Gough's Tech Zone

I follow Gough Liu's blog [1]. His investigations on power banks[2] was especially helpful to me. He covers many other gadgets too. [1]: http://goughlui.com/ [2]: http://goughlui.com/category/power-bank-2/

Yeah the second blog post in this series has some examples of leaking, unexpired batteries: https://goughlui.com/2016/12/19/great-aa-alkaline-battery-test-pt-2-th…

This is really amazing work, I found part 3 to be the most interesting https://goughlui.com/2016/12/19/great-aa-alkaline-battery-test-pt-3-th… particularly the mwh/$ and other charts like capacity vs. weight etc.

Note that this is the first post of a four part series. The final post, an addendum, is [0]. The post with the energy ratings is [1] [0] https://goughlui.com/2017/01/31/great-aa-alkaline-battery-test-addendu… [1] https://goughlui.com/2016/12/19/great-aa-alkaline-battery-test-pt-3-th…

It appears he did get reached out to by netflix "I thank everyone for their attention, time and support. It has been very overwhelming, and has broken a number of records in regards to page-views at my personal blog. Special thanks to PetaPixel who agreed to republish the article in its entirety this morning. As of 12:30pm (UTC+11) while I was away from the desk, I received a reply from Netflix. The reply reads as follows:" You can read the rest on his blog: http://goughlui.com/2017/11/22/netflix-uses-my-vhs-cassette-images-wit…

I love the data, but I'm a little mad that Hitachi had to die as a company and got sold into pieces. I'm not sure if I trust what you guys did, calling the old Hitachi Drives as HGST. Technically, the 3.5" drives from Hitachi got sold to Toshiba. For example, the Toshiba DT01ACA300 is allegedly the same design as the Hitachi 7k3000. In the following link, note that the "HDS723030BLE640" is the model number to the 7k3000 with ridiculously low failure rates in the Backblaze study. http://goughlui.com/2013/02/26/toshiba-dt01aca300-aka-hitachi-hds72303… I don't know if HGST drives are related to the old Hitachi models at all. Again, I hate to criticize such awesome research that you've given away for free in your blog. But I'd definitely would like some research and clarification on the Hitachi -> Toshiba or Hitachi -> HGST situation.

There is an update, Netflix have replied and said they're investigating. The original post is on goughlui.com, the PetaPixel link is a reblog and hasn't yet been updated: http://goughlui.com/2017/11/22/netflix-uses-my-vhs-cassette-images-wit… The Netflix reply (pasting here so the website isn't crushed by HN clicks): Dr. Lui, First, my sincerest apologies that no one has gotten back to you until now. Your blog post was brought to my attention so I wanted to reach out and let you know that we’re currently looking into this matter with the creative agency that worked on the product design for the tapes. Will update you as I know more. Feel free to reach out in the meantime. Best, Marlee Also worth pointing out that the image in question is also being used on dozens of other websites (including BuzzFeed). You can find them by using a reverse Google Image search, and noting the specific camera tripod reflection: https://www.google.com/search?sa=X&tbm=isch&tbs=simg:CAQSmQEJh…

The linked article on the same blog on building a tower of optical drives is also quite interesting: https://goughlui.com/2026/03/15/project-building-an-optical-drive-towe…

It is probably just a brand, like many others, and based on a reference design from the OEM. I have a small Tenda 5-port gigabit dumb switch. It uses the same switch chip as this TP-Link, just with different branding; even the "SG105" model number is the same: https://goughlui.com/2022/02/27/unbox-teardown-tp-link-tl-sg105-5-port…

Did anyone ever see retention issues like this guy reported on one of his older models? https://goughlui.com/2024/07/28/tech-flashback-intel-optane-3d-xpoint-…

I've also been searching for that double-bong for years. Last time I asked, user hackmiester pointed me to https://goughlui.com/2016/05/03/project-the-definitive-collection-of-v… The "Texas Instruments DSP based Modems" linking to USR-Sportster-bong-bong.wav is pretty close to what I remember. edit: hackernudes reply is perfect. The youtube auto generated subtitles are pleasing too.

Is the encoder any better than previous AMD offerings? https://goughlui.com/2024/01/07/video-codec-round-up-2023-part-14-av1_…

There's this paper, which made the news at the time I think: https://crypto.stanford.edu/gyrophone/files/gyromic.pdf And there's this post, which includes an audio clip: https://goughlui.com/2019/02/02/weekend-project-mma8451q-accelerometer…

Related: https://archive.goughlui.com/legacy/soundofmodems/index.htm https://goughlui.com/2016/05/03/project-the-definitive-collection-of-v…

I had this same problem a few years ago and went down the rabbit hole. I was looking for the US Robotics X2 and K56Flex handshake sounds and eventually found them. V.90/92: https://goughlui.com/2016/05/03/project-the-definitive-collection-of-v… X2: https://goughlui.com/2018/06/10/project-record-a-us-robotics-x2-dial-u… K56Flex: https://goughlui.com/2018/06/10/project-record-a-k56flex-dial-up-modem…

https://goughlui.com/2023/10/22/tested-project-usb-c-pd-trigger-decoy-… More on the ZY12PDN: https://lygte-info.dk/review/USBmeter%20yzxStudio%20ZY12PDS%20PD%20tri…

> This vulnerability is due to a missing authentication process within the firmware upgrade function. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by upgrading an affected device to a crafted version of firmware. > There are no workarounds that address this vulnerability. Just crack the thing open and hard-wire the Write-Enable line to high and you’re good. Here’s a tear down: https://goughlui.com/2016/02/14/review-teardown-cisco-spa112-2-port-an… And here’s the data sheet to the flash chip: https://www.mxic.com.tw/Lists/Datasheet/Attachments/8448/MX30LF1G08AA,… Pin18 Voilà, enjoy your discount SPA112s! (Or set pin19 write-protect to GND, can probably do that without even cutting a trace. Pin 20 is “NC” and might be wired to GND anyway so blobbing the two together might do it).

> a cheap UPS to keep it running in case of power outage What are the cheap options for RPI? I'v read that powerbanks are not designed as UPS and have no passthrough charging: https://goughlui.com/2021/09/03/note-potential-issues-of-using-a-usb-p…

Here is a really cool collection of modem sounds: https://goughlui.com/2016/05/03/project-the-definitive-collection-of-v… https://archive.goughlui.com/legacy/soundofmodems/index.htm https://archive.goughlui.com/legacy/modemlab/index.htm

Author is in Asia-Pacific, https://goughlui.com/about-me-a-short-bio/ > Currently, I reside mainly at Quakers Hill, in the west of Sydney, Australia

There's allegedly nothing different special about blu-ray M-DISCs >Digging further around the M-disc site, it is noted that their section on longevity testing actually features no data about the BD-R discs at all. Indeed, if there were tests, the reports were not actually featured on the site at all. Further poking around in M-Disc Technology pages shows only references to their DVD products. In fact, it seems their patented “etched in stone” material may only apply to their DVD products. https://goughlui.com/2015/10/16/review-tested-verbatim-lifetime-archiv…

Here’s one test: https://goughlui.com/2017/05/30/experiment-8gb-usb-flash-drive-enduran… No idea if there is anything on the same scale as Backblaze’s reports. Can you tell us anything more about the project/constraints? E.g. is it an option to write the data to Amazon S3 for reliable storage…?

The canonical solution in train/subway/metro systems seems to be full-length antennas that span the tunnel corridor. The cool solution would be base stations built into train carriages that then uplink through some kind of backhaul. I think (but need to properly evaluate) that some Australian trains use something like this. EDIT: Nooope nope nope, horribly misread. https://goughlui.com/2014/03/23/random-post-railcorp-gsm-r-rollout-opa…

Office 95 doesn't look that functionally different from Office 2003: Office 95: https://i0.wp.com/isoriver.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/06-MS-Excel-… Office 2003: https://imag.malavida.com/mvimgbig/download-fs/office-2003-sp1-265-2.j… Honestly even Excel 3.0 (1990) doesn't look that disimilar (https://goughlui.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/about-excel.png) So that's 17 years for toolbars vs 13 for ribbon

This may not be exactly what you're asking for but every re-encode introduces additional noise (generational error). Over many re-encodings (even at same high bitrate/quality) the noise will accumulate in a predictable manner. See [0] for an interesting deep-dive blog post on the subject. Now, as for whether or not you can distinguish the re-encoding from it's original source.... difficult but plausible in certain scenarios? Perhaps if the content was heavily re-encoded to the point where you can statistically determine the presence of the generational noise. With only a single re-encode it may be impossible to determine. [0] https://goughlui.com/2016/11/22/video-compression-x264-crf-generationa…

Flash level checksums are an integral part of wear-leveling and flash block allocation strategy. So they are also used for block migration/retirement controls. In other words, it's not trivial or desirable to remove flash level ECC or other checksums from physical flash management layer. I cannot find the article now, but the flash storage is way less reliable than it seems and it's correcting bit errors silently without reporting most of the time. This article [0] shows some of the things behind the curtain in flash storage configuration and lifetime. I'd edit or add the other article if I can find it. [0]: https://goughlui.com/2015/04/05/teardown-optimization-comsol-8gb-usb-f…

Also see http://goughlui.com/2016/08/05/diy-build-a-70cm-band-yagi-for-amateur-…

It is literally the first result when I do an image search on Google for "VHS Cassette". And when I go to the "Contact me" page on his site [1] I read a lot of passive-aggressive "Don't talk to me, bro" language ;-) Also none of the pictures have any kind of license or copyright info. I cannot even see from the article at [2] that he took the pictures himself. In conclusion my opinion is yes, the designer should have asked for permission. But also the author should add copyright/license info to his site and make that info easy to discover. I'm sure Netflix will do the right thing and we all live happy ever after :-) [1] http://goughlui.com/about-me-a-short-bio/contact-me/ [2] http://goughlui.com/the-vhs-corner/intro-inside-the-vhs-cassette-vcr/

It's absolutely not silly. He's spent quite a bit of time on documenting VHS technology: http://goughlui.com/the-vhs-corner/

You may be interested in checking out this series of blog posts [1] (with a surprising cameo by Dick Smith himself in the comment section) [1] http://goughlui.com/2014/11/09/tech-flashback-dick-smiths-fun-way-into…