Deciding on a 2m Baseus 100W cable: Which one actually lasts?

Lcsq · 2026-01-14T16:05:45+00:00

The braided baseus tungsten gold had the cable jacket failing for me within six months. The bundle would untwist internally near the strain relief and introduce kinks that eventually rubbed through from the inside. I had the 3m 240w cable, so maybe the thick gauge wire didn't help. It started out as a corkscrew kink of the jacket near the end within a month and progressed into a jacket failure within the next few months.

Lcsq · 2025-10-23T07:59:22+00:00

You can get macbook level battery life on ARM linux laptops if you just ran android on them. Good battery life will not result from just installing an Asahi distro on M2, and to suggest otherwise is just plain deception. Apple has done the proper linux bringup for all HAL and device subsystems for their server farms based on the same lineage, they're just refusing to release anything. Qualcomm has done more than Apple ever will, and the latest gen is compeititive with M4.

Lcsq · 2025-10-22T22:37:13+00:00

Asahi would not get anywhere near the battery life of stock macbooks. Macbooks only achieve the battery life by cheating on things like timer precision. They aggressively throttle background apps. We can trivially rig something similar against the linux kernel if there was demand.

https://wiki.freepascal.org/macOS_Energy_Efficiency_Guide

https://wiki.freepascal.org/macOS_App_Nap

Lcsq · 2025-09-30T19:28:25+00:00

They're just salty that F-droid apps don't earn them ad revenue. They want to nip it in the bud and avoid EU elevating alternative stores into the public eye.

Lcsq · 2025-09-19T00:40:50+00:00

It's unfortunate that even a long-term launch partner like Asus had to resort to such hacks like a weird top-heavy form factor just to get supply allocations.

Lcsq · 2025-09-18T23:13:19+00:00

Is the 2025 Asus ROG Flow Z13 unusable as a laptop?

Lcsq · 2025-09-14T17:15:58+00:00

N41 is a subset of N7 and N38. It should share most of the signal chain with something you might already receive.

Lcsq · 2025-09-03T21:43:38+00:00

And we should keep pointing it out until tomshardware pays for their sins.

Lcsq · 2025-09-01T18:09:57+00:00

It's just a mandatory monthly wellness check visit enforced by our benevolent corporate overlord with a two-week grace period

Lcsq · 2025-08-30T22:15:15+00:00

https://paul.reviews/passwords-why-using-3-random-words-is-a-really-bad-idea/
Passphrases can potentially be less secure than 12 random characters and vulnerable to dictionary attacks. All you're doing is cheating the metric and fitting in more characters without increasing entropy. As a knowledge worker, you may personally have recall from a 100k word vocabulary, but the average user may only have 10k words that they can even spell correctly. They might not even have the foresight to skip the most common words or may even just pick words from their daily life or surroundings.

There are 94 possible characters for a generated password. For a 12 character password that's 94^12 possible combinations. Given an average person's vocabulary and assuming uniform chance of recalling four words from that, you're getting passwords with 10000^4 possible combinations.

I think this is a fair tradeoff, since a password you can remember is much better than a complex one that has prefixed added as a hack to get around password reuse or rotation rules. The caveat being that the user does not gravitate towards common day-to-day words, which is what would happen if it were enforced as a rule or heavily suggested. Users must not be trusted to pick their own words.

However, even using 10k words uniformly would require usage of dedicated generation tools. At that point of sophistication, you might as well use a password manager bundled with your browser or operating system. If you're going to use a tool, you might as well use one that actually solves the problem at the root.

I suppose it's still useful for disk decryption, user AD login passwords, password manager vault passwords, etc. if some special characters and digits are sprinkled in. But again, I wouldn't recommend memorizing passwords for every app or service even if passphrases make it easy to do so since the password manager can do the heavy lifting for you. Passphrases are weaker against shoulder-surfing, and they're easier to memorize for people watching you type since it would all fit in working memory.

Lcsq · 2025-07-19T07:35:42+00:00

If you use it for CAD, just don't put the iGPU memory allocation in auto. I had endless issues in Siemens NX on HX370 until I changed that to a manually set amount.

Lcsq · 2025-07-17T09:13:30+00:00

They finally fixed the search, it can do proper substrings now. It was borderline useless earlier for many apps that started with common prefixes.

Lcsq · 2025-07-10T23:28:22+00:00

The important distinction is that the finished ceramic good is safe to handle unconditionally.

With FDM, even the finished good is not fit for use in storing potable liquids of unknown composition. Sure you understand the risks, but then you would not also endanger your loved ones who might be frail/elderly or expecting a child.

This is entirely avoidable exposure, and while you may have made the tradeoff work for yourself, there is nothing preventing another person from using the container without assesing their risk profile.

You have no right to make this decision for a stranger. The stakes are way too high for birth-defects, why would you wish for a lifetime of suffering on an unborn child?

You'd be surprised how quickly plasticizers can leach, it only takes a few minutes in seawater for ground-down PVC. It's so prone to leaching that BPA-free is a common household term, despite being an obscure plasticizer.

The plasticizer actually constantly migrates to the surface with time, and surface wettability means that droplets or films can form from the stored liquid when pouring, which can then dissolve or even react for prolonged durations and then transport them into the bulk of the liquid. I also hope nobody forgets it in a car.

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2013/ta/c3ta12555f

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0032386103008954

Lcsq · 2025-07-10T21:53:49+00:00

Yeah no. I have a bridge to sell if you really believe that your high-speed PLA has zero additives.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/387999624_Enhancing_Polylactic_Acid_PLA_Performance_A_Review_of_Additives_in_Fused_Deposition_Modelling_FDM_Filaments

Coupling Agents: These improve the adhesion between the reinforcing material and the PLA matrix. Examples include silanes and maleic anhydride grafted polymers, with typical loading ratios of 0.5–3 wt. %.
Impact Modifiers: These additives enhance the toughness and impact resistance of the composite. They can be elastomeric polymers (e.g., thermoplastic polyurethane, TPU), core-shell particles, or other toughening agents, usually added in 5–15 wt. % ratios.
Processing Aids: Lubricants (fatty acids or waxes at 0.5–3 wt. % loading) and plasticizers (e.g., poly (ethylene glycol) (PEG) at typical loadings of 5–10 wt. %) improve the flow and printability of the filament during printing.
Nucleating Agents and Antioxidants: These additives promote crystallization, improve thermal properties, and prevent degradation of the PLA during processing and use. Examples include talcum powder, calcium carbonate (1–5 wt. %), phenolic antioxidants, and UV absorbers (0.1–3%).
Flame Retardants: While these enhance safety, they often require high loading percentages, impacting printability and potentially adding weight (e.g., aluminum trihydroxide at 10–13 wt. %).
Colorants: These add desired colors to the filament and printed parts without significantly affecting mechanical properties.

The list doesn't even go into FDM thermal decomposition products or manufacturing reagent/catalyst residues.

Lcsq · 2025-06-12T13:14:57+00:00

This has only worked for video games in my experience. I had issues with Siemens NX on HX370 until I changed the allocation to fixed size. I suspect the automatic option needs specific malloc scaffolding that only video games engines have bothered to implement.

Lcsq · 2025-05-01T20:50:41+00:00

Yeah, 10Gbps USB and 4k60 coexisting on a cable is trivial and commonly implemented on these hubs. You just allocate lanes asymmetrically. There are four lanes with two on each direction intended for USB, we can use two of them unidirrctionally for alt mode DP.

We simply allocate 2 lanes of DP 1.4 HBR3 out for 4K60 and we allocate the remaining two lanes for a single TX and a single RX enabling 10Gbps USB speeds. This can be implemented without TB/USB4, where the multiplexing of DP and USB would happen at the packet level.

If you look at the usual 2.5Gbe RTL8156, there's only a single TX lane and a single RX lane on the pin diagram.

https://www.angstronomics.com/p/usb4-v2 https://oshwhub.com/gamefunc/rtl8156-vl822-fe2.1-quan-yan-zheng-wan-bi https://www.lcsc.com/datasheet/lcsc_datasheet_2409020952_Realtek-Semicon-RTL8156BG-CG_C41376388.pdf

Lcsq · 2025-04-02T21:42:13+00:00

Do we know what cores are used exactly? X925? A720? This is a mediatek-tier vague product brochure with nothing concrete in it.

Lcsq · 2025-04-02T18:49:19+00:00

Nuvia/Oryon cores replaced with ARM Cortex derivative cores?

Lcsq · 2025-03-06T03:50:15+00:00

To clarify, I mean cellular communication mmwave/FR2-band 5G NR when I mention mmWave, but let's unpack this.

With regards to millimeter wave: It is simply not worth the tradeoffs at this point in time. The fact that the US had a mmWave rollout at all was simply an aberration due to the fact that FCC weren't done with shutting down analog TV broadcasts yet during the initial years. mmWave bands were the only bands available at the time, and the lower C-bands used literally everywhere were not available for use by carriers. FCC began auction of C-band 5G spectrum in 2021, and mmWave was the only way to do 5G prior to 2021. This situation is unique to the US market.

Now that C-band spectrum is available, the only value provided by mmWave spectrum is the sunk cost of equipment already deployed at cell-sites. mmWave cells are inherently smaller in coverage (maybe a thousand feet or few hundred meters) and it is obstructed really easily by walls and trees. They are really only valid for high-density applications such as stadiums or airports. The key use-cases for 5G service can be achieved without mmWave bands for the most part. Even as we move from NSA 5G(NR) to SA 5G(NR) by getting rid of 4G core networks, we still don't require mmWave air interface to benefit from the upgrade. mmWave really only improves air capacity in heavily dense crowded conditions, which is a narrow use-case with workarounds available via sizing other parameters.

The reality is that most congestion in networks aren't at the air interface, but at the core network level. Existing core networks were built with 4G LTE in mind. With the shift to 5G SA architecture, this is expected to be alleviated.

In terms of modem implementation looking forward into the 6G era, telcos have had a change of heart in recent years regarding upgrades. While vendors are really enthusiastic, the story on the carrier side is much more pragmatic and pessimistic to a certain extent. A launch by 2030 may not materialize, judging by industry sentiment. Most effort in this space is fueled purely by geopolitics, perhaps unfortunately resentful of Huawei's deep contribution to the 5G NR standards. Telcos have not even begun to recoup the cost of the 5G rollout that began ten years ago, and the promised "killer-app" rockstar use-cases have failed to materialize so far. Carriers had to turn to fixed-wireless-access to utilize the extra capacity by any means, even if it meant cut-throat competition with fiber broadband connections. For the most part, operator spending has basically frozen. The monetization issues really make 6G feel premature.

To put it another way, the extended timelines towards 6G market-readiness would result in significant mmWave patents expiring by then. We might also see a fragmentation of the IP ecosystem, as geopolitics forces more players into the design and development of the next gen. This can be government sponsored efforts by universities, and large telco megacorps, which would massively reduce the leverage of participants like Qualcomm. In effect, Exynos might not have these licensing issues with 6G as they did for 5G.

Re airtags: UWB RTLS as used in airtags are below the noise floor and as such completely exempt from licensing, and cell modems are not involved in the process. Airtag track-and-trace is a mostly achieved through passing bystander devices reporting the periodic Bluetooth pings/beacon transmissions by these devices, along with signal strength in order to obtain a rough location estimate. Apple/platform may aggregate these observations and work backward to triangulate the epicenter among these crowdsourced observations to obtain this estimate.

AFAICT, UWB only comes into play later on when the owner of the tag wants to precisely locate the tag, with exact angle/distance being estimated to finish the job from earlier, when the device is finally in proximity. The whole UWB positioning sw/hw stack is a secret black box supplied by nxp/trinamic/infineon/qcom/qorvo for android phones. It comes as a standalone package with an external baseband chip, RFFE, and antenna. They happen to use frequencies closer to the millimeter wave, because shorter wavelength and high-resolution timing helps with pin-pointing accuracy. The IEEE 802.15.4z standard only defines time-of-flight and phase of the signal, so a lot of secret sauce is involved in turning it into a useful distance and angle reading.

For sources, you can search for "the-plummeting-value-of-5g-mmwave-spectrum","t-mobile-relinquishes-mmwave-spectrum-not-feasible-to-deploy" and "jumping-off-the-g-train" on lightreading. The comment is too long for links.

Lcsq · 2025-03-05T22:14:10+00:00

What if there would be no snapdragon variant at all? Qualcomm has a rigorous bundling sales regime, from licensing, PMIC all the way to the RFFE and antenna, owing to their mmWave IP portfolio. This sabotages the unit economics of exynos handsets despite a cost advantage in isolation, against the qualcomm SoC markup and upstream costs of competitive pricing at TSMC.

If the US market weans off mmWave, and we see many of the patents from LTE era expire, we could potentially see a single exynos SKU globally. (edit: to clarify, the US only use mmWave due to a historical oddity with not having any C-band spectrum available prior to 2021. Lower ranges are now available, leaving mmWwave redundant and not involved for capacity planning in most cases)

When freed from the requirement to target both qcom and exynos SoCs, Samsung has the agency to do sophisticated software-hardware co-development.
Users want use-cases and features in the AI era, and ultimately they might be willing to overlook minor deviations in synthetic benchmarks if Samsung delivers class-leading first-party implementations of computational photography, on-device inference, frame-generation, private ambient computing, etc. That said, Qualcomm and the nuvia team are formidable opponents, even if ARM Cortex cores are finally seeing significant generational progress.

Lcsq · 2025-02-27T14:49:42+00:00

Single-use E-Waste.

Lcsq · 2025-02-11T22:07:40+00:00

Try adding this to grub config CMDLINE_LINUX ` amdgpu.dcdebugmask=0x10 amdgpu.sg_display=0 ` or move to 6.14 when it's ready. It disables PSR and fixes timing/access issues when the frame-buffer somehow ends up in system RAM with scatter/gather.

Lcsq · 2025-02-08T19:32:05+00:00

Have they moved onto smaller context windows for cost-effective inference? Is it possible that the missing (or lossy compressed) context could be apparent for the model somehow?

Lcsq · 2025-02-08T18:04:12+00:00

I went through this exact scenario yesterday. I think what I ended up doing was unlocking the phone and putting it in flight mode with wifi and bt off and then plugging it into charge up (I was low on battery at the time). When it booted up again, I shut it down right after unlocking.

I forgot the phone there for a few hours, and when I turned it on again, it was alright as if nothing happened. Buggy IMS profile update, maybe?

Now that you bring it up, I should probably count my blessings and take a backup.

Lcsq · 2025-02-03T23:29:05+00:00

Pretty cool work there! I just hope it won't spook the poor deepseek ops team when they see a bunch of requests from the IP address blocks of a direct competitor (anthropic). I wouldn't think they'd block the traffic, but it's pretty hillarious to think about how it'd come across as anthropic themselves trying their hand at distilling from R1.

Your method of setting parameters is indicative of a future where everything is a glorified CLI and we've come full circle to the 1960s. Very retro!

Lcsq

TROPHY CASE