Yeah we have the same laptops at work for window users, same issue with the batteries. Bit worse then the prior generation when the rubber lining around the screens was coming off.
The battery on my wife's laptop is swelling. Turns out is a very known issue with these Dell laptops, to the point where they did a recall and replace on them last year and no longer make new batteries. We of course missed that window and now I have to buy 3rd party. I did call support this morning.
Never again.
Similar issue on my Surface Book, where it actually pushed the screen out of the frame in the last week.
It's technically out of warranty, but tech support have said they will honor it anyway and are organising a replacement for the whole unit.
The battery on my wife's laptop is swelling. Turns out is a very known issue with these Dell laptops, to the point where they did a recall and replace on them last year and no longer make new batteries. We of course missed that window and now I have to buy 3rd party. I did call support this morning.
Never again.
I feel like the "swelling battery" in the "laptop" fits really well with the usb jokes on the previous page.
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
Pretty much the headline. There's some sort of interesting stuff about how company founders are jiggering stocks to keep permanent control in ways that didn't used to happen for publicly traded companies, but mostly it's just funny seeing someone making grandiose claims about their company lasting longer than the country it was founded in months before it started to crater.
They're worthwhile tools, but like any software you need to do research first to pick one that will work properly. They're not just for people at risk.
I think is privacy is your main concern than TOR is generally considered the way to go, no?
+1
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
I used TOR in a library infosec class about ten years ago, and it seemed to make the entire internet unusably slow for anything except like plaintext emails. Do people really just use it for daily browsing?
I've had some tech dramas lately, while having the shit kicked out of my by a flu. My trusty Surface Pro 3 straight up died on Friday night. It was sitting on the coffee table running happily, I was watching a youtube video on the TV PC, I turn back to it and it's just black. Did all the proper hard reboot procedures, charged it overnight, tried it docked, tried it undocked, nothin'. So that was annoying, but handily I was already seriously considering replacing it with a Pro 7 and had some funds allocated for that, so.. today I bought a new one. The i5 / 8GB / 128GB model. It's.. more of the same, but 10th gen intel i5 and finally a USB-C port. So yea. This one shouldn't need the cardboard tube / 40mm fan cooling solution jammed on the top when I'm streaming twitch in HD at least.
The other tech drama going on is that I've been trying to get my NES RGB mod'd. There's a guy over east who is the preferred installer for this particular mod board (the etim one) who's been great to deal with - I sent it over, he installed it, I got it back.. and grey screen. So I sent it back, he tested and replaced the board with a new, not fried one and sent it back (and didn't charge me anything, including return postage.. but I'm going to try to reimburse him that) and tried again.. grey screen. So it seems that perhamps the (official nintendo) power brick that was fine with the non-modded NES is somehow frying the mod board? or something? Not sure what to do about it yet, don't want to just keep posting it over, getting it back and frying boards all over the place.
In practice a VPN is adding in a middleman who gets to see all your (meta)data instead of your ISP
your ISP can still see a good bit, and then the endpoint obviously tracks all your data as well
the problem with VPN vendors is that you generally have no way to verify their practices or hold them acountable in the event of a breach of trust
TOR is great if you want to hand your data over the US feds, but also really good at what it does so you know depends on your needs/risks
end to end encryption has gotten way better and more the norm these days making VPNs for just privacy sake mostly obsolete in many countries
Theoretically your ISP shouldn't be able to decipher any of the traffic you're sending out to a VPN. Not even the original "hello, I am connecting" message is unencrypted.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Seeing as how my dad just got NordVPN to use overseas for a month and literally came back Sunday, I'm sure he'll be really happy to see this.
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Zxerolfor the smaller pieces, my shovel wouldn't doso i took off my boot and used my shoeRegistered Userregular
edited October 2019
It is done. I have finally ascended to the next level of nerdery. Behold, via artsy glamor shot:
Another angle which shows the full layout better
The tilde and backslash keys are red for this one, which is more consistent but looks worse. I can't decide which is better.
so pretty
It's a so-called "75%" 84-key board, red and black because that's just ostentatious enough, and one of the very few things I decided to glam up and didn't come out looking like molten turd. This came about mostly because I've gotten real sick of full sized 104 keyboards, which either compromises your typing position or your mouse space on the right side, and I wanted something a bit more compact than a tenkeyless board. 75% keyboards are actually rather uncommon because the enthusiast keyboard market is heavy into 60% boards, and you'll see stuff like 40% and even more ridiculously spare novelty layouts because the scene really enjoys naval gazing about increasingly small and more unusable devices -- when keeping it compact goes wrong. (I actually do appreciate the theory around these layouts in keeping everything within easy reach via programmable keys, but hell you can do the same thing with a slightly larger board anyway. No dedicated function keys make nervous man, shit ain't right.)
One of the problems with a typical 75% layout is the unusual key sizes it uses: 1U right alt, ctrl, and function keys, 1.75U right shift, and, for sculpted profiles, a couple of keys for delete, home, page up, page down, and end on the rightmost column need different curves. Some sets will have them, or you can add them in, but often you're just SOL because, again, everyone wants to use 60% boards anyway.
Key switches are Kalih Box Jades and a single heavy-spring Navy for the spacebar, and they are a type of clicky switch. If you ever used a Cherry MX Blue keyboard, you get the idea, except more aggressive. I don't think I like using anything other than clicky or at least heavy tactile switches. I've used MX brown boards which people swear by, and frankly that shit is barely tactile and I'm not a fan. Don't get me started on linear switches, bleeeeeech. I want something that pushes back against you a bit, daring, "Are you?" as if each keypress is an act of deliberation. Yes, the dumbass dog gets jumped by a fox, I'm for damn sure.
The PCB that runs the whole joint is a KBD75 rev2 with QMK, which means it is fully programmable. And by "programmable," I mean you download the firmware source from Github and program the damn thing yourself in C. I spent an evening with vscode and a Linux terminal doing kinky shit with the keyboard and didn't wake in the morning feeling awkward, so I suppose it went well enough. This is where the real power of the keyboard is at, and there tons of possibilities available (VIM-style nav keys on modifier -- yea boi). I'm sure I'll think of more dumb nonsense to try on a drunken Sunday evening. The PCB supports backlighting for keys, but since the switches can only fit SMD and not through-hole LEDs, I had to leave them out, which is real sad, I know.
Anyway, this has been real fun and, all said and done, I now have a super nice looking -- and nice using -- keyboard that I'll probably be able to use for a while, or until the stupid anodized aluminum invariably scratches to hell and my OCD tendencies gets the better of me. I can see that for a lot of people, building these things is the experience itself (journey, not the destination, etc.), so who cares if you're making a keyboard with only 14 keys. It's fun.
And idiotically expensive holy shit. Be smart and do like my brother by getting something like this instead.
Additional stuff spoilered to spare you all from too much concentrated dorkery
I also dug this ancient thing out:
This exact keyboard was from an old IBM PC that my uncle had, which I used to play some old DOS stuff on. I remember thinking its keyboard was fucking weird. It was noisy, with a strange metallic snap when the key went down, and it felt unlike any other computer keyboard I've ever touched. The keyboard was in fact the beloved Model M, and it's the only surviving remnant of that PC.
That funky looking cord is a 6-pin SDL-to-USB cable I got my hands on. Model Ms have a detachable cable, normally a coiled cord with a DIN or mini-DIN connector. I actually had to take it to work to find a computer that still had PS/2 ports to make sure it worked using the original cable (fun fact: although Windows 10 still does support PS/2 devices, you actually to explicitly enable a device service to make it work). The new cable has a microcontroller to translate the signal for USB, making it ready for modern work. This particular board's vintage is from 1987, the second iteration of the Model M, and it's only a few years younger than I am and is actually older than my other siblings.
So I gave it a thorough cleaning inside and out, made it pretty, and took it out for a spin. Let me tell you, for a 32-year old piece of prehistoric technology, this thing still fucking rocks ass.
The keyboard uses a buckling spring mechanism, described in its patent as a "catastrophically buckling compression column switch and actuator," which is probably the most metal description of a keyboard switch ever. A very stiff spring is attached to the cap for each key, and when pressed on, it hardly compresses. Instead, the force will eventually cause it to collapse and buckle, activating the switch.
This gives it a tactile and sound profile that is unique among the sea of MX-style switches you'll find in mechanical keyboards nowadays, giving a crisp, very tactile action punctuated with a metallic resonance that sounds like your steampunk machine is about to take off. While the Model M isn't the only keyboard with buckling springs (IBM's own earlier Model F used it as well, and a handful of other manufacturers produced similar boards), it's the most widespread and iconic. It's exceptional, and it could be a daily driver if it wasn't so large. The thing is a beast, weighing about 5-6 pounds -- three times as much as my laptop -- with the desk profile to match. They did make a "space saver" tenkeyless version, but those are rare and commands exorbitant prices on ebay, many times higher than regular Model Ms.
It's built like a tank (the bezel isn't held together by puny phillips screws, but fucking bolts), and there's decades of life still left in it. I'll probably use it for some retro DOS box or something.
On the other side is this Drevo Gramr, which besides the dumb name, is a pretty decent, economical 75% board. I got one for like 30-some-odd bucks off of ebay as a test board before I went off and built my own, and it's pretty easy to work with. Detach the USB-C cable, pry open the case, and take out the PCB. That's about it. Spent a few hours desoldering and replacing the switches (came with linear black Outemus, and ew), and turned out something that's pretty nice. I may change the keycaps because the legends look terrible, but no big deal. It's now my work keyboard.
edit 10/16:
Oh hey, it turns out I actually ordered a cheap set of keycaps that originally was going to use on main project keyboard before I decided to on the red/black DSA ones, and I kinda forgot because I'm dumb, and they finally arrived after several weeks because they ship from overseas. I put them on the Drevo, and they actually look real tight.
In practice a VPN is adding in a middleman who gets to see all your (meta)data instead of your ISP
your ISP can still see a good bit, and then the endpoint obviously tracks all your data as well
the problem with VPN vendors is that you generally have no way to verify their practices or hold them acountable in the event of a breach of trust
TOR is great if you want to hand your data over the US feds, but also really good at what it does so you know depends on your needs/risks
end to end encryption has gotten way better and more the norm these days making VPNs for just privacy sake mostly obsolete in many countries
Also if the guy who looks at your online activity when logged in your banks website/app has to suddenly wonder why you have log in from Sudan when your a 76 year old retiree.
Recently I figured out how to use the vpn server on my wireless router. Being able to vpn into my home network and internet to check on bank accounts while on starbucks wifi feels good enough for me.
Now to figure out how to make pi-hole work over VPN so I can use its ad blocking on my phone outside of my home.
i'm surprised someone hasn't tried to bring back buckling springs yet.
Expense and practicality, I imagine. The keys for the IBM design come in two parts (the key housing itself that slots into the spring mechanism and a cap with legend that covers it) and are incompatible with the cottage industry of MX keycaps. Unicomp does make new Model M clones that you can buy for not-unreasonable prices, although they're more expensive than second hand Model Ms and not quite as well built IMO.
Recently I figured out how to use the vpn server on my wireless router. Being able to vpn into my home network and internet to check on bank accounts while on starbucks wifi feels good enough for me.
Now to figure out how to make pi-hole work over VPN so I can use its ad blocking on my phone outside of my home.
This is really the best use of VPNs for most people, if I remember right pi-hole acts as a DNS server? so it should be in either the client side of the VPN or server side in forcing that DNS provider
As far as what an ISP sees for VPNs, 1) we see that you are using a VPN, and which VPN, 2) we see any traffic not configured to go out the VPN, 3) all your traffic still passes thru so you have to hope/know its not a VPN/tunnel the feds have a back door in if that's your threat vector
So, we definitely still get the oppurtunity to sell your consumer data, and it's only a small hurdle in the way of a warrant. Considering the majority of VPNs out there are run by venture capitalists of one type or another I personally hold no trust for those.
VPNs definitely have uses but if you decide to use one just remember encryption doesn't solve everything, it's just moving your threat vector around.
i'm surprised someone hasn't tried to bring back buckling springs yet.
Expense and practicality, I imagine. The keys for the IBM design come in two parts (the key housing itself that slots into the spring mechanism and a cap with legend that covers it) and are incompatible with the cottage industry of MX keycaps. Unicomp does make new Model M clones that you can buy for not-unreasonable prices, although they're more expensive than second hand Model Ms and not quite as well built IMO.
true, i'm just assume with how insanely expensive and weird the mechanical keyboard cottage industry is someone would have taken a shot
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mightyjongyoSour CrrmEast Bay, CaliforniaRegistered Userregular
i'm surprised someone hasn't tried to bring back buckling springs yet.
Expense and practicality, I imagine. The keys for the IBM design come in two parts (the key housing itself that slots into the spring mechanism and a cap with legend that covers it) and are incompatible with the cottage industry of MX keycaps. Unicomp does make new Model M clones that you can buy for not-unreasonable prices, although they're more expensive than second hand Model Ms and not quite as well built IMO.
They are definitely out there, for example there's the Model F which purports to be a true clone of the Model M. There's also Matias switches. While I don't believe they're exactly buckling springs, they are inspired by Alps switches and therefor have a very similar feel to buckling spring type switches. I used the quiet click variety in a keyboard and next to Hall effect switches, are my favorite type of switch. They're also difficult to find in pre-builts and difficult to get keycap sets for, though (or they used to be, I haven't looked at Matias switches in a while)
Pi hole has good documentation, was able to fiddle around with applying that to the openvpn settings on my asus router and I got it working over vpn. Blocking ads on my phone away from home is nice.
Posts
Am I having a stroke?
Or sampling it earnestly for the intro to their retro tech YouTube channel.
1:01
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
It's technically out of warranty, but tech support have said they will honor it anyway and are organising a replacement for the whole unit.
I feel like the "swelling battery" in the "laptop" fits really well with the usb jokes on the previous page.
Fuuuuuuuuuu
unless you're at risk don't use them
and if you do look for one that actually focuses on civil rights rather than "PrIvAcY"
dang really?
I was strongly thinking about signing up for one
They're worthwhile tools, but like any software you need to do research first to pick one that will work properly. They're not just for people at risk.
However, if you're not convinced you can just follow this handy guide to make one of your own
your ISP can still see a good bit, and then the endpoint obviously tracks all your data as well
the problem with VPN vendors is that you generally have no way to verify their practices or hold them acountable in the event of a breach of trust
TOR is great if you want to hand your data over the US feds, but also really good at what it does so you know depends on your needs/risks
end to end encryption has gotten way better and more the norm these days making VPNs for just privacy sake mostly obsolete in many countries
As long as you don't mind the FBI watching literally everything you do. No corporate ad tracking or anything, though. Just the Feds.
The other tech drama going on is that I've been trying to get my NES RGB mod'd. There's a guy over east who is the preferred installer for this particular mod board (the etim one) who's been great to deal with - I sent it over, he installed it, I got it back.. and grey screen. So I sent it back, he tested and replaced the board with a new, not fried one and sent it back (and didn't charge me anything, including return postage.. but I'm going to try to reimburse him that) and tried again.. grey screen. So it seems that perhamps the (official nintendo) power brick that was fine with the non-modded NES is somehow frying the mod board? or something? Not sure what to do about it yet, don't want to just keep posting it over, getting it back and frying boards all over the place.
Theoretically your ISP shouldn't be able to decipher any of the traffic you're sending out to a VPN. Not even the original "hello, I am connecting" message is unencrypted.
Seeing as how my dad just got NordVPN to use overseas for a month and literally came back Sunday, I'm sure he'll be really happy to see this.
Another angle which shows the full layout better
The tilde and backslash keys are red for this one, which is more consistent but looks worse. I can't decide which is better.
so pretty
It's a so-called "75%" 84-key board, red and black because that's just ostentatious enough, and one of the very few things I decided to glam up and didn't come out looking like molten turd. This came about mostly because I've gotten real sick of full sized 104 keyboards, which either compromises your typing position or your mouse space on the right side, and I wanted something a bit more compact than a tenkeyless board. 75% keyboards are actually rather uncommon because the enthusiast keyboard market is heavy into 60% boards, and you'll see stuff like 40% and even more ridiculously spare novelty layouts because the scene really enjoys naval gazing about increasingly small and more unusable devices -- when keeping it compact goes wrong. (I actually do appreciate the theory around these layouts in keeping everything within easy reach via programmable keys, but hell you can do the same thing with a slightly larger board anyway. No dedicated function keys make nervous man, shit ain't right.)
One of the problems with a typical 75% layout is the unusual key sizes it uses: 1U right alt, ctrl, and function keys, 1.75U right shift, and, for sculpted profiles, a couple of keys for delete, home, page up, page down, and end on the rightmost column need different curves. Some sets will have them, or you can add them in, but often you're just SOL because, again, everyone wants to use 60% boards anyway.
Key switches are Kalih Box Jades and a single heavy-spring Navy for the spacebar, and they are a type of clicky switch. If you ever used a Cherry MX Blue keyboard, you get the idea, except more aggressive. I don't think I like using anything other than clicky or at least heavy tactile switches. I've used MX brown boards which people swear by, and frankly that shit is barely tactile and I'm not a fan. Don't get me started on linear switches, bleeeeeech. I want something that pushes back against you a bit, daring, "Are you?" as if each keypress is an act of deliberation. Yes, the dumbass dog gets jumped by a fox, I'm for damn sure.
The PCB that runs the whole joint is a KBD75 rev2 with QMK, which means it is fully programmable. And by "programmable," I mean you download the firmware source from Github and program the damn thing yourself in C. I spent an evening with vscode and a Linux terminal doing kinky shit with the keyboard and didn't wake in the morning feeling awkward, so I suppose it went well enough. This is where the real power of the keyboard is at, and there tons of possibilities available (VIM-style nav keys on modifier -- yea boi). I'm sure I'll think of more dumb nonsense to try on a drunken Sunday evening. The PCB supports backlighting for keys, but since the switches can only fit SMD and not through-hole LEDs, I had to leave them out, which is real sad, I know.
Anyway, this has been real fun and, all said and done, I now have a super nice looking -- and nice using -- keyboard that I'll probably be able to use for a while, or until the stupid anodized aluminum invariably scratches to hell and my OCD tendencies gets the better of me. I can see that for a lot of people, building these things is the experience itself (journey, not the destination, etc.), so who cares if you're making a keyboard with only 14 keys. It's fun.
And idiotically expensive holy shit. Be smart and do like my brother by getting something like this instead.
Additional stuff spoilered to spare you all from too much concentrated dorkery
This exact keyboard was from an old IBM PC that my uncle had, which I used to play some old DOS stuff on. I remember thinking its keyboard was fucking weird. It was noisy, with a strange metallic snap when the key went down, and it felt unlike any other computer keyboard I've ever touched. The keyboard was in fact the beloved Model M, and it's the only surviving remnant of that PC.
That funky looking cord is a 6-pin SDL-to-USB cable I got my hands on. Model Ms have a detachable cable, normally a coiled cord with a DIN or mini-DIN connector. I actually had to take it to work to find a computer that still had PS/2 ports to make sure it worked using the original cable (fun fact: although Windows 10 still does support PS/2 devices, you actually to explicitly enable a device service to make it work). The new cable has a microcontroller to translate the signal for USB, making it ready for modern work. This particular board's vintage is from 1987, the second iteration of the Model M, and it's only a few years younger than I am and is actually older than my other siblings.
So I gave it a thorough cleaning inside and out, made it pretty, and took it out for a spin. Let me tell you, for a 32-year old piece of prehistoric technology, this thing still fucking rocks ass.
The keyboard uses a buckling spring mechanism, described in its patent as a "catastrophically buckling compression column switch and actuator," which is probably the most metal description of a keyboard switch ever. A very stiff spring is attached to the cap for each key, and when pressed on, it hardly compresses. Instead, the force will eventually cause it to collapse and buckle, activating the switch.
This gives it a tactile and sound profile that is unique among the sea of MX-style switches you'll find in mechanical keyboards nowadays, giving a crisp, very tactile action punctuated with a metallic resonance that sounds like your steampunk machine is about to take off. While the Model M isn't the only keyboard with buckling springs (IBM's own earlier Model F used it as well, and a handful of other manufacturers produced similar boards), it's the most widespread and iconic. It's exceptional, and it could be a daily driver if it wasn't so large. The thing is a beast, weighing about 5-6 pounds -- three times as much as my laptop -- with the desk profile to match. They did make a "space saver" tenkeyless version, but those are rare and commands exorbitant prices on ebay, many times higher than regular Model Ms.
It's built like a tank (the bezel isn't held together by puny phillips screws, but fucking bolts), and there's decades of life still left in it. I'll probably use it for some retro DOS box or something.
On the other side is this Drevo Gramr, which besides the dumb name, is a pretty decent, economical 75% board. I got one for like 30-some-odd bucks off of ebay as a test board before I went off and built my own, and it's pretty easy to work with. Detach the USB-C cable, pry open the case, and take out the PCB. That's about it. Spent a few hours desoldering and replacing the switches (came with linear black Outemus, and ew), and turned out something that's pretty nice. I may change the keycaps because the legends look terrible, but no big deal. It's now my work keyboard.
edit 10/16:
Backlit side-printed keycaps are pretty dope!
Also if the guy who looks at your online activity when logged in your banks website/app has to suddenly wonder why you have log in from Sudan when your a 76 year old retiree.
Now to figure out how to make pi-hole work over VPN so I can use its ad blocking on my phone outside of my home.
Expense and practicality, I imagine. The keys for the IBM design come in two parts (the key housing itself that slots into the spring mechanism and a cap with legend that covers it) and are incompatible with the cottage industry of MX keycaps. Unicomp does make new Model M clones that you can buy for not-unreasonable prices, although they're more expensive than second hand Model Ms and not quite as well built IMO.
This is really the best use of VPNs for most people, if I remember right pi-hole acts as a DNS server? so it should be in either the client side of the VPN or server side in forcing that DNS provider
As far as what an ISP sees for VPNs, 1) we see that you are using a VPN, and which VPN, 2) we see any traffic not configured to go out the VPN, 3) all your traffic still passes thru so you have to hope/know its not a VPN/tunnel the feds have a back door in if that's your threat vector
So, we definitely still get the oppurtunity to sell your consumer data, and it's only a small hurdle in the way of a warrant. Considering the majority of VPNs out there are run by venture capitalists of one type or another I personally hold no trust for those.
VPNs definitely have uses but if you decide to use one just remember encryption doesn't solve everything, it's just moving your threat vector around.
true, i'm just assume with how insanely expensive and weird the mechanical keyboard cottage industry is someone would have taken a shot
They are definitely out there, for example there's the Model F which purports to be a true clone of the Model M. There's also Matias switches. While I don't believe they're exactly buckling springs, they are inspired by Alps switches and therefor have a very similar feel to buckling spring type switches. I used the quiet click variety in a keyboard and next to Hall effect switches, are my favorite type of switch. They're also difficult to find in pre-builts and difficult to get keycap sets for, though (or they used to be, I haven't looked at Matias switches in a while)
Pi hole has good documentation, was able to fiddle around with applying that to the openvpn settings on my asus router and I got it working over vpn. Blocking ads on my phone away from home is nice.
Ooo tell me more about using Pi’s for VMs for a home lab, and I’d love to get into that kinda stuff.
I was thinking of grabbing of some Pi’s for pihole and pwnagotchis.
a what?
*googles*
okay that's amazing