Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[tautech]

Another great bit of UK weapon control. Had an email from neighborhood watch about a weapons surrender scheme. I clicked the link to find that apparently it will be illegal have one of these (pic below)
in your own home next year  I didn't even know that it's already illegal to have one in public, make or sell one (no one told ebay)
Yes it's a kids toy, but  it meets the description here
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1988/2019/made
"the weapon sometimes known as a ‘blowpipe’ or ‘blow gun’, being a hollow tube out of which hard pellets or darts are shot by the use of breath;"
The one pictured even comes with ammunition! About the only vaid reason for having one would be if you were a wildlife vet and were using it to administer drugs.
The new law "Offensive Weapons Act 2019" https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2019/17/part/4/enacted
Now makes it illegal to own, even in private, a bunch of "weapons" that previously it was only illegal to carry in public, sell, buy or make. I can understand and agree with keeping weapons off the street and out of the hands of criminals but thi seems to just be a way of making conviction easier as they don't have to prove how you got it, just having it (there are some exemptions like antiques or work use) is an offence that you can be locked up for.
So if you are in the UK and have any unusual knives, batons, swords, throwing stars etc. you should have a look at this:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/offensive-weapons-act-surrender-and-compensation-scheme
If you have a at least three peashooters you bought before 2018 they are supposed to give you £14 each for them 

Nope it's a United Nations civilian disarmament initiative that all member nations that are signatories to are following.
Gubbermints that subscribe to this are worthy of the same amount of trust as the UN themselves.
Disarm populations and then you have absolute power !

[Cubdriver]

Oooh.

I've got some small bore copper tubing coiled up in the garage somewhere.  If I cut that up into 30cm lengths and put a 3d printed mouthpiece on them, I should make enough to buy some interesting test equipment. The curvature is an experimental technique for shooting round corners, of course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krummlauf

-Pat

[Saskia]

a railgun does not seem to be on their list.

needs some tuning tho

[mnementh]

    That, however, is not my biggest hurdle right now; board density is. This board is an order of magnitude more miniaturized than my practice PCB. To give you an idea: that chip is 2.1mm², and there is a 6x6 grid of pads under it.

I just plain can't see it clearly unless I use both my magnifying visor and the magnifying lamp located right over the work. Trying to do it from an angle just distorts everything to illegibility. The focal length of this combination puts the lens of the lamp 50-60mm directly above the work, and there simply is not any way to get the hot air nozzle anywhere near the chip.

I guess I'm gonna have to start shopping a cheap digital microscope; either that or swallow my tinkerer pride and send the board off to someone who's better equipped.

mnem
Murphy's a bitch, and she has puppies.

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07D9FK8LW/

I settled on this one; should be here in a couple daze. Camera/chassis are allegedly same specs as the one Tony reviewed, only 4.3" screen. We'll see if it's good enough; I just couldn't make myself spend another $150 on this project with the DM9 microscope. This brings total cost up to ~$103; that I feel is a reasonable gamble to take on this iPad.

mnem
 

[Saskia]

I really like my amscope trinocular 4.5-90 or so on a boom with the led ring. Expensive, but totally worth it

[mnementh]

I'm pretty pleased with myself, getting to this age before I had to have a microscope for microsoldering.

I've done hand soldering directly to the pins of a Atmega2650 more times than I can count. Still can't decide if that's a matter of skill or obstinacy. 

mnem
 

[Brumby]

I really like my amscope trinocular 4.5-90 or so on a boom with the led ring. Expensive, but totally worth it

I understand the "Expensive, but totally worth it" sentiment - and it would be a nice to have - but justification for my situation would be a stretch.  My needs are somewhat more modest - as is my budget.

I have so many toys I would like to import into my little world - but space, budget and need really cramp those ideas.... 

[Brumby]

Mnem, please let us know how this unit performs.  It might make my "One day..." shopping list.

[mnementh]

I will do. Here's Tony's review of the DM9 for those who haven't seen; if I weren't already overspent on Xmas, I'd probably have splurged on it. I'm gonna save that money in case I need to buy a new iPad for my daughter.

mnem
 

[0culus]

I really like my amscope trinocular 4.5-90 or so on a boom with the led ring. Expensive, but totally worth it

I understand the "Expensive, but totally worth it" sentiment - and it would be a nice to have - but justification for my situation would be a stretch.  My needs are somewhat more modest - as is my budget.

I have so many toys I would like to import into my little world - but space, budget and need really cramp those ideas.... 

Amscope is good value for the money though. I plan to get one, have some experience with someone else's. Would I prefer a Zeiss? Well, yes, but I'm unlikely to want to shell out unless I can find one for pennies on the dollar at a property auction.

[mnementh]

From the  WERE THEY THINKING?!? Files...

https://www.zdnet.com/article/red-hat-resets-centos-linux-and-users-are-angry/

mnem
Jeebus... even OS is going monopolistic.

[0culus]

From the  WERE THEY THINKING?!? Files...

https://www.zdnet.com/article/red-hat-resets-centos-linux-and-users-are-angry/

mnem
Jeebus... even OS is going monopolistic.

Gotta sell more support contracts, obviously. 

[Cerebus]

From the  WERE THEY THINKING?!? Files...

https://www.zdnet.com/article/red-hat-resets-centos-linux-and-users-are-angry/

mnem
Jeebus... even OS is going monopolistic.

I find it completely unsurprising. Red Hat has become the favoured corporate flavour of Linux because the PHBs think "You can get support" and thus shell out for Red Hat licences. However, anyone who has actually tried to get the support from Red Hat that they're paying for will find that it's useless, and furthermore that Red Hat is pathetically weak at keeping up to date with things that need to be patched. With the weight of a huge Red Hat customer behind me I have previously failed to get them to do anything useful for me, and worse still they took a long time to do nothing. However, most of the application software, middleware and the like that corporate types pay for is built to run on Red Hat, so corporate types still need Red Hat to run stuff on, even after they've discovered that Red Hat's support isn't worth paying for. Oh, but wait, there's Centos - that is release identical to Red Hat but for the branding, and it's free.

So, I suspect that a lot of paid Red Hat licences have been migrating to free Centos licences. Cue Red Hat discovering that their business model is crumbling under them. Instead of fixing the problem, making the support worth paying for, they are trying to change the playing field so that people who need to run software that is only officially supported on a Red Hat release have to use Red Hat rather than Centos. Reason being that corporate change control teams will have a blue fit if you try to run a configuration that updates on a rolling basis, and the security team will have a blue fit that you want to punch a hole in their firewall to let it install patches that they haven't approved (Both reasons that a lot of corporate systems run software that can be years behind current patch levels).

[mnementh]

It was a rhetorical question... even I can see that AssHat is engaging in monopolistic behavior.

mnem
I am never surprised by the depths that people will sink to; but I am constantly amazed.

[vk6zgo]

Another great bit of UK weapon control. Had an email from neighborhood watch about a weapons surrender scheme. I clicked the link to find that apparently it will be illegal have one of these (pic below)
in your own home next year  I didn't even know that it's already illegal to have one in public, make or sell one (no one told ebay)
Yes it's a kids toy, but  it meets the description here
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1988/2019/made
"the weapon sometimes known as a ‘blowpipe’ or ‘blow gun’, being a hollow tube out of which hard pellets or darts are shot by the use of breath;"
The one pictured even comes with ammunition! About the only vaid reason for having one would be if you were a wildlife vet and were using it to administer drugs.
The new law "Offensive Weapons Act 2019" https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2019/17/part/4/enacted
Now makes it illegal to own, even in private, a bunch of "weapons" that previously it was only illegal to carry in public, sell, buy or make. I can understand and agree with keeping weapons off the street and out of the hands of criminals but thi seems to just be a way of making conviction easier as they don't have to prove how you got it, just having it (there are some exemptions like antiques or work use) is an offence that you can be locked up for.
So if you are in the UK and have any unusual knives, batons, swords, throwing stars etc. you should have a look at this:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/offensive-weapons-act-surrender-and-compensation-scheme
If you have a at least three peashooters you bought before 2018 they are supposed to give you £14 each for them 

The worry is probably more about the cost to taxpayers of kids going to ER with eye injuries.
To this end, they could probably have written, or used, some other legislation, but why not go the easy route, & use the weapons law.

If they had declared them "dangerous toys", the importers would become responsible, & they couldn't have that!
As it is, the owners become the "bunnies" ("After all, my dear, they are not 'one of us', so who cares?")

I sorely doubt if these peashooters would ever be a lot of good for anyone "defending their sovereignty" against an oppressive govt, or to defend against all the multitudinous criminals wanting to invade the Brit's "two up, two down" mansion!
If you really want to protect yourself & "your castle" from all those  "boogey people" who are just dying to invade, go out to the garden shed, & knock the head off the mattock.
The mattock handle then becomes a very effective "Nulla Nulla" to fight them off!

OK, if they have guns & are silly enough to use them, it won't help, but it would be quite intimidating to the rest.




 
 

[med6753]

I really like my amscope trinocular 4.5-90 or so on a boom with the led ring. Expensive, but totally worth it

I understand the "Expensive, but totally worth it" sentiment - and it would be a nice to have - but justification for my situation would be a stretch.  My needs are somewhat more modest - as is my budget.

I have so many toys I would like to import into my little world - but space, budget and need really cramp those ideas.... 

Amscope is good value for the money though. I plan to get one, have some experience with someone else's. Would I prefer a Zeiss? Well, yes, but I'm unlikely to want to shell out unless I can find one for pennies on the dollar at a property auction.

I saw You and your 519 try to sneak into the "Old Tek Scopes" group in Facebook without telling me. 

[0culus]

I really like my amscope trinocular 4.5-90 or so on a boom with the led ring. Expensive, but totally worth it

I understand the "Expensive, but totally worth it" sentiment - and it would be a nice to have - but justification for my situation would be a stretch.  My needs are somewhat more modest - as is my budget.

I have so many toys I would like to import into my little world - but space, budget and need really cramp those ideas.... 

Amscope is good value for the money though. I plan to get one, have some experience with someone else's. Would I prefer a Zeiss? Well, yes, but I'm unlikely to want to shell out unless I can find one for pennies on the dollar at a property auction.

I saw You and your 519 try to sneak into the "Old Tek Scopes" group in Facebook without telling me. 

 

You know what they say, birds of a feather flock together. 

[med6753]

 

You know what they say, birds of a feather flock together. 

Yep, but the rest of the world thinks we are....

[0culus]

I may be crazy, but I have an extremely capable lab that has an MSRP that I most certainly could not have afforded. 

[cyclin_al]

if that is as thunderous as your spiders are venomous then I'd rather be somewhere else ... (which I am, but ... whatever ...)

But the Flowers  The Inland Deserts are home to several nasty species of Snake and Scorpions are more of an issue in the desert than the Spiders 

I would drop some photos up but they are on a CD and well who has one of those ancient devices on their PC these days....

*starts to say something, but thinks better of it...*

mnem
"I nevah met da storage device in question..."

I do for one, I have 2 of them actually

I have five of those here, in 3 different computers.... no big deal...

Edit:  Crap, I thought we were talking about CD drives.  Let me go count again ....
Answer is still five of those here, in the same 3 computers....
Double-crap, one of those machines has both a SSD and a floppy drive .... 

[mnementh]

mnem
I may be crazy but... no, wait. I'm pretty much just fucking nuts.

[beanflying]

I do have one PC with a spinny drive and a CD in it other than that the others have SSD's and somewhere I have a plug in CD reader but where  Apart from some ancient backups and photos I should add to my NAS at some time CD's time is about passed.

[bd139]

From the  WERE THEY THINKING?!? Files...

https://www.zdnet.com/article/red-hat-resets-centos-linux-and-users-are-angry/

mnem
Jeebus... even OS is going monopolistic.

I find it completely unsurprising. Red Hat has become the favoured corporate flavour of Linux because the PHBs think "You can get support" and thus shell out for Red Hat licences. However, anyone who has actually tried to get the support from Red Hat that they're paying for will find that it's useless, and furthermore that Red Hat is pathetically weak at keeping up to date with things that need to be patched. With the weight of a huge Red Hat customer behind me I have previously failed to get them to do anything useful for me, and worse still they took a long time to do nothing. However, most of the application software, middleware and the like that corporate types pay for is built to run on Red Hat, so corporate types still need Red Hat to run stuff on, even after they've discovered that Red Hat's support isn't worth paying for. Oh, but wait, there's Centos - that is release identical to Red Hat but for the branding, and it's free.

So, I suspect that a lot of paid Red Hat licences have been migrating to free Centos licences. Cue Red Hat discovering that their business model is crumbling under them. Instead of fixing the problem, making the support worth paying for, they are trying to change the playing field so that people who need to run software that is only officially supported on a Red Hat release have to use Red Hat rather than Centos. Reason being that corporate change control teams will have a blue fit if you try to run a configuration that updates on a rolling basis, and the security team will have a blue fit that you want to punch a hole in their firewall to let it install patches that they haven't approved (Both reasons that a lot of corporate systems run software that can be years behind current patch levels).

Oh don’t get me started on this. I just inherited a three figure sum of mixed CentOS 7 and 8 nodes haphazardly managed with spacewalk and ansible on top of VMware. At least it’s not on HPE crap this time. One reason I haven’t been posting much recently is working out how to approach the problem. Literally as we landed on a half decent solution they pulled this shit so it’s back to the drawing board.

And yes this is going in Amazon.

Edit: on a positive note there’s only one windows node in the entire cluster which is used to wrap some piece of shit COM in a service.

[med6753]

From the  WERE THEY THINKING?!? Files...

https://www.zdnet.com/article/red-hat-resets-centos-linux-and-users-are-angry/

mnem
Jeebus... even OS is going monopolistic.

I find it completely unsurprising. Red Hat has become the favoured corporate flavour of Linux because the PHBs think "You can get support" and thus shell out for Red Hat licences. However, anyone who has actually tried to get the support from Red Hat that they're paying for will find that it's useless, and furthermore that Red Hat is pathetically weak at keeping up to date with things that need to be patched. With the weight of a huge Red Hat customer behind me I have previously failed to get them to do anything useful for me, and worse still they took a long time to do nothing. However, most of the application software, middleware and the like that corporate types pay for is built to run on Red Hat, so corporate types still need Red Hat to run stuff on, even after they've discovered that Red Hat's support isn't worth paying for. Oh, but wait, there's Centos - that is release identical to Red Hat but for the branding, and it's free.

So, I suspect that a lot of paid Red Hat licences have been migrating to free Centos licences. Cue Red Hat discovering that their business model is crumbling under them. Instead of fixing the problem, making the support worth paying for, they are trying to change the playing field so that people who need to run software that is only officially supported on a Red Hat release have to use Red Hat rather than Centos. Reason being that corporate change control teams will have a blue fit if you try to run a configuration that updates on a rolling basis, and the security team will have a blue fit that you want to punch a hole in their firewall to let it install patches that they haven't approved (Both reasons that a lot of corporate systems run software that can be years behind current patch levels).

Oh don’t get me started on this. I just inherited a three figure sum of mixed CentOS 7 and 8 nodes haphazardly managed with spacewalk and ansible on top of VMware. At least it’s not on HPE crap this time. One reason I haven’t been posting much recently is working out how to approach the problem. Literally as we landed on a half decent solution they pulled this shit so it’s back to the drawing board.

And yes this is going in Amazon.

Edit: on a positive note there’s only one windows node in the entire cluster which is used to wrap some piece of shit COM in a service.

Didn't IBM buy Red Hat last year? Yep, they did. And didn't IBM jump on the "Open Source" bandwagon years ago when it comes to selling their servers? Yep, they did. So while I don't completely understand what is going on now it seems to this peon that they are now talking out of both sides of their mouth. The hypocrisy of it all and not surprising from my former employer.   

[McBryce]

I do have one PC with a spinny drive and a CD in it other than that the others have SSD's and somewhere I have a plug in CD reader but where  Apart from some ancient backups and photos I should add to my NAS at some time CD's time is about passed.

I thought everyone still had CD/DVD drives in their computers?? Mine is in the bay below the 5.25in floppy drive... Oops.

McBryce.