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Posted on 19-09-29, 23:44 in Mozilla, *sigh*
Dinosaur

Post: #561 of 1282
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Know who deserve genocide?

The creators of D'OH!

My computer, my rules. I don't need the help of my web browser provider to fight censorship, thanks.

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-09-30, 13:42 in Mozilla, *sigh*
Dinosaur

Post: #562 of 1282
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Google plans (they're actually D'OH!, not DNS-over-TLS as the article wrongly says!) are already making "friends" with your friendly politicians:
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/09/29/2033247/googles-dns-over-tls-plans-scrutinized-by-us-congress

Seriously, trying to secure DNS is like trying to encrypt the freakin' phone directory.
Who cares if my ISP knows I'm trying to connect with www.mybank.com.ve or fuckyoucommunists.org or loli.porn?
I care more about my connections to said sites to not be tampered or detoured in transit, and for that we have the tech (HTTPS, run your own DNS servers).

The political side has an easy solution: overthrow your governments. (And get rid of your evil corporations while we're at there).
But then, normal people is ignorant by choice, they don't want to learn, they enjoy their brainwashing (all they want are their Kartrashians gossip and their Fecesbooks), and that's where Big Tech comes with non-solutions (D'OH!, social networks, "dark patterns") which please their agendas, while politicians help to destroy our future.

sureanem, you sure enjoy the propaganda. I'm not. I just want to use my goddamned computer, which I'm being denied, by both users AND providers!

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Dinosaur

Post: #563 of 1282
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Posted by tomman
Looks like my Inspiron 6400 kinda disliked it.... or at least the wired NIC (some Broadcom IC that has worked flawlessly since the good ol' 2.6 series) started vomiting at my kernel log:
...kernel log snipped, look at the bugreport...

If there is network traffic of ANY kind, I'll get my kernel log spammed to death and back with that crap. This time I'm not alone, as some guy is experiencing regressions with the b44 driver on Ubuntu:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1821564

"If it is not broken, don't fix it!"
Linus, where are your angry yells when they're needed?!
In the meanwhile I've filled a Debian bug, and refrained from booting 5.2 on this laptop anymore (4.19 works fine)


Three weeks later, my bug report remains untriaged. Yay opensource.

Still better than the dude that reported it to Fedora, whose bug report just got closed because nobody cares it went "stale" due to newer kernel releases (which still contain the bug).

The machine is stable and networking works fine, it's just that your kernel log is rendered useless, which can go from "meh" to "kinda dangerous" (as I routinely use it to diagnose misbehaving/faulty hardware).

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-10-01, 12:30 in The DS128(8)7(A), the RTC from Hell (revision 1)
Dinosaur

Post: #564 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

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After the last blackout yesterday, I had to spend the next 3 hours on this:



Yup, that's the very same reworked DS12887A from my 386SX box, that I had to pull and put in service on Saki, my routerbox. This time I actually bothered to solder a proper coin-cell battery holder! Not fun to solder things at 11 PM under low light, particularly when I had to redo my rework because the solder broke at one of the chip-side wires :/

The story starts this way: I've already mentioned earlier in other threads that Saki was giving nothing but headaches in the last months, mostly product of the constant blackouts (yes, I have an UPS, no, it can't hold for more than 20 minutes, while the average blackout on this zone usually lasts ~2 hours at least). First there were the constant segfaults every now and then, sometimes several of them in a row in minutes (turns out that it was VRM-related: I ended getting rid of that by bumping Vcore to 2.9V - not the right voltage for a Pentium MMX as those are 2.8V parts, but they're happy with that nonetheless, and they don't even heat that much anyway - maybe some aging capacitor is not doing its job and the VRM actually experiences "brownouts"?).

One of the HDDs recently died (fortunately it was a junk drive) due to a cute design fault (where the heads click but it's actually the MCU on the PCB that develops a curious malfunction - look for "WD Tornado head mimic fault", as it happens to a few select WD families, including early WD Czviar Blue drives). And then, the whole RTC problem. Battery started running low, so I had to reset the clock after every blackout, but in the last two incidents, I got the dreaded "CMOS battery fail - defaults loaded" error at POST. The first time it was enough to enter BIOS setup, fix settings, save, and machine booted OK. But this second time it wasn't doing the trick anymore: not only the error was coming even after soft reboots, the settings weren't sticking anymore! (except for the clock). Have fun trying to boot from a non-existing floppy drive, and with your RAM running slower than it should... The dead battery had to go, somehow.

Reworking this brick o' doom at 10 PM wasn't feasible, so I had to swap ICs. Not fun neither comfortable by any stretch of the word. First, everything is tightly packed on those Baby AT motherboards: on my PCCHIPS M535/8 (never figured out which one I actually got - mine lacks the COAST slot, but has the integrated VRM which early versions lacked and instead provided a connector for). The RTC module (originally a Houston Tech/VIA brick, but an original Dallas IC will work fine despite that Maxim says otherwise, and that's what I've been using since 2007) sits surrounded by the AT power connectors, the DRAM slots and the parallel port ribbon connector. I don't have a chip extractor, and pulling the brick without breaking anything with only my fingers was... let's call it what it was: PAINFUL. The DIMM slots (which partially extend at the top of the RTC socket) make things quite difficult, and hurtful for your fingers. Surprisingly I was able to pull the module at first, with only two bent legs! (I must give credit whenever it's due to the Dallas Semiconductor motherfuckers: those pins can stand quite a lot of abuse, more than a EPROM/Flash IC - more bending than Bender Bending Rodriguez itself!).

Plugged the reworked IC... and it rocked freely on the socket! Uh-oh. Even pushing it while powering ON failed to achieve POST. Something was... obstructing the IC? Tried putting the original (dead) brick back, and it actually fitted snuggly. WTF!? Long short story: had to carefully bend the pins, both on the socket (again, not fun inside of a very cramped space full of wires you don't want to remove), and the IC itself (it helps if you slightly bend the pins inwards a couple of degrees or so). After hurting my fingers a few times, I managed to securely seat the reworked brick, and lo and behold, we got liftoff!

Reset everything, disable the FDC I'm not using anymore, set the proper DRAM speed, save, power off, turn on again, settings now stick! Saki is back to business... but not before one of the network cards started playing hooky (thankfully I only had to blow off some dust and reseat it on its PCI slot). She really really REALLY HATES whenever someone play with its innards (even replacing a HDD can imply trying to reseat everything for the next 3 hours until she boots again), and being shutdown by extended periods of time. Talking about a picky system, huh?

But once everything is set, it's one of the most reliable boxes I've seen in my life, thus why I'm not swapping her by a RPi or your favorite ARM toy anytime soon :)

And now, I have another DS12887A to rework. Of course, if you don't live at a communist hellhole, you have better solutions at your reach. But in my case, this will have to do...

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-10-01, 15:51 in The DS128(8)7(A), the RTC from Hell
Dinosaur

Post: #565 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

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Rework of the 2nd brick went successfully, aced it at the first try.

The toughest parts are:
1) clearing enough epoxy to expose the battery pins. Hope your knife/cutter is sharp enough!
2) Severing the (-) pin close enough to the battery. On the first IC I reworked I nearly fucked it here (ended breaking the pin too close to the IC, making soldering of the battery wire needlessly difficult). On this one I managed to break it at the right spot, but once again, hope you're using a very sharp tool!

Solder a CR2032 holder (others recommend using a CR1125 holder instead as it exactly matches the original battery footprint), leave enough wire so you can reroute the battery holder (in my Acer 386sx case, I ran into clearance issues with the bottom-most ISA slot, so I had to set the battery aside, and to prevent shorts, fix it in place with a couple pieces of styrofoam), and you're done. Worked just fine after reconfiguring the BIOS stuff (this Acer BIOS is as stubborn as the Award BIOS on Saki, or worse: a flat battery means you can't boot from the HDD!)

I still am awaiting for a reasonable explanation of why those sealed RTC modules even exist. No, I don't want to hear the word "embedded". To the Dallas engineers that came up with this abomination (and those that dared cloning it): rot in hell, choke on a dick, step on a Lego, blah blah blah, you and me can't be friends, ever.

At least you have options for the DS128(8)7 if you don't want to solder (unless if your OEM decided to save 3 cents on a DIP24 socket, like Acer did on the AcerMate 333s line; in that case you're in trouble if can't solder like a pro). Some systems used its close brother, the DS1387 (same IC, but with 4KB NVRAM instead of "just a few bytes") - all relevant parts are long EOL, and noone has designed yet a homebrew replacement, so it's reworking or bust :/

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Dinosaur

Post: #566 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

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Been using xterm since I got bored of konsole/gnome-terminal (too much stuff for my liking), even back when DEs weren't braindamaged. Normally I dislike minimalism, but come on, it's a terminal, you should not get in the way! ("tabbed terminals"? Dude, windows are free!)

I haven't even touched my xterm settings - I use whatever defaults are shipped by my distro of choice.

Yes, I know xterm has a menu. No, I've never used it intentionally.

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-10-02, 16:35 in Mozilla, *sigh* (revision 2)
Dinosaur

Post: #567 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

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Posted by Kawa
Can someone recap the Mozilla thing for me please?

Mozilla hates you, the loyal user that has been there since the original browser wars age.

They prefer to pander to Silly Valley hipsters, computer-challenged people, cellphones, the advertising industry, and whatever target Google has today, including one or two big governments.

In the meanwhile they're hellbent on getting rid of every single feature we computer nerds and sensible users actually like/need (from cookie controls to DNS to customizable UIs), because those somehow pose a major threat to that userbase they're trying their hardest to reach (spoilers: they won't - they're very happy with Chrome, despite being another turd... and this turd is the new IE because there has to be a new IE, of course!)

Every Mozilla history since Chrome became popular often boils down to this. Apparently they have a template for these kind of things, who would know that?

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-10-04, 11:56 in Mozilla, *sigh*
Dinosaur

Post: #568 of 1282
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I thought that if you wanted blackjack and hookers, you needed VC money and an IPO for that...

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-10-04, 20:29 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
Dinosaur

Post: #569 of 1282
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The once unhackable Wii Mini has now been successfully cracked wide open, ready for bricking some serious homebrew action:

https://github.com/Fullmetal5/bluebomb

Nintendo: "We've removed WiFi and SD for your security, good luck pirating games having fun on this family-friendly bento box"
Fullmetal5: "Hold my beer"

Unfortunately this hax is not for the random PokèRAWMz kid at home, as it requires access to a Real Computer running Linux with a Bluetooth adapter (ideally a laptop), the ability to build stuff from source (it uses vanilla Bluez userspace, albeit built with some deprecated features, hence you can't use the one shipped by your distro as you will have to disable it prior to using bluebomb - hope you are not using a BT keyboard! Thus, a VM with USB passthrough is highly desirable here), and following instructions ("butbutbut I am not a NASA hacker!!!")

As a bonus, bluebomb also works on older, uncrippled Wiis (I guess this should be the way to go if somehow you don't have a <4GB SD card handy yet you own a Bluetooth-enabled laptop and an USB stick)


Nice to see one of those "OOOH SCARY!!!" wireless vulnerabilities out in the wild being used for good and not for evil.

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-10-05, 12:26 in Computer Operating System News
Dinosaur

Post: #570 of 1282
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I thought crApple only kept selling their "not really personal computers" as they're the only licensed devices where you can make "apps" for their overpriced cellphones. You're not supposed to make applications targeting those designer computers!

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-10-12, 00:41 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
Dinosaur

Post: #571 of 1282
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Posted by CaptainJistuce
Posted by Kawa
So here's a thing I think I'll bait Tom with.

Adobe is deactivating all accounts in Venezuela
Seems like that should hit a lot of services, not just the mud.

RIP Tomman's Steam account.



Edit: Except I just read the executive order and Adobe's just slinging mud. It calls for the seizing of venezuelan government assets, not banning everyone suffering under the dictator's yoke.


Yup, but then Adobe is not in the business of telling which Venezuelans are pro-communism and which ones are actually starving to death.
Plus, you can't buy software with our creditcards thanks to our never-ending currency exchange controls (you can now go to a bank and "buy greenbacks", but only in cash, and after jumping a vat full of flaming, acid-soaked angry cobras, but our Visas and MasterCards are forever barred from the global market), so I guess the number of impacted users is in the low thousands (mainly newspapers and some graphic designers that actually pay for their shit, instead of pirating everything like it has been done since forever).

This is a dire reminder that...

- DRM means that you don't own shit. You're renting a permission of use that can be revoked AT ANY TIME.
- "Sanctions" means jack shit, little more than useless token efforts. IF anything they cause the commies to become more bloody murderers than ever, because they will try their hardest to convince their slaves that "USA is the enemy!". But then, since when 'murica (or anyone else) has gave a shit about us anyway?
- This can also hit your beloved open source software. Remember, Microsoft now owns GitHub, and this means that if one of their useless lawyers decides to pull an Adobe, it means that I'll be out of a job, forever.

Not that I would care that much if my Steam account goes down the shitter, as I only get TEN MINUTES of DSL access every 3 days... if I'm lucky. Even DRM-free software is fucking useless if you can't even download the freakin' installers in first place!

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-10-12, 05:29 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
Dinosaur

Post: #572 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

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Never ever ever EVUR! neglect properly implementing equals/hashCode methods in Java (or whatever language you're using):
https://www.journaldev.com/21095/java-equals-hashcode
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27581/what-issues-should-be-considered-when-overriding-equals-and-hashcode-in-java

If you're relying on your IDE to take care for you, that decision is going to come back several years later down the road and bite in yer' ass. HARD. No mercy! And the pain will not be a pleasure!

True story: this happened to me on a story that started in 2014, and should have ended in 2018, but due to $REASON$. I'm still giving service to $FORMER_EMPLOYER_APP, now as a sort of external contractor (I take service calls from customers, patch bugs, deploy patches when CANTV allows me for the two customers for which I have remote access, and get paid a slice of the pie so I can actually eat it and not starve). Last month I got a call from a customer near me, the system was eating some records on some module. Since this customer is actually on the same bus road I take to the same place I get my worthless banknotes for my collection (i.e. a bank), I went in person to see the problem in action, and after 2 hours of reentering the same records just to have the system reject them because the sums were off at the end of the process, I whipped out my copy of good ol' pgAdmin III, just to notice that there were duplicate records on the database... something that should have been stopped by the server-side checks!

After clearing the duplicate records and blaming cosmic radiation instead of PEBCAK (which usually is the source for ~80% of those service calls), I left the premises and went home. Tried replicating the problem at my setup, with no result: punching the same records at home failed to trigger any failure. Gotta love heisenbugs~

Yesterday, another customer calls. They had the EXACT SAME PROBLEM, but even worse as the app let them advance those records to a state they should haven't been (because the sums were off: on the first case that last server-side check actually worked, but not this time). After giving them a call after my DSL miraculously came back alive for enough time to remote in and pull the ~3MB PostgreSQL DB backup from the live production server, once again I failed to trigger any bugs.

Or so I thought. On the next phone call, most likely the planets aligned, because one of our users managed to trigger the "eat some, dupe others" issue live and in real time: just open your records, DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, click "Save", and watch the world burn right after your eyes. And sure enough, this time I was actually able to fall in the trap and face the bastard bug face to face. But that was just the beginning of a long debugging struggle...

In this specific setup, you have an ArrayList<SomeEntity>, and a bunch of SomeEntity objects. Said objects have a ID field, which is usually null until they're committed to the database, where an ID is autogenerated (and if you read them back to entity objects, you get a valid ID and not just "null"). So far, so good. On save, some validations are performed (we're dealing with money here, so it's the usual "input valid, non-zero amounts, and make sure your final sums are OK, because I'm not going to save mismatching amounts on your documents"). Since those record sets often involve large quantities of records, we let our lusers to save their progress every now and then and make all the edits they want until they're ready to commit their records to a final, immutable document. During this phase, our ArrayList<SomeEntity> is populated with copies of another ArrayList<SomeEntity> which are exact copies bar one field: the ID. The editable copy has their IDs set to null, and during save, we match those records through their other fields, discarding deletions and making new records for additions as required.

Long short story: why in the fuck when I tell you "List.remove(someEntityWithNullIDButValidData)", will you remove someEntitiyWithNullIDButACompletelyDifferentContents instead after having worked flawlessly for FIVE yars?! Because my name is Cirno, the king of bakas, it seems! It took me hours to figure out that it was my equals() methods (which were kindly autogenerated by Netbeans years ago, thankyouverymuch SunOrrible®) were as flawed as the whole premise of the Sonic The Hedgehog live action movie, that's why! The only field being considered was the ID, and what happens when you try to compare a null with another, different null? You get a match, and the wrong record gets the boot in the ass, which led us to this sticky situation! Records being deleted when they should haven't been, others being duplicated because the app thought they were NEW additions, and even the initial foolproof barrier of "sum all things and bail out if you see something fishy" was being nicely fooled by this glaring omission.

And sure enough, after strengthening my equals() methods to dive in the actual contents of the object when you happen to be comparing null IDs, all this disaster went away in a flash - from Clownpiece-tier all the way down to "random noname Stage 1 fairy". FUN. And of course, if you touch equals(), you have to also update hashCode() to keep things consistent. So yeah, this time computerizers weren't outsmarting me, because I wasn't exactly complying with the API contract ("thou shall evaluate all of the relevant fields in your comparisons") because someone thought it was a good idea to only consider primary keys when autogenerating entity classes from DB tables on whatever Netbeans wizard they use to generate JPA entity classes. Sure, this makes sense if you're consuming already existing records or generating the IDs yourself. But in the real world, the devil is in the details.

So... how did this obviously BROKEN code worked flawlessly for FIVE YEARS, until 4 weeks ago?! Why why why WHY!?!?!?!?!?!?! Man, that house of cards held quite strongly, but eventually it had to fall (and even then only a few cards fell down!). Fortunately (for me!), only two customers (out of five installs) were impacted, and only with a handful of recent records which were trivial to fix with a couple of SQL oneliners), but it could have been much much MUCH worse. I dodged quite a few cannonballs and nukes, just to end being hit by a Bart Simpson-level prank :/

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-10-12, 17:00 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
Dinosaur

Post: #573 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

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Posted by CaptainJistuce
Posted by tomman

So... how did this obviously BROKEN code worked flawlessly for FIVE YEARS, until 4 weeks ago?!
Dark magics.

In other words, a schrödinbug.

TIL there is also a higgs-bugson. Yes, I've experienced those too. At least one of those remain unfixed at $PRODUCT, because it's simply impossible to replicate it under any test setup, and it doesn't even happen at some deployments.

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-10-13, 18:45 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
Dinosaur

Post: #574 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

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Posted by sureanem
- This can also hit your beloved open source software. Remember, Microsoft now owns GitHub, and this means that if one of their useless lawyers decides to pull an Adobe, it means that I'll be out of a job, forever.

Wait, what? Do you work at/with GitHub? Or are you just opposed to proxies/VPNs for the same reasons as you don't like Bitcoin?


It means that if a certain dependency I use for whatever project I work on is hosted at GitHub, it means that when MS plays the lazy "shoot first, ask never" game, I can't download it anymore unless someone mirrors it outside 'murica. And if the EU decides to do the same, that means I'll be forced to source my libs from China/Russia, where the FOSS movement is either shitty, non-existent, or unlikely to work in the stuff I need to use?! NO THANKS.

And as you've guessed, I won't be using proxies/VPNs anytime soon. Sorry buddy, I need not to explain my reasons to people like you as you will turn them into another 3-page shitpost craze, so let's leave it as is. And once again, VPNs and proxies don't work if you can't get online in first place, which is my biggest problem right NOW.

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-10-19, 21:36 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
Dinosaur

Post: #575 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

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https://simpleflying.com/emirates-criticizes-boeing-airbus/

The Emirates CEO reminds that airplanes are not cellphones and therefore you should be receiving nearly flawless products right from delivery date - you're not expected to buy a new iJet A7 every year at $LOADSOMONEY because neither airframe nor engine OEMs can't properly debug their shit nowadays :/

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-10-20, 10:28 in Stupid computer bullcrap we put up with.
Dinosaur

Post: #576 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

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Minimalist UIs and web browsers.

'Nuff said.

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Dinosaur

Post: #577 of 1282
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Well, fuck you very much too, Microsoft.

Also, gotta love the "ancient 1990s laptop" icon they choose to represent my Sandy Bridge laptop.

Update to add to your shitlist: KB4493132
Or, if you're already infected, find and nuke %WinSysDir%/sipnotify.exe, which is the nag message executable.

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-10-24, 11:35 in I still HATE smartdevices
Dinosaur

Post: #578 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

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The ZTE saga is over for now... as I lost my phone yesterday :/

The Fine Citizen that found the phone did the right thing: turn it over to the authorities power it down, pull the SIM card, and enjoy their new prize. Wait, that's the complete opposite of being a fine citizen! FUCK.

Yes, the phone had a lock pattern (annoying, but it was the only way to ensure that it wouldn't start turning on/off things while on my pocket), but as I refuse to give Google full control over my device, I guess that I get no FRP protection.

Personal information lost: some recent photos of things (as I don't photograph people, EVER), SMS (mostly from banks), and a perfectly good 32GB Sandisk MicroSD card that somehow had survived without getting lost or damaged on my ol' RAZR.

I hope the battery was defective and the phone goes BOOM~ on the fucking asshole that found it, because this country is full of very shitty people willing to extend communism to year 2050 at least!

Fun fact (and by "fun" I mean "not at all!"): Called Movistar to suspend/disable the SIM card, the routine procedure anyone that gets their phone lost/stolen would do right at the spot. They can't, because like everything on this shitty country, every single internal support application on their internal networks were "experiencing technical problems". They want me instead to visit a customer care center. Except that they closed down the one in my city 3 years ago, and the nearest one is like ~250km away! But why would they care anyway? As long as THE billing system works and they get paid, they don't give a fuck if your phone dies, gets lost, stolen, or seized by the commies. Bunch of greedy bastards.

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-10-25, 12:15 in I still HATE smartdevices
Dinosaur

Post: #579 of 1282
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Posted by sureanem
Posted by tomman
The Fine Citizen that found the phone did the right thing: turn it over to the authorities power it down, pull the SIM card, and enjoy their new prize.

How do you know that though?

Because this is Soviet Venezuela, where there is no honest people left.

Finally managed to get the SIM deactivated and the IMEI blacklisted at Movistar (I had better luck calling yesterday). Too bad carriers don't share IMEI blacklists over here, but then, good luck getting a nanoSIM at Movilnet (they're unicorns). Your other option would be Digitel, except that since they were the GSM pioneers over here, they chose to use the Euro GSM frequency bands, which means that unless you buy a top-of-the-end quad/pentaband 3G/4G handset, all you're going to get is craptacular GPRS with our proper American-spec phones. But opportunists only see "hey free phone!". Once again, to the dipshit asshole that STOLE my phone: hope a truck crushes it, then the battery goes Samsung all over your shitface!

We have a saying in Spanish for that: "lo mal habido no luce".
But then, noone cares about being honest anymore :/

Yes, I'm well aware that IMEIs can be changed on those Qualcomm devices. No, unlike Mediatek phones, you can't do it at home - you need Very Expensive Gear for that (the same magic boxes that can also defeat FRP and dump your lock pattern, but a backalley guy with a table full of stolen phones can at most have a soldering iron and a USB cable). Which is kinda amusing, because losing your IMEI is nearly trivial on those firmwares (damage your EFS -> no IMEI -> you're fucked if you don't have a backup)

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 19-10-27, 01:20 in Stupid computer bullcrap we put up with.
Dinosaur

Post: #580 of 1282
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Reminds me last time I tried building Qt from source: it was like in 2010 or so, I was still clinging to some ancient Fedora Core 6, and no way in hell I was going to upgrade. (It was to build bsnes back then, mind you!)

...it required 4GB of free space, and a prayer. And smashing a Nokia cellphone into tiny bits.

Related: why in the hell TeX and friends involve installing gigabytes of junk just to build some random package documentation files from source? This is why I'm not building my own VirtualBox .debs from source.

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    This does not actually go there and I regret nothing.