vk6flab

vk6flab , 5 days ago

Q: How do you eat an elephant?

A: One bite at a time.

Whilst you are faced with a multitude of issues, don't get lost in the weeds by details when you are trying to untangle the past to move it forward.

A simple spreadsheet to track hardware, licenses and other details like location, specs and primary contact is a perfectly reasonable starting point.

I say that because you don't know what you don't know yet. You might for example discover that some shops are doing their own thing, regardless of company policy.

Creating a ticketing system is useful to track stuff for everyone. I settled on trax with web access to people who need it, but the computer literacy levels might prevent some from using this.

Burnout is a very distinct possibility in an environment like this, so make sure that you set aside time for you to think. Call it a meeting, call it an on-site visit, whatever you do, take time to think.

Also, remember to backup your work. It's not unheard of for it to vanish unexpectedly if you are perceived as a threat.

Source, I've been working in this profession for 40 years.

vk6flab , 4 days ago

I see this everyday.

The ticket system is for the IT department, allowing it to track activities, keep abreast of open tickets, build a knowledge base and share information with colleagues.

Users benefit from this indirectly.

Of course, some managers use ticket systems to manage performance metrics. That doesn't work, but they'll never learn.

vk6flab , 5 days ago

Which version of Debian are you using?

What version was it before you did this update?

What action did you take that prompted this dependency?

vk6flab , 5 days ago

Okay. Couple of things.

• Pop_OS is not Debian and any issues should be raised with the maintainers of that distribution.
• Doing a dist-upgrade is the only thing that can remove packages if a newer package has different dependencies.
• I don't know why you did a dist-upgrade, but likely it was because some packages were held back, which was probably because they removed something.
• You guys is you. If you want something to change, the first step is lodging and issue with the correct maintainers. If you were to lodge this issue in the Debian BTS, I'd be surprised if it survived 24 hours without being closed as being not related to Debian.
• Your approach is unlikely to win you any sympathy or friends. For the most part, we're all volunteers here.

vk6flab , 6 days ago

As opposed to the real apps that .. steal your data?

vk6flab , 6 days ago

I've noticed a sharp increase in spam and I've been reporting each one simply as "spam".

I then block the user

Many of these posts have dozens of down votes.

Several go back months, which I discover when a new variant turns up.

I'm unsure if what I'm doing is helping or not, and as an ICT professional, I'm not sure why this obvious spam isn't caught earlier.

vk6flab , 6 days ago

Is this not a slightly selfish action? It solves the problem for you, but doesn't make the community better for everyone. I feel like blocking users should be reserved for issues like harassment, not spam.

This is an aspect that I had not considered. Even thinking about it now leaves me unsure of the best way forward.

Specifically, whilst it's a valid argument that blocking the user only solves this for me, and not blocking would help me see if the issue was dealt with, I feel that leaving the user free to roam across my screen is impacting me directly and if I'm not a moderator in a community, it's not my place to second guess their decision to leave such a user and post in place.

In other words, I'm stating to a moderator that I think that this post is spam and should be dealt with accordingly, but if you leave it alone, that's your choice.

I moderate several communities outside of the fediverse and spam in my communities is a one-strike ban. That's not what everyone does.

Having now thought through this again, now in more detail, I'm comfortable with blocking the user.

vk6flab , 10 days ago

It's right up there with random requirements to upload government photo id to suppliers in a different legal system. Hard Pass.

(I'm looking at you, PayPal, Airbnb and Stripe)

vk6flab , 10 days ago

Here in Australia, they were attempting to force us to provide Government Photo ID on Airbnb several years ago, we stopped using them instead.

There's a Know Your Customer (KYC) legislation that keeps being interpreted by numpties as requiring that they store these documents, rather than identify the user, create an account and dispose of the documents, which is making these companies rich hunting ground for infiltration by groups wanting to monetize personal data and provide identity theft services.

vk6flab , 10 days ago

Note that there is no calibration of audio hardware, so the level of usefulness of any such software would be strictly limited.

vk6flab , 10 days ago

I don't know, but I doubt that the frequency response of a mobile phone microphone is either linear or consistent across sound level.

I don't even think you could compare two sounds with different frequencies, but I don't know.

I suspect that calibration of any such thing would require a whole lot of infrastructure, consider for example the angle of the phone in relation to sound and the impact of holding the phone in how it affects vibration and noise damping.

You might be able to use a calibrated sound level meter and pair it via Bluetooth with your phone, but I think that's going to be as close as you might get.

In the past I've tried a wired USB microphone, but the OS isn't real-time, so the jitter was horrendous. A pi would give you a more consistent result.

vk6flab , 8 days ago

The only reason that LinkedIn is doing this is money. Not yours, theirs.

By jumping through the hoops, you prove that you are you and suddenly your data is more valuable to people marketing on the platform.

Remember, LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft.

vk6flab , 11 days ago

You can change how long a phone rings for. Talk to her telco for both landline and mobile.

In my experience, if someone doesn't want to answer the phone, strapping it to their arm is unlikely to make any difference and in my experience they're more likely than not to leave it on the charger.

Long battery life and tiny battery are on opposite ends of physics. Pick your poison.

Health monitoring is unlikely to be transmitted to emergency services, except iOS fall detection.

iOS and Android are both tracking as much as they can get away with.

Remote management is likely only with devices used in corporate settings.

vk6flab OP , 15 days ago

Yes. As I said, I'm aware of Kermit. It's like sendmail, user friendly, just picky who it makes friends with.

I have not discovered a complete language reference for Kermit, neither have I been able to determine if it works asynchronously, since the examples I've found are just polling loops, which is not what I need.

My use case is talking over serial to a CNC to iteratively calibrate it. This requires dealing with asynchronous events, think move, interrupt by edge switch.

vk6flab OP , 15 days ago (edited 15 days ago)

No, it needs to be serial communication. My use case is talking to a CNC.

Edit: fat fingers: "ea" -> "to a"

vk6flab OP , 14 days ago

I started down the bash path but came unstuck when I wanted to create a process that uses a single bidirectional serial port to write a move command, whilst reading the current location and checking to see if an end stop switch was closed to write a stop command.

Ideally, all of it is interrupt driven, but I'm at a loss to see how I can do this with either Kermit or expect. Both appear to use a send, then wait for a response model, even if you can check for different responses.

Of note is that the end stop is external to the serial communication, so I can't check the same stream for that information.

vk6flab OP , 14 days ago

That's several recommendations for expect. I'll start digging. Thank you.

vk6flab OP , 14 days ago

Yeah, it's already on a pi, connected to my LAN and the USB port of the CNC. The switch is on a gpio pin.

I need to automate the calibration of the three axis. In other words, tell the CNC to move a specific distance, then figure out how far it actually moved, update the number of steps per mm, rinse and repeat.

To implement this, I have a known calibrated distance, a set of three 1-2-3 blocks, so I actually need to move until the switch closes, then ask the CNC how far it thinks it moved.

I intend to run this several times because right now, doing it manually is giving me weird results and I'm trying to figure out the root cause of the error.

So, I need to move an axis, interrupt the move if the switch is closed, and keep moving until the switch is closed.

vk6flab OP , 14 days ago

Yeah, I was hoping to avoid that, but it's been heading that way for a few days now :}

vk6flab , 18 days ago

I just pirate media I like

In other words, your computer is downloading stuff from other computers, that's potentially receiving stolen property, but a potential argument might be that you didn't know that it was stolen. It's not a good argument, but it's an argument. So you're an individual who potentially broke the law. Depending on how much money you have, you might get a knock on your door.

But then, you also distribute that potentially stolen property to other computers, because that's how BitTorrent works, and now you're part of a distribution network dealing with stolen property. The chances that once you've discovered you come away with just a slap on the wrist are slim to none.

How do they find you?

Through your IP address.

How?

By figuring out who owns that address, who loaned it to you to get online at that specific time. One packet at a time the research will bring them closer to knocking on your door.

So, is it a big deal that your public IP address is linked to torrenting? Yes it is.

Is this the whole story? Not by a long shot, but it's not my job to teach you how to break the law.

vk6flab , 18 days ago

If you think that will protect you, there is a lot for you to learn..

vk6flab , 18 days ago

In Australia an ISP went to extreme lengths to have a ruling, spending four years in litigation:

https://torrentfreak.com/iinet-isp-not-liable-for-bittorrent-piracy-high-court-rules-120420/

vk6flab , 21 days ago

I created some buttons with Tasker that log my desired entries into a seperate calendar which I download from time to time to analyse.

vk6flab , 20 days ago

OMG!

That's sensational! Thank you so very much!

vk6flab , 21 days ago (edited 21 days ago)

My first networked computer, on an AppleTalk network was called "()/)/)()"

It was an Apple Macintosh IIci.

It had that name for less than five minutes. That's how long it took the network manager to find me and demand that I rename it to something that didn't appear at the top of the Chooser, since that's where the ADMIN NetWare server should be.

He suggested "ob1", and that's what it has been and continues to be for the past 32 years. My laptop became ob2.

Servers under my custody are called short words, generally four characters or less unless they're disposable and they don't get a name beyond what the installation process creates.

Edit: Oops, one too many slashes. Fixed.

vk6flab , 21 days ago

Take note of my username and then squint at it.

vk6flab , 21 days ago

I just spotted an extraneous slash. I fixed my comment. Hopefully that clears up any confusion.

vk6flab , 21 days ago (edited 21 days ago)

You're going to kick yourself in a moment..

What is my name?

Edit: it seems that names are not always visible on Lemmy. If you're playing at home, my name is Onno.

vk6flab , 21 days ago (edited 21 days ago)

Thank you, that's not something I knew, the three clients I've used show both the account and the name.

Edit: This is weird, my current client (Connect) shows the name, but only for my account, not for any other account.

vk6flab , 21 days ago

It turns out that some clients don't show my name together with my account. My name is Onno.

vk6flab , 22 days ago

Shame that all those business models require US centric payment processors to actually get paid.

I'm not in the US and my choices for actually getting money into my bank account are PayPal or Stripe, neither of which have policies that permit the distribution of electronic data or alternatively donations without being a registered charity.

Neither has dispute resolution procedures that go beyond "you broke the rules and we're keeping your money", and "sorry, that was a fraudulent card and we're taking the money back, plus a fee, and the fraudster keeps the goods", and finally "our word is final and we're now closing your account without disclosing why".

So, yeah, good luck with that.

Source: I've spent months looking for alternatives and as far as I can tell, they just don't exist.

vk6flab , 22 days ago

I wonder if the need for speed that Netflix requires has any benchmarks that compares FreeBSD with things like OpenBSD, Debian, Ubuntu, RHEL and SUSE.

vk6flab , 22 days ago

Uhm. AFAIK, you only have to share code under the GPL if you distribute binaries outside your organisation.

If it stays in-house, there's no distribution, thus no requirement to share the source.

I'm happy to be wrong, feel free to point out what I missed.

vk6flab , 22 days ago

It appears that there's a bunch of benchmarks for various flavours of BSD already there. I'm not sure how to compare these with each other and various Linux distributions in a meaningful way.

vk6flab , 24 days ago

THIS is why I'm a firm advocate for Open Source Software.

Not because it's better, not because it's more secure, cheaper, sexier or any other commonly used "reason".

It's because having the source means that you can fix a bug for everyone, or just yourself.

This is just not possible in a closed source environment.

vk6flab , 24 days ago

True dat

vk6flab , 25 days ago

How does this compare with rsync?

vk6flab , 25 days ago

I don't believe that it's the root cause.

Enshitification is about monetization, getting more money from the same customer base.

If the product you are providing isn't paying for itself with a sustainable margin then the prerequisites are in place for the wheels of enshitification to start moving.

Putting the foot on the accelerator is achieved by going public, selling the company, or pivoting to some random marketing weenie wet dream.

Most of this is fuelled by "free" products that become "fremium" when companies realise that monetizing you isn't nearly as sustainable as the marketing department would have you believe. "You just need to grow!" - nevermind that the costs of running the infrastructure grow faster than the income generated by new customers. This is exacerbated by the silo mentality exhibited in many companies, the marketing department has no insight into the costs of the infrastructure team.

I think that we're going to see much more of this before it gets any better. What better looks like is yet to be determined, since much of this is driven by the likes of Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM.

I mention IBM in that list because it's been buying up "free" software companies and changing their business models.

We live in interesting times..

vk6flab , 25 days ago (edited 25 days ago)

The vast majority of companies don't start by being publicly traded. They begin life as a good idea, an itch to scratch, or how to make money fast.

The public trading happens when the founders run out of money or get stars in their eyes about "the fortune" they're sitting on.

That's where the wheels come off, but the process is well and truly in motion by that stage.

vk6flab , 26 days ago

A Google sheet with a Google form to collect data.

vk6flab , 25 days ago

OP said:

Maybe it does not have to be self hosted, but I have a sense the best solutions for this use case are.

I responded with the quickest, simplest, cheapest solution currently available. It provides all requested functionality and didn't include a requirement that OP indicated was optional.

vk6flab , 27 days ago

Looks interesting. Has anyone used this?

vk6flab , 27 days ago

Why did you need a bare metal anything?

I realise that with the enshitification of VMware, there's one less viable option for virtualisation, but it's not the only one around.

vk6flab , 27 days ago

In the same way as if your Windows Server on bare metal doesn't start after an update, via the console.

vk6flab , 28 days ago

AFAIK the whole point of a VLAN is that the rest of the network outside your own VLAN is invisible. The only place where other traffic is visible is on the router itself.

vk6flab , 1 month ago

If you're anything like me and find coloured text is often unreadable in a terminal window, here's the list of how to address the issue:

http://no-color.org/

vk6flab , 1 month ago

Hardware was why I went virtual. Before that, for a decade, I ran Linux bare metal, but was spending days recompiling kernels and drivers and futzing around with non-productive activities. Every upgrade would start the cycle again.

Once I went to VMware all those issues went away.

Now that new owners have taken over, it appears that I'm going to have to find a new solution.