That awkward moment when your AliExpress package has travelled more countries than you ever have

So I have that custom-made wifi router I've built. And it uses a USB wifi adapter with AC (wifi5) capability - the fastest one I could find in AliExpress.

I set it up a while ago - the internet access works fine, although speeds are somewhat sluggish. But hey, what to expect from a cheapo on Ali! Not to mention it's USB, not a PCIe...

A few days ago I ran a few speedtest.net tests with my actual AC router and the one I've built. Results were so different I wanted to cry :( some pathetic 23Mbps with my custom router :(

This evening I had some time on my hands and finally decided to have an umpteenth look.

nmcli d wifi
this is what caught my eye first. The RATE column listed my custom router as 54Mbps, whereas the actual router had 195Mbps.

I have reviewed the hostapd configuration sooo many times - this time nothing caught my eye as well.

Googling did not give anything obvious as well.

What do we do next? Yes, that's right - enable debug and read the logs.

> VHT (IEEE 802.11ac) with WPA/WPA2 requires CCMP/GCMP to be enabled, disabling VHT capabilities

This is one of the lines at the top of the log. Waaaaiiitttt.. VHT is something I definitely want with ac -- why does it disable that??? Sounds like a configuration fuckup rather than the HW limitation! And config fuckups CAN be fixed!

Turns out, an innocently looking
`wpa_pairwise=TKIP`
change into
`wpa_pairwise=TKIP CCMP`

made a world of a difference!

:wq
!hostapd
connect to the hostapd hotspot and run that iperf3 test again, and... Oh my. Oh boi! My pants fell off -- the speed increased >3x times!

A quick speedtest.net test deems my custom router's download speeds hardly any worse than the speeds obtained using my LInksys!!

The moral of the story: no matter how innocent some configurations look, they might make a huge difference. And RTFL [read the fucking logs]

In the pic -- left - my actual router, right - my custom-built router with a USB wifi adapter. Not too shabby!

I love my Nexus 6P but goddamn do I hate its battery. Shuts down randomly at 25%, lasts only half a day, and a lot of other crap. So I want to replace it, bought a new battery from AliExpress but didn't buy any tools for it.. so I'll have to make do with what I currently have. On iFixit I found that the replacement process is apparently quite difficult as it's glued in (God I fucking hate that) and can only be safely removed by heatgunning it (which I don't have a heatgun for). Are the results worth the risk of breaking it? Is it possible to pull it out while cold, without too much risk of breaking stuff or damaging the battery? I've got experience in disassembling 2 previous phones and one of them had the battery glued in as well.. and I didn't break the battery (in fact I'm still using it) but it was very difficult.. and this is my daily driver. So yeah 😶

I'm getting addicted to buying cheap electronic modules on AliExpress. Help me.

A month or so ago this manufacturer of soldering equipment contacted me with the request to make a video about a review unit (a soldering handle) that they'd send to me for free in exchange. Initially I was really pumped about it - company would send me free stuff!! - but fast-forward to today and I realized how terrible a choice I've made by accepting that offer.

See, that handle is worth only €40 and I've spent so much time on the bloody video material already that it'd make my "pay" expected to be close to €1/h if not less. I feel like I've been exploited, especially since I don't even like the handle's design and am not using it. It's just collecting dust, making my work essentially free labor.

I could return the item but that's gonna cost me a fuckload of money, I could pay for the handle and cut my losses that way.. or I could do the review anyway and end up feeling very bad about that company. Or I could tell them to fuck off and lose a supply chain for my soldering equipment.

I have no idea what to do about this..

Oh and the fact that the correspondent in that company has the worst Chinglish skills imaginable, the communication skills of a toddler and is also super indecisive (they asked me to make a YouTube video first which led me to assume a video format for YouTube, but instead they want to put it on their fucking AliExpress product page, rendering my existing video footage useless!) doesn't help either.. I hate that shit company. Fucking leeches!

Anyway, what would you do when you're in a position like that?

*decides to take another look at the Arduino Mega and LCD*
*suddenly realizes that this LCD controller that I bought has a different pinout*

"Alright, let's look at the seller's product page and they better have a pinout for this fucking thing"

*tries to log into AliExpress*
*can't login*

"At this point I don't even know anymore if it's China that fucked up again or whether this is another feature from the Facefucks"
"LOG ME FUCKING IN ALREADY YOU PIECE OF SHIT!!!"

And honestly, if I want to start a project, I want to work on the fucking project. I don't want to have to deal with all this shit instead!!!

that feeling when your new toys from aliexpress get delivered earlier than expected... i feel so happy unpacking those sensors, capacitors, heat sinks, microchips, breadboards and all. i feel like i have a geeky shopping addiction, i probably won't have the time to play with them from all the work and other personal projects, but still i hoarded enough electronics to invade the world with a drone army in case i have a few weeks me-time.

I just noticed that my desktop still has a DVD-RW in it that I never used.. which led me to think, I've got here like 5 DVD-RW's as well as 5 CD-RW's, but I never use them. Are there still any uses for them? Long-term backup storage for example? I've heard somewhere that data rot can happen over the course of a few years.. but would it really be a problem? I mean I've had these for over a year already and they look healthy to me. That said, they've never been used and just sat on the top of my desk in their enclosures all the time.

FWIW, I'm having 10TB of storage (as well as some other smaller stuff here and there.. maybe 500GB or so) in various hosts and 3 mirrors, so the need for backups is already fulfilled.. it's merely a curiosity of mine as in "ah, I still have these things huh".. so yeah.

I think that I've bought these DVD's for something like €6 for 5 pieces in a local store that doesn't specialize in this sort of thing, so I'm fairly certain that I could get them for cheaper elsewhere.. think the likes of AliExpress etc. Would they be a viable technology to maybe still invest in over hard drives for long-term storage purposes, considering that the cost of a hard drive these days is only €50 for 1TB? But I guess that tapes would be better for this purpose, no?

You do know that "why do I need you if I can copy-paste code from SO?" joke floating around, right? Today I had a real-life situation perfectly illustrating it.

So I bought a set of parking sensors. Cheap ones, from AliExpress. Prolly the cheapest ones I could find. Installed them w/ engine turned off. All seemed fine. Cleaned it all up, got ready to go, started the engine and beeeep beeep beeepeeeeep beepp ..... beeeeeeeeep.

fuck.

Tried unplugging/replugging them one-by-one to find the faulty one. Nada. Apparently they all were false-alarming. They must all be bad, bcz they seem to work well w/ engine turned off (ignition on) and only false-alarm when engine is on.

Allright, I'll get a new set next weekend, a more expensive one and replace them again.

There goes my €20 and another week basically w/o parking sensors (car length is >5 meters, so sensors do help a lot).

Today I spend a few hours removing my rear bumper again, replacint all the sensors, wiring, etc. Tests show promising results - all sensors seem OK even w/ engine on! Close it all up, start a car again and.... beeep bep bep beeep beeee..eeeeppp.

MOTHER FUCK!

Another 30min-hour goes by while looking for a possible culprit. And I found it. The fix could did not take longer than 5 seconds. Apparently a wire feedint the sensors' controller was too close to sensors' wires. All I had to do is to push that wire a lil further from the controller with my index finger.

I could have saved €30, a week of time, half a day of work if I only knew what wire to [literally] poke.

shit...

How do you know my name, AliExpress?

- I need heat shrink tubes
- go to aliexpress, find the one set I need, order
- receive them to my PO, use a few of them

- I needed parking sensors
- to to aliexpress, find the set I need, order
- the parcel arrives in my country, on its way to my PO

- Today I visit a random site

Conclusion: AI is great at knowing what I have already bought and suggesting the exact same items I've ordered. Because if you've ordered them once you're likely to order them again, right?

Any idea how to make a fan in an HP laptop spin at lower temperatures? The fan in my Pavilion dm-1 only starts spinning when CPU reaches 75°C and enters full speed when the GPU also becomes 75°C. Which is strange because this CPU and GPU are one and the same thing.. an APU. And overheating freezes often happen at around 75-80°C.. which isn't too much of a headroom really. I'd rather have it kick in at 50-60°C already, but would like to avoid using the power of the soldering iron for it.. I've already lost a fan to that previously (current one is a spare part from AliExpress). Granted, my soldering experience was much less back then.. nowadays I can probably even solder 1206 SMD packages comfortably. But I don't want to risk it, and I've got experience with custom kernels anyway.. are there any fan speed governors in the kernel that you know of?

FWIW, fancontrol doesn't seem to be supported on this laptop, and neither is pwmconfig. Perhaps I'll have to stick to the electronics method after all? Given that it's just a 5V fan, I guess that I could feed it power by tapping some power from a USB rail and controlling its speed from an ATtiny85.. but inside the laptop there isn't enough space for that and I don't feel like freeing this hardware out of its laptop chassis yet (though that is on the list). Either way running at 60°C under no load is terrible.. some HP certified enganeering "feature" I guess...

when you divide the products you sell into different categories, i dont think "human hair" is a good category.

this actually gives me an idea. i kinda wanna create a redesign plan for aliexpress app tbh cause i dont like its UI/UX.

Please do not make assumptions..

When you create a world class e-shop and if you detect a person is browsing from some EU country, don't assume he's fluent in Spanish [?].

Aliexpress detects I'm from LT and I have no idea how to change my language. I don't understand spanish enough to find langg settings and changing the url does not work

Speaking of.. What in your opinion would be an appropriate way to warn someone about security problems, like db passwords in git?

I once came across dozens of extremely sensitive services' infra accesses: alibaba/aliexpress, natuonal observatories, gov institutions, telecomms, etc. I had dozens [if not hundreds] routers' and firewalls' credentials along with addresses. I tried one to confirm validity - it worked. I wanted to warn them but did not want to get in trouble.

If it were servers, I'd set a motd or append some warning messages in .profile. But not sure how to do it for non-server devices

what would you do? How would you warn them?

P.S. Deleting that record was a smart move, buddy ;)

p.P.S. Sorry, wrong category... Can't edit now :(

rant, !dev...

NEVER BUY ANYTHING THAT COST MORE THEN $5 FROM ALIEXPRESS....

I CANCELLED AN ORDER LIKE 1HR AFTER I PLACED IT, 3 DAYS AGO... I JUST GOT NOTIFIED THE ORDER IS NOW SHIPPED....

ALSO SEEMS MOST THINGS ON THERE A CHINESE RIPOFFS... BEING MARKETED AS QUALITY GOODS....

Oh and their customer support is really sketchy... they said they'll try to get me a refund... But as I was taking to her, I also placed a dispute on my credit card "just in case"

So I got this tempered glass from AliExpress on my OnePlus 6, and I gotta say... It's a piece of shit.

The glass itself has that weird black bezel and because of that, it steals some of my screen on left, right, top and bottom. It's mildly frustrating. Plus the glass itself doesn't feel smooth, but rather a bit harsh.

Testing in prod? Really AliExpress......

So I plan to ditch my 17" heavy gaming laptop to chose something more suitable for school for a (13/14") ultrabook (I plan to run Debian on it) that has a decent battery life
Anyway, I looked at those chinese ultrabook on AliExpress/gearbest but I'm a bit skeptical about some factors.
Anyone has recommendations about a model or some advices?

How moronic is it to buy a router from China (AliExpress)?

!dev && dev_workflow

Hey guys, what are your favorite truly wireless headphones?

For context:
- my OSes: Android (phone), MacOS (laptop), iOS (tablet).

- my getting in love with wireless audio story: I have been using some Chinese ones off AliExpress just to test out the truly wireless waters, their sound quality and pairing experience especially on Android is pretty shit but the ability to forget that you have headphones in your ears and just listen to music obstruction-free is 🔥 but they are now dying so I am looking for a replacement.

Any experience with AliExpress?