• 4 Posts
  • 46 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: July 9th, 2023
  • over_clox@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Have you ever successfully plotted revenge? Why? And was it worth it?
    6·
    1 day ago

    Mechanical keyboard don’t have super thick heavy duty power traces, so basically any cheap $25 dollar 30 watt iron from Lowe’s or other hardware store should do the trick for your needs.

    When looking for solder, look for flux core or rosin core solder, practically all electronics grade solder is hollow and has flux/rosin already inside the solder.

    For larger projects where you’re dealing with large power traces and/or large wires, you might want to invest in a more professional temperature adjustable soldering station, and additional flux.

    What old flux I’ve been using (I admit I haven’t done all that much soldering in years after I quit that job, chemicals aren’t exactly healthy yo)…

    NC-559-ASM-TPF(UV)

    But hey, if you want some cheap flux, just go cut some bark off of a pine tree and let the sap run for a day or two. The original soldering flux was pine sap.

    Good luck fully cleaning that shit off though, pine sap is super sticky…

  • over_clox@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Have you ever successfully plotted revenge? Why? And was it worth it?
    11·
    1 day ago

    Use flux, pre-tin your soldering tip and the stuff you’re planning to solder before you actually solder things together, rubbing alcohol and Q-Tips to clean residual flux off afterwards.

    Yes that’s an extremely simplified explanation, but for real, cleanliness is of utmost importance. When solder is clean and has flux, it flows almost like mercury when hot.

    Also, you don’t want the iron too cold or too hot. I’ve found temperature ranges between 370⁰C to 420⁰C typically best, lower temperature for thin data line traces, higher temps for large ground plane or power traces.

  • over_clox@lemmy.worldtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•What's the oldest thing you enjoy on a daily basis?
    9·
    1 day ago

    My bifocal glasses. They were donated to me last year, and some fucking how, they’re a perfect match for my prescription, and have absolutely no scratches.

    They were manufactured in 1988, literally 2 years before I ever got my first pair of glasses.

    I didn’t exactly sign up for big ass thick bifocals, but the last prescription glasses I paid for cost me $217, are scratched to hell and back, and the frames split at the nose bridge.

    They’re big, they’re ugly, but they just fucking work, even clearer than my most recent actual prescriptions.

    You can’t complain when it’s free!

  • over_clox@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Have you ever successfully plotted revenge? Why? And was it worth it?
    3·
    1 day ago

    If I had to spot a guess, he was taking advantage of his savings account building interest, he had me and at least 2 other employees doing this. Walmart would charge $6 for the check processing fees, so…

    (1500 - 6) * 3 employees = $4482, every week.

    I think he was taking advantage of the delay in Walmart’s check verification and racking up his interest buildup on his savings, then turning around and paying back the original amount prior to interest accumulation.

    Something like that anyways, that’s the loose understanding I came away with.

    Edit: Damn good question though, if someone has a better explanation, by all means please share and educate us…

  • over_clox@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Have you ever successfully plotted revenge? Why? And was it worth it?
    33·
    1 day ago

    A former computer repair employer of mine apparently had us running what they call a ‘check racing scam’ back around 2014. I didn’t fully understand the nature of the scam back then, but I knew it seemed really fishy.

    He’d write on the memo line ‘loan to shareholder’, though he wasn’t on the stock market and we most definitely weren’t shareholders.

    When 2015 came, I was expecting my tax documents so I could file and get my tax returns in a timely manner, which should be given to employees in January and are due with the IRS by April 15th, at least here in the USA.

    But no, even by April 15th, we still didn’t have our tax documents. It was on that very day I quit, and I reported everything to his banker, his tax people, and Walmart, where he had us cashing those checks.

    Needless to say, those organizations were not happy with my former employer. That’s also how I learned what they call that sort of scam, a check racing scam.

    He’d print out and have us cash checks in the amount of $1500 at Walmart, then have us bring the cash back to him and he’d go to his bank and deposit the money into his own account. Apparently Walmart doesn’t bother verifying the checks for another 2 days or so if the amount doesn’t exceed $1500.

    As I reported his fraud to the different companies involved, I made it clear with them that any check in the amount of $1500 was part of his scam, but the lesser checks around ~$400 to $550 or so were my legit paychecks.

    His tax people told me that what I reported answered a lot of questions they had. His banker said he didn’t have the privilege to share the employer’s banking data with me, to which I responded that I wasn’t asking any questions, I was only there to report (with evidence in hand).

    I forget what Walmart told me, but their money center apparently passed the info up the chain of command. And then I just walked, and took my own personal toolkit with me.

    I was one of the best employees he ever had, nobody else was worth a shit at soldering or had the knowledge and ability to get rid of rootkit infections.

    He had 5 shops open when I quit. Within 2 years, they shut all of them down. Last I heard through the grapevine was that he was planning on opening a restaurant somewhere.

    Lesson: If you’re running a tech shop, don’t fuck with the hardware and data recovery specialist, we do keep backups.

    As a final note, once I got my ‘tax papers’, it was in October, and it was just a fucking PostIt note with how much I earned the previous year.

    Edit: Yes, I’d still do that again to this day, if I had to. I despise scammers, and I especially despise scamming employers that make their employees part of the scam as part of their terms of employment.

  • over_clox@lemmy.worldOPtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•Do you like AI? What model(s)? If so, or not, why?
    2·
    3 days ago

    My original algorithms were specifically designed to help artists perform nearly perfect color matching, based largely on text inputs. It started off as a single purpose application, but totally human driven.

    The more I used and tested my own software, it taught me more than I even expected to learn about photochromatic processing. More than I even designed it to do even.

    I was already also studying acoustics around the same time. I saw how well my chromatography software was working, and just barely started adapting the algorithm to process acoustics.

    I quickly realized that I didn’t have nearly enough RAM or processing power to do anything meaningful in any sensible timeframe, but I could already see that it was possible to go as far as changing one’s voice with the voice print of someone else.

    I announced that with online friends at the time, around 2017, and nobody believed me. Probably because I couldn’t quite prove it yet. But I knew it.

    The more I thought about that, the more I thought it would only contribute to fraud. So, I just fucking stopped, slammed on development brakes, and said fuckit.

    I don’t want to be part of the problem, I just wanted to design a better color filter/processor system.