IT: Hi, how can I help?
User: Hi, I can't get onto the wifi / internet, my computer says "No Signal".

IT: Hm, we don't have wifi, your on a cable, what exactly is saying no signal?
User: Its just on the screen here.

IT: No but where, are you inside a browser, or is it a popup down the bottom corner?
User: No I haven't got that far yet, it just says no signal on a black screen, then it flashes and says no signal in another position.

IT: ...... did you turn on your computer after turning on the monitor ... thats the screen saying no signal from the computer.
User: ah yep, thats it, thanks!

Anyone know this bitch hacker 127.0.0.1 story?

WORST HACKERS OF ALL TIME

CONTINUED IN THE COMMENTS BECUASE IT IS SO LONG...

TLdr bitch hacker hacks himself by localhost

bitchchecker (~java@euirc-a97f9137.dip.t-dialin.net) Quit (Ping timeout#)
bitchchecker (~java@euirc-61a2169c.dip.t-dialin.net) has joined #stopHipHop
<bitchchecker> why do you kick me
<bitchchecker> can’t you discus normally
<bitchchecker> answer!
<Elch> we didn’t kick you
<Elch> you had a ping timeout: * bitchchecker (~java@euirc-a97f9137.dip.t-dialin.net) Quit (Ping timeout#)
<bitchchecker> what ping man
<bitchchecker> the timing of my pc is right
<bitchchecker> i even have dst
<bitchchecker> you banned me
<bitchchecker> amit it you son of a bitch
<HopperHunter|afk> LOL
<HopperHunter|afk> shit you’re stupid, DST^^
<bitchchecker> shut your mouth WE HAVE DST!
<bitchchecker> for two weaks already
<bitchchecker> when you start your pc there is a message from windows that DST is applied.
<Elch> You’re a real computer expert
<bitchchecker> shut up i hack you
<Elch> ok, i’m quiet, hope you don’t show us how good a hacker you are
<bitchchecker> tell me your network number man then you’re dead
<Elch> Eh, it’s 129.0.0.1
<Elch> or maybe 127.0.0.1
<Elch> yes exactly that’s it: 127.0.0.1 I’m waiting for you great attack
<bitchchecker> in five minutes your hard drive is deleted
<Elch> Now I’m frightened
<bitchchecker> shut up you’ll be gone
<bitchchecker> i have a program where i enter your ip and you’re dead
<bitchchecker> say goodbye
<Elch> to whom?
<bitchchecker> to you man
<bitchchecker> buy buy
<Elch> I’m shivering thinking about such great Hack0rs like you
bitchchecker (~java@euirc-61a2169c.dip.t-dialin.net) Quit (Ping timeout#)
bitchchecker (~java@euirc-b5cd558e.dip.t-dialin.net) has joined #stopHipHop
<bitchchecker> dude be happy my pc crashed otherwise you’d be gone
<Metanot> lol
<Elch> bitchchecker: Then try hacking me again… I still have the same IP: 127.0.0.1
<bitchchecker> you’re so stupid man
<bitchchecker> say buy buy
<Metanot> ah, [Please control your cussing] off
<bitchchecker> buy buy elch
bitchchecker (~java@euirc-b5cd558e.dip.t-dialin.net) Quit (Ping timeout#)
bitchchecker (~java@euirc-9ff3c180.dip.t-dialin.net) has joined #stopHipHop
<bitchchecker> elch you son of a bitch
<Metanot> bitchchecker how old are you?
<Elch> What’s up bitchchecker?
<bitchchecker> you have a frie wal
<bitchchecker> fire wall
<Elch> maybe, i don’t know
<bitchchecker> i’m 26
<Metanot> such behaviour with 26?
<Elch> how did you find out that I have a firewall?
<Metanot> tststs this is not very nice missy
<bitchchecker> because your gay fire wall directed my turn off signal back to me
<bitchchecker> be a man turn that shit off
<Elch> cool, didn’t know this was possible.
<bitchchecker> thn my virus destroys your pc man
<Metanot> are you hacking yourselves?
<Elch> yes bitchchecker is trying to hack me
<Metanot> he bitchchecker if you’re a hacker you have to get around a firewall even i can do that
<bitchchecker> yes man i hack the elch but the sucker has a fire wall the
<Metanot> what firewall do you have?
<bitchchecker> like a girl
<Metanot> firewall is normal a normal hacker has to be able to get past it…you girl
<He> Bitch give yourself a jackson and chill you’re letting them provoce you and give those little girls new material all the time
<bitchchecker> turn the firewall off then i send you a virus [Please control your cussing]er
<Elch> Noo
<Metanot> he bitchchecker why turn it off, you should turn it off
<bitchchecker> you’re afraid
<bitchchecker> i don’t wanna hack like this if he hides like a girl behind a fire wall
<bitchchecker> elch turn off your shit wall!
<Metanot> i wanted to say something about this, do you know the definition of hacking??? if he turns of the firewall that’s an invitation and that has nothing to do with hacking
<bitchchecker> shut up
<Metanot> lol
<bitchchecker> my grandma surfs with fire wall
<bitchchecker> and you suckers think you’re cool and don’t dare going into the internet without a fire wall
<Elch> bitchchecker, a collegue showed me how to turn the firewall off. Now you can try again
<Metanot> bitchhacker can’t hack
<Black<TdV>> nice play on words
<bitchchecker> wort man
<Elch> bitchchecker: I’m still waiting for your attack!
<Metanot> how many times again he is no hacker
<bitchchecker> man do you want a virus
<bitchchecker> tell me your ip and it deletes your hard drive
<Metanot> lol ne give it up i’m a hacker myself and i know how hackers behave and i can tell you 100.00% you’re no hacker..

WhatsApp, freaking WhatsApp.
How did this thing become such a standard. How? Why does everyone EXPECT you to have it. They assume that you have it installed on your phone.

'Why don't you respond to my messages? '

'Which messages? '

'The ones I sent you'

'I didn't get any messages. Wait, how did you send them to me? '

'WhatsApp'

'Ah, yeah I don't use that. Wait, where did you even get my phone number from? '

'What? You don't have WhatsApp? Freaking weirdo. '

'bye'

How did an app(lication) become such a standard and why does everyone automatically assume that you have it? And whenever I explain them why I don't use it (Facebook = bad), they just react with 'install it again' (most ridiculous answer) or 'what is wrong with you' or they just give me a confused look and walk away.

A lot of them also act like there were no alternatives (some even better than whatsapp). One of them and probably also the best one is signal. It has all the necessary features a messaging app needs and is also very secure.

Luckily a few of my friends have installed signal and I am currently trying my best at my parents. They have threatened to 'take my phone away if I don't install WhatsApp again' or 'if you don't use WhatsApp then you also don't need a phone'.

Okay finale:

Fuck whatsapp, fuck facebook, fuck ignorance

WhatsApp confirmed that ads are coming to the status part of the app!

Fucking finally.

What? Do I like ads? Oh no, I quit WhatsApp when Facebook bought it.

I just know some people who'll leave (mostly for Signal, some for telegram or wire) it the second the ads show up for the first time and I'd love to see people leaving WhatsApp (especially in my country).

Hurry the fuck up with those ads, Facebook!

I've had this twice in a very short period of time now and it really pisses me the fuck off.

Sitting in the train (I think the grammatically correct version is on the train but no that would be a little too dangerous for me I think), on my phone devRanting/Signalling/Rioting around when an an elderly person says (aiming towards me):

"Oh, youngsters and their technology, where has socializing gone? Why are you people always on your phones? Go socialize sometimes!"

Excuse me but fuck right off.

Because you know what, I am currently socializing.

Just not in the way you are used to or maybe even 'okay with'.

I'm talking with friends from all around the world (Signal + Riot), participating in interesting discussions (on here) and what not.

I do have very strict rules for myself though. When in company with people I am actually going to socialize with or when hanging out with friends, the phone goes the fuck away unless I NEED to be reachable.

But I'm on a fucking train with people I don't know and frankly I'm done with socializing for the day as I've had to hear (often stupid) people asking for help all day long.

Next to that, I don't know you, you don't know me, who am I to judge you? I'm not going to socialize with anyone here anyways and even if they'd like to, I'm fucking done with people for to-fucking-day.

Sincerely fuck off please.

Yes, we get the "long" idea

Fuck these movie people:
You run "sudo apt-get update.." and you say we've got the signal. Your f*cking signal! Am sure someone even typed the password for you. I update my system every 5 minutes I have got no signal. F*ck you again. I'm not watching the movie again. P*ssing me off.

Weak signal at the garden? No problem

Our project manager who also happens to be our web designer... (Start Up)

Project Manager: We have a go signal. Go convert this design to html and css. And make it responsive.

Me: Can you forward me the mail so I can check if it's actually approved?

Project Manager: Just do it.

Me: (After tweaking) There. It's done.

Project Manager: They want to change all the layout of the site. We're gonna do it from scratch. They didn't like the design.

Me: What? I thought your design was approved?

Project Manager: I thought so too. But i'm your PM so get back to work.

There was no mail from the client.

Services/apps and their automatic general sayings. I fucking hate that.

'apping' is an abbreviation for either whatsapping someone or messaging them in general (in the Netherlands at least).
Sorry but I fucking hate WhatsApp and I'm not going to say that fucking app/apping word. But then in general it's confusing imo.

IF YOU'RE GOING TO TEXT ME, DON'T SAY YOU'RE GOING TO APP ME.

IF YOU'RE GOING TO SIGNAL ME, DON'T SAY YOU'RE GOING TO APP ME.

"but I meant that" - THEN FUCKING SAY IT.

I DON'T 'GOOGLE SOMETHING'. I FUCKING DUCKDUCKGO IT. NO, THAT'S NOT THE FUCKING SAME.

FUCKING HELL.

What I'm posting here is my 'manifesto'/the things I stand for. You may like it, you may hate it, you may comment but this is what I stand for.

What are the basic principles of life? one of them is sharing, so why stop at software/computers?
I think we should share our software, make it better together and don't put restrictions onto it. Everyone should be able to contribute their part and we should make it better together. Of course, we have to make money but I think that there is a very good way in making money through OSS.

Next to that, since the Snowden releases from 2013, it has come clear that the NSA (and other intelligence agencies) will try everything to get into anyone's messages, devices, systems and so on. That's simply NOT okay.
Our devices should be OUR devices. No agency should be allowed to warrantless bypass our systems/messages security/encryptions for the sake of whatever 'national security' bullshit. Even a former NSA semi-director traveled to the UK to oppose mass surveillance/mass govt. hacking because he, himself, said that it doesn't work.

We should be able to communicate freely without spying. Without the feeling that we are being watched. Too badly, the intelligence agencies of today do not want us to do this and this is why mass surveillance/gag orders (companies having to reveal their users' information without being allowed to alert their users about this) are in place but I think that this is absolutely wrong. When we use end to end encrypted communications, we simply defend ourselves against this non-ethical form of spying.
I'm a heavy Signal (and since a few days also Riot.IM (matrix protocol) (Riot.IM with end to end crypto enabled)), Tutanota (encrypted email) and Linux user because I believe that only those measures (open source, reliable crypto) will protect against all the mass spying we face today.
The applications/services I strongly oppose are stuff like WhatsApp (yes, encryted messages but the metadata is readily available and it's closed source), skype, gmail, outlook and so on and on and on.

I think that we should OWN our OWN data, communications, browsing stuffs, operating systems, softwares and so on.

This was my rant.

!rant && sarcasm

For a long time now I've been trying to convince people to use secure communication. I'm used to getting called "paranoid", but the killer phrase always was (and still is): "Why do you want me to encrypt my communication, I HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE, so I don't care who's reading it" - "It's not about hiding something, it's about private stuff staying private" - "Yeah, whatever"

"I have nothing to hide". That always killed the conversation... until I asked them to hand me their phones, unlocked, for 5 minutes.

"No" - "Why? I thought, you had nothing to hide and don't care who's reading it?" - "Uhmmm..."

More and more people around me are popping up in my Signal contact list.
Looks like they suddenly care a lot about private stuff staying private </sarcasm>

ARGH. I wrote a long rant containing a bunch of gems from the codebase at @work, and lost it.

I'll summarize the few I remember.

First, the cliche:
if (x == true) { return true; } else { return false; };
Seriously written (more than once) by the "legendary" devs themselves.

Then, lots of typos in constants (and methods, and comments, and ...) like:
SMD_AGENT_SHCEDULE_XYZ = '5-year-old-typo'

and gems like:

def hot_garbage
magic = [nil, '']
magic = [0, nil] if something_something
success = other_method_that_returns_nothing(magic)
if success == true
return true # signal success
end
end

^ That one is from our glorious self-proclaimed leader / "engineering director" / the junior dev thundercunt on a power trip. Good stuff.

Next up are a few of my personal favorites:

Report.run_every 4.hours # Every 6 hours
Daemon.run_at_hour 6 # Daily at 8am

LANG_ENGLISH = :en
LANG_SPANISH = :sp # because fuck standards, right?

And for design decisions...

The code was supposed to support multiple currencies, but just disregards them and sets a hardcoded 'usd' instead -- and the system stores that string on literally hundreds of millions of records, often multiple times too (e.g. for payment, display fees, etc). and! AND! IT'S ALWAYS A FUCKING VARCHAR(255)! So a single payment record uses 768 bytes to store 'usd' 'usd' 'usd'

I'd mention the design decisions that led to the 35 second minimum pay API response time (often 55 sec), but i don't remember the details well enough.

Also:
The senior devs can get pretty much anything through code review. So can the dev accountants. and ... well, pretty much everyone else. Seriously, i have absolutely no idea how all of this shit managed to get published.

But speaking of code reviews: Some security holes are allowed through because (and i quote) "they already exist elsewhere in the codebase." You can't make this up.

Oh, and another!
In a feature that merges two user objects and all their data, there's a method to generate a unique ID. It concatenates 12 random numbers (one at a time, ofc) then checks the database to see if that id already exists. It tries this 20 times, and uses the first unique one... or falls through and uses its last attempt. This ofc leads to collisions, and those collisions are messy and require a db rollback to fix. gg. This was written by the "legendary" dev himself, replete with his signature single-letter variable names. I brought it up and he laughed it off, saying the collisions have been rare enough it doesn't really matter so he won't fix it.

Yep, it's garbage all the way down.

In electronics there's 3 options.
1. You pay a small fortune to get something decent.
2. You pay a smaller fortune to get crap.
3. You build it yourself and it'll be nicely priced AND decent.

Why is that? I have no idea. Profiteering gluttons perhaps.

Case in point: my watch. A waterproof one, so you'd expect to be able to take it in the shower, which I often did.
But then, le wild drop from 50cm height occurred and the whole thing just popped open, with soapy water rushing in. Luckily it didn't short out, and I quickly evacuated it out of the shower and dipped it with my towel.

Then already I thought.. what the fuck is wrong with the designers of this thing?! I'm all for keeping the inner parts of electronics accessible for self-servicing. But in a waterproof watch you wouldn't expect the backside to pop right off and expose the bloody internals, would you? So that's one thing. While evacuating it I quickly figured that I'd want to remove the battery immediately.. except that fucking thing was screwed in place?! WHAT THE FUCK?!! Use those screws to keep the fucking backside of the watch in place you certified pieces of shit that designed this craptacular piece of garbage!!!

Finished showering, went ahead and troubleshooted the thing. Miraculously it still worked. Except that now the UI of the fucking thing is biting me in the ass. A single button on the watch is used to operate the whole thing, and get it to set itself to the correct time, get radio signal, go in sleep mode (where the watch stops ticking, for storage purposes) and activate itself again. So I dived into the manual.. and still couldn't get it to work properly. So it's got one button just like an iPhone, it craps itself when it's dropped just like an iPhone, its design is shit just like an iPhone, and it's completely unusable when it craps itself just like an iPhone.

And the manual... Oh fucking shit. It specifies that the watch is 3 bar water resistant, yet apparently you can't take it into the shower. 3 FUCKING BAR!!! That's supposed to enable you to take a fucking dive with it! And apparently you can't drop it either.. who would've thought, when they lock it with no more than outwards pressure from the back plate into the main body! How difficult can it be to use fucking screws, and to make it watertight put some rubber bands or whatever?!

CERTIFIED MOTHERFUCKERS!!!

And the watch, it's in the garbage can right now. Right where it belongs!!

I’m the embodiment of lazy...

I had turned on the TV in the living room earlier and put on sesame st. for my daughter to watch.

Some time passes, I’m trying to work in the back bedroom, have daughter in my arms and she’s falling asleep. I forgot to turn off the TV in the front room.

Didn’t want to get up from my desk so I just wrote up a powershell script to connect to the computer plugged into the TV and kill chrome. (The Computer sleeps after 10 minutes, and the TV shuts off after 10 more minutes of no display signal).

Script was successful as I heard Elmo laughing, then suddenly all was quiet 🤫

This startup I started working for with their shitty code base written by interns, restrictive sys admin who had no actual use in the company since I was the one setting up their servers, know-it-all CEO, stupid HR representative who used to grill employees for being 10 minutes late in the morning, very small apartment "HQ", using fingerprints to signal our entry and our leave to and from the office, no formal process, and, to top it all, monitoring our own laptops which we use for work with a software that takes screenshots every few minutes. In short, it had the worst in corporates with the worst of startups combined in one company.

If, hypothetically, we could overlook all this, I couldn't overlook the horrible smell this place had. The apartment was overlooking a small garden which was a home for many stray cats and dogs. You can imagine how horrible this smell was. The weird thing was that no one there seemed to really care about the smell!!

I lasted there for only one week before I gave my resignation and I believe I had every right to do so.

So it happens that yesterday I stayed all night to install some Meraki antennas. "Installed, configured and tested sucessfully!"
This morning i was a approached by a user asking me why his iPhone is not connecting on sight. I explain the antenna thing and he asks me AGAIN, WHY isn't auto connection since its the SAME INTERNET... I try to go through the basics with no success. He shows how disappointed he is with my stupidity.
Then he asks where i got my diploma so he can make sure never to send his sons there, since i cant tell the difference of an internet provider and antennas who just distribute the internet signal. WELL, living and learning.
WTF was i thinking, hes right! OMG my whole life i believed we had to set up routers and all sort of hardware.
All i had to do is call to the Providers Call-centers, im sure they have PROPER ENGINEERS THERE!

I regularly want to send pictures from my work phone to my private one and I've got WhatsApp installed on my work phone but no way in hell it's getting on my private phone.

Was thinking about how to exchange those images easily...

I now have Signal on my work phone as well and I can chat with my private phone 😊

Inappropriate experience at work? Here is another one:

The IS department manager 'John' bought a drone (when they first started getting popular, paid over $400 for it), flew it around the office, which was kinda fun, then he took it outside and started peeking in (and recording video) various VPs offices.

Needless to say, that behavior wasn't popular because several/most have their back to the window and never saw the drone and the drone was close enough to see/record their monitors (which John did). No one was doing anything wrong (no porn, no secret company plans, etc), but they were rightfully upset.

Later that day he decided to find out how high he could go and because of the technology at the time, it lost signal or battery power, fell from the sky, and before he could gain control, it crashed (styrofoam wings shattered). Can't say I felt sorry for him.

So yesterday evening I was going to play some games. Checked NVIDIA and saw new update (no beta). So I went to install it and it literally fucked up my graphics card.

One monitor stopped working instantly and the other one got this old tv effect like when you had no signal.

Took me two hours to downgrade to my old drivers because I couldn't fucking see shit.

PLS NVIDIA DONT PUSH NEW DRIVERS IF YOU FUCKIN NOT TESTED THEM

Roommate: Filter it, would you please? (* Was talking about the tea*).

Me: Alright buddy, say no more. (*Names the signal that I was working on as "Tea".*)

(*Got the filtered output 😎*)

In the before time (late 90s) I worked for a company that worked for a company that worked for a company that provided software engineering services for NRC regulatory compliance. Fallout radius simulation, security access and checks, operational reporting, that sort of thing. Given that, I spent a lot of time around/at/in nuclear reactors.

One day, we're working on this system that uses RFID (before it was cool) and various physical sensors to do a few things, one of which is to determine if people exist at the intersection of hazardous particles, gasses, etc.

This also happens to be a system which, at that moment, is reporting hazardous conditions and people at the top of the outer containment shell. We know this is probably a red herring or faulty sensor because no one is present in the system vs the access logs and cameras, but we have to check anyways. A few building engineers climb the ladders up there and find that nothing is really visibly wrong and we have an all clear. They did not however know how to check the sensor.

Enter me, the only person from our firm on site that day. So in the next few minutes I am also in a monkey suit (bc protocol), climbing a 150 foot ladder that leads to another 150 foot ladder, all 110lbs of me + a 30lb diag "laptop" slung over my shoulder by a strap. At the top, I walk about a quarter of the way out, open the casing on the sensor module and find that someone had hooked up the line feed, but not the activity connection wire so it was sending a false signal. I open the diag laptop, plug it into the unit, write a simple firmware extension to intermediate the condition, flash, reload. I verify the error has cleared and an appropriate message was sent to the diagnostic system over the radio, run through an error test cycle, radio again, close it up. Once I returned to the ground, sweating my ass off, I also send a not at all passive aggressive email letting the boss know that the next shift will need to push the update to the other 600 air-gapped, unidirectional sensors around the facility.

!dev

And again...

Our ISP doesn’t say it blocks any port on our Business Fixed IP. Currently I’m trying to access port 25 for SMTP. Guess what? Indeed port blocked. Called them “The port is open”, I visit a port checked, the same thing “Port Closed”

Always the fucking same thing. Every fcking time. These are just criminals. Lastly I removed their router, that they mentions was the only working router in our house and our signal from the other router, not provided by them was much better. They blocked the hotspots because we removed the router then. Guess what? On their site is an option Enable Hotspot on your home router (this enables your access to hotspots). Just pressed it. Haaa they can’t acces my router to set that up and it works.

In our second home, we have another ISP, Proximus, first they did difficult to come and install everything. Because in the appartment the previous owners didn’t pay the bills. After a week or so someone came to install it. Because they cut the cables couldn’t do it myself. Ok it worked for some time. After 3-4 months by once I can’t access the camera there, strange. My uncle went there and there was no internet. Neither TV. But we never received any invoice. Because they didn’t send them. We contacted them, no response. My father sends them an email, with politic people in copy and by once they called to say they will turn it back and scrap the invoices that were not send. They said no technician needed to come, as it’s second home. Guess what, next day a message came “We will arrive in less than an hour”
My uncle went. They did nothing, only restart the modem.
There still was no internet after two days after they came. We called back, response was: “There wasn’t anyone.” Yeah right, we have proof of a technicial that passed (Local Video). By once the internet worked.
Now 4 months later, still didn’t receive any invoice, neither via post or email.

Fuck those criminals, called ISPs

Ok, so our team is responsible for writing an app that consumes an API written by the client's team (I refuse to call it a "REST" API, despite their claims). On one of the clarification meetings we are discussing an endpoint that accepts a (logically) unique field multiple times, even though an entity is already registered in the system with that unique identifier. Our proposal would be that this API of theirs should not happily accept duplicates as many times as there are bits on a 4TB hard drive, rather it should signal an error.

The response we got is this: Due to the Separation of Concerns principle they thought that it should be our app's responsibility to not send a request if an entity with said field is already in the system. Thus there's no need for the backend to validate this.

I didn't hear the next part, because I had to collect my headphones from the other side of the room where they were flung in rage.

I DID IT!!! just fucking installed lineage os <3 never imagined that it could be so complicated... they really don't want you to flash your phone man. I guess the main problem was that my phone is old x)

So I'm trying to get a clean and free environment, any advice about applications? My biggest problem is with telegram, I'll try wire, bit there is anything else that can replace telegram and on android and Linux? I mean I need to keep conversations sync, and I won't use a Chrome application TT so no signal.

Imagine: It's the year 4249.

Corporate has finally managed to convince workers that they don't need a salary.
Workers are now paid with food, shelter and clothes. And it's only in effect if you achieve your deadlines.

Keystroke monitoring softwares are now replaced with Webcam eye tracking software.

GitHub Co-Pilot now takes over your code editor and tries to dictate you how to write better code.
Refusing to do results in a signal sent to the management about your behaviour and you lose food access for the day.

HR Recruiters now require you to give them a blood sample and part of your house as a security deposit.
They also require you to have a micro-chip placed in your brain so they can monitor their worker's thought process.

Switching a job is no longer an option. You pledge allegiance to one company your entire career.

You can never see the real world now because the government has mandated you to never take off your VR glasses.
You see the world the way the government wants you to see it.

PHP is still trash.

Life is Good.

So I'm writing some multithreaded shit in C that is supposed to work cross-platform. MingW has Posix threads for Windows, so that saved already half of the platform dependency. The other half was that these threads need to run external programs.

Well, there's system(), right? Uhm yes, but it sucks. It's incredibly slow on Windows, and it looks like you can have only one system() call ongoing at the same time. Which kinda defeats the multithreaded driver. Ok, but there's CreateProcessA(), and that doesn't suck.

Fine, now for Linux. The fork/exec hack is quite ugly, but it works and is even fast. Just never use fork() without immediate exec(). First try under Cygwin... crap I fork bombed my system! What is this shit? Ah I fucked up the path names so that the external executable couldn't be run.

Lesson learnt: put an exit() right after the exec() in the path for child process. Should never be reached, but if it goes there, the exit() at least prevents a fork bomb.

Well yeah, sort of works under Cygwin, but only with up to 3 threads. Beyond that, it seems like fork() at some point gives two processes the same PID, and then shit hangs.

Even slapping a mutex around the fork and releasing it only in the parent process didn't help. Fork in Cygwin is like a fork in the ass. posix_spawn() should work better because it can be mapped more easily to the Windows model, but still no dice.

OK, testing under real Linux. Yeah, no issues with that one! But instead, I get some obscure "free(): invalid size" abort. What the fuck would that even mean?! Checking my free() calls: all fine.

Time to fire up GDB in the terminal! Put a catch on the abort signal, mh got just hex data. Shit I forgot to compile with -O0 and -g. Next try. Backtrace shows the full call trace, back to the originating line in my program - which is fclose() on a file.

Ahhh I remember! Under Linux, fclosing a file that is already closed makes the program crash. So probably I was closing it twice. Checking back.. yeah that's where it was.

Shit runs fast on several cores now!

Me: Hmm... My Android phone has been acting strange lately, cell signal keeps dropping... Maybe I picked up a virus... let's flash the latest update.

Phone: Updating Done

Me: Hm... signal is still bad... maybe it's hardware... *Angry*

Phone: By the way you lost root

Me: @#$%$&&$%^#$!#$@$%$#%^ OK LETS SEE, SUPERSU, REINSTALL THE BINARIES... YES!!!

Phone: Reinstalling... Restarting...
......................................................
......................................................

Me: it's not loading.... why? NO! I bricked it..... NO NO NO NO.....

*1 hour of flailing...*

Hey Recovery still works! OK, let's try to reflashing the OS

Phone: Flashing... Restarting...

Me: Please, please... let this work.... it's not starting............. wait. IT LOADED!!!! WOOT!!!! AWESOME...

Phone: still no root...

Me: Eh...

And there went my most of my evening which I was supposed to spend preparing for an interview tomorrow....

Who makes monitors which can only change the input if there is a signal on the currently selected input?

Monitor on -> VGA -> No signal -> Going to sleep

Like, let me change it to something which has a signal instead of directly going to sleep again?

So, I've come to hate Sundays. You might ask me, why? Why Sunday of all days? The answer is very simple: My wont-shut-her-fucking-mouth roommate.

Woman should be a commentator at sport events. She woke up at 10 in the morning and has been talking to what seems like the entire fucking population of this goddamn world, it's going to be 10 in the night soon. I feel like I am staying as a leech so I have no say in this goddamn room.

Please someone help me design a fucking signal jammer so I can block out the signals to shut her up!

Kill me now!
FML

Most successful? Well, this one kinda is...

So I just started working at the company and my manager has a project for me. There are almost no requirements except:
- I want a wireless device that I can put in a box
- I want to be able to know where that device is with enough accuracy to be able to determine in which box the device was put in if multiple boxes were standing together

So, I had to make a real time localization system. RTLS.
A solo project.

Ok, first a lot of experiments. What will the localization technique be? Which radio are we going to use?
How will the communication be structured?

After about two months I had tested a lot, but hadn't found THE solution. So I convinced my manager to try out UWB radio with Time Difference Of Arrival as localization technique. This couldn't be thrown together quickly because it needed more setup.

Two months later I had a working proof of concept. It had a lot of problems because we needed to distribute a clock signal because the radio listeners needed to be sub-nanosecond synchronous to achieve the accuracy my manager wanted. That clock signal wasn't great we later found out.

The results were good enough to continue to work on a prototype.
This time all wired communication would be over ethernet and we'd use PTP to synchronize the time.

Lockdown started.

There was a lot of trouble with getting the radio chip to work on the prototype, ethernet was tricky and the PTP turned out to be not accurate enough. A lot of dev work went into getting everything right.

A year and 5 hardware revisions later I had something that worked pretty well!
All time synchronization was done hybridly on the anchors and server where the best path to the time master was dynamically found.

Everything was synchronized to the subnanosecond. In my bedroom where I had my test setup I achieved an accuracy of about 30cm in 3d. This was awesome!

It was time to order the actual prototype and start testing it for real in one of the factory halls.

The order was made for 40 anchors and an appointment was made for the installation in the hall.

Suddenly my manager is fired.

Oh...
Ehh... That sucks. Well, let's just continue.

The hardware arrives and I prepare everything. Everything is ready and I'm pretty nervous. I've put all my expertise in this project. This is gonna make my career at this company.

Two weeks before the installation was to take place, not even a month after my manager was fired, I hear that my project was shelved.

...
...

Fuck

"We're not prioritizing this project right now" they said.

...

It would've been so great! And they took it away.
Including my salary and hardware dev cost, this project so far has cost them over €120k and they just shelved it.

I was put on other projects and they did try to find me something that suited me.

But I felt so betrayed and the projects we're not to my liking, so after another 2-3 months I quit and went to my current job.

It would've so nice and they ruined it.
Everything was made with Rust. Tags, anchors, RTLS server, web server & web frontend.

So yeah, sorry for the rambling.

I like model railways. I also like embedded electronics.

I therefore enjoy combining the two in my free time quite a bit - putting arm processors on trains and getting them to do cool stuff. I'm also happy to dish out electronics advice to other model railway guys, a lot of whom are older and have literally no clue (but will create stunningly realistic scenes that are a million miles away from my lowly efforts.)

But bloody hell - is it hard to do so without being drowned out by incompetent sods who think they know it all because... reasons. I think I may just stop attempting to help beyond this point. This is the latest nugget I've had to contend against - I guess he's heard about skin effect, but since DCC works at around 8Khz and using anything more than 1.5mm core cable is ridiculous for a model railway, even that is complete baloney.

Other electrical nuggets I've heard from this group include "only washing machines run on AC, everything else is DC", "the colour of the wire matters otherwise it could short circuit", and "driving your old trains with a DCC signal will make them run better, because it's more modern". 😬

Meanwhile at Disney World...

I started a short term contract job that requires access to company online resources. Only problem is the office I'm working in has really bad internet. The connection speed at best is comparable to dial up and at worse just non-existent. I tried tethering to my phone but this wasn't working either due to low signal. I mention this as an issue early on the week to the boss. Later in the week the boss asks how things are going at the same time that the network is down. I tell him the same problem. He then tells me his computer is fast and he has internet, so I show him the 2 computers I have access to and how they are too slow/no internet. He then tells me a bad workman blames his tools and he's not happy with me for having problems.

Don't even know what to say to that. I just told him this role wasn't working for me and clocked out.

The worst type of debugging: Programming an MCU without a Serial Monitor.

Some Context: I've spendt today about 3h+ on getting an attiny 45 to read 3 digital values on 3 pins. So for every test I wanted to make, I needed to put the MCU inside a socket put this socket on a arduino and flash it. Then extract it from the socket and put it on a breadboard for testing.
After getting headaches for nothing making any goddamn sense, I ended up noticing that one input pin is a multiplexed reset pin with the reset having top priority and no way to change it. So whenever this pin should have read a low signal, it got held in reset! FML

So, the Network I was on was blocking every single VPN site that I could find so I could not download proton onto my computer without using some sketchy third-party site, so, being left with no options and a tiny phone data plan, I used the one possible remaining option, an online Android emulator. In the emulator running at like 180p I once again navigated to proton VPN, downloaded the windows version, and uploaded it to Firefox send. Opened send on my computer, downloaded the file, installed it, and realized my error, I need access to the VPN site to log in.

In a panic, I went to my phone ready to use what little was left of data plan for security, and was met with no signal indoors. Fuck. New plan. I found a Xfinity wifi thing, and although connecting to a public network freaked me out, I desided to go for it because fuck it. I selected the one hour free pass, logged in, and it said I already used it, what? When?, So I created a new account, logged in, logged into proton, and disconnected, and finally, I was safe.

Fuck the wifi provider for discouraging a right to a private internet and fuck the owner for allowing it. I realize how bad it was to enter my proton account over Xfinity wifi, but I was desperate and desperate times call for desperate means. I have now changed my password and have 2fa enabled.

when your mouse is a signal-less piece of sh#* coz you've lost the bluetooth module.... and that makes you a piece of sh#* coz no one said unplugging was needed

My phone just died. Got a new phone on recommendation of friends and flash Jolla on it. The OS is super nice but the "Android support" doesnt work. No lastpass, no netflix, no prime, signal works half, no banking app.

I really need my windows phone back. It just worked without issues. After two android phones and now a Jolla in about two years im kinda done with all this shit.

You guys, I've just been away for a week on holiday

No mobile signal, no wifi

The horror 😱

I'll post a rant (will be long) soon-ish on the root of the asinine problem...

TL;DR
Anyone got a better suggestion of killing a WLAN router signal than a Faraday Cage?
-----------------------
As to the point as I can manage atm...
My ISP forces a proprietary router/modem for them to script my static IPv4 block (/28, aka 13 usable). Modifying this equipment in any way or using the vast majority of tactics to modify its behaviour = Federal Felony... with my history, it couldn't be construed as mistake/ignorance of this fact, so I'd likely end up working for some branch of the gov to mitigate the costs of standard prison (on both ends... handicapped af = expensive af to comply with base human rights laws... plus I'd be a dangerous prisoner from what I've been told).

I NEED the ipv6 functionality TOTALLY off... I've written this into every kernel and every container config at kernel level.

The issue is, I don't trust their shit device (which "should" also be set to no ipv6 via gui... non-GUI = fed felony).

This horrid device, they apparently made them for home use initially (to be fair it has decent specs and tolerable RAM), so included WiFi... that comes on by itself.
Disable the WiFi!... except I cant (at least not without 'tampering').
Why? Well acc to the GUI it's not enabled in the first place. Acc to the 'tech support' it's apparently a paid feature (yes, nonsense) that I have not paid for (nor would I), meaning on their end's GUI and DBs I also don't have WiFi ability from that dev.

So... Not trusting the other settings and the dev, being something im not allowed to directly config outside of their GUI that doesn't realise it's putting out a usable signal despite registering DHCP on behalf of that non-existent signal. I NEED to kill those signals.

I realise it likely sounds extreme to make and use a Faraday Cage for a router/modem (secondary modem, it parses the initial modem's output, via script, to allow the static block to be accessed). I really dont know any other way that's legal to restrict it.

Oh, in case unclear, I have tried so many ways to get them to just allow me to use any device (pref. mine, but even their's) that i can simply script myself... it's a no-go.

Just upgraded my internet service from a WISP, that could only get 1mb down and 1 up on a good day with lots of packet loss, (hack job company no improving infrastructure) ... for reference in live out in woods in northern Michigan.. sooo there arnt many options... DSL, don’t cross the river to me, neither does cable or fiber. Cell signal doesn’t work either as you can see.
So I had to try out satellite... went with viasat... got put on viasat-2 and holy shit first time in 4 years since living here have I been able to stream, and download and upload to my servers without having to take a nap. But the experience of dealing with what I did for 4 years definitely caused me to be more creative in what I do, and how I process data, and transmit data. Definitely an experience that taught me lot and gave me a lot of knowledge.
But now I’m in what I will consider “phase 2” there will be faster internet to come... Ariel fiber is being ran by the power company... but they are min 2 years out.. and Elon’s sats will also be next sooo good times to come..
Yeah yeah I know the ping rate sucks.. but guess what... I don’t play games so I don’t care... and as far as voip or web conferencing goes yeah there’s a slight delay/lag.. but I just tell them.. when you call me or conference with me pretend I’m not on earth.. boom the latency is explained then hahah.

First time today trying a sensory deprivation chamber.

All I could think was
"error no input signal"

Today's accomplishments:
- Actually got the fuck out of bed this morning

- Fixed the RCA connector on the CRT I got from a friend (I got scared while discharging it but it turned out fine). Basically the metal piece that carries the signal through the connector was bent to hell and sticking out, so I desoldered it, bent it right again, put it in, and resoldered it.

- Went to taco bell twice within 8 hours

- Sat and talked with a couple friends for like 2 hours after school

- Met and briefly talked to a very cute girl that my friend introduced me to. She has colored hair (I REALLY like colored hair) and she vapes. So perfect girl for me.

- FINALLY FUCKING STARTED LAUNDRY

Things I didn't accomplish today:

- Working on the web page I posted about this morning

- Getting to school on time (ONE DAY I WILL)

- Staying in school once I was actually there (left during my 6th period to go to taco bell the second time, first time today was in the morning after I was already late to school cause they won't let me into class if I'm late)

- Fixing the boot errors on my laptop (sometimes when I boot it fucking freezes after flushing the journal, I've been trying to figure it out for a while but I have no fucking clue)

- Figuring out why my PS2 doesn't want to recognize controllers or memory cards (got a new motherboard and now it just isn't recognizing the controller/memory card, I feel like some of the traces broke at some point while it was apart??)

Finished exams, in 3 days i have a flight to my parents house to see them.
Before that, thought about comming to my grandma's home, which has a beach nearby so i can spend 1-2 days relaxing.
Came here. No one is home. I don't have keys either. I'm hungry too.
Fortunately the wifi signal is ok.
Sat in front of the door, and opened my laptop.
Time to start migrating my projects from duck to static typing and practising my ability to write python code with type annotations until someone comes home.

On holiday skiing in France and all I can hear as I come down the mountain is the ring tone I assign all work related contacts.

Get to lunch and see 10 missed calls ... I will be saying "I had no signal on the mountain" a lot when I get back

If ya ever feel frustrated as all fuck because that retard friend is too fucking dense to bundle a vue.js instead of pulling it from cdn for a fucking phonegap build.

0) get in yo car
1) find a bmw at a red lite
2) signal 4 race
3) floor dat shit and leave em in the dust bc bmws have no fucking launch control

Yall know who the fuck wrote this rant dontcha

I have a question on the Signal app.

Two family members have an extensive chat history. One of them accidentally deleted the data. The backup function was not active. However, the other side still has all the data. Both are using Android smartphones.

How to transfer the data? Re-sending works only five messages at a time, which is not practical with some thousand messages.

Is it possible to export the data from one smartphone e.g. via USB to a PC, then import that via USB on the other?

There's no such thing as a SIGSERV signal.

Somewhere around the world that I call fatherland and the where the internet speeds are fucking terrible, baccalaureate exams got leaked on facebook years ago. Two unrelated things? WRONG.

It's been years now, every fucking baccalaureate exams period social media websites go down nationwide. No Facebook or Twitter. They do that rather than installing signal jammers in examination centers.

I'm not angry. I'm Just feeling a little urge to plant some C4 in one of "COUNTRY Telecom" centers but I'm mostly fine.

I have another issue 😬 with one of my Ubuntu laptops. The wifi chip somehow has connection issues. It nearly has no signal. I have to be beside the router to get a connection.

I changed the chip to a new Qualcomm Atheros chip already, but there was no change. I tried a few "speed up your WiFi connection" blog posts. But that also changed nothing.

Do you guys have any advice? :-\

Just installed Signal. Now what? No one I know uses it or has reason to since I'd be the only one they talk to on it. Any cool groups to join or something?

Dark theme on it is much appreciated!

Disclaimer: This is all theoretical. Neither me nor my friend (with whom I discussed this) are stupid enough to even try to pursue this, but as an idea, i believe it might generate cool/new ideas/ways for handling secure communications across social groups.

Let's do some role play. Let's design a delivery app for drug dealers, think Seamless or Uber Eats, but for drugs. Not for big deliveries, like kilograms of coke, but smaller stuff. Maybe a few grams of it or something. The clients could rate dealers, and vide-versa. This would build a level of trust within the system. There would be no names, just anonymous reviews, ratings, and prices. Only the info you'd need to know.

The biggest (only?) problem we found (besides legality) was that, how would you prove that you're a client and not a snitch (or cop). This would have to somehow be handled both on signup, as well as when ordering (let's imagine that all who are clients are pure and won't ever snitch).

One of the ways we found to combat this was to have the app invite-only. This would, in theory, do away with the problem of having snitches signing up. However, what if the phone got stolen/breached by a snitch, and they also got full access to the account. One way we thought we could combat this would be with a "dispose number" or something similar. Basically, you call a number, or send a text, or message a Signal bot etc, which would lead to the account's instant termination, no traces of that user left. Hence, a dispose number.

The flow of the app would be as follows:
A client wants some amount of heroin. He opens the app, searches for a dealer, sends the him the desired amount, and in return gets back a price from the dealer. If both parties agree on the amount and price, the deal would start.

The app would then select a random time (taken from the client's selected timeframe and the dealer's "open" time) and a location (within a certain radius of both them, somewhere in between them both for convenience). If both of them accept the time and place, they'll have to meet up at said time and place.

The actual delivery could also be done using two dead drops - the client drops the money at one of them, the dealer drops the goods at the other one. Yes, this might be subject to abuse, but it wouldn't be that bad. I doubt that clients would make huge orders to unknown/badly rated dealers, as well as dealers accepting offers from badly rated clients. My idea is that they would start small, just so if they do lose their money/goods, the actual loss wouldn't be as big for them, but for the other party, having bad ratings would mean less clients willing to buy or dealers willing to sell.

A third way would be to use crypto, but the reason I left this as the last one is because it's not that wide-spread yet, at least not in local drug dealing. With this method, the client would initiate the order, the crypto would be sent to either the dealer or an escrow account, the dealer would then drop the goods at a random place and let the client know where to go to get them. After the client has gotten the goods, they could both review/rate the quality as well as the overall experience with that dealer, which would either make or break the dealer's upcoming deals. This would be pretty much like other DNM's, but on a local scale, making deliveries faster.

So far, this would seem like something that would work. Are there any ideas that might improve this? Anything that might make things more secure/anonymous?

My reason for this post is to spark a conversation about security and anonymity, not to endorse drugs or other illegal stuff.

Cheers!

PS. Really loving the new PC design of devRant

Ideas I've had over the years that could pan out and be useful:

SMS-DB: Stands for SMS-Data Burst. Used to allow those with low cell signal or no data plan to transfer data between a phone and some client via the standard SMS text space. Would be slow, but would act kinda like dial-up over SMS (as mobile lines are compressed on all service levels, even LTE, so traditional dial-up wouldn't work!) I have a general idea on how packets would be laid out, but that's about it so far...

everything2PNG: Allows one to transpose any file's data into a PNG with a 3 byte per pixel (full color RGB), which allows for a "compression" of sorts (about 91, 93% on preliminary tests) AND allowing further, more efficient compression of the resulting file. (Plus... it's just kinda cool to see files transposed as PNGs.) I actually have a simple transposer to go to PNG, but can't yet go back. Large files (around 600MB) use upwards of 4GB with efficient paging and other optimizations via NumPy so far, so it's not *viable* yet, but it's coming along nicely.

RPi-GPIO Interconnection Bus: A master/slave or round robin method to allow for Raspberry Pis to communicate using GPIO, which can help free up network bandwidth in RPi cloud computing clusters. At most, this'd allow for 4 bits used for pushing to the GPIO "bus", and 4 bits used for pulling from the "bus". 8 pins total are usually unused minimum, so either 3 or 4 pins for upload, 3 or 4 for download, and potentially 1 or 2 for commands, general non-data communication, etc. I made a version of this concept using Round Robin for a client, but it was horribly slow. (I also don't have distribution rights for the code, so i'm working from scratch.) Definitely doable.

"Averice - a serial novel"

2021 - found on the remnents of an old 'youtube' server rack.

A gaunt but handsome man walks into the view finder. Adjusts the camera. "Hi guys and girls." he smiles weakly. rubs his blonde unshaved stubble, running his hand over his mouth, inhaling as if trying to find the right words.

"How can I say this. god. ...americas fucked and rapidly going down the shitter,
college is a fucking scam,
all success in the modern day is based on fraud, bullshit, mythmaking, and "who you know."

we're on the verge of a new cold war, the merger of the fed and the treasury combine with negative oil is the legit death signal of the petrodollar, we're gonna go through a *50% haircut* in living standards and a doubling of taxes on *everything* in the next six months, the tech bubble is gonna burst taking with it half the industry jobs overnight, the credit bubble will burst even as the fucking stock market climbs higher, a quarter or more of all retail will shut down leaving empty assets turning every state property market into the equivalent of fucking detroit. MAD as a protective doctrine is dead with the spread of hypersonic weapons so enjoy living with the constant threat of being obliterated without warning, my entire generation basically has no meaningful or stable future to look forward to, and none of us have really had an actual, genuine say in anything involving society for decades."

He exhalled visibly on camera, as if exhausted by the demons of anxiety he'd poured forth, a torrent of fears, uncertainties, and revelations like the tormented ghost of christmas past

A long pull from a bottle of southern comfort.

"look. we have an out of control intelligence apparatus that are in their operation more orwellian than the real life stasi ever were, a government at both the federal and state level thats made of millionaires and billionaires who give no fucks at all except for their own power, out of control and absolutely dogshit-corrupt *local* leaders, nothing is audited, nothing is meaningfully transparented, rampant fraud, destruction of evidence, witness tampering, railroading, intimidation, violence, threats of violence, skyrocketing cost of living, skyrocketing spending, skyrocketing taxes, skyrocketing policies of total control by police, skyrocketing homelessness, fatherlessness, poverty, political corruption, drug abuse, massive politically funded thinly veiled state propaganda, collapsing and decaying infrastructure, the loss of all tradition, culture, community cohesion we might have had, and on and on and on and on.

and all I want right now is to get my dick sucked. drink a beer and blow my motherfucking brains out.

and when people start fighting in the streets over some bullshit and it turns into race riots, because the motherfuckers in the media serving wallstreet always make it about race or some stupid shit like that, I wont be in america to put up with it.

do us all a favor. when you're hanging bankers, hang some fucking journalists too. they never tell the truth. doesnt matter which side they are on
they only divide people and advocate for more of the same bullshit, expanded state powers, more federal dollars, more workers for their campaign, more privileges. they're fucking cancer. yes even your favorite journalist. they're a tumor on society.

our government has become hostile to us even being *alive* anymore. it has for me become intolerable, and in time I have grown to hate it.

there is no way to change it. no way to salvage it. I cannot see any hope for the future anymore. And if you search yourself I know many of you feel the same."

He took another long pull from the bottle.

"we no longer have a voice in america and no means to air our grievances peacefully.

theres nothing in it left worth saving when it all can be taken away at a moments notice by a deaf and hostile bureucratic government. I should have voted for bernie last year. At least he would have destroyed it.

many of you will disagree with this sentiment, thinking things can still work out. because you still have your creature comforts. your apartment which you cant afford. your car with its maintenace bills and monthly payments you've fallen behind on same as half the country now out of work, but in a short few months, a year at most, you will learn what I have learned, and the reason I drink, what I knew about as early as june of 2019, that this is it. this was as good as it was ever going to get. and that the good days, the best days are behind us. that all that you hold dear could be taken. all that you worked for, was already gone, and you just havent realized it yet. I've set this to autoupload once it's done recording. I built a company just to watch the people who dont want any of us to succeed burn america down around it. Im done. Goodbye america."

The man got up from his chair, camera still recording, and left. Only the red flashing dot remained, the only witness to the silence.

Telegram or Signal? Got essentially blocked from Messenger because I was stupid enough to fold to peer pressure to get it for robotics and since I enabled it with a GV number they stopped allowing its use for specifically security checks while allowing it even to reset a password, and I somehow got a security check triggered, with no customer support and no ability to call with code, so I'm looking to switch. Even if I get Facebook back, I want to move to something at least that doesn't randomly trigger security checks and then has no customer support.

what the f....

So I'm making some changes to my setup. I'm relieving my current router from its duties and retiring it as a mini PC for my desktop setup. And I got my hands on a Dell Optiplex that will become my new router.

Now, firstly, the Optiplex came w/o a wifi antenna. I booted it up into a LinuxMint install USB for the first time and didn't expect much from it, but to my surprise, I got a popup: "There are wifi networks available". At that spot there was also my Fenvi PCI wifi card's antenna of my current (soon-to-be-previous) PC and it was barely seeing any wifi, and there came Optiplex with NO antenna attached to it and it managed to maintain stronger and more stable signal. wtf....

Alright, it's Fenvi, it's chinese -- there's probably not much I should expect from it.

Then I hooked it up right next to my current router with an external USB wifi adapter having 4x6dBi antennas on it, serving as my current wifi AP. Trying out hostapd configs, searching for the right channels,... should I test it? Naah, it still doesn't have an antenna - it won't reach my laptop. Meeh, for shits and giggles! `hostapd -d /etc/hostapd/hostapd_custom.conf`, on my lappy `nmcli d wifi rescan; sleep 5; nmcli d wifi` and... wtf... To my surprise, the AP was there! A thick wall away, no antenna whatsoever, and I still could connect to that Optiplex AP and post this rant!

What magic is this??? I'm now a bit concerned about ordering an antenna for it - I'm worried it could either worsen the signal or make it so strong that it'll fry my brains overnight.

Can anyone please help me troubleshooting my PC? My PC won't boot even to BIOS. This happened several times in the past but usually jiggling the cables would do the trick, this time it doesn't.

What happened: PC powered up, power light went on, all fans turned on just fine, hdd light turned on for a few seconds before turning off, monitor didn't catch any signal from the HDMI

What I have tried with no luck:
- unplugged and replugged SATA cables, fans, mobo 24 and 8-pins connectors
- moved the harddisk to another SATA and power connector
- flushed the CMOS memory
- removed RAMs
- unplugged speaker, keyboard and mouse
- switched it on without the HDD connected

Any suggestions?

Only in Windows does turning the power off on my monitor mean to make it my primary monitor and show login screen there. I swear they'll never get this shit right.

I'm forced to turn it on/off so windows can figure out what kind of signal to send it.

Partially blame my questionable hdmi switch. No issues with MacOS and Linux though.

So a few months ago a broke screen of my laptop, currently I quite broke so I can't change screen and for some time I was using TV as screen, but ofc. Windows have to crash or do similar shit and know it doesn't send signal via HDMI, probably it's showing some info, but signal is only send when it boots windows or something.

So my girlfriend give me her old laptop (4gb RAM and I3 processor, bit touchscreen :/) and windows aren't updated for quite a long (it was still windows 8) and I tried to update it. Ofc it has to be problem, DISM doesn't work, downloading iso doesn't work, fml. I guessed I have to live with that, but later disc usage starts to be around 100% and freeze for few minutes (shitty Win2k PC at uni was more responding). Then I try to refresh windows, DISM starts working, updates semi-working. I left with 21 updates with error and there starts conversation:
Me: install 21 updates
Win: kk. Or actually no
Me: please
Win: the best what I could do is 8.
Me: it's something
Win: actually fuck it, only 4
Me: I'm done *typing Manjaro xfce*

So now I have dual boot with Manjaro which use 40% ram with Firefox open, when windows has 30% alone. I can't play anyway and DF is on Linux so fuck Windows.

I am noob when it comes to Linux and everything actually, but it makes me want to learn and improve.

Sophomore year starting soon so I'm looking for new project (s) to complete in parallel with the studies.
Some are more design-y and some more backend-y but I recently started getting better at designing so :)

1) Learn some fragment shader stuff. I've always been messing around with graphics and have a game on steam, so I think that's a good idea to be paired with signal processing.

2) Reactive web services. Preferably with spring-boot or vert.x but

3) I would also like to dive into golang (and make some reactive thing with it)

4) WebAssembly seems nice... But I got some concerns

5) exercise making wireframes -> CSS (with some js)

6) I've never really done any real backed work with nodejs, except serving and aot compiling js, or doing gulp tasks

7) Implementing a whole project, or a fraction of it as serverless on aws

* I'm definitely going to use a couple very simple services to make a docker swarm with load balancing, etc, just because I know how everything works but got no practical knowledge

8) Design an esports jersey for the university department I'm in (shouldn't take long)

So what do you guys think? Recommendations are welcome :)

P.S. last year in review:
> A webapp running on a raspberry pi powering a reflex testing game on gpio (java/spring-boot , codename: buttonmasher)
> small Elastic search cluster to monitor some random university servers through kibana dashboards
> laser tracking on wall of *any* colour and variable light conditions via a webcam (opencv) , controlling the mouse pointer, whether you run it against a projector or any wall
> jstrain.herokuapp.com => a small JavaScript powered tool with a DSL to help you train more efficiently without a coach
> Various random Photoshop stuff

hey guys which android phone do you find the best in terms of network, connectivity and gps/location while being offline?
thinking of buying a new phone.
- no ios device
- should have good location sensors(most imp, recently had an incident when i was in an unknown city and my device messed up google maps. we ended up circling for 30 mins in the same area)
- good network connectivity ( i know its dependent on sim provider and network towers but i have seen some devices fine signal even in worst areas)
- price: moderate to lower expensive ($1000/INR 60000 max)

i rarely buy phones , like once in 3-4 years, so having a decent build quality will also help
thanks!