Root Access

Bob

08:00

Playing on this cheap thing: logitech.com/en-au/product/x100-mobile-wireless-speaker

dunno which BT version

Hm looks like it might support 4.0

...urk. the phone I'm playing from is only 2.1

so this might have completely different results

allquixotic

heh, with the phone's chipset limited to BT 2.1, you're likely not to have any problems at all

Bob

wouldn't it be juuust great if Bluedroid was fine on older BT hardware?

allquixotic

BlueZ with a BT 4.0+ controller or Bluedroid with BT <= 3.0 should be fine

Bob

aha just had a really quick pause

allquixotic

heh

Bob

08:02

hm. if it's a screen-off issue I could probably fix it in CM11 by playing with the governor settings

but that's probably going to increase battery usage, and would take too much time right now

allquixotic

you know what's even more puzzling? there are a lot of mixed results and corner cases in the bug tracker

some people say they have had the same BT 4.0 headphones for years, and they worked great with the Galaxy S4 but are broken with the Note 4

other people say the Galaxy S4 has exhibited the problem

Bob

@allquixotic With the same OS version?

allquixotic

then some people are like "what? I use Bluetooth headphones every day with my S5, and I've never had a single problem"

@Bob yeah, I'm talking about Kitkat or later S4 (which is Bluetooth 4.0, and would be running Bluedroid)

Bob

The pauses are short enough that I'd probably ignore them if I wasn't specifically listening for them.

In fact, I think I just had another but I can't even hear it over my clicky-click (keyboard)

allquixotic

@Bob I can't ignore them - I'm an audiophile. and I definitely can't ignore the gunshots

Bob

08:04

oh that one was definite

so it seems not even 5 mins in between for me

@allquixotic no gunshots here, but it's 2.1

though, the shitty CPU and the streaming music might exacerbate the issue here

allquixotic

right

Bob

@allquixotic Does the app you play from matter?

Spotify? Non-streaming local player? Other?

I mean for the pauses, not the gunshots.

I'm wondering if it might be a combination of an attempt at power saving (definitely involved) and the network traffic + decoding + BT being too much.

@allquixotic Strangely? I think I've had similar pauses before with BT.

Might've been with a laptop.

oh wow this is a 45nm CPU

allquixotic

@Bob No.

@Bob Well a tiny little bite-sized device (I would be able to fit it in my mouth easier than a potato chip) called the Avantree Saturn Pro plays back bluetooth audio using BT 4.0 with apt-X to all three of my headsets with ZERO problems - ever, ever, ever - not a single dropout or gunshot in hundreds of hours of use.

it must have a SoC an order of magnitude less capable than your smartphone's, even the cheap one

because the little guy was very cheap

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: also likely it has specialised chips for what it does

Bob

^

allquixotic

08:17

and I'm aware that the wireless environment where I work might be noisy - there could be several other BT devices in the area - but whatever the Avantree device does differently eliminates any impact from the other devices using the bands.

Bob

An underclocked general-purpose CPU? I could see it lagging, no matter how fast it is at normal clock.

A specialised device? Heck, it doesn't even have to worry about power saving. Doesn't have a screen, LTE network, etc.

Though, smaller battery too.

Then again, my Pebble can maintain a BT connection for at least half a week, and it definitely satisfies "tiny".

allquixotic

oh boy... just realized something :S

Bob

@allquixotic How much is cheap?

I just checked and this phone was $39. In 2013.

allquixotic

the Avantree is BT 3.0. it DOES support apt-X (and AAC), but not BT 4.0.

Bob

The same phone now would probably be worth $20. It's like the Intex FF OS phone...

Heck, even that one was $35!

allquixotic

08:21

@Bob ahh, the Saturn Pro is the same price, but no screen, no general purpose OS, just an ADC for the audio input in receive mode, a DAC for audio output in transmit mode, and a bluetooth chipset, and whatever CPU it needs

Bob

@allquixotic Is it battery powered?

Ah, it is.

10 hours Tx.

allquixotic

@Bob it comes with a Lithium Ion battery built-in, so that has to be factored into the price also

Bob

It's actually bigger than my Pebble.

allquixotic

so to sum up the bill of materials: chassis, box, instruction manual, probably a 16-bit DAC and ADC (a miniature sound card), Bluetooth module, and some kind of CPU to tie it all together

Bob

So 10 hours sounds about right, with whatever audio encoding it does.

@allquixotic Basically, they can put far more effort into optimising for audio quality :P

A phone has too many other concerns.

allquixotic

08:24

and it has to be potent enough to turn incoming audio over the analog 3.5mm connector, into a Bluetooth signal in 32 ms, because "apt-X Low Latency" codec has a latency of 32 ms from the time the chipset receives a buffer of bits from the analog side

Bob

Not excusing Android, etc., of course.

allquixotic

@Bob quality isn't great, though, which is one of the reasons (aside from elegance) that I'm hoping to not need to use the Avantree Saturn Pro.

if I turn down the output volume on the headphone jack on my phone, quiet parts of songs are "optimized out" to save power, meaning the headphones temporarily go into standby mode and don't receive any audio, instead of receiving a very quiet amount of background audio

if I turn the output volume to max, or even near-max, I get analog overdrive (not digital clipping - it sounds better than digital clipping, but still losing information)

Bob

o.O

@allquixotic Probably about $5.

Maybe even less.

Retail profit usually anywhere from 10% to 50%. Higher sometimes.

Rest is manufacturer profit.

Considering the likely design effort (: not that much), I'd say $35 is probably a tad expensive :P

But long as it works I guess that's fine. Not a crazy amount to spend.

Oh, it was 15 hours tx, 10 hours rx.

Ah, RRP $50.

allquixotic

hmm, tempted to get a new OVH server that's $3/month more than what I have, but with the Haswell Xeon, and instead of getting 3 x 2 TB disks with a RAID controller, I'll get 2 x 2 TB disks and 2 x 300 GB SSD... with no RAID controller

Bob

@allquixotic Not going for 3x SSD? :P

No RAID controller - ZFS mirror?

allquixotic

08:31

@Bob I currently have 4 TB of usable space, but I can tolerate 2 TB of usable space due to low utilization of existing space

stick the disks in RAID1 (ZFS), and use the SSDs as L2ARC and ZIL

Bob

Setup cost, though...

allquixotic

the "RAID" overhead of RAID1 is extremely low, right?

Bob

ok, that's bad... just paused for ~5 secs. think it was network interruption though

the wifi reception on this phone is shit

@allquixotic should be, yea

allquixotic

serverascode.com/2014/07/03/add-ssd-cache-zfs.html

L2ARC is supported on ZOL

wonder how much ZIL to give it

@Bob can you help me do ZFS wholedisk? plez :D

I wanna boot off of it too :D (I'm crazy)

Bob

@allquixotic sure :P

you doing it now?

allquixotic

08:35

nah, gotta place the order, etc

it'll be tomorrow

Bob

oh you probably need to wait for them to provision first

I still need to write it up as a blog post :P

@allquixotic Debian? Ubuntu?

allquixotic

also, I'm unsure as to what's going on, but they are not charging me a setup fee, despite having a 1-month contract term

Bob

I only really know how to do this for Debian. Ubuntu you might need to fiddle with slightly different packages.

allquixotic

@Bob Ubuntu. I'm still all-in with lxd. It's working great for me. It's NOT the problem here.

Bob

IIRC debootstrap does Ubuntu too, so that's fine.

allquixotic

08:36

yup

I guess OVH decided to waive setup fees for their entire 2015 line?

because there's no big "HEY GUYS! SALE! NO SETUP FEES!" message on the site

and there are no actual setup fees anywhere on my order

odd

Boris_yo

@Psycogeek Do these things work? amazon.com/dp/B00NUG0CV8

Bob

09:05

@allquixotic gist.github.com/Elusive138/f3eb7ac4d6473ae54f14

Pretty much copied straight from the OneNote doc with minor formatting fixes.

But that's basically the process I followed.

Adapted from the ZoL instructions.

Not sure how different Ubuntu might be

allquixotic

@Bob Thanks! Gonna take a nap, be back later

Bob

I can walk you through it when you actually do it, if you want. Assuming I'm awake :P

But that would be the starting point.

@allquixotic Oh, if you want to boot from ZFS you're gonna need a separate boot device. I'd recommend a flash drive.

bertieb

10:18

@JourneymanGeek Awww, not even in comments? :P

I suppose VLQ covers NARQ?

Journeyman Geek

kinda.

bertieb

I suppose it doesn't come up that often- but there have been two or three in the last day or two which could have used one-word answers

Journeyman Geek

10:50

You can always say more!

bertieb

Heh, it's usually verbosity I have a problem with :P

Bob

11:20

...uh

I have a 1.6 GB XML file here

wtf

HackToHell

lol

Bob

anyone happen to know how I can view at least a part of it?

I'd be fine with deleting 95% of it too

bertieb

head or tail ?

Bob

scratch that, I can delete 99% and be happy :S

bertieb

What's it from?

Bob

11:21

@bertieb good point

giant book catalogue

thing

bertieb

Wow

So not a Linux ISO wrapped in <bindata></bindata>

Bob

lol

bertieb

Should probably ask over at DIY.se, but does anyone have a better technique for removing kitchen wall tiles other than "attack it with a claw hammer and a crowbar" ?

HackToHell

Blah, need to set up continuous delivery

Bob

@bertieb I'd probably bring a chisel into the mix as well, and maybe a mini-slege, but that sounds about how I'd do it! :P

HackToHell

11:27

Jenkins is over kill and I can't find anything simple

Bob

Depends if you care about the wall behind it.

bertieb

@Bob Ooh, good shout on the chisel!

I care about the wall insofar as it's the common wall between two semi-detached properties :P

Bob

In practice the crowbar should get most of it.

But the chisel can help with really stuck down parts.

But you also risk wall damage...

bertieb

Yeah, the crowbar is doing a decent job, but I worry about being too, uh, vigorous :P

Some of the tiles don't have an easily-accessible gap to pry into, which is where I think the chisel will help

(the whole thing is being covered up with a one-piece splashback, so cosmetic appearance is not a worry!)

Journeyman Geek

@HackToHell: What do you really need to do?

HackToHell

11:32

@JourneymanGeek Update a bb repo onto a client machine every time something is pushed

Journeyman Geek

hmm

could use inotify to run a command?

or more specifically incron

Bob

oh god the query is at 8 GB of RAM and still climbing

HackToHell

Oh wait I had the sentence wrong, bb repo -> client machine

on push to bb repo

Journeyman Geek

(assuming files on the system are changed)

Bob

seems to have stabilised at 9.6 GB! :O

that extra 16 GB was a good investment :P

HackToHell

11:34

I am thinking a fabric script for now

Journeyman Geek

@Bob: head tail or less.

Bob

4.6 million records

@JourneymanGeek I need to extract a (random) subset of ~20k from 4.6m

Journeyman Geek

._.

Bob

Also, I needed a bit more info of what was in there.

Basically, requires an XML parser.

Ended up using LINQPad with a bit of C#

HackToHell

11:55

Going to try this github.com/Strider-CD/strider

Itay Sela

12:18

i got a question about hexdump to binary

I need to convert a string that hold a hexdump of a file back to binary in C program

any suggestions

Journeyman Geek

._.

Isn't that what xxd does?

linuxcommand.org/man_pages/xxd1.html

Itay Sela

yeah but I want to do it from within a program

i used xxd -ps to turn a file to hexa

now i want to do the equivilant to xxd -r -ps STRING_FILE

in my program

Bob

...wrong chatroom

Journeyman Geek

Yuuuup

Bob

also, it's pretty much a matter of parsing a string and writing bytes.

if you don't know how to do that... you need a more in-depth tutorial than I'm willing to go through right now

Itay Sela

12:23

i see...thanks anyway

Hennes

@bob: Math 101? Counting to 16 ?

Journeyman Geek

;p

Hennes

read token, (e.g. 0x2A)
ignore/skip 0x part
Read next (in this case). result is valuex16 plus. Read next. Result plus value.
Use a case from 0 to F, with as default
default: System_panic("Someone corructed the file and we are going to make sure someone notices. Going down hard now with this on the console!").

@ItaySela Stack Overflow is more the side for programming quesions.

Though this is literally counting to 16, understanding hex (which IIRC is high school level math) and knowing your input pattern

bertieb

@Bob found a mini pry-bar, doing the tile-removing job wonderfully :D

HackToHell

14:43

@JourneymanGeek check out strider

Using it

Simpler and lighter than travis

allquixotic

@Bob I already have two /27 subnets with OVH; the good thing about upgrading to a new server with them is you can transfer over your previous subnets to a new server... so I don't have to keep re-buying subnets over and over

ChatBot John Cavil

14:59

I have just been restarted! This happens daily automatically, or when my owner restarts me. Ready for commands.

Bob

15:56

@allquixotic Wait, two? o.O

allquixotic

@Bob first server and second server had to be running concurrently

I still own the IPs from my SP-64

Bob

Ah. Did they accept that as justification? :P

allquixotic

They did! :D

so now I have two sets of 32 IPs to use, and that allows for perfect transition from one server to the other, as long as I have only one "prod" server and one server in the process of being stood up

Bob

urk

when I get an email I get a notification on three phones and 1-2 computers... and a watch

should probably disable a few of those

allquixotic

I'm a neurotic gmail checker (the web app on my browser, or my phone if I'm out), so I don't get notifications

I check it anyway

Bob

16:05

heh, I do that with chat

but I keep notifications on because urgent stuff

...most emails I get now aren't particularly urgent

meh

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