#USB Driver Fix

[3utoolsdownload]

How to fix can’t connect your Windows, Mac device with 3uTools

If you're struggling to connect your iPhone or iPad to 3uTools on Windows or Mac, this article provides a clear, step-by-step solution. Learn how to use the built-in "Repair Now" and "Advanced Repair" tools, fix driver issues, disable firewalls, reset Winsock, and even restore a disabled device. Whether you're facing a connection error or a device not recognized issue, this guide is tailored to help you solve it easily.

[sheila--e]

Man I'm having quite the issue with BOTH of my Shift buttons ever since this dumbass update showed up. It's either unrelated hardware error (weird cuz whats the chance both of the keys broke at the same time) OR some shit Windows just pulled. The keys work for a while then seemingly randomly stop working. I think its software tho, I even took the keycaps away and apart from some Dust and Grime nothing seemed out of the ordinary. My guess is that something stops working on the background of the computer and then it remembers "Oh shit yeah the keyboard." and restarts. I hate it here

[z0mborb]

dude if all it took to fix my PC was update my BIOS im gonna be real brassed off

[olessan]

@ everyone following me for art, worry not about the non-art spam, my PC has been having intermittent BSOD issues so I've been holding off on some things while I figure it out. lol

Probably more faulty RAM, which is insane as it's only like 9 months installed, but the faulty RAM last year corrupted several of my complex Clip Studio Paint files (1-5 layers of each corrupting) and forced me to reinstall Windows due to corrupt drivers, so I'm playing it safe. 🫠

[ms-demeanor]

Ahahahaha, customer came up to the door and I took in his computer and it was a super simple issue (needed a driver for a camera installed and his laptop couldn't read the driver disc so I used one of our in-house optical drives and installed the driver and the recording app) and I took it in and fixed it and billed half an hour while the new boss is in the front office fully not giving a shit and the old boss is sitting in his office right next to my desk fucking *fuming* that I'm fixing a computer and billing for my time.

Cucking this dipshit with my little ThinkPad and my little USB DVD Drive.

[idontcaboose]

Haunted car Au part 11

Previous. Masterpost

When Duke woke up, he remembered the fight he had with Bruce last night. All in all, it was actually what Duke wanted to happen in a way. Duke got full access to “fix” the Batmobile, but just the way Bruce made it sound was just… Infuriating. Like, sure, blame the newly 17 year old kid who had only moved the car, not even a hundred feet, for everything wrong with the car. Being benched until he figured out how to get whoever was possessing the car sucked though.

The good news is that the only people who would be awake to bother him or ask unwanted questions would be Alfred and maybe Tim. If Tim got on his case it would be simple to call in Alfred or to threaten him with calling in Alfred. The only other people that use the cave like the front door are Dick and Jason. Both would be up for hiding the issue from Bruce once explained. Dick would be a bleeding heart to a potential meta/alien kid getting stuck because of their powers. Jason would keep the secret just on principle, especially if told Duke got blamed for something he had no hand in. Jason would probably help set the kid up after he gets out of the car too, assuming Bruce doesn't pull a Bruce. It would be nice to not be the only meta in the family though, and the kid would already know about the family, but that would be the kids choice.

After a short breakfast, Duke made his way back down to the cave, only to hear a…Rave?

He made his way through the cave following the muted music to… the car…

“What in every hell are you doing?” Duke could not help to exclaim as he saw the Batmobile, for lack of a better comparison, dancing.

The car was strobing its headlights from the yellow driver's lights, to the brights, to the color changing LEDs Jason and Dick put in for a party prank that Bruce never removed, all to the beat of some techno that had to have been in Tim's Playlist. The car stopped in its perceived dancing to open its door in another mockery of a wave causing the music to become almost deafening as the door opened. Duke had to cover his ears as the kid in the car panicked and set off its alarm before turning everything off. If Duke thought the cacophony before was deafening, the silence after was even more so.

“Seriously, what the hell kid?” Duke said with as much incredulity as he could muster.

The car responded with a slow turning of its front wheels and a quieter sound of ‘Sorry’ by Justin Beiber playing, which could have been from either Dick or Steph’s playlists.

“You know what? I am not going to deal with song names and lyrics to guess from. Give me a second.” Duke went to the Batcomputer and found Tim's folder containing all of the sound bytes and clips that he uses when he gets real malicious with the power points for his team, the JL, or for Bruce when he is being exceptionally pissy, and downloads it onto a large USB stick. It took a little longer than Duke expected, but within an hour the USB was downloading its new playlist into the Batmobile’s radio storage. The sound bytes should be better than songs, right?

“GOOOOOOODDDDDD MOOOOORRRRRRNNNING GOOOOOOOTTTHHHHAAAAAAAAAMMMM!!!!!!!!!!”

“God dammit Tim”

Next

@kizzer55555 @sebas-nights @candeartist422   @trappednyourheart @fandom-life-corrupted-me @tkiesai @2lbballpeenhammer @admiralwidow @rewrittenwrongs @whotfevenknowsanymore @symmetricalastigmatism @thespacedragons @atinygracie @okami-love  @lesbian-spider-drone @1n0sss @forgetmenot-bluepurple

[arcadequeerz]

I got it fixed! Thank god.

Guess whose laptops fucked up again ^_^

[epicqtefail]

i got a new drawing tablet but it's having the same connection problems as my old one which means it's likely my laptop's USB port or something fucky with the laptop itself that's the issue (i've tried restarting and updating drivers and all that fun stuff). I knew the sole USB port would become a problem at some point! (this is why the standard is TWO! like kidneys). It doesn't show any visual signs of damage but what do i know. I'll keep trying to carefully clear any potential dust build-up inside it for now

it's gonna be a while before i can fork out to get that fixed (a bluetooth tablet might end up being the cheapest option?). I'm having fun drawing with the touchpad atm but i imagine the novelty will wear off quite fast :'''^D i also can't do any big bang art (last years, and hopefully, this years) using only the goddamn touchpad so i'll have to figure something out before then.

BUT,,, in the meantime expect some really scrungly touchpad art because drawing is sparking way too much joy for me atm to stop lol

[trainsinanime]

Tram de Liège

After a lot of delays, the new tram line of Liège, Belgium finally opened today, bringing this mode of transport back to the “glowing city” after 58 years. So obviously I left work early and travelled through two countries to check it out.

The line had been planned since the late 2000s, and just about everything about it had been controversial, from its existence to its PPP financing model (which got ruled illegal by the EU not once but twice until they finally got it right) to its construction and delays.

As it stands, the line is almost 12 kilometers, almost all of it at the western bank of the river Meuse, with a single short branch over the river to Bressoux, serving the Expo Centre and also the depot. Three sections are wireless, and trains travel through them on battery power. Personally I think that’s at least two too many; wires would not have massively disturbed the view of the Pont Atlas or the new station quarter at Liège Guillemins, the city's striking main railway station.

As usual for these types of projects, a lot of city spaces got extensive renewals as part oft eh tram project, and between you and me, they were urgently needed. Liège has not always been a very nice city. In places, these improvements have meant reducing space for individual motor traffic and adding bike lanes. However, a number of new bike lanes are just the dreaded “share arrow” on four lane roads; this could be better.

Extensions at either end to Seraing and Herstal (yes, the one from the guns) are possible and some construction started back in 2023, but they got cancelled in 2024 due to high costs.

Costs are a major issue here. The line was very expensive, with a final bill of 530 million euro. In comparison, the line T9 in Paris, probably not a city with low construction costs, has a similar length and only came to 480 million euro (both figures include rolling stock and a dedicated depot and workshop, and come with the caveat that my French is atrocious and I may have misunderstood French Wikipedia here). So the Liège Tram is not quite crazy expensive, but definitely expensive.

The trains seem and feel very French, but are actually from Spanish CAF, part of the Urbos family. They are 45 meters long, 2.65 meters wide, fully low floor, with wide open spaces for standing passengers and persons with reduced mobility, but relatively few seats (though the seats all have USB charging ports).

Today, operations were fairly rough, I’m not going to lie, with lots of breakdowns and issues. I travelled the entire network, and ended up in two trams that just randomly stopped for ten minutes, presumably while the driver was trying to fix some issue. As a result, while headways are supposed to be good, actual headways were essentially random. On a more regular level, I would say signal priority is not yet handled perfectly, there are a number of places where trams had to stop due to red traffic lights.

Ticketing also left me baffled. I think I had a valid ticket, but I’m not actually sure. The Dutch-Belgian-German border region has a special day pass, the Euregioticket, valid in all trains and buses in the regions of Aachen (Germany), where I live, Maastricht (Netherlands) and Liège. But all documentation for it predates the tram, so there’s no point that actually says it’s valid on trams. The ticket validators on the trams certainly couldn’t tell me. Half of them were out of service anyway. And for the others, I have no idea how to get them to read a QR code on my phone, if they even have a camera for that. They’re supposed to, according to an employee of the operator I spoke with at a station, but I certainly didn’t see it. What the validators do is magically open the wallet app on my phone, which would probably have scared the shit out of me if this hadn’t been something I’d seen before. Some types of chip card readers for public transit just do that, apparently, regardless of my phone's settings. It was probably fine, I guess?

But don’t let the negativity fool you. The line is on track to be a huge success. Many of the trains I was in were rather full. Not quite packed, but definitely well used. A lot of that is probably people just trying it out (I noticed several people who did the same end-to-end-and-back runs as me), and a lot of it is that people are forced to use it, since the bus network was changed do that many bus lines now end at tram stops. But still, this clearly will be the backbone of the city for many years to come.

Now let’s hope my own city of Aachen manages to do the same before too long. We need more trams in this world.

[tarisilmarwen]

RobStar Week, Day 7 - Playlist

(Last one! I had fun with this. Set sometime during the Titans' long road trip chasing the Brotherhood of Evil. IDK when exactly but this is an underexplored time period in fanfics so I thought it would be fun to set one in it. And yes, all the songs referenced were on my own ipod RobStar playlist.

Enjoy!)

---

Starfire's taste in music was... eclectic, to say the least.

Her interests ran the gamut from basic pop starlet to the screechiest of death metal bands (which she claimed reminded her of the "great musicians of the Tolothian Praxxus") and, it sometimes seemed, everything in between. She even, somehow, had music from other planets. Robin had absolutely no idea how she had obtained a recording of her favorite childhood Gorka pipes band, nor how she had digitized said recording into MP3 format and gotten it onto the same ipod holding the Becky Wilder TV soundtrack and Rachel Tanner's latest album. Frankly the shuffle felt a little bit like playing Russian Roulette.

So Robin sympathized a little with Beast Boy when the song changed, once again going from one genre to something diametrically opposite, causing the changeling to clutch his temples and throwing his head back with a groan.

"Can't you stick to one genre?!" he complained. "I'm getting whiplash from these mood changes!"

Starfire turned to glare at him where he was squashed in-between Robin and Raven, in the middle of the backseat of the T-car.

"Whoever has shotgun seat decides the music," she reminded him, her voice unusually clipped and irritated. "Those were the rules you set. And I am also the only one who has music in my collection that you all enjoy," she pointed out.

There were mumbled noises from Cyborg and Raven as they conceded some agreement.

Starfire sighed, pushing hair out of her face tiredly as she lifted her ipod, plugged into the T-car's music system via aux cable.

"I only wish this were better organized," she said. "I can never find anything I am looking for in this library. It is impossible to scroll through to the songs I know we can all tolerate." She skimmed down the songlist, the ipod clicking and clicking and clicking as it proceeded down the endless track names.

"Oh that's easy to fix, just make a couple playlists," Cyborg suggested, flexing his hands a bit on the steering wheel as he signaled to begin passing a semi.

Starfire looked up from her scrolling, face an expression of blank confusion.

"A... what?" she asked.

Robin straightened and scooted forward a little bit in his seat. "Here, I'll show you," he offered. He reached between the driver's seat and shotgun with an outstretched palm.

Hesitant but curious, Starfire paused playback on her ipod and disconnected it from the aux cable, handing it over.

Now Robin leaned down, bending almost in half as he searched near his feet, the seatbelt digging sharply into his shoulder. After a moment of fumbling in his bad he slid out his red laptop and propped it open on his knees, also fishing for a USB cord.

Within minutes he had the music player open to Starfire's extensive library and was clicking through artists and genres, trying to tap very carefully on his mousepad with the vibrations of the car. She watched him fiddle for a few moments, eyes inquisitive, hand curling around the side of her seat.

Robin concentrated, his brows pinching cutely until he gave a nod of satisfaction. Turning the computer around he showed her what he was doing.

"Right, so, see here, where I've basically added a folder to the device storage?" he asked, leaning forward, trying to stretch to show her.

Beast Boy held back a complaint as he was pushed against Raven by the gesture. Starfire nodded in rapt attention.

Robin pointed to the screen as he demonstrated. "So you take any song that you want to go on the list and just kind of... drag it over from the wider library."

He clicked and pulled one of the Gorka pipes tracks to the new playlist, then clicked to open it.

Starfire gasped in delight, grabbing up both sides of Robin's laptop and bringing the device up closer to her face.

"Oh this will make things so much easier!" she cried.

Robin smiled and pointed over to the sidebar. "And see how you can name it pretty much anything you want? You can basically put any number of songs on the new list—"

"—And then they can share a common theme!" Starfire interrupted in conclusion.

"Exactly! You can do love songs, songs that make you happy, work-out songs..." Robin started listing.

"Songs to listen to while rocking it out at the club," added Beast Boy.

"Songs to set the mood with your date," Cyborg put in, grinning. "Lotta R&B on mine for that one."

"Ew," Beast Boy said, wrinkling his nose.

Cyborg shot him an offended look. "Don't be hatin' until you try it."

"What about you, Raven?" Starfire asked back, interrupting the brewing argument. "What kind of playlist would you suggest?"

"Songs to make you contemplate the existential dread of the universe and your own role in it and wonder if you really are as small and insignificant as you seem or if you just need a sandwich," came Raven's monotone contribution.

...

There a long awkward silence at that, and the boys blinked at Raven in concern and mild alarm.

"That is... oddly specific," was Starfire's inadequate response.

Raven shrugged. "Are we pulling over soon?" she asked towards the driver's seat. "I'm hungry."

Cyborg glanced at the next billboard. "Shakes n' Steaks coming up on our right?" he offered.

The empath waved dismissively. "Sure."

"Aw man!" Beast Boy complained. "Not the Shakes n' Steaks! You know they put meat chunks in the salads?! Who does that?!"

Robin nudged Starfire's arm as the debate on their food stop continued, whispering under Cyborg and Beast Boy's arguing. "Why don't you keep playing around with that for a while?" he offered kindly.

She nodded once, vigorously, mouthing a 'thank you' as she turned around.

-TT-

One pit stop later—Beast Boy wound up outvoted and sullenly resigned himself to picking chicken bits out of his caesar salad—Starfire finally emerged from her meticulous organizing and dismissed herself to the bathroom.

She unplugged her ipod, but left it on the table by his laptop, easily accessible.

Robin slurped through his straw, his eyes falling across it. He set his cup down and stared at the lit screen, mildly curious.

Glancing around as if to check for unfriendly eyes, Robin let his hand snake over to Starfire's place and slid the ipod into his palm, picking it up surreptitiously.

He paid a quick peek at the new playlists in Starfire's library. Sure enough she had "Tamaran" as a category, and "Dancing Music", and "To Cheer Raven Up" and a couple others. He had to smile and chuckle a bit at that last one.

His amusement was drowned out by confusion as he spotted on that read:

"Me and Robin"

He stared at the title for a long moment, visibly wondering, then his curiosity compelled him beyond his reason and he clicked to open it.

His eyes read off the titles as they scrolled alphabetically, slowly widening with realization.

"All You Wanted", "A Thousand Miles", "A Thousand Years"...

Wait a minute, his brain kicked in.

These were all love songs.

Suddenly feeling like he was doing something he very much shouldn't, Robin quickly set the ipod back down in its former spot, heat rising to his face as he was confronted with the knowledge that Starfire his Not Girlfriend (they still hadn't quite figured that out although after the whole alien planet stranded thing they at least both acknowledged they had feelings for each other) had been picking out songs that she felt defined 'them'.

Like an actual girlfriend would.

Hoo boy he hoped he wasn't going to have to clear up another misunderstanding.

-TT-

He was still nervous while he waited his turn to pile into the backseat, after Cyborg's annoyed, "Yo! If we want to make it to Atlanta before nightfall you better get your butts back in the T-car!" shout had cut short their lunch.

Starfire claimed shotgun again, much to Beast Boy's whining and complaining, but Raven picked him up with her telekinesis and stuffed him into the backseat ahead of her and shut the door, pointedly going around the other side and leaving Robin standing there awkwardly with Starfire.

The princess handed him his laptop back.

"Thank you for the usage of it," she said. "I believe I have arranged things to my liking."

There was something coy in her words, and her grin was a little too... knowing.

Robin coughed and tugged at his collar and rubbed his neck, tapping a steel-toed shoe. "Yeah, well... good. Good, that's... I'm glad."

"All right, enough committee meeting," grumbled Cyborg, ending the moment with a pointed shove to Robin's shoulder. "Get in the damn car, I gotta fill her up."

The moment the door was open Beast Boy popped out again. "At least lemme have the window seat this time!" he yelled, and Robin found himself jostled and bumped as he was shoved none-too-gracefully into the car and squashed into the narrow middle seat, pushed right up against Raven on one side and Beast Boy on the other.

Raven tried to pull her elbows in closer and failed.

"This isn't uncomfortable at all," she said dryly.

Robin had no reply, no real thoughts of any kind really, because as soon as she was comfortably seated and Cyborg was turning the key in the ignition, she looked back straight at him with a wry grin and pressed play on her once-again-connected ipod.

And when the first song off 'their' playlist started, Robin's throat closed with a pitiful embarrassed squeak and he turned a very bright red.

[adafruit]

The first test for our WLED board codename "Sparkle Motion" 🌈💖💡 … 🐇⏳🌌

We got our WLED-friend PCBs today, and we only made one mistake: the wrong resistor on the 3.3V feedback line. Now that it's fixed, the board seems to work great with the latest version of WLED

We are checking all 4 signal outputs with this handy 256-LED grid that sits on our desk. Next, we will test the onboard IR receiver, USB PD, I2S microphone, extra I/O pins, and I2C. We'll also do an Arduino IDE board definition in case folks want to use it as a generic ESP32-to-LED-driver board. We're calling the board "Sparkle Motion" for now, but if you have other naming ideas, let us know - if we pick your name, you get a free board

Sign up, coming soon.

[junkyardisles]

NO LONGER BEING UPDATED

emulation sources

roms megathread (ssa wii u internet archive download) (may require cdecrypt if not downloading roms through usbhelper) dolphin wiki + download rpcs3 wiki + download cemu wiki + download zadig (if using a real portal. i know dolphin and rpcs3 have portal emulation, unsure with cemu) prototype builds: giants builds (useful info), ssa xpec builds, swap force build, superchargers build

will update if i get any more information. feel free to add anything additional info based on stuff i've toyed with (i don't know my specs): > you may need to allow a usb passthrough in dolphin, it's in the config > as stated on the wikis, cemu requires updating the usb input driver while dolphin requires zadig to have it changed to a libusb/winusb driver (either work about half the time. technology moment). the portal is under spyro porta. i recommend having separate portals for cemu and dolphin so you don't need to mess with drivers > i used vulkan graphics for cemu and default for dolphin. i'm not a tech guy though so just play with whatever works best ig i just use default settings. portal compatability guide > for dolphin gif making, i used 8x msaa anti aliasing and had the internal resolution as 1920x1080. for the most part it ran average on a half dead computer from 2015. i'd recommend 1280x720 w/ no or minimal anti aliasing though > ssa and giants' main gameplay both ran mostly fine with vbi skip on (though i haven't checked heroic challenges) with occasional drops to 12fps, only superchargers racing's first cup and parts of the second have been tested > never used rpcs3 and i don't know if citra can run skylanders games, until i learn more it'll be absent > swap force is pretty broken on cemu, lawl > ir sensors for dolphin will need to be configured if using something like an xbox controller, have relative input on so the cursor doesn't snap back to the middle > ssa and giants can lag often and being in the ruins starting from around the middle part of the game will be noticeably slower. co-op is very slow. cemu handles co-op great though and generally is pretty fast > if you wanna play online with a friend, get parsec > if not using the console's controller type, i'd recommend just using your own controls rather than setting them to whatever makes sense (like having the trigger be your primary instead of something like A w/ an xbox controller) > if the game lags hard enough your skylander might disconnect for a sec (only experienced in giants when recording with obs). pausing the game for a couple seconds if having lag usually fixes it > dolphin games run fine when being recorded w/ obs or streamed on discord. haven't checked cemu yet > cutscenes in dolphin always have a weird like. screen tearing? thing? as far as i know there's no way to fix it, but they play fine besides that > newer (experimental) versions of cemu seem to break with skylanders >if you're getting wii u roms from the internet archive you'll need to get cdecrypt. its newest release is super easy to use (drag the rom folder onto it and it'll do everything for you, thank god) >dolphin is the only emulator with freecam >superchargers racing was buggy on both computers i got it on. 2015 pc wouldn't launch it and my 2022 laptop disconnects the portal after every race, requiring the game to be restarted >cemu would crash after doing about two races (updated 31/8/2024. added another piece of info)

[kde-plasma-official]

whats the status of like. using linux on a phone. it feels like there are two parallel universes, one that kde lives in where people use linux on phones, and one where if you google linux phones you discover theyre almost usable but they can barely make phone calls or send texts and they only run on like 4 models of phone

don't have much experience with linux on phone so anyone please correct me if i'm wrong but

one of the problems with phones is that every vendor and manufacturer adds their own proprietary driver blob to it and these have to be extracted and integrated into the kernel in order for the hardware to function.

as companies don't like to share their magic of "how does plastic slab make light", reverse engineering all your hardware is quite a difficult task. Sometimes there just isn't a driver for the camera of a phone model yet because no one was able to make it work.

So naturally, this takes a lot of time and tech is evolving fast so by the time a phone is completely compatible, next generations are already out and your new model obsolete.

Also important to note: most of this work is made by volunteers, people with a love for programming who put a lot of their own time into these things, most of them after their daytime jobs as a hobby.

Of course, there are companies and associations out there who build linux phones for a living. But the consumer hardware providers, like Pinephone, Fairphone and others out there aren't as big and don't have this much of a lobby behind them so they can't get their prices cheap. Also the manufacturers are actively working against our right to repair so we need more activism.

To make the phones still affordable (and because of said above driver issues) they have to use older hardware, sometimes even used phones from other manufacturers that they have to fix up, so you can't really expect a modern experience. At least you can revive some older phones. As everything Linux.

Then there's the software providers who many of are non-profits. KDE has Plasma Mobile, Canonical works on Ubuntu Touch, Debian has the Mobian Project and among some others there's also the Arch Linux ARM Project.

That's right baby, ARM. We're not talking about your fancy PC or ThinkPad with their sometimes even up to 64-bit processors. No no no, this is the future, fucking chrome jellyfishes and everything.

This is the stuff Apple just started building their fancy line of over-priced and over-engineered Fisher-Price laptop-desktops on and Microsoft started (Windows 10X), discontinued and beat into the smush of ChatGPT Nano Bing Open AI chips in all your new surface hp dell asus laptops.

What I was trying to say is, that program support even for the market dominating monopoles out there is still limited and.... (from my own experience from the workplace) buggy. Which, in these times of enshittification is a bad news. And the good projects you gotta emulate afterwards anyways so yay extra steps!

Speaking of extra steps: In order to turn their phone into a true freedom phone, users need to free themselves off their phones warranty, lose their shackles of not gaining root access, installing a custom recovery onto their phone (like TWRP for example), and also have more technical know-how as the typical user, which doesn't quite sounds commercial-ready to me.

So is there no hope at all?

Fret not, my friend!

If we can't put the Linux into the phone, why don't we put the phone around the Linux? You know... Like a container?

Thanks to EU regulations-

(US consumers, please buy the European versions of your phones! They are sometimes a bit more expensive, but used models of the same generation or one below usually still have warranty, are around the same price as over there in Freedom Valley, and (another side tangent incoming - because of better European consumer protection laws) sometimes have other advantages, such as faster charging and data transfer (USB-C vs lightning ports) or less bloated systems)

- it is made easier now to virtualize Linux on your phone.

You can download a terminal emulator, create a headless Linux VM and get A VNC client running. This comes with a performance limit though, as a app with standard user permissions is containerized inside of Android itself so it can't use the whole hardware.

If you have root access on your phone, you can assign more RAM and CPU to your VM.

Also things like SDL just released a new version so emulation is getting better.

And didn't you hear the news? You can run other things inside a VM on an iPhone now! Yup, and I got Debian with Xfce running on my Xiaomi phone. Didn't do much with it tho. Also Windows XP and playing Sims 1 on mobile. Was fun, but battery draining. Maybe something more for tablets for now.

Things will get interesting now that Google officially is a monopoly. It funds a lot of that stuff.

I really want a Steam Deck.

Steam phones would be cool.

[sunmontuewrites]

I MIGHT NEED A GLASS OF WINE TONIGHT...

OKAY... So. NS is working from home, was sick yesterday, and working from home today, so I am the only one here. This morning before 9am I had to restart my laptop FIVE TIMES, because the USB drives on my docking station were not recognising the mouse or keyboard. I rung ITS three separate occasions (on hold each time) - we did a hard reset of the laptop, installed new drivers for the docking station.

The whole time I'm saying "I'm pretty sure it's the USB ports, because everything else is working fine - I can plug them mouse/keyboard into my laptop and it's FINE". But I need the docking station to work... so I am trying very hard to remain calm and collected.

The driver installation works. For about 40 minutes. And then I am back to no mouse/keyboard. So I'm like, fuck this, I am going to go and buy a new docking station on the company dime. So I go down to the shops on campus and buy one, and when I get back to my office there is someone from ITS who is like "I want to have a look at your dock". I'm like...

Sure. Go ahead.

It's now 10.30. I have been doing NOTHING for nearly 3 hours. (Well, I have been organising invigilating a test, regalia for graduation, staff getting locked out etc etc).

ITS guy is looking at my dock and he goes to me "I think it's your USB ports..."

Me (internally) NO FUCKING SHIT!

So then he goes away happy that he's fixed my problem (by plugging in my new docking station, which I was apparently incapable of doing myself wtf?) and then AS turns to show me the munted as picture of the car crash she survived last week (they are so freaking lucky, the photos made me feel sick).

ANYWAY, then I have to go to this 11am meeting. I have an appointment with LV at midday for eyebrows etc (Yay!) but I am also meant to be starting a student off with their test. I get back to the office from LV's (to find someone parked in my spot, wankers), and then I'm inundated with students wanting to buy hoodies (have sold 8) and trying to organise the E^2 event for next week...

All this on top of the now 100+ emails in my inbox, and another 50+ in the joint school one and I am meant to be taking a van load of students to Karangahake Gorge on Saturday. Phew!

[nosleepforaiba]

Hey do any tech experts (who use windows 11) have any idea why my controller constantly disconnects and freezes my computer briefly when it does? It even makes my monitors flash sometimes. I know it’s not the controller or my cord because I’ve tried two different cords and two different controllers and both of them get tue same thing. Lily’s controller has now started doing the same thing.

I’m convinced it’s a driver issue but I cannot seem to find a way to fix it. Xbox support tells me nothing and I’ve tried removing ALL of my usb devices and readding them and it still does the same thing.

[mephie404]

This is the story of how I brought a laptop that simply shouldn't exist back into this world and I'd do it all over again, because nothing can stop me from drawing my favorite gay couple.

It all started on a nice day when my beloved 800€ laptop, my child of six years just decided to die on me. Well, its screen did. Maybe it was the AO3 fanfic I posted, or maybe it bumped into something and that was just too much for its fragile little LCD soul and sadly, I needed like 300€ to fix it.

HA!No.

So I go to my local online marketplace and found... a thing. For 10 bucks and a dream.

So ofc I bought it. And guys. Fellas. This thing had 2GB of RAM, meaning it couldn't run more than three pixels at once. But you know what? I adapted. I learned to draw with 3-5 layers. Like a normal person. I learned to save religiously. I learned patience. So. Much. Patience.

After three months of establishing a routine with this creature from 2008, things start to go wrong. Windows 10 begins to lose its will to live. Brightness? Internet? Volume controls? All gone. Getting bluescreened became a lifestyle.

But I refused to let it go.

So what do I do? I start exporting my art via USB, sending it to my phone to post.

Few weeks pass like this. All is okay. (Standards are low at this point)

But then...then I get a CRITICAL ERROR! DIED (thank you Windows, for not being dramatic).

But again: I say when it dies.

So I drag its corpse to an internet cafe to (ethically and legally) reinstall Windows. But the damn thing refuses to boot. A hot nice guy working there offers to help. Very hot, very nice. We meet up for three days. By this point, I’ve accepted the laptop might’ve sacrificed itself to help me find a boyfriend, so I’m not that mad.

But no, no. If my laptop suffers so do I. My friend tells me that this dude already has a girlfriend and regularly cheats on her with girls he meets at his work.

The sheer rage and betrayal I felt made me want to try everything again myself. I dig up another ancient USB, download Rufus and Windows 7 on another internet cafe and perform a digital resurrection.

Six hours and 6€ later later: It's alive. Running on Windows 7 and a deep desire to defy death.

Luckily, my drawing tablet is also from the 2010s, so I slap the driver into the laptop and I'm crying real tears because it works. It works. It can’t go online, for both safety and shame reasons, but it WORKS.

Give me two days to mentally recover and I'll be drawing gay stuff by Monday