Neat, unusual tech tips

What's something neat and unusual/uncommon that you do on your computer or with tech in general?(USER WAS WARNED FOR THIS POST, You should always elaborate on your opinions rather than just spilling the soykaf.)

>What's something neat and unusual/uncommon that you do on your computer or with tech in general? I use it for recreational purposes.

>>80854 I have air gapped not been online in 15 years laptop that is 19 years old that still works like a charm with windows XP, I use it to write and read on, sometimes play a little doom3 or warcraft 3. Only the battery has died and I need to use it pluged in.

>>80861 "air gapped" running windows

>>80861 Perhaps you could install Linux on another partition and use it for basic web browsing (unless the machine is pretty weak for that which is understandable. Browsing the web on any machine pre-2010 is a pain in the ass).

Take pictures of by bumhole. Not in a weird way, just to monitor it for hemorrhoids.

I use emacs software I wrote that lets me do the "incremental reading" like the software supermemo.

you can cap your cpu in software on both linux & windows. Limiting cpu ghz to 90% removes fan noise entirely for me with negligible perf drawback. Windows requires a regedit hack to unlock cpu limit in power settings. Linux is just using "cpulimit"

>>80854 Hiding my bash history in my .bashrc and .zshrc files How to hide Bash / Shell commands: >https://github.com/hackerschoice/thc-tips-tricks-hacks-cheat-sheet?tab=readme-ov-file#bash-hide-command unset HISTFILE [ -n "$BASH" ] && export HISTFILE="/dev/null" export BASH_HISTORY="/dev/null" export LANG=en_US.UTF-8 locale -a 2>/dev/null|grep -Fqim1 en_US.UTF || export LANG=en_US export LESSHISTFILE=- export REDISCLI_HISTFILE=/dev/null export MYSQL_HISTFILE=/dev/null TMPDIR="/tmp" [ -d "/var/tmp" ] && TMPDIR="/var/tmp" [ -d "/dev/shm" ] && TMPDIR="/dev/shm" export TMPDIR export PATH=".:${PATH}" 1. unset HISTFILE : This command removes the HISTFILE variable, which is used by the shell to determine where to save the command history. By unsetting it, the shell will not save command history to a file. 2. [ -n "$BASH" ] && export HISTFILE="/dev/null" : This checks if the shell is Bash (by checking if the BASH variable is set). If it is, it sets HISTFILE to /dev/null, effectively discarding any command history. 3. export BASH_HISTORY="/dev/null" : This sets the BASH_HISTORY variable to /dev/null, which means that Bash's history will not be saved. 4. export LANG=en_US.UTF-8 : This sets the default locale for the shell to en_US.UTF-8, which is a common locale for English language support with UTF-8 encoding. 5. locale -a 2>/dev/null|grep -Fqim1 en_US.UTF || export LANG=en_US : This checks if the locale en_US.UTF-8 is available on the system. If it is not found, it sets the LANG variable to en_US, which is a fallback locale. 6. export LESSHISTFILE=- : This sets the LESSHISTFILE variable to -, which means that the less command will not save its history to a file. 7. export REDISCLI_HISTFILE=/dev/null : This sets the history file for the Redis command-line interface (redis-cli) to /dev/null, preventing it from saving command history. 8. export MYSQL_HISTFILE=/dev/null : This sets the history file for the MySQL command-line client to /dev/null, preventing it from saving command history. 9. TMPDIR="/tmp" : This sets the TMPDIR variable to /tmp, which is a common directory for temporary files. 10. [ -d "/var/tmp" ] && TMPDIR="/var/tmp" : This checks if the directory /var/tmp exists. If it does, it sets TMPDIR to /var/tmp. 11. [ -d "/dev/shm" ] && TMPDIR="/dev/shm" : This checks if the directory /dev/shm exists. If it does, it sets TMPDIR to /dev/shm, which is often used for shared memory. 12. export TMPDIR : This exports the TMPDIR variable so that it is available to any child processes. 13. export PATH=".:${PATH}" : This prepends the current directory (.) to the PATH environment variable, allowing executables in the current directory to be run without specifying their path.

>>86159 https://thc.org "The Hacker's Choice" has always put out good info but I was not aware of this, thank you. Does it work with ZSH though?

>>80871 Lainon could have ripped the wifi antenna out.

>>80854 Xiaomi and Samsung phones are great (just make sure latter is not one of those subvariants by various telecoms which use different ROM partitions and barely unlockable). Just buy any Xiaomi and Samsung that has a custom ROM support, then you can root them either: Magisk/Kernelsu/Apatch use Shizuku/LSPosed for other useful things but I find the former to be less useful. Notally (FOSS) is the best app for notes, you can also use Google's Keep Notes which has nice features - airgap it if you will. Since most I do is writing, recording and doing other productive creative things I find that using a PC is wasteful and I need something immediately usable upon waking up or having a spontaneous idea. Now the protip is these phones usually have aftermarket batteries, unlike a laptop - which lacks aftermarket stuff or usually expensive for time-worn lithium ions. Xiaomis have authentic li-poly batteries online and samsungs also have cheap li-ion batteries, it's like the BL-5C of phone industry these two phone manufacturers are the only good choice if you want a phone that has: [/] root capability or go full foss/debotnet [/] replaceable battery it also is powerful enough to replace laptops, so for the part where to look, try facebook market place if you have an account or things like shady or smartphone sellers at mall stalls - they have the goods usually I look for old xiaomis, you can turn them into something useful like for home computing or smart iot purposes even use it as openwrt if you can do termux stuff or kernel stuff. it is dirt cheap since most of the ones that do have support for custom roms are way too old or 5-3 years ago they will work well and have "BL-5C" of battery availability. Just make sure the xiaomis have the Global IMEI https://www.mi.com/global/verify/ or you won't be able to bootloader unlock it if it has Chinese hardware. Samsung allows easy unlocks via Odin but make sure your device model is the right one (use cpuz or similar). Termux is extremely useful you can install python, install yt-dlp which is nice and do other bunch of things.

>>86671 Xiaomi phones are horrible to root, you need to download their Windows only application, put in your Xiaomi account and wait 30 days to be able to root it. Easiest way would be to reverse engineer the snapdragon CPU's but even that is a horrible process.

>>86671 >>86674 People act like having a "superuser" role is this magic key to unlocking computer freedom when that's not at all how it works. It's a shame people who know so little about OS development repeat the same soykaf over and over again, because Google Samsung and the others are absolutely doing anticompetitive things. I bet they love this "let me root my phone" rhetoric because it's an easy red herring to point to as just clueless power users complaining. If you want true freedom over your device then complain about Google Play Services, closed source firmware, a lack of community involvement in Chromium/AOSP, locked bootloaders, or a lack of schematics/repairability. I only really see niche usecases like if you wanted to heavily mod mobile games, at the cost of utterly destroying your security. You don't need root for most Termux uses. For a home computer I'd rather buy an SBC or low powered mini pc since those are already power efficient, and have way better IO and hardware support. For pentesting get a cheap thinkpad instead. Maybe a pinephone as a secondary tinkering device? >>80854 Using vtm, kakoune, and chawan with alpine on a visionfive2 for a text based risc-v desktop, fun to write on :)

>>86675 the problem is your SBC is not cost-effective meanwhile you can get a EOL samsung device and have more powerful CPU/GPU and a 1080p screen but your SBC's 1080p screen already costs about $100 and it doesn't have a wifi chip yet. "maybe a pinephone" is literally unobtainium. I'm presenting the untapped market and potential, the concept of efficiency and portability and having working batteries* hence BL-5C reference. you can't even have a proper battery on the SBC, you need to solder EOL vape 18650s to get meager portability also if you preach what I would call a chasing a rabbit hole that is limiting yourself to "purely FOSS" stuff, you might as well just get a Replicant but that isn't also entirely free even after all the reverse engineering, well you can get yourself a RYF certified laptop with ME-killer libreboot preinstalled but that is no longer effective, phones are more water proof and portable and scalable. and the other thing that never will happen is the idea that everything is open - open schematics, open source drivers, open everything. all of these Intellectual Properties are protected in some way - if you just released a flagship killer with open schematics, open CPU arch, open drivers and source code - some company will reproduce what you did had you released it all out in public domain and they would reap more benefits while you don't outside of just "giving it to the world" so it doesn't incentivize it since most of each of these IP down to individual components are a composition of various works. root is fine, you can use it to install linux distros, have a portable windows drive, carry on app save files/databases (because you can't do that even with google's own backup system! and let alone access app data now even when file manager has root!) over updates, install a proper SSH server and other tools in the android system, well would be nice if pinephone exists but it's unobtainium at this point. Nothing else is better, you can get a steamdeck with pure arch but its batteries will fail and it's less waterproof than a phone that costs so cheap (mere $20) that you might as well buy a new one if its emmc/ufs failed which it won't anytime soon. also finally the security fallacy, its never about security. you have out-of-band undocumented instructions on your device, you don't control its ring negatives, the only time you will is if you bought the novena platform 11 years ago and that's it. you can angel invest Open RISC-V and it will not ship anytime soon and you're closer to getting arch running on apple M4 than getting a Open RISC-V that can run 5 windows of gearsglx. you can use the most secure device called latest android and ios for "secure" payments but that is a different use case, root is not about security, even linux is not about security and is pretty barebones. your idea of "computer freedom" is an ideology never realized - did you preorder Talos or no? too bad. how about bought RYF certified or diy'd your librebooted ME-cleaned laptop or desktop? a postmarket/replicant smartphone because /e/ is not /e/nough? qubes without blobs and blatant red hat spywares and not use anything else? computer freedom is a myth you can chase forever, you will use the internet and "connect" with other non-free computers. your BGP is not powered by Open-BSD or has blobs and spyware, you live in range of HAARP and other military radar systems, your life is already compromised regardless but this is not defeatism, this is to say that you like to call out us "superuser" as not in the know and proceed to preach chasing a mythical dragon (well dragons at least existed though). at least I know I have to use non-free software sometimes so I can read those confidential documents or excel sheets or something. the ideology is not bad though - at least if you truly were the super libre hero then you'd have joined china's development on fully foss systems but wait, technology in the end is used to enslave humanity or it will by accident so it doesn't really matter whether the ones and zeroes were under your control or not, when it already is in control of you, the train's software, the bus, the hospital computer that ran your birth certificate, your government ID, the list goes on. the way you're particles are entangled, there is no escape it is like kicking dead whales down the beach, and finally when quantum computing is here, actually they are already using quantum signal generators about 8 years ago so your precious airgapped data can be exfiltrated remotely and I say that with certainty.

>>80854 Most normals don't know what ctrl + w does so telling them to press it while something important is on screen is still funny.

>>86683 You're evil. I've lost so much time to ctrl+w, I don't know whether I should hate firefox or emacs

>>86683 >>86693 wait until you hear about ctrl+shif+w

>>86681 Holy mother of unhinged rants >your SBC is not cost-effective meanwhile you can get a EOL samsung device and have more powerful CPU/GPU and a 1080p screen Lol no, an intel N100 will give you a way better time as a desktop than a Mediatek Helio G85 or Exynos 990. Have fun with your single usb port >you can't even have a proper battery on the SBC Why do you need a battery for a home computer? >solder EOL vape 18650s to get meager portability You are so up your own ass you could eat your lunch again. Use a fuarrrking power bank. >well would be nice if pinephone exists but it's unobtainium at this point Again, just delusional. The pinephone beta edition is in stock right now for 200 bucks >bla bla bla The rest of your post is such clueless drivel that I'm not going to bother. Do you think just naming acronyms makes you sound smarter? Stop blabbering and go actually learn something about systems design

>>80854 I know this will sound like I'm joking, but it's a real tip. Get a tablet. I made fun of them before and thought they were garbage, but ever since I began dating my fiancee, who uses her iPad as her main computer daily, I've realized that they're more capable than I thought, so I got one out of curiosity, a cheap used Android, which is what I'd recommend for those just trying it out like I was, and man, I use this thing daily too, for reading comic books or manga, drawing and consuming content in general, tablets are worse than desktops, laptops and even smartphones in most of its tasks, which is why I've always looked down on them, but those few tasks where they're the best? It makes up for it, for me at least.

>>80854 Used e16, which is 26 years old as my wm. It's really pretty and lightweight, and has all kinds of small useful programs. Switched to a tiling wm because the eye candy is a bit distracting but being able to see the windows in each desktop is definitely nicer to be honest. I have a tutorial I never published if anyone is interested. Also rooted a chinese mediatek phone navigating from vague instructions in a russian forum. Was difficult as fuarrrk but worth it.

Want to install certain Emacs packages quickly? 1. Switch to *scratch* buffer 2. Type (mapcar #'package-install '(magit vertigo marginalia)) 3. Type C-j or eval-buffer, etc. How to find out which command you need on PowersHell? 1. Get-Command *process* 2. Help -full Get-Process 3. Get-Process chromium | Get-Member Note: Get-Alias is also handy if you are new. Note: You can get the PowerShell extension for VSCodium or VSCode-OSS. It has a handy PowerShell ISE emulation mode that lets you easily discover new commands. Note: Disable telemetry by setting the env variable: POWERSHELL_TELEMETRY_OPTOUT=1 Note: Learn how to use Select-Object and Where-Object as soon as possible. Safely test Fish or any other login shell Append the following to the bottom of your .bashrc if [ -n "$DISPLAY" ] || [ -n "$WAYLAND_DISPLAY" ]; then exec fish fi

>>86702 >I made fun of them before and thought they were garbage >I use this thing daily too, for reading comic books or manga >consuming content in general So, it's only good for wasting time on stupid crap? Thanks for the tip, I won't ever buy a tablet.

>>80854 In soft & hardware, a line between organization and practical utility needs to be developed,younger generations are all increasingly erratic in this regard, major leanway into irresponaibility, perfectionists like i used to be may have great difficulty. Glad to say i am now a master of tech, but it couldnt have been further from easy

>>87677 >skipping the part of creative work on purpose Nice bait fool

>>86703 >Used e16, which is 26 years old as my wm. >I have a tutorial I never published if anyone is interested. Could you please publish it? What a great desktop!