Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Mr. Scram]

As y'all may know, facemasks are still pretty much unobtanium, unless you had the foresight to mail order them before they ran out. I finally gave up and ordered one of those cloth ones, just to make others feel better when I go out shopping.

So.... whadday'all think...? Pretty stylin', ehh...?

mnem
*impairing productivity since nineteen-mumblety-mumble*

I can confirm that covering your face is an improvement for everyone.

[bd139]

Get out the gimp? (dog)

Right print done. And I got it right first time.



Wedged behind the television out of sight



running headless:

Code: [Select]

# dmesg | grep Memory:
[    0.569842] Memory: 3922744K/4104656K available (10252K kernel code, 1241K rwdata, 3320K rodata, 1592K init, 2276K bss, 181912K reserved, 0K cma-reserved)
# dmesg | grep Celeron
[    0.650476] smpboot: CPU0: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU  N3010  @ 1.04GHz (family: 0x6, model: 0x4c, stepping: 0x4)
# acpi -t
Thermal 0: ok, 26.8 degrees C
# uname -a
Linux anubis 4.19.0-8-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.98-1+deb10u1 (2020-04-27) x86_64 GNU/Linux

And off to ebay to hunt down some test gear ....

[Saskia]

kindly send over the .stl ?
puleaaauuze ?

[bd139]

Attached f3d and stl

License: aahhh whatever the fuck you want just don't sue me if your computer falls off it

[Saskia]

dank u wel, tak, arigatou, merci

[BU508A]

Crap!
Followed the call and also ordered a Xtal tester from ebay. Ordered from the seller pretending to be shipping from the UK because of hopefully shorter shipping times.
Only some ours on the next day (today) I received message from the seller stating he would like to cancel my order because he has none left in stock.
This is the ebay offer I bought from after he wrote me, today, 16:30 GMT, I didn't even order last one offered:


I'm pissed.   
OTH perhaps it's better this way, who knows?   

Yeah, thats the same seller who also cancelled mine. They sell them on BangGood for less money, but they are now I think, only available from their Canada warehouse now.

Ok, so, let's see who's got the crystal tester first.   

(Attachment Link)

Good luck. 

Oh shit, it looks likely that nobody is going to get theirs very quickly at all. When I ordered mine it was showing as being in stock and shipping time from the UK warehouse was 1 to 2 business days. Today I received this email attached below and after a very long live chat with their support dept., it seems that the item is only in stock in China and that China is currently in their Spring Festival Holiday and that there will be about 2 week delay at least. So why the hell do their stock systems only apparently report the China stock situation. I asked if Canada has any in stock and was told no 

Edit:
I just did a bit of digging and it would appear that Dongguan, CN does not refer to a warehouse in Canada at all but it is a warehouse in Dongguan, China that is assigned to Canadain orders, so I suspect that there also exists a Dongguan, UK and a Dongguan, EU, which are quite possibly the same warehouse, split in to sections and all orders placed via that portal are shipped in bulk to a forwarding agent in Canada, UK or the EU accordingly and then forwarding agent has to split apart the bulk delivery and forward each package on to the final destination  Not sure if that is faster or not, maybe they get better rates from the airlines / freight carriers if they offer 1 bulk package rather then loads of smaller packages?

Lucky me, I for myself can report some progress.    Please see attached screenshot.   

[Mr. Scram]

Attached f3d and stl

License: aahhh whatever the fuck you want just don't sue me if your computer falls off it

Next month's headlines: "London menace endangers children" and "15 signs your teenager is into reckless computing".

[SilverSolder]

I like the small Dell Optiplex (small form factor, SFF) PCs,  they are dirt cheap on eBay so you can sprinkle them liberally around the house / office wherever you need a PC - no need to carry a laptop around.

Most of them have a real serial port too,  which is great for electronics work.

Only problem is you need to actually get the stuff you need onto the right PC which is always a pain in the arse. We have (counting), err 3 laptops, 3 desktops, 2 ipads, 3 iphones here and nothing is ever in the right place.

[...]

I stick with PCs primarily, and Windows 7 on all of them because I know everything I need to do works, and don't want to spend time re-learning to ride a bike. Standardisation is the only way to keep the amount of work down to a reasonable level.  A combination of Dropbox and drive shares means everything is pretty much always present where it needs to be.  Favouring portable apps when possible is another time saver overall.

[Saskia]

having a hard time managing 700+ docker containers. Sigh.

[bd139]

Ooooh don't even go there today  . The answer is kubernetes which is not an answer but another layer of problems.

Processes are all the virtualization we really need. Containers are an excuse to let people get away with steaming shit for software architecture by pretending there is adequate isolation between the lumps of poo floating in the lake of diarrhea.

[URI]

Crap!
Followed the call and also ordered a Xtal tester from ebay. Ordered from the seller pretending to be shipping from the UK because of hopefully shorter shipping times.
Only some ours on the next day (today) I received message from the seller stating he would like to cancel my order because he has none left in stock.
This is the ebay offer I bought from after he wrote me, today, 16:30 GMT, I didn't even order last one offered:


I'm pissed.   
OTH perhaps it's better this way, who knows?   

Yeah, thats the same seller who also cancelled mine. They sell them on BangGood for less money, but they are now I think, only available from their Canada warehouse now.

Ok, so, let's see who's got the crystal tester first.   

(Attachment Link)

Good luck. 

Oh shit, it looks likely that nobody is going to get theirs very quickly at all. When I ordered mine it was showing as being in stock and shipping time from the UK warehouse was 1 to 2 business days. Today I received this email attached below and after a very long live chat with their support dept., it seems that the item is only in stock in China and that China is currently in their Spring Festival Holiday and that there will be about 2 week delay at least. So why the hell do their stock systems only apparently report the China stock situation. I asked if Canada has any in stock and was told no 

Edit:
I just did a bit of digging and it would appear that Dongguan, CN does not refer to a warehouse in Canada at all but it is a warehouse in Dongguan, China that is assigned to Canadain orders, so I suspect that there also exists a Dongguan, UK and a Dongguan, EU, which are quite possibly the same warehouse, split in to sections and all orders placed via that portal are shipped in bulk to a forwarding agent in Canada, UK or the EU accordingly and then forwarding agent has to split apart the bulk delivery and forward each package on to the final destination  Not sure if that is faster or not, maybe they get better rates from the airlines / freight carriers if they offer 1 bulk package rather then loads of smaller packages?

Seems I'm back in the race again. 
Ordered yesterday from a seller located in Hongkong.

Not cancelled yet.   

[Saskia]

Ooooh don't even go there today  . The answer is kubernetes which is not an answer but another layer of problems.

Processes are all the virtualization we really need. Containers are an excuse to let people get away with steaming shit for software architecture by pretending there is adequate isolation between the lumps of poo floating in the lake of diarrhea.

Deploying shitloads of Neural Networks for production use ... Each one is hooked up to an endpoint of a message queuing system, and of course we have load balancing by splitting the input into segments and fanning them out and later reassembling them.

Take this and about 30 - 40k users a day ....

puuuhhhh ...
But it's a small installation, just 3 TB of main memory and ~ 200 cores plus 4 Teslas ...

[Saskia]

In other news, I just got a thinkpad style USB keyboard with built in trackpad for about 28€

[Kosmic]

Ooooh don't even go there today  . The answer is kubernetes which is not an answer but another layer of problems.

Processes are all the virtualization we really need. Containers are an excuse to let people get away with steaming shit for software architecture by pretending there is adequate isolation between the lumps of poo floating in the lake of diarrhea.

I was about to recommend the same thing. You should look at Kubernetes 

[Saskia]

nah, can't. I would have to rewrite the entire distribution and fan out plus the interfaces.

[GreyWoolfe]

My current "desktop" set up. Just grab the laptop and walk off when you need to go.



Edit: btw that is triple independent displays, not mirrored.

I have almost the same setup for work.  A T460, docking station and 2 24" ThinkVision LED monitors with DP connections.  I don't use the laptop screen, it sits under and behind one of the monitors.  I did run a 3rd monitor for awhile using a USB video card, worked fine as there was nothing but company intranet pages on it, it is gone now as I have no need for it any more. 

[bd139]

Ooooh don't even go there today  . The answer is kubernetes which is not an answer but another layer of problems.

Processes are all the virtualization we really need. Containers are an excuse to let people get away with steaming shit for software architecture by pretending there is adequate isolation between the lumps of poo floating in the lake of diarrhea.

I was about to recommend the same thing. You should look at Kubernetes 

Then run away, fast.

Ooooh don't even go there today  . The answer is kubernetes which is not an answer but another layer of problems.

Processes are all the virtualization we really need. Containers are an excuse to let people get away with steaming shit for software architecture by pretending there is adequate isolation between the lumps of poo floating in the lake of diarrhea.

Deploying shitloads of Neural Networks for production use ... Each one is hooked up to an endpoint of a message queuing system, and of course we have load balancing by splitting the input into segments and fanning them out and later reassembling them.

Take this and about 30 - 40k users a day ....

puuuhhhh ...
But it's a small installation, just 3 TB of main memory and ~ 200 cores plus 4 Teslas ...

Oooh fun. Similar architectural fun here albeit there has been a visit from the Microservices Gnome (ref underpants gnomes)

MICROSERVICES
?
PROFIT

Actually no, what we have now is an http based damage multiplier and database DoS attack architecture. What would suffice with a couple of joins now does 5 distinct queries and does the join in the service consumer thus multiplying IOPS and latency at the same time!!!

Edit: replaced my last comment. Software "engineers" (in quotes intentionally) are fashion victims, nothing more.

Just add more abstraction, microservices and the problem is solved! Nope!

Just add more abstraction, containers and the problem is solved! Nope!

Just add more abstraction, cluster orchestration and the problem is solved! Nope!

Just add .... TBD.

Edit 2: sorry celebrating my minor IT victory today with alcohol so getting a bit ranty. Also Cerebus owes me at least 3 hours of my life back as well playing with godbolt.org and comparing GCC versions (really, I appreciate it as I have learned a lot)

Edit 3: apologies for the TEA distraction btw. I am returning to sanity now and have added two things to watch list of interest 

[bd139]

I have almost the same setup for work.  A T460, docking station and 2 24" ThinkVision LED monitors with DP connections.  I don't use the laptop screen, it sits under and behind one of the monitors.  I did run a 3rd monitor for awhile using a USB video card, worked fine as there was nothing but company intranet pages on it, it is gone now as I have no need for it any more.

Nice  . I did consider a couple of thinkvision monitors myself but these iiyama ones are pretty cheap (£100 a pop).

[Saskia]

nah, it's not that bad. it is in fact scalable, and fast, and used for translations. The nice thing is that I can deploy a new language model in about 10 seconds and most of the stuff is running on auto. Minimum downtime, extremely high uptime, and getting shitload of traffic each day (i.e. job security for me ...)

However, our extremely enlightened management wants to move that to an Enterprise Operation Center, i.e. some dudes in a region where MacArthur was active. They are to do 3rd level support for custom tensorflow engines.
Umm, right ...
 

my setup at home office: T460 with an Asus 28" 4K panel. Cannot fit more on my desk. Under that desk there is my new discord client in the making. I finally got hold of an inexpensive corsair 540 cube, a rather nasty power supply (850W modular gold ...) and an X99 board. Stuff 64 GB into it plus the 1.2 TB Intel PCIE SSD, and I should be fine.

[bd139]

Oh fun  . I worked for a company that outsourced stuff to India's lowest bidder. Nothing wrong with India as such but they bid the lowest and hire any old idiot. Got fed up of waking up to some fucked deployment in the middle of the night because some melt had crashed every thread iterating every day from some time back when the T-rex was king to the end of the universe.

Ooh nice with the corsair. That'll do most jobs

Trying desperately not to buy a better Ryzen at the moment. I don't need it but I'm bored.

[Saskia]

what Ryzen do you have and what are you eyeing ?
I have built a couple (like 5 - 10 Ryzen systems) during the past couple of weeks and might be able to give you a hint or 2

[Mr. Scram]

Nice  . I did consider a couple of thinkvision monitors myself but these iiyama ones are pretty cheap (£100 a pop).

Where'd you get them for that price? Are they new?

[Kosmic]

Ooooh don't even go there today  . The answer is kubernetes which is not an answer but another layer of problems.

Processes are all the virtualization we really need. Containers are an excuse to let people get away with steaming shit for software architecture by pretending there is adequate isolation between the lumps of poo floating in the lake of diarrhea.

I was about to recommend the same thing. You should look at Kubernetes 

Then run away, fast.

I never used it myself but I did read a lot about it. I like the architecture, it's well done really extensible.  The guys at work that use it seem to like it. We did put together something with Kubernetes, Docker, SaltStack and/or Teraform (don't remember if it's both or only one of them) and we are deploying our workload to any cloud providers or bare metal.

[bd139]

Nice  . I did consider a couple of thinkvision monitors myself but these iiyama ones are pretty cheap (£100 a pop).

Where'd you get them for that price? Are they new?

Yeah new. I actually have three now. There's a desktop on the living room table for school work with one as well.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01GELBKBG/ (currently £104.99)

I paid £93 for the first one from Amazon, £98 for the second one and had to get the third from Scan via ebay as Amazon were out of stock and that was £108 (figured I'd get three the same as I can use the third as a matching spare if one of the other ones dies).

The stands were bought separately from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0765Y4CT5

I never used it myself but I did read a lot about it. I like the architecture, it's well done really extensible.  The guys at work that use it seem to like it. We did put together something with Kubernetes, Docker, SaltStack and/or Teraform (don't remember if it's both or only one of them) and we are deploying to any cloud providers or bare metal.

It looks pretty but it's hell. I run a three node from scratch K8S cluster on my desktop just to do work . Terraform + k8s here

It's based on Google's "borg" system and mostly used on systems way too small to worry about this shit with 

[mansaxel]

Ooooh don't even go there today  . The answer is kubernetes which is not an answer but another layer of problems.

Processes are all the virtualization we really need. Containers are an excuse to let people get away with steaming shit for software architecture by pretending there is adequate isolation between the lumps of poo floating in the lake of diarrhea.

We have all the virtualization we've got because people are shit at managing shared libraries, so as soon there's more than one app per OS, their heads will fucking explode.