monovergent

I'll usually first notice it sometime in the afternoon, a stale, rubbery, maybe sour smell on my hands, especially the fingertips. Like a weak version of the smell that develops after wearing rubber gloves, even though I hadn't touched gloves all day. Quite annoying and makes me want to grit my teeth. Washes off with soap and water 9 times out of 10, but I'm also not bothered enough to do anything about it until I bundle it with a trip to the restrooms. I've never been able to trace down the source and it's been that way through school, work, and since at least 10 years ago in general. Anyone else experience this or know what might cause it?

For casual web browsing, coding, and document preparation, I'm getting just shy of 4 hours on a 6-cell and a little more than 6 hours on a 9-cell. Granted that's with a quad core mod, IPS display, and full Coreboot, so the typical power consumption with a browser window open might be anywhere from 13 to 16 watts.

How's your battery life? Any optimizations I might be missing out on?

Doesn't affect usability, but I am curious if other people see the timestamps (i.e. '6 hours ago') next to posts and comments in another language before the page fully loads in.

In my case, the timestamps show up in Chinese (or Japanese Kanji?) and are replaced with English once the page fully loads. Am using Librewolf, have CJK fonts installed, and system is set to English, if that is relevant.

Follow-up to my earlier write-up on Corebooting my i7-3612QE X230: https://lemmy.ml/post/23117122

Since I initially flashed the top 4MB BIOS chip with Coreboot via 1vyrain, the bottom 8MB remained intact with the Intel ME. Its contents are independent, so no need to worry about updating the 4MB BIOS for this procedure if it's already Corebooted.

I used an unmodified black CH341A with the included generic black clip. Pins 1-4 are on the side with the lever, align red wire of the clip with the indent or dot (pin 1) of the bottom 8MB chip.

While I purchased the CH341A with a 1.8 V converter, the chip was not detected with the converter in place, so I resolved to take a risk and do without it. Although the CH341A output reads 5 V on a multimeter, that's supposed to be the open-circuit voltage, which falls to around 3.3 V with any load, which the X230 chips should tolerate very well for the brief flashing operation. Please keep in mind that there's still a risk, especially if you are an owner of such a quad-core board.

Put the chip in the test clip and then plug in the CH341A into a system with flashrom and the iomem=relaxed kernel parameter. Save the contents of the chip:

flashrom -p ch341a_spi -r bottom.bin

It may detect multiple compatible chips. I couldn't really read the engraving on the chip itself, so I picked a random one. The particular choice shouldn't matter now, but might later. In this case,

flashrom -p ch341a_spi -r bottom.bin -c <YOUR CHIP>

Then verify that the dump matches the chip contents:

flashrom -p ch341a_spi -v bottom.bin -c <YOUR CHIP>

If anything fails, unplug the CH341A, redo the test clip, and plug in again.

Grab a copy of me_cleaner and run bottom.bin through it. It'll know what to do with the raw dump, no need to prep or otherwise bless the file:

python me_cleaner.py -S -O bottom_clean.bin bottom.bin

-S: In addition to stripping down the Intel ME, also set the AltMEDisable/HAP bit just in case

-O bottom_clean.bin: output result to bottom_clean.bin

Now to flash it the clean file back to the chip:

flashrom -p ch341a_spi -w bottom_clean.bin -c <YOUR CHIP>

This is where the specific selection of compatible chip does matter. On my first run, it failed to erase before writing the chip. Fortunately, it's mostly a matter of trial-and-error if you really can't read the chip markings and the other compatible model worked for me.

I can confirm that everything works as expected after the procedure, even the dreaded suspend-then-hibernate and resume. No noticeable changes in boot time, performance, or battery life.

Considering the aforementioned options for my next phone, but I've heard mixed reports on their compatibility with carriers in the US. Has anyone here gotten either to work reliably in the US and how good is the signal if it's missing some cellular bands? I'm currently on a T-Mobile MVNO, but am open to switching to whichever carrier that might work best.

Recently tried an Impossible burger and nuggets and thought that if nobody told me it wasn't meat, I'd have thought the patty was made out of a weird kind of meat, rather than make a connection with the taste and texture of plants. Honestly, I might not complain if that was the only kind of "meat" I could have for the rest of my life.

Well, maybe I'd miss bacon.

I've yet to find the opportunity to try lab-grown meat, but I for sure would like to try it out and don't see much wrong with it as long as it's sustainable, reasonably priced, and doesn't have anything you wouldn't expect in a normal piece of meat.

Also, with imitation and lab-grown options, I'd no longer have to deal with the disgust factor of handling raw meat (esp. the juices) or biting into gristle. I'll happily devour a hot dog, but something about an unexpected bit of cartilage gives me a lingering sense of revulsion.

Most AI-generated images with photorealistic and 3D elements have obvious defects, but I'm curious if anyone's done some analysis on the flat cartoon-style AI images. Cartoons, comics, and 2D artwork usually aren't meant to be photorealistic, but I can tell something is off at a glance. What exactly is it?

I've been mindful of the ways companies can track my spending habits, and so have been increasingly keen on using cash and avoiding mobile banking/payment apps like the plague. I realize that this varies by country and might be a bit far out, but the thought does linger in the back of my mind. If current trends continue, how much longer until they take cash and browser-based banking from us? Or will there be a reason those options should continue to exist (and be easily usable) far into the future? And perhaps:

• What else can I, as an individual, do about this?
• Is there a tendency for larger banks or smaller credit unions to push towards mobile-only online banking?
• What does it look like in countries where cashless and mobile payments are the norm?

When visiting some sites on Cromite, Fennec, or IronFox on my Android devices, the Anubis challenge fails with the error "invalid response". I don't recall if there were any other error messages that came up. This only affects a seemingly random portion of sites using Anubis and does not clear up after refreshing, both immediately and after waiting several hours. It's never affected Firefox and Librewolf on desktop, however.

Anyone know why it happens, how to avoid it, or what logs I could collect for an issue report on Github?

This is from a sampling of aftermarket batteries for the "old body style" ThinkPads (T510, X230, etc.). This may or may not apply to newer ThinkPads using flat Li-Polymer cells.

In general, the performance of an aftermarket battery correlates with its cost. The cheapest aftermarket cells provide half the battery life of more expensive ones and degrade sooner.

Brand-agnostic observations

• Some batteries don't play well with charge thresholds. If not allowed to reach 100%, they lose track of the actual charge over the course of a few cycles. This usually manifests as suddenly dropping to nearly empty from 30% to 50%.
• If it advertises support for the **30 series, the battery will probably pass the boot-up verification on those models.
• Aftermarket labels make liberal use of Arial instead of Helvetica. Maybe I have an eye for typefaces, but this should be a dead giveaway that tends to slip under the radar.
• Good aftermarket batteries tend to be considerably heavier than low-quality ones.
• Low-quality aftermarket batteries tend to fit poorly in the slot.
• Boxes for aftermarket batteries, compared to originals, are missing the large sticker on the box with Lenovo part numbers, barcodes, and regulatory markings.

Kingsener

• Reasonable cost
• Genuine capacity, matches that of the original
• Heavy in the hand, slightly looser fit than original
• May sporadically register 0% on a Corebooted X230, but immediately returns to normal without shutting down
• Gradually loses track of charge with thresholds

Dr. Battery

• Most expensive
• Genuine capacity, matches that of the original
• Heavy in the hand and fits well
• Gradually loses track of charge with thresholds

DTK

• Relatively lower cost
• Genuine capacity, but less than that of the original
• Feels lighter than the original, but fits well
• Rubber feet fell off after less than a month
• Did not test charge thresholds for this brand

"Lenovo" with fake recycle symbol

• Reasonable cost
• The RECYCLE symbol uses a wider font and there is a typo in the text: "Use of enother battery may present a fire or explosion"
• However, capacity is genuine and matches that of the original
• Heavy in the hand and fits well
• Comes in a plain, unmarked cardboard box
• Works well with charge thresholds
• Rubber feet fell off after less than a month
• Can vary by actual manufacturer

Unbranded

• About half the price for half the battery life and a third the lifespan compared to a higher-quality battery
• Advertised 57 Wh, actual 48 Wh, compare to 63 Wh of genuine Lenovo
• Lighter and worse fit than original
• Rubber feet fell off within two weeks
• Loses track of charge within a few cycles if thresholds used
• Works fine for a few months, but capacity thereafter decreases noticeably beyond about 150 cycles
• May use scavenged cells: serial numbers on the cells inside are far apart, which would be uncharacteristic of a factory receiving and using fresh cells from a reputable manufacturer
• Can sporadically cause laptop to get stuck in suspend, requiring a hard restart
• Can vary by manufacturer

My use cases for these bottom-of-the-barrel batteries is getting beater ThinkPads up and running with some degree of mobility and getting rid of the void otherwise left if the battery is absent. Also fine for BIOS updates that demand a charged battery.

Most times when I hear an alarm (presumably for fire) go off in the office or a public place, it goes as such:

1. Observe for any signs of actual emergency: smoke, smell, flame, first responders, or panicking crowds
2. If nothing unusual seen and nobody is getting up, assume it's a false alarm and continue with task at hand
3. (Most of the time) Alarm was false and goes away within a few minutes
4. (<1% of the time) There is indeed a fire somewhere in the building and people take their time gathering belongings before leisurely walking to the nearest door

Same goes in the house:

1. Wake up groggy, assume false alarm again
2. Put on pants, check out the source of the noise
3. (4 times in current residence) Find no indication of fire, hush alarm
4. Alarm shuts up with a dose of compressed air. If not, sledgehammer time and buy a new one the next day.

That can't be how most of us are supposed to go about it, right?

Is it for a lack of better smoke detection technology? A consequence of buying low-quality detectors? While we're at it, can anyone recommend a smoke detector that does its job with a minimum of false alarms?

When using XFCE in conjunction with light-locker (the default lock screen utility), it normally takes some seconds to resume from suspend as it loads up the light-locker prompt. However, I've found that if I let the prompt load up, but then close the lid without entering the password and let it enter suspend again, light-locker is almost instantly ready the next time I resume. Is there any way to do this automate this behavior when I close the lid of my laptop?