June 2024 - Talk - lists.gtalug.org

anyone have this bell item?
by Karen Lewellen 06 Mar '25

06 Mar '25

hi all, Layered times, leaving me reading more than commenting. My landlord wishes to provide, but cannot seem to successfully secure from bell, the box below. it's a basic bell cable box vip2502 https://www.bellmts.ca/support/tv/fibe-tv/installation-and-setup/arris-vip2… Anyone have this sitting in a closet? Might be wise to confirm the idea will work. This entire property, even outside, has bell fibe for home coverage including internet..But my on going issues with them have me a bit scared. Thanks, Kare Who has not given up on Over The Air, just gauging offered options.

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(very off topic) quality die grinder bits
by William Park 03 Jul '24

03 Jul '24

Hi all, Very off topic, but I'm fed up. I sharpen my lawn mower blade with die grinder. Problem is, all the bits that I bought from Canadian Tire, Rona, and Home Depot, they all wobble. Except for one bit. And, that has been used so much that I need a new one, now. If anyone has die grinder, what brand of grinding bits do you recommend? --

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Invitation updated: GTALUG monthly general meetings
by Ron via Nextcloud 27 Jun '24

27 Jun '24

Ron updated the event "GTALUG monthly general meetings" Title: GTALUG monthly general meetings Time: Tue, Jun 11, 2024, 7:30 p.m. - 10:30 p.m. (America/Toronto) Location: https://hub.gtalug.org/call/7m45sf9i Description: Monthly general meetings Please double-check the day of week: I managed to make it span > 24hours when setting timezone on my laptop (tiny screen makes it HARD). Accept: https://hub.gtalug.org/apps/dav/invitation/accept/KMeohH0rYsHlFmDAymWgU9Zu5… Decline: https://hub.gtalug.org/apps/dav/invitation/decline/KMeohH0rYsHlFmDAymWgU9Zu… More options at https://hub.gtalug.org/apps/dav/invitation/moreOptions/KMeohH0rYsHlFmDAymWg… -- Nextcloud - a safe home for all your data This is an automatically sent email, please do not reply.

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Raspberry Pi as a desktop or settop computer
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 23 Jun '24

23 Jun '24

When the Raspberry Pi first came out, it was appealing to think of it as an ultra-inexpensive computer for your desktop (perhaps as a very secondary unit) or to play media on your TV. Note: this wasn't the intent of the Raspberry Pi designers. They wanted a totally hackable, cheap, simple (as possible) computer to encourage kids to dive into computing. They fondly remembered they youth spent hacking and mastering BBC Micro and other home/educational computers. There was little competition at the price point of the Raspberry Pi. But it wasn't powerful enough for a comfortable desktop (for most people). Since then, a few things happened: - a bunch of new SBCs inspired by the Pi have been released. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages compared with Raspberry Pi models. None has the depth of support of the Raspberry Pi. - Raspberry Pi models improved a lot but the price crept up. Note: older models are still available at roughly original prices. - streaming media players were introduced at RP prices. They play better with the many forms of DRM that infest the services. Oh, and new TV sets include embedded streaming media players. (This bothers me on a philosophical level.) - tiny x86 boxes have become a lot better and cheaper My current opinions: - instead of a desktop computer, consider a laptop. That market is much larger and the competition has produced some quite good option. - for desktop computers, x86 seems to be a more practical choice. At the low-end, I'd probably pick one based on an Intel N100. I'd select a brand like Bee-Link or models from a similar tier of Chinese brands. I actually want more performance on my desktop so I currently use a much more powerful Bee-Link Mini PC (a SER7). - for set-top boxes, first I'd get a dedicated streaming device. If I also felt the need for a computer, I'd pick an N100 box. We do this (except our mini PCs are much older). - Raspberry Pi computers are still a great choice for learning and for embedding into projects. Much more fun than x86. Note: all of these things run or can run Linux. Except for the Apple streamers.

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GPU in desktop
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 23 Jun '24

23 Jun '24

| From: Evan Leibovitch via talk <talk(a)gtalug.org> | - Desktops can upgrade their GPU to enable gaming, video editing or AI | assist; laptops can't. Most off-the-shelf desktops have pitfalls that prevent installing a GPU - weak power supply with proprietary connectors, weak cooling. required specs are hard to find. - card slot too short for GPU care (thi hi me) These need not be problems if you designed your PC out of parts or it already came with a dGPU. Getting a gaming notebook or gaming desktop seems to double the price. You can add an external GPU is your computer supports ThunderBolt. The bandwidth to the PCI buss will be constrained. For AI, things are changing. Most of the next generation of processor chips include an NPU. I have no idea if the NPU is powerful enough to matter. You may still want a GPU for AI; I'd assume that you'd want as powerful a GPU as you can afford since there is no "enough". My desktop mini PC has a Ryzen 7 7840HS processor (designed for laptops). It includea an AMD Ryzen AI processor good for "up to 10 TOPS". I have never consciously used it nor do I know how.

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reasonably powerful RISC-V SBC
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 23 Jun '24

23 Jun '24

| From: D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk(a)gtalug.org> | Subject: Re: [GTALUG] Raspberry Pi as a desktop or settop computer | | From: Evan Leibovitch via talk <talk(a)gtalug.org> | | If anything, I am hoping to see the next generation of commonly-used | | Raspberry Pi style experimenter boards to be using RISC-V instead of ARM. | | There are a bunch of them. So far, most are inferior at the same price. | I hope and expect that will change. Here's a Banana Pi BPI-F3 with SpacemiT K1 8-core RISC V SoC. You have to beef it up to be interesting but it starts with the bare board with 4G of RAM and 16G eMMC for (currently) $100. I think it is a bit of a prototype. <https://vi.aliexpress.com/item/1005006953292960.html> I don't think that it is as good as a Raspberry Pi 5. I like the idea of RISC V (heck, I'm a member of the organization). But the great thing about Linux is that you rarely care what the ISA is. The Orange Pi 5 might be a good alternative to the Raspberry Pi 5. Much less support. Not significantly cheaper (price is all over the place). Interesting processor: RK3588s. Has an NPU, I think. The Orange Pi 5 Plus is more expensive and has the RK35888. Evan: what SBCs look better to you than the various Raspberry Pi models?

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Reminder: GTALUG General Meeting
by Alan Heighway 09 Jun '24

09 Jun '24

Open Source Project Models <https://gtalug.org/meeting/2024-06/> with Evan Leibovitch <https://gtalug.org/> 11 June, 2024 at 07:30 PM >From Bathwater to B2B: 10 different ways open source projects operate We're going to use Big BLue Button for this meeting: https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl *Time:* June 11th, 2024 19:30 AM Eastern Time *Join us on Big Blue Button:* https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl. *A*lan *H*eighway <http://heighway.ca/> heighway.ca VA3WAH / VA3YKZ [image: Please consider the environment before printing]

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static IPs are available with TekSavvy Fibre
by Val Kulkov 09 Jun '24

09 Jun '24

TekSavvy recently started offering Internet over Bell's fibre in the GTA. The great news is that static IPs are available over fibre as they are now over DSL. Apparently, TekSavvy uses PPPoE for the fibre connections. Also, I have been using a static /56 subnet from TekSavvy for years at no additional cost. They are saying that I can migrate my current static /56 subnet from DSL to fibre. I am extremely happy with that. They have been also providing one static /30 IPv4 subnet per residential customer at the cost of $5/month. I don't know if this is still the case now.

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war story: snag in updating old Fedora systems
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 09 Jun '24

09 Jun '24

I hit this, and the symptoms are sometimes mysterious: <https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/f39-kernels-fail-to-install-when-boo…< If a Fedora installation dates back long enough, a directory with a name /boot/efi/$(cat /etc/machine-id) might exist. Note: the last component of the name is the Machine ID, hence the odd construction. If that directory exists, the installer gets confused and fails. Unfortunately, that failure doesn't stop the upgrade so the error message very likely will scroll out of view. Then when you reboot, problems will ensue. This happened to me on a couple of systems before I got wise. The fix is detailed on the linked page. I've not decided to execute this command before updates on my old machines: sudo mv "/boot/efi/$(cat /etc/machine-id)" "/boot/efi/$(cat /etc/machine-id)_disabled" This is a bug in Fedora 39 but it also seems to be in Fedora 40. For haters: this seems to be a systemd project bug.

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Federal agency warns critical Linux vulnerability being actively exploited
by Ron / BCLUG 06 Jun '24

06 Jun '24

News is out about a fairly severe Linux vulnerability. This is a new one: > Federal agency warns critical Linux vulnerability being actively > exploited > > Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency urges affected users > to update ASAP. > The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-1086 and carrying a severity > rating of 7.8 out of a possible 10, allows people who have already > gained a foothold inside an affected system to escalate their system > privileges. It’s the result of a use-after-free error, a class of > vulnerability that occurs in software written in the C and C++ > languages when a process continues to access a memory location after > it has been freed or deallocated. Use-after-free vulnerabilities can > result in remote code or privilege escalation. https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/05/federal-agency-warns-critical-linu…

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