ragebutt @ ragebutt @lemmy.dbzer0.com

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6 mo. ago

You’re correct, I was misremembering (it’s been awhile)

The prodinfo/console identifier is on the emmc and in situations where the console was dead or not hacked this couldn’t be dumped (although looking it up now it appears there are methods to extract prodinfo from dead emmc or generate a fake one that will get you banned but make the console boot).

I repaired more switches than anything because there was an ample supply of broken ones and they were easy to sell as refurbished. I stopped a few years ago but for awhile I would buy every broken switch I could get my hands on that was reasonably priced, fix it (if possible), and resell it

I would argue they are very repairable though it is in spite of nintendo, not because of them. The modular design does help a bit but ultimately what helps is that there were a lot of people like me posting notes online and if you know where to look (badcaps, gbatemp, youtube (side note youtube fucking sucks for this post your notes as actual notes), etc) there is extensive documentation on the switch and joycon motherboards to the point where they’ve basically been reverse engineered (not fully but close enough).

Then on top of that there is a huge level of support from Chinese manufacturing. I can get all the chips that were hard to source from places like mouser and digikey on AliExpress. I can get replacement joysticks, batteries, fans, usb c ports, LCDs, casings, basically everything Nintendo won’t sell, and most of it is all solid quality. In some cases it’s greatly improved - I can skip the $3 joycon stick replacement that will inevitably drift again in 6 months because of the flawed design and get the $20 Hall effect stick replacement that will last for years. I have these in my switch and they work great, I haven’t replaced the sticks since like 2020

Nintendo made the somewhat modular design and not pairing parts right but otherwise fucking suck at support. If you get one I refurbished they’ll tell you to go fuck yourself. Fuck nintendo. That said if you want a console you can repair yourself the switch is extremely well documented and parts are everywhere.

Keep in mind that not all switches are fixable before you buy a broken one and some repairs are extremely complex. If the emmc is fucked you’re screwed because it’s paired to the cpu. If there’s a short in the cpu you’re screwed unless reballing the cpu fixes it but this is generally not worth the effort and probably won’t work. If someone else who sucks tried fixing it first you might find a nightmare scenario of board damage: the worst deals I got were ones where someone said their switch broke and sold it to me, I opened it up, and it was clear they tried to replace the usb c port. This isn’t a terribly difficult fix if you know what you’re doing but if you’re new to soldering it’s pretty challenging, definitely not a first project. So the board is all charred, burnt flux (from flux core solder, they never use flux haha), pads lifted and traces ruined, blobs of solder, passives in the area like filters just straight up missing. Fixing all that is a nightmare so it becomes a donor

Honestly the bigger thing is sponsorblock, blocking youtube ads is a big deal but it’s so much nicer to be able to circumvent the internalized advertising. Youtuber spends 4 full minutes plugging a vpn service? Automatically skipped seamlessly

Rooting ranges from very easy (literally go to a webpage, very unlikely you’re on a firmware this old), to medium (put stuff on a usb and try to play some music, may have to try a few times), to very difficult (connecting hardware to the tv), and in some cases is impossible. Don’t update your tv if you don’t have to, lg rarely fixes issues and never adds new features

https://cani.rootmy.tv/

Jellyfin for kodi is pretty bulletproof for me although it wasn’t always that way; when I first changed to this setup (bit over a year ago when Coreelec added dolby vision support) there were some headaches because kodi was changing how the db worked at the time (change from kodi 20 to 21 and Coreelec was using the kodi 21 nightlies for dv stuff that hadn’t been brought into final version)

Once the 21 final came out and Jellyfin for kodi was updated it’s been smooth sailing.

That does remind me of another downside though: there’s a minor slap fight on how db management should occur between kodi and jellyfin devs. Like many open source projects they simply can’t agree on anything so each project just does what they think is right. So kodi 22 or jellyfin 11 might cause another scenario like above if they decide to revamp the db again (especially on the Jellyfin side; I would not be surprised if someday they will overhaul the lackluster music portion of Jellyfin)

If you ever do revisit Jellyfin for metadata administration I would suggest posting about your issues on the github for Jellyfin for kodi. I’ve never used Jellycon so I can’t speak to that but Jellyfin for kodi’s github is overall helpful although fair warning that the dev can be a bit curt, especially if your issue has already been addressed and is configuration related. Things may have changed but at least ~ a year ago it was solely developed by one person who did the majority of the support as well. But if nfs is working then why break what isn’t broken?

You can root webos depending on what version you’re running but that more just lets you run homebrew (which is handy for youtube with Adblock and sponsorblock)

As others have said the best thing you can do is bypass internet connectivity altogether. I use the youtube app so I keep it connected with lg services and tracking blocked:

||snu.lge.com^ ||su.lge.com^ ||su-ssl.lge.com^ ||snu-dev.lge.com^ ||su-dev.lge.com^ ||nsu.lge.com^

(Formatted for adguard dns)

But it’s easier to just disconnect entirely. Let it collect data but if it’s disconnected it can’t do anything with it.

For a box I use a Chinese google tv box - ugoos am6b+. It can decode almost any video format (including dolby vision and all lossless audio, can pass through) except av1 basically and there are some newer versions that can do that as well. Google is awful right? The ugoos is stripped back pretty hard though it does retain the play store but still block the following:

||androidtvwatsonfe-pa.googleapis.com^ ||androidtvchannels-pa.googleapis.com^

Probably not necessary but just in case. Anyway, the Google tv side is just for streaming services (if you use them) and IPTV because Jellyfin and kodi are garbage at IPTV, tivimate on android is leagues better

Anyway flash the box to use Coreelec and copy Coreelec to the emmc, takes like 10 minutes and is pretty easy, just need an sd card. Now you use kodi as your Jellyfin app (or plex/emby but fuck plex/emby) by just installing the Jellyfin for kodi plugin in kodi and in jellyfin. Sign into your Jellyfin instance in the plugin, your library will import (can take awhile the first time if you’re like me and have a huuuuge library with like 1,000 movies, 10,000 episodes, and 300,000 songs)

Then look around on the kodi forums for a decent skin that looks nice for you bc the default one is butt, configure the menus to match your setup, adjust the skin settings to your liking, etc. backup your settings!

Now you have a Jellyfin client that plays back media directly without transcoding 99.99% of the time (assuming you have an avr that can play lossless audio), is far more mature than any of the shitty Jellyfin client apps (development started in 2003), handles stuff like subtitles far better, still syncs watched status, etc. and the worst part of kodi: library management and administration, is now handled by jellyfin, which does it much better.

If you have remote users or other TVs/phones/etc they can still use the client apps too

Downside is that you lose most plugin support. Like back before they started to roll intro skipper into Jellyfin or jelly scrub, those are useless to kodi. And a weakness of kodi is that with the rise of plex/jellyfin addon development for kodi has dropped off significantly so no introskipper plugin for kodi. Navigation features work well (pressing right on the remote skips forward 10s) so that’s close enough, or just download good quality rips with chapters

I remember vga patching all my Dreamcast games to play them in glorious 480(i?) on my 19” acer crt back in like 2000

Soul caliber was the best

This except telling a story about literally anything and giving an overwhelming amount of background detail because if you don’t have the context of course it won’t make sense and it will be misinterpreted, right (see: my post history)

“Optimizing for things people love” aka talking to you like an hr team building seminar

It’s frustrating, or maybe it’s a good thing given the tendency for some people to form weird pseudo social relationships with LLMs, to see the evolution of chatgpts language processing

Public chatgpt only had the 3.5, 4, and 4o model but you can play with earlier models like 2 and 3 on huggingface. These were far weirder, often robotic and stilted but sometimes mirroring more natural colloquial English more based on the input

Rather than make something that is authentic and more natural to interact with they instead go for the ultra sanitized HR corporate speak bullshit. Completely bland and inoffensive with constant encouragement and reinforcement to drive engagement that feels so inauthentic (unless you are desperate for connection with anything, I guess). It’s mirrored in other models to some degree, deepseek, llama, etc (I don’t know about grok, fuck going on twitter).

3-5 years until it’s ruined by advertising, tops. If that

The problem is the adhesive does serve a purpose (mainly vibration/keeping the battery in place). Depends on how much you travel with it and the design overall (I’m not familiar with the steam deck but looking at the ifixit it appears ribbons are fixed to it so having the battery bounce around could be a problem)

That said you can buy those pull tab strips and could probably use them here. I hate those things but why not? Better than what was there, I guess. Especially bc the off brand ones can be fairly weak adhesive

Ehhh I’ve had some nightmare experiences with Samsung, LG (back when they made phones), Xiaomi (edit not Xiaomi, huawei), etc. a lot use pull tabs and when they work they’re perfect but when they’re old or you go just a bit too fast and they break you’re fucked and have to either heat it a ton, drown it in solvent, or slide a thin wire to cut it, all options suck

Funny enough the new apple phones actually have this weird electro conductive adhesive that’s crazy simple to remove. The pull tabs are now terminals, you connect those to a standard 9v battery with alligator clips or whatever, and after a short bit of time (30 seconds iirc) the adhesive just releases and you can lift the battery out

There are videos of it on youtube, it’s pretty cool and the one adhesive I can potentially get behind. though I would want to see what people say about it after a few years of actual use. The initial teardown videos when the 16 came out made it look impressive but who knows if it holds up after 5-7 years

They also don’t use it for laptops so far. They didn’t even use it for all versions of the iphone 16 so it’s not exactly applaud apple time but if they roll that out to replace the nasty adhesives they were using for batteries across their product line it would be a great step in the right direction

Isn’t battery adhesive the worst thing ever?

I remember fixing a few macbooks that had batteries like this. The batteries were gigantic and the adhesive was crazy strong. Dumping acetone behind them with a syringe, heat, and gently prying eventually got them out but it was quite nerve wracking. I guess you can’t dump solvents in a steam deck though

It’s so dumb. Adhesives make assembly easier but fuck over repairability. The only advantages are even distribution of pressure and vibration dampening, which are notable, but are not worth making the main wear item completely inaccessible and a nightmare to replace for the majority of people who don’t have experience with heat guns and sliding cards/thin metal to cut the stupid fucking adhesive that could’ve been replaced by a screw making the product 0.5mm thicker and 0.1g heavier (if that)

Patent infringement is about use, not price

It’s total bullshit that stifles innovation but such is life in the USA. At least the period isn’t completely obscene like copyright

That makes sense. If you’re going that route though you should be fairly safe patent wise I would think? Most of the dot matrix patents, if not all, have to be expired by now?

That is correct but it means it’s a lot of work for not much benefit

3d printing took off in 2009 when the stratasys patents on FDM expired. You can literally look at the history of consumer 3d printing and it’s basically nothing nothing nothing nothing 2009 reprap makerbot prusa. Similarly when SLA patents expired we suddenly got formlabs and eventually cheap resin printers.

Why reinvent the wheel? If a patent is about to expire just wait and do that. If it’s not and you truly have a novel idea for how to achieve the function that does not infringe on any patents, most people would end up trying to sell it (assuming they have the skill to bring it to market). Our culture is ruthless and requires capital to survive so I don’t necessarily fault someone for trying to secure the bag, though I wish they would at least do it in a way that wasn’t totally gross

Most modern printers aren’t what you describe though, they’re either a piezo that flexes with electricity to create pressure on the ink chamber and release a precise droplet of ink or they are a thermal design where a resistor heats inside the ink chamber to create pressure that forces ink out of the nozzle and subsequently draws more ink into the chamber as it cools. Heat is used here to eject the ink but heat is not used to set the ink in either process, that is done with evaporation and absorption (which is why printing a full page image can smear).

It’s not some big secret as you’ve said, the patents are openly available, but as you’ve said they’re off limits even for noncommercial use because America is stupid. It’s true that they’re not mystical and impossible to recreate but they’re definitely harder to replicate than a heat sink with a tube cut in it, a heat break, a cartridge heater, and a metal nozzle with a (typically) 0.4mm hole

The print head in most inkjet printers (at least non commercial ones) has no moving parts (unless you count the piezo flexing). Dot matrix used needles but why recreate that unless you specifically want that for the vibes or something?

The latter. Someone could create a novel means of transferring ink onto paper in a way that results in high resolution images and give it to the world for free i suppose

CUPS works great when it does work but it can be a real pain in the ass. That said if you build the printer around it it would probably work pretty well

An open source 2d printer is possible but will probably never happen

The print head is incredibly complex, the drivers and communications to talk to printers are all closed source, and unlike 3d printing the level of quality people are accustomed to is covered by patents for another 20-30 years

I became more aware of how much tax I was paying when I became self employed because instead of paying a bit out of each check like a w2 worker I have to pay it in lump sums quarterly.

I run a low overhead medical practice so I don’t have a tax cheat llc, I take the standard deduction every year and as a result my taxes are pretty much the same as they ever were. Even though it’s roughly the same amount (slightly more actually, now that I cut out the overhead of medical systems stealing 30-60% of my labor) there’s something psychological about paying the amount in a lump sum

I think paying taxes is important and I want to do. However I feel conflicted about spending this money because what I feel paying taxes are important for are generally not what my tax dollars fund, and increasingly so. I want to pay and gladly will for community enrichment, better public schools, access to healthcare, infrastructure like roads, power lines, sewers, moving away from fossil fuels, better handling of trash and recycling programs, rehabilitation programs for criminal offenders, mental health programs including interim programs like community supports and mobile programs that exist in between outpatient and inpatient, social welfare programs that give people access to housing, food, electricity, etc

But instead my taxes pay for these things increasingly less. About 20% of my taxes go to military and defensive spending and while I do think some amount needs to go to this I think it’s absurd. Most countries spend 3-5% on defensive spending. Even China, the second highest after the US, spends 6%.

So I don’t resent paying taxes but I do resent how much when roughly 1/5th of that goes to defense contractors to launder billions from taxpayer and Israel for genocide. I also resent that my tax burden continually increases despite making roughly $60-70k a year while the services around me continually decrease.

I remember reading a conspiracy theory that this key was purposely put in by a liberal employee who believed everything should be free and that’s why the first 5 digits are FCKGW - fuck George w - and that it was the volume license for Lockheed Martin or something

It’s not true but interestingly this key was leaked before windows xp even came out, like a month before, and it’s suspected to be a VLK from dell

Nowadays they’d probably say leftist