Proud dad moment:
My son just worked out how to use a firestick remote to put Thomas on TV.
He's 2.
My parents can barely work their remote without playing 20 questions.
Not long before he learns how to use bash now!

Can't find the remote?
Let me just ssh into my tv...

That feeling you get when you run

$ php tvVolUp.php

And the god damn tv’s volume goes up a level 😆

Now to clean the shit out of the chaotic mess I just made and make it work from a Rpi which I’ll then add to my voice activated list for my google home.

Coz you know voice activated TV remote in PHP 😍

Back the mid 90s at secondary school, a friend came back from holiday with a Casio CMD-40 TV remote control watch. It was like magic, no one had never seen anything like it before.

We pranked our history teacher so badly, changing the channels, volume and turning the TV off while we were supposed to be watching some video on Henry VIII or something (no idea, too busy PMSL).

We'd pass the watch round the class to keep em guessing.

In the end, school replaced ALL the TVs and were seriously pissed off, to this day I believe they had no idea it was us!

Technology never stops to amaze me.

I bought hdmi stick with nes emulator, connected it to power using usb on my tv directly no power adapter needed - only cable, it has 2 remote pads powered by batteries, all fits into my pocket and it has removable sdcard that I can connect to my computer and upload games.
I can go to someone’s house, bring up this little fella and we can play games together. It only took 40 years to do it.

Damn I remember playing, mario, contra or micro machines as a kid.

Spent 8+ hours playing great old games already lol.

I just need portable 60 inch tv screen or projection screen and battery that would power it for at least 8 hours and fit to my pocket and my life is complete.

Imagine you go to the bar, sit, grab a beer and play mario with random people all night.

Fuck Apple sideways! (Wait for it, the original part begins)

HOW can a company that keeps on boasting about UX, to the point that last WDC they took more time speaking about a fucking kaleidoscope animation for their watch then about the whole changes to their MacBook's hardware, even consider putting that turd of a remote on market.

If you have an Apple Store in reach, I invite you to get up, flush, and go there. Try that atrocity that is the AppleTV, and laugh at how incredibly bad it is. Then do your best to refrain from burning the place down in your inevitable rage, that might cause you legal issues.

The previous AppleTV was fine, it was practically useless, but usable. But for some reason they decided a touchpad with low precision and no gestures was a good idea to put on a remote to a thing that will, due to its target audience, most likely be plugged into a fancy TV that has a 300ms lag due to fancy image processing. That thing gives no feedback, appart from visual, has so little precision that in a movie, the smallest step I've achieved was 5 fucking minutes, while being really fucking careful not to spoil the movie.

Sometimes I want to slap myself.

I’ve been making progress with my voice activated TV remote project - coz you got to use a Google Home and a Raspberry pi for something right? Right??

Anyway, when the API you have written suddenly stops working and you’ve spent hours trying to solve it, it is really soul crushing when you realise you’re using a class variable incorrectly

I’ll just go cry now, while I control my tv 😥😎

Class TVAPI{
Private $tvIP = “192.xxx”;
Private $args = $this->decodeArgs($_GET);

Function of tvVolume(){
exec(“python tvRemote.py {$tvIP} {$this->args}”);
}
}

Coolest thing I’ve built solo?

Damn, there’s been a lot of things over the years, but I guess the most used one I’ve made would be my voice activated tv remote - yes it’s real.

So in essence it’s a google home... yea I know spyware and all, but look it was free so I’m going to make use of it... err where was I, oh yea.

An IFTTT account which taps into the google assistant API and creates a webhook, although the authentication side of things is 0 to none, so had to put a api-key into the requests to at least have some layer of auth.

This webhook then hits a raspberry pi containing a PHP API to accept and authenticate the request in, digest this into KEY commands for the TV, and drops this into a Python script to connect to the TV over a web socket connection ( I found python more stable for this ) and sends the pre made key requests, it can even do multiple keys at a time... that was a pain.

So after all that, the end game becomes about a second from saying “hey google, change the tv channel to xxx”

This sick and twisted contraption is finished and the tv is my little bitch.

This has been built out to handle channels by name, number, volume up/down, sources switching to hdmi, tv, vga and a bunch of other things.

The things we do when we can’t find a tv remote for days....

Next up, getting it to launch Netflix app and going to a specified show / episode.. but may be to adventurous.

Family:
- I pressed a wrong button on my TV remote and now I can't switch channels. Can you fix it? You're pro with computers.
- Can you set the clock in my car?
- You should change workplace to be closer, for example the <random factory name here> needs a new system administrator.

Me:
- Yeah, ok, I'll check that TV, then the car, and no, I shouldn't work for a company as a system administrator, I'm a developer.

Family:
- You can learn while working, it's similar.

Me: *facepalm*

While most people want the force to get stuff like a TV remote, I want to use it to get people thinking how they can solve their problems independently

All employee meeting, tv has no volume.
Guess who gets passed the remote to figure out why there is no sound...

A box with 20 blotters of LSD, a bottle of Tawny Port, some rock climber's hand strength training clay which is great against RSI, a very undomesticated purring feline, some leatherworking tools (making a new folding case for my phone), 2 sesame bagels with cream cheese, a piece of cherry wood, two routers (one woodworking, one internet), one Ducky Horizon and one ErgoDox keyboard, two boxes of baby wipes and a bottle of formula, an expired ticket to a corona-cancelled concert, my sleeping newborn daughter wrapped in a black hoodie, a bottle of cognac, 3x 1440p displays, a chunk of chocolate, one freshly brewed cortado, a bottle of dimethylsulfoxide, 3 laptops, a TV remote, a glass of water, and one bolt which was left over from an IKEA box but I'm unsure which furniture item it belongs to.

One guy buyed a remote for his tv which moves the mouse's cursor by pointing with the remote. And inserted the usb receiver into another's guy pc: restarts, antivirus scan, nothing worked for the poor guy. His mouse was crazy.

!dev

Why do I hate my extended family coming over for lunch and dinner you ask?

> kids, who will ruin the remote by pressing the keys so hard, I'll have to get a new remote.

> NO PEACE. I'll have to move from my comfort spot to another spot where, again kids, will come and ask if I have "GAMES" in my mobile or laptop

> and this happened after lunch while watching a movie which I never watched before, my imbecile cousin decides to spoil the entire movie just like that, like, FUCK YO, LIKE REALLY, I KNOW YOU'RE MY RELATIVE IN SOME WAY, BUT FUUUUUUCK YOUUUUUU, spoilers is one of the things I cannot stand.

> I really do not like to be annoyed again and again and again and again, so please stop asking me if I want to have lunch or dinner with everyone because I really HATE the talk during that time.

> I leave my laptop for one microsecond and they surround it like scavengers, I MEAN FOR FUCKS SAKE, GIVE ME MY PRIVACY, (I have my own room, but it's under renovation).

The best I could do was to put on headsets and pretend like I'm working while browsing LinkedIn.

> "Oh I see you have HD TV, but the picture is blurred" NO SHIT, SHERLOCK, It is due to I chose not to buy HD Pack because I live stream HD Channels and cable is a backup

Got to know about OSMC/Kodi last week. Took out my Raspberry Pi. Setup OSMC over the weekend, did all the cable setup for 4 external hard drives and connected to TV via HDMI. After few configurations, I'm all setup. I'm astonished by all the features it provides. Fetching data from TMDb (I had actually created a javaFX app to do this for my local library just last month), remote control from Android as well Web Browser. Enabled UPnP and now I have my complete media center floating around my house network. It is one of the best open source project I have laid my eyes upon. Wish I could attach more pics.

there has to be a special place in hell for people who don't set their mobile phones to vibration while in office.
no john, latest tv show theme song as ringtone is not going to make you cool. you are just disturbing others.

something i (we) don't have to face in remote work. multiple folks around my seat had their ringer on.

You're a developer?

Fix the TV. Fix the wifi connection. Fix the remote control.

Today I woke up with some new stickers in the mail !!
(Along with a new TV remote lol)
Woohoo 😊

Working with Microsoft is like trying to make a fucking bridge out of jello. It’s like trying to tell where you are in a forest by licking the soil. It’s like trying to run on a track covered in oil. It’s like trying to speak to aliens. Its like trying to write something with your own blood. It’s like spending 10 fucking hours to find out how to setup the IDE so the scrolling works. It’s like shoving your tv remote up your own ass to feel something.

Apple products are so fucking overpriced. Here is an "Apple TV Remote Loop" (that holds the remote to your wrist). It costs ₹ 1500

For people outside India, his shit costs more than 1 year of unlimited calling phone plan from the leading provider, with 24 GB data and complementary TV and Movies subscription. (₹ 1299)

I have set up a raspberry pi and screwed it with some switches and buttons to the wall next to my bed, so I don't have pick the remote which lays on my shelf...
The pi handles the buttons and switches and sends infrared signals to TV, stereo and receiver ^^

The hand of IT guy in family

My family sees me as guy who works on IT stuff. The best part is that I will have to help them whenever they encounter problem regarding electronics in daily activities.

Son! The internet is not working
Son! The printer is not working
Son! The TV is not working
Son! My phone didnt get any signals
Son! The microwave is not working
Son! The TV remote is not working
Son! Why is this whatsapp popup always appear whenever I opened it
Son! The dvd player is not working
Son! My phone wont charged
Son! I want to buy online stuff
Son! The email that ur uncle sent me cannot be opened
Son! The email that ur aunt sent me is not there
Son! Can u help me download this travelling app
Son! I opened a website and it told me that I have 163718362 virus!
Son! I forget my password of my facebook account!
Son! Some guy idk on facebook added me as his/her friends, what should i do?
....
Son! The internet is not working (again)

The fact is that, most if these problem, I helped them by just.. restarting the router, reboot the router for 1 min interval, find specific toggler in disfunctional hardware that they accidentally hit during sweeping the floor, take out the power and put it back again, show them how to's in many account/payment mechanism in apps, etc

The very best part that whenever they satisfied, whenever things back to work again, whenever they can reset the password:

"I've tried what you told me, but it just didnt work, but idk when u did it, it works! you are really an IT guy"

And i was like
🙃

A friend of mine asked me yesterday for help for his bachelor thesis.

He wants to write about MySQL internals in regards to BLOB storage / usage.

We had a veeeerrrry long discussion....

And found a loooot of scary internet pages.

It's so .... Insane....

What some people with doctor titles or higher education generate...

Isn't content. More poo...

Most "blogs" / "articles" or whatever the author named it were missing all kinds of relevant data (version, configuration, anything relevant) but full of opinionated / biased bullshit.

Highlights were:
- we store lot of BLOB data, Backups take long and require more space
(you store additional data in an database, whaddya expect???!!!!)

- interesting guesswork about locking without any reference (interesting since it was sometimes so far away from reality that it looked more like quantum physics)

- storing blobs means that _each_ blob entry will be stored in a separate file (without any reference, but if an RDBMs did that... It would end in an amazing fireball I guess)

- BLOB's bad since it can represent only the file content, the database cannot distinguish wether it's an MP3 / MPG or anything like that...

(Ehm. Yeah. And an database cannot distinguish if you store under "Name" an Name or gibberish?!)

I somehow think that some people made an doctor and post this gibberish nonsense so people stay dumb to give them a job...

Like the TV repair men who steals the batteries from the remote.

Even conspiracy theories were more convincing

when I was like 11yrs. old, my father has bought a new phone for himself. I used to play a lot of gta vice city those days on my PC. one day i got to use a card reader to exchange multimedia between PC and the phone.
so, i copied gta vice city in my phone. bcoz i knew that i can move around the players using the phone's d-pad. I was left broken when I saw the error msg. in the phone: "file not recognised"
:-/
After few days, my friend wanted to play gta-vc, so he asked for the game CD. but this guy didn't have a computer in his home and he won't listen to me when I try to tell him, "you can't just play a video game in your DVD-player with a TV remote??" So, I gave it to him.
Next day, he was angry at me, bcoz the game didn't worked, obviously it was me who hve messed something in it. :-/

What utterly stupid things you guys or your friends have done?

A person who can fix anything that is electronic.
For example:
Washing machine,
TV,
Mobile,
Playstation,
Xbox,
AC,
Remote control,
Camera ...etc

Hooking up a raspberry pi to the smart tv and installing LibreELEC(Kodi) on it, is the best thing I have ever for the family’s tv.
It even works with the smart tv remote:)

Who makes a TV with two power buttons?!

Pioneer, that's who.

The remote wouldn't work until I pressed the physical toggle button below the screen.

Dumbest TV ever...

Kodi is shit.
And all the other things (which seem to be just kodi with a different ui. All of them) claiming to be "tv box ready" with sentences like "let your smart tv look old": bro if I can't even install fucking netflix alongside youtube with a nice navigation (product native at best), need to use some kind of keyboard because you won't work with my paired aftv remote and get like 4 fps on a fucken raspberry pi.. my smart tv looks like it's from 2075.

I'm at a hospital waiting and the tv is so loud so I thought I'd find a remote app to turn it down.

I found this app, one with no ads but look at all the damn permissions it needs....

What the hell,

Anyone know a good remote app that doesn't want to steal my identity?

So a client just asked me if a could come up with a solution for him to keep in contact with his elderly parents. He wants a TV screen with webcam where he can Skype to and then it auto accepts the video call. When there is no Skype conversation he wants it to display photos from a remote Dropbox like location. Any tips?

I am thinking maybe an android box with USB webcam. Or perhaps a Intel nuc?

Why the fuck does Samsung Hub which I don't want on my device, keeps installing Peel Smart Remote TV Guide, what ever that shit is on my device.
Have deleted it 3 times since yesterday and it keeps installing it.

Since it's a thing, top is my 40" uhd tv monitor with my model m keyboard on my HACKINTOSH. The other is my MacBook Pro with usb lights for late night remote sessions with some light.

All the youtubers ranting about adpocalypse, watchtime and such for weeks now..

And tbh i didn't really care. But for fucks sake the AI youtube uses to recommend videos indeed sucks!

You know back in the days, when you listened/watched part 1 of a playthrough and were just fine with the upcoming video because it was part 2, 3, 4 and so on of the series?

FUCK THIS. How about now that you saw part 1 of Scykohs "Pokemon Snap Playthrough", watch some random fucking shit of jacksepticeye?

FUCK YOU. THENKS.

I used to fall asleep and wake up with some chill ass gameplays on my tv. But now I fall asleep with using my remote to direct myself to the next part of the video and wake up to some random ass content nobody wants to watch.

FRIGGIN FIRSTWORLDPROBLEM I KNOW BUT IT SUCKS.

What do you do on a remote island? Try and find the TV island it belongs to.

!rant

I need opinions: Amazon Fire Stick or Google Chromecast?

I want Hulu, Netflix, Crunchy Roll, Amazon Prime TV, and WWE Network.

I welcome all opinions. Remote strength, price, ease of use, and stability are my main concerns.

I also might jail break it and/or try to develop apps for it.

Sorry if a repost but this is a random thought from an alcohol addled mind.

I would use a laptop on every tv, but cost vs benefit says no.

A friend asked me to set up a system that allows them to see their desktop on their tv and use a remote to wirelessly control it.
Fine, so I set up a system that allows them to interact with their desktop on tv wirelessly with their phone. Once the desktop booted, all they have to do is click one single button to open the thing they need.

Guess what? They come tell me: "This is too much work". What, clicking on a single button is too much work? Now you want it to auto-load too? Right, so apparently this is better: when the users plomps their @#!* on the couch, the OS has to be already booted, the desktop has to be ready and the desired functionality has to be launched. How lazy can you be?

Users can be so lazy.. and I thought I was lazy for not wanting to debug Python to webscrape a website that asked for cookies.

Chromecast >>>>> Amazon Fire TV

FUCK TEAMVIEWER ... HAVEN'T USED THEN FOR YEARS BUT WANTED TO REMOTE FROM 1 ANDROID TO ANOTHER.

Spent an hour setting up dealing with account lockouts, devices verification.... Finally connected all the 2 phones to the account... And TV can't connect... Stuck at connecting....

I once had a team member who was a self proclaimed technology expert. He was even interviewed on national TV for his opinions on telecoms, net neutrality and the ITC sector in our humble island.

this guy, for several months, probably to this day, cannot figure out how to set his password for his company Gmail account. he could never figure how to use Google drive, docs or any of the most basic tools.

he has no training in any development practices or languages. he did history in college and didn't even finish, but.....somehow he was able to watch half of an HTML tutorial online and then land himself a remote web dev job earning $45 USD/hr!!!!! i still dont know how he did that.

I'm am three parts upset, one part in awe of how far he has gotten just by talking to people.

Fuck TeamViewer.

I've been using it to control my home PC desktop from remote for a few years now (booted PC via Wake-On-LAN, done stuff, shutdown). I started using Chrome Remote Desktop a while ago too, but its ports are blocked at work, so I had to rely on TV some more.

Recently TV more often told me that I was offline (but I wasn't) and more importantly they started blocking my connections due to "commercial usage" (it's my private shit, yo), so now I've moved on to RDP via SSH.

That really makes me feel relieved as I wanted to move away from it for a while now anyways and SSH tunnels also are the real shit.

Today was a good day.

Dunno if anyone else has ever used it or if most people just the browser, but the Twitch smart TV app is hot garbage. It takes several seconds to process every remote control input, even just navigating the menus.
It’s the only app on my TV that performs so badly. YouTube/Netflix/Prime all work perfectly, but for some reason Twitch acts like its running on a Windows Vista toaster

Browser automation is a PITA. I’m going on my fourth side mission with this crap and I honestly still look like a newbie. I’ve tried Java Selenium with Chrome, Excel VBA with IE9, Vanilla JS in the browser console, and tonight I’m thinking to concoct some kind of hybrid CDP & Selenium approach in Chrome. Never used CDP before, not even sure where to start but I heard it sucks like anything else unless you get some extra libraries and plugins and stuff.

It doesn’t help that I can’t get just anything I want from our IT Department. It would be another PITA to ask for puppeteer. If puppeteer is totally legit please let me know.

Selenium sucks. The buttons don’t click, the waits don’t wait. Its unusable. Iframes are annoying as all hell but I can deal with that. HTML Tables suck too. It doesn’t help I have to restart my whole java program and whole Chrome every time an element doesn’t get picked correctly. Scripting one single element can take all fucking night.

Chrome dev tools what the fuck. Why the fuck is the DOM explorer in the same window as the web page I’m working on?? I can’t undock it. Am I supposed to use a fucking TV screen to work with this bastard?? If I use the remote chrome tools on port 9225 or whatever - It Still Renders The Whole Fucking Page Alongside The Console. Get Out Of My Way!!! The nested HTML CODE IS ONE CHARACTER WIDE ALL THE TIME. I can’t for the life of me figure out what the fuck I’m looking at. Haven’t you people ever heard of A HORIZONTAL SCROLL BAR at least.

Fuck I tried using getElementById, and the Xpath thing and its not all that great seeing I have seemingly 1000s of nested Divs all over the god damned place oftentimes containing a single element. I’m finally on chrome now should I learn Jquery now? I mean seriously wtf.

I use this one no code tool for dev it has web automation built in. As you can imagine its just as broken as anything else!! I have 10 screens to navigate it gets stuck on the second screen all the damn time. Fuck I love clicking the buttons when my script misses and playing catch up with it.

So as a work around to Selenium not waiting even 1 millisecond when I use explicit wait or implicit wait or fluent wait, I’m guessing maybe I can attach both Chrome Dev Tools Protocol (CDP as ive called it earlier) and selenium to the same browser and maybe I can use CDP to perform a Wait with any degree of success. Selenium will do nothing more than execute vanilla javascript Element.click(); This is the only way I know to even ACTUALLY use selenium beyond the simplest html documents possible. Hell I guess CDP can execute js idk.

I can’t get the new selenium that has CDP but I do have some buggy ass selenium from a few years back. Yeah, I remember reading there was a pretty impactful regression defect in the version I have. Maybe I’m being gaslighted by some shit copy of selenium?

The worst part is that I do seem to be having issues that the rest of the internet’s devs do not seem to be having. People act like browser automation is totally viable and pretty OK. How in the fuck hell is my Selenium Test Suite going to be more reliable my application under test?!!?? I’ll have more fucking bugs in my test suite than in my application. Today, I have less than half a test script and, I. already. fucking. do.

I am still SUPER PISSED at the months of 12 hour days (always 8 hours spent on normal sprint work btw only 4 to automation) I spent trying to automate our regression tests. I got NOWHERE.

I did learn a lot about HTML and JS though like I’m not that mad…but I’m just trying to emphasize my achievement on my task was zero.

The buttons don’t click. There are so many divs and I swear you sometimes need to select a div somewhere in the middle sometimes to get it working. The waits don’t wait. XHR requests are invisible. Java crashes 100 times before I find an xpath and thread.sleep() combo that works. I have no failure modes to use — Sometimes I click the same element 20x in a script because I have no way to know if it clicked the first time! Sometimes you gotta scroll the page to make the click work. So many click methods all broken. So many wait methods all broken. Its not just the elements don’t click! There are so many ways to click that almost work but surely they all fail the same in the end. ok at this point I’m just repeating myself…

there yet even more issues that I can’t remember…and will soon remember as I journey into this project yet again…

thanks for reading I hope I entertained and would love to hear your experience!

!DEV

As some of you (I'm certain), I have a plex server at home. Hosted with an "old" core i5-4670K, 16GB ram, no GPU. (Ubuntu 20).

My question. HOW, HOW THE FUCK :

I can play HDR and DV videos via plex TV app.
I can play HDR via my S10 fucking phone !
I cannot play nor HDR nor DV since last update on Xbox X... It's the ONLY use I have for that console. If my TV can do better, wtf I'm supposed to do with that console ? (Any way to put plex server on it ?)

My friend can play my 4k HDR video on apple TV via remote connexion..

What's wrong with Xbox X ?

RHAAAAA.

Also, FU all ripers using PGS format for subtitles without SRT option.

Also FU sony for not allowing TrueHD via ARC. (AT least on my A/V reciver)

Also fuck me for buying xbox.

Also fuck the worl just because.

Ok, I feel better. Thanks you all.

Being asked to build a website in a few days built specifically for a PowerPoint plugin that uses an IE emulator being shown in a slideshow at a remote site that your IT policy does not allow you to install in order to test - ok fine, annoying but fine.

Having to use someone taking a video of the site in the Powerpoint on a TV Screen to make changes... ok more annoying.. but whatever...

Having to work with a 14page branding guideline document to add images for a sponsor to a Powerpoint website that you cannot directly test.... erm...this is kinda awkward...but I guess...

Finding out the team you're working with has their own designer who has very specific rules for font etc. who noone involved until the day before go-live.... ... oh for...

Site goes live

Powerpoint at remote site breaks
you get asked wha'ts going on...

...f you...

Hi everyone

I have a pretty old sansui tv in my room that I lost the remote for ages ago. I would like to remotely control the TV without having to buy the actual remote for the specific model (which is ~$28). Any ideas on how I can find the remote codes for the tv so I can program my own remote? Let me know if u guys have any ideas, thanks!!