Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Zucca]

What you mean you need to run this pi-hole software on a separate raspberry Pi? Can't it be run on the local PC then?

That's the power of Linux, can't wait to become more penguin compatible. I sucessfully escaped the Google cage, but I am still in the M$ one.

[BU508A]

TEA Alert: Ender 5, used 3 months for 250Euro.
Seller got a markforged and don't need it anymore.

I will do the 2019 upgrade so about 75Euro more and 2 months until the corona package will be here.

Are 250 too much?

SWMBO seems to give green light this time.

 

Nice one. It is on my watchlist too. 
But I can't buy it yet. Other obligations ...   

so, go for it! 

[Zucca]

My Tea addiction is changing, for some stuff I have always to ask permission here. Even if I know that you guys will push me down the rabbit hole for sure.

[BU508A]

The endless happyness of marriage.       

This guy can it better explain than me:

Code: [Select]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFYW5Px8LwM
 

[med6753]

Latest update on the 1A2 plug-in: according to USPS should be here by Wednesday. That sounds a lot more reasonable than the original estimate of Saturday. Ground from Portland, Oregon to here by Saturday? In your dreams. 

Now that I've successfully proven my method of capacitor replacement with terminal strips I'm going to apply the same to the Tek Type 114 Pulse Generator and the Type 191 Signal Generator. Both are 1960's vintage and both have original aluminum electrolytics. The caps are on order and should be here Friday. Of course I'll document the process. 

[Zucca]

med I would like to be retired now so I can fix all the devices collecting dust under my bench... what a nice life.
Enjoy your retirement and thanks for sharing with us.

[bd139]

Retired and single is my idea of bliss. Half way there 

[BU508A]

Retired and single is my idea of bliss. Half way there 

That's a rather good 13000th posting.   

[Cerebus]

You can get rid of the ads with a "pi hole" https://pi-hole.net/ ... but that's another power consuming wart in the house. Although med, it'll probably cost about half an hour of 535A runtime every year hahaha 

If, as I do, you run your own DNS server you can get the same effect by adding a "reverse policy zone" to your setup and then you can block domains, redirect them, etc. etc., at will. This is essentially what pi-hole does but it does it by turning a whole Raspberry Pi into an appliance. I feed it from a lot of the same sources that Pi-hole gets its block lists from supplemented with a list I curate for myself.

I also block outgoing DNS requests on my firewall except from my official DNS server. This stops devices (like google phones and tablets) from using an external DNS server as yet another feed-in point for their surveillance machine.

As well as blocking ads you can block trackers, including ones you can't see like the ones a lot of mobile apps use behind your back such as app-measurement.com. Moreover, from the point of view of anything on the network here Facebook and all their properties just don't exist.

[mnementh]

Soooo Anybody want to buy a Brand New unused RX560 GPU I now have 'spare' In spite of only a few short months ago making a nice compact Plywood Case for this MITX board I did buy a compact RX 560 GPU with plans to make another larger case for it.

Spotted this Coolermaster 110 Elite case on special last week and thought why not just do it easy this time as I had all the hardware and it would just be PNP fairly much and save the time and muck around with rolling my own.

Take it out of the box and look at the case more closely and go Mmmmm there is a heap of room in here wonder if the RX 580 I should have already sold after replacing it with a 5700XT in my main box and see if it can be squeezed in - NOPE. But with some help from the Nibbler after some careful measuring TWICE. Fits like a Bum in a bucket The case is mesh on the sides and front so plenty of easy airflow.

Maybe I NEED another MITX board and bits to go with the 560 

   And y'all were pokin' fun at me for cutting up my box and 3DPrinted bracket abuse to make this happen with my old 1055T/FX-8350 build. THIS is just how case modding starts; you find a great deal on a box that's ALMOST perfect... 

   If y'all were on this side of the world, I'd send you all this crap just to stop myself from building it into a MAME cabinet... 

mnem
hmmm... I wonder how much LASER I need to cut 3/4" MDF...

[bd139]

You can get rid of the ads with a "pi hole" https://pi-hole.net/ ... but that's another power consuming wart in the house. Although med, it'll probably cost about half an hour of 535A runtime every year hahaha 

If, as I do, you run your own DNS server you can get the same effect by adding a "reverse policy zone" to your setup and then you can block domains, redirect them, etc. etc., at will. This is essentially what pi-hole does but it does it by turning a whole Raspberry Pi into an appliance. I feed it from a lot of the same sources that Pi-hole gets its block lists from supplemented with a list I curate for myself.

I also block outgoing DNS requests on my firewall except from my official DNS server. This stops devices (like google phones and tablets) from using an external DNS server as yet another feed-in point for their surveillance machine.

As well as blocking ads you can block trackers, including ones you can't see like the ones a lot of mobile apps use behind your back such as app-measurement.com. Moreover, from the point of view of anything on the network here Facebook and all their properties just don't exist.

In the short term yes. DoH is emerging which will cause some problems for some of the less respectable clients. I also overheard a conversation the other day regarding circumventing this by using ephemeral elastic IPs in AWS and having rotating app versions every few days which change the "good" EIP list. Difficult to shoot that thinking down unfortunately. It's a bad situation when you have to consider that the attack vector is inside your network and comes from your operating system, applications and browsers .

Working from home today and they've started digging bloody holes outside my house with a fibre seeking backhoe 

[mnementh]

As for being able to see 4K, I have 20/20 vision still by some miracle and it's not actually possible to perceive any improvement over a 1080p screen that is 9 feet away from me unless it's approximately 65" diagonal. Most of the perceived improvement comes from the dynamic range and only if it's an OLED TV as the number of lit elements is approximately 4x the 1080p. And on top of that a lot of the improvements are only visible in the show room as they turn the things on "factory mode" which makes everything look like telly tubby land with some carefully crafted 4k streams. By the time you've turned the glaring face-dickery down it looks about the same as a normal Full HD unit. And if it's a cheap arse backlit unit which is all I'm willing to pay for then not worth it...

Anyway just dropped the Apple TV off at the post office on the way in and it's now gone!

Edit: in line with the thread, I will use the money for test gear 

Sorry, this simply isn't true. I have horrible eyesight, and I can easily tell the difference between my cheap-ass 43" 4K TV and the 40" 1080P unit it replaced from across the bedroom. The problem with it, as with all TV, is A) The lack of quality content and 2) whether the content is native 4K or upscaled 1080P or 1440P (2K) content. Even the 1440P content is visibly better.

Well, there is a tertiary issue; the fact that ALL LCD TVs shift the color gamut way blue; but this latest generation made in the last 18 months or so are a quantum leap better. They use a lot more individual LEDs in the backlight for newer dynamic contrast schemes, which has the added benefit of allowing them to be driven not nearly so hard. This allows them to use true white or warm white LEDs without them blowing them in a year or three.

As for iOS... Roku has had AppleTV service for the last 2 generations; seriously, look into them a little closer. You should be able to get the content you want in the resolution you want with no problem. Just make sure you get the Roku Ultra with the Bluetooth Remote; it can ALSO bind to your phone for AppleTV app control.

mnem
*toddles off to spraybomb a chest of drawers*

[bd139]

Perhaps I don't want to see the crabs and scars on my pornstars

Edit: from my perspective all I watch is the odd film, The Expanse, Rick and Morty, Picard and Discovery and SFA else so I'll just sit at the desk and watch it. Got a decent chair, 1080p screen, decent headphones and it all works with the TEA thread too  . The Apple TV was mostly for the kids which means smooth as fuck integration which it didn't have thanks to HDCP. If the TV had HDCP and worked properly then this would be a non issue but I refuse to throw everything into this poorly contrived copy protection protocol upgrade racket.

[mnementh]

Another point for Roku Ultra with AppleTV service. 

mnem
ain't I a stinker...?

[bd139]

Roku doesn't have Apple Music which was a key point on my decision matrix (I did do one). We have 4 iPhones, 3 iPads and an apple family sub which 90%+ of use is apple music.

[mnementh]

Ewww.... playing music over your TV...?      What are you, running a Sixbucks Coffee up there...? 

I just use one of the kids' old Kindles plugged into my stereo with Prime Music app. Of course, you can easily put a cheap BT receiver dongle on the stereo (or a analog input on the TV) and let it auto-connect to your iDevice with iTunes/fAppleMusic as well.

I really think you're just letting a severe case of "the fukkits" overwhelm you here. You're smarter than the fucking TV; you can figure out a reasonable compromise.

mnem

[Mr. Scram]

Well I'd just like to say FUCK YOU to Samsung's shitty implementation of HDCP. Turns out my shiny new Apple TV 4K won't play any Netflix or Amazon Prime Video content. It works absolutely fine with the PC monitor but not a 5 YO Samsung. Grr. 

TV shopping time! And can you get a non Smart 4K TV? Time will tell.

Edit: now I discover HDMI splitters which stick themselves in the signal path and MITM the certificate.... rabbit hole gets deeper.

So options:

1. Buy a 4K smart TV
2. Find an HDMI splitter that reliably unfucks HDCP and hands it over to the dumb old bastard.

Why is this stuff always so fucking difficult?

I wanted to mention the splitters but you already figured that one out. Thank those nifty Chinese.

[Mr. Scram]

TEA Alert: Ender 5, used 3 months for 250Euro.
Seller got a markforged and don't need it anymore.

I will do the 2019 upgrade so about 75Euro more and 2 months until the corona package will be here.

Are 250 too much?

SWMBO seems to give green light this time.

 

Will this be a marriage Ender? 

[BU508A]

Why is this stuff always so fucking difficult?

Simple answer: because of the lawyers. 

[Specmaster]

My Tea addiction is changing, for some stuff I have always to ask permission here. Even if I know that you guys will push me down the rabbit hole for sure.

You mean that you want someone to blame when SWMBO folds her arms and fixes you a steely glaze in her eyes while tapping her foot firmly on the floor

[bd139]

I really think you're just letting a severe case of "the fukkits" overwhelm you here. You're smarter than the fucking TV; you can figure out a reasonable compromise.

Yeah aware of that. The compromise here is I'd have to accept a compromise now whereas the compromise will probably not exist by the end of the year (house move)

As for listening to music on the TV, it's mostly so I can nick the half decent bluetooth speaker we have for personal use and tell the kids they have to use the bloody TV when they have sleepovers and shit.

[med6753]

Retired and single is my idea of bliss. Half way there 

It sure is. And I waited and worked a long time to achieve it. 

And ask me if I give a shit that you guys are jealous?

[bd139]

Not jealous - you are inspirational 

[Specmaster]

And I'm not jelly in the slightest bit, I've punched my membership ticket years ago, so shove over and let me pull my chair up alongside yours for a while, you keep hogging all the fireplace 

[BU508A]

Not jealous - you are inspirational 

You mean, like the sandal in "The Life of Brian"?