I have an M1 MacBook Air. I use UTM to run a Debian 11 virtual machine.

After the initial setup, updating and upgrading, installing Firefox and a few small programs, (I almost called them apps, d'oh), the Debian.utm file size was about 6GB. Now, less than a month later, it's almost 9GB.

The VM size increases after each use. I haven't downloaded or installed anything close to 3GB worth. I have downloaded files, then put them into the trash and emptied the trash, could the trash not be emptying properly?

I have run ncdu, but nothing stands out. When I drill down into /usr and into each large folder, no sub folder is larger than a few 100MB. I can't see any big files lurking.

I've googled using many search terms, but I can't get past results that are about how to increase the size of a VM that is running out of room.

Thanks very much for reading this, any ideas?

Solution

It was probably my motherboard. I got a new CPU and motherboard and it worked. I also upgraded from DDR3 to DDR4 ram in the upgrade process

Background

So my computer is not posting, and I am unsure the cause. I am not getting an error code, so that complicates things. I do not know if this motherboard will provide post codes, it does not have a seven segment display for providing post codes.

How it started

It just randomly stopped displaying any pictures, unsure if it happened while in use or when the computer was asleep. I was doing stuff at my desk and had music playing on my computer. The music ended and I did not put on more music and the monitors went to sleep. Later when I went to use my computer It did not appear to wake up, I tried fully shutting down and turning on my computer, and that is when this problem occurred.

Symptoms:

• When I power on, computer appears to start normally, with all fans spinning so power delivery appears to be working. Even GPU fans are spinning.
• Holding down the power button turns the computer off as normal.
• Nothing is displayed on the screen, my monitors do not even detect an input.
• USB devices do not appear to be powering on.
• Every minute or two, the GPU fans ramp up briefly, and then ramp down. It may be all fans are ramping up, kind of hard to tell exactly which fans are ramping up.
• With the AMD GPU, the LEDs for power turn on. However, I vaguely recall the GPU itself having some RGB when the system was running that was not on. How my computer was setup I did not see inside my case that often, so the RGB on the GPU is a vague memory from a few years ago and I would not put much weight in there being some RGB.

Hardware:

• MOBO: Gigabyte 9900FXA-UD3
• CPU: AMD FX-8350
• GPU: ASUS Radeon HD7870 or EVGA GTX 970
• PSU: Cooler Master Elite V2 550W

Troubleshooting Attempted:

I initially assumed it was GPU related as the computer appears to turn on normally, but then nothing is displayed. So another user shipped me his old GPU (the GTX 970), and I swapped it out with my old one, and the problem persists.

I tried swapping out the RAM

I tried a brand new PSU and that also did not solve the issue

Leading hypothesis

Since I have changed everything out except CPU and MOBO, I am thinking it is probably my MOBO. I am currently researching my options for replacing my MOBO, or a friend offered me his CPU and RAM from his old rig with a broken MOBO that may be a better option than replacing mine.

I've been struggling with this for a long time. I want to keep my workflow consistent independent of my "workstation", and have identical dotfiles (like .bashrc, .vimrc etc.) on different devices.

So... How you personally deal with this issue, and what should I do?

Thanks!

tldr; W11 bluetooth doesn't work with multiple cards. It will see devices but will not pair. Same hw pairs under Linux.

hey folks. I posted this to /r/techsupport on reddit and for some reason they say they don't support Windows 11 Enterprise... and it took them a day to tell me instead of using automod. I thought this was both funny and the dumbest thing. Anyway, here's a fun little issue I'm trying to sort out.

Windows 11 Enterprise 22h2 (22621.3810)

About two weeks ago (after a year of having this system) my bluetooth decided not to pair with anything. It will see devices and try to pair, but it never goes through.

I have tried:

• a different wireless card / bt combo (PCIE)
• removing the wireless / bt combo and using a bt dongle
• removing all drivers (show hidden devices etc), rebooting clean, reinstalling
• changing the USB connection to the mobo for the PCIE card
• live boot of latest Ubuntu LTS -- successfully paired DS4 controller and Sony Headphones

The event logs for Bluetooth Policy are all positive (e.g. A connection to a remote device 0xA4538553B7FD was successfully established) -- but nothing is paired.

This happened on a day when I added two HDDs to the box and ran updates etc. I also tried everything above without the drives installed without any luck.

Any ideas?

notes:

• I just finished with a W11 windows-to-go install off a super slow USB and I wasn't able to pair headphones or the DS4, but I did pair some sony TW earbuds. I'm sensing a fresh install in my future.

Fellow PC builders, here's a fun one for you.

I took some "old" and no-longer-used PC parts and built my sister-in-law a gaming PC for her and her stepdaughter to use. It was a Christmas gift so the stepdaughter could play the Sims.

She has called me three times to tell me it's completely frozen - like hard locked, dead freeze, screen is displaying the last frame it was on but you can't interact with the PC in any way until you reset it with the power button.

She let it sit for an hour before she gave up. Two times this happened while stepdaughter was playing the Sims 4 and once it happened while my brother-in-law was watching YouTube videos.

Obviously, I went through the usual things you'd think in this situation and I had her bring the PC over so I could do some digging. Fully expecting to find a hardware issue, I tried the following:

1. I ran the Sims while also watching multiple YouTube videos in the background. Couldn't replicate the issue after about two hours.

2. I obviously checked the temperatures while gaming and YouTubing, checked the usual performance metrics and everything was great.

3. Ran OTTC stress tests - all of them. Under heavy loads, this thing was doing fine. Even at 100% utilization, the memory, graphics card, and cpu were fine. Did a power test too, fine. Did a "combined" stress test and all was fine.

4. Ran mem86, no issues with the memory, no bad sectors or errors.

5. Played Skyrim on ultra for several hours. This was a really fun way to troubleshoot.

6. Checked the event log from the day she had freezes. I can see where the event happened because leading up to the unexpected "power off" event, there were a ton of events related to various processes timing out. Seems like it was unable to connect with services and run certain background processes while it was frozen? I didn't see anything that really stood out to me as being a possible cause except...

7. in the event viewer, there were a few events related to Microsoft family safety. I set this up at the request of SIL so stepdaughter wouldn't get into anything she shouldn't. In the Event Viewer, it seems like maybe it wasn't verifying something correctly or didn't have permissions it needed? Upon Googling, I found some other folks with this error but I couldn't find anything about whether it caused freezing or not. Seems like one of the many events that just gives a warning but doesn't have any effect. One guy who had this issue had his computer freeze but disabling the family safety entirely did nothing. People in the comments thought it probably wasn't related. I also found another event that Google wasn't very helpful with. Might have been related to sound card but my sound card drivers are up to date and again, I have not been able to replicate the issue even when gaming and watching videos, so I don't know if it's related.

8. I ran the Windows System Files Checker and found no issues related to my Windows install.

I can't figure out why this would be happening only at her house. She says it froze after one hour of use every time. This brings me to the title of this post. My SIL moved into a really old house with sketchy wiring. My FIL told her the wiring is so bad that she needs to get it fixed immediately or risk a fire, so she's working on that. This house has a butler stairway, asbestos, and plaster/lathe walls if that tells you what we're dealing with here. This is the ONLY thing I can think of that would possibly be different between the two setups and maybe explain the freezing, but it just seems so unlikely to me that this is the cause.

Help?

I have managed to install and configure something called NextDNS on both of my devices and most browsers, even though the documentation seems to be made with more tech-savvy people in mind. So far so good. I turned on all the available blocklists, but a lot of strange looking (to me) traffic is still getting through. I'm assuming some of it is benign, but how do I evaluate which addresses I should block or not? I'll list some examples below.

init.ess.apple.com
init-p01md.apple.com
bag.itunes.apple.com
gsp-ssl.ls.apple.com
gspe35-ssl.ls.apple.com
pki-goog.l.google.com
For these, the service offers the following information: 'Provides advertising or advertising-related services such as data collection, behavioral analysis or retargeting.' Sounds like something I wouldn't want to enable. When it comes to the iTunes one, I don't use iTunes and don't even have it installed (don't ask how I managed to get rid of it - it took several days worth of trial and error..). One of these, pki-goog.l.google.com is listed as 'dangerously prevalent (tracks 21.23% of web traffic)'.

Then again, the same general description is sometimes given to addresses that seem legit, such as:
time.apple.com
weather-data.apple.com

Some are indecipherable to me and don't come with any sort of description:
fp2e7a.wpc.phicdn.net
init.ess.g.aaplimg.com
get-bx.g.aaplimg.com
ocsp2.g.aaplimg.com
ocsp.pki.goog

Some descriptions are kind of vague:
a2047.dscapi9.akamai.net
apis.apple.map.fastly.net
'Content delivery network that delivers resources for different site utilities and usually for many different customers.'

Some seem to be doing tasks that are definitely wanted:
ocsp.digicert.com
'Digicert Trust Seal - Includes tag managers, privacy notices, and technologies that are critical to the functionality of a website.'

Then there's an Amazon Web Service, go-updater-1830831421.us-west-2.elb.amazonaws.com, listed as very prevalent (tracks 5.5% of web traffic) that has been contacting my phone even though I haven't done any shopping or product related searches. What is this and should I block it?

And so on and so on. Is there any logic to these that I can follow? I tried google searching some to no avail.

Came home today and found wet clothes in the dryer. Which was weird because earlier, I had found the same load in there wet and just thought I had forgotten to start the dryer. Low and behold, when I stood and watched it, about ten seconds after starting it, it started beeping and gave out an F01 error code.

While googling it, it seemed that the code meant the relay electronics board had failed and needed to be replaced. I thought, I can probably do that, but the board seemed to be more than $150, which is more than the callout fee on our home warranty ($125). But what we most needed was a working dryer!

While looking for the exact price and a source to order the board, I found this video describing a simple fix for a blown solder connection. I unplugged the washer, opened it up, and the board was blown in the exact same spot as in the video. I soldered a jumper in, put it back together, and lo and behold, the dryer runs!

I have an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering, even though it hasn't been my day job in a long time. So I could at least evaluate the plausibility of the fix, and I had the tools and know-how to do the soldering. So definitely not a fix for everyone.

Money is tight right now, so fixing the dryer for $0 (and in half an hour no less) was big for us. Sometimes you need a win, and today was a day I really needed one!

What fixes around the house are you most proud of, saved you some money, or kept a piece of equipment out of the landfill?

Really hoping there’s an easy fix for this, because it’s making using my phone a pain. Relevant info:

• I never actually set up a fingerprint, and have only used passwords.
• phone memory is almost full (I have too many photos I still haven’t offloaded, I don’t use iCloud)
• I did drop the phone earlier today, but there was no visible external damage
• case does not cover the home button
• I’ve tried force restart, it didn’t work

Long story short--I don't want to connect my mac to my iCloud account, but every time I login to my laptop, I get three popups in a row that say "This Mac Can't connect to iCloud because of a problem with [my email] ...".

I can't find a setting that allows me to disable this, and online searches have been fruitless.

Edit2: I'm a mac user who doesn't understand how windows explorer works. Leaving the post for some hapless mac user who may come along. Windows explorer doesn't report how it is traversing the directory tree, leading to some confusion about where the search result is, which happens to be waaaay down in a zip of a mac application installer I had inadvertantly archived on the Windows disk. I would ask any windows users, how do I make powershell ls | select-string "text" behave like ls | grep "text" on unix?

edit3: Also, why the fudge would windows explorer search find <weird characters>net but not dotnet when typing 'net' into the search box?

So I download the occasional, um, linux distro installation video. I use a vpn and private firefox windows for most.

I'm doing some clean up today, and find a file with a bunch of strange characters, including the text characters, "net." "M⌐⌐v├▒├┼⌐▒net" is the filename listed in the properties window. Inside are a series of .ase files with mostly unrecognizable names.

I don't see the filename when doing an ls in powershell of the directory reported in explorer.

doing ls | select-string "net" in powershell results in an unending peristalsis of weird text like you might get from a binary file viewed in a text editor. I do notice, however, that some of the text might be from inside a zip file. But why is select-string searching inside the zip file? ls seems to ouptut only filepath information. Upon further investigation, the zip file is several directories down, it appears adding | select-string to ls makes ls travel the full tree. Wut?

And when I say undending, I mean it kept going until I hit ctrl-c.

Any ideas to what is happening here?

Incidentally, I opened one of the ASE files by right-click->view file in notepad+, which never launched.

Edit: lots of edits.

Specifications:

Computer: Framework 13" DIY Edition.

• 32GB RAM
• 11th Gen i7-1185G7
• Windows 11 Pro

Browser: Brave Browser

• Current Version

Displays:

• Samsung LC27JG50QQNZA Series Curved 27in
• HP VH240a

Dock:

• Dell WD19TB Thunderbolt Docking Station.

Issue:

• If I move it to the HP display it stops.
  • sometimes when I move it back it continues and sometimes it doesn't.
• If I try and capture it via the built in screen recorder in windows it doesn't show up in the recording.

Have any of you had this experience or know what is causing this?

P.S. Thank you in advance for whoever corrects my tags and title which seams to happen evetime I post. I'm still trying to learn the correct way to post here on Tildes.

***EDIT***

• My monitor also blinks now and then video starts to slide
• I've only gotten it to reproduce on Brave Browser.
• I put Firefox and Brave side by side when it started happening. When I clicked on the Firefox browser it stopped. Then when I clicked on to Brave browser it started again... Like WHAT!?
• With the browsers side by side the video on the brave browser started to slide again but now slid across both browsers...
• Every time I try to record it stops... It's mocking me at this point.

Hi all - I need some help troubleshooting my internet and really don't feel like dealing w/ customer service reps. I don't consider myself a tech savvy person, so I'm wondering what this community might know..

I've been having issues with my internet for a while. we have xfinity with a plan that promises up to 1000mbps. I'm lucky if i get up to 250 on a good day. beyond that, we constantly lose connection, or get very slow connectivity. i'm using a Netgear c7000v2 as my modem/wifi router combo paired with a Google Nest Mesh router. My home is roughly 1000 sqft footprint split level. my computer is in a different room, but there's no doors between and about 600 ft from the modem/mesh routers.

i called xfinity to talk about the issue, they said that my modem likely needed to be replaced. the initial modem was also a Netgear c7000v2, but i figured maybe the hardware just burnt out(?) they sent me an xfinity modem, and everything seemed to work great (still not 1000mbps, but definitely better). when I realized they were charging me more than I was willing to pay monthly for a rental fee on the modem, i decided i'd go back out and buy a new modem. i bought a Netgear c7000v2 again, because it should be able to handle those speeds, and to my understanding is a decent enough modem. i also bought a new coaxial cable to double check. but after replacing, my internet is still spotty and constantly goes in and out.

i don't have any device to plug directly into the ethernet cable (because it's 2023...), so i can't pinpoint the issue through that. i haven't had an xfinity tech come out yet, because apparently that takes anywhere from 6-8 weeks to get a visit...

any ideas on what i should do? part of me is convinced that xfinity is throttling my internet because I'm not using their modem and paying them a rental fee, but i don't want to give into conspiratorial thinking...i'm about to file an FTC complaint on them because I'm just fed-up at this point.

This is my first Tildes post and I'll remove it if needed!

I recently dumped some photos from an old cell phone on to an old windows 10 laptop to be stored on an external hard drive.

The phone is a 4 year old Galaxy with 128g onboard storage.

The laptop is an HP running windows 10 and is a notebook-like machine with about 30g total hard drive, the max usable is like 4 or 5 gigs after the OS etc.

At the time of transferring files, I found it quicker to use the available 2.5 gigs I had to put pictures directly on the laptop and then transfer them from there to the external hard drive.

Here is my problem:

2 folders, from separate camping trips, totalling about 380 photos and a few videos are stuck on the desktop and are claiming to take up 4.02 terabytes and thus cannot be moved.

I did notice the file type .heic is not recognized by windows 10, but all my other photos (several thousand,) are the same file type and take up a normal amount of space.

These individual photos in question are claiming to be around 7 to 8 gigs each.

There's not 4 TB between the phone(128g,) laptop(30g,) and the external drive(3tb.)

So the pictures are stuck on this laptop which is only acting as a surrogate computer while I'm building a real desktop PC.

I can keep this laptop forever, even though I'd rather donate it or something, but one of these folders has pictures from the last camping trip with my brother before he took his own life last year, I'd really like to keep them archived and backed up.

Any ideas? Anyone have a similar experience? Thank you for reading and thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Again, I'll delete this post if it's inappropriate.

Cheers.

EDIT: I just realized while proof reading this, that if I can update the codecs where windows can view the files, I could screenshot the photos, but that still leaves me at a loss for the videos.
I miss his goofy laugh, and want to preserve it for his son also.

I’ve been running into a minor annoyance of late, I tend to get logged out of ~ on a page refresh (I.e., pull the screen down) on iOS after about a day or less. I have also noticed that my outlook web also does a thing where it seems to forget that I’m signed in under an account, and asks me to input an email, but if I refresh, there’s a 50/50 shot it will see I’m logged in and drop me into the outlook web client.

I recall some of these threads from a few years ago here (but having issues finding them in search) and seem to remember the consensus being “check your add-ons”…. But this is happening on the super nerfed Firefox for iOS (I.e., there are no add-in’s to my knowledge).

I’m running Ffirefox 115 if that helps at all

First, forgive me for I am a first time DOSbox user. My O/S is Windows 10 home 64-bit

I went to old games and grabbed Doom & Doom II. I use to play these quite a bit and remember them fondly. I did the easy setup which added DOSbox 0.74 and the game. It loads up and runs just like I remember with the keyboard, just no mouse.

I did searching online, but the only solutions seem to be making sure autolock=true in the config file, and using cntl-F10 to capture the mouse. Toggling cntl-F10 does seem to grab the mouse in that the cursor disappears, but the mouse still will not function in either full screen or windowed mode.

I seem to be missing something obvious, but for the life of me I just don't see it. I'm reasonably computer savvy, but feeling stupid at the moment.

Any advice would be appreciated. TIA

Edit: Forked over the 5 bucks and went with the Steam version. Works perfectly.
Thank you everyone for your advice.

I'm having some trouble getting the local developer environment set up on Apple hardware, specifically it seems because Virtualbox, which is used as the provider, is not properly functioning on Apple hardware.

Is there anyone here who has managed to get it up and running?

I use Firefox for Android. One thing I love about some web apps are when they designed to be a "installable" Progressive Web App (PWA). It looks like Tildes doesn't support that. Perhaps it's a silly question, but does anyone by chance know if this can be forced to some degree? (Beyond adding a shortcut to one's desktop.)

Without an app available yet, that's my next go to normally. (Yep, I said yet. I'm eager to see your first release, @talklittle. 💜)

And ye

I currently have a Lenovo N42 Chromebook far past it's EoL, for which Google is no longer supporting it. I have put Chrome OS Flex on it by reflashing the bios, and it's pretty solid, but I have no internal audio. Bluetooth audio and HDMI works fine, but no headphones, and no speakers.

I found this solution for trying to hack in an Alsa configuration from an Ubuntu Live Disk (https://www.reddit.com/r/chromeos/comments/swzxsy/comment/irk5kqk/) and I was able to follow the instructions and enable development mode, but when I try to run the alsaconfig script, I get this.

crosh> shell
chronos@localhost / $ sudo alsarestore
No state is present for card chtrt5650
/usr/sbin/alsactl: sysfs_init:48: sysfs path '/sys' is invalid

Found hardware: "chtrt5650" "" "" "" ""
Hardware is initialized using a generic method
No state is present for card chtrt5650

It may have something to do with those instructions being for a different build computer, but I am outside my sphere of knowledge, and anything else I could troubleshoot would be appreciated. Internal audio isn't mission critical for me, but it would be appreciated.

[SOLVED]

Thank you so much for everyone's support and suggestions, it seems that I may have overreacted a little bit. One of the things that I did was send a form to Google, but the form was not really for this issue, so I wasn't hopeful at all. To my surprise, I received a message just now with instructions to recover the account and change the 2-factor phone number to my mother's current one. The cause of the issue is not clear, but whatever it was, they sorted it out. She is obviously ecstatic, when I went to her house two days ago I couldn't disguise my pessimism.

I set her recovery email to my own and will generate recovery codes shortly, so we're good for now. I instructed her on how to download all her data from Google (it's easier than I thought), just because this made her quite paranoid, and I'll take the opportunity to gradually move my family out of Google, as well as myself. Thanks for being so supportive, this was very stressful, to say the least! Sometimes it's nice to know we're not alone ;)

Original post

So, for some reason Google logged my mother of everything at once: browsers in two laptops and two smartphones (one Android and one iPhone). Trying to recover the account sends a message to a cellphone number she no longer has. I understand Google is basically unreachable, but there must be something I can do, right? We're not famous, but she does pay for YouTube Premium.

My child (who does not live with me) has a PC. He's pretty good at sorting problems out for himself, but he sometimes needs extra help. We've tried doing this over phone and video calls, and it's an unfun experience for both of us.

Is there a remote access software that would fit our needs? I want to be able to connect to his computer over the Internet and have some level of control when he's logged into his account. I'd need to be able to open files, I wouldn't have to be able to save them. He's using Windows 11. I think he's using the home version. I'm using Windows 10 Pro. We both have reasonably good Internet speed.

For the first time in what feels like decades, I have been unable to find a solution myself or via the ol' googling so I turn to the wonderful people of Tildes for assistance with a clearly critical issue...

Background Information:
Newly built gaming PC (a day old, the reason I've been gone from Tildes for the last week, I know you all missed me, I missed you too)
Windows 10
HyperX headphones plugged in via USB
5.1 speaker setup plugged in via back panel and set as default audio device
Logitech G910 keyboard

Issue:
Volume control knob on keyboard will only control headphones volume despite headphones not being the default device.
Knob will control speakers if I unplug the USB to the headphones or disable the headphones in control panel.
Previous build had the same speakers, headphones, and keyboard setup and worked with no issue, volume knob would control whatever audio device was in use/selected in the taskbar "Select Playback Device" dropdown. I'd swap to headphones during a call/gaming with friends, swap back to speakers for normal day to day use.

Ideas? I've already tried all of the uninstall/reinstall driver options I can think of.

I need to put Linux on a laptop, but I'm afraid I may not be around to upgrade to major versions (which usually means reinstalling everything) and maintaining the machine. Something like Arch or Manjaro (which I use) might be good because I wouldn't ever need to reinstall the OS, but stability leaves a lot to be desired for a non-technical user. So I was thinking of getting something with an enormous support lifecycle, like Rocky Linux (10 years). Is that a terrible idea?

I subscribe to quite a few youtube channels to get notified when there are new videos posted. I've had this set up for several years.

Today I tried to add a new channel I've discovered. My RSS reader informs me it's blocked. I check all the other youtube feeds. Every single one of them reports "Error transferring <feed url>." server replied Forbidden (201).

Update: One day later and every feed is connecting and transferring again. It seems to be a temporary block. My IP address has changed overnight though so that's still my main suspicion.

It seems like I'm not the only victim

That contains a link to the author's issue on google's issue tracker

The official response is

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29752447/how-to-get-a-youtube-channel-rss-feed-after-2015-april-20-without-v3-api


They completely misunderstood the question - it's not asking how to find a feed, it's asking why that feed is getting blocked.

Not only this but using DuckDuckGo bangs for to search google get randomly sent to a captcha page - issuing the exact same query a second time goes through perfectly. The same is happening with keyword searches I set up in my browser. .

Any ideas what to do about this?

So sick of google's monopoly.

I'm starting to get tired of being complacent about the fact that I am using Google's services when I'm well beyond the 'reasonable doubt' phase of Google being evil. They're a giant monopoly and I want to stop making them money as much as I possibly can.

Thankfully, I'm not as badly intertwined with them as I could be; I have already downloaded all the music I bought from them and since I have switched to iPhone, I'm not reliant on too many of their services. They do have some of my old files and pictures, but that shouldn't be too hard to get out. The biggest problem I can see is my email. Right now I'm actually paying $4/mo for an Amazon WorkMail account for a failed venture (which I'm planning on getting rid of), but I'm sure there are much better alternatives out there. I'd prefer something that has good spam filtering options including custom filtering. I was also wondering if anyone would recommend Apple's email service since I'm already paying for iCloud+ to store my backups.

Another more specific recommendation I need is for a replacement to Google Authenticator that works on iPhone. It looks like there are several options but I'm frankly not sure how to evaluate them.

If you have any other resources you'd like to share, please feel free to share.

Long story short, I wiped my keyboard with a moist towel and I knocked out exactly 6 keys on my mid-2020 MacBook Pro (Magic Keyboard, A2251).

I'm now looking at either paying $300+ to have it serviced by a technician. But I have the tempting option of buying an aftermarket replacement keyboard for less than $100 and replacing it myself. That + I'm in the spirit of DIY repairs to keep my things going longer.

Has anyone attempted this before? Any tips and advice?

It seems slightly daunting because the keyboard is adhered to the aluminium body so I would have to literally tear the existing one off.

I currently dual-boot Arch and Windows and just use the Windows EFI partition in Arch as well, however I only have about 13 MB of space left on it.

I’d like to try installing Gentoo on an extra SSD I have with nothing on it, but don’t really want to have a second EFI partition if I can avoid it.

So my question is, can I shrink the Windows main partition towards the right and expand the the Windows EFI partition into the newly freed space?

I know we already have more than enough launchers for the PC platform, but are there any recommendations for the one that can rule them all, with the controller functionality and presentation of Steam's Big Picture Mode, but also with the modularity and ease of setup of GOG Galaxy? Or is it pretty much one of the above as far as easy options go?

Edit: Took a look at Playnite, really impressed. Deeper impressions in the thread.

Hi,

I would like to run a Tildes instance on a VPS, using a custom domain.

QUESTION:

Is it possible to install and serve Tildes directly on a VPS? (eliminate Vagrant / VirtualBox entirely)

Being a solo dev, it feels like Vagrant / VB adds excess complexity for little benefit.

• note 1: I tried the Vagrant / VB install method (on an Ubuntu VPS), and hit some errors - all related to Vagrant / VB.

• note 2: I found this 3-year old comment of Deimos’ instructions, though I'm guessing it's out of date, since the code has changed a lot in 3 years (salts, minions, etc).

If it IS possible to install and serve Tildes directly on a VPS - what is the best / simplest way to do it in 2022?

I will very much appreciate any ideas.

As some are aware, my NAS hates me. Anyway, I ran an update just now and it spat out the following:

Setting up linux-firmware (1.187.27) ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.13.0-30-generic
I: The initramfs will attempt to resume from /dev/sdb2
I: (UUID=e6480da4-95f0-4cf3-a047-a43ef09f978f)
I: Set the RESUME variable to override this.
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.11.0-27-generic
I: The initramfs will attempt to resume from /dev/sdb2
I: (UUID=e6480da4-95f0-4cf3-a047-a43ef09f978f)

UUID=e6480da4-95f0-4cf3-a047-a43ef09f978f is /swap.

/dev/sdb2: UUID="e6480da4-95f0-4cf3-a047-a43ef09f978f" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="329487d0-88c7-4d47-ab82-dc4b80bd3bfe"

The full log is below. If I reboot this thing, will it tell me that it cannot find GRUB like the previous installation that shit the bed?

My assumption is that its simply telling me that it's enabled some sort of hibernation and will use the /swap for that.. but I'm totally on edge with this thing. I don't have a lot to set up with the system-side of things, so I put off trying to fix the old installation from the previous post until later.

Anyway, does anything here seem fishy?

edit:

UUID=842ddd01-963f-4cea-b04f-a52b6b719a16 /          ext4  errors=remount-ro 0   1
# /boot was on /dev/sdb1 during installation
UUID=5cfbef39-3eb7-41e6-8223-e6881b4f3286 /boot      ext4  defaults          0   2
# /home was on /dev/sdb3 during installation
UUID=4f30a4a2-9f28-4831-a22c-dc5b969c4f17 /home      ext4  defaults          0   2
# swap was on /dev/sdb2 during installation
UUID=e6480da4-95f0-4cf3-a047-a43ef09f978f none       swap  tf                0   0

A few months ago I got a new to me HP Proliant ML310e Gen8. For the most part it works well, but I went to add some drives to it yesterday and grub / whateverthefuck doesn't like the one and only kernel that is installed.

I'm running Ubuntu 20.04. I looked around saw guides like this. this, and this -- but I'm not sure if this will fix the issue.

After grub I get the ol'

---[end Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0) ]---

I think I need to run something with initramfs or something, but I just want to be sure before I go messing around.

The bad kernel listed is 5.11.0-27-generic. I'm a little out of my element with this part of things.

Alright, so I fell down a rabbit hole of trying to understand a whole bunch of techy things that I don't fully understand and could use some help:

What I'm looking for: a pair of Bluetooth wireless earbuds that I can pair with my computer, with low enough latency that it won't impair my enjoyment in casual gaming/video watching

What I understand so far: Almost nothing. 😔 I get that Bluetooth will always have some level of latency, but, beyond that, I've got nothing. I'm so confused.

There are lots of different versions of Bluetooth, and then there are different Bluetooth protocols within that, and then different audio codecs, and each piece of hardware seems to support completely different combinations of those, and I'm not sure if the devices have to match configurations or even how to figure out what my computer supports? It seems Bluetooth will gracefully fall back to worse codecs/protocols if better ones are incompatible, but I don't really want to buy something that's just going to fall back to its worst usecase.

I also don't know what's an "acceptable" level of latency. What's reasonable versus what's intolerable?

It also seems like the information I read online is subject to rapid decay. I read a bunch of stuff only a few years old saying I should look for aptX Low Latency capability, but then I read very recent posts saying that's dead and to go with aptX Adaptive instead. Meanwhile there are a handful of gaming-focused headsets that say they're low latency but don't really say how (e.g. Razer's Hammerhead). And some, like Samsung's buds, having a "gaming mode" but it only works on special hardware.

Also, how do I know what my computer itself will support? Is there anything I can do from the computer side to reduce latency, or is that strictly a function of what my hardware supports and which earbuds I buy?

My usecase:

My computer is a System 76 Oryx Pro (5) running Pop!_OS 21.10. I think its Bluetooth adapter is version 5.1 (though I'm not confident on that). I do not know which protocols/codecs it supports, nor how to find that out.

Audio quality isn't too important. These will be for everyday video-watching and gaming, which is what's prompting the latency requirement. I'd rather them be responsive than rich.

Active noise cancelling would be nice to have (especially if it has a toggleable transparency mode), but I don't know if ANC adds latency and is therefore incompatible with what I'm wanting.

I don't have a specific budget for it, and that's honestly the least important requirement. If the solution exists I'm fine paying for it (within reason, of course). These will end up getting used for thousands of hours, so even a big price difference upfront will even out over time.

I'd appreciate any help anyone can offer in pointing me in the right direction on this!

hey tilders,

so I mostly read tildes.net content through my RSS reader, and it's 98% great. the remaining 2% is due to two things:

• HTML entities (fancy quotes, etc) don't degrade nicely; I get a lot of &#xxx; in my feed reader - Edited topics (I think) get posted twice to the RSS feed, giving me duplicate items.

I don't know how hard it might be to fix these issues, but is there anything I can do to help?

I have an HTPC (a shitty asRock beebox) away from my main router and all. For the most part the wireless signal is fine, but it can act up at times or completely cut out.

The design of the beebox is bad for wireless. I get a more consistent connection running from USB C > USB hub > USB Wireless stick -- but it still isn't great.

I'm thinking I should just bit the bullet and use ethernet. Would it be better to go with powerline or a wireless bridge for this? The reviews for powerline stuff are all over the board.

The HTPC pulls everything off the LAN, so outside speeds are about 99% irrelevant. The most it'll ever pull is metadata for Kodi's library, and even then it doesn't pull a lot.

Which is best? I'm running an RT AC68U running Merlin if that matters. I also saw a lot of gripes re: the AI Mesh stuff.

I don't use Windows 10 all that much, but there's a Windows laptop in the house that I use from time to time.

I generally wait like a year before upgrading, but I heard Windows 11 has better support for running Linux GUI applications with the Windows Linux Subsystem 2. Command-line Emacs is fine but is not exactly the same and there is no clipboard integration. That is the sole reason I'm thinking of upgrading. I don't care about any details or aesthetic changes, since I'll just make everything look and feel more like Windows 7 anyway. I just wanna know if it's stable enough, and if it will get in my way.

Thanks!

For the life of me I am unable to find the "up next" area to watch things I have added to watch. The left top of the screen has the AppleTV+ logo, and the right top has the settings. Can any of you help me get this sorted?

So I rescued an old TV from the trash, appears to be a Hitachi Rear Projection TV, no obvious model number available, and when I try to power it on, it will display just fine, but it has no audio coming out UNLESS I turn it over to antenna input, in which case it has bone rattling analog static. This is the US where everyone changed over to digital television, so not super helpful, and while I could do some sound splitting magic, that seems like a waste if there are already good speakers. So I have come to you, honored Tildos, for assistance in pointing me in the right direction on whether or not this television's speakers can be saved.

Internet in my fiancee's house is weird. Once I open up a domain, going to links in the same domain is quite fast, but if I try opening another domain in another tab it is super slow. On Chrome it is really bad, Firefox is better but still sluggish. This occurs similarly on different devices running Windows, Linux, and Android. What could be causing this?

I have a CalDigit TS3+ dock that I switch between my M1 Macbook Pro and a System76 Galago Pro that's currently running Windows 10 (I'm sorry, FOSS gods). The M1 has no problem using the TS3+ when it's connected or disconnected and reconnected. But the Galago Pro will only connect to the dock if it was connected while booting up. Disconnecting and reconnecting leaves the dock in a state where only the pass-through thunderbolt port works. So my monitor that uses the pass-through for DisplayPort can operate after reconnecting the dock, but no other devices plugged into the dock will. My mouse/keyboard for example don't even receive power in this state.

Oddly when setting up the drivers for thunderbolt I found that the only drivers available are for Intel's NUCs. IIRC someone on reddit said that this is actually the software I need to install, so that's what I did.

Any help getting the dock to work better is appreciated! Currently I need to reboot the laptop every time I switch back from the M1 to the Galago Pro.

Hey Tildes!

I need some help with a specific tech issue, and I'm sure someone here can help me do it way quicker than I would be able to on my own.

General Request

I'd like to be able to scan a directory and find all of the largest files of a specific type (e.g. the largest .jpg files). I'm running Pop!_OS and I'm assuming there's some way to do this in the terminal, or alternately some utility I could use.

More Specific Details

I'm cleaning up my digital music library, and I realized in setting it up I made some errors by saving some very high res cover art. Many of my Bandcamp purchases come with a cover.jpg or cover.png file that is several megabytes large. I made the mistake of writing these into the files (adding, for some albums, an extra, say, 100 MB across all tracks). They also take a lot longer to load when I pull them up in my cloud music player. I'd like to be able to identify the albums with the largest cover.* files so that I can go in and replace the album art with a lower res version and gain back all that wasted space lost to unnecessary duplication.

I could go folder by folder and take a look at the sizes of each, but I figure there's an easier way to surface the ones that need my attention. Everything I've looked at online so far has helped me figure out how to identify the biggest files in general, but all that will do is surface the actual audio files, when it's the cover art that needs the specific attention.

Also, in case it's necessary information, the directory structure is Music/[artist]/[album]/cover.*

Any help will be very appreciated!

EDIT: Crisis averted! The problem was with the modem and not the devices connecting to it. I'm not sure why the first person I called at the ISP couldn't help me. In reality, the second person I called also didn't help, but something magically started working after talking with them a second time and rebooting the modem about 5 more times, so it turns out I don't need a new WiFi router at this time. That said, I will take these suggestions to heart, as I may be buying one anyway as a backup for when this inevitably happens again.

TL;DR: I probably need a new wifi router and want one that isn't malware and will work even if the company I bought it from goes under or stops making it.

Long version:
So today my wifi stopped working. I use an Apple Airport Extreme (the tower one that has a Time Machine backup in it). I've had it for 5 or 10 years and it's worked fine during that time, other than replacing the hard drive it backs up to. My spouse and I were sitting on the couch after lunch surfing the web on our phones, when we suddenly couldn't reach anything. The router itself appears fine. We can connect to it and see other devices that are connected to it, but for some reason, it's no longer communicating with the cable modem via the WAN port. It still backs up the computers in our house, though. I have tested the cable that was connecting it to the cable modem, and it appears fine. I can connect my computer directly to the cable modem without issue using the same cable. So my guess is that the WAN port is hosed.

However, I'm suspicious that something else is going on for 2 reasons. #1, the cable company (Spectrum) made me replace my cable modem last week. I did that, got my Airport connected to it, and after a call to tech support got it up and running. It's been working for the past week. I suspect the modem may have updated or changed configuration without me knowing it and that's the real cause here. They sent me a Wifi router with the modem, but will charge me $5.00/month if I keep it. I'd rather own the hardware. #2, I have an older Airport Express that was working the last time I used it. I replaced it with the newer model about 5 years ago so I could do backups. It fails to work in the same way. It seems like the WAN port isn't communicating with the cable modem. So, if there's some way to verify that the WAN ports on my Airports are or aren't working, I'd be interested to hear about it.

I am able to connect a wired ethernet switch to the cable modem and all devices on the switch can see the Internet just fine. I tried connecting both Airports to the switch via their WAN ports while the switch was connected to the cable modem, but that did not work. (Or at least, I couldn't connect to the internet via either Airport.)

So, on the off-chance that both my Airports have a similar failure, I need to replace them. I have gotten suggestions from others, but have been pretty unhappy with them. I have the following requirements:

• Absolutely must not store any information about me in the cloud (for example as Ubiquiti apparently does)
• Absolutely must not rely on any sort of connection to the manufacturer to work properly and must not phone home without my permission
• Preferably not a poorly made device that will die in 3 years
• Must work properly and at full speed with Apple devices
• Must not require a phone app to configure
• Must have ~3 ethernet ports so I can hardwire in my TV devices (AppleTV, TiVo, etc.)

Things I don't need, but aren't a deal-breaker if it has it:

• The ability to configure every little setting. I prefer to set it and forget it.
• Mesh networking. My house is not huge, the cable modem is in the middle of the house and my single Airport base station has good coverage of the entire house.

If you know of any device like this, please share!

Edit:

This was resolved by @tomf (cf. this comment).

Google’s account authentication appears to broken for me for some reason.

I have several devices and several Google accounts accumulated over the years.

Accounts:

1. Work Google account (this was set up by IT staff at the company where I work as they are a paying enterprise Google services customer)
2. Undergraduate University account (this was set up when I attended undergrad, where the University is a paying Google services customer)
3. Graduate University account (this was set up when I attended for grad school, where the University is a paying Google services customer)
4. Personal Google account (this was set up a long time ago, it’s just a non-paid, consumer Google account)

Under iOS and iPad OS, Google apparently asks you to download the official Google app in order to sign in and “trust” devices, so that they can send you prompts to acknowledge when you sign in on other devices. There is also the Google Authenticator app that lets you do traditional 2FA.

Further background, I got an iPhone 12 Pro circa October 2020. I gave my old iPhone handset to my dad (after signing out of everything and resetting it according to Apple’s instructions). Ever since, I’ve been having issues with logging into my Google accounts from the new iPhone, my iPad, and my Mac (provided by work). I’m actually afraid to log out of my work Google account on my work Mac, because I’m afraid I won’t be able to log in again, and that would prevent me from being able to get work done.

For example, let me walk through the steps I would normally take to log in to my Undergraduate University Google account on my iPad:

1. Open the Google app
2. Tap user icon in top right corner
3. From the modal menu, tap the downward chevron (circled in red)
4. Tap “Add another account” (circled in red)
5. Tap “Continue” on the confirmation widget when prompted
6. Enter the Gmail address for the account in the provided “Email or phone” input box and tap “Next”
7. At this point, I wait for the progress indicator (the blue bar with the red arrow pointing to it) to indefinitely traverse from left to right over and over again and I cannot progress further.

Virtually the same steps can be reproduced from my iPhone by going to accounts.google.com from any browser (I’ve tried Safari and Chrome).

The same sort of authentication redirect from accounts.google.com happens when trying to add my associated Gmail accounts to my iOS devices from the Settings > Mail > Accounts > Add Account, and similarly stalls at the same point.

I’ve tried logging out of my accounts from my personal Mac where I can still log in from google.com, and also tried going into the security settings for the accounts and disabling, then re-enabling 2FA (I can receive the text message with the code to associate my iPhone as a second factor authenticator, so Google knows my phone number).

Google’s support documents don’t provide any guidance on this situation where the accounts.google.com authentication hangs, and there seems to be no way to contact a human being at Google to provide technical support. I’ve searched their help portal/forums, and found nothing similar to my issue. They point me down a tree that ends here, which is not useful to me.

If Google’s services don’t work for you, it seems to be your problem, not theirs. I get that I’m not paying for their services, so it is totally unreasonable for me to expect any sort of technical support from Google. But, at the same time, it seems very strange that I am alone in my use case of simply trying to log into my accounts that have worked for years in the past without issue.

Anyone have advice on next steps?

I recently got an Ethernet cable in the hopes of making my online gaming more responsive, but to my dismay it made little difference in latency measure on the Xbox Series S. It merely dropped from 146ms to 143ms.

I use the modem+router provided by the ISP, a Sagemcom Fast 5655v2. According to preliminary research, the ISP blocks any alterations so I would have to jailbreak the device to explore other solutions. I’m open for suggestions in that regard too! I’d like to know if I can determine if the problem is on the router or the ISP.

On your suggestions please consider that my country’s currency is worth less than one fifth of the US dollar, so I’m not looking for anything even remotely close to the best setup possible, but merely a significant improvement. Anything above 50 US dollars is already too much for me.

So, with that in mind, what do you recommend?

It started a day or two ago. Three threads (I think?) jump from nearly 0% to 100% and go back as soon as I open task manager to try figure out what's causing it. My first thought was a virus or bitcoin mining trying to hide itself (though isn't that done on GPU's?), but Windows' Defender came up empty handed.

I know certain OS apps, like automatic VIRUS scans behave similarly, stopping when you click or type, but this culprit seems to only react to opening the task manager. It also doesn't start again until task manager has been closed for a while.

So, I had an issue with the radionouspace.net website, referenced here. Since then, I've started hitting the exact same issue on a few other sites ... webpage never resolves, the browser just spins its wheels until it times out.

I went thru and systematically shut down all of my add-ons, no joy. Tried other browsers, does not work anywhere ... except, oddly, sometimes, in TOR. On a hunch, I fired up my VPN service and tried to connect thru a US-based VPN server ... and there it is.

I have now confirmed, multiple websites (I'm assuming these are all US-based -- have not checked) no longer resolve for me, here in Hungary. Can anyone, anywhere else in the EU, confirm this?

I'm guessing this is the US response to the latest GDPR ruling against data-sharing across the Pond, but I'm on a "news fast" and haven't been keeping up-to-date ... anyone care to fill me in -- the "in a nutshell" version?

Update: Definitely something local-ish, probably specific to my ISP. VPN thru Hungary works, non-VPN thru Hungary does not.

Recently a loved one of a friend has died and they would like to archive their entire timeline (no retweets), including media they posted.

I've looked around a little bit and the Twitter API only allows 3200 tweets to be exported. As this includes RTs, this goes back to about 2018, while the account was made in 2011, so it's missing about 90% of their tweets. Also, getting all the media isn't really possible.

Do any of you know a way to accomplish this? Or, can anyone direct me to scripts that crawl the page and save every non-RT tweet + potential media? I'm not very tech-oriented but I can at least run python scripts.

I should mention that I've so far checked out Allmytweets.net (returns RTs) and the Twitter archival project (or whatever it's called), which is a group of people that help in archiving accounts, but they haven't responded yet.