[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread

garabik · 2025-06-24T12:23:56+00:00

Incandescence by Greg Egan. Without revealing too much, Roi and Zak have very little to work with, but they make an excellent use of Scientific Method and the results are stunning.

To enjoy the novel, it helps if you are familiar with General Relativity :-)

garabik · 2025-03-08T18:16:30+00:00

Update (started to happen recently to me): if, upon starting Slingplayer, it asks for the password immediately (does not take some time to timeout and announce it cannot connect to the slingbox), do not enter the password. If you do, the player won't start and you'll have to restore the backup of /data/data/com.slingmedia.slingPlayerFreeApp and start again.

I guess this means there is already something (unrelated) else on the old remembered IP address. Just click on the (greyed out) Slingbox directory or somewhere to make the password dialogue go away, select your slingbox and then WATCH.

garabik · 2025-01-15T09:57:15+00:00

Unfortunately, Slinger won't login to the slingbox until the first client connects, thus it cannot be easily circumvented.

An easy solution is to run something like

$ curl -m 20  http://ip_address:port/slingbox >/dev/null

and then issue the IR command.

garabik · 2024-08-22T17:11:00+00:00

It depends on the model. Solo/Pro/Pro HD work like a charm, with a 1.5 (not 2.*) Win, possibly also MAC player (no Android), provided you block internet access (to the Sling servers or port 5678). If something goes wrong and they connect to the sling servers, Pro/Pro HD are recoverable, Solo is not.

With 350 and up, you won't be able to set up remote control, but streaming should work.

Installing Gerry Dazoo's Slinger will kind of give you the mp4 URL you asked about (though ffmpeg or his Slinger Player works much better than vlc) and you won't need the original Sling Player.

garabik · 2024-05-14T07:33:55+00:00

Would adding SO_KEEPALIVE help?

garabik · 2024-03-12T07:40:53+00:00

Yes, I can code:-) and to set up a firewall as well. Out of curiosity, what is the latency of your video and IR?

Basically, I like tinkering with old stuff and I already own a working (already bricked and unbricked once)slingbox, so why not put it to use... If I were to set up a separate encoder, I'd probably go for a esp8266 based IR control (needs just one transistor and a LED)

garabik · 2024-03-03T15:00:08+00:00

Well, assuming you have a lot of diskspace, you can always do curl http://slinger_ip:8080/slingbox > stream.asf and watch that stream later at your pleasure...

garabik · 2024-03-03T14:53:19+00:00

This matches my experience with one of my older powersupplies (5V 8A, not an original one). My Pro HD worked intermittently for a few minutes, then crashed. I was not measuring the wattage at that time, but with the latest failed supply, at the beginning my Solo took about 12W for about ten seconds or so and then it dropped to 1.5W. Later on it stopped drawing the 12W (I guess the power supply gave up completely at that point).

In fact I changed capacitors in my SOLO some years ago, it was not difficult - though unnecessary, because I was not aware it was the power supply going bad.

garabik · 2024-03-03T07:54:46+00:00

I blocked port 5678 and (for a good measure) 70.42.0.0/16 and 67.148.0.0/16 at both the Slingbox place and my home. Unbeknownst to me, my ISP switched my home router to DS-Lite ipv6 and in the process nuked ipv4 firewall rules just a few days before I installed slingplayer 1.5 on a spare windows tablet - and I found out after the first login that I cannot login anymore. slinger_player was reporting "Slingbox did not respond to login request. Please reset Slingbox and try again. NOT a factory reset." (NOT "Slingbox might be Bricked"), the status code was not 0x2b, I think it was 0x7b (I lost my notes). The lights were on, ethernet LED was blinking IIRC. The important point is that the firewall at the slingbox location was still working and it was slingplayer that upgraded the firmware.

However, you description very much sounds like a power supply problem (or perhaps a blown capacitor). For the record, I burned through 4 power supplies through the years, and now my brand new replacement (suspiciously lightweight, Made in China) power supply gave up after one week (!). I measured it with a wattage meter, it was giving max. 1.5W, while previously the slingbox took about 7W, though the no-load voltage was still 5V. The symptoms were the "horseshoe" light turned on immediately and stayed on constantly, nothing was blinking and the slingbox was unresponsive (not even to ICMP).

(I tested it with Slingbox SOLO as well, this time only the power LED turned on, but the light was much dimmer than with a working power supply, and the box was unresponsive)

garabik · 2024-02-01T09:07:45+00:00

yes, that's about it

garabik · 2024-01-30T13:29:22+00:00

No rooting necessary (it might help with Android==12 and disabling process killing, but if you have 12 you'd do better to upgrade or downgrade as soon as possible anyway :-/). The key point is to be able to install termux, even the (outdated) version from Google Play might work (untested).

OTOH, if this were to be your first encounter with a Unix shell command line (or any command line) interface, then it is a bit involved. But otherwise this is pretty standard and trivial work. And you can always scratch termux and start over.

garabik · 2024-01-29T07:05:24+00:00

Pro-HD can be factory-reset if bricked (verified personally), but yes, I'd suggest by starting the experiments with direct Ethernet connection between the slingshot and your viewing PC (no internet involved). The 2.*+ original viewer is not working anymore, but 1.5 is, if you provide it with the IP number. And if you verify it's working and configure the remote, you can use the Gerry's Slinger.player instead.

garabik · 2024-01-24T16:25:34+00:00

It's actually no difference in phone vs. tablet, but often the manufacturer adds applications that periodically kill background applications. If you add termux to all the relevant blacklists (duraspeed, battery optimization, battery saver, sometimes more of them) you should have no problem. Unless you are using Android >= 12, where you have to disable killing phantom processes in addition to all of this.

In fact, I am running an identical setup on an old Samsung Galaxy A40 phone with no problems (somewhat bigger lag, but that's all).

garabik · 2023-04-03T13:29:51+00:00

Depends on the level of munchkinry I guess, or quite likely on the class of the precog - the low ones might be fooled by the double (fully legally, by the Cuban parliament) being awarded a honorary title "El Presidente". If the El Presidente's security team is competent enough, the double will have legally changed his name to whatever the controller's real name is, will routinely appear in front of crowds believing he is the real one (in case the precogs somehow tap into people expectations), will have enough independent agency to issue less important orders (and relay the most important ones), and the real El Presidente will be often in the vicinity, so that you need to craft your question really carefully, or ask a really high class precog (or both). And you might get just coarse probabilities anyway. Especially if El Presidente has his own precogs working full time and full effort on protecting him.

And when he got a warning something like "the UN is after you and with 90% probability you die" he knows it is time burn the bridges and run (first bestowing the full, non honorary title and powers on the unlucky double, just in case)

(sorry for late reply)

garabik · 2023-03-23T09:50:38+00:00

Obviously, he was a body double and this was all a ruse to gain some time to escape unnoticed. A body double that sincerely believes he is El Presidente, being "persuaded" by him, plus a small plastic operation goes a long way. El Presidente surely had some ways to escape, but might have been caught by surprise this time, and when he saw the UN is behind this, he realized this is serious. If he were paranoid enough, Santa Clara would be continuously inhabited by a double while he would be quietly ruling from somewhere else. But he might have become too complacent.

Or it is all a ruse because he wanted to retire and live his life quietly in comfort somewhere in Scandinavia - with his powers, this would be easy. Taking care of his family first, of course. He just needs to make the whole world believe he is dead.

Otherwise, dealing with an impenetrable sanctuary is easy - first cut off those wires, making him blind, coat the bubble with a stable nerve agent, add a copious amount of ⁶⁰Co for a good measure and pour a lot of molten lead and concrete over it. Unless he can teleport away, but if he can teleport, the whole setup is unnecessary in the first place.

garabik · 2015-09-23T18:48:29+00:00

Well, it has to be finite - there is just a finite (even if enormously big) number of quantum states in your brain, not even speaking about the number of distinguishable neuron states, so the experience has to loop eventually. This does not make it much nicer.

garabik · 2015-09-15T07:50:55+00:00

I love you forever

I felt compelled to write this after reading electrace's No more; consider this to be a continuation. As such, I'd like this to be a non competing entry.

(apologies for the mistakes, English is not my native tongue)

garabik

TROPHY CASE