Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

I’ve always used core i5 k processors for my builds. With most gaming an overclocked core i5 at 4.5ghz for $220 is all you need. And the other features don’t matter.  The lone exception is a cheap Xeon file server where based on vlads advice we went with a six core slow Xeon for ecc…

Well this is supposed to be the most powerful setup box made, but argh, is it hard to setup.  It requires that you logon to Google and it is really pleasant, asks you to use your phone or your laptop. Here is what I found: The http://g.co/AndroidTV is not compatible with either iPhone or Safari.…

I think I’m a little scared I have over the years I’ve accumulated all this gear and it is the same as the wirecutters recomendations  Lowepro 350 aw. Nearly the perfect stealth bag for camera equipment. I’m on my third one. Great protection and even carries a 15 laptop. The latest is all weather with…

Ok so now that we are getting to just internet here are the tips tricks and traps Wow Comcast customer service has really improved. Actual smiling people. And retail locations that’s great. The main optimizations are getting rid of television. If you love sports this is hard but otherwise it is quite survivable. You can…

So how to make it all work. Rather than wait for my new hardware, I thought I might as well start with the hundred or so Raspberry Pi Model Bs we already have. Here’s a recipe for how to get it all running: Hypriot: The Operating system Hypriot are a great bunch and they have…

Wow what a great day for low cost processors. The conversion to 64 bit is on and that means much simpler software development. We are moving away from the strange hybrid architecture of the original Raspberry Pi (ARMv6 with hardware floating point) to 64-bit and fast GPUs. Also the busses are getting better so some…

OK more than a day, but there was a bad update where Apple accidentally blacklisted their own driver (ugh, I’m sure someone is getting yelled at right now). It should be fixed automatically if you are using the automatic update feature. Mine was broken at on Friday and fixed Saturday at 530PM, so software update…

Well, we got a pretty amazing server two years ago and it is interesting to see how little has changed, most of the parts are still good (Haswell-E), but the main thing that has changed are: SSDs in Server NVMe. Wow boot drives and cache drives are much faster. With a Xeon platform there are…

Wow the service run by Obitalk is pretty incredible. It has some incredible features using Google Voice and it works with a burglar alarm as well. It also has no FCC fees as well and you can hear your voice mail on Google Voice. Of course who knows how secure any of this is really…

Time once again for my monthly security reminders here is what I learned (relearned): iMessage. This is actually quite a safe protocol. It is zero knowledge in that Apple cannot read the messages while in transit. Way better than sending a text or email both are unencrypted. The main vulnerabilities are that Apple can be…

Lots in the news about cracking iPhones. Here’s some net net advice Let us all hope that iOS 10 not only signs updates with their key but also encrypts with the user passcode.  For the current iPhone the easy thing to do is to use TouchID and then bump up the passcode from 4 digits…

Wow what a difference two years make. We are now in free fall for tvs and HDR is coming as well. There is also a convergence happening as tvs get full operating systems and arm chips So here is a quick review of what to get depending on needs. Hat tip to the wirecutter Computer…

Never had so much fun learning about a new topic or building a computer but at last I have a reason to want a $5k desktop! arriving in two days! Of course since then it’s pretty clear that instead of the i7 we should Xeon e5-1650 v3. It’s the same chip and costs the same…

Most of notes now go to slack. It’s so convenient to post there as I do most things in my phablet these days. 

Wow this is a cool application. it uses a web browser on the Mac and then you use a QR code to connect it to an Android device. This gives the local IP address of the Mac to the phone and somehow the browser application can facilitate the transfer

Living With the iPad Pro – Extratextuals https://apple.news/AJOMlfeCiMaGVF0hmAVERtw has great app list for productivity on iOS. 

Well finally back to running a Raspberry Pi stack. Got the new Hypriot Cluster Lab which is in it’s first incarnation. it is much easier than the manual docker swarm setup up, but a little less clear how to do thing. It uses Consul for managing the cluster (rather than just using docker swarm cli)…

Well there are so many options these days but here are some good ones: directpay.irs.gov. This is a free site that let’s you pay with your checking account for free. The only trick is that you have to do it before the deadline. You need 3-5 days beforehand. pay1040.com. This has a $3 charge for…

OK, this might seem like an oxymoron, but if you are doing machine learning you kind of want to do it when mobile or in poor connectivity areas yet also want something that doesn’t weight 7 pounds. I tried the MSI gaming notebook, but at 17 inches and 6 pounds it is just too big.…

Here are the big ones as covered in a survey article: Tensorflow. The newest one from Google. The biggest issue seems to be how this scales as Tensorflow is a single machine solution now. Google Brain is the a closed source scaled system. Torch. A great chance to learn lua and Facebook has open sourced…

For a long time I used pricegrabber.com, but then it really changed to a resell site. Then I used the Merrill Lynch rewards site which was decent, but had some great mileage bonuses, now I’ve just been hacking away looking at some random store (Amazon, Best Buy, Target, Wal*mart, Newegg, Rakuten and Overstock) and that…

I haven’t seen much about this on the web, but with our two older machines (MacBook Pro 2010 and iMac 2009), we have had hang problems with File Vault. On the former, the upgrade just failed and hung at a blank screen. The on the later, it worked, but then on some update, it would…

We just started our first Skylake build on micro-ATX taking the Haswell build and using it with a system cost of $1500. The main changes with the Z170 board called the Gigabyte Z170MX-Gaming 5 is that we now get: USB 3.1 Controller. So 16Gbps for 2 USB 3.1 ports (10Gbps is standard and is 2x…

Happy 2016. I can’t believe we are already here. Wow, and we are getting close to 2020 and driverless cars and even hoverboards, but the old tradition of New Years resolutions lives on. So here are mine: Really understand computer vision machine learning. Ok nerdy in the extreme, but last year, it was about really…

Ok been reading way too much about AI lately and helping folks do everything from buy a computer to getting a summer job. Some meta rules. And then some rules. Metarules Ok here are some tips. First meta rules (an ode to Zombieland): Have someone who has done it before. Doesn’t matter if they know…

Well we’ve use the Ubiquiti Unifi’s for the last few year and have had good luck with them but now the product line is huge a little confusing, so in order from most capable and expensive to least. It is tough because all the names sound the same with all the data sheets: Unifi AP…

Well I know that it isn’t practical, but wow, the new MacBook is kind of amazing. For $1300 you get a 256GB flash system with 8GB of memory and it is completely fanless. Most importantly it has a nice keyboard and reasonable 7 hour battery life. The main issues are: it is mid product life…

It’s always hard to know the best time to buy things. But for electronics the main question is how rapidly the technology is evolving.  For things that are moving fast it makes the most sense to try to buy “ahead” because the software typically will end up depending on new features. For instance phones are…

Ok I’ve been trying to be good and use the bus and run to work. One strangeness with the Orcacard. If u get down to zero balance and have autologous enabled you can actually get on the bus. Auto load only triggers if u get to zero and the refills.  It also doesn’t show any…

Wow what a confusing set of ideas. With these modern graphical operating systems, making character or terminal applications look nice takes you back literally 40 years.  Here’s the scoop for pretty terminal colors for developers.  The default colors in vim are pretty bad. http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized has devoted way too much time to creating a beautiful palette…