The lonely tech post thread.
- Thread starter Sasaferrato
- Start date
Sasaferrato I have no first hand experience of recorders but my parents like to "tape" things and have been happy with the Humax models they're had over the years.
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
Yes, sorry, should have said.
RoyReed
Must fly!
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Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
That looks impressive, but it is Freeview. It is Freesat that I need.
RoyReed
Must fly!
Apologies - this seems to be the Freesat equivalent:
Recordable 4K TV Box
Hundreds of hours of entertainment. No sky-high TV bills. The Freesat Recordable 4K TV Box covers your every need.
The 1TB version gets the same score of 4.4 at Richer Sounds
Freesat UHD-4X 1TB
Shop for Freesat UHD-4X 1TB HD Recorder 1TB Hard Drive PVR with Richer Sounds for expert advice and lowest prices guaranteed
www.richersounds.com
Mation
real life adventure worth more than pieces of gold
Had a completely wtf moment yesterday, but I might be behind the times.
Recorded some audio - a conversation about care packages - using the Recorder app on my Android phone. Clicked save and went to put in a filename, but found it had already named itself "Carers - Thurs 13 April."
WTF? Is this a new thing?
Haven't yet managed to find anything that says how it did it, but I'm thinking maybe it matched the most common soundwave pattern to a list of lowish-frequency nouns?
Recorded some audio - a conversation about care packages - using the Recorder app on my Android phone. Clicked save and went to put in a filename, but found it had already named itself "Carers - Thurs 13 April."
WTF? Is this a new thing?
Haven't yet managed to find anything that says how it did it, but I'm thinking maybe it matched the most common soundwave pattern to a list of lowish-frequency nouns?
Throbbing Angel
Well-Known Member
Yes, the Google Recorder app does that and can transcribe the recording for you too if you're phone's new enough. Good innit. Your recordings are saved/synced at recorder.google.com
Mation
real life adventure worth more than pieces of gold
Potentially very useful. Somewhat creepy, too. As with all of this stuff, I'm dead excited by the tech and also fearful of its applications.
Does it do it how I speculated, do you know?
Throbbing Angel
Well-Known Member
It latches onto keywords I believe, so it may count them and use the most frequent as a title? I hope it isn't clever enough to discern context, because that's weird.
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
Quick question on secure wiping SSDs? Normally I'd say just dispose of them, but I've got a client who is a social enterprise and they want to retire some laptops and repurpose them, possibly give them to staff.
My first thought was just to DBAN the PCs, but apparently that doesn't work on SSDs. If enable full disk encryption using Bit Locker and then wipe them in Windows so the key is lost, is that good enough, assuming they are to old to have proper TPM.
Failing that I've read there is a clean all function is diskpart which could work? Or does anyone have any free utilities that can be booted from USB which would do the same thing?
My first thought was just to DBAN the PCs, but apparently that doesn't work on SSDs. If enable full disk encryption using Bit Locker and then wipe them in Windows so the key is lost, is that good enough, assuming they are to old to have proper TPM.
Failing that I've read there is a clean all function is diskpart which could work? Or does anyone have any free utilities that can be booted from USB which would do the same thing?
Chz
Stark Raving Sane
Usually the manufacturer (if it's one of the major ones) offers a utility to secure wipe them. This will shorten the lifespan of the drive - SSD cells are only rated for so many R/W cycles.
The diskpart method works in that it's very difficult to recover data that's had that done to, but it's not impossible. You have to make a judgement call on how good is good enough. I would say that unless you're in finance, insurance, or national defense, it's probably good enough.
There are plenty of options if you boot Linux off a USB stick, but then we're getting into the question of just how much effort you're willing to put in.
2hats
Dust.
Use a suitably strong encrypted filesystem and keep the relevant keys on a physically separate device. Then, at end of production life, use the manufacturer's secure erase feature from BIOS/UEFI. This approach also covers you for hardware failure that precludes operation of the hardware's secure erase feature. Failing that, contract an appropriately certified disposal service provider to crush and grind it to dust.
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
I should have mentioned I'd thought about the manufacturers utility, but it's a mix of brands, I'd rather have one process as I'm going to show one of their staff how to do it.
Diskpart seems to be winning then.
Ta. I must get a phone call every few weeks from one of these companies offering to take our old kit away, but I'm trying to keep these ones useable.
Artaxerxes
Look out, he's got a gnu!
Trying to get to grips with Graph, it’s not easy for me.
Spent this morning hacking a powershell script to check room mailboxes and give a summary of activity to do that for specific named User mailboxes instead. (Because we don’t use room mailboxes for the video conference camera kit…).
Relatively simple once I knew where to cut and how to insert the array but had to change a few of the column variables to point to right thing.
Spent this morning hacking a powershell script to check room mailboxes and give a summary of activity to do that for specific named User mailboxes instead. (Because we don’t use room mailboxes for the video conference camera kit…).
Relatively simple once I knew where to cut and how to insert the array but had to change a few of the column variables to point to right thing.
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
Yesterday morning I did a 90 min round trip to turn a modem off and on again. I've at least taken photos so if it happens again I send them directions on how to do.
In the afternoon I did an hours journey because I had a complaint that the Wi-Fi adapter was disabled and his admin credentials weren't working. Nothing was odd in device manager, it just wasn't picking up any networks. So I turned it off and on again.
It's depressing how often this works.
In the afternoon I did an hours journey because I had a complaint that the Wi-Fi adapter was disabled and his admin credentials weren't working. Nothing was odd in device manager, it just wasn't picking up any networks. So I turned it off and on again.
It's depressing how often this works.
souljacker
innit
Should have updated the drivers while you were there. That fixes 50% of all WiFi issues that are affecting a single client.
Artaxerxes
Look out, he's got a gnu!
Don’t talk to me about wifi.
We’ve swapped out like a hundred Meraki APs and they are just not working well
We’ve swapped out like a hundred Meraki APs and they are just not working well
souljacker
innit
I'm what way? I'd recommend paying someone to come in and sort it because the meraki support seemingly don't care.
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
Fair. I should have done that. And checked.
Sometimes the automatic Dell ones disable mine.
Artaxerxes
Look out, he's got a gnu!
Constant loss of SSIDs, dns and dhcp fuck ups. Other stuff. Mostly going between APs
It’s a mess and yeah we are thinking of getting someone in. Project supposed to br done by March
One random thing I spotted is that if the iPhone has Private IP address's in options it doesn’t work sometimes just sticks on negotiating a connection.
souljacker
innit
You don't work at a large museum in London do you? Sounds similar to some problems one of my colleagues is looking into.
Artaxerxes
Look out, he's got a gnu!
Not me guv but let me know he gets on
Chz
Stark Raving Sane
Wifi. Don't talk to me about wifi. Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they tell me to turn it off and on again. Call that job satisfaction? 'Cos I don't. I thought you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed...
two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
What language are linux files written in? For example in /etc/apt the file sources.list starts off:
#deb cdrom:[Linux Mint 20.2 Uma - Release amd64 20210703]/ focal contrib main
# This system was installed using small removable media
so a comment starts with # and a space
a command seems to start with # without a space
I thought I read somewhere that they were written in C but C comments start with /
ta
#deb cdrom:[Linux Mint 20.2 Uma - Release amd64 20210703]/ focal contrib main
# This system was installed using small removable media
so a comment starts with # and a space
a command seems to start with # without a space
I thought I read somewhere that they were written in C but C comments start with /
ta
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
That file is just a list, but it's using a fairly common comment convention, that crops up in many languages, including bash, perl, Python, Ruby, et al.What language are linux files written in? For example in /etc/apt the file sources.list starts off:
#deb cdrom:[Linux Mint 20.2 Uma - Release amd64 20210703]/ focal contrib main
# This system was installed using small removable media
so a comment starts with # and a space
a command seems to start with # without a space
I thought I read somewhere that they were written in C but C comments start with /
ta
two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
How about this, in one of the printer files?
I'm using Bash when using Terminal but these don't seem to be Bash commands. I'd expect them to be since these are just contents of files on my linux system. I'd like to understand a bit of what's going on in there - anywhere recommended that I can study up on it?
Eta: they're bash scripts aren't they? I need to go and study bash.
I'm using Bash when using Terminal but these don't seem to be Bash commands. I'd expect them to be since these are just contents of files on my linux system. I'd like to understand a bit of what's going on in there - anywhere recommended that I can study up on it?
Eta: they're bash scripts aren't they? I need to go and study bash.
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existentialist
Tired and unemotional
There isn't a Linux "language" as such. A lot of the scripts (take a look in /etc/init.d for example) are vanilla bash scripts; quite a lot of the Ubuntu subsystem is written in Python, and then of course there is the kernel itself, which I believe is now written in a sort of mongrel C/C++.
There is almost certainly some kind of configuration file reader library/utility which would encourage apps to use the same feature to manage their own configs, so in a sense the configuration file format is a "language" itself, but usually one that is read in by an application running as a bash script (or maybe even a python program, although the latter has its own internal capabilities for managing configuration files).
The technical difference is that those config files you are looking at are not executable; bash scripts are executable. There are good reasons why you might not want a configuration file to be capable of being executed (think system security).
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