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Topics - Deozaan [ switch to compact view ]

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51
Last night I told my computer to go to sleep and left it as it was doing its thing since it can take a good 10-20 seconds to fully go down into sleep mode. This morning I returned to my PC to find it hadn't fully entered sleep mode. The displays were off, power had been cut from USB devices, but I could hear that the fans were still running.

Wiggling/clicking the mouse gave no response. Pressing keys on my keyboard resulted in no response, other than the keyboard backlighting briefly turning on and then off again (it turns off when my PC enters sleep mode). Pressing the power button on the tower resulted in no response.

It didn't occur to me to try ctrl-alt-del at the time, and I ended up just holding the power button long enough until it fully powered down.

When I turned the machine back on I was greeted by a BSOD before it even made it to the "loading Windows" startup animation. After the machine rebooted itself it went into self diagnostic and ended up checking the disk(s) for errors. Then it told me it couldn't repair the problem.

If I manually boot from my OS SSD from the BIOS (UEFI) I get an error saying something to the effect of:

"NTLDR is missing. Press ctrl-alt-del to restart your computer"

Everything I've found in my searches on the error seems to indicate that this error message is for Windows XP/7 and I should only be seeing it if I upgraded my PC from an older version of Windows to Windows 10. But I haven't done that. I have formatted this SSD and installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 on it in the past.

Other guides I've seen either don't work (probably because they're written for Windows XP/7) or I can't be guaranteed whether or not they'll work since they suggest using some program(s) (usually partition managers) that are not free, and I'm hesitant to buy something that I'll likely only need this one time without knowing for sure that it will solve my problem.

I've booted into a Linux Live USB and the SSD itself seems to be functioning properly and the data appears to be in tact.

It seems the problem stems from the fact that the PC failed to fully enter sleep mode. Perhaps that changed some files or boot configurations and I just need to modify or replace some files somewhere, but so far I haven't found any useful information that is actually helping me to repair the boot problem.

Any helpful tips, suggestions, or pointers would be greatly appreciated.

52
DC Gamer Club / Steam launches Remote Play Together feature
« on: November 01, 2019, 09:43 PM »
A recent update to Steam comes with a beta release of Remote Play Together.

Put simply, Remote Play Together allows you to play games online with your friends. That is, games that feature local (split screen or "couch co-op") multiplayer only, with no networking capabilities, can now be played online with your friends. And only the host of the game needs to own the game in their library.

Or put another way, if a game supports multiple people playing on the same device simultaneously (usually using gamepads) then it can now work online through Remote Play Together.

Anyone up for some gaming? I have a number of local co-op games that I haven't really played much because I never really had anyone to play with. It might be fun to organize some play sessions.

53
If you have a Keybase account, or if you create a new Keybase account and link your GitHub or HackerNews account(s) that were created before the announcement, you should be eligible to receive a giveaway (airdrop) of the cryptocurrency called Stellar Lumens.

I received about $20 worth of Lumens last night, and they're giving away more each month divided equally between everyone who joins and is eligible.

As a surprise gift, the Stellar Development Foundation just starting sending 100 million Lumens, worth $5 million USD, to 300,000 Keybase users. There are lots of different tokens on Stellar, but Lumens are Stellar's native token, and SDF wants real people of the world to have them.

This surprise giveaway translated to something like $19.54 USD worth of Lumens for each active Keybase user. No strings attached, and those Lumens are going out now, to be delivered by Sept 13th or so.

But that's only the beginning.

SDF is dropping 100 million Lumens next month. And the month after that.

In total, they are giving 2 billion Lumens (roughly $117 million USD) out using Keybase over the next 20 months. On the 15th of each month (starting Oct 15, 2019), SDF will give the next batch, divided equally among everyone.

Those who join now will participate every month until the end. So people who join earlier will get more.

To qualify: you must have a Keybase account registered before this announcement OR if you're new to Keybase, you must connect your Keybase account to a GitHub or HackerNews account that was registered before this announcement. This is to prevent bot signups to Keybase.

More details here:

https://keybase.io/airdrop

And for reference, here's a link to the Keybase thread on this forum.

54
General Software Discussion / How to convert FLAC albums to tracks?
« on: August 18, 2019, 04:44 PM »
I recently used Music Box Alpha to rip a bunch of CDs because they make it dead simple to make guaranteed accurate rips with CUETools (CUERipper).

The only problem is that they rip the entire album to a single FLAC file. But sometimes I want to listen to or play only a specific/single track and not all media players support that. For example, Plex Media Server shows the album as a single, hour-long (or more) track, which makes "shuffle play" kind of useless if you don't want to listen to an entire album at a time.

So now I'm on the lookout for something that can take my perfectly ripped FLAC files and export them as individual tracks using the metadata from the associated CUE file for proper filenames and tags, etc. Ideally the individual tracks would also be FLAC, but I'm willing to accept MP3 for convenience sake.

It would also be nice if it could download the album (cover) art based on the metadata as well, but that's not a requirement.

Thanks!

55
My PC updated to the Windows 10 1903 update a week or two ago and I've noticed that the audio in my headphones is really quiet now.

Whereas usually I had the volume set to the 20-30% range, sometimes turning it up to about 40-50% if it was too noisy around me, now I have to have the volume cranked to 100% with Loudness Equalization enabled to be able to hear decently in a relatively quiet environment (e.g., with maybe a quiet TV on in the background). Sometimes the audio coming through my headphones is still just too quiet for me to be able to hear what's going on on my PC, such as when the TV gets turned up or people are talking too loudly, and I have no recourse since I can't turn the volume up any higher than 100%.

I've done some searching for potential solutions but everything seems to suggest either rolling back the driver (which isn't an option for me; the button is grayed out and disabled) or reinstalling the previous/manufacturer's driver (I've never used any driver for this headset other than the Windows built-in driver). These headphones aren't anything special. Just two little speakers connected to an audio jack. There are no special buttons or volume controls on the cable, etc., that would require custom drivers.

Does anyone know of a way to get the audio working back to the way it was before the 1903 update? Or perhaps can anybody recommend some software that allows me to boost/equalize the audio coming from my PC?

Thanks in advance. I hope to hear from you soon. ;)

EDIT: Maybe I spoke too soon. Just after posting this message I rebooted my PC so that Windows could finish installing a cumulative update and when it got back into Windows, the volume was set to 20% and I can take it all the way up to 100%, with it getting louder than I'd like at around the 50% range. So it seems things are back the way they were for me. :Thmbsup:

58
DC Gamer Club / Assassin's Creed Unity free for a week
« on: April 18, 2019, 10:54 AM »
In support of Notre Dame, which was badly damaged in a fire earlier this week, Ubisoft is giving away Assassin's Creed Unity, which prominently features the cathedral, for a week on their Uplay store.

They've also pledged to donate €500,000 to help rebuild Notre Dame.

As the smoke clears on the events that unfolded on Monday at the Notre-Dame de Paris, we stand in solidarité with our fellow Parisians and everyone around the world moved by the devastation the fire caused. Notre-Dame is an integral part of Paris, a city to which we are deeply connected. Seeing the monument in peril like this affected us all.

In light of Monday's events, we will be donating €500,000 to help with the restoration and reconstruction of the Cathedral. We encourage all of you who are interested to donate as well. In addition, we want to give everyone the chance to experience the majesty and beauty of Notre-Dame the best way we know how. For one week, we will be giving Assassin's Creed Unity away free on PC, for anyone who wants to enjoy it. You can download it now for Uplay PC here: http://assassinscree...com/unity-notredame/

When we created Assassin's Creed Unity, we developed an even closer connection with this incredible city and its landmarks – one of the most notable elements of the game was the extraordinary recreation of Notre-Dame.

Video games can enable us to explore places in ways we never could have otherwise imagined. We hope, with this small gesture, we can provide everyone an opportunity to appreciate our virtual homage to this monumental piece of architecture.

59
Recently I was wondering how I could get a file from a headless Linux VM onto a different Windows machine, and thought it would be super useful to have some kind of file sharing service which could be accessed from the command line. Almost like a pastebin, but for files rather than just text.

A quick search revealed something called transfer.sh which allows you to send files up to 10 GB with no complicated setup required.

  • Made for use with shell
  • Share files with a URL
  • Upload up to 10 GB
  • Files stored for 14 days
  • For free
  • Encrypt your files
  • Preview your files in the browser

An example of how to use it:
$ curl --upload-file ./hello.txt https://transfer.sh/hello.txt

And there's even an onion link:
http://jxm5d6emw5rknovg.onion/

I'd never heard of it but searched the DC forum in case I'd missed some previous mention of it, and found that a relatively new member of the forum posted a link using it just a couple weeks ago, here: https://www.donation....msg428747#msg428747

It's open source, too, so if you want to host it yourself you can do that:

This code contains the server with everything you need to create your own instance.

Transfer.sh currently supports the s3 (Amazon S3), gdrive (Google Drive) providers, and local file system (local).

I hope others here find this useful.

60
Details are scarce as it seems Google is withholding information until more people have had a chance to update to a version of Chrome which doesn't have the vulnerability. This is the most specific information I found:

According to the official release notes, this vulnerability involves a memory mismanagement bug in a part of Chrome called FileReader.

That’s a programming tool that makes it easy for web developers to pop up menus and dialogs asking you to choose from a list of local files, for example when you want to pick a file to upload or an attachment to add to your webmail.

When we heard that the vulnerability was connected to FileReader, we assumed that the bug would involve reading from files you weren’t supposed to.

Ironically, however, it looks as though attackers can take much more general control, allowing them to pull off what’s called Remote Code Execution, or RCE.

RCE almost always means a crooks can implant malware without any warnings, dialogs or popups.

Just tricking you into looking at a booby-trapped web page might be enough for crooks to take over your computer remotely.

I'm curious if this affects all Chromium-based browsers. :-\

61
Living Room / Coinbase Earn - Get Paid Crypto to Learn About Crypto
« on: February 27, 2019, 02:24 PM »
Learn a Little, Earn a Little

Coinbase recently (December 2018) launched Coinbase Earn:

Coinbase Earn allows users to earn cryptocurrencies, while learning about them in a simple and engaging way. The idea is for users to understand more about an asset’s utility and its underlying technology, while getting a bit of the asset to try out.

I received an email about it this week with an offer to receive about $10 worth of Basic Attention Token (BAT) for learning about BAT and the Brave browser (which I've mentioned here before). There were four "lessons" for me to take, each one consisting of watching a short video and answering a 1-question quiz, which took me about 2-3 minutes (each) to complete. The final one had me sign into my Coinbase account from the Brave browser instead of taking a quiz. I completed the whole thing (including installing Brave) within about 10-15 minutes.

Right now Coinbase Earn is invite only (with invites being controlled by Coinbase, so I can't invite you myself), but you can go to the Coinbase Earn site and check out each set of lessons and join the waitlist for each one that interests you.



Note: I am not being compensated in any way to share this information. I just thought some folks here may be interested in this opportunity to earn a little "free" cryptocurrency in exchange for learning about them. :Thmbsup:

62
Found Deals and Discounts / Affinity Designer Workbook 50% off
« on: February 14, 2019, 11:52 AM »
I got an email from Affinity with a link that can be used to buy the Affinity Designer Workbook at a 50% discount which comes to $25 (+$5 shipping) in the USA.

https://store.serif....b19&mc=WBFEB19E1

It says the offer is available for a limited time, but doesn't specify when it ends.

63
General Software Discussion / Full Windows 10 on Raspberry Pi 3!
« on: January 16, 2019, 09:45 PM »
I came across this tweet thread saying full Windows 10 on Raspberry Pi is possible, linking to this Github repository for instructions and details on how to do it.

I've got a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ not doing anything worthwhile, so I decided to give it a try. My first attempt was unsuccessful. I'm making another attempt as I write this, but decided to post about it here in case anyone else would be interested and maybe we could help each other get a working install.

In my first attempt, I tried Windows 10 Pro 18237 image and the 1.2 Core Package. After deploying to the SD card I plugged it in and attempted to boot up. Eventually it just got stuck in a BSOD boot-loop. The stop code is DRIVER_UNLOADED_WITHOUT_CANCELLING_PENDING_OPERATIONS.

In my second attempt, I'm using the same image but trying the 1.0 Core Package. If there's any interest, I'll report back on things later.

64
I came to my PC today to find a message in the notification area telling me that a Photos Add-on had been installed. I clicked it to see what it was all about and it opened the Microsoft Store to the product page.

Photos Add-on is essentially free DLC for the Photos app. While my first impression of the software leaves me questioning its usefulness (it created a bunch of albums for me, but only from photos taken around 5 years ago), this post isn't really about the software itself. This is about the disturbing fact that Microsoft thinks it can (and should) install software on my PC without even asking me first. In my mind, this is different from bundling software with the OS installer, or even OS updates. While that is annoying, it could be said that the bundled software is part of the "feature improvements" the update brings.

But this was not an OS update. It was not even a Photos app update. It is just an out-of-the-blue download-and-install on a random day for no reason other than just because Microsoft decided they wanted me to have it.

It's disturbing and makes me feel violated in some sense. Like I had a home-invasion from someone who saw through my windows that I eat bread and thought I'd really enjoy a certain flavor of jam to go with my bread.

65
One more piece of evidence to back up the axiom that security and convenience are often mutually exclusive.

It seems "hackers" and law enforcement have a new tool in their toolbelt for getting into people's phones: a 3D printed head/face can unlock some devices.

Forbes reporter Thomas Brewster commissioned a 3D printed model of his own head to test the face unlocking systems on a range of phones — four Android models and an iPhone X.

Bad news if you’re an Android user: only the iPhone X defended against the attack.

But, at least in the case of law enforcement, it's more likely they would just compel you to press your finger or show your face to your device to unlock it, rather than make a 3D print of your head.

Even still, the fact that a 3D print can bypass security measures reveals a fundamental risk:

“A situation where you couldn’t get the actual person but could use a 3D print model may exist,” he said. “I think the big threat is that a system where anyone — cops or criminals — can get into your phone by holding your face up to it is a system with serious security limits.”

...

Those cheering on the “death of the password” might want to think again. They’re still the only thing that’s keeping your data safe from the law.

68
If you launch the Battle.net client you can claim Destiny 2 for free between now and November 18.

69
Living Room / Backup Power for USB device -- does it exist?
« on: September 25, 2018, 03:01 PM »
I have a USB device that I need to keep powered. It is connected to a Raspberry Pi type device that itself is connected to a UPS, but it seems when the RPi reboots, it shuts off power to the USB ports momentarily, which resets the USB device.

I need something that will keep a steady supply of power to the USB device, but still allow a data connection to the RPi.

Does such a thing exist? Would an ordinary USB Y-cable (such as for external hard drives) do this? Or is there some kind of special Y-cable (or anything) that will provide power but still allow data to be sent/received to/from another device?

70
Hi all,

I've been thinking about writing a little utility for myself that could probably benefit from using a database of some kind. My needs will honestly be simple enough that I can probably just write everything out to a text (XML or JSON) or binary file, but on the chance that this is something that gets released and used by others who have a lot more data to wade through than I will, I figured I'd look into options of some sort of simple database system that might help keep things relatively speedy compared to parsing and iterating through plaintext to get all the relevant details.

The hard part about answering my request is that I'm not sure what language I'll be using for this utility. I'm most familiar with C# (but by no means an expert), so my inclination is to use that, but lately I've been tinkering with Python and Go and am considering using one of those if it would suit this project better. Also, cross-platform compatibility is somewhat important to me, at least between Windows and Linux. Ideally I'd like for my utility to have a GUI, but I'm pretty inexperienced with GUI frameworks and they tend to not always be very cross-platform friendly, and I'm not looking to make this a huge project that will take over my life for the next year. So for now I'd be satisfied with a command-line utility that can read, write, search, and display the pertinent information on demand.

Oh, and I'd like to be able to include the database with the utility in a portable manner, so the end-user can just run everything on a thumb drive or whatever without having to worry about installing things.

Maybe that was more information than needed. Anyway, can anyone recommend a simple and easy to integrate/use, portable database-type system that would be more efficient for parsing and looking things up than a plaintext (JSON/XML) alternative?

Thanks in advance

72
DC Website Help and Extras / NANY badge tooltip is wrong
« on: August 22, 2018, 05:09 PM »
This is a really minor issue. Probably just a copy/paste error. But it seems that the NANY badge for people with 12 years of NANY entries (Skwire and mouser) has a tooltip that says they only participated in eleven NANY events.

73
Looks like everyone who has ever said something like "I'd transition to Linux if it weren't for my huge Steam library" may soonTM be transitioning to Linux!

In 2010, we announced Steam Play: a way for Steam users to access Windows, Mac and Linux versions of Steam games with a single purchase. More than 3000 of the games that have been added to Steam after that point have included Linux support, with more titles being added every day. Since then, we've continued to look for ways to make more titles easily accessible to Linux users.

[...]

[T]oday we are releasing the Beta of a new and improved version of Steam Play to all Linux users! It includes a modified distribution of Wine, called Proton, to provide compatibility with Windows game titles.

[...]

Proton, the tool that Steam Play uses to provide Windows compatibility, contains a custom version of Wine as well as additional libraries developed alongside it. It's fully open-source and available right now on GitHub!

74
Found Deals and Discounts / Game-Ready Spacecraft SFX $1
« on: July 09, 2018, 05:13 PM »
Normally $30, these 5000+ game-ready audio files are discounted to just $1 for a limited time (not sure how long).

https://www.imphenzi...d-effects-spacecraft

Here's a preview video of some of the sounds:


75
General Software Discussion / More Ads in Windows 10
« on: July 05, 2018, 03:54 PM »
Lately I've been "buying in" to Microsoft's ecosystem more and more. And by that I mean instead of opening my browser and doing a search for the forecast, or using Google Maps, I'll just use the included Microsoft Weather or Maps apps. And I've also been more open to trying out (free) apps from the Windows Store, since the UWP platform is a lot better about being able to clean up everything when you uninstall something.

I've even considered importing my contacts, email, and calendar accounts into the respective Microsoft apps, but haven't quite gotten that far yet.

But then something like this happens:

Microsoft Weather Advertises Microsoft News.jpg

I opened the Weather app because it's getting really hot today and I wanted to know what to expect for the rest of the day and week, but I was greeted by an ad for Microsoft News.

This makes me question whether or not I really want to get myself too involved in Microsoft's ecosystem after all. And it also doesn't make any sense to me because Microsoft News comes installed by default on Windows 10. I had to manually uninstall it because I don't want it. They should know this. And yet they're still advertising it to me, trying to get me to install it again?

I guess it's because they're advertising the mobile app for iOS/Android. But still. It's like trying to heat up your food in a microwave, but before the door will open to allow you to put the food in, the microwave says, "Hey! Check out our cool new refrigerators!" (pun intended), and then a permanent button shows up on the microwave which you can press to hear "Hey! Check out our cool new refrigerators!" any time you want.

😒

I found this in the Feedback Hub: Remove get news link on the left side bar.



Other related threads:
Ads On The Windows 10 Start Menu Are Coming

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