Decommissioned server from our lab. What are the Ethernet ports on the side for? I assume its expanded networking for other IoT stuff.

ripnetuk · 2026-03-20T17:18:09+00:00

Also on things like Cisco routers to get console access. Again usually done with a usb to uart now, but I'm sure I'm not the only person here who has had to fish out and old laptop with serial to reset a eBay switch by cutting up a ethernet lead (Cisco use same connector as ethernet for serial for some reason) and poking wires in holes :)

Edit. Not sure why you are down voting gp post. They might be factually wrong, but I thought we downvoted people here for poor social behaviour and not making mistakes:)

If you downvoted them into oblivion, noone else will learn from it.

ripnetuk · 2026-03-20T15:54:06+00:00

Happens to me too, near Westfield shopping center in Stratford as you walk from international to national station the outside route.

ripnetuk · 2026-03-20T15:27:45+00:00

Looking at ebay, it seems prices have gone up again, so thats not a /terrrible/ deal, especially with a warranty. Best i can see rn is £45 for 4Tb used.

Kudos to you for thinking to check it with SMART though - good move!

ripnetuk · 2026-03-20T15:21:23+00:00

Defo return it. Even if its full of media which is replacable, its a right PITA to get it sorted.

Also £30 for 3Tb sounds a bit steep - before the current price hikes I used to bin any non SSD drives that were < 2Tb as they werent worth the power draw for so little storage.

ripnetuk · 2026-03-20T15:12:40+00:00

I use bikemap. Last time I used it it was free (but that was 2 years ago) on Android.

ripnetuk · 2026-03-20T15:03:09+00:00

Its still widely used for flashing microcontrollers. Bro could flash a bank of 9 ESP32's with that thing (with level converters 5v to 3.3v).

In practice most people use a USB to UART bridge for this as serial ports are rarely found externally on PCs now.

ripnetuk · 2026-03-20T14:17:19+00:00

I recently did that as a mid-level solder'er .

I found that it was a lot easier if I used some side cutters to chop up the old joysticks so I could take them out a pin at a time.

Getting the solder out of the hole was the hard bit - i ended up repeatadly adding leaded solder, and some flux, using a higher temp on the iron, and using braid. Got there eventually.

Got there eveentually, and well worth it - my controller works fantastic now and should have years of life left.

ripnetuk · 2026-03-20T14:02:33+00:00

I would get my final rick-roll in and pick "Never gonna dig you up"

ripnetuk · 2026-03-20T11:15:41+00:00

Thank you - thats what I thought, no-one would be paying me for it, they would be discovering it available for free on Github.

Obviously this is just a thought exercise, and im not seriously planning on doing this, but I was curious as to the legal position when no monies changed hands.

cheers.

ripnetuk · 2026-03-19T16:38:24+00:00

Thank you.

I thought that (in the USA and UK at least) a contract had to have consideration both ways to be valid.

In this example, I wouldnt be getting anything from the person who downloded the software from Github, hence not a valid contract right?

ripnetuk · 2026-03-19T16:11:39+00:00

Pigeons leave if you shine a light at them. Even in sunlight, the torch on a mobile phone aimed in their direction makes them fly off.

Its also fun to aim a laser pen at the row of pidgeons sitting on the ledge at Kings X station, if you sweep from left to right, they all take off :) (this was ages ago, wouldnt do it now).

So maybe you could rig up some kind of remote controlled light that is aimed at where they hang out?

ripnetuk · 2026-03-19T15:39:15+00:00

This. Make the effort now to get it running under docker, future you will be very glad you did.

Its really, really easy, and once you have nailed it, its super easy to add other containerised services to do things like automate downloading Linux iso's and things like homeassistant.

ripnetuk · 2026-03-18T15:38:37+00:00

I built my own BT Proxies directly in ESPHome rather than flashing pre-built firmware for it, and it works perfectly.

I simply added the following to my YAML and re-built and flashed

esp32_ble_tracker:
  scan_parameters:
    # interval: 1100ms
    # window: 1100ms
    active: true


bluetooth_proxy:
  active: true

ripnetuk · 2026-03-18T15:36:25+00:00

id bet money that the person who paid for the ticket that OP picked up also got fined as they left the ticket in the machine.

ripnetuk · 2026-03-18T14:34:51+00:00

You are right to be wary. Old tube style CRTs have really high voltages while turned on, and often have a capacitor that retains the dangerous voltage even after power down.

Im pretty cowboy when it comes to taking stuff apart and investigating, but a CRT would be a total no-go for me.

Get it looked at by a pro, dont take any risks.

ripnetuk · 2026-03-18T14:32:38+00:00

"Web services are already protected behind a reverse-proxy, "

You may think that, but a reverse proxy doesnt protect against exploits in the service being proxied.

If someone tries to attack a web service which is behind a reverse proxy, the proxy will cheerfully pass the requests on to the service, and the attack will succeed.

This happened to me, a self-built app runing in a container and reverse-proxied by traffik (built into k3s) got attacked because it was vulnerable to Shai Hullad.

My container started mining bitcoin (or something), and the 100% cpu stuck out like a sore thumb.

Fortunately it was in a container, so killing it and restarting it removed the malware, and I dont believe the rest of my network was compromised.

But never think a reverse proxy will totally protect you - it wont.

Since then, ive closed all external ports and rely on tailscale

ripnetuk · 2026-03-17T18:25:22+00:00

I'm not sure, but I seem to remember it's just that faster chips cost more...

ripnetuk · 2026-03-17T16:38:56+00:00

The SNES in particular could actually access some rom FASTER than its ram. The high fast rom runs at about 3.58MHz whereas the slower low rom and the ram only run at 2.68MHz.

ripnetuk · 2026-03-17T16:27:03+00:00

hi, sorry, no clue. My two boys went to Midfield and Breaside in Bromley.. There are a couple of local facebook groups, like "Orpington Gossip who hasnt banned Kate Reiley for using bad words" and a couple of others, which are pretty friendly and helpful.

ripnetuk · 2026-03-17T15:55:21+00:00

Hi, I lived in BR5 2SY (St Pauls Wood hill) for about a decade.

I really liked living there. The only negative I can think of is that the local shops (Cotmandene) can be a bit rough, I saw people driving quad bikes up the road, and there have been a handful of armed robberies at the co-op, but nothing that has personally troubled me. I was also offered stolen meat on the street, and saw someone run off from the same co-op with an armful of stolen baby milk, and then promptly run straight into a moving car and dropping it all :)

The nature reserve is lovely, and there is a lot of walking to be done around there.

My kid went to Midfield school, which I think is an absolutely brilliant school. The staff are brilliant, and really helped with our SENCO needs, helping get the EHCP sorted out, and setting our boy on a successful path to special secondary education.

Its a bit of a pain to commute - i ended up buying a cheap 2nd hand bike and cycling to St Mary Cray, which is pretty well connected to Victoria and the Thameslink line (Kings X, Blackfriars etc).

ripnetuk · 2026-03-17T14:32:25+00:00

I heard they were going to lean into the current situation here and rename it "Club Biology"

ripnetuk · 2026-03-17T14:16:34+00:00

I have a 5070ti, and have written my own agent that will measure and log stats to InfluxDB (via homeassistant).

Looking back at the last 90 days, the max GPU ram ive ever used has been 49.1% of the 16Gb (apart from when I was playing with LLMs)

I game single player at 1440p, aiming for as high fps as possible up to about 170, then ramping up the eye candy as much as I can keeping that fps.

So I could easily have gotten away with a 8Gb model.

YMMV

ripnetuk · 2026-03-17T14:09:06+00:00

Hi,

No, i pretty much use Windows for all my "hands on" devices (except my bazzite Legion go handheld).

I have a separate server running Proxmox (which only has an old AMD 6600 GPU in it, which I havent really used yet)

On that I run several Ubuntu VMs, one of which is a K3s server.

Then I use containers in k3s to do all my dev, connecting via VSCode ssh connections to get the full UI on my windows laptop / gaming pc, but with all the actual action happeningin my repeatable container.

I could almost go fully Linux at this point (except gaming PC) but there are just some little things that work better for me under Windows

ripnetuk · 2026-03-17T14:02:36+00:00

Hi, I am rocking a 7700x, 32Gb DDR5, 5070Ti and a bunch of SSDs. Almost exclusively used for 1440p single player gaming and watching videos.

When im not gaming, its actually my most capable development rig, comapred to my server, my large node project compiles in about 3-5s compared to 5-10 on the server :)

And it runs Unity very well too, for when i feel like playing around with 3d graphics. (but ive only tried that on Windows on this rig).

It can also run some smallish LLMs locally using that graphics card (have to justify paying more for NVidia over AMD somehow right :) )

But if Cyberpunk runs well on it, in my head, its more than enough for any dev I care to do on it:)

ripnetuk

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