'No Stupid Questions' (NSQ) Internet & Technology Edition

[herefortheactualthreads]

Probably a niche question: will disconnecting the internal antenna be enough to make the device unable to connect to wifi? If not then what will?

I used to have a defective tablet where the wifi wasn't working and damn, "just don't use Internet lel" doesn't even come close to the peace of mind and mental silence of being technically, mechanically unable to go online even if you wanted to. Textbook if-you-know-you-know. I binged on ebooks and retro games with a focus I hadn't felt in years.

I tried Linux handhelds from Anbernic, and even 351droid, but it always ended up too restrictive vs the Swiss army knife features and convenience of a full touch-enabled Android.

i never opened up a phone / tablet from the inside, but yeah if you manage to yeet of the wifi thingy you shouldnt have any other oppurtunity to visit the interwebs.

 

[MerelyAPlateOfSpaghetti]

Probably a niche question: will disconnecting the internal antenna be enough to make the device unable to connect to wifi? If not then what will?

Not exactly. What kind of device are you using? With no antenna, it most likely won't be able to transmit or receive usable signals, and I've heard it can damage the wifi card if you have no antenna plugged in for too long. Haven't looked into that specifically so take it with a grain of salt.

But it definitely doesn't just stop wifi from working, if you have a Windows computer you can disable it or uninstall the driver in Device Manager. Another option is that wifi cards in laptops are usually an add in card, and can be fully removed.

Tablets are more tricky as everything is likely soldered to the motherboard.

 

[Rololowlo]

everything is likely soldered to the motherboard

That's my problem. Android devices have an internal antenna plugged to RF connectors and that's about the only thing an average person can physically tamper with.

At the moment I have an Odin Lite. An offline Odin is my ideal device, but I heard that removing the antenna on modern devices will only limit the range, hence why I'd like to know more before I sabotage a functioning device.

I've even considered x86 handhelds since some of them do have non-soldered wireless chips, but that idea comes with too many drawbacks.

 

[MerelyAPlateOfSpaghetti]

That's my problem. Android devices have an internal antenna plugged to RF connectors and that's about the only thing an average person can physically tamper with.

At the moment I have an Odin Lite. An offline Odin is my ideal device, but I heard that removing the antenna on modern devices will only limit the range, hence why I'd like to know more before I sabotage a functioning device.

I've even considered x86 handhelds since some of them do have non-soldered wireless chips, but that idea comes with too many drawbacks.

This teardown video shows that yeah, the wifi is built in, but at least it seems like it's not too hard to disconnect the antenna wires. Since it has a board of some sort attached to the left antenna, it might not work at all if you disconnect them.

 

[DavidS877]

That's my problem. Android devices have an internal antenna plugged to RF connectors and that's about the only thing an average person can physically tamper with.

At the moment I have an Odin Lite. An offline Odin is my ideal device, but I heard that removing the antenna on modern devices will only limit the range, hence why I'd like to know more before I sabotage a functioning device.

I've even considered x86 handhelds since some of them do have non-soldered wireless chips, but that idea comes with too many drawbacks.

The problem is even without an antenna there's still a bit of metal on the connector that can act as an antenna, it may not give you enough for WiFi, but it could.

Usually we would use something called a "Dummy Load" to attach and attenuate the signal. But they don't seem to make them this small. You could try a layer of electrical tape over the connectors so you don't short them out and then a layer of aluminium foil to block the signal taped in place over that being careful not to short anything out, which could accidentally act as an antenna, so you'd need to test.

 

[National Defense Advocate]

So, I got a fairly beefy Gaymin rig, it's served me well so far, save for one minor issue.

Sometimes, a couple times a day, my PC will randomly slow to a crawl with whatever I'm doing. It doesn't last longer than a couple seconds at most and recovers, then runs fine.

I have no idea what's causing this, is this normal?

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

Probably a niche question: will disconnecting the internal antenna be enough to make the device unable to connect to wifi? If not then what will?

I used to have a defective tablet where the wifi wasn't working and damn, "just don't use Internet lel" doesn't even come close to the peace of mind and mental silence of being technically, mechanically unable to go online even if you wanted to. Textbook if-you-know-you-know. I binged on ebooks and retro games with a focus I hadn't felt in years.

I tried Linux handhelds from Anbernic, and even 351droid, but it always ended up too restrictive vs the Swiss army knife features and convenience of a full touch-enabled Android.

The PinePhone and PinePhone Pro have dip switches for turning WIFI off.

Just turn your phone('s wireless) off (in the Android settings) bro. Seriously. Your WIFI password should be something different from the factory and something that you're unable to remember without looking at your password manager anyway, which would make that easier.

 

[seri0us]

So, I got a fairly beefy Gaymin rig, it's served me well so far, save for one minor issue.

Sometimes, a couple times a day, my PC will randomly slow to a crawl with whatever I'm doing. It doesn't last longer than a couple seconds at most and recovers, then runs fine.

I have no idea what's causing this, is this normal?

is it running out of memory when this happens?

 

[MerelyAPlateOfSpaghetti]

So, I got a fairly beefy Gaymin rig, it's served me well so far, save for one minor issue.

Sometimes, a couple times a day, my PC will randomly slow to a crawl with whatever I'm doing. It doesn't last longer than a couple seconds at most and recovers, then runs fine.

I have no idea what's causing this, is this normal?

Highly likely it's Windows indexing shit. I always turn C drive indexing off at least. Right click C: in My Computer (still best way to describe that) and uncheck Index drive for blah blah. Takes a while to save attributes to literally every file in the c drive but it's worth.

 

[National Defense Advocate]

is it running out of memory when this happens?

I don't think so, it can happen when I'm playing Helldivers, it's happened when I'm watching a youtube Vod of MATI, so it's not memory dependent I think.

Highly likely it's Windows indexing shit. I always turn C drive indexing off at least. Right click C: in My Computer (still best way to describe that) and uncheck Index drive for blah blah. Takes a while to save attributes to literally every file in the c drive but it's worth.

I believe and hope that this is the correct answer, because if it's just my computer doing stuff, I'll just leave it be.

 

[MerelyAPlateOfSpaghetti]

I don't think so, it can happen when I'm playing Helldivers, it's happened when I'm watching a youtube Vod of MATI, so it's not memory dependent I think.


I believe and hope that this is the correct answer, because if it's just my computer doing stuff, I'll just leave it be.

If you check the Performance Monitor (accessible from start menu) you can check the disk activity in detail and see if windows search is reading the disk like mad. Worth a look, even when it's hard to catch it in the act.

 

[Anti Snigger]

I wasn't sure where to poost this, but, if you've been having trouble accessing archive.is, I have found that it appears to be an issue with DNS resolution of some sort. I don't understand the specifics much, but I have found that using it via TOR is almost a flawless bandaid solution

 

[std::string]

I believe and hope that this is the correct answer, because if it's just my computer doing stuff, I'll just leave it be.

If it's a fresh install and you have a collection of PDF files then that's probably it. It'll chug whenever it runs across a huge PDF file that isn't properly OCR'd.

 

[MerelyAPlateOfSpaghetti]

I wasn't sure where to poost this, but, if you've been having trouble accessing archive.is, I have found that it appears to be an issue with DNS resolution of some sort. I don't understand the specifics much, but I have found that using it via TOR is almost a flawless bandaid solution

I remember seeing on Hacker News where people walked about it. The culprit seems to be if you are using Secure DNS (most browsers try to default to using some DNS over TLS, Firefox I think proxies it through cloud flare) so if you disable browser DNS, it might help.

The other thing people say is to use .ph instead of .is, I guess the .is link just redirects to .ph. You can also try archive.today as well.

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

I wasn't sure where to poost this, but, if you've been having trouble accessing archive.is, I have found that it appears to be an issue with DNS resolution of some sort. I don't understand the specifics much, but I have found that using it via TOR is almost a flawless bandaid solution

It will consistently happen if you're using Cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1) because Matthew Prince is a faggot. If you're using that, another DNS provider will work better.

 

[N Space]

I'm currently transcoding my media library into AV1 using ffmpeg and the SVT-AV1 encoder. One setting I always use is CRF to set the quality of the encoded video stream, in theory lower numbers mean higher bitrates and better quality, however, I've come to realize CRF 0 (the minimum) produces a much lower bitrate than CRF 1 for example, why is that? ATM I can only suspect CRF 0 just sets it to the default but I can't find any documentation to confirm my suspicion.

 

[MerelyAPlateOfSpaghetti]

I'm currently transcoding my media library into AV1 using ffmpeg and the SVT-AV1 encoder. One setting I always use is CRF to set the quality of the encoded video stream, in theory lower numbers mean higher bitrates and better quality, however, I've come to realize CRF 0 (the minimum) produces a much lower bitrate than CRF 1 for example, why is that? ATM I can only suspect CRF 0 just sets it to the default but I can't find any documentation to confirm my suspicion.

My quick guess is CRF 0 is "lossless" so it doesn't try to do anything to convert the bitrate, where using CRF 1 enforcing a sort of minimum. What's the bitrate of the original file compared to CRD 0 and 1? Wondering if the source bitrate is lower than the transcoded bitrate on CRF 1.

 

[N Space]

My quick guess is CRF 0 is "lossless" so it doesn't try to do anything to convert the bitrate, where using CRF 1 enforcing a sort of minimum. What's the bitrate of the original file compared to CRD 0 and 1? Wondering if the source bitrate is lower than the transcoded bitrate on CRF 1.

I'll do a small test tomorrow, however, SVT-AV1 doesn't support lossless encoding unlike libaom.

 

[N Space]

My quick guess is CRF 0 is "lossless" so it doesn't try to do anything to convert the bitrate, where using CRF 1 enforcing a sort of minimum. What's the bitrate of the original file compared to CRD 0 and 1? Wondering if the source bitrate is lower than the transcoded bitrate on CRF 1.

I'll do a small test tomorrow, however, SVT-AV1 doesn't support lossless encoding unlike libaom.

Here's the promised test, I took the Serial Experiments Lain opening , encoded using h.264 with an average bitrate of 11289 kb/s, and transcoded it with the following commands:

ffmpeg -i Opening.mkv -c:v libsvtav1 -preset 6 -crf 0 crf0.mkv
ffmpeg -i Opening.mkv -c:v libsvtav1 -preset 6 Default.mkv
ffmpeg -i Opening.mkv -c:v libsvtav1 -preset 6 -crf 1 crf1.mkv

The resulting bitrates, SSIM and PSNR scores compared to the source video are shown below:

	crf 0	Default	crf 1
Bitrate	1998.8 kb/s	1998.8 kb/s	31393.7 kb/s
SSIM	0.9789	0.9789	0.9965
PSNR	43.63	43.63	53.44

It seems crf 0 and Default are the exact same, to confirm my suspicion I computed the SSIM and PSNR values one against the other and indeed the proved they are the exact same stream (SSIM value of 1 and infinite PSNR). As an additional footnote, don't use low crf values, crf 1 fucking tripled the bitrate and didn't even managed to losslessly encode the source stream, the default is visually indistinguishable from the source and reduced the bitrate by 80%.

 

[ATI Escapee]

Is there any possible way to view someone's facebook without an account? I know it became impossible once they cracked down on the data crawlers but has any autist since then figured it out? Honestly I want to snoop on a family member who went batshit insane and might have gotten into some sort of mail order bride situation without her realizing she is the bride...