Root Access

Well, that announcement was out of the blue.

Anonymous

@bwDraco indeed

The rumor mills didn't give much notice about Polaris.

Anonymous

also there was no PR that I knew of, only that youtube video

1:10 AM

Boom. There goes Dick Smith.

@MichaelFrank ^

1:44 AM

boingboing.net/2016/01/04/young-girl-plays-incredible-or.html whoa

Pentax K-r shutter and mirror in slow motion

1:59 AM

►

Is this a good chatroom to ask for laptop recommendations? I don't usually keep up on laptop hardware stuff, and I'm looking for some opinions.

more or less

As far as SE chatrooms go, it seems to be among the best.

most people don't until they buy a laptop tho, but yeah, this would probably be the best chatroom for trying to get an opinion

@PatoSáinz amd.com/en-us/press-releases/Pages/…

2:11 AM

@duzzy better if you have a general idea what you want

I do have a general idea.

I'm looking for something lightweight, with good battery life. It doesn't really need to be super powerful... but I also need it to be capable of virtualization (virtual box, gns3), and I want to run OpenSUSE as my host OS.

back in a bit, updates

@duzzy what's your budget?

I basically want something that is easily portable, something good to fly with... but good enough to run some VMs

@duzzy inordinately fond of the thinkpad X series for that.

Suse might need a bit of work if they don't do secureboot

I'm kind of up in the air on budget. I started looking in the area of about $700, but then started looking at them around $1000... I'm not sure. I'd consider anything as long as it fits what I really want.

2:14 AM

@JourneymanGeek I remember SUSE being one of the first to make Secure Boot work using the default Microsoft keys.

The ideal is to generate your own keys and sign your own kernel, but that's not easy.

@bwDraco I have no idea. I run fedora and ubuntu but its something worth considering.

A lot of UEFI firmwares don't make this process straightforward.

en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:UEFI#Secure_Boot

Michael Frank

@Bob Yea, saw that earlier.

> Dick Smith customers are losing out after the company's receiver confirmed it will not honour outstanding gift vouchers or refund deposits paid for goods.

@duzzy vt-x is common now, core i5 I'd guess, core i7 if you're budget would stretch 8gb of ram is the standard now I suppose, but 16 would be nice.

I'd love to suggest going with an SSD (256gb) though if you can have an m.2 drive for boot and a normal HDD for other stuff, it would be optimal

@JourneymanGeek "common" => it's in literally every modern CPU, down to Atom

2:22 AM

@Bob wasn't always and at one point would be the sticking point to building a virtualisation rig.

@JourneymanGeek that's over half a decade in the past now

no need to worry about hardware-assisted virt

though if you intend to use the GPU in a VM (e.g. gaming) you're going to want iommu

@Bob on a laptop?

I don't really intend to use the laptop for gaming. It's mostly meant for school and work.

@duzzy TBH you could probably make do with Core M or an i3 for the vast majority of typical uses.

Core M especially is common in midrange lightweight/long-battery-life devices.

What do you want to run VMs for?

And how many do you intend to run concurrently?

I've been looking at the core M models. I don't know much about them. I don't really think I'll be doing anything huge on it. I think my linux/windows VMs and gns3 will be about as intensive as it will get... probably.

Probably no more than 2 at a time, but most of the time it should just be one at a time... but with gns3 at the same time.

the VMs are mostly just for testing scripts and stuff, and doing projects for homework.

2:28 AM

Hm.

They'll mostly be CentOS, Windows 7, Windows server 2012.

and then GNS3 for the Cisco switches and routers.

Ah. 8 GB would be bare minimum for RAM then.

You'd be better off going 16 if possible...

Yeah, I've been figuring on 8 as a minimum

Problem is, there aren't many devices with 16 GB RAM in a small/lightweight form factor.

Others: do you want a convertible? What screen size would you prefer?

A convertible would be okay, not really necessary. Honestly, I've been shying away from most things with a touchscreen, though, because that seems to reduce battery life in a lot of them.

I like the 13-14" range. 15" would be pushing it.

I want it to be light and easy to travel with.

2:31 AM

@JourneymanGeek Yes, on a laptop :P

@duzzy Hm. So you basically want All The Things (TM) :P

Well, doesn't everyone? :P

Other things to consider: how long do you intend to use it for, what would you be willing to sacrifice (weight, battery life, performance) first?

Because hitting all of those is likely to end up quite pricey, if it's even possible.

performance would probably be the first thing to sacrifice. I don't think I really need anything big in the area of gpu, etc...

Most likely you can sacrifice performance since your VMs probably aren't that intensive if you're just playing around with configs.

weight and battery life is important to me... and I just want it to be able to run my VMs.

2:34 AM

If you're not gaming you're fine with the integrated GPU.

Yeah, exactly.

I don't need a touchscreen or anything like that. I don't care if the sound quality is great or not.

I'd prefer to avoid things like an optical drive.

Nobody uses them anymore and they just add weight/bulk

What country are you in?

US

Ah, should be fairly easy to get your hands on whatever you want :P

You're pretty much looking at ultrabook territory.

Of course. Access to everything. 'Merica!

2:37 AM

Would've suggested the XPS 13 but that's got a steep price tag on it.

I was looking at those.

@JourneymanGeek did suggest Lenovo/Thinkpad above. I'm not familiar with those.

Yeah, I'm looking at that right now.

Inspiron 13 7000 Series looks decent too, but it's a convertible.

And they tend to be worse in terms of build quality.

Still, you don't get too much choice with those requirements and a ~$1000 budget :P

I can go more than that.

That's just the area where I started looking.

2:40 AM

How important is build quality to you?

Under $1500 you're mostly looking at the somewhat-bulky plasticy kinda-creaky stuff.

It's fairly important. I'm fairly careful so it's not right at the top of my priority list, but my laptops always just end up in a backpack when I'm traveling.

sitting under the seat in front of me on the plane, etc...

Okay, ignoring pricetag, what would you be thinking?

Hm. I've not looked at the high-end lightweight stuff much TBH

Do you have any brand preference?

Nothing that can be make or break. I've never been much of a fan of HP. I kind of like Asus... but I'll go with what works.

Heh. I've personally had bad experience with HP build quality on the lower end.

But higher-end is a whole other matter.

HP stuff in the past has often been annoying for me.

2:45 AM

In any case, you can consider the Envy 13" ones => store.hp.com/us/en/mdp/Laptops/envy-13#vao

Hmm.

The ZenBooks are nice too

Yeah, I saw those too.

There are so many options out there.

Heh.

status.linode.com

2:51 AM

I just tend to get an idea of the specs I want and then shop around for one nearby.

I'm pretty sure whoever is doing this DDOS has sworn that they will kill Linode at any cost.

securityintelligence.com/…

A USB 1.0, USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 controller walk into a PCIe lane.
The USB 1.0 controller says, "UH...."
The USB 2.0 controller says, "EH...."
The USB 3.0 controller says, "xH...."

My jokes are terrible

blogs.akamai.com/2015/11/…

@duzzy If you're considering the ZenBooks, well, you have plenty of chocie there :P

UX305 range is cheaper and lasts longer on battery. Core M.

UX303 can go up to 12 GB of RAM. Core i3/i5/i7.

General opinion seems to be avoid the Core M for anything demanding.

...which probably includes your VMs.

Okay, I've been wondering about that.

2:58 AM

XPS 13 apparently is 'rated' for up to 15 hours battery life (against UX305 10 hours and UX303 7 hours)

And of course I have to hit a motherfucking kernel bug when I attempt to do my bonding thing

@allquixotic clearly your kernel dosen't want to bond. It wants to sulk in a corner like a broody teenager...

bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=89161

@Bob Yeah, that battery life looks impressive. I've seen reviews that said the XPS 13 can expect around 10-11 hours in realistic situations.

and, typically, met with indifference, yet a 2 line patch fixes it

3:04 AM

@duzzy The XPS 13 is the most energy efficient laptop in existence

hmm

(That I'm aware of)

blah, My LED strips need to get here.

I've already got ideas for my final bias lighting setup

It could do 60 hours with the display off, if you tried hard enough

@JourneymanGeek Ooooh you were the one wanting a bias light setup? I thought that was Bob

It doesn't seem to be possible to have 16 GB of memory with the XPS 13, and it says the memory is on board, so I'm assuming it's soldered on and not possible to upgrade?

3:05 AM

@qasdfdsaq totally me

going to test it with cheapo LED strip lighting

@duzzy Correct

dx.com/p/… looks like a cool idea for something a little more elegant

d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/NtsROJrfVV6O2aUw.medium

though, I would need to wire up mains and a switch for it

Err... ifixit.com/Teardown/Dell+XPS+13+Teardown/36157#s81012

3:07 AM

but hey, I can do it. I went to engineering school! (and dropped out)

@qasdfdsaq Interesting.

@JourneymanGeek It'll need 240v AC wiring though :-/

Lol yeah, beat me to it

@qasdfdsaq yup

@duzzy It does say it can be purchased with 16GB out of the box though, which I personally would

Anonymous

@JourneymanGeek remember to abide by your national electric code :)

3:09 AM

If I wanted bias lighting (and I sorta do) I have a pile of LED strips I could use for it but would probably just put a pair of Philips Hue bulbs there

@qasdfdsaq It isn't giving me the option for that.

Much better CRI, and you can control it with a bash script... or javascript...

@duzzy Which site/country?

dell.com / US

It's only showing 8 GB

Ah, I just noticed an arrow pointing to a fifth model.

Blech. Stock shortage perhaps.

UK and Thai site both have 16GB listed: dell.com/uk/p/xps-13-9350-laptop/pd?ref=PD_OC

(Also Lenovo is more annoying, the configurations i want with GPU tend to only be available in Singapore, Estonia, or certain sources in the US

@PatoSáinz Meh.

@qasdfdsaq going to test out LED strips

they're significantly cheaper

3:12 AM

True, in my case I already have both :-P

and I can power them off my PSU, which is cool

but this is probably a better solution

I can write a script that turns my Hue bulbs off when my computer screen goes off? :-P

hell, for ~45sgd I could probably build something I can control with a remote control

Or have a script on my router ping my PC and turn off the bulbs when it isn't responding >_>

It bothers me that some things are available in some countries, but not others. Seems silly.

3:13 AM

@qasdfdsaq price ;p

Oh I have a pile of remote controllable LED strips too, some are IR, some are RF

I quite dislike how the Philips LED strips are about 4x more expensive, despite being the same damn strips

I'm looking at ~10-15 dollars worth of parts for the initial test

@duzzy keep in mind that while 16 is nice to have it's not a hard requirement - your VMs will run in 8. You need to figure out if you're willing to pay for it :P

Yeah, 35 sgd for the remote control stuff

and I might have some RGB LEDs left over which I could just buy a controller for

I think I bought the plain white strips (no controller or power) for about £7, and RGB controllable (single colour for the whole strip) for about £20 several years ago

IIRC my fully controllable (in sets of 3) strip cost about £50

But you can get much cheaper ones now

3:15 AM

@Bob Yeah, I see that to go to 16 GB, it's going to double the cost of the model that seems to have everything else I want.

Anonymous

@JourneymanGeek no, really. Sometimes they seem overkill but I've read enough to fear live mains.

The plain white one I sorta use as a bias light and sorta as a desk light

Build the whole thing from basic components! :P

@PatoSáinz what dosen't kill you hurts like a <censored>

Anonymous

Also, it's best if you want your home to be in spec in case of an eventual resale

3:16 AM

@duzzy personally I wouldn't pay that much more just for the RAM

@JourneymanGeek RCDs reduce both the hurt and the killing

@PatoSáinz these won't be wired directly into mains.

@Bob Yeah, I don't want to pay an extra $1000 for a few more GBs of memory. :P

I'll wire it up to a power plug

It comes with a bunch of other stuff too, but it's all stuff I don't need/want

Anonymous

3:17 AM

@JourneymanGeek are you going to plug a power supply for those LEDs into a wall socket? then it's fine

@PatoSáinz yup, and use terminal connectors

@PatoSáinz No, he's going to plug himself into a power socket

Like the japs do with their robot dogs

Anonymous

@JourneymanGeek ok then, but remember to put the switch in the DC side

Anonymous

@qasdfdsaq store.steampowered.com/app/353560 Plug & Play

@allquixotic LOL

3:19 AM

lol

@PatoSáinz all the switches

I donno yet

I'm still trying to decide how I'd build shit

Anonymous

I love reading electrician horror stories

it would help if you had opposable thumbs

@qasdfdsaq its amazing what you can do with a little help

3:20 AM

@JourneymanGeek You mean your hoomin?

@qasdfdsaq I was brought up by wild engineers ;p

!!tell 26604024 xkcd cables

ChatBot John Cavil

Comes with a 50-lb sack of gender changers, and also an add-on device with a voltage selector and a zillion circular center pin DC adapter tips so you can power any of those devices from the 90s.

some of those are surprisingly sane, like diesel to 120V AC

HDMI to micro-USB...

string to thunderbolt is what I use for my iphone

3:40 AM

hm

I've determined that my monitor actually does have 3 HDMI 2.0 ports

hm

I do not like HCDP

there's apparently no way to check if your monitor supports a specific version

and the tool someone suggested picks up my onboard video card

@JourneymanGeek WTF

What's the difference between 91 and 95 petrol anyway

Anonymous

@qasdfdsaq pressure required to detonate

3:55 AM

Interesting

Still can''t decide which to use tbh

Stupid Thai manual that has no english in it

Why is it in the UK I have to tolerate everything having 200+ page manuals because it's repeated in 15 different languages but when you actually NEED a multi-language manual it's all in just one language that Google Translate can't decode

4:31 AM

rofl

Same issue with my monitor

Also if its a mass market product just google the manual

4:53 AM

Welp, just decided to use my old tablet as a news reader.

@JourneymanGeek Duh why didn't I think of that

I do it all the time with technology, just his motorbike is... not my usual piece of work

5:10 AM

Bleh, even the online manuals are Thai-only

Apparently it's a Thailand-only product

What product?

@qasdfdsaq heh, similar issue as my crossover

5:25 AM

@Bob Honda Scoopy i

@Bob context suggests its a motorbike

A cheap rented motobike

...you bought a motorbike in Thailand?

Oh, rented.

Wait. You rented a motorbike in Thailand?

o.O

I'm surprised they even let you have it.

They basically have no standards here, and openly flaunt the law

lol

5:27 AM

@qasdfdsaq: You might want to change the text in your profile.

Anonymous

does anybody know how to use SE's data explorer to show me bountied questions ordered by publiction date?

@PatoSáinz Including closed?

@bwDraco My profile just says Woof

I mean, awarded?

On the main site.

Anonymous

5:28 AM

@Bob nope, open only

@bwDraco Oh. But it's true

@PatoSáinz ...that doesn't make much sense. Keep in mind that SEDE is only updated weekly and bounties expire weekly.

Anonymous

@Bob oh I thought it was real-time

.......

@qasdfdsaq I found a service manual

Anonymous

@Bob yea it does, because I found some questions bountied since november of last year

5:29 AM

in indonesian

Anonymous

they are probably forgotten, and i'd like to filter them out

@PatoSáinz That's not how bounties work.

Bounties expire within a week.

More importantly, bounties are explicitly designed to draw attention to older unanswered questions when someone wants an answer (and has the rep to spare).

@JourneymanGeek lol

@qasdfdsaq which is ENTIRELY useless to you

Anonymous

@Bob but who marks an answer as accepted if not the OP? what if the OP is long lost in the depths of the internet? does the bounty-creator get to choose?

5:31 AM

except that you could try looking for a indonesian or malaysian owners manual

Might not be

you could at LEAST know the script

astra-honda.com/app/webroot/upload/katalog/PC-SCOOPY.pdf

Now that I think of it, an online copy of the Thai manual could be fed into Google translate

@PatoSáinz The person who added the bounty always gets to choose who to award the bounty to.

(Whereas Google translate can't OCR printed Thai characters at present)

5:32 AM

Your answer doesn't have to be marked as the answer to the question. You'd still get the bounty - and the bounty giver gets the answer they want.

Win-win.

Also I've figured out how you guys manage to keep repcapping. Just by having a huge repertoire of old answers that randomly get upvoted every few months.

Anonymous

@Bob I see, just one last question: but the question will still not have one accepted answer even after the bounty-er awards the bounty to the bounty-ee?

@PatoSáinz It won't have the green tick, unless the original asker marks it, but you still get your +[50-500] rep.

@PatoSáinz the bounty and accepted answers need not be the same

@qasdfdsaq I've never repcapped due to that

Rather than having to get several answers with +10 upvotes per day, once you've been on the site long enough even if 0.1% of your answers gets a random upvote, by having 10,000 of them you get easy repcapping

5:33 AM

Or half the bounty amount if the bounty expired and got auto-awarded.

passive rep is a trickle

@qasdfdsaq Nah, I get anywhere between 0 and 40 rep a day from that. Usually 0.

It's not that much.

Repcap comes from landing on HNQ :P

yup

Anonymous

@JourneymanGeek yes I understand, but I just hate it when a question's author forgets to mark an answer as accepted

@PatoSáinz It's one of those things where there is no point worrying about it.

5:34 AM

@PatoSáinz can't really do anything about that

You give a good answer, you help someone who wanted the answer - wanted it enough to put a bounty on it - and you probably also get upvotes.

I gave away a chunk of rep from my accepted answer to another answer I felt was actually better ;p

Who cares about some tick and 15 measly rep?

Anonymous

@JourneymanGeek how can you even sleep well at night

@JourneymanGeek Still, a passive 20-50 on a good day lowers the bar a lot

Anonymous

5:35 AM

@Bob I'm talking from a database standpoint

Anonymous

it'd be nice if every entry had an accepted answer

Anonymous

a 1-to-1 mapping

Anonymous

it itches my OCD

@qasdfdsaq It rarely coincides with a well-upvoted answer, at least for me.

Though I guess if you have upvoted answers daily then it does help a bit.

@PatoSáinz The database cares even less.

Well I've had a random +10 on an old answer four days this week or something

5:38 AM

Hm. Now you have me wanting to calculate my total rep earned from >weekold answers.

@qasdfdsaq dosen't always happen

@PatoSáinz in a bed, airconditioning....

@qasdfdsaq those 2 repcapped days were from a HNQ

heh, the DB calls it UpMod and DownMod

Anonymous

@JourneymanGeek sleeping with A/C gets expensive, fast

@PatoSáinz can't really sleep without it here

Anonymous

@JourneymanGeek it's summer here in Chile, we had one night with 33ºC

Anonymous

5:44 AM

I had just to learn to sleep with it because I really feel guilty at the amount of energy used for cooling myself

@PatoSáinz I'd run an electric fan near me.

@qasdfdsaq I've earned a total of 8570 rep from upvotes to >weekold Qs and As. You've earned 270. @JourneymanGeek has earned 20105.

data.stackexchange.com/superuser/query/419461/…

Hm... a surprisingly large portion of mine actually o.O

Here's a more customisable one: data.stackexchange.com/superuser/query/419461/…

And here's the top 10 old-upvoted Qs: data.stackexchange.com/superuser/query/419463/…

Turns out I got a lot of old votes on highly-scored questions/answers.

...not really a surprise.

So it's not so much the number of answers. Lots of low-score answers don't do much.

6:08 AM

@PatoSáinz 33 is hot but not terribly so -_-

Oh yea. Have you heard of Spoon, @allquixotic?

@Bob so ~ 1/4 my reputation?

Q: What is wrong with my internet connection/Torrent?

@JourneymanGeek Around that, yea.

Anonymous

6:32 AM

@Bob oh god what's hot for you at night? 35?

Michael Frank

6:43 AM

Couldn't figure out why Couchpotato couldn't post-process Star Wars Episode II after it downloaded... Turns out someone renamed Star Wars Episodes I-III to Ⅰ, Ⅱ, and Ⅲ on themoviebd.org yesterday. Completely messing up any non-unicode application that tries to fetch the movie details via the website API.

Mrstupid

7:01 AM

can anyone help me?

0

My uTorrent is acting very weird. It has something to do with my Internet Connection. This is what happened and what happens. My torrents are not working well for past few days. I am on a Dell laptop with a dongle (USB Wireless internet, TataPhoton+). They were working very well but recently the...

@Mrstupid if we could, we would have posted an answer.

and mobile dongles are a terrible option for torrenting, and its entirely possible your ISP just blocked it

7:52 AM

that's just straight tethering my iphone to my NUC over USB at nearly 3 in the morning

;p

that's with channel bonding to a t2.nano -_-

what's a t2,nano?

and that looks sloooow

t2.nano is the smallest instance on AWS

ahh

7:58 AM

it's not the Amazon server that's slow, though

# speedtest-cli --server 3893
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Testing from Amazon Technologies (52.1.13.146)...
Hosted by Fast Serv Networks, LLC (Ashburn, VA) [1.18 km]: 16.885 ms
Testing download speed........................................
Download: 374.73 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed..................................................
Upload: 264.53 Mbit/s

somehow the channel bonding link is just horribly bad

so I've spent considerable time on this and I don't think it's really worth it to do channel bonding, and Speedify isn't very good either

Boris_yo

8:15 AM

Why printer never prints white?

Does it have sensor that determines contrast between paper and document?

jokerdino

Why do everyone have a brain?

8:30 AM

Gotta go so, but installing speedtest-cli on my experimental server to confirm these numbers

# speedtest-cli --server 3893
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Testing from Linode (45.79.142.34)...
Hosted by Fast Serv Networks, LLC (Ashburn, VA) [263.86 km]: 10.989 ms
Testing download speed........................................
Download: 852.66 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed..................................................
Upload: 203.50 Mbit/s

(Upload speed limited by the Linode.)

Traceroute?

@allquixotic Bad software?

Vincent

@JourneymanGeek hey there. I have a Q over at Graphic Design that looks to be a better fit for your guys: graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/64938/…

Wanna have? Please ping me if you do!

Sorry, wouldn't be able to help on this one.

Vincent

Ok, then I'll close it instead of dumping it on you guys. Thanks!

@Vincent Looks alright.

Not sure if this is worth migrating.