Tech minor victory thread

GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
DarkAudit said:
Spent a little more than I'd intended yesterday. Asked some questions about the TV I'd had my eye on going in. Turns out even tough it's an upgrade from what I was running, it wasn't as capable as other similar models. Plus Sharp is really a rebadged HiSense using big brother's hand-me-down parts.

So I went with a TCL 50S425 instead. Only $10 more, but significantly more capable. Reviewed very well as a PC monitor, too.
Click to expand...
That's very similar to the TV I just got a couple weeks ago for my living room. I'm very happy with it, and I think you will be, too.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Got me a new cable modem and router... and now my gigabit internet is behaving like it should. I just got 850 megabit from fast.com, which is netflix... so I'm pretty happy with it.

The modem/router my ISP had been renting me was just utter garbage. I was getting double digit ping times to MY OWN MODEM. It's amazing the difference good equipment makes.
 
Bones

Bones

in relation to that Comcast keeps trying to remotely flash my own modem with their firmware and its driving me crazy as it sucks compared to what the actual vendor has supplied as their current firmware.
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

Bought a wifi range extender for $30 off of Amazon. Clawed back a good 20-30Mbps of bandwidth compared to without it. And the connection from my devices to the extender is now encrypted.

OTOH, the connection between extender and main access point is not. I'm still good though, right?
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
DarkAudit said:
OTOH, the connection between extender and main access point is not. I'm still good though, right?
Click to expand...
(repeating the post that I made that the server transfer ate)

From a security standpoint? No... not really. But I guess you're no worse off than you were using the main AP before, if it's always been unencrypted.
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

GasBandit said:
(repeating the post that I made that the server transfer ate)

From a security standpoint? No... not really. But I guess you're no worse off than you were using the main AP before, if it's always been unencrypted.
Click to expand...
Yeah. It's always been an open wifi connection. Only now the specific access point I'm using is passworded. I have a VPN account, but there's the significant loss of bandwidth that comes with it.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Rescued from the latest forum hiccup:
Gasbandit said:
Not really, from a security standpoint.
Click to expand...
ncts_dodge_man said:
Like Gas said, if you want the most security, you'll want full end-to-end encryption, no sections without it. Is there new firmware available for the main AP? If not, do you feel comfortable doing something like DD-WRT on it?

I'm running two Netgear routers that are upgraded with DD-WRT (getting much better performance than with stock) with a wire running between the two to cover my house (one functioning as a router and one is just a AP).
Click to expand...
Dei said:
If I recall he's using his hotel's wifi, and probably isn't allowed to fuck with it.
Click to expand...
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

Yes, this is hotel wifi and I'm not allowed to fuck with it. So this is the best solution I've got (AFAIK) to keep max bandwidth incoming.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Reinstall completed, content migrated, installs complete.
Before:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 6.0.0 x64 (C) 2007-2017 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : https://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 102.646 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 94.414 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 1.785 MB/s [ 435.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 1.030 MB/s [ 251.5 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.626 MB/s [ 397.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.007 MB/s [ 245.8 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.447 MB/s [ 109.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 1.003 MB/s [ 244.9 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB [C: 69.1% (574.4/831.7 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2019/12/17 22:32:20
OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 17763] (x64)

After:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 6.0.0 x64 (C) 2007-2017 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : https://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 192.979 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 174.891 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 2.829 MB/s [ 690.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 2.902 MB/s [ 708.5 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 2.861 MB/s [ 698.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 2.876 MB/s [ 702.1 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.835 MB/s [ 203.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 2.854 MB/s [ 696.8 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB [C: 25.4% (414.5/1629.8 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2019/12/20 0:04:16
OS : Windows 7 Professional SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

Double the storage and just about double the speed. I'll take it.

--Patrick
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

The bright side to the calamity of the last 24 hours is once I am finally settled, I'll be able to have fast internet again. I gave up my 200Mbps cable when I left the house, and have had to settle for ~35Mbps on average for the last couple of years. I could go for full on gigabit, but if I want to eat, 600Mbps is about the best I can hope for. Still faster than what I left behind.

So I've got that going for me, which is nice.
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

Gig internet is too expensive, so I "settled" for this. But after 2 years of settling for 30-50Mbps, I'll take it.
 
Bones

Bones

That should be more than enough for a single user. What the hell are you doing that you need gigspeed?
 
sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

I ordered $1k worth of components for my next home PC. Hard to believe that I'm 50 and still building my own PCs.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Haven't signed into my NAS in a really long time.
Discovered I'd forgotten the password.
Tried many things.
Eventually discovered I was getting the password correct, it was the username which I'd forgotten.
Blaaaaaahhhhh...
Well at least I didn't lock myself out of my data!

--Patrick
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

PatrThom said:
Finally got around to replacing my onboard Realtek with an add-in Intel.
Reduced my ping time 30% and reduced my CPU usage. Life is slightly better.
Click to expand...
Last night I finally switched out my old router for that purpose-built PFSense box I've been talking about.
Realtek latency (pre-intel) was usually 165-185ish milliseconds.
The add-in Intel NIC reduced that to 130-150ish milliseconds.
With the new router? My latency is now 30-40ish milliseconds. Holy RNGeezus, I had no idea it would make THIS much difference.
That might even go down a tick or two once I take the next step and retire my current external BIND DNS in favor of PFSense's built-in Unbound resolver. Plus I'll get to retire the server itself, which means something like a 45-60W savings, I guess.

--Patrick
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

PatrThom said:
That might even go down a tick or two once I take the next step and retire my current external BIND DNS in favor of PFSense's built-in Unbound resolver. Plus I'll get to retire the server itself, which means something like a 45-60W savings, I guess.
Click to expand...
It did not go down more. If anything, it actually went up a bit (to around 80-90ms), but I don't know how much of that is just the enforced Quarvid-19 increasing traffic to their servers. Whatever, the ol' DNS server has now been retired and powered down (it's earned it!), and additionally all my DNS lookups now go out over DNS-TLS so that my ISP can no longer snoop my lookups. Also, I've successfully set it so that all other DNS queries get rerouted back through my router so they can't sneak around it, either.

So that's it for now. Future projects I'd like to do: Setting up a Squid proxy to speed up web page load times, and maybe black holing obnoxious ad servers (or at a minimum google analytics/doubleclick).

--Patrick
 
Dirona

Dirona

OK.
So.

I have installed OBS. Win!
I have created two "scenes" with one "source" each - the first is a video without sound, the second is a video with sound. (This took longer than I'm willing to admit to figure out how to do.) But win! none the less.
I have recorded, found where the file saved, and checked it over. The sound... well, sounds, when it's supposed to. Win!

Wins all around!

Now... help! I've have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. All the guides on the website assume a level of knowledge that I do not possess (even the "general" guides were intimidating).
Current question - how do I get it to automatically transition between to two source videos when the first one ends?

Whine: I've used Windows Movie Maker before, slowly, but proficiently enough. This is a whole new level of "WTF am I doing?!?"
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Dirona said:
OK.
So.

I have installed OBS. Win!
I have created two "scenes" with one "source" each - the first is a video without sound, the second is a video with sound. (This took longer than I'm willing to admit to figure out how to do.) But win! none the less.
I have recorded, found where the file saved, and checked it over. The sound... well, sounds, when it's supposed to. Win!

Wins all around!

Now... help! I've have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. All the guides on the website assume a level of knowledge that I do not possess (even the "general" guides were intimidating).
Current question - how do I get it to automatically transition between to two source videos when the first one ends?

Whine: I've used Windows Movie Maker before, slowly, but proficiently enough. This is a whole new level of "WTF am I doing?!?"
Click to expand...
What software are you using to actually stream your sermon?
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Dirona said:
Previously I've been streaming directly from my webcam to either Facebook live or YouTube live. Soooo... none????
Click to expand...
Ok. In that case, I recommend you use OBS as your "middleman" to do your stream.

This is going to get involved, so I'm going to make a new thread for you. One sec.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

New smartphone :aaah: Huawei P30, last version to still have access to Google apps. Damn you Americans :-P
But it's now come down in prince enough to fit my budget, and it beats pretty much anything at that price point.
 
bhamv3

bhamv3

Bubble181 said:
New smartphone :aaah: Huawei P30, last version to still have access to Google apps. Damn you Americans :-P
But it's now come down in prince enough to fit my budget, and it beats pretty much anything at that price point.
Click to expand...
Do you need me to teach you how to say "I know you're listening" in Chinese, to maybe spook the guys monitoring you?
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

How about "please get me access to the good anime you guys are keeping for yourself"? :-P

First thing I just now discovered: the finger print sensor is now under the screen instead of on the back (which I knew), and despite all the protestations of Huawei, literally every review of every screen protector states "afterwards, fingerprint detection doesn't work as well anymore".
Well crap. I do A LOT of stuff with fingerprint ID. And there isn't always an alternative (e.g. my banking business, and the Belgian tax system).
 
General Specific

General Specific

I work as the tech person at a high school. This year has been challenging. One of the most recent challenges has been Graduation. I am posting from it right now. It starts in about an hour from now. We are attempting to take every precaution possible with still having a full ceremony for the seniors. Debate about the appropriateness of that aside, the main problem we have had is that the big video board at the football stadium where we are holding it has been on the blink all week.

This is an LCD board that was installed in 2013 and was already old by then, so it still runs on foot square panels of LCDs called Mods. Well, those have been going out all over the board ever since I got here a year and a half ago. We try to keep them repaired as much as possible, but there's always something that has gone out.

Well, this week is no exception, we've had random outages all over the board. It seems to calm down after about two hours of being on. I was asked to be in early today to see if we can get it going and miracles of all miracles, it is fine this morning. There are no issues currently. I just need it to last until the end of the ceremony and I will look like goddamn Scotty.


Edit: They are playing "Walking on Sunshine" right now and all I can hear is Philip J. Fry. :D
 
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