3 rants for the price of 1, isn't that a great deal!

1. HP, you braindead fucking morons!!!

So recently I disassembled this HP laptop of mine to unfuck it at the hardware level. Some issues with the hinge that I had to solve. So I had to disassemble not only the bottom of the laptop but also the display panel itself. Turns out that HP - being the certified enganeers they are - made the following fuckups, with probably many more that I didn't even notice yet.

- They used fucking glue to ensure that the bottom of the display frame stays connected to the panel. Cheap solution to what should've been "MAKE A FUCKING DECENT FRAME?!" but a royal pain in the ass to disassemble. Luckily I was careful and didn't damage the panel, but the chance of that happening was most certainly nonzero.
- They connected the ribbon cables for the keyboard in such a way that you have to reach all the way into the spacing between the keyboard and the motherboard to connect the bloody things. And some extra spacing on the ribbon cables to enable servicing with some room for actually connecting the bloody things easily.. as Carlos Mantos would say it - M-m-M, nonoNO!!!
- Oh and let's not forget an old flaw that I noticed ages ago in this turd. The CPU goes straight to 70°C during boot-up but turning on the fan.. again, M-m-M, nonoNO!!! Let's just get the bloody thing to overheat, freeze completely and force the user to power cycle the machine, right? That's gonna be a great way to make them satisfied, RIGHT?! NO MOTHERFUCKERS, AND I WILL DISCONNECT THE DATA LINES OF THIS FUCKING THING TO MAKE IT SPIN ALL THE TIME, AS IT SHOULD!!! Certified fucking braindead abominations of engineers!!!

Oh and not only that, this laptop is outperformed by a Raspberry Pi 3B in performance, thermals, price and product quality.. A FUCKING SINGLE BOARD COMPUTER!!! Isn't that a great joke. Someone here mentioned earlier that HP and Acer seem to have been competing for a long time to make the shittiest products possible, and boy they fucking do. If there's anything that makes both of those shitcompanies remarkable, that'd be it.

2. If I want to conduct a pentest, I don't want to have to relearn the bloody tool!

Recently I did a Burp Suite test to see how the devRant web app logs in, but due to my Burp Suite being the community edition, I couldn't save it. Fucking amazing, thanks PortSwigger! And I couldn't recreate the results anymore due to what I think is a change in the web app. But I'll get back to that later.

So I fired up bettercap (which works at lower network layers and can conduct ARP poisoning and DNS cache poisoning) with the intent to ARP poison my phone and get the results straight from the devRant Android app. I haven't used this tool since around 2017 due to the fact that I kinda lost interest in offensive security. When I fired it up again a few days ago in my PTbox (which is a VM somewhere else on the network) and today again in my newly recovered HP laptop, I noticed that both hosts now have an updated version of bettercap, in which the options completely changed. It's now got different command-line switches and some interactive mode. Needless to say, I have no idea how to use this bloody thing anymore and don't feel like learning it all over again for a single test. Maybe this is why users often dislike changes to the UI, and why some sysadmins refrain from updating their servers? When you have users of any kind, you should at all times honor their installations, give them time to change their individual configurations - tell them that they should! - in other words give them a grace time, and allow for backwards compatibility for as long as feasible.

3. devRant web app!!

As mentioned earlier I tried to scrape the web app's login flow with Burp Suite but every time that I try to log in with its proxy enabled, it doesn't open the login form but instead just makes a GET request to /feed/top/month?login=1 without ever allowing me to actually log in. This happens in both Chromium and Firefox, in Windows and Arch Linux. Clearly this is a change to the web app, and a very undesirable one. Especially considering that the login flow for the API isn't documented anywhere as far as I know.

So, can this update to the web app be rolled back, merged back to an older version of that login flow or can I at least know how I'm supposed to log in to this API in order to be able to start developing my own client?

A rant from the old box, with some minor edits because I don't remember the exact wording anymore.

So last time I had this window cleaner visit me, and he'd do his job while I was troubleshooting a broken tablet that my past home supervisor donated to me. After he was done he came to me, very impressed.

He then said: "Wow, you are disassembling this.. you must be very technical."
Me (kinda tired): "Thanks. And yeah pretty much."
He: "Does this mean that you can fix anything?"
Me: "Kind of. It depends. But I can't fix printers."
He: "Why is that? Are they so complicated?"
(the tablet I had disassembled is orders of magnitude more difficult than a printer)
Me: "Not really. It's just that that's often what users ask next."
He: …

The guy immediately left 🤣

I've just disassembled this LED floodlight that I bought a while ago. It's some stupid little cheapie from a dollar store, so I figured that there'd be shit inside. But I wanted that LED cob.. a power LED :3

Well, shit wasn't too far off from the truth. The component choice is reasonable, but the design of the bloody thing.. batshit insane. The LED floodlight is powered by 4 AAA batteries, connected in series. So 6VDC. That then goes into this little tactile pushbutton, into the LED cob and then a 4.7 ohm resistor.

Well that's a pretty easy circuit.. let's remove the batteries and the casement, and put it on the lab bench power supply. Probes connected to the circuit with only the resistor and the LED cob in between (I didn't want to deal with the switch). Power supply set to 6V, current limiting to 500mA, contact!! And it works, amazing! So I let it run for a while to see that nothing gets too hot.. hah. After a minute or so, smoke would come out.. LED cob was a bit warm to the touch but nothing too bad. But the resistor.. I could cook water on it if I wanted to! 100 fucking °C, and rising. What the F yo?!

So I figured that I didn't want to put the resistor in between there. Just the LED cob now, which apparently has a forward voltage somewhere between 3.2V and 3.3V depending on how I set the current (500mA and 600mA respectively). Needed a bigger heatsink though, so I jammed one of my aluminium heatsinks on there. And it worked great! Very bright too, as it takes between 1.6 and 2W of power. Just for a comparison, the lighting in my living room is 4x5W and the ones on top of my dining table are 2x3W (along with some TL bar that my landlord put there.. fluorescent I think). So yeah, 2W is quite a lot for an LED, especially when it's all concentrated into one tiny spot.

That said, back to the original design with the resistor. 2 questions I have for that moron that designed this crap. First, why use a resistor for a power LED?! They needlessly waste power, and aren't good choices for anything that consumes more than 100mA. You should use PWM for these purposes, or tune your voltage on the supply side. Second, why go with 6V when your forward voltage is 3.3 at most? Wouldn't it make more sense to use 3 batteries with 4.5V? Ah, but I know the answer to the second one. AAA cells aren't rated for high loads like this. So that's likely why the alkaline cells that I had in there before have started leaking. Thanks, certified piece of shit!

Honestly, consumer electronics are such a joke... At least there's some components that I can salvage from this crap. Mainly the LED cob, but also the resistor and the tactile pushbutton perhaps.

One last remark that I'd like to make. This floodlight was cheap garbage. But considering that you can't do it well at that price, you just shouldn't do it. You know why? Because consumers always go for the cheapest. Makes a lot of money to build at rock bottom prices and make shit, but it damages the whole industry, since now the good designs will go out of business. That's why consumer electronics is so full of crap nowadays. Some unethical profiteering gluttons saw money, and they replaced the whole assortment with nothing but garbage. I'm sure that there's a special place in hell for that kind of people.

Just disassembled 2 €5 desk fans because they were shit.. and so is their design apparently.

What I found inside was actually surprisingly simple.. a toddler could build it. It's just a DC motor, a 3PDT switch, DC barrel connector, some wires and screws to hold stuff in place. Oh and the plastic thingie with the fan blades, as well as the USB cable of course.

5 fucking euros. The combined cost of the components would be less than 3, certified motherfuckturers. Time to build it, injection moulding, transportation, sure.. but still.

And if you think that being salty about €5 is cheap shittalk, expand that to every fucking piece of electronics that doesn't cost a small fortune.. at all price ranges. Could be radios, alarm clocks, heck even phones. Shit's way too expensive for what it's worth. Perhaps because so many people in the industry are just here for a quick buck.. motherfuckers 😒

Anyway, back to the design.. the hole in the fan blade thingie is supposed to get the motor's shaft shafted in, to turn the blades. I'd use glue there.. but not these designers. They just shove it in and hope that friction takes care of everything. And one of the fan blade modules' hole was so wide that inserting the motor is like throwing a sausage down the hallway. No contact at all! Make it tight already like the Chinese designer's glory-...
Nah let's not get into Chinese tightness just yet.

Oh and also a resistor for slow mode. Consumes just as much power except the fan turns slower. Because fuck efficiency, right?

Goddammit, next time I'm just gonna build my own again.. at least that wouldn't be a certified piece of shit 😑

Recently I disassembled this Remington beard trimmer that I have, right. Thinking that I probably just depleted the battery or something like that, and that that's why the fucking thing would turn off after 10 seconds, with a miserable motor speed that could only be caused by what.. 2.5V or something like that? So I kept up with it for a while, and then a few days ago, I finally disassembled the fucking thing.

New 4.2V LiPo battery of my own attached, wicked! The thing has a 2Ah capacity and is fully charged, so fuck all in a big ship, I'ma shave my fucking hair without protection, who cares with 2Ah anyway, given that motors at 4.2V consume only 800-ish mA, right. So I shaved my head, and figured.. holy shit mate, I fucking beat this fucking cunt, fuck you Remington! Planned obsolescence my ass!!!

Just now @xewl sent me a request that made me reconsider this shaver. Some PS3 controller, should be easy enough to fix. But I referenced my shaver so I figured that I might actually check it beforehand.

The original fucking battery has 4V left on it. 4 fucking volts! That ain't gonna trip shit for an overdischarge protection circuit!!! WHY THE FUCK REMINGTON, WHY THE FUCK DID IT (IF ANYTHING) TRIP?! And more importantly, why did you make the motor turn for only 10-ish seconds after charging, 1 year after purchase, despite the fucking cell having 4 fucking volts in it, which is more than plenty to get the thing turning for at least a 60% charge?! Planned obsolescence perhaps, hmm?

But let's say that it was bad contacts or something like that. After all, my probing was a bit intermittent, showing 1.5V (if it's shorting, shouldn't it be in the mV range?) and then 4V at times, until I separated the nickel connectors from the 16500 cell. Why the fuck should that thing short, considering that it's unprotected?! The fucking cell is unprotected, and you Remington are going to let it short? What kind of fucking engineering is that, you fucking braindead morons?!!!

And why do you use a 16500 cell which isn't very standard over a 18650 cell, which is? Again, planned obsolescence? Fucking vile pieces of shit.

Now what's more.. I tried to power on the shaver for a picture for this fucking rant, using a LiPo cell of my own that I used to shave my hair with the other day, to get a nice picture of my little hack. But the fucking thing, despite having 3.89V left in it after that fucking shave, which is more than plenty for a lithium cell, the fucking unit doesn't power on. WHAT THE FUCK REMINGTON?!! That's planned obsolescence at its best, init?!! You vile fucking pieces of shit.

So I guess that this rant is no more one of "I beat these Remington cunts". It is one of "you can bet your fucking ass that planned obsolescence is a thing!!"

Just disassembled my iPhone. Actually, I just wanted to attach the battery again, because the adhesive strips do not hold so tight since the battery exchange. But then... 😁

Got a gift from my friend. It was from an Indiegogo project. It worked fantastically until it has broken recently.
Although 1 year warranty was promised according to the site, the fact that it's from Indiegogo means that's non existence (I'd say if you actually receive the thing, you're very lucky). So I disassembled it and had a look.
Now I'm thinking maybe I just need to hack my way in to find out what that blown chip is and if I can replace it.
I am also disgusted by the Chinese printed on the IC...

I just got a bugreport for an ages old release of a software which was assumed finished. Problem is, i couldnt find the source anywhere.

"hey, could you send me the file so i can check the bug?"
*sends jar file*
"yay im saved"

thanks java, for being easily disassembled 👌😍

My home is under renovation and so my desktop is disassembled and in the box for more than a week now . I feel depressed, aimless and meaningless.

So last week I got my second 3D printer. I have done a few prints with it and this weekend I wanted to connect it to an Octoprint instance on my Raspberry Pi. Yesterday everything went great, got some plugins installed, changed all settings within octopi, connected it to my network and this morning I thought let's connect it to my printer and try to print something with it. But everytime I executed my gcode it gave an error about the heated bed not being able to heat up. Even though I did see all communication between the printer and octopi, on both ends.
I've disassembled the build plate to see what could be causing the heating issue. Did not see anything. Strange...

I assembled the whole thing again and then turned on the printer and tried printing again. Hmm, now it does work, why? Me thinking a bit and then realizing that before I didn't hit the power switch on the printer and apparently the Pi gave enough power through USB to turn on the display and do basic logic like doing beeps on touches and changing variables on the screen. The worst thing is that octoprint gave me warnings about low voltage on the Pi even though I was using the official Raspberry Pi power adapter...

Noname Russian $17 wireless charger somehow makes less high pitched coil noise than my fancy nomad charger.

Yes it’s ugly. Yes the led is blasting and yes I painted over the led with a black nail polish.

I disassembled the nomad charger and located the coils that were making noise. I’m going to either fill them with epoxy (a common technique used by gpu enthusiasts to get rid of coil noise) or replace them completely.

TL;DR:
nomad — bouba
noname russian charger — kiki

Got a new motherboard today, a Asus crosshair vi hero, AM4 for amd ryzen.

Bought is as broken / defective, it supposedly works except 2 ram slots should not get detected.

On a closer look, the story of water-damage didn't seem right.

Disassembled everything and took another look.

😲😨 "Is that solder tin? What the actual fuck?"

*Scratche it with tweezers

*"Supposed solder tin" becomes liquid and moves

😱 "The fuck that's liquid metal"
😵 Who the fuck sprinkles liquid metal all over a board?
😳Ryzen is solderd why the fuck should someone use liquid metal?

What the heck

Linux software RAID and LVM are pretty powerful.

Bought a new server case for my home file server / VM host. 3U with 16 hotswap bays. Had 2x software RAID1 mirrors already with everything on them. Inserted 2 new disks with system running. Created new RAID10 array using these, with their mirrors as "missing".

Created new physical volume. Extended volume group into it, then used pvmove to transfer every logical volume across. Shrunk volume group to no longer use the old RAID1 array, disassembled that array, added its disks to the new array... Now just waiting for the mirror disks to sync up.

All this, with the system and several VMs still running.

And with a backup, of course ;)

I think I'm a good developer. I have pretty decent debugging skills, including pulling apart disassembled x86 and other architecture code.

I'm fascinated by how things work.

But almost everything is catered for by a library. Or has already been done.

I find it enjoyable to create a library or program myself, but get disheartened when I find some library or program that is written seemingly very well, compared to my own code. And then I start to think I'm not a good developer after all.

Sort of relates to my previous rant about repeatedly rewriting code.

Applies to me doing programming as a hobby but probably affects my code at work as well... I just can't help but think my code is probably awful compared to what someone else might write.

...then I see incredibly ugly, messy, badly written code by other people and I feel better...

I suppose it is like an artist who sees amazing works but cannot paint to that standard, but is well beyond drawing stick figures with crayons.

Sounds like a trivial problem but it probably impedes my progress with a lot of things.

I remember that my granddad and I built a computer with old crappy hardware that we disassembled from other computers.
I mostly used it for playing games like Age of Empires or Rollercoaster Tycoon.
I really don't remember a lot about but I remember I also had internet. Never got any Malware tho haha.

Then sometime my friend came over and he showed me a website named "Scratch". We made a lot of crappy games and a cat that farts when you press a button.

So yeah I instantly fell in love and did a lot of "Scratch"-ing with my brother.

That's was the time I found my love for programming.

I think about 2 years later I got a MacBook (the old from my father) and finally started with real programming!

Now, after 6 years I have an awesome little ZenBook and am programming everyday.
Love it!

I got inspired to make my code as closest to perfection as possible for me by my uncle. Seriously - he was real handyman.

Once he had an accident in his car (I think it was Škoda 100) because of the drunk pedestrian. The car engine was ruined, as like back of the car. He disassembled the car bolt by bolt (he was writing all the actions in his notebook). He then bought exact parts and paint (which wasn’t easy in 80’s Poland) and fixed the car alone in his garage.
Even tho everyone was telling him to give up, it will not work, etc. the car started at the first try and you couldn’t spot any damage. Even the paint on the body was matched 1:1.

This story inspires me to don’t give up and try to do my job as best as possible - even if everyone else says I can’t do it.

Spent 2 days installing different versions of nvidia-driver, nvidia-cuda-toolkit, cudnn.
Disassembled pc due to some ram memory problems and pc not starting after freeze.
Looks like sometimes plug out and plug in various components on your motherboard fix pc lol. Destroyed PC casing that collapsed due to me sitting on it.

All of this to just find out tensorflow error and all crashes are from graphics card overheating after keeping it for some time at 82 celsius.

Added time.sleep to python code and looks like it's working, keeping temperature below 65 celsius.

Still ~100 times faster than cpu training so I can live with that.

Let's talk fans. I've skimmed through beQuiet and noctua, but couldn't find the type I need. Are there quiet laptop fans out there?

Here's my case. I have an LED projector. As projectors are, it's somewhat loud. Not painfully annoying, but still. I wonder how could I make it quieter.

I had it disassembled to see what fan it has. It looks like an oversized laptop fan. Like 12cm or so.. I was thinking I could buy a silent fan, tear it apart, take its axis with blades and pop it in the original projector fan case. Problem is, I can't find any quiet laptop fans, be it normal size or oversized. Aren't there any? If so - why? Are there other means to quiet a fan like this down? I mean apart from cleaning and oiling - that's already done.

This is not a rant, but I've searched this for some time now and can't seem to find it so maybe any of you will be able to help me.

A good few years ago, when I was still a 4-5yo I had a Win95/98 (I don't remember which). We used to have this CD that had a bunch of games, like Chucky Egg or Mahjong, or a xmas-related one (where you could bake cookies, serve drinks - there was a red and a yellow one - and more I don't remember), one with a (purple?) dragon (in a dungeon, that was played in levels, but every run was randomly generated, I think), and many more.
The CD was white with black text, and had a yellow-ish/orange-ish grinning face, that looked like a man's, with a few hairs, that was drawn simply, nothing too complex. I also know there was this one game that made the computer/game freeze, and that was in a blue palette?

I played the crap out of that CD with my mom, and she used to play the dragon one for me (until she found out Mahjong), but it all ended when it broke inside the tower and we had it replaced by the WinXP tower we currently have at home (and that's in pieces because me and my brother disassembled it).

I know it's not much, but does any of you remember anything like what I just wrote? It should be from around the 2000s and probably from a gaming magazine.

Not pushing myself for a better university, stuck here until diploma without good professors.

Taught students from my group, been checking their labs for three disciplines, tried holding an "open IT community evenings" for full 15 meetings, assembled and disassembled group of game developers.

Hobby project are all my hope.