Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65
Posted on 20-03-31, 22:56 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
Dinosaur

Post: #661 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 4 days
Last view: 3 hours
Posted by CaptainJistuce
And that while Hi-Point is shockingly willing to fix this under warranty, they are totally gonna post pics afterwards(seriously, click the link just to see the pictures of that poor barrel).


They should give the guy a lottery ticket instead of a fixed gun.

Oh, apparently the total annihilation of inkjets is not happening today: Xerox finances got COVID-19'd so Hellet-Printers Inc. will survive for quite some time as an independent company. Boo!
https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/03/31/2125203/xerox-ends-its-hostile-takeover-bid-for-hp

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

Post: #662 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 4 days
Last view: 3 hours
I'm only leaving home once a week just to get some food, completely draining my bank accounts as my hopes of getting paid are getting slimmer. At least most (non-Chinese) shops are now forcing people to wash/disinfect their hands before entering the premises - free water and soap included! I would like for this to stay even after the emergency ends, to be fair.

While half the planet is falling apart due to The Plague™ (including my commie shithole which is about to finish its third week of mandated lockdown and where cops and soldiers are forcibly closing shops and harassing people on the streets after noon to comply with the curfew), I'm glad to report that some USAian entities have cancelled April Fools.

Yes, it feels awesome to read a prank-free Slashdot. They even have real news posted! (political bulllshittery aside)

Unfortunately Japan failed to get the memo: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2020-04-01/anime-manga-game-industry-celebrates-april-fool-day-2020/.158153

Also:
html {

transform: rotate(0.1deg);

}

Not funny, guys.

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 20-04-02, 12:44 in COVID-19 (or why 2020 will SUCK for a lifetime) (revision 1)
Dinosaur

Post: #663 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 4 days
Last view: 3 hours
And over here, people still refuse to understand the "social distancing" and "one meter apart" concepts.

Even during The Plague™, moronic primitive beings (aka "Venezuelans") are still willing to brawl while standing in line to buy food, instead of keeping distances. Because somehow their sacred right to buy half-price potatoes and onions is far more important than, y'know, not get sick in a country with absolutely no healthcare system whatsoever. And when you try to inject reasoning into their brains, you get insulted.

So yeah, if you're one of those, hope you get The Plague™ and die. Seriously, once again: that's how communists/authoritarian assholes WIN. If you still want to pretend that we're "business as usual", well, hope $DEITY have mercy on you, because the real world is not going to be merciful at all.

But hey, homebrew facemasks are the latest trend over here! In all fabrics, colors and patterns you can imagine! Too bad people also refuse to understand that if the facemask is not properly covering your mouth and nose, it's as useful as a rag soaked in water from the WC.

Most non-essential business have closed, including most (if not all) street sellers... save for the lone guy that somehow defies curfew just to sell DirecTV satkits (yes, DirecTV now allows to do so over here, instead of going to an brick&mortar authorized retailer; unlike most countries they don't sell kits online or over the phone). Are now HBO and sport-less sports channels considered "essential services"? (BTW: satkits are not cheap at all: an HD antenna+decoder kit costs $200 in the country where people earns $3/mo)

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 20-04-02, 20:17 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
Dinosaur

Post: #664 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 4 days
Last view: 3 hours
Squenix releases BEST PATCH EVER:
https://steamdb.info/patchnotes/4849932/

According to user reviews online, the patch greatly improves game experience by freeing about 4GB from the game install directory, and this is achieved by the revolutionary algorithm of "delete everyting inside the game install directory".

In other words, the update actually uninstalls the freakin' game!

WELL DONE, GUYS!
You. Only. Had. One. Job!

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 20-04-09, 16:16 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
Dinosaur

Post: #665 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 4 days
Last view: 3 hours
Shonumi's Edge of Emulation series of articles

Why Japan really likes churning out weirdass devices for their consoles!? Because they can, that's why?
Unfortunately this means that if you're an emudev, hope you're an agile eBay sniper and really have the taste for solving puzzles noone else cares.

"Nothing is impossible. Never surrender. Emulate everything."

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 20-04-10, 20:09 in COVID-19 (or why 2020 will SUCK for a lifetime) (revision 1)
Dinosaur

Post: #666 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 4 days
Last view: 3 hours
Posted by BearOso
Posted by Nicholas Steel
Posted by CaptainJistuce
One meter apart? Isn't that only about three feet? We've been pushing double that here.
Good luck, now more than ever.

In Australia it's 1.5 meters apart.

Yeah, you should go ahead and double that at least. A meter is just about arms length. Respiratory droplets can go much farther than that and a half.

Trying to get morons to understand that over here is like trying to teach high performance CPU design to a drugged monkey. People are already so used to get sandwiched standing in lines that I've yet to see a single idiot over here respecting the distancing.

Anyway, things are getting really shitty over here: while the virus is not killing us yet (well, that's what China and the Soviet Venezuelan druglord shitheads want us to believe!), everything else is going down the shitter at a faster pace than usual:

- Currency exchange rate once again took the rocket to Moon, so hyperinflation is killing us faster than any virus can do. Even worse: even if you've got hard currency, scumbag retailers (i.e. all of them) are raising the prices in USD too. A egg carton (30 units) went from $3 to $5 in ONE week! They blame it on the gas shortages (which are real, and people are now risking their lifes in order to refuel 10 liters once a week if they're VERY lucky... and that's here at the East - I've heard shit has gotten really ugly at the West, combined with daily, long power blackouts!), but the real reason is plain and simple anarchy (aka "everybody hates everybody").

- Speaking about money, banks are still closed, and the black market for local currency once again rise from dead. Want some worthless Sovereign Bolivar bills that noone wants anymore? Street sellers and shitbag Chinese shops are charging 25% premiums for that. At those prices, you would be terminally stupid if you didn't chose to buy some greenbacks instead!

- CANTV is also falling apart at a supersonic speed. First their flagship Chinese bird died suddenly because that's what you get when you buy cheap shit from China, blacking out their sat TV service and the entire ISDB-Tb DTV platform because they didn't let private stations set up their own DTV transmitters, instead forcing every single public and private TV network to broadcast from a central transmitter operated by CANTV and using that now-dead satellite as the up/downlink to the local DTV repeaters), and more recently, last weekend a fire at the very same CANTV HQ building (that they still refuse to disclose, or maybe are blaming to "sabotage from Trump/the opposition/Trump-funded opposition", not that I care what actually happened) knocked offline half of the country that still somehow had a working phone/DSL line. So yeah, that "let's silence every fucking Venezuelan as they're idiots anyway" strategy is working wonders.

- "Collective social voluntary quarantine" is the new disguise for a "mandatory curfew". If you're unlucky enough to be on the streets after 2PM, you're going to jail, most likely to be tortured and humiliated. Journalists are shutting their mouths as noone want to be the next one in line. For those naive idiots that still dare believing that "COVID-19 is the fall of the Soviet Venezuelan communism": get real, motherfuckers: if anything it's completely backwards: The Plague™ is turning an already horrible situation into something that soon will resemble the holocaust.

- Alcohol is nowhere to be found yet. Vinegar prices are high but not actually "extreme"... yet. Lemons? We call those "green gold" now. But in a bizarre turn of events, there are no toilet paper shortages to report yet, so the allmighthy Cornholio might consider having some vacations in hell Soviet Venezuela.

Yes, I'm pissed off, way more than usual.
I'm reserving my most nicest words for China and the WHO, but given that I would be breaking board rules if I said them (and believe me: the last thing I need is more isolation: first social networks, then COVID-19), I'll keep them to myself.

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

Post: #667 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 4 days
Last view: 3 hours
And now Snowden fucking realized what I've known since Hour Zero: welcome to Dictatorship 2.0: The Plague's Iron Fist:

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/04/10/1934250/snowden-warns-governments-are-using-coronavirus-to-build-the-architecture-of-oppression

(Please ignore almost all of the comments from spoiled USAians that really wish to move to their nearest Soviet republic)

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 20-04-18, 12:47 in Computer Hardware News
Dinosaur

Post: #668 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 4 days
Last view: 3 hours
My SMR WD is doing fine so far, but then I haven't bothered enlarging partitions or filling it up yet.

But yeah, hardware OEMs are a bunch of sleazy scumbags - nothing new here.

Buy SSDs, if you can!

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 20-04-21, 17:37 in I have yet to have never seen it all. (revision 1)
Dinosaur

Post: #669 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 4 days
Last view: 3 hours
My last lockdown timewaster: resurrecting long-dead Win16 shareware!

This story started about two weeks ago, where I was looking for something else and ended finding a few CD-ROMs that had survived my shareware CD-ROM purge last year. One of those CDs was quite special: it's my oldest shareware CD-ROM from a long-defunct Spainard magazine, "CD WARE" (what an original name, yessir!), dating all the way back to 1995 (timestamps in the files are around April '95, but the CD says "X/95" - could be an October issue date?). Remember, back then this "Inter-net" thing was in a fierce competition with other online services (Compuserve, Genie, Delphi, and whatever weirdo you had available at your particular backyard), alongside good ol' school BBSes. Oh, and Windows 95 was still in beta, so most likely you were rocking that 486 with DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 (other platforms were a whole separate universe that doesn't apply to this particular story).

In fact, back then if you wanted to try some random piece of software, you couldn't just fire up Netscape and go to Download.com... because back then there wasn't a Download.com, or your ISP was lacking the "I" in "Internet Service Provider". You could get a phonebook of local BBSes from your local computer club/dealer and hope they had something interesting... and ending with your ass property of Your Friendly Telephone & Telegraph Company, Co., due to all those hefty phone bills. And I really don't miss the dial-up modem PRO GEAR SPEC speeds. So your only option was finding someone selling floppies or CD-ROMs full of shareware. If you liked some random piece of code, you were supposed to take the phone and tell your credit card numbers, or sending envelopes full of cash money to some stranger at the opposite coast (or even in another continent, if you were really lucky!). Simpler times indeed, none of this DLC/spyware garbage.

...or if you didn't believed in paying for computer programs, you could always give a call to Someone You Know™, who knew the phone numbers of the good BBSes, bring your box of floppies, and go back home with a whole load of Imaginary Property crimes (remember: there was no "Google <name of the program> crack" back then!). But what if you're an unfrozen caveman and want to get some Win16 action on your overclocked i9/Threadripper with Windows Diez COVID-19 Special Update?

You bring the virtual machines and emulators, of course! Nah, that's EASY MODO. And only kindergarten babies play in EASY MODO, right? Noooo, you get the heavy guns, and bring the decompilers in! Well, that's only if your target app was made in Visual Basic... and given that this was 1995, and everybody and his dog wanted a slice of the Win16 shareware pie (soon to double in flavor with Win95), it means most developers flocked over the cheapest IDE they could find, and that was some flavor of VB. If your FILE_ID.DIZ says "requires VBRUN300.DLL", it means you would have to wait until 1997, when someone which goes under the handle of "DoDi" came up with a Visual Basic 3 decompiler that actually worked more or less decently! We can all give our thanks to Microsoft, because VB versions prior to 5.0 only compiled to P-Code (some proprietary bytecode that not only wasn't native, it led the path to decompilers - VB5 not only introduced the native code compiler, but made it the default... and to this date, I've yet to see a VB5/6 decompiler that can output human-readable VB code; all you get is assembly stuff unless you were one of the two idiots that re-enabled the slowass P-Code compiler option!).

Long short story: DoDi dissapeared from the Internets, but someone found the long-lost decompiler... and used it against itself! Yup, our VB3 decompiler was made in VB3 - did anyone just said "YO DAWG~"!? While this made possible a native Win32/VB6 port (with some bugfixes, even!), noone has figured out how to convert the VB3 binary forms format to text (other than requiring to have VB3 installed somewhere, which for obvious reasons won't fly on Win64 unless you get creative). So yeah, maybe you will still need that XP VM... if only for a while.

Back to my shareware CD-ROM: after doing some data recovery on it (sadly it has the disc rot, and I was only able to recover about ~98% of the CD - some of that early WinNT shareware is now lost forever), and after resurrecting my Visual Basic workbench (last time I fiddled with VB code was circa 2007, in college before crossing the Bridge of No Return to Java... 13 years ago!), I've been spending the entire morning making (and cracking!) some ancient Win16 shareware games. Of course, here are my notes on this entirely pointless (if perversely fun) ordeal:

- Windows XP, 32-bit. No ifs (leave those for your conditionals!), no buts. Installing VB6/VS6 on later Windows version is painful.
- For installing VB3, I suggest either finding a portable version somewhere, or using a throwaway XP VM (or snapshots), then extract all the relevant files and drop those in a single directory (just take every VBX and DLL dated 1993 or so, sans the OLE2 bits, as NTVDM already provides them). Or if you really must, you can install both VB versions side-by-side, but in any case, install VB3 first!
- If you go for the portable version, make sure to run VB3 at least once, and check if the proper path is set on %WINDIR%/vb.ini - correct if required, because the "form converter" (FRMS2TXT.EXE) will use that for launching VB3 to convert forms!
- Now install VB6, then SP6, then KB2708437 and KB3096896 - you need those two patches in order to address some incompatibilities with later MSCOMCTL.OCX versions/patches!
- You also need the bunch of OCXs from /Common/Tools/VB/controls/ from any VB6/VS6 disc that is not Disc 1 (in my VS6 Enterprise, those are in Disc 3), because those are 32-bit replacements for most of the VBXs that shipped with VB3. Don't forget to RegSvr'em and to install the design time licenses (vbctrls.reg), as a bunch of shareware from the era will rely on several of those controls.
- Try to keep the paths short for your VB3 dir, the decompiler, and wherever you choose to decompile your executables, as we're dealing with Win16 dinosaurs!
- If your piece of software relies on some non-standard VBX... God have mercy of your soul and HOPE whoever made that VBX did jumped ship to 32-bit ActiveX land. Though chances are the road is over for you :/
- Remember, even if you still have the original 16-bit sources, it's not just matter of "Build EXE..." and call it a day! You still need to deal with deprecated/removed APIs, renamed libraries, and once in a while, plain broken code.

Have fun~~~!

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 20-04-21, 21:52 in I have yet to have never seen it all. (revision 1)
Dinosaur

Post: #670 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 4 days
Last view: 3 hours
Porting from Win16 to Win32 (VB1~3 -> VB4~6) is mostly straightforward - all you need is to:

- Have installed at least two different versions of the same obsolete product, because later VB versions can't open forms saved in earlier versions UNLESS you use the earlier version to save forms as text+binary, instead of a monolithic binary blob because pretty much every binary format circa 1993 was actually "a raw memory dump of whatever internal structures were used in that exact version" in disguise (same story as Office formats, really)

- Source replacement OCX (ActiveX) controls for whatever weird custom VBX your original sources were using. Sometimes it's as easy as "get rid of the offending VBX because 3D look is native to Win32", and sometimes is as hard as "proprietary blob, original developer got bought, then merged, then double bankrupted, and now sells real estate in Michigan". If your program was a good citizen and stuck with whatever VBXs shipped on VB3 Pro, you're golden... as long as you have your VB/VS6 CDs handy (or know well your $SEARCHENGINE-fu)

- Upgrade your external API declarations. Most of them are just matter of renaming libraries ("kernel" -> "kernel32", "user" -> "user32", "gdi" -> "gdi32", and so on - luckily API names and parameters remain mostly unchanged, aside of Integer->Long promotions that you must be well aware of), but there are plenty of 16-bit only cruft that got thrown under the 32-bit bus (hello, GetWinFlags!) so you must figure how to cope with loss.


But that got NOTHING on the dreaded "Old World VB" -> .NET switch - you're supposed to take a decade of code or so, incinerate it, and start over! That's pretty much the main reason of why I left Visual Basic behind, why projects like GenRomSuite died, etc.

Stupid moronic wish: Nutella's MS, pretty please opensource classic VB3/6, incorporate Win32 API as part of the core language classes, and port it to non-Windows targets.

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 20-04-22, 18:38 in I have yet to have never seen it all. (revision 2)
Dinosaur

Post: #671 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 4 days
Last view: 3 hours
You can do it yourself at home, you know~
You only need to be extremely bored. Oh, and knowing some Visual Basic helps.

So far, I've tried with the following random pieces of VB3 shareware:

- Cubix v1.0 (Scandere Software, puzzle): This is something that we would call today an "crowdfunding pitch", as there is nothing to unlock, just a bunch of unfinished code and the promise that "the more people pay, the faster we can finish the game". Does not use external controls at all.

- Four Seasons v1.06 (Randy Rasa, cards): This one even has sounds! Oh, and the regcode is hardcoded inside the application code - how nice of him~. The decompiler barfed its guts during the late stage of decompiling, but I was able to pick up the bits and build a working executable. Uses PicClip and Sheridan's THREED controls.

- KASINO KENO 2 v?? (Dennis Pipes, lottery): Meh, I don't understand Keno. No regcode, all you need to unlock the "Due System" (whatever that means)) menu is to just click the "Games Played" label - that's all. Does not use external controls at all.

- Lottsa Lotto Picks! v?? (Stephen F. Nannini, lottery): Man, why all those lottery simulators for dumb people that has more money than common sense!? But if you just paid $12+$2 for shipping, you wouldn't even have needed the decompiler anyway! Nothing to unlock, but try typing "ZAXXIN" while you hould CTRL+ALT on either the main window or the about dialog. Does not use external controls at all.

- AHORSEX v1.0 (Juan Carlos Torres Navarro, wordgame): Yay, an H-game with love... from Spain?! Well, you get real pictures of tits (scanned, not drawn!)... and an lameass Hangman game. All this at a rather heavy 2MB executable (and that's for the original VB3 build!), which was certainly a luxury back in the 14400bps BBSes, and the game ships with no documentation, timebombs or anything, but it does look like it has some hidden function to load your own words from external files. Does not use external controls at all.

But those were straight-up decompiling jobs. For extra fun, I tested my luck with some random non-game stuff, and found a stupidass caller ID tracker application (kinda useless in the post-modem era) which came with some kinda overengineered license key validation routines. So overengineered that they're actually BROKEN and will cause the application to hang on an infinite loop if started up with the default placeholder shareware key, "Unregistered Demo Version", as the routines expect to only validate all-caps and numbers. Seven forms: a nagscreen, four dialogs which tell you how wonderful life would be if you order your own 25-character license key for yourself, an about dialog, and the actual application window itself (which contains more broken code for configuring your modem). I guess B***d B***n and Company should be working now for Microsoft Product Activation :D

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 20-04-23, 17:35 in I still HATE smartdevices (revision 2)
Dinosaur

Post: #672 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 4 days
Last view: 3 hours
Status of the Smartdisease, 2020 edition volume I:

* $MOM Allshitter tablet:
- Just finished reloading it. Didn't bothered rooting this time, but you can easily debloat over ADB as you're already root on these firmwares anyway (adb remount, delete CCP spyware from /system/(priv-)app, reboot). Backed it up everything I could, saved some of those APKs for reinstall, reflashed with PhoenixSuit, copied everything back to the tablet, installed Total Commander, and uses that to update/reinstall every relevant bit (Google Spy bits, Chrome vomit, WhatsFuckingApp)


* Me:
- Since my life is destined to suck and BOTH of my RAZRs finally died rather unceremoniously (goodbye forever, CDMA2000! You served me well for over a decade, despite Qualcomm's greed and Soviet Bolivarian Movilnet negligence), $GENEROUS_UNCLE sent me another special American Telephone & Turds prepaid special: another MSM8909-based thing, this time a root-proof Alcatel CameoX/xciteIDEAL/whatever shitty marketdroid name. Internally, it's an OT-5044R. This is pretty much the same thing as the Z835, save for a shittier camera (no autofocus), older Android release (7.0), absolutely NO factory ROMs or factory flash tools (so the day this firmware goes bust, so does the phone), and naturally, no root choices whatsoever as noone gives a flying fuck over $FREE-with-fries prepaid phones.

- However, this thing is marginally better than the Z835 in other aspects: the preloaded base apps are closer to Android stock rather than abominable mutations by some Chinese OEM. And that's nice, coming from yet another Chinese OEM (TCL). The phone dialer and SMS app are less terrible (but still terrible!). It came with the usual suite of AT&T spyware (Fecesbook, Uber, Twatter, Yelp, DirecTV... but surprisingly no CarrierIQ bits!). Debloating is same as any non-rooted phone: user-level uninstalls over ADB is your only option.

- TETHERING IS NOT BLOCKED! Repeat: Tethering. Is. Not. Blocked! I can use this shit as a mobile hotspot without getting my ass in a plane to whoever AT&T headquarters are located! I guess that the poor Chinese engineer that forgot to enable the Deathstar killbits on this firmware was already sent to a concentration camp :/ Too bad you can't use those modern Android phones as good ol' USB modems, instead you're forced to shove yet another layer of NAT in the middle :/

- F-Droid (+ Aurora Store for the Play bits) is all you need. I've yet to enroll this phone in the Googleborg™, so all they will get from me are those forum posts.

- You can't turn off LTE on this thing, as the Settings app doesn't have an option for network mode selection on this firmware, which doesn't help this phone's already terrible battery life (seriously, it feels like a gas guzzler every single minute the display is ON). There is a supasekret network diagnostic activity buried on Android that you're supposed to access via *#*#INFO#*#*, but naturally AT&T/TCL blocks that code. Luckily there is F-Droid to the rescue: look for de.mangelow.network (it's simply named "Network", so it might be hard to find by name alone), which allows to trigger said activity. BAM! You can now test ping, switch network modes, etc. This is a godsend as there is a fat chance in hell for us to get Movistar to properly deploy VoLTE (if the phone picks LTE, you can't receive voicecalls!)..

- For whatever reason, this thing refuses to roam in 2G (it CAN list networks, but refuse to register on Movistar 2G). Dunno if it is the firmware, the SIM (I heard Movistar now locks out 2G for new postpaid 4G SIMs for whatever stupid reason), or just bad luck. Not that I actually want some GPRS action anytime soon (I always keep my phones in 3G-only unless if I'm going to travel to some location where I actually know in advance that 3G won't work), but it's not unusual to have UMTS/LTE faill and leave you with nothing but GSM coverage over here.

- This firmware ships with some crappy French audio FX garbage, Arkamys Audio. You can't disable it (even if you disable the APK as this thing seems to have some native bits scattered somewhere else), which means that if your music player features an equalizer, Arkamys will ensure that your music will sound like garbage as it will don't let the player app do its work alone. BUT! If you take apart the Arkamys system APK, you will find a whitelist of popular apps exempt of having their audio crapped by Arkamys. Naturally, there is no opensource player present... save for one: VLC. This led me to the rather rare scenario of actually being forced to switch to VLC as my main music player. As I've said previously, VLC is a fine video player, but it sucks as a MUSIC-ONLY player (slow, bloated, and in rare cases, crashy). But if I have to pick between "reasonable audio" and "UX nightmare"... well, that's a tough call, but at least you get the opensource exit. FUCK ARKAMYS, and fuck TCL!

- Apps installed: Firefux (still sucks hard, but it isn't Chrome), bank mobile pay apps, VLC, Total Commander, Google Maps, Simple Mobile Tools series of core apps (Gallery, Calendar, Draw), some random test stuff and games from F-Droid (unlike the ZTE, GPSTest and Tower Collector WILL work properly on the 5044R!), and of course, Puyo Puyo Fever.

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 20-04-24, 15:28 in I have yet to have never seen it all. (revision 3)
Dinosaur

Post: #673 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 4 days
Last view: 3 hours
Fun, the Soviet Bolivarian Supremo is now blocking Cloudflare:

tomman@himawari:~/Descargas/androidshit$ traceroute danbooru.donmai.us
traceroute to danbooru.donmai.us (104.26.10.39), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 saki.tomman.net.ve (192.168.0.254) 0.939 ms 1.194 ms 1.708 ms
2 * * *
3 10.24.240.94 (10.24.240.94) 164.823 ms 164.861 ms 185.237 ms
4 10.24.240.73 (10.24.240.73) 194.135 ms 214.514 ms 214.535 ms
5 10.24.240.68 (10.24.240.68) 234.074 ms 253.791 ms 275.086 ms
6 * * *
7 * * *
8 * * *
9 * * *
10 * * *
11 * * *
12 10.24.240.68 (10.24.240.68) 1309.746 ms !H * *
tomman@himawari:~/Descargas/androidshit$ traceroute forum.hddguru.com
traceroute to forum.hddguru.com (104.26.13.230), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 saki.tomman.net.ve (192.168.0.254) 0.655 ms 1.017 ms 1.585 ms
2 * * *
3 10.24.240.94 (10.24.240.94) 215.850 ms 235.067 ms 274.860 ms
4 10.24.240.74 (10.24.240.74) 324.704 ms 354.854 ms 395.767 ms
5 * * *
6 * * *
7 * * *
8 * * *
9 * * *
10 * * *
11 * * *
12 * * *
13 * * *
14 * * *
15 * * *
16 10.24.240.69 (10.24.240.69) 47.463 ms !H * *


https://bgp.he.net/ip/104.26.10.39 => AS13335 104.26.0.0/20 Cloudflare, Inc

So yeah, while you 'muricans bitch and moan about Trump being Trump, our very own Donkey-at-Chief just broke half the Internet.

Also, that's what you get when people decide that centralizing everything behind the "sekuritah" excuse is an awesome idea.

UPDATE: Only the services/hosts under 104.26.0.0/20 seem to be actively blocked right now (wondering which opposition-led website pissed off the druglord regime enough to disconnect an entire /20). Other ranges work as usual, their 1.1.1.1 spyware DNS is also reachable from here.

UPDATE 2: Managed to check from a working CANTV DSL link: 104.26.0.0/20 is reachable and affected sites DO work fine. Apparently it's only Movilnet that its blocking this part of Cloudflare, maybe due to a broken router somewhere in the Caracas HQ. Sites I can't visit anymore:

- Danbooru
- HDD Guru forums
- GBATemp

...so basically, there goes the three sites I most use daily :/

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 20-04-25, 13:13 in Computer Hardware News
Dinosaur

Post: #674 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 4 days
Last view: 3 hours
And now Western Digital is doing damage control:
https://blog.westerndigital.com/wd-red-nas-drives/

Well, fuck you too, WD.
They're even pulling this SMR crap with Black drives, you know, the performance lines!

Basically if your drive is not too large or not too small, you will get a SMR unit.
If you're in the market for a new laptop HDD, this makes my suggestion easier: AVOID SPINNING RUST... or anything made by former spinning rust OEMs.

Mind you, this is not the first time WD is caught pulling a Huawei: most of their recent external drives now hide most of their SMART attribute values (including Power On Hours!) via firmware trickery.

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 20-04-28, 14:10 in Computer Hardware News
Dinosaur

Post: #675 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 4 days
Last view: 3 hours
Weren't Stadia and friends supposed to kill gaming PCs and consoles as we know them?

Nothing to install = no fancy SSDs to sell.

Ah yeah, the China Plague™ reminded everybody of the fact that streaming is, indeed, a terrible way to enjoy interactive applications when 75% of the planet is locked down inside their homes and therefore every server in the world is forced to ration bandwidth so they can cope with the increased load of people downloading THE WORLD at once.

As for SMR: it does have its uses (anything that is "write once, read many" fits the bill perfectly), it's not a universal replacement for all other magnetic recording technologies in the market, no matter how many pennies on the dollar it saves for the beancounters at Western Deceiver, Suckgate and Toshitba. So if you're right now on the market for that NAS expansion, carefully review both the market offers AND your particular use cases. If you're just a data hoarder, SMR is fine. But for high-performance RAID, constant VM thrashing, or simply changing the failed boot drive on $GRANNY's laptop, avoid SMR and go for CMR (if looking for massive storage), or ditch the disk and make the jump to an all-solid lifestyle (if you don't need that much storage)

Thankfully I'm not one of those data hoarders anymore (it complicates your backup strategies when you have limited access to storage media, for starters). As for my WD SMR laptop drive: so far I haven't hit the SMR woes during daily usage, but then I don't heavy VM thrashing, or recompile the Linux kernel several times a day.

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 20-04-29, 17:12 in Computer Hardware News (revision 1)
Dinosaur

Post: #676 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 4 days
Last view: 3 hours
Posted by CaptainJistuce
It actually occurs to me that shingled recording drives should benefit a lot from developments intended to help flash drives, as they have a simidar weakness(read small chunks, write big chunks).
...
Do shingled drives support trim?

Quoting myself:
Posted by tomman
Well, almost ordinary: the only hint you get from those that they're not normal drives is a bit on the ATA IDENTIFY structures claiming that those drives support TRIM. Wait, what?! "Butbutbut wasn't TRIM only for solid state cards!?" Not exactly. Due to physics being a bitch, on SMR drives write heads are wider than read heads, this is why write speeds can tank when drive is being filled, as your lone "write a bunch of sectors" operation has become a VERY EXPENSIVE "read a bunch of sectors, including some that are completely unrelated to the ones you're going to write, modify them on memory, then rewrite several tracks at a time". In other words: you've got a really crappy SSD with moving parts, and therefore in order to preserve performance, you must treat those as such - if you're using Windows 7+ or most modern Linux distros, you're set: enable TRIM (periodic is highly recommended over continuous), set your filesystem mount options to "noatime", and try to not do any heavy random write workloads on those drives (I can guess swap space and mailservers/databases are right out of the question).


And from the actual drive itself:
tomman@himawari:~$ sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda

/dev/sda:

ATA device, with non-removable media
Model Number: WDC WD10SPZX-11Z10T0
Serial Number: WD-WXA1AAXXXXXX
Firmware Revision: 01.01A01
Transport: Serial, SATA 1.0a, SATA II Extensions, SATA Rev 2.5, SATA Rev 2.6, SATA Rev 3.0
Standards:
Used: unknown (minor revision code 0x006d)
Supported: 10 9 8 7 6 5
Likely used: 10
Configuration:
Logical max current
cylinders 16383 0
heads 16 0
sectors/track 63 0
--
LBA user addressable sectors: 268435455
LBA48 user addressable sectors: 1953525168
Logical Sector size: 512 bytes
Physical Sector size: 4096 bytes
Logical Sector-0 offset: 0 bytes
device size with M = 1024*1024: 953869 MBytes
device size with M = 1000*1000: 1000204 MBytes (1000 GB)
cache/buffer size = unknown
Form Factor: 2.5 inch
Nominal Media Rotation Rate: 5400
Capabilities:
LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)
Queue depth: 32
Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, with device specific minimum
R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 16 Current = 16
Advanced power management level: 254
DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
Cycle time: no flow control=120ns IORDY flow control=120ns
Commands/features:
Enabled Supported:
* SMART feature set
Security Mode feature set
* Power Management feature set
* Write cache
* Look-ahead
* WRITE_BUFFER command
* READ_BUFFER command
* NOP cmd
* DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
* Advanced Power Management feature set
Power-Up In Standby feature set
* SET_FEATURES required to spinup after power up
* 48-bit Address feature set
* Mandatory FLUSH_CACHE
* FLUSH_CACHE_EXT
* SMART error logging
* SMART self-test
* General Purpose Logging feature set
* 64-bit World wide name
* IDLE_IMMEDIATE with UNLOAD
* {READ,WRITE}_DMA_EXT_GPL commands
* Segmented DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
* Gen1 signaling speed (1.5Gb/s)
* Gen2 signaling speed (3.0Gb/s)
* Gen3 signaling speed (6.0Gb/s)
* Native Command Queueing (NCQ)
* Host-initiated interface power management
* Phy event counters
* Idle-Unload when NCQ is active
* NCQ priority information
* READ_LOG_DMA_EXT equivalent to READ_LOG_EXT
* DMA Setup Auto-Activate optimization
* Device-initiated interface power management
* Software settings preservation
* SMART Command Transport (SCT) feature set
* SCT Write Same (AC2)
* SCT Features Control (AC4)
* SCT Data Tables (AC5)
unknown 206[12] (vendor specific)
unknown 206[13] (vendor specific)
unknown 206[14] (vendor specific)
* reserved 69[3]
* DOWNLOAD MICROCODE DMA command
* WRITE BUFFER DMA command
* READ BUFFER DMA command
* Data Set Management TRIM supported (limit 10 blocks)
* Deterministic read data after TRIM
Security:
Master password revision code = 65534
supported
not enabled
not locked
frozen
not expired: security count
supported: enhanced erase
184min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT. 184min for ENHANCED SECURITY ERASE UNIT.
Logical Unit WWN Device Identifier: 50014eexxxxxxxxx
NAA : 5
IEEE OUI : 0014ee
Unique ID : xxxxxxxxx
Checksum: correct


Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 20-04-30, 12:37 in Computer Hardware News (revision 7)
Dinosaur

Post: #677 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 4 days
Last view: 3 hours
More damage control.

But hey, they didn't forgot to bring the buzzword bingo!
Using machine learning and pattern recognition in our system, the drive detects types of data so that we can coalesce similar data types together to maximize performance.


They also said how good SMR is for data integrity at the user-area level...
Data integrity — Because DMSMR drives put data down sequentially, track ECC (accumulation of parity information on a per-track basis) can be placed at the end of each data track. It enables the drive to correct up to 8K bytes of data per track during read, with near on-the-fly performance. This exceptions-handling capability is especially beneficial in event of shock, fan vibration, grown defects or other less-than-ideal operating environments. This development of data protection power during read comes naturally in a SMR architecture.

...while failing to address the more vulnerable, highly complex firmware architecture that will nuke your data as soon as the LBA translation tables get corrupted, which seems to be a popular issue with some of those WD drives. (For reference: this could happen too to older WD drives, but most of the times it was an easy fix, doable at home even, with free or cheap tools! While the only equivalent for those SMR drives involves the purchase of thousands in American money of Soviet-made software with heavy DRM and -possibly- more $$$ in a new PCB for your drive since HDD OEMs doesn't want people tampering inside their drives since the NSA had their fun with firmware-level spyware, and Suckgate got into the data recovery biz).

Oh, that article does mention some WD models that are NOT listed on WD's blog (mainly external drives)

At least they're being honest (for once!) with the main disadvantage of SMR:
Data movement requires idle time — One of the most discussed about topics in DMSMR drives, is data movement. This is, by LBA Indirection nature, the other side of the same coin. To be able to move the data freely requires the drive to have idle time to perform these tasks in the background. Without the ability to preemptively maintain disk space, the drive, under specific conditions, may take longer to complete a command as its resources dwindle.

...hence reminding you that knowing your workloads is of vital importance when picking your next HDD.

I'm not against SMR at all (once again, they have their place in our data hoarder lives). I'm against scumbag companies pretending that everybody of us are dumb (just like dictators and presidents!), while they keep lowering the quality of their products without us realizing all and any possible savings.

UPDATE: And now the Toshiba beancounters (which are used to deceiving customers, just ask their nuclear guys) are feeling the pressure, as the company is now disclosing which of their HDD product lines are using SMR:
https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/ap-en/company/news/news-topics/2020/04/storage-20200428-1.html

So far Suckgate has yet to make their move (aside of teling Ars that "our NAS drives aren't shingled, no sir!"), and considering how terrible are their product lines (particularly how nasty their mobile drives have become) this isn't surprising at all.

UPDATE 2: The Toshiba P300/DT02 series is actually a rebadged Hitachi... kinda, sorta? Well... I thought the WD/Toshiba HDD divestment agreement ended with the DT01 series (which IS still in production - damn, those are probably the LAST GOOD HDD drives still made!), but if you look at the pics, you can see that Toshiba is still evolving that former Hitachi design (which also implies that the WD/HGST merger stuff let them with full IP rights over those designs, instead of just allowing Toshiba to build rebadged drives under license, a-la Excelstor). However, those drives don't seem to be fully Hitachi under the hood:

- For starters, HGST didn't used that chassis for their native air-based 6TB drives.
- Look closer at the DT02 PCB: that thing looks more like a native Toshiba PCB (barcode label designs are clearly unique to OEMs), and it's less shiny (again, a trait of native Toshiba PCBs)
- Firmware revision KQ000A, which is clearly a Toshiba version string (Hitachi ones look like "MXO1A1BB", that is, 8 characters... a trait inherited from the IBM generations)
- These drives are SMR, of course. To date, no Hitachi/HGST drive is known to be using SMR (and that includes anything released under the WD brands)

...so, what the hell, Toshiba?! Time to look up some reviews! Of course, being SMR it means you won't be slapping those Half-tachis inside your NAS or DVR anytime soon!

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 20-04-30, 16:05 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
Dinosaur

Post: #678 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 4 days
Last view: 3 hours
Good ol' Raymond Chen talks about Windows update formats:
- Full updates
- Delta updates (which aren't actually "delta" patches!)
- Express updates
- Quality updates (the ones introduced during Windows 7 late lifecycle, and which looks surprisingly similar to BPS patches, since these updates can also use the source file as patch data - wonder what encoding they're using under the hood)

...and why tampering yourself with application or system files is a bad idea (they break patches, of course!)

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Posted on 20-05-08, 01:10 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
Dinosaur

Post: #679 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 4 days
Last view: 3 hours
Speaking about Visual Basic Classic (and not New Coke Visual Basic), turns out Microsoft is committed to support your VB6 apps on Windows 'till the cold death of the universe at least:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/visualstudio/visual-basic-6/visual-basic-6-support-policy

But as coins have two sides, at the other side, the IDE hasn't been supported since April '08, and even back then it has already been abandoned since New Coke .NET happened, six years earlier. But that hasn't stopped people from doing stupid things devising compatibility workarounds on every Windows version released since then.

Relevant read: this guy wrote a book about doing stupid things with VB while working for Microsoft, became crazy during the process, burned all bridges before New Coke .NET, then moved to greener pastures, but every now and then he feels the temptation of the devil to go back and toy with Visual Basic .NOT. Oh, and his book is on the MSDN CDs that shipped with your copy of VB6, if you don't want to "spend $300 on eBay for a hardcopy".

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

Post: #680 of 1282
Since: 10-30-18

Last post: 4 days
Last view: 3 hours
Protip: if whoever at the lead of your country is thinking about relaxing the lockdowns, overthrow those fuckers NOW.

As much as we want/need to reopen the global economy ASAP, that it's just not happening anytime soon for as long as we don't get this China pest under control. With vaccines not expected to be released until early 2021 AT THE VERY EARLIEST (and assuming that those Phase II/III trials go according to plans, i.e. people don't start dropping dead after the shots), it would be a crime to give people a naive expectation of safety just because "we did it, we flattened the curve!!!". Oh, and I've just read that there are already more infectious variants of this shitty virus already in the wild, so have fun!

But then, morons still believe that Bill Gates is infusing those vaccines with 5G nanobots, or whatever.

Oh, we're doing as bad as usual over here at Soviet Venezuela. We've been EXTREMELY lucky to have "only" ~381 cases officially reported (the real number should be like 10x times that considering that commies are fucking liars), but that's mostly due to the severe fuel shortages, plus good ol' repression. You can't get infected if you can't leave home.

No, people still refuses to respect social distancing.

Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65
    Main » tomman » List of posts
    Yes, it's an ad.