I have a family member, whose phone screen broke, and they want to get their data off it. Developer tools are not enabled, so i fear I can't do anything with ADB, so i guess a hub is my best option (I have been meaning to buy one for myself anyway)

Having googled for a bit i noticed that i need something that is OTG compatible, but none of the hubs seem to mention anything OTG related.

Thank you in advance.

edit: the phone is an OnePlus, will ask what yhe model is

edit2: OnePlus 6

I’ve spent so many hours on this. I’m trying to get Star Trek TNG to play at 7:30pm on Mondays and Fridays (all seven seasons, sequentially). But my player still just shows “Channel is Offline”.

I’ve scanned local media and the show is detected. I created a channel and a schedule, and set the collection type to the entire series. The playout is paired with the channel. The m3u link shows “Channel is Offline” in IINA (like VLC but for macOS).

Any help appreciated. I’m a bit overwhelmed by the breath of options and documentation.

I just swapped a brushless DC 12V fan on my LG RC185 VCR. Please excuse the abomination that is the MacGyvered contacts. Forgot to order new these:
So that's my excuse. Anyway...

Is it okay to let the cord lean/rest against capacitors and whatnot?

I'm constantly worried that I didn't get enough sleep, so I'm hoping to prove to myself that that is not the case. How could I do that without sending all of my health-related data to Google or some other company?

Edit4: there seems to be a correlation between whether the VCR's timer is counting (meaning it's able to read data on the tape) and whether there is any visual noise.

Edit3: I cleaned the whole pathway that the tape travels within the VCR, to no avail, but I experimented with extremely lightly giving the "tension arm" (it's called something else for Walkmans...) a little more tensions, and lo and behold, at the very least it influenced the duration of each individual noise occurrence. Push to hard and the noise in the attached video above disappears, but then other artifacts are introduced. On another Sharp VCR that I had, rest in peace, you could actually adjust the tension belt by hooking it further "back", giving it more tension, but not on this LG. Here is the part in talking about:

Edit2: As stated by @voodoo3dfx@retrolemmy.com the creases on the tape seem to be a huge contributing factor. Interestingly, the noise seems to temporarily improve if I manually, with my fingers, spin the two wheels/gears in opposite directions to give the tape a bit more tension. It soon degrades again though.

Edit: The VCR is an LG RC185 and the make of the tape is unknown. The underside of the tape lid say P-55. Also, I noticed these fairly evenly distributed physical lines/indentations on the tape:

This phenomenon, in which noise appears at the top, slowly travels downwards and disappears at the bottom happened all through the tape, from start to end, at quite regular intervals, perhaps every ten seconds.

I have cleaned the read/write head of the VCR, which already looked fine regardless. By clean I mean shiny, because I'm a layperson...

I'm looking for a new set of router/APs to cover a whole house in a mesh setup, that doesn't involve using an app, or creating an account with the manufacturer. It has to work locally, with the configuration accessible from a browser. I repeat, no app and no online accounts. Just devices that can act as a router + repeaters, that can be configured from a browser. A bonus would be to have SMA ports so that antennas can be connected to them.

The current setup consists of only two Asus RT-AC66U, and the range sucks. They'e getting old, I don't want more of these, and the one serving as a mesh repeater often stops responding for a few seconds. I made the mistake of buying a pack of TP-Link Deco and I ended up returning them because they require an app and online account to configure.

Any suggestion meeting those requirements will be appreciated.

I have noticed on the handheld cameras and on this VCR, which I use for digitization, that they are quite smart in the way that (even) if I fast forward the tape, the counter stops as soon as there is no video/data, which is really useful when setting up bash scripts for the recording. However, some tapes display video and audio when monitored - in my case with mpv on Linux - while the VCR's counter is still. The video and audio signals are perceivably degraded with a lot of noise and distortion.

Does this mean that VHS tapes lose magnetic charge over time? Does it mean that all ferromagnetic media lose charge over time?

I hope my ungrateful colleague (see this post) will still be happy for the little I was able to recover without professional equipment. 🥲

This community has helped me in so many fields, I don't even know how to begin expressing my appreciation for your help! I'll just pick out one example of the many. That'll have to do.

THANK YOU FOR THE ADVICE ON CLEANING A POTENTIOMETER BEFORE ATTEMPTING A SWAP

My audio cassette deck is now outputting evenly on both channels! 🥰🥰🥰

Pictured here, taping Cyndi Lauper's She's So Unusual 🥰🥰🥰

I bought these possibly Kenko cfe auto extension tubes (26 + 12 + 11 [mm]) with Canon FD mounts. I'm using them on a really sweet Canon FD 135/f2.5. Normally, I simply input those values into the digital camera's "manual lens info" slot in order for the in body image stabilization to work better, but I'm not sure what to input here. Should I simply add the above tube lengths to the total focal length (135 + 49)? And what about the visually obvious loss in light/aperture. What would the new value be there?

Bredit (brag edit):

I have fine tuned my fan curves in the BIOS and normally, even when I used to game, the fans wouldn't speed up unless there was actual heat to dissipate. Now, I'm digitizing analog tapes using ffmpeg on Linux with the encoder h.246. This smart little thing auto detects the number of CPU cores available - 18 in my case - and uses them all. As soon as I hit ENTER ("start" or the likes for Windows users), my fans blast at full speed. Not that I'm trying to determine CPU temps by hand feel, but the air coming out of the chassi doesn't feel hot at all - at least compared to when I used to game, but maybe that was more the heat from the GPU? Even so, how could the CPU heat up to temps requiring maximum fan speed in an instant? Or is it so that the fans (or their controller or the likes) anticipate high temps and spin up preemptively?

Edit2: There seems to be an "M" in the top left corner, but I'm not sure:

Did some fucktard for any reason scrape off the part numbers? I can just make out some symbols and shapes if I illuminate the chip from the side and shadow is cast on the miniscule deformities.

Edit: could I perhaps dust/brush some white powder on its surface to make it more visible?

My audio cassette deck has a panning knob (left/right), which I assume regulates the strength of the two channels of a stereo signal. When I turn the knob, there is a rustling sound and the sound is intermittent. I have to manually push the knob in some direction to have both channels make contact.

Is such a knob a simple potentiometer that I could replace? Or is there some sort of maintenance to be done on it? I have already used compressed air in various angles directed at the base of the part and at the small openings around knob itself.

Edit: description of the knob in question

Edit: view of the PCB on which the "potentiometer" in question rests

I am digitizing analog PAL video from VHS, VHS-C, Hi8 and Mini DV cassettes. I recently learned that analog to digital conversion is done by sampling and quantizing the continuous analog signal into discrete snapshots and values. See for instance: https://www.monolithicpower.com/en/learning/mpscholar/analog-to-digital-converters/introduction-to-adcs/fundamental-concepts

In light of this, I decided to open up my video ADC in order to get the name of the IC that does the job, because there was just no way that I'd be able to read the IC's resolution off of Linux, considering that the signal had gone through a capture card and ffmpeg's filters after the conversion.

I learned that the IC is an MS1858E by Macro Silicon, which quantizes with an 8-bit resolution (not to be confused with image size resolution!) and samples at 54 MHz sampling rate, although my Chinese is a bit rusty, so take this with a grain of salt... Here: https://www.lcsc.com/datasheet/C42374496.pdf

Question: the 8-bit quantizing resolution means that my little ADC can output at most 256 (2^8) video values. That probably includes not only the color space, but all other information too... If I just let this all go and ask myself whether I'm satisfied by the end results of my digitizing, then yes, I am satisfied. But it also makes me wonder whether paying $200 for a professional ADC is worth it (as opposed to $20 for my current one) if it comes with greater resolution? Like 16-bit? I can't even know what I get before buying and opening up the product, because the retailers don't exactly write that in the product description...

Edit: I’m asking whether investing in an ADC that can work with more bits would make a significant improvement in subjective video quality, considering that the analog signal is at most early 2000’s PAL.

Me and a few classmates are hoping to set something like this up for shared class notes.

Obsidian with the Relay plugin seems perfect, but sadly even if you self host it you have to pay to have more than 3 users, and even if you do, you're limited to 6 users. The Logseq DB version also seems nice, but it's in alpha, so I don't trust it with important data.

All drives are HDDs. I am backing up drive A on host A to drive B on host B and drive C on host C. The hosts are connected via a LAN with a star topology. I started two consecutive rsync processes without considering whether that would be too taxing for drive A. Is that even a thing? Like, mechanically. Is the needle needlessly (sorry) jumping back and forth more than what's good for it? Maybe I'm being too empathetic towards the machine. Please enlighten me. :3

Update: aight, I'm keeping it. Check out my new next gen audio rig 3000:

I cleaned it out and it seems to work fine. The drive belts seem okay: not dry, but maybe a little loose, although the BPM of the music sounds about right. I paid $50 for it.

I have no bloody idea why I'd need it or would want to keep it. I just wanted to try it out, knowing that the store's policy is "no questions asked" if I return it within 30 days. Also, retro is fun...?🤣

Edit: I encode to/with(?) the codec h246. This question is about containers/filename extensions.

I am digitizing old video mediums, such as VHS, VHS-C and Mini DV. A few colleagues have asked me to do it for them, which is awesome and feels great. Now, for personal use, I encode save video with the .mkv container out of habit. I have no idea why that is bad or good. However, the question is, which container should I use to ensure maximum compatibility with my colleagues' phones, computers, possibly TVs? Is, for instance, .mpeg the way to go?

Hi, I was hoping someone may be able to advise me. I have an old Acer laptop that's a bit delapidated but I thought this would be an ideal chance to try out Linux as the laptop is basically of little value anyway so if I mess something up, nothing will be lost.

I've backed up everything I want to keep and I've written the Linux Mint image to a USB stick. I can get into the BIOS screen by pressing F2 but I'll be dammed if I know what my password is. I'm not sure if I ever did.

I read that updating the BIOS driver should allow me to remove the BIOS password but after a somewhat risky decision to run a driver I found on the internet (Acer refuses to recognise my old laptop so won't provide me any driver files), the BIOS still requires a password to open. Is there anything I can do with this old laptop? Is there any way to remove the BIOS password?

Edit: should have pointed out that the laptop uses UEFI rather than BIOS.

I'm using an HP printer and currently am using the USB cable to connect to my PC to print. I'm running out of USB ports and (for some reason) when I use a USB hub with it, my PC fails to read it.

Instead, I wish to connect the printer to my local network, BUT I don't want it connected to the internet. I've seen how dangerous it is to expose your printer to the internet, so I wish to prevent that (plus I don't want the printer to auto-update).

How can I connect my printer to my local network so I can print wirelessly without allowing internet access to it?

If it's important:

• My PC is ArchLinux
• My printer is a HP ColorJet Pro MFP (I dont know the model #/what series it is)
• I do have cups and hp-lip installed on my system

Also: A guest network does not work on my network for some reason, but that's a separate issue unrelated to this.

I finally bought myself and old audio cassette player. The insides look crazy clean and the drive belts seem neither loose nor dried out.

But!

It's only the left "axis" - or whatever it's called - that's spinning and thus "driving/forwarding" the tape. With "left", I mean the one that rolls up the tape as it's being played. Looking inside, the right axis is not even actuated. It's just a "dead"/unmoving part. Is this how they all work?

The link is just an example. I have no knowledge of that particular product.

My laptop screams a littbe bit sometimes when playing heftier video files and I would like to show it some luv.

I have just ordered one of these cool looking cassette players. The specs say, regarding in-ear headphones and type 1 cassettes, that:

So I asked their chatbot why this is, because I got worried, since I naturally intend to listen to music with my PortaPros and my Sennheiser IE900s. This is what it says:

How come they're "complaining" about having weak output at 30 ohms, but at the same time tell me they'll be able to drive my 60 ohm over-ears?

Along with a second, “shield-apay-cash-wdp-device-prod.pci.prod.apay.apple.com.v.aaplim g.com”. Seems strange and didn’t notice it in my NextDNS logs until recently.

So went into “Wallet & Apple Pay” in Settings and turned off, Live Activities, assuming it’s there’s a possible connection. No new cards in it, same old same old stuff.

Has anyone else experienced this before and can comment? Appreciate any feedback as I’m sick as a dog today.

I never used to have issues with this bar, but when I got my current phone it's using a version of Android that defaults to that newer bar-less gesture based control scheme. I hate that new system so I changed it back to the bar.

But now I have this problem where I frequently get accidental presses on the nav bar while typing. It's a daily occurrence that I will accidentally hit the home button while typing anything, which is annoying as hell. This never used to happen before.

Is it maybe just the particular phone I have, or has anyone else noticed the same issue? It's obnoxious enough that I keep looking into getting a device with physical keyboard.

Follow the link to read the background.

I had recently done an update on my TV, which I am using as a "dumb" monitor, connected to my laptop with an HDMI cable. The TV has three HDMI ports, each with a corresponding entry under the "sources" menu (HDMI1, HDMI2, HDMI3). While troubleshooting the issue, I noticed that - after the above mentioned update - one of the HDMI entries had changed name from "HDMI1" to "COMPUTER". I guess I should've read Panasonic's change logs or whatever, because - just for fun - I tried one of the two remaining ports that are still called "HDMI*" and voilà, the flickering/strobing/any artifacts whatsoever, were gone!

For now, I am just happy that I can watch Angela bang two guys behind their backs, but it does make me wonder... What configuration changes did Panasonic make to the port...