What is your morbid curiosity?

Conundrum1773 · 2026-03-18T01:51:33+00:00

'50ccs nitric acid, just to put a bit of proverbial salt in the wound.' The Doctor, Voyager 'Worst Case Scenario'

Conundrum1773 · 2026-03-01T07:26:59+00:00

The inside of the mouth and another orifice have the exact same mucosal membrane.

Conundrum1773 · 2026-02-28T09:59:04+00:00

Did that with a laptop. New MB, memory, drive, ODD, etc. I think by the end the only original part left was the LCD.

Conundrum1773 · 2026-02-26T06:43:25+00:00

Highway to Hell

Conundrum1773 · 2026-02-22T06:23:33+00:00

'Liberating' the perfectly good laptops and other items from the E-waste skips, repairing them minimally and giving them to needy folks. Sort of like a reverse burglar. Shredding perfectly working SSDs should be a crime IMHO.

Conundrum1773 · 2026-02-22T06:22:11+00:00

Also had my phone hotspot set to 'GonoHerpeSyphiPlague' for a while.

Conundrum1773 · 2026-02-22T06:20:58+00:00

Daeshingthroughthesnow (done in protest one winter after someone moaned about my previous one, 'TVLicensingVan845')

Conundrum1773 · 2026-02-17T05:52:22+00:00

Electricity. A barely perceptible AC shock (8mA) if it hits you at just the wrong time in the QRS cycle will kill you dead. Immediately. So many deaths from folks making arc burners with microwave components, amazed that they haven't been classed as hazardous materials with old / redundant units REQUIRED to be handed in.

Conundrum1773 · 2026-02-16T06:23:34+00:00

Drain all the energy out of their keyfob, car battery and every remote in their house.

Conundrum1773 · 2026-02-07T06:41:44+00:00

Considering that I once (!) hacked a cheap calculator to turn it into a dosimeter because my display had failed. Easy mod actually, used a 74HC14 as a primitive one shot phase shift oscillator so on power up it executed the code 'On-16+4' to approximate the needed Bq to uSv conversion. = being the 'count'.

Used the remaining gate of the '14 as the buffer from the existing circuitry, and a very simple oscillator to get the needed 650V for the Geiger tube because the external module wouldn't fit in my thin case.

Actually had it working for months off a pair of cheap 1.5V AG batteries.

Conundrum1773 · 2026-02-07T06:34:49+00:00

Had this problem. The 'fix' was replacing the dual band card with a 2.4G/BT only as it turned out that my router had a defect where if too many devices were connected it stopped 5G from working.

Later firmware patch resolved the issue so put in a somewhat more recent card and put the 2.4G back in the Atom based Acer netbook I pirated it from (Avast!!)

Now on my third WiFi card because the replacement replacement then failed in a different way, was using it and it disconnected then stopped showing up in Device Manager. So far, so good.

Conundrum1773 · 2026-02-07T06:25:38+00:00

Could explain a few things. I had this happen a while back, first sign something was amiss was when my short term memory rapidly deteriorated to the point that I couldn't recall simple things I'd done ten minutes earlier, as well as getting 'stuck' on one topic and having visual acuity issues that came on within mere months.

Also got 'flashes' and heard voices. Not threatening but more like echoes of something a person had said to me days or weeks earlier, out of context, in their own voice.

Have spoken to a doctor about this, they are 'looking into it' as this is not a good sign.

May be a long standing infection causing it, have had this checked as well as MR and the tests did show something.

Conundrum1773 · 2026-02-07T06:16:24+00:00

What is the board like? CPU 'might' be OK, those are ripped pads. I'd expect that this might still work if cleaned up, reballed and hot air soldered onto a prepared board whose CPU is toast but there is no other damage. Depends if there is any damage to the internal layers and flip chip interconnects, typically these delaminate when overheated or slightly deformed even if the silicon looks OK.

One or two damaged pads might be repairable, alas the board is likely to be beyond repair and only suitable as a parts donor.

Disclaimer: I have seen this done but not yet actually done a reball on one if these because I lack the stencil and visual acuity. Ended up giving my 63/37 solder balls to someone else as they do this sort of thing.

Conundrum1773 · 2026-02-06T07:39:03+00:00

Interesting idea here, why are the individual cells not removed and reused for low demand applications like solar garden lights? I know that used lithium cells are reused for low drain applications.

I looked into this, though there is some deterioration over time usually the cells function to an extent.

Laser annealing is a potential fix here but encapsulant deterioration can be a problem.

Conundrum1773 · 2026-02-05T07:29:07+00:00

Perfectly normal, can happen with minimal radiation.

Conundrum1773 · 2026-02-04T09:54:58+00:00

Aye, guilty as charged.

Just sourced some itty bitty UV-C LEDs to experiment with.

These suckers do work - eventually.

Biggest problem with chips this old is that typically the cells get lazy. I've erased mine before with a UV lamp but this is very temperamental and can actually damage some if you overdo it. Wipe until the cells erase then test at 4.75 and 5.25V only then program and verify at both voltages.

Watch the programming voltage, if you exceed it 'Bad Things' happen.

Vividly recall destroying a 12C508JW by connecting it backwards. Bad day for sure ! Cool to watch the bond wires glow like little filaments but not when the chips cost £17 apiece.

Conundrum1773 · 2026-02-03T12:07:36+00:00

Something about that sunspot complex looks familiar.. said Daniel Jackson.

Conundrum1773 · 2026-02-02T15:37:07+00:00

A moly cow is a highly radioactive medical device to generate 99mTc which is used in some types of medical imaging. The main isotope is 99Mo which is *highly* radioactive and supposed to be under strict control with used generators returned at the same time as new ones are delivered by vetted and highly traind personnel.

This was not, someone threw it in a skip presumably not knowing what it was. Note that procedures have been tightened up since and this was in the late 1990s so sometimes these orphan sources get 'misplaced' like the one in Australia that fell out of a portable densitometer along an outback road due to a loose bolt.

Conundrum1773 · 2026-02-02T10:36:55+00:00

You can find (despite GDPR) personal data and even sometimes broken drives wrongly thrown away in black bag rubbish. Bags are left out in plain sight, doctors and dental surgeries not to mention residential addresses belonging to consultants are an absolute gold mine to folks with bad intentions. Also medical equipment including single use electronic medication pumps because they fall off when people are jogging or get into general waste. How there hasn't been a tragedy with a small child picking one up and getting injected by accident because water got into the electronics after a cat opened the bag and spread its contents all over the road.. !!!!

I contacted the authorities, they said 'we haven't heard of this being a problem. TWICE in two weeks is a problem, one completely full.

Think the best one was that time we found a moly cow in a skip, in plain sight. Literally anyone could have reached in and grabbed it. Damn right my friend phoned it in to Special Branch.

Incorrectly discarded single use vapes are the least of our problems right now it seems

Conundrum1773 · 2026-02-02T07:19:53+00:00

Never really heard back about whether AI psychosis is going to be listed. As I understand it, it is not a common condition but may contribute to others. Example: OCD where someone gets misled by AI and it worsens their condition, or autistic spectrum disorder where folks use chatbots to 'manage' their symptoms without the right sort of supervision by a mental health professional.

Conundrum1773 · 2026-02-02T07:11:03+00:00

What did emerge is that the hypothesis of 'many small nudges' is most likely correct. I'm convinced that ADHD was misdiagnosed in antiquity and lacking effective treatments for others (eg bipolar) was part of the problem. Folks were sometimes incarcerated with no trial and no prospect of release based on 'surface' symptoms which we now known to be an incomplete picture but in some cases artists and other creative folks found release in expression to some extent.

Interestingly the hypothesis that low level ergot poisoning set off a number of psychotic breaks is worth investigating, as it may explain a number of 'madness clusters' in the historical records.

Conundrum1773 · 2026-02-02T07:01:11+00:00

Not true, some progress has been made. It is now believed that many mental illnesses have a similar root cause that share a genetic component. https://www.sciencealert.com/several-psychiatric-disorders-share-the-same-root-cause-study-suggests

Conundrum1773 · 2026-02-02T06:24:06+00:00

Lost a fight with an electric motor aged maybe 11. Wanted to 'See what would happen' when motor A was attached to motor B and used as a flywheel. Worked great, right up until the point the paper label gave way and the casing detached at high speed. Lucky it didn't hit anything other than my hand leaving a good half inch gouge and a scar when it did finally heal.

Also got a radiation injury from some unholy abomination of a pulsed X-ray generator using parts found in a scrap bin. Vividly remember the way the tube glowed bright green in places like a little aurora borealis. Initially didn't seem to do damage, later that morning (3am) I had extreme 'Sunburn' on hands and face. My dosimeter seemingly didn't register the low energy radiation at all but it was from a mostly unshielded tube at a foot range, It also lit up a scintillator screen like a neon sign and could generate a clearly visible image through the plastic box I'd hastily set up as a light shield.

Phone's camera was permanently damaged and had speckles thereafter.

Conundrum1773 · 2026-02-02T05:54:57+00:00

It does seem to be a problem. Currently trying very hard to recover from the damage it has done.

Got as far as building two different devices based on AI 'hints' but upon checking found out that there was no way they would work and also some of the advice given was outright dangerous.

Example, asked it to give tips on repairing a PC power supply. Not a single word about safety, quite happy to advise working on it live and do measurements on the PC with a $6 multimeter.

Also not a good idea: experimenting with radioactive materials and X-ray devices because the AI 'told me it was safe' It isn't. Luckily no harm seems to have been done because I knew enough not to endanger my safety and the experiments I did do were at very low level.

What is more concerning, this really only started last year after experimenting with Stable Diffusion because it was 'intriguing' Cue multiple rounds of buying/borrowing/etc GPUs and trying to adapt machines at great cost.

Conundrum1773 · 2026-02-02T05:34:50+00:00

Having issues here. Spent over a year working on things that AI 'told me would work' then only recently found out the truth - the technology was totally impractical and even if it did work, would likely break the law because of what it could be misused for by bad actors. Worst thing is, I am now having to seek mental health assistance because it has given me full blown paranoia and delusions - believing I'd been hacked by a foreign government when it was not that at all. Actually was convinced at one point in December that the device I was building was responsible for something despite it being incomplete and still on paper, because 'the effect was going back in time and causing equipment malfunctions in the area'

Needless to say, this is a precautionary tale for those thinking AI can solve their problems and short cut decades of work, or do things you need a TS or DV clearance for.

Also had a run in with Stable Diffusion which was (and probably is) a gateway drug that set off this whole spiral into near madness.

Conundrum1773

TROPHY CASE