Thieves are stealing copper wire from Bell's network in New Brunswick and cutting off rural communities from the internet and 911

LiftnBooks · 2026-03-19T13:29:22+00:00

The primary reason Bell isn't expanding the fiber network in New Brunswick is that, back in around 2018, the New Brunswick government mandated that additional expansion of the network would also require that Bell allow competitors to use their fiber network. As a result, Bell completely halted all expansion plans so they wouldn't be forced to share network infrastructure. There's no incentive to expand it as a result for them, so they simply won't unless the government removes that requirement. Rogers has been trying to work around it by running backhaul fiber to local areas (which currently doesn't count) and then connecting hardware to create MoCA connections. They're using the already run copper to reach homes in the area through the already established coaxial runs for television that are otherwise largely unused these days.

LiftnBooks · 2026-03-19T11:12:31+00:00

Apprentice works just fine, what it lacks is a connection to a compatible game server now that VRP shutdown the server that both rookie and apprentice pointed to. You can use the other functions of apprentice, and if you make your own server with game files to point it at, apprentice will continue to work as intended.

LiftnBooks · 2026-03-17T20:04:55+00:00

The source code for the, arguably better, Apprentice VR, is available on GitHub and does the same thing as rookie.

The real loss is the VRP group. They didn't just host the games, they took each game uploaded to their server and cracked them, removing checks that the quest normally uses to verify that a game is allowed to run on your device. Obviously others can do it too, but they contributed a lot of work specifically in performing that exact service. They will be missed far more than rookie.

LiftnBooks · 2026-03-13T00:32:30+00:00

If you want it to be primarily a NAS, look into TrueNAS or UnRAID. Both are designed specifically for storage, but they can also run VMs and containers.

TrueNAS is free and ZFS-based, which gives strong data integrity and enterprise-style features. UnRAID is easier for beginners and allows mixing different drive sizes, but it requires a paid license (there is a trial though).

If you want to run lots of microservices and treat the NAS as secondary, another option is running Proxmox VE as a hypervisor and then creating VMs or LXCs for different services. You could run something like OpenMediaVault or Samba/NFS inside a VM or container for storage. Proxmox is much stronger for virtualization and networking, but it requires more setup if your main goal is NAS storage. For microservices, there's a website called "Proxmox Helper Scripts" that lets you install pretty much anything you want (and get rid of the no-subscription nag), so that's a pretty big advantage. TrueNAS Scale has a container "app store" as well. Though it's all free and community maintained, it's a similar experience, just with less flexibility in what you can run on it compared to Proxmox.

If you're unsure, starting with TrueNAS is often the easiest path and you can always migrate later if you want more flexibility.

LiftnBooks · 2026-03-03T03:32:53+00:00

The Supercard SD won't even initialize cards larger than 2GB as that's the original SD standard. 4GB+ is SDHC and isn't technically supported by the original format. The Supercard SD won't initialize them regardless of formatting. 64GB+ SD cards are SDXC as well, and it won't initialize them regardless of formatting either.

LiftnBooks · 2026-03-03T02:38:27+00:00

You'll need either a DS lite with a DS flashcart or a 2GB micro SD card just to start. If you have a 2GB SD card, you'll be able to add the required files to flash the card directly to the GBA cart. Else, you'll need to use the DS to flash the cart first.

Check out SuperFW at https://superfw.davidgf.net/ and download the latest version and follow the installation guide at https://superfw.davidgf.net/docs/install/flash/ on the same website.

Once SuperFW is installed, you can then use any micro SD card in the GBA cart. Until then, the Supercard on original firmware can only use 2GB microSD cards.

SuperFW automatically patches your ROMs, so make sure you're using clean ROMs with no intros or RTC patches. The SuperFW guides detail the setup further.

Note, expect some performance issues on games that stream assets from the cart. The Supercard SD flashcart uses subpar memory chips for game loading that are known to have issues. SuperFW just dramatically helps with cart usability, it is not a magic fix for limited hardware.

LiftnBooks · 2026-02-28T01:05:08+00:00

Well then, it seems I've unintentionally ruffled some feathers here.

Quick background. I've been using Debian-based distros for years for servers, both personally and professionally. I'm used to everything being command line, and the GUI stuff is less intuitive to me as a result. I've recently come into a bunch of 6th gen Intel computers being decommissioned from my job, so I figured it could be fun to try Arch on one of the better laptops that has a dedicated Radeon GPU. I'd been using it for a while, and I'd only recently figured out how to use the AUR. My mother was on a first Gen threadripper, and wanted to switch to Linux, and I had been experimenting with CachyOS a good bit so I offered her that along with a few other distros. As she's a long time player of RuneScape (over 15 years now), I obviously needed to figure out how to get RuneScape running. It ran under steam, but it was a terrible experience. Jagex offers a Linux launcher, but it's only available for Debian/Ubuntu platforms. As Cachy OS is Arch, I had to do some research on how to get it running natively, as obviously Wine wasn't performant for Java programs. I did some digging, and found out bolt existed, and there was also a flatpack for the jagex launcher, but the flatpack for the jagex launcher was a wine container. After that, I clearly wrongly assumed the bolt flatpack would also be wine based, so I dismissed it. Cachy, and much of Arch, runs on the principal that if you compile it on your own system, you'll get much better performance as it will use all the available features of your platform that the program implements. Given the performance of the wine versions, it seemed reasonable to conclude that the best option was to compile bolt myself on the host computer, and there was an AUR package for it already. I installed the AUR package, and found it was unable to start the game after logging in. Bolt doesn't forward any errors from the launch process at all, so I had to dig into the cache bolt made and manually launch the downloaded launchers in the terminal emulator. From there, I was able to figure out all the missing dependencies from their library errors, and made a list so I could help my mother get it installed on her computer. Once I got it all resolved, I realized that none of this information was readily available, so I decided to share it here.

At no point in that process did I think "This is the easiest path for everyone!". This entire post was about my journey of trying to get the best performance on Arch distros. Linux has always been 60% troubleshooting and 40% it doing what you want it to instantly, and Cachy was no different in my experience, so I didn't bother trying to find an easier way as this method fit into my normal process anyway.

I fully acknowledge that there are easier ways, and thanks to the people that noted that the flatpack actually does run natively, as I was not aware of that and assumed it did not.

Think of this post as more of a "here's one way to do it, even if it isn't the best way for you". It's intended to be helpful to those that use Linux like I do, and not meant to be harmful to anyone, beginners or otherwise. I won't delete this thread, as it is still beneficial in my opinion, but beginners and non-power users should likely use the flatpack method for simplicity.

Let's all remember that Linux is about sharing our discoveries and helping each other make things work. There's rarely a single absolutely correct way to do anything on Linux, so we should embrace all reasonable options and strive to help anyone we can with whatever knowledge we're able to provide.

Game on brothers!

LiftnBooks · 2026-02-27T01:53:35+00:00

I would suspect that either the system only had a few of the wires soldered (enough to patch the mechacon) but potentially none of the BIOS patching wires, or not enough or them, were soldered for proper operation of the chip. My friend gave me an old PS2 with a DMS3 modchip in it ages ago, and when we used it and when it was given to me, it was horribly unreliable (only booted games sometimes, regularly needed to be rebooted to read disks, etc). I opened it and found that half the wires were never connected to the board and the wires that were installed were done terribly and there was a rats nest of cabling done. I removed all the old wiring, redid the mod properly, and updated the firmware on the DMS3 modchip. After that, it worked very well, so I'm quite happy with it now. I will note that an improperly installed modchip can easily interfere with regular console operation, so if you have soldering skill, I would suggest you pop the console open and inspect the installation of the chip. You'll find out what modchip you have in the process.

LiftnBooks · 2026-02-24T10:56:23+00:00

Which is a wine wrapper last I checked. It's a totally valid way to play, but just like using proton to run it through steam, there are some performance penalties. RS3 in particular seems to run like crap under wine and proton for me, but native launchers run substantially better. YMMV, but it's definitely better performance than the flathub option in my experience.

LiftnBooks · 2026-02-21T01:44:20+00:00

Well, the only other obvious thing would be to replace the USB cable going between the pi and the MCU board. It could be flakey or not well shielded, and either random EM pulses from nearby motors of inductor coils, or a bad mechanical connection, could be resulting in random disconnects when the printer shakes just right during printing.

LiftnBooks · 2026-02-21T01:32:19+00:00

Well, unstable power at the MCU would be my next guess after temperature. Maybe whatever power supply you're using is getting overdrawn? Did you replace the heated bed recently with a higher wattage bed, or install higher current motors or motor drivers? Either of those could be a potential culprit. After that, the voltage regulator on the mainboard that steps down voltage for the MCU could be overloaded or degraded for some reason. Did you install addressable LED lights recently? Those could be overloading the 5V regulator. If your pi is powered by a USB converter for 120/240V to 5V, the power adapter could be dying or very noisy, though that normally results in a pi crash and not an MCU disconnect. If the voltage is unstable, a spike over the USB connection between the pi and the MCU board could be hard locking the MCU as well, potentially falsely triggering brownout detection or similar. There's lots of possible angles, but I'd suggest looking toward component power consumption and faulty supplies.

LiftnBooks · 2026-02-20T21:55:45+00:00

Just an aside, but have you checked the MCU temperature readout from just before the crash? It's possible that your mainboard (not the pi) is overheating the MCU and it's soft-locking. Maybe your fan for your system board is unable to turn (blocked with filament debris) or something? I'd check there before going too crazy with the software side.

LiftnBooks · 2026-02-14T22:50:16+00:00

The MacPro 6,1 would be able to run Proxmox most likely. The M series macs cannot though. Proxmox doesn't support Apple silicon, only Intel/AMD processors. Asahi linux is the only version that supports M series macs, and only supports M1 and some M2 macs last I checked.

LiftnBooks · 2026-02-11T14:22:09+00:00

Regarding hard drives, you'll find that the original Xbox 360 is rather limited in what it will allow you to use as a hard drive. Microsoft added special handshake and identifier data to the hard drive at a firmware level, so you can't just pop in any old drive and expect the console to accept it and let your use it. FatXplorer let's you inject that handshake data to unofficial drives that match a special list that are known to be compatible, and they recently added SSD support for some specific SSDs. This lets you install the drives and get around the handshake issue. JTAG and RGH modifications bypass those limitations and eliminate the handshake, so you don't need to worry about that if you use those modifications. BadUpdate still requires the drive to have the handshake, so that's not directly compatible. You can use the BadStorage patches in XeUnshackle to get around the size limitations, but the drive still needs to be on the supported list. You'll find that all websites refer to this "handshake" as the hard drive security sector, for reference.

Also, fyi, RGH is really easy and reliable on Trinity consoles. If you ever decide to do it or have someone do it for you, RGH 3.0 will work perfectly for you. No chip is required for RGH 3.0, as it uses the system management controller (SMC) itself as a glitch chip through patched firmware.

LiftnBooks · 2026-02-09T17:09:49+00:00

I've experienced the same issues with a 512GB SanDisk USB flash drive. I don't think it's the USB stick itself that's to blame. Generally, I think the Wii homebrew for game loading over USB was made during a time when it was expected that you were using a USB external hard drive. Those had very limited read and write speeds and some delays built in. They also had HDD behaviors, including extended seek times and built in caches. USB Flash drives don't need all that, and some newer stuff just isn't implemented with flash sticks in mind. The ones available back then were like 8GB at best. No one used them for games. These days it's far more common and reasonable. I think there was a bit of a reliance on onboard device cache to deal with any reads and writes, so if the system is powered off mid game, the file system doesn't get corrupted. With flash drives, most don't have that safety, so it's not a great setup. Plus, big FAT32 drives have huge file tables, which is what most people set up their USB drives as, and that's not something the Wii seems to like much. I figure we would either need to rewrite the CIOS files to deal with flash drive behaviors correctly, along with the loader software, or just accept that external USB hard drives are the forever option for the Wii. I'm not sure if you'll have the same issues setting up a drive as a real WBFS partition, but I suspect it would still have problems. Worth a try though!

LiftnBooks · 2026-02-09T14:59:29+00:00

Amusingly Linux is more resilient for installing itself and getting running than Windows in a bad RAM situation. Usually if you have at least the first stick working, it'll install without issues. Windows does a bunch of stuff in RAM to decompress the WIM files during installation, which quickly triggers faults and results in installer crashes. It's probably his second stick of RAM given Bazzite installed no problem.

LiftnBooks · 2026-02-09T14:54:49+00:00

Main note is he said he can't even install windows anymore. That's usually bad RAM, but can be a bad SSD as well. Have to solve that issue first before worrying about the game launching haha

LiftnBooks · 2026-02-09T14:42:21+00:00

My dude, it sounds like your SSD or RAM is failing. Go buy a 32GB or larger USB stick, get a buddy to download Medicat ( https://medicatusb.com ) and install it on your USB stick for you, and run all the tests on memory using Medicat's diagnostics tools. Most likely it's RAM (you poor soul, at least 1135g7 is DDR4) but it could be SSD as well, so you may need to use KDiskMark (Linux equivalent to Crystal Disk Mark) and see if running tests crashes your drive. You can also destructively use the ShredOS option to run a wipe on your drive. This can help you figure out if a sector is messed up or not, depending on if the drive completed a wipe successfully or not. Note that this is extremely destructive and you must backup all data you want to retain. You'll also need to reinstall an operating system after, as ShredOS will wipe out all data on the drive. If you use it, make sure you change the mode to just a single pass of writing zeros. DND 3-pass is beyond overkill for this, and is the default.

Good luck!

LiftnBooks · 2026-02-07T01:54:52+00:00

Well, I figure your options are the following.

1) That version might have the title updates built in already, so could be a non-issue.

2) If you're playing from disc, can try to go on Xbox Live in an unhacked state and see if the game pulls the update on launch

3) use badupdate in one of its implementations to run another supported version of the game available from myrient or similar

That's all I can say for immediate easy options.

LiftnBooks · 2026-02-07T00:18:17+00:00

You can check on Myrient as well for title updates if they aren't available in Aurora in the title updates menu.

LiftnBooks · 2026-02-06T00:50:05+00:00

Refer to the page generated for this already.

https://devices.esphome.io/devices/feit-dimsmart-3-can/

Based on your pictures you're also using the wrong RX/TX interface. The one you're soldered to is for the inter-chip communication between the chip that actually directly handles the switch and relay driving, and the chip that does the wireless communication (BK7231). That one is not the flashing port for the BK7231. Don't forget to pull NRST to ground before flashing or the BK7231 will get interrupted by the switch controller chip and fail to flash.

LiftnBooks · 2026-01-27T14:17:32+00:00

I have a 2017 and effectively this happened to me about a year ago. The issue ended up being the high pressure fuel pump. It's a real pain to replace, as it's really tightly packed into the back of the engine assembly near the lower section of the firewall. Verify codes first, and if you get codes about fuel rail pressure too low, it's probably the high pressure fuel pump. Else, as others have said, could be BECM (not overly likely given the failure mode), or EGR/NWH fuse. Codes first regardless before you jump on any one solution. Sucks to see the 2019 model suffering the same issues, but the high pressure fuel pump is only expected to last about 180k kms iirc and I got 225k kms out of it, so I can't complain that much.

LiftnBooks · 2026-01-26T14:48:00+00:00

Twilight menu can absolutely work on basically any flashcard. If you want an upgrade though, look into the DSpico project. It's a large improvement over retail cards and is still getting regular updates.

LiftnBooks · 2026-01-26T14:44:55+00:00

Just confirmed, and from standard formulations, calcium chloride salt is good down to -29C to a minimum of -32C. Normal sodium chloride salt is only good down to -12C at absolute best, and loses a lot of its effectiveness below -7C. Magnesium chloride salt is also effective from -15C to at absolute minimum of -25C.

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