Apacer SSD forced itself into read-only mode -- how can this be reversed? Anyone know what pw Apacer uses?
cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/21033639
The background is here. In short, an SSD with the “Apacer” brand froze itself into read-only mode, presumably due to reaching a point of poor reliability.
The data on the drive is useless. It was part way through installing linux when it happened. I would like to reverse that switch to make one last write operation (to write a live linux distro), which thereafter can be read-only.
I have heard some speculation that the manufacturer uses password to impose read-only mode. If true, then the password would be in the drive’s firmware. Does anyone know what Apacer uses for this password?
SSD forced itself into read-only mode -- how can this be reversed?
The background is here. In short, an SSD with the “Apacer” brand froze itself into read-only mode, presumably due to reaching a point of poor reliability.
The data on the drive is useless. It was part way through installing linux when it happened. I would like to reverse that switch to make one last write operation (to write a live linux distro), which thereafter can be read-only.
I have heard some speculation that the manufacturer uses password to impose read-only mode. If true, then the password would be in the drive’s firmware. Does anyone know what Apacer uses for this password?
That indeed makes sense from a purely practical PoV, if you neglect right to repair. But the drive maker (Apacer) is effectively denying users their right to repair through the nannying. Your approach is good for repair avoidance but still supports anti-repair suppliers in the end.
Solid State Disk drives (SSDs) have a short life and worse: manufacturers nanny users after blocking write access to old drives
cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/21031468
SSDs can only tolerate a certain number of writes to each block. And the number is low. I have a 64gb SSD that went into a permanent read-only mode. 64gb is still today a very useful capacity. Thus the usefulness is cut short by hardware design deficiencies.
Contrast that with magnetic hard drives which often live beyond the usefulness of their capacity. That is, people toss out working 80mb mechanical drives now because they’re too small to justify the physical space they occupy, not because of premature failure ending the device’s useful life.
Nannying
When an SSD crosses a line whereby the manufacturer considers it unreliable, it goes into a read-only mode which (I believe) is passworded with a key that is not disclosed to consumers. The read-only mode is reasonable as it protects users from data loss. But the problem is the nannying that denies “owners” ultimate control over their own property.
When I tr
I don’t quite follow the connection between retailer size and planned obsolescence. Do you have a Cliff’s Notes? Youtube has become a shitshow since Google now treats Invidious and Tor with hostility. We can no longer consider YT videos to be openly reachable. I am essentially blocked from YT.
(edit) I was able to find a rarely working invidious instance and fetch it. will watch it later.
I’m pretty sure you are writing from a device that has most of his fundamental components not made in Europe but the US.
Globalisation has yielded a machine that was produced from all over the world. It’s a 2008 machine. Not sure what point you’re trying to make here but no dime of mine has gone to any PC maker anywhere since 2008. And I believe I can get another 10+ years out of this machine before I have to start using PCs that I have salvaged from curbside dumps.
Removing the possibility for us to use US tech from day one it’s non only impossible but also unnecessary.
Of course it’s necessary. As long as you are dependant on US tech giants, you don’t have ETS.
I know peertube very well, is not a replacement for YouTube.
It’s easily a replacement for content creators. Hence why I said I could not tell if it’s your content. Now that you say it’s not, then indeed options are limited to finding Invidious instances that have not been neutered for saving videos that can be shared outside of YT. Beyond that, we need someone to invent a sharing platform well suited to YT. Something that uses the basic bittorrent design with trackers that key on the video ID.
Boycotting the US is silly. Boycott shitty corporations and you are already boycotting the US anyway, in effect. Nothing changes here.
You should be boycotting these companies already because they support extreme right politics by their ALEC membership:
You should be boycotting Amazon for many reasons.
If you oppose private prisons, then you already boycott these banks:
Don’t think they are out of reach to Europe -- many European small banks that you assume are ethical actually outsource their investments to JP Morgan. Also, BofA uses different branding outside the US.
If you like transparency with food labeling, then you endorse labeling of #GMO food, in which case y
I have to say there is a bit of irony to link to Google Youtube videos.
I don’t do Youtube so can’t tell if that’s your content.. but have you considered peertube?
Where is the story here? I just see a pic in cloudflare, which forces readers to enable image rendering and fetch it from a walled garden. Only to find nothing to support the title. It’s a shit post, even if the title is an accurate statement.
Fabric softener is only a scam to ppl who don’t know what to do with it. Here is how fabric softener is useful:
It only affects how you obtain it. If you boycott Nestlé, then you can still ethically obtain Nestlé products by shoplifting or buying it from shoplifters.
The capability you’re after is “geocoding”, which (IIRC) is the conversion from street address to coordinates. It’s built into nav apps like OSMand, but only functions if the addresses are in the db. I live in a well mapped area that has most addresses. But exceptionally, sometimes I zoom in on a map and there are buildings that have no numbers assigned to them. In those cases, the address is unsearchable in the app.
If you know where the building is, then as @tippon said you can add it using an editing app. If you don’t know, then you need to find another source. Apart from google and apple maps, you could perhaps pick up a cheap old TomTom from a flea market. I recently saw a box of them.. 2 TomToms for $1.
I often use this tool for geocoding:
https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/ui/search.html
But I suppose that won’t help since the source data is also OSM.
If it’s a business you cannot find, be sure to complain to the business that they are not in OpenStreetMaps. It helps to raise awareness. They have a business interest to being included in the OSM dataset.
Editing favourites on a PC is rough-going. Updates to favourites.gpx inconsistently take effect
This command transfers the favourites from OSMand to the PC:
undefined
$ adb pull storage/sdcard0/Android/data/net.osmand.plus/files/favourites.gpx
That much works as far as making a backup copy. But then I wanted to expand descriptions so that e.g. restaurants would have a detailed description of the food. The favourites.gpx file has MSDOS carriage returns, so I piped it through dos2unix and edited in emacs. Then I ran the file through unix2dos before pushing it back to the device while OSMand was not running:
undefined
$ adb push favourites.gpx storage/sdcard0/Android/data/net.osmand.plus/files/
Most of my edits were to simply add a descrption with the <desc> tag. Some of my changes involved color modifications to the icons by simply changing the hex inside the tags like this:
undefined
<wpt …
<extensions>
<osmand:color>#10c0f0</osmand:color>
</extensions>
</wpt>
None of my description changes had any affect. OSMand remembered the previous favourites. This means t
New community to track non-BifL goods
We can’t always find BifL products for everything. So it’s at least interesting to steer clear of the utter garbage known to be the opposite of BifL. I just created this community for that purpose:
Oki (formerly Okidata) has always had the ethical higher ground, above Brother, AFAICT. Brother does partake in ink waste shenanigans with their inkjets. IIRC, the only negative with Oki is they write that non-Oki toner voids the warranty -- but don’t they all?
⚠ But note that you cannot be in the US. Oki pulled out of the US marketplace.
This is click baity. Have a look at some of the laws:
Things like wheelchairs, farm equipment, and cars. Very narrow.
I’m not the least bit impressed and hope these examples are not used as an excuse to encumber the badly needed progress to fix things that matter apart from wheelchairs and veg. farm equipment.
IMO, Trump is more of a right to repair motivator because all the trade wars will make consumerism less attractive and thus inspire repair.
I mean, it would be an accident on Trump’s part and he will want to intervene to thwart r2r. But consider as well that the GOP is theoretically all about shifting power to the states and reducing federal power. This will be a source of cognitive dissonance for the retarded tyrant.
I appreciate the info. JOSM is java which gives me issues. OSM’s website is Cloudflare (a non-starter for me.. I won’t touch Cloudflare). I did not know about rapideditor.org, so I’ll have to check that out.
What if you want to sell the house
I’ve not read the contract yet. Considering they include removal an reinstallation labor for free if someone renovates their roof, they theoretically might as well relocate them to another house when moving within their service area (which is constrained as well by the region of the green certificates).
What happens when you want to exit the contract within the 30 years?
Certainly you can buy the gear. And if you buy all the panels you are out of the contract. Price per panel as they age is something like this:
If you want to exit the contract and return the panels, I have no idea. But since these prices seem to be heavily inflated to cover their labor, I imagine it’s quite uninteresting to return the panels because they likely factor in the labor.
When the sun is shining at peak brightness, what’s the guarantee that you get to use all of it?
All the boxes have LCDs. The 1st box shows the power generation. Then another box shows what of that you are consuming. I don’t recall what the 3rd box shows but I can only imagine it’s the energy fed to the grid. I assume the original electric meter is still installed, in which case it might be possible to check the math.
There could still be shenanigans because it’s probably hard to verify. I think as a low consumer I might be better off buying the panels and getting an i/o meter (not sure what the correct term is but something that compensates me for what is fed back to the grid).
Anyway, I appreciate the reply. I’ll have to mirror some of those questions to the supplier.
I can only guess. I don’t think that could even be in contract. My guess:
The cost of installation, wiring and transformers is more than the cost of panels.
They likely factor all those costs into the panel costs. But would labor and parts overhead represent 9/10ths of €8500, for example? Looks like they install 3 boxes in the basement plus panels for around €7500.
That may be where the fat is. So I’m tempted to say this is only a good deal for someone who really wants hands-off on-grid solar power for 30 yrs. And perhaps a bad deal if someone foresees going off grid and doing their own labor.
After the 30 years of “borrowing” the panels, who pays for their removal and recycling?
I assume that’s the homeowner because the supplier simply makes it all the homeowner’s property after 30 years.. likely so they don’t have to deal with it.
Solar panels are gratis in my region (to borrow). But 10× normal prices to buy. What’s going on here?
A deal being offered in my area is:
The supplier profits from some kind of green certificates from the gov.
Seems like a no-brainer, on the edge of too good to be true. So I’m trying to decomp
I just get a white screen, even after enabling JS. I have images disabled. Is the whole page just an image?
They’re slow
Okay but that’s not the real deterrant. It’s the cost you mention. I would like to take a transatlantic cargo ship despite the extra long journey, but the cost blows it.
I don’t think cargo ships do much better on GHG than jets. But an airship would be vastly more eco responsible than ships or jets. Cost is really the issue though and that can be solved. People taking jets could be forced to subsidize those traveling more responsibly.
Today human hibernation is widely thought to be crazy talk but it’s not far off. We will see it in our lifetime. People in hibernation eat less, need less space, and need less customer service.
Using coffee or tea as printer ink
cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/3036509
There is apparently a printer that can use spent coffee or tea leaves to print. I love this idea but I would not buy a printer when so many are being thrown away. I pull them out of dumpsters with intent to repair them. So the question is, can they be hacked to work with coffee or tea?
Canon actually disclosed how to hack their cartridges as a consequence of a semiconductor shortage due to coronavirus. So this suggests #Canon could be a candidate for this hack. Has anyone tried it? How precisely do we have to match the viscosity of homemade ink to the original ink?
Can you actually tell us what your post had to do with the abolition of work?
I’ve posted there in the past about mitigating work (incl. concepts like ”quitting” but working which just means ways to not work your ass off pleasing a boss and just working at a content pace). I posted about new work reduction laws. I never posted about full abolition of work. And I commented then that it was strange that the sidebar seems to only mention full abolition of work, and I asked if there were any objections to chatter about work reduction. There were none. And those other posts were not suppressed. So I figured the sidebar was unintentionally narrow.
I stand by the decision to remove the post and I think its kinda ridiculous how out of proportion you are blowing this instance of mod action.
The rationale in the modlog was nonsense. Now you are giving different rationale.
When I say “more work than necessary”, I mean more than necessary for me. I only need 20 hours of employment, generally. The employer needed full-time. There is an infinite stack of work. The work is trivially divisible but the manager can organise the work more conveniently if dividing across fewer workers. When a manager insists on structuring work into only full-time positions in my line of work, they are a lazy manager. (Though I push back and put those lazy managers to work by giving them a part-time or nothing ultamatim, and bounce if needed).
I always start off a new job full-time to accommodate the up-front training in order to reach a point of positive productivity. After becoming established in a position for ~2—3 years many employers allow a transition to part-time. But some do not. In any case, the moment the job imposes more work than the worker needs, the worker is over employed (which can of course be attributed to workers living cheaply as that’s a factor in how much work is needed). I am over-selling my time and over employed the moment a manager refuses my request for part-time.
Bad mod action in anti-work community
This thread was inappropriately censored by either @[email protected] or @[email protected] claiming:
“Reason: Reason: Literally the opposite of anti-work is "over employment" which OP is arguing for”
There is an English comprehension problem by the mod. Would someone whose first language is English please:
The mod’s action to suppress is actually a pro-work action, as it prevents discussion around solutions to over-employment.
Progressive tax regimes are conducive to anti-work philosophy, right up until you take a year or more off.
Having a progressive tax system means tax rate increases disproportionately with the more work you do. And that’s a good because working less is encouraged by a reduced avg tax rate.
But what happens when you take a year (or 5 years) off? You live off savings that were taxed in higher brackets while earning zero. IOW, consider:
They both had the same gross earnings per unit time but Alice gets screwed on taxes because of the progressive tax system. My pattern is comparable to Alice due to forced full-time gigs that refuse part-time. My refuge is to subject myself to being over-employed for a stretch then quitting for a stretch of bench time. The only remedies I see:
heat your body, not your house -- using an infrared heat lamp
My goal is to keep central heating turned off as much as possible. I bundle up indoors, which works for the most part but I will struggle when temps drop low enough. And hands in cold air on a keyboard are still a problem regardless.
What about using an infrared heat lamp, which traditionally has these use cases:
The last bullet inspires some enthusiasm. But I am interested in a DiY project on-the-cheap, buying locally not online.
This [array of IR LEDs](https://www.nepal.ubuy.com/en
(success story) A fiber carrier drilled into homes without consent to run their cables and used Cloudflare to make their service exclusive -- and how my friend hit back
A new fiber network provider drilled into the façades of private homes to run their cables, without consent, to save themselves the cost of digging. Their website was in Cloudflare’s exclusive walled garden -- which means they were drilling people’s façades who were not even necessarily in the included group who could get service.
So my friend hand-delivered a letter and got the receptionist to sign for it (thus can be recognised by a court). The letter objected to the use of their home to deploy a network that exclude everyone Cloudflare excludes, and also said something like “since you had no consent to drill my house and I explicitly object, I will detach your cable on date X. And unless you say otherwise, if you consent to my work then take no action. Your inaction will signal acceptance to my plans.”
The Internet carrier had to employ a lawyer to write a long strongly worded response citing laws and their right to drill people’s façades, which they then had to send using registe
Encountered a human “ATM”. What is it really?
There was an ATM sign at a souvenir shop, so I entered to use it. Walked in circles looking for it.. sometimes they are very well hidden. Staff asked me what I was looking for. “The ATM”. They said “that’s me... just tell me how much you want and tap your card on the terminal.
It’s an interesting option for shops because if the cash comes from the register then that keeps the register light, thus fewer bank deposits and lower security risk.
But how does it work? The staff were at a loss to answer questions. They warned: if you have visa, the fees will be 11%. Yikes! Extortionate. Very hard to believe that’s even legal in Europe. Staff said most people use maestro (of course, Netherlands), but really bizarre that visa customers would be charged a staggering 11% and maestro 0%. I asked if it’s really an ATM transaction because that makes a big difference if the card is a credit card. A credit card at ATMs is doing a cash advance which has a cash advance fee on top of the interest.
Any ATMs in Amsterdam with generous limits on foreign cards?
ATMs are a nightmare for folks using non-SEPA cards. The biggest problem is getting solid info. E.g. this page falsely claims “Withdrawal limit: Bank ATMs in Netherlands have a withdrawal limit of 400 euros per transaction. However, there is no limit on the number of withdrawals per day.” The €400 per transaction limit is widely understood to be for non-eurozone cards, not local cards -- but in fact that’s also a bogus rumor because I have seen a non-eurozone card get ~€440 before. And the claim of no limit on the number of transactions is apparently nonsense too.
ABN·AMRO claims the limit is €2k. That’s probably correct for local cards but certainly not foriegn cards.
This page is one of few to acknowledge
Today, we at SFC, along with our OpenWrt member project, announce the production release of the OpenWrt One. This is the first wireless Internet router designed and built with your software freedom and right to repair in mind. The OpenWrt One will never be locked down and is forever unbrickable. ...
cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/15774903
No need to circumvent anti-consumer mechanisms and risk bricking. This router is liberated by design.
Today, we at SFC, along with our OpenWrt member project, announce the production release of the OpenWrt One. This is the first wireless Internet router designed and built with your software freedom and right to repair in mind. The OpenWrt One will never be locked down and is forever unbrickable. ...
No need to circumvent anti-consumer mechanisms and risk bricking. This router is liberated by design.
(alexandrite) When blocking Lemmy.world, all comments are suppressed when deliberately visiting a lemmy.world thread
I block all Cloudflare instances I know of (lemmy.world, sh.itjust.works, lemm.ee, lemmy.ca, programming.dev, etc). But sometimes I inadvertently end up on one of the those instances when searching in a logged out state. When I login, the block rules apply (as expected). But it makes no sense to block all comments in a thread without blocking the thread’s OP.
IOW, if the OP is displayed because it is visited specifically, then the full thread with all comments should also be visible.
lemmyverse.net missing many communities - is it no longer crawling?
When querying for “legal” and “law” on lemmyverse.net, it’s starkly clear that many communities are missing from the database. I get far more results when querying on specific instances. So what’s the problem? Is it no longer crawling?
(alexandrite) Cannot use search to visit unknown communities even when the [email protected] format is used
I am somewhat forced to use Alexandrite because the stock Lemmy client is broken on Ungoogled Chromium. So when Alexandrite cannot handle something it’s a burden. In the case at hand, Alexandrite is unable to search for a community using an exact path as the query.
Workaround: We have to use the stock client or some other client.
(edit) what is in the heads of ppl who downvote a bug? “This bug does not affect me personally so please don’t spend time fixing it”.
(Lemmy) No list of pending subscriptions
I am not sure why subscriptions are often not instant. Some subscriptions are forever stuck in the pending stage. The problem is that to enter a community in that state I must remember the host and community name, or I have to search for it again every single time.
The fix: put in the profile a list of pending subscriptions so we can easily enter those communities.