my (purportedly good until yesterday) Anker hub. I noticed something interesting from the image: it's 12V input! not 5V

so the hub has a little DC-to-DC converter in it to go from 12V to 5V O_O

2:22 AM

0_0

Maybe to keep the current through the PSU cord lower?

2:32 AM

man - from a 1 to 10 where 1 is "why the hell did I downgrade to this system" and 10 is "I now have a quantum computer", this thing is a 9.8 or so... I'm completely satisfied

and I got the whole kit (except PSU, GPU and SSDs, which I'm re-using from prior purchases) for under $1500

:)

@allquixotic Did you end up replacing the mobo?

@Bob Nah. I definitely will at some point, but it all depends on how long USB 3.0 can continue to meet my external connectivity needs, vs. 3.1 / Thunderbolt.

Even though I only have one 5 Gbps shared pipe for all my I/O outside the confines of the physical box of my computer at this point (remember, I have only one xHCI Root Hub), it's currently meeting my needs, even with one extremely heavy user and two modest users (1080p60 monitor, microphone, and BT soundcard)

a motherboard that costs about $50 more (and is not sold in Microcenter) would come with one additional PCIe slot and at least one additional 5 Gbps USB 3.0 Root Hub.

Well. When you say "replacing" - this is the third Z170M motherboard that's been in my possession. It's the lowest-end one, its only saving grace being DDR4, but basically has no frills at all and just does what the Sunrise Point-H chipset from Intel provides. It's the Intel chipset glued to a board. KSP-style. :P

I won't be having a fourth Z170M motherboard in my possession til the long haul, and by that time there may be a Z180M I can upgrade to (and presumably still use my Skylake processor in it)

2:53 AM

@allquixotic RMAing the other two?

imgur.com/gallery/DLAKu feline floof

@allquixotic Well, I meant - did you just return the other one, or were you going to get a replacement?

3:12 AM

@Bob gonna get a refund on the first one

Ah.

we have a Beer, Wine & Spirits?! o.O

3:31 AM

used to be beer

They ended up widening the scope

feedproxy.google.com/~r/techreport/all/~3/ew7cg2zGvE0/…

rumoured 1080Ti and titan specs

3:46 AM

@JourneymanGeek eh... I'll wait for pricing

but you could probably buy a whole decent system for the same price :P

lol

Hm... ugh... I'd probably be looking at... $2k for a new machine at this rate. owwwww.

piecemeal upgrades sound better :P

the TI should be closer to a grand

Yeah

hm... maybe wait for Cannonlake?

Sandy Bridge is still holding up :P

4:14 AM

@JourneymanGeek my Maine Coon is much less ... long than most of those cats. She is definitely larger than your average tabby cat, but not THAT huge. Her markings and features and coat are exactly like those cats though

@Bob that's sensible unless you need the platform upgrade or, like me, desperately wanted to change form factor!

Honestly, had I not felt the push to reduce weight and size, I wouldn't have upgraded from the 3770K just yet, and simply upgraded to the GTX 1080 when it came out

And perhaps sink a bit more money into SSDs (which now I won't do for a while because that money went into the system components)

I do feel like SSD based I/O through the RAID controller is a lot faster and more responsive now, but it might just be the RAM working faster...

Pretty sure the sequential transfer rate on my Ivy system was equally impressive. I think. System is just handling the data smarter

@allquixotic some of those might be forest cats

which are also huge, possibly bigger

@JourneymanGeek ah, true -- see I always thought of maine coon cats as effectively "kitty-cat-sized" since mine is

big kitty cat, but still same category. Compared to the cats in those pics... which are enormous

@allquixotic most local cats are tiny

@allquixotic well, my mobo sucks and my case is cramped so I'd probably go in the other direction :P

@Bob I like big cases and I cannot lie ;p

4:25 AM

@Bob eh - I halved the number of disks I have. Zero intention of SLI/CF.

Mid-ATX at the moment

It can be costly, but if you need serious storage, you can just use a small number of really dense HDDs

@allquixotic I don't like the sound of SMR

only real reason to use full ATX at this point is if you need more than 2 or 3 HDDs of the maximum capacity available on the market, or you need optical drive(s) built into the case

@allquixotic or a long gpu :P

4:26 AM

@Bob shingled magnetic? that's what Seagate is doing with their 8 TB non-helium disks, right? or are they still PMR?

@allquixotic I quite literally like the empty space to work with

@allquixotic I think they're shingled

Apparently possible performance and retention issues

@Bob nah, Micro-ATX towers built for gaming can still comfortably slot a flagship GPU. Maybe not certain individual ones that have ungodly-sized cooling solutions, but I think they sized my case, the Corsair Carbide Air 240, to slot the reference GTX 980 perfectly

@allquixotic reference tends to be mid-small

there were people complaining that the R9-295X doesn't slot into the Carbide Air 240

4:28 AM

My current 760 is amongst the longest cards :/

I was like... wut. WHY ARE YOU USING THAT BEAST IN MICRO ATX

Plus all the extra room allows for upgrages in the future or working space if you need to swap drives in and out for repairs if you dont have a dock or external sata connections.

Had to cut off a few bits

honestly I don't see the need for uber-long or wide cards anymore - a reference flagship single-GPU card from Nvidia (or AMD, if Polaris is good) should be fine

Reference 1080 costs more iirc

4:34 AM

And even the 1070 is not bad for its price.

Hmm. I wouldn't completely rule out the possibility of a non-reference 1080 fitting in a Micro-ATX tower. You would have to get specific with the measurements (length, width) and match it up to a case that fits it.

Granted, with full ATX you generally don't have to care -- it'll fit unless your case just sucks or is so old that the designers couldn't imagine they'd ever make PCIe add-in cards that big -- but it's not that hard to work it with Micro-ATX, IMO

I've even seen Mini-ITX cases that can slot a flagship GPU of some kind or another.

granted you're limited to two RAM slots there, so that's why I didn't opt for one of those

The Length is 10.5 so you would need a case that was either 10.80-11 inches tall or wide. and possibly a riser cable.

silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=392

5:12 AM

hmm, my Nvidia control panel is only display Stereoscopic 3D settings, no other options... did an uninstall and reboot, no dice

Hm. They're setting up a quadcopter fighting cage down the street :P

@allquixotic That sounds like the one on my laptop w/ switchable graphics.

except my iGPU is disabled; Windows doesn't even detect it

I do have the DisplayLink thing though

ok, WTF

I unplugged my displaylink display and it works

Another for the list of "why DisplayLink sucks"

It solves a problem, but in just about the worst way possible above "it works".

(and even then it doesn't always work...)

>

Someone asked for `onbeforeunload`, so I started fixing it. Then I found that there was some rot in the drywall. So I took down the drywall. Then I found a rat infestation. So I killed all the rats. Then I found that the reason for the rot was a slow leak in the plumbing. So I tried fixing the plumbing, but it turned out the whole building used lead pipes. So I had to redo all the plumbing. But then I found that the town's water system wasn't quite compatible with modern plumbing techniques, and I had to dig up the entire town. And that's basically it.

5:35 AM

@Bob well it has to kind of hack itself into the nvidia driver layer, but it's pretty impressive that it works at all, TBH.

and it's great for ordinary desktop usage

haven't had any flickering since plugging it straight into the USB port

two 1080p renders from Star Citizen's hangar, very high quality, GTX 980:

now in 4k DSR (downsampled to 1080p for a fair comparison):

blame the artifacts on bad imgur jpeg compression

still, if you look at the metal cockpit structural elements going diagonally across the screen, it's pretty obvious that the 4k image is much smoother... and that's not jpeg artifacts because the 1080p one is way worse

(I think Star Citizen doesn't yet have AA, so this is without it)

I get pretty solid high 50s to 60 fps at 1080p on the GTX 980. At 4k it's a slideshow

this reinforces the idea that Star Citizen's developers are targeting the GTX 980 to deliver basically solid 60 fps at 1080p (without AA; though they may be able to optimize stuff further closer to release to retain 60 fps even with AA)

since the 1080 is many times faster than the 980, it should be able to pull 2k @ 60 Hz just as smoothly or even smoother than the 980 does 1080p60

anyway, bed time

Boris_yo

Zerg for president!

Zerg?

Zerb 2016

►

@allquixotic I'm actually not entirely sure how it works, but I would've suspected some (semi-)standard Windows mechanism, considering it works with iGPUs too.

7:23 AM

hey

lo

7:39 AM

any news from rivercorp?

@Burgi they felt I was a strong candidate but decided to go with someone else.

Unless you mean the second application for the same job with a different title ;p

which I've not heard back yet

i'm sorry dude

something will turn up

Yeah

have you looked at civil service jobs?

In singapore? yeah

They outsource their tech support to NCS

I've applied there with no responses

I'm hoping I get a callback for this stackoverflow.com/jobs/114752/…

7:55 AM

No Doubt you shouldn't get a call back on that.

@NetworkKingPin heh, getting a email/phone call would be a good thing

NCS?

Vaguely government owned tech company

ah ok

NCS Pte Ltd

NCS Group (also known as NCS Pte Ltd or "NCS", previously known as National Computer Systems) is a multinational information technology and communications engineering company headquartered in Singapore. NCS has over 8,000 staff located in more than 10 countries across Asia Pacific. == History == NCS was founded in 1981 when the Government of Singapore embarked upon initiatives to harness information technology (IT) for both the public and private sectors. It was restructured as a commercial entity in 1996 and a year later, became a wholly owned subsidiary of SingTel Group. NCS adopted its current...

The government often kickstarts specific industries by starting a 'statutory' board, then turning it into an independant publicly owned corporation with a large stackeholding by one of their investment entities

8:01 AM

do they make much money for the public purse or are they hugely over bloated money blackholes?

@Burgi er...

tbh?

No one really knows

its a limited company... do they not have to disclose their finances for public scrutiny?

@Burgi well, they essentially will almost always have a market

so they're 'profitable'

in the UK we have a bad history with publically owned comanpies

british rail, british steel, british leyland etc...

Well, our rail system's suddenly having issues in the past few years...

heh. We're going into politics ;p

8:08 AM

well the privatised system for railways here isn't quite working

@Burgi it was working here

Then I think they got trapped in the usual cycle of "we don't need institutional memory" and "we need to make more money, and as such do wierd unfocused stuff"

We used to have a seperate bus and train company

things worked.

well 2 bus companies and a train company

and then they merged the bus and train company, and gave the other bus company a train concession

and the former train company built a string of underground malls which no one went to

And everyone wants to be management. No one wants to do operations

heh

Which is probably part of the problem for me. There's a couple of hundred jobs for devs. I found... 8 for sysadmin sorts in the jobs bank.

There's a fair number of tech support jobs, but most of those applications blackhole

Where I live I feel most people just want to do a normal job and nothing more. There are a select few that do it because they actually love the job.

8:25 AM

@NetworkKingPin I'm not sure what else I'd want to do. I don't actually bother mentioning most of the "tech support" jobs I apply for here

@JourneymanGeek just dont give up. Get your foot in somewhere and move up its highly possible for anyone with the will and Knowledge.

@NetworkKingPin naw, not giving up

the applications are still going out, I have a plan B aside from my own efforts, and a plan C.

The job market for a aspiring sysadmin in singapore is somewhat ducked up

Gotcha. Ive heard they have quite a few really good Tech Jobs in Singapore.

@JourneymanGeek become a consultant? :P

@Bob hm. A bit more experience + someone who can handle the boring bits would be needed.

jokerdino

8:40 AM

hire an assistant

9:51 AM

XKCD now uses https! The NSA cant see which dirty tech comics I view anymore!! :D

2

djsmiley2k

:D

Very Exciting!!!!

@RahulBasu ...it has for a while?

We had a lot of trouble with the feed and xkcd oneboxing in here

@RahulBasu xkcd has always used https....

I take back my Very Exciting....

10:06 AM

they just haven't enforced it

@Burgi that's funny, bacause my PCs always seemed to connect through http... Are you sure?

I was trying to clean the shitty hp pavilion dv6 of my mom, the fan did a lot of noise on windows10, it could go to 50°C, so I cleaned all I can, and reinstalled win7 (orinigal OS), and indeed the fan does way less noise, I just opened cpuid HWmonitor, the temp of the cpu is 67°C on average, the air going out of the fan is really warm

@RahulBasu yeah, its https by default

:/

unless you're going to the main page and using http

10:07 AM

so win7 is silent, but superhot, but the laptop could handle that for several years strangely

since, well...

I use the rss feed

The homepage is one of the sites which open automatically with chrome for me...

oh, ok, it it was http in chrome settings

which is why I never noticed...

I couldn't access the fan though, too hard to unmount, but it didn't look too dirty

I'm shared between letting the laptop in this unheathly hot state, or putting back win10 that's sometimes very noisy (with a weird sound)

@crl it may have been noisy due to the dirt

you don't always need to unmount a fan to clean it

10:24 AM

@crl PROTIP: Compressed air cans

with a dirt air bomb maybe?

ah that ok

thanks, never tried, you inject it inside the fan output?

while keeping the fan from spinning

you can do it while the laptop is running? or is it unsafe?

@JourneymanGeek for a laptop fan? you often do

laptops have a bad habit of getting literal clumps of dust stuck in there

air dusters don't help with those

and they're usually a turbine design, and often have a little nook that gets filled with dust

it's more a lint ball than dust

if you have curved tweezers, that might work

so the best is to access it and clean it, hmm ok can try that too, thanks guys

10:30 AM

What @bob said is correct. I worked on several DV6 in 2014.

@NetworkKingPin might be an HP thing?

most of this is from a Pavilion G7 (?) :P

but I've noticed similar designs in other HP laptops

It possibly could be. I know they have a lot of issues with Solder breaking on Hp laptops Dv6 being one of them.

I usually ended up taking the board out

and picking at the fan with the tweezers

Which will also cause higher temps

really need curved ones for that

first time I took the fan off the CPU entirely, not that much harder

but you do need to have some paste handy

10:32 AM

I removed a lot of screws, the keyboard, and one board in the bottom, but could't dismantle more :/

Ive probably baked a dozen or so of those in the oven. cheapest re-flow system out there.

hp doesn't make it easy to access their fucking fan

@crl model?

usually the keyboard is the hard part

damn clips

oh, there should be several screws under the keyboard

hp pavilion dv6 6154-sf, yes removed the screws under the keyboard too

@crl hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01860375.pdf

You're looking at that one, right?

10:44 AM

o, great, I was more watching videos, but the manual is great, I didn't know there were more than 2 different screw sizes :)

@crl If there's one thing I like about HP laptops, it's how easily available and detailed the service manuals are.

And that's needed. Cause they're a pain in the arse to actually service :P

Oh, that DV6 keyboard is actually easy to remove...

The Pavilion I had, you needed to pry some spring-loaded clips back.

And they never worked properly again :\

@Bob lenovo has those too.

not that you needed them with the model I had

@JourneymanGeek The manuals or the clips? :P

manuals ;p

thinkpads are stupid easy to take apart

djsmiley2k

11:18 AM

1 hour ago, by Rahul Basu

XKCD now uses https! The NSA cant see which dirty tech comics I view anymore!! :D

errrm if you're not using dnssec, they know?

at least, they still know you connect to xkcd.com./..

Wait... does that mean that the XKCD bot can't onebox the images?

> Greetings in the name of our lord Jesus Christ. l am Mrs Elizabeth Anna Johnson from Germany, a widow to late Dr. A. Johnson . l am 51 years old and a converted born again Christian, suffering from long time cancer of the breast, from all indication my condition is really deteriorating and it is quite obvious that I might not live more than two (2) months, according to my doctor because the cancer has gotten to a very worst / dangerous stage.

Oh dear, this seems serious...

djsmiley2k

The linkedin spam begins?

@djsmiley2k Naw, just a standard phishing email.

@MichaelFrank Nah, they added https to the onebox list a while ago

xkcd has been on https for a while

why is everyone acting as if this is new? :S

Ahh. shrug

11:27 AM

@Bob, i think @RahulBasu only just found the refresh button on his browser... ;)

> don'treply@elizabethjohnson.co.za

is that even a legal email address? o.O

yes

hehe

Huh, so it is.

@MichaelFrank Just about everything is a legal email address

11:30 AM

Unless it has quotes in it, apparently. "abc"@... is legal. But a"b"c@... is not.

i think the only actual requirement is that it has an @ in it

@MichaelFrank lol. If she lives in Germany why would she have a .za domain? Oh wait a minute "ElizabethJohnson.co.za is for sale" so it is not a valid email address. ;)

I just took a massive leap of faith and updated my phone (cc @qwertyuiop)

apparently Odin 3.11.x fixes the HOME_CSC bug

> From: Elizabeth Johnson <don'treply@elizabethjohnson.co.za>
Reply-To: Elizabeth Johnson <elizzzj2016@gmail.com>

thanks guys for the help, that's the first time I open a laptop i.stack.imgur.com/PFgBW.jpg, should I take the fan apart or I can clean it in-place?

11:32 AM

@DavidPostill heh IMO, not really worth argueing with alex.

@MichaelFrank An email "From" address is trivial to forge.

Of course.

@JourneymanGeek shrug. I'm bored ;)

k ;p

I'm going to clear out the comments sooner rather than later tho

@crl If you have tweezers with an angled nose, you can slowly pick the dust out (there's lots between the fan and vent in that hidden area)

Otherwise, you'll have to remove the fan.

11:33 AM

@Bob I have one of those. Guess where I got it ;p

@JourneymanGeek No problem ;)

@JourneymanGeek Daiso? dx?

ok @Bob

@Bob daiso ;p

@crl I recommend taking it apart the first time, so you know what you're working with.

It'll be easier next time.

11:34 AM

yeah, have to disconnect things tho

@crl Yup. Lots of things. And have thermal paste ready! :P

The fun of laptops.

Clevo W230ST W230SS Sager NP7330 7338 Repaste with IC Diamond

@NetworkKingPin Clevo ones are remarkably open.

►

My current laptop is a W230SS :P

Skip to ~3:10

Oh wow @Bob

Take off the back and you can reach just about everything :D

11:38 AM

They had some thought put into that.

A mobo replacement would probably still be a bit hard, but just about anything else looks pretty simple.

Huh. That was easy. @qwertyuiop: updated to APDN, rooted again, all done :D

Let's see if the palm rejection is actually any better.