X-mas day 2 thought:
best defense might be to refrain from doing things that don’t look good on the front pages of the world’s newspapers
Source: Organizational Doxing – Schneier on Security
–jeroen
Archive for the ‘LifeHacker’ Category
Organizational Doxing – Schneier on Security
Posted by jpluimers on 2016/12/26
Posted in About, LifeHacker, Opinions, Personal, Power User | Leave a Comment »
How to make an easy universal knife holder | DIY projects for everyone!
Posted by jpluimers on 2016/12/16
Co
ol: How to make an easy universal knife holder | DIY projects for everyone!
You only need the below materials and some tools:
- 9mm thick Oak Wood
- Bamboo Skewers
- Wood Glue
- Wood Oil
–jeroen
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HDDWatches site. HDD Watch created from a Microdrive HDD. – Kristian Köhntopp – Google+
Posted by jpluimers on 2016/12/12
[WayBack] Kristian Köhntopp – Google+ – Ist ja bald Weihnachten pointed me to http://www.hddwatches.com/.
If I could wear watches (that’s over since I had RSI in the 1990s), I’d ask one for X-mas.
Which reminds me I still should have a few of these microdrives around.
The manufacturer is based on an Indiegogo project. Here are the links:
- [WayBack] HDDWatches site. HDD Watch created from a Microdrive HDD.
- [WayBack] HDDWatches. The geek watch made out from a HDD | Indiegogo
–jeroen
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C13/C14 wiring diagram live/neutral/earth
Posted by jpluimers on 2016/12/02
Edit 20220215/20200713: The original wiring description in this article was wrong, thanks Jules Vape and John Cooper for pointing this out in the comments.
This is the correct wiring according to IEC 60320 – Wikipedia: C13/C14_coupler: File:IEC60320 C13.jpg – Wikipedia (rotated for clarity) and Source: File:IEC60320 C14.jpg – Wikimedia Commons.
- Facing the C13 female side that has holes:
Position Lead Left N Neutral Middle ⏚/PE Protective Earth/Ground Right L Live 
Facing the C14 male side that has pins:
Position Lead Left L Live Middle ⏚/PE Protective Earth/Ground Right N Neutral
The same information from [WayBack] IEC 60320 (IEC 320) Reference Chart – IEC 60320 Connectors & Plugs | StayOnline:
IEC-60320 Plugs and Connectors Rating Configuration
Female/MaleInternational North America Wires Poles
C13/C14250 Volts
10 Amps125/250 Volts
15 Amps3 Wires 2 Poles
Wiring colours
If you wire it, the colours depend on where you live. I live in the Netherlands so this shortened table does apply:
IEC (most of Europe) AC power circuit wiring color codes.
Function Label Color, IEC Color, old IEC Protective earth ⏚/PE green/yellow green/yellow Neutral N blue blue Line, single phase L brown brown or black
Longer tables and infographics are here:
- description – IEC 60446: Use of colours – Wikipedia (above images of wire ends are from this article)
- tables – [Wayback/Archive] Wiring Color Codes : Color Codes – Electronics Textbook
- graphics – [Wayback/Archive]Wiring Color Codes Infographic : Color Codes – Electronics Textbook
–jeroen
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Posted in Development, Electronics Development, LifeHacker, Power User | 5 Comments »
0.5W 12V 56-Lumen 7×3528 SMD LED Car White Light Bulb (Pair) – Free Shipping – DealExtreme
Posted by jpluimers on 2016/12/02
Since they work nice as car lamps, they are quite robust for weather conditions, so they work well as garden lamps too. So we have 69 of them in our deck.
–jeroen
Source: DX 0.5W 12V 56-Lumen 7×3528 SMD LED Car White Light Bulb (Pair) – Free Shipping – DealExtreme
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Google drawing AI – My first “Quick, Draw!” attempt – Jeroen Wiert Pluimers – Google+
Posted by jpluimers on 2016/11/28
Can a neural network learn to recognize doodles? See how well it does with your drawings and help teach it, just by playing.
Source: Quick, Draw!
On the right is my first “Quick, Draw!” attempt.
Too bad the canoe didn’t work out; parrot and firetruck are pretty hard with either a mouse or a trackpad.
Source: [WayBack] My first Quick Draw attempt – Jeroen Wiert Pluimers – Google+
Other A.I. Experiments (g.co/aiexperiments):
- Giorgio Cam – A.I. Experiments
- Quick, Draw! – A.I. Experiments
- The Infinite Drum Machine – A.I. Experiments
- Thing Translator – A.I. Experiments
- Bird Sounds – A.I. Experiments
- A.I. Duet – A.I. Experiments
- Visualizing High-Dimensional Space – A.I. Experiments
- What Neural Networks See – A.I. Experiments
- Submit your experiment – A.I. Experiments
–jeroen
Via:
- [WayBack] Google is going to become very, very good at recognizing dicks. Because Humanity. – Roderick Gadellaa – Google+
- [WayBack] This Google-powered AI can identify your terrible doodles – The Verge
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APC UPS battery replacement for Smart-UPS 1500 (SUA1500) and XL 3000 (SUA3000XLT): batteries RBC7 and RBC55
Posted by jpluimers on 2016/11/28
On the right and bottom how the APC SmartUPS 1500 looked before cleaning. Despite APC claims of being non-spillable, lead acid batteries do eventually leak. APC just doesn’t tell you when (they say there is some fine print about replacing them, but hey – if the UPS doesn’t complain about capacity loss…).
Like I mentioned in my first post about the leaking, I cleaned the inside with sodium bicarbonate (easily to get – even in The Netherlands – as “baking soda” or “zuiveringszout” in most grocery shops. “zuiveringszout” is the same but much cheaper).
So after cleaning, you need to assemble a new battery pack and reinstall it. The RBC7 stock battery packs from APC are very expensive and since warranty expired on the UPS and APC batteries leaks anyway, it is much cheaper to re-assemble your own battery pack from a pair of UB12180 batteries. The same holds for the RBC55 (which are just basically two pairs of assembled UB12180 batteries). The decoding of these battery numbers are fairly easy: 12V holding 18.0 Ah of charge. Different battery manufacturers use different battery size nomenclature usually with a similar structure.
Disassembling and re-assembling the packs is fairly easy. Be sure to do this carefully: replacement sets of the APC battery connector wiring harness and fuse will set you back another USD/EUR 15-20 excluding shipping.
The below youtube videos are much clearer on this than any picture series I could have made, plus a series of Tweets figuring out the correct fuses to use.
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RMAing a Google Nexus 5X, dying in Account hell… – via +Kristian Köhntopp
Posted by jpluimers on 2016/11/22
Google does react:
Noted. Contacting the right teams. And now trying to find Kim :)
Thanks for the writeup +Kristian Köhntopp
Source: RMAing a Google Nexus 5X, dying in Account hell …
Full story (comments in the above thread):
Kristian Köhntopp
RMAing a Google Nexus 5X, dying in Account hell
I purchased my Google Nexus 5X on November 11, 2015, almost exactly one year ago. The device died on November 15, 2016 during the morning commute, when it froze. Right now, when I try to power it on, I get a single red LED blink from the lower grille.
When I bought that device, I have been living in Berlin, Germany. I am living now in a village close to Amsterdam, Netherlands. I am a GPMAA subscriber with a family subscription, and I am managing the play family setup for my family from my account.
I called the Netherlands support number, and got an agent almost immediately. She’s speaking excellent English.
We are going through the device validation routine and establish that the device is indeed broken. Then she’s trying to find my Google account, but me having the name I have, I have to spell it about five times.
She’s ready to RMA, but wants to validate my address. That’s the old Berlin address.
Easy to fix. New Tab. Go find your face in the upper right, click on it, click on “My Account” and… Nope. That’s a link to myaccount.google.com, and you can’t find or set your address there.
Ok, new attempt. Go to play.google.com, and hit Account. That’s “Account” in the left hand menu of Play, not “Account” on the top bar where your face is. It’s showing Payment methods, which has nothing to do at all with addresses. Edit payment methods.
That links to payments.google.com, which has nothing to do with account at all, and is also different from security.google.com, which has all the other account details, but has nothing to do with payments or addresses. Anyway, I disgress, in payments.google.com, there’s an address.
It has no country. Country is two lines higher. And while there is a pen next to my address so I could edit it, I can’t edit my country, because… Well, at least there is an info bubble.
It says:
»You can’t change your country because of the following reasons:
– One or more Google services you’re using does not allow you to change your country
– You manage a Google family account«I read that as “Because you are giving us money we won’t allow you to update your data so that in the future you can continue to give us money.” Well.
“Can we detach the current payments from you account, so I can migrate it to the Netherlands?” “No, you can’t, that will break the Family setup, disable all my Sonos boxes which are running on this account, and will kill several software subscriptions attached to my account. Also, there is money on it, because I am participating in the Survey program, and there is about 400 local guides points attached to it as well.”
Kim, the support specialist handling my case, has been on the phone with me at this point for 40 minutes now. She’s put me on hold half a dozen times and consulted with as many payment, account and security specialists. She’s awesome. She’s kicking ass. She’s not giving up.
“Ok, are you in front of a laptop of desktop machine running a Chrome browser” “Indeed, I am, Kim.” “Ok, please open an incognito tab, I am going to walk you through the process of creating a new Gmail account, and if you have a Netherlands payment method, adding that to it.” “Thanks, Kim, I know how to do this. Let me quickly do this, and get back to you.” I put the phone away and make me another Gmail, add NL and my address to it in Payment methods, and she’s now handling the RMA through that.
Yeah, so if all goes well I am getting a replacement phone this week, and am sending back my broken phone to Google.
But, Google, it’s not actually just the phone that is broken. Your maze of security, payments, play and so on, it does not just suck. It borders on the insane.
And the way you are totally not handling country-as-a-living-addess vs country-for-RIAA-and-MPAA-suckage as two different things, it’s really, really hurting you.
Also, not handling the EU as one country, that’s only going to hurt more in the future as well.
So, if you are reading this and are in a position to change this mess. Do so. I don’t care if it is hard, or what the actual factual reasons for ending up with mess are. It’s broken. Fix it. Now. That would actually almost be too late.
My call started at 09:19 and took 54 minutes and 26 seconds to resolve. And just for the record, Kim is awesome and should be given a pay rise. It the tools and processes she has to work with that suck.
–jeroen
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Hydrogen – a free and open source cross platform drum machine…
Posted by jpluimers on 2016/11/21
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Audio Tape Recovery – recording old audio cassettes on modern hardware
Posted by jpluimers on 2016/11/14
I need this one day: Audio Tape Recovery – Saving the Tapes
Recording done on an IBM ThinkPad X30 using Gnome Sound Recorder, post processing on an IBM ThinkPad X200 using Audacity.
–jeroen
via Will Hill commenting on Watch how old technology can make a comeback with trends, product quality and nostalgia. This is the last cassette factory in the world and the machines… – Jan Wildeboer – Google+
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The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
