Test Equipment Anonymous

VERY BAD idea: mixing Decaborane and white fuming nitric acid:

Black Metal without distortion is just Surf Rock:

This guy talks about "Top 10 words we should steal from German"

That was a fun one!

----

My contribution for the day https://forrestheller.com/Apollo-11-Com ... rgers.html

A few minutes ago at the 37C3:

Quote:
"Imagine discovering a zero-click attack targeting Apple mobile devices of your colleagues and managing to capture all the stages of the attack. That’s exactly what happened to us! This led to the fixing of four zero-day vulnerabilities and discovering of a previously unknown and highly sophisticated spyware that had been around for years without anyone noticing. We call it Operation Triangulation. We've been teasing this story for almost six months, while thoroughly analyzing every stage of the attack. Now, for the first time, we're ready to tell you all about it. This is the story of the most sophisticated attack chain and spyware ever discovered by Kaspersky. "

https://events.ccc.de/congress/2023/hub/de/event/operation_triangulation_what_you_get_when_attack_iphones_of_researchers/

Edit:
A few minutes ago, the video got uploaded to youtube:

[youtube]https://youtu.be/PDkL0PGhlFY?t=60[/youtube]

How to build a guitar amp:
Here is somebody assembling a vacuum tube guitar amp, Marshall style from the 1960s.
(sorry, audio is in German)

I think, the schematics are looking like this:


Watching the video was a bit painful (e.g. shrinking the shrinking tubes with a gas lighter, cleaning the soldering tip with solder grease, soldering iron is underpowered imo, etc. ...)

I can see the point of valve guitar amps. The soft cut off characteristics, and the considerable even order distortion, are part of the sound. Some people take it much too far.

It makes more sense than ludicrously expensive valve hi-fi, with all its fads and fancies.

24/7 electronics in Japan:
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasf ... older_and/

Zenith wrote: ↑Tue Jan 02, 2024 8:22 pm I can see the point of valve guitar amps. The soft cut off characteristics, and the considerable even order distortion, are part of the sound. Some people take it much too far.

It makes more sense than ludicrously expensive valve hi-fi, with all its fads and fancies.

Back in the day, when valves were "the only game in town" designers of hi-fi amplifiers went to great lengths to find "workarounds" to minimise the effects that people seem to worship in guitar amps.
Top level, & indeed, middle level, valve hifi amps were already approaching the limits of human perception------after all our ears haven't changed for many hundreds of millennia, & "golden ears" have never been necessary for survival of the species.

An obvious difference is that with a valve hi-fi amp, everything would be conservatively rated, so a classic design such as the Mullard 5-10, based on a pair of EL84s, would produce 10W, unacceptably low for a guitar amplifier using the same components. They'd also use expensive and carefully wound output transformers to ensure a flat frequency response, another pointless frippery for a guitar amp. Hi-fi makers wouldn't make a big deal of the soft overload characteristics, as they'd go nowhere near that. No need for an RIAA profile in a guitar amp

Different requirements for different markets.

The Golden Ears business started long before hi-fi, with discussions about whether Stradivarius violins were better than other top name violins and blind tests to see if people could really tell the difference.

As this is a thread on interesting findings on the internet, to keep it on track.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e0Tuvi ... =RobLandes

He's a noted violin virtuoso. His videos where he poses as a beginner for on-line lessons are a hoot, and fun not nasty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nenJ827 ... =RobLandes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpUC8ar ... =RobLandes

BU508A wrote: ↑Tue Jan 02, 2024 11:23 pm 24/7 electronics in Japan: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasf ... older_and/

Notice the market-appropriate pricing as well... where the fuckup (coil of solder) costs approx 4/11 that of the fix (solder-wick). And of course, the replacements for what you fucked up are a little over twice that... unless you fucked up a cap. Then shit gets aspensifff!!!

mnem
*toddles off top do family time things*

https://wtfnotebooks.com/collections/all-wtf-notebooks

mnem
why do I get the feeling this is one of @bd139's side hustles...?

mnementh wrote: ↑Thu Jan 04, 2024 8:05 pm Notice the market-appropriate pricing as well... where the fuckup (coil of solder) costs approx 4/11 that of the fix (solder-wick). And of course, the replacements for what you fucked up are a little over twice that... unless you fucked up a cap. Then shit gets aspensifff!!!

mnem

All rather odd, but a photo can be misleading. Japan, I've been told, is the closest you can get to experiencing an alien culture without leaving earth. In the UK hobby electronics reached a peak around 1990 and then seemed to die abruptly in the mid 90s. In the 80s there were small electronics shops in most large towns. I can never imagine a dispensing machine for electronic bits and pieces being a success. It was always mainly a mail order business.

In 1996 I went to a branch of Fry's in California. I'd been assured they stocked absolutely everything and that they would definitely have several types of tunnel diode. It was a strange building in a Middle Eastern style. They had common component types and it was a step up from Tandy. I asked and they didn't know what a tunnel diode was.

Oh, I just assumed the machine was on-campus at some tech college, to make sure students could get the parts they needed for graded projects.

Yeah, best part of our Fry's in Houston was the loss-leader consumer electronics. Oh, and all the space-race decor.

mnem
*watching a ballgame with dad*

mnementh wrote: ↑Fri Jan 05, 2024 2:28 am Oh, I just assumed the machine was on-campus at some tech college, to make sure students could get the parts they needed for graded projects.

Yeah, best part of our Fry's in Houston was the loss-leader consumer electronics. Oh, and all the space-race decor.

mnem
*watching a ballgame with dad*

I went to Fry's in Palo Alto back in 2003, just to have been there. That, at the time, felt cool as an experience, and since I'd already experienced the wonder that was the Distrelec brick-and-mortar store in Stockholm, I had high expectations. Turns out the Distrelec store was way better (Distrelec closed it in 2020, IIRC). But, the Fry's of 2003 was still an electronics store. Fry's of Las Vegas in 2019 was a pale shadow and barely that. 2nd But: If you are in the Valley, don't miss Anchor Electronics. They are what an electronics store oughta be. For real. Also is mentioned several times by CuriousMarc.

Zenith wrote: ↑Thu Jan 04, 2024 9:09 pm

mnementh wrote: ↑Thu Jan 04, 2024 8:05 pm Notice the market-appropriate pricing as well... where the fuckup (coil of solder) costs approx 4/11 that of the fix (solder-wick). And of course, the replacements for what you fucked up are a little over twice that... unless you fucked up a cap. Then shit gets aspensifff!!!

mnem

All rather odd, but a photo can be misleading. Japan, I've been told, is the closest you can get to experiencing an alien culture without leaving earth. In the UK hobby electronics reached a peak around 1990 and then seemed to die abruptly in the mid 90s. In the 80s there were small electronics shops in most large towns. I can never imagine a dispensing machine for electronic bits and pieces being a success. It was always mainly a mail order business.

In 1996 I went to a branch of Fry's in California. I'd been assured they stocked absolutely everything and that they would definitely have several types of tunnel diode. It was a strange building in a Middle Eastern style. They had common component types and it was a step up from Tandy. I asked and they didn't know what a tunnel diode was.

If you mean the one in Mountain View, ISTR it being more adobe/Aztec inspired.

I too went there in '96, and while it was good, it felt like it was going more towards the latest Japanese gizmo market. Maplin in the UK adopted that strategy, over-expanded because of cheap capital, and fell apart when that dried up and all the potential new customers moved to playing with computer.

The other source for impecunious youngsters was the surplus shops that sprang up after WW2. I frequented the one in Lisle St (before Soho became sanitised), Tottenham Ct Rd, and Edgware Rd. One hang on near me until this century, and I'm not sure whether J Birkett's in Lincoln is still operating. (Shown on gurgle maps, but Birkett died in 2022 at 93yo).

tggzzz wrote: ↑Fri Jan 05, 2024 9:34 am
If you mean the one in Mountain View, ISTR it being more adobe/Aztec inspired.

I too went there in '96, and while it was good, it felt like it was going more towards the latest Japanese gizmo market. Maplin in the UK adopted that strategy, over-expanded because of cheap capital, and fell apart when that dried up and all the potential new customers moved to playing with computer.

No it wasn't that one, but there were several Fry's in the Bay Area and more across the USA. Fry's were noted for many of their stores having outlandish exteriors.

Hobby electronics had a long boom from the early 60s til towards the end of the 90s. At one time there were several magazines dedicated to it which eventually merged. Maplin had their own magazine for some years. Maplin thrived on that boom. I can recall in the late 80s, going to the Gloucester Road Bristol branch on a Saturday near to Christmas, and the queue went right round the shop and out onto the street. I suppose the modern equivalent is "making" but it doesn't seem to have the same impetus.

The story of Maplin is covered in depth in several articles.

https://www.coppolacomment.com/2018/03/ ... onics.html

There certainly seems to have been a fair amount of financial sleight-of-hand, in the interests of tax efficiency, leveraging yada yada, along the way.

My observation was that the core business, electronics supplies for hobbyists, had dried up and they made a fairly successful move into toys, gimmicks, disco equipment, computers and other geeky things. They still felt obliged to stock components, but it was a token effort. There were other changes taking place as well, such as the difficulties High Street shops have been facing generally.

So the sad story of Maplin may simply be an old-fashioned tale of over-expansion, loss of core focus and inability to respond to a fast-changing market. Just like Toys R Us.

Maplin has arisen like a phoenix from the ashes and lives on as a mail order business.

https://pro.maplin.co.uk/

I can't see any compelling reason to deal with them rather than CPC or Farnell.

tggzzz wrote: ↑Fri Jan 05, 2024 9:34 am The other source for impecunious youngsters was the surplus shops that sprang up after WW2. I frequented the one in Lisle St (before Soho became sanitised), Tottenham Ct Rd, and Edgware Rd. One hang on near me until this century, and I'm not sure whether J Birkett's in Lincoln is still operating. (Shown on gurgle maps, but Birkett died in 2022 at 93yo).

There wasn't one in the town where I lived. I was stuck with mail order. A lot of the well known shops in the Edgeware Road and Tottenham Court Road, such as Henry's Radio, always had a strong mail order business.

Birkett used to have a stall at some of the rallies and I bought some things from him. That was over 20 years back. I had a look on the WWW and found a forum comment saying that by June 2022 the shop had gone and been replaced by several trendy new shops.

Those shops were part of an era. It's hard to see starting one up these days and it having any prospect of success.

No new Linux-kernel because of winterstorm:
https://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/ker ... 06297.html

Google is rebranding gambling as "real money gaming".
https://android-developers.googleblog.c ... -play.html

Presumably suckering punters into watching worthless look-at-me talking head videos isn't sufficiently lucrative

I don't think that's a rebrand. It has been described as gaming as far back as 2005 when I worked for a dodgy gambling outfit.

When I worked in software support one of the customers was a casino in the Netherlands. I had a call from them and the bloke on the other end of the phone described the problem. He was a bit cagey about what the business was (fairly clear from the title) and went through all sorts of contortions when he mentioned the customers of the business, calling them paying customers and dear guests etc. In the end I suggested that this was a casino and the customers in question were gamblers. He seemed relieved and agreed that it was a casino and he was talking about gamblers. The word "suckers" crossed my mind.

bd139 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 16, 2024 11:50 am I don't think that's a rebrand. It has been described as gaming as far back as 2005 when I worked for a dodgy gambling outfit.

Far longer than that. I'm sure it was described as gaming in Regency times at least, and the participants were called gamesters. It was carried to ridiculous lengths and large estates were known to change hands on a turn of the cards.

Zenith wrote: ↑Tue Jan 16, 2024 1:09 pm

bd139 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 16, 2024 11:50 am I don't think that's a rebrand. It has been described as gaming as far back as 2005 when I worked for a dodgy gambling outfit.

Far longer than that. I'm sure it was described as gaming in Regency times at least, and the participants were called gamesters. It was carried to ridiculous lengths and large estates were known to change hands on a turn of the cards.

Beat me to it.

Nonetheless I claim gurgle is attempting to avoid discussion that it is allowing gambling apps.

I too have never seen the point of gambling, except once. In the days after brexit I enquired what odds they would offer that the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" would exist in 20 years time. The off-the-cuff answer was probably 2:1. If it had been 10:1 I would have placed a bet.

But why would gambling attract us? We get the same kicks from GAS on fleabay and at hamfests.

bd139 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 16, 2024 11:50 am I don't think that's a rebrand. It has been described as gaming as far back as 2005 when I worked for a dodgy gambling outfit.

The Gaming Board was the regulator for gambling in the UK until it was replaced by the Gambling Commission in 2007. "Gaming" as a term of art dates back at least to the Gaming Acts of 1739, 1745 and 1845.