Recent Posts

1501

Living Room / Re: Looking at an android tablet

« Last post by 4wd on January 11, 2016, 06:31 PM »

Chuwi tablets turn up on OzBargain (search link) fairly regularly, you can peruse the comments there.

1502

Living Room / Re: Forbes forces users to disable ad blockers, promptly serves malware.

« Last post by 4wd on January 11, 2016, 06:08 PM »

Like wraith, the ExtremeTech site just shows a blank page, (and produces a bucket load more hits in uBlock than Forbes).

Running uBlock, RefControl, RequestPolicy, and hosts file blocking - not getting any ads nor am I getting prompts to disable an adblocker on Forbes.

Possibly geo specific?

I get this when going via a US VPN:


Doesn't happen if I go via normal IP, (Australia).

1503

General Software Discussion / Re: System resources monitor overload warning for Windows 10

« Last post by 4wd on January 09, 2016, 04:49 AM »

If it were me I'd just keep letting it crash until they get it through their skulls that they are the cause of the problem.

Fix the problem, (PEBKAC^w), not the symptom.

  


Or you could use Task Scheduler/Performance Monitor to run some command that opens a big window on the screen that displays a warning.

See steps 2-4 here.

And here's a simple VBScript that opens a warning window, (replacement for script in step 1 on that page):

Warning.vbs

Code: Visual Basic [Select]

1. x=msgbox("WARNING: Your computer is low on resources.  Close some programs or risk losing your work." ,16 , "WARNING!")

1504

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by 4wd on January 07, 2016, 06:27 AM »

Any tips for upgrading to Windows 10 now?
=> upgrading from 8.1, I'm going try keeping programmes unless advised otherwise.

-tomos (January 06, 2016, 02:19 PM)

Yes: Check with the manufacturer of the computer if an upgrade to Windows 10 is supported.
In hindsight I found out why my upgrade adventures failed for my Lenovo Y580 laptop: Lenovo states that it is not possible to upgrade that specific model (and a few others) to Windows 10.

-Ath (January 07, 2016, 02:56 AM)

thanks Ath,
that knocks the idea on the head -- it's a Lenovo (n581) that is included in that list as not recommended. It doesnt clearly state why (that I could see), so I probably wont bother following up on it.

-tomos (January 07, 2016, 04:43 AM)

I think I'd be tempted to go ahead anyway, just image the drive and let it update, then do an image after it has 10 on it.

If it doesn't work restore the image, you'll have lost a couple of hours but on the flip side the laptop is now registered with a Windows 10 license so that if relevant drivers ever do appear for esoteric hardware, you can upgrade for nothing.

Otherwise, you might find that you can live without whatever functions no longer work under 10.

1505

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by 4wd on January 06, 2016, 10:44 PM »

I bit the bullet and told it to 'Download Now, Upgrade Later' ... in my case, Microsoft's definition of 'later' was a bit different from mine.  The download started immediately and when it was finished it said it wanted to restart to perform the upgrade ... WTF!?

-4wd (January 06, 2016, 06:09 PM)

Really? Is that how it works? Is there no backing out at that stage?

-dr_andus (January 06, 2016, 06:50 PM)

No, it just happened to be what that machine did.  I've got two others that i chose the same thing on and they haven't decided to upgrade whether I like it or not.

I made damn sure I chose the right option to start with since I wasn't ready to do it right at that moment.

I just happened to find Murphy waiting around the corner 

1506

General Software Discussion / Re: Survey of data recovery & forensic tools

« Last post by 4wd on January 06, 2016, 06:23 PM »

They only test these:

CardRecovery 6.10
Kroll Ontrack EasyRecovery 11.5
PhotoRec 7.0
Recuva 1.52
Remo Recover 4.0
Sleuth Kit 4.0.0
SystemRescueCd 4.6.1

PhotoRec comes out on top.

1507

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by 4wd on January 06, 2016, 06:09 PM »

Any tips for upgrading to Windows 10 now?
=> upgrading from 8.1, I'm going try keeping programmes unless advised otherwise.

-tomos (January 06, 2016, 02:19 PM)

Image your drive beforehand

I bit the bullet and told it to 'Download Now, Upgrade Later' ... in my case, Microsoft's definition of 'later' was a bit different from mine.  The download started immediately and when it was finished it said it wanted to restart to perform the upgrade ... WTF!?

So I imaged it before I restarted, not the optimum solution.

Anyway, the upgrade was fine - all installed programs worked after upgrade, (eg. DaemonTools, DOpus, Sony Vegas, Malwarebytes AM, VPN software, etc), even ClassicStart.  I don't have an AV installed apart from Microsoft's.

The only things that screwed up were file associations, it now wanted to use Edge instead of PaleMoon, Reader instead of PDF-Xchange, and a couple of others.

It also had to download a newer video driver but that was all on the hardware side of things.

1508

General Software Discussion / Re: What Android Apps Do You Use?

« Last post by 4wd on January 05, 2016, 10:16 PM »

UpToDown - A software repository for various OS' including Android, it has a lot of the apps you'll find in the Google Play Store with the added bonus of being able to get and install previous versions.



UpToDown Android app (italics mine):

The official application of Uptodown for Android operating systems. With this app, you can quickly access descriptions, screenshots, and of course, complete apps. In addition, it allows you to always have the latest updates and versions of every app.

Every Content. Limitless apps, betting apps, multimedia apps, and competitors from any sector or area.

Every Country. Completely free and global access without region restriction, like political or business limitations.

Every Device. You don’t need Google Play services, in fact you can download and install any app just from your browser.

Every User. No google registration required, no email, account, credit card or payments. Just you.

From the main interface of Uptodown Android, you can see the app of the day and all important news, including new apps and updates. Also, below the image of the app of the day, you can find a dropdown menu with direct access to all of the Android categories: video games, messenger apps, video players, office software… if you’re looking for any app, it is going to be here.

Because Uptodown stores more than a thousand different APKs, the app gives you the possibility to access both older versions of some apps and others that are not available on Google Play. This means that you have the option to install older (and possibly more stable) versions of practically any app. You just have to scroll down to the bottom of a file to see all of the versions available.

Thanks to this feature, Uptodown Android offers the possibility to do a ‘rollback’ of any app. For example, let’s say you updated Twitter to the latest version and you don’t like it. No problem. You simply download the previous version from its file in Uptodown and problem solved.

Uptodown Android is an interesting alternative to other application download services like Google Play because it not only lets you download thousands of different apps, but also older versions of the same apps. In addition, Uptodown displays ‘neutral screenshots’ instead of the traditional screenshots offered by many developers. Thanks to this, users always know what they’re downloading with just a glance.

1509

General Software Discussion / Re: What is Runtime Broker, and Why is it working so pathetically bad?

« Last post by 4wd on January 05, 2016, 09:40 PM »

It's an "essential" service, the best you're going to be able to do is remove things that use it to so as to reduce its effects on the system.

I've disabled Time Broker service on a Win10Home system I have here at the moment - this dropped Runtime Broker from >10% CPU and ~10MB RAM -> 0% CPU and ~1MB RAM (which stopped a good amount of disk thrashing).

Read from this post onwards - there's a couple of ideas on reducing it's usage.

1510

Living Room / Re: USB TV tuner for W8.0 Laptop?

« Last post by 4wd on January 03, 2016, 06:26 PM »

If you're not in a hurry and can get it delivered somewhere, various Chinese shopping sites have them for US$8-15.

-4wd (January 02, 2016, 11:51 PM)

Thanks for the tip.   

-MilesAhead (January 03, 2016, 05:38 AM)

No problem but it usually means they will deliver only to the address associated with a PayPal account.

I had a site up yesterday with ATSC tuners for up to $15 ... think I can find it now 

Otherwise, Monoprice on ebay has a couple.

Your biggest problem will be ensuring you have decent signal reception for it to work, the stick antennas they come with have never worked for me, I've always had to connect a decent external antenna.

1511

Living Room / Re: USB TV tuner for W8.0 Laptop?

« Last post by 4wd on January 02, 2016, 11:51 PM »

And as long as the tuner uses a standard BDA driver you can probably use whatever software you like to view the signal.

Of course, North America uses the ATSC standard but the requirements shouldn't be that much different.

-4wd (January 02, 2016, 03:34 AM)

Just to run this by you.  Does this gizmo fit the bill do you think?

http://www.newegg.co...9083AB3052-_-Product

Edit:  I am a bit paranoid as it mentions PAL but not ATSC.

-MilesAhead (January 02, 2016, 02:22 PM)

That's a DVB-T tuner - it won't work in the USA.

-mwb1100 (January 02, 2016, 10:19 PM)

Correct - it needs to state that it handles the ATSC standard.

Nice map from Wikipedia^w:




Newegg - Cheapest appears to be $37 for open box item.

If you're not in a hurry and can get it delivered somewhere, various Chinese shopping sites have them for US$8-15.

1512

Living Room / Re: USB TV tuner for W8.0 Laptop?

« Last post by 4wd on January 02, 2016, 03:34 AM »

Are you really looking for HD? Not sure if that is even available through an antenna-signal, I'd expect SD quality only

-Ath (January 02, 2016, 03:05 AM)

Maybe not in the USA but HD DVB-T signal is routinely transmitted over FTA in other parts of the world, (eg. AUS, UK, NZ).  Here in AUS we're still mostly transmitting HD in MPEG2, with some HD MPEG4 transmissions.

I've used USB DVB-T devices for more than 6 years without any problem on desktops, laptops, and even my old netbook.  If your laptop specs aren't up to it then you might be stuck being only able to watch SD without stutter but I don't think you'll have that problem MilesAhead.

And as long as the tuner uses a standard BDA driver you can probably use whatever software you like to view the signal.

Of course, North America uses the ATSC standard but the requirements shouldn't be that much different.

1513

General Software Discussion / Re: Assemble PDF documents

« Last post by 4wd on December 31, 2015, 05:35 AM »

I am sure that pdftk would be able to do what you need. I used this once for a slightly different process a couple years ago and it worked fine. Of course you would need to write the command line to do just what you want. 

-x16wda (December 30, 2015, 10:13 PM)

And following on from this ^

Concat all PDF files in a directory structure:

https://www.donation....msg374877#msg374877

1514

General Software Discussion / Re: What Android Apps Do You Use?

« Last post by 4wd on December 29, 2015, 10:48 PM »

I mentioned it elsewhere, Black Player EX is my audio media player of choice.



OSMAnd+ Maps & Navigation (was on special recently for 0.20 )

1515

Living Room / Re: Raspberry/Arduinoe/etc. - Choosing a device questions?

« Last post by 4wd on December 29, 2015, 09:04 PM »

Or, if you're in no hurry the C.H.I.P. computer can handle audio input/output and is cheap.

-4wd (December 29, 2015, 03:17 AM)

Recommending CHIP over Onion?  Why is that?  Just curious...

-wraith808 (December 29, 2015, 11:07 AM)

It's cheaper

Plus I haven't really looked at the audio input/output capabilities of the Onion whereas I knew that the C.H.I.P. had both with no extra hardware requirement.  To record a sound as a WAV file.  To play a sound, (WAV, OGG, MP3).

So really just a matter of seeing whether the C.H.I.P. can do the MP3 encoding on-the-fly when recording, (1GHz vs 400Mhz CPU in the Onion, 8 times the RAM, 4GB of onboard storage that can be used for buffering).  Depending on what the final recording qualities are to be, if it's for something that only requires a low bitrate, (like voice), then I would think it'll have no trouble.

It can also handle USB flash drives without requiring a hub since you can still connect a mouse/keyboard via Bluetooth.  Add a LiPo cell and you have battery backup if that's important.

I've got two C.H.I.P.s arriving sometime next year along with a HDMI adapter, something else to sit on the desk and gather dust 

1516

Living Room / Re: Raspberry/Arduinoe/etc. - Choosing a device questions?

« Last post by 4wd on December 29, 2015, 03:17 AM »

Or, if you're in no hurry the C.H.I.P. computer can handle audio input/output and is cheap.

1517

General Software Discussion / Re: dream phone

« Last post by 4wd on December 28, 2015, 03:37 PM »

(still trying to get my head around what exactly is meant by dual 'active' sim)

-tomos (December 28, 2015, 12:51 PM)

Basically, a Dual Standby phone has to time switch between each SIM, thus only one is active at any instant.
So if you make or receive a call on one SIM, the other is inactive until the call is finished. Incoming calls to the number associated with the inactive SIM will be unanswered and there'll be no indication of an incoming call.

Dual Active, each SIM is always active, you can receive two calls simultaneously and switch between them, or make a call on one SIM while using the data connection on the other.

1518

General Software Discussion / Re: backup strategy

« Last post by 4wd on December 27, 2015, 06:56 PM »

OK, but it doesn't really make any sense to do that, I want to save my data in case someone breaks into my house and steal my laptop! He will also steal the usb as well!

-kalos (December 27, 2015, 06:36 PM)

Not if you have it on you?

-wraith808 (December 27, 2015, 06:38 PM)

and I will plug it in every time I want to use my laptop? that's very inconvenient!

-kalos (December 27, 2015, 06:40 PM)

That's not what wraith said.

Someone can't steal the flash drive if it's with you, they can steal the laptop but not the flash drive ... thus your data is still available.

If you're going to keep the flash drive with your laptop and you're worried about it being stolen with the laptop then don't bother making a backup because you have other problems.

1519

Living Room / Re: pass time during flights

« Last post by 4wd on December 27, 2015, 05:17 AM »

The player I use for Android: BlackPlayer EX

Spoiler

BlackPlayer Exclusive - Premium MP3 Music Player

Extra features:
- Folder view
- 6 Extra Fonts, including option to use System font.
- 11 Color accents.
- 4 Extra Themes
- White Widget theme.
- Extra Track information in Now Playing. Bitrate, samplingrate and format.
- Customizable crossfading
- Screen Always on option.
- Change the Library startpage.
- Customize the Library pages completely. Add, Remove and sort.
- Custom grid size for Artist & Albums.
- Show Bitrate, samplingrate and format in Now Playing page.
- Manually search and set Artist images.
- Blacklist Folders and Tracks
- White widget theme.
- Zap, discover your music fast with this smart function. Auto plays random music tracks for 5 seconds each.
- Floating window control widget
- Visualizer, customizable (Beta)
- Widget and Notification customizations.
- Change notification text color and background.
- View Artists as bigger grid.
- View Genres as List and as Big list.
- Custom 4x1 Widget transparency.
- Played Tracks can be tracked monthly instead of weekly.
- Blur effect to Lockscreen or Widget.
- 2 Extra text animations
- 1 Extra transition effect
- Show queue position in widget.
- Add "PLAYLISTS" page to the Library.
- Hide any of the Sliding pages.
- Sort Artist albums.
- Developer love!
- More upcoming features! EX version always gets the new features first!

There is a free version: BlackPlayer

Spoiler

BlackPlayer is an ad-free elegant modern local Music player. It's easy to use and one of the fastest out there.

Key features:.
- Supports the standard local music file formats such as MP3, WAV, OGG.
- Build in Equalizer, bassboost & 3D surround virtualizer or option to use external Equalizer.
- Flac support (4.1+)
- Gapless playback.
- View & Edit embedded lyrics
- HD Album cover management, auto and manual.
- ID3 Tag editor, edit Track, Albums & Artists
- Changeable Themes, fonts and colors.
- Very customizable.
- Music scrobbling.
- 3 widgets.
- Sleep timer
- Flat minimalistic design.
- Ad-free

1520

Post New Requests Here / Re: Replace existing file with zero byte version with slight name change

« Last post by 4wd on December 26, 2015, 04:55 PM »

robocopy <source> <dest> /CREATE /E /np /nfl /ndl /njh /njs

eg. robocopy D:\harry K:\fred /CREATE /E /np /nfl /ndl /njh /njs

That will create an exact copy of a directory tree populated with zero byte files in a very short time, (usually a few seconds).

Then you can use a bulk renamer afterwards if you want another alternative.

1521

Living Room / Re: pass time during flights

« Last post by 4wd on December 26, 2015, 12:01 AM »

as for the slimjet, it seems very promising, but could I disable the automatic merging of audio and video? I only need the audio! (or ideally only save the audio!)

-kalos (December 25, 2015, 09:08 PM)

http://www.slimjet.c...video-downloader.htm

If you only want to quickly download the audio track without wasting time downloading the video data, you also have to wait until the video has started playing for at least 5 seconds. After that, click the "Download Audio" button to start downloading the audio track in mp3 format.

Otherwise just cancel the MP4 component of the download in the downloader.

1522

Living Room / Re: pass time during flights

« Last post by 4wd on December 25, 2015, 05:04 PM »

also will the phone last these 3.5h?

-kalos (December 24, 2015, 09:09 PM)

That depends on your phone, (mine will last almost a day just playing mp3s), and considering it will be in flight mode, (no active RF transmitters), the battery will last longer.

1523

General Software Discussion / Re: Why I am done chasing AV scanners

« Last post by 4wd on December 25, 2015, 04:59 PM »

FWIW, I compiled your source above using AutoIt v3.3.12.0 (I haven't updated yet), scanned with MBAM (latest DB) and it was fine.

EDIT: Compiled with AutoIt 3.3.14.2 and it still scans clean.

1524

Living Room / Re: pass time during flights

« Last post by 4wd on December 25, 2015, 04:26 AM »

But how can I browse youtube and with one click save the sound of these songs ...

-kalos (December 24, 2015, 09:09 PM)

Download SlimJet,
Install,
Browse Youtube,
Push the button.



It'll download both the MP4 video and MP3 audio generally.

1525

Living Room / Re: Show us a photo of your mutt or other creatures..

« Last post by 4wd on December 23, 2015, 04:44 AM »

A pair of Christmas visitors: