cmnybo
@cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
- Comment on 🔌 testing an a/c adapter before use-- 12v PSU measures at 18+v, increasing. Is that a problem? 2 days ago:
A switching power supply should be regulated. The one you have is defective. Some do have a minimum load, but I’ve never seen that on an adapter that can be unplugged from the load.
A linear power supply has a linear regulator and will supply its rated voltage with very little ripple. The unregulated power supplies are just a transformer, rectifier & capacitor. They only provide their rated voltage when they are supplying their full rated current and there will be a lot of ripple.
- Comment on Wildlife cam setups? 3 days ago:
Get a CCTV camera for it. Make sure it supports ONVIF. An IP camera can be run 100 meters on CAT5.
Trail cams are not intended for remote viewing. They are battery powered and a remote connection would drain the batteries quickly.
- Comment on 🔌 testing an a/c adapter before use-- 12v PSU measures at 18+v, increasing. Is that a problem? 3 days ago:
Is that adapter heavy? It sounds like an unregulated transformer type power supply. It’s not unusual for those to output twice their rated voltage with no load. They will damage equipment that requires a regulated supply.
- Comment on RAM shortage chaos expands to GPUs, high-capacity SSDs, and even hard drives 4 days ago:
You would think that RAM manufacturers would ramp up production. Hopefully the fact that they aren’t means the bubble is going to burst within a couple of years.
- Comment on This tech could keep EVs from stressing the grid — and save everyone money 6 days ago:
Using your battery to help stabilize the grid is going to put a lot of extra wear on the very expensive battery in your car. Whatever it saves you on your electric bill won’t be nearly enough to cover a replacement battery when it wears out much faster.
- Comment on Rumor turns true as Spotify hikes Premium subscription prices in the US, Estonia, and Latvia 6 days ago:
A lot of high school and college stations play music. You probably won’t hear many of the more popular artists, but they do play a lot of indie music.
- Comment on Rumor turns true as Spotify hikes Premium subscription prices in the US, Estonia, and Latvia 1 week ago:
In the US, non commercial educational stations are not allowed to have paid advertising.
- Comment on My website was down; because I didn't pay the server bill 1 week ago:
Hosting the site from home may be an option if symmetric fiber is available and the site doesn’t get a huge amount of traffic.
- Comment on The AI explosion isn't just hurting the prices of computers and consoles – it's coming for TVs and audio tech too 1 week ago:
I would immediately return that as defective. I’d rather use that old 1980’s portable TV that’s been collecting dust in my closet since they shut down the analog TV broadcasts.
- Comment on The AI explosion isn't just hurting the prices of computers and consoles – it's coming for TVs and audio tech too 1 week ago:
So start making more dumb TVs and speakers. That way they don’t need much memory.
- Comment on What if the Internet Goes Down? - 15 Jan, 7PM CET 1 week ago:
The AM broadcast stations aren’t going anywhere, at least in the US. Above the broadcast band is mostly aircraft, marine and the 160 meter ham band. None of that is likely to change.
Below the AM broadcast band are non directional beacons. Those are slowly being decommissioned. Eventually they will all be gone and that spectrum may get repurposed. I don’t know what the spectrum may get used for, but it would be nice if the 630 meter ham band was expanded.
LF and MF can be used at low power. The 2200 meter ham band has a power limit of 1 watt EIRP and the 630 meter band has a limit of 1 or 5 watts EIRP depending on the country. Actually radiating that much power is difficult because it’s not practical to build an efficient antenna. Luckily there is no limit on how much power the amplifier can put out, so we can put hundreds of watts into a very inefficient antenna. Narrow band digital modes work great on those bands.
In the US, we have LowFER, which allows hobbyists to use 160-190 kHz for experimental use without a license. The power limit is 1 watt input and the transmitting antenna is limited to 15 meters. People still manage to make long distance contacts with those significant limitations.
- Comment on What if the Internet Goes Down? - 15 Jan, 7PM CET 1 week ago:
For LF and MF, you typically want narrow signals, not spread spectrum. It’s hard to make wide band antennas for such low frequencies and propagation can change a lot in just a few tens of kHz.
- Comment on How do you Sand Coloured PETG without loosing the Colour? Are there any Methods to Preserve or Regain the Colour? 1 week ago:
How fine are you sanding it? Coarse sandpaper makes the PETG turn white and fuzzy. That goes away after wet sanding with 400 to 600 grit. I usually go up to 2000 grit to get a smooth surface. The color is still quite a bit lighter after sanding though.
- Comment on What if the Internet Goes Down? - 15 Jan, 7PM CET 1 week ago:
Keep in mind that without working repeaters, the baofeng will only have a range of a few miles on level ground with nothing in the way. If the power goes out, most of the repeaters will go down too. Some have battery backups that may last a few hours to a few days. Depending on where you are, a few may be solar powered, but heavy use will drain the batteries. Some repeaters are also reliant on the internet for linking to increase the coverage area.
What you really want in that case is a portable HF radio and a wire antenna you can string up over a tree branch or a support with a fishing pole. In the daytime, you can use the upper HF bands for long distance communication. That has a range of thousands of miles, but nearby stations won’t be able to hear you if they are beyond line of sight. Since the portable radio doesn’t have much power, you may need to use digital modes to get through. For more local contacts you can use NVIS propagation on the lower HF bands. That has a range of several hundred miles and can even be used to talk to someone on the other side of a mountain. Even 5 watts and an antenna strung 3 feet off the ground can work for voice contacts out to over a hundred miles.
- Comment on Cheapest way to back up a *lot* of data? 1 week ago:
They haven’t been selling anything that cheap since the AI driven hard drive shortage. A refurbished 12TB drive is around $200 now.
- Comment on Why does my ISP sometimes give one IPv6 and another with a different subnet? 1 week ago:
CGNAT is a nasty hack to work around the shortage of IPv4 addresses. It’s not used with IPv6.
- Comment on How Did TVs Get So Cheap? - by Brian Potter 1 week ago:
There would be nothing for one to connect to out here. There’s no WiFi except mine and no cell service unless you go outside.
I would probably desolder the antenna if I was in the city though. - Comment on Microsoft Windows Media Player stops serving up CD album info 1 week ago:
I can’t even remember the last time I put a music CD in my computer to play it. I always rip them to FLAC and add it to my music player library.
- Comment on How Did TVs Get So Cheap? - by Brian Potter 1 week ago:
Mine has never been connected to the internet.
- Comment on Dell says the quiet part out loud: Consumers don't actually care about AI PCs — "AI probably confuses them more than it helps them" 2 weeks ago:
There are a number of NPUs that plug into an m.2 slot. If those aren’t powerful enough, you can just use an eGPU.
I would rather not have to pay for an NPU that I’m probably not going to use. - Comment on Self hosting hardware - what are your experiences with Lenovo ThinkCentre as homelab server? 2 weeks ago:
The price of DDR4 has tripled over the last year. It’s still not as bad as DDR5 though.
- Comment on Law enforcement can now use Flock’s software to directly request doorbell videos from Ring users 2 weeks ago:
This is one of the many reasons why you should never used cloud based cameras.
Keep your cameras and DVR on an isolated network with no internet access. Use a VPN if you need to access it remotely.
- Comment on Dell admits consumers don’t care about AI PCs 2 weeks ago:
Yes, it’s useful for things like text to speech that doesn’t sound like a Speak & Spell or motion detection that doesn’t go off because a bug flew past the camera. I consider stuff like LLMs that will lie to me useless though.
- Comment on MSI's fifth-generation QD-OLED gaming monitor embraces RGB stripe subpixels — 34-inch display boasts enhanced text clarity, boosted brightness, and improved black levels 2 weeks ago:
It’s about time someone made an OLED monitor that’s usable for more than games and movies. I can’t stand reading text without subpixel antialiasing.
- Comment on Raspberry Pis are cheaper than Mini PCs again 2 weeks ago:
Thin clients are good if you don’t need much storage. They usually don’t have any way to add more except for USB.
- Comment on Home electricity bills are skyrocketing. For data centers, not so much. 2 weeks ago:
The AI data centers and crypto miners should be paying much higher rates than everyone else.
- Comment on I'm brave enough to say it: Linux is good now, and if you want to feel like you actually own your PC, make 2026 the year of Linux on (your) desktop 2 weeks ago:
Mod Organizer 2 works great on Linux. It’s a bit trickier to install due to the way Proton works, but there is an installer for it.
- Comment on I'm brave enough to say it: Linux is good now, and if you want to feel like you actually own your PC, make 2026 the year of Linux on (your) desktop 2 weeks ago:
Linux has been very good for a long time. It’s just gaming that didn’t work very well until DXVK came out and Valve started putting a lot of work into it and Wine.
- Comment on What's a good printer for ASA filament? 3 weeks ago:
I use 100°C for ASA. The recommended bed temperature for the Sunlu filament I have is 90-110°C.
- Comment on Where are you running your wireguard endpoint? 3 weeks ago:
I run one on my firewall, but it’s IPv6 only because of CGNAT. The other one is running on a VPS in case I need IPv4 access. I just configured them manually.