The Computer And General Tech Thread - Software, Hardware, Questions, etc.

[Moose-tache]

Boy, this is a problem that has laid me low, and I would love any help people could give.

I want to put a link to a random URL (i.e. an HTML button that goes to one of a predetermined list of URLs) on a website. The problem is that the only way I know how to do this is with a javascript function, and website builders like Wordpress, Wix, and Boxmode only allow you to add javascript code to a page if you pay a crap-ton of money. All I want is a) one javascript function on the header, b) one paragraph of text, and c) a hyperlink or button at the bottom, without paying anyone a lot of money. So I either need

A: a hosting service that will let me add javascript to a page for free, or
B: a way to create a link to a random site/page using only the basic HTML allowed by free hosting sites.

Any help people can offer would be greatly appreciated.

[bradrn]

If you’re happy to write HTML yourself, you may want to try out Netlify, which is a hosting service for static webpages. It will host any webpage written in HTML+CSS+JavaScript, though of course this presupposes the ability to write such a site. (Or use a static site generator which will write it for you.)

[Moose-tache]

Netlify is another one of those sites that pretends to be free until you get to the part where it says "OK, now go buy a domain." What do you think I need from you, Netlify?

EDIT: I am now trying to create a website using github, which is making me tear my hair out. I literally want to publish something the size of a long facebook post, just with a random link at the bottom, and it's like I'm trying to steal nuclear secrets from China.

[bradrn]

Netlify is another one of those sites that pretends to be free until you get to the part where it says "OK, now go buy a domain." What do you think I need from you, Netlify?

Well, do you need a domain or a hosting service? I thought you only needed the latter, in which case Netlify should be fine.

EDIT: I am now trying to create a website using github, which is making me tear my hair out. I literally want to publish something the size of a long facebook post, just with a random link at the bottom, and it's like I'm trying to steal nuclear secrets from China.

I’d be interested to know more. I haven’t yet used GitHub Pages myself, but I have thought about using them before.

[Moose-tache]

Well, I don't really know the difference between hosting and a domain, but Github does both. Problem is, it still doesn't allow javascript without spending the next week downloading things and scouring help forums and so on. It turns out, the universe just does not want you to be able to use javascript on a webpage without paying money.

EDIT: Thank you Bradrn for all your help anyway!

[bradrn]

Well, I don't really know the difference between hosting and a domain, but Github does both. Problem is, it still doesn't allow javascript without spending the next week downloading things and scouring help forums and so on. It turns out, the universe just does not want you to be able to use javascript on a webpage without paying money.

As I understand it, a hosting site will just let you put stuff online. It doesn’t necessarily let you assign your own custom name to said stuff. By contrast, a domain name service (or whatever it’s called) lets you buy a name to put stuff in, but doesn’t necessarily give you the infrastructure to actually put anything there.

Netlify and GitHub Pages both act primarily as hosting sites, but they let you specify a name under their own domain. It’s not quite a domain name registrar, since you’re basically just piggybacking on the domain they control, but to the non-technical it’s not such a big difference. I’ll take Neonnaut’s site as an example: https://neonnaut.github.io/. (Partly because it’s a convenient example, partly because it’s really useful and I want to advertise it.) This site is hosted on GitHub Pages, which uses the github.io domain, but under that domain GitHub has said that the neonnaut subdomain should point to the site specified at https://github.com/Neonnaut/Neonnaut.github.io. (And by the way that seems to have plenty JavaScript, so I’m not sure what’s so difficult in your case.) With Netlify it’s a similar story: you have to put your site under the netlify.app domain, but you can choose your own subdomain.

[Travis B.]

Well, multicore support for zeptoforth for the RP2040 is in the works. The plan is to have two loosely-coupled multitaskers, one on each core, so in a way it will be SMP, but at the same time each core will be essentially separate aside from sharing RAM, flash, and GPIO's, with multitasking operations being limited to a given core (i.e. one won't be able to communicate between cores using standard channels) because of the difficulties of synchronizing cores. (There are hardware spinlocks and FIFO's, but the only way to suspend a core is by acquiring a spinlock, sending a message via FIFO to the other core, which triggers an interrupt in the other core, and have the other core attempt to acquire the same spinlock, causing it to hang in the interrupt handler (which is in RAM) until the spinlock is released; while this is necessary for writing to flash, this is incovenient otherwise because the interrupt handler must have the highest priority possible, to prevent other code from executing in flash while flash is being written to.)

[Raphael]

Zompist's rant from a week ago about losing many of his e-mails thanks to getting a new computer (https://zompist.wordpress.com/2021/10/1 ... r-who-dis/) got me thinking about my own e-mail habits. You see, I hardly ever download e-mails to my computer - I usually leave them on their servers and use my e-mail providers' web interfaces to read and write them. I guess I simply never really got into the habit of using specialized e-mail software, except for a brief period when I was completely new to the internet.

And now I wonder if there's any sound reason why I shouldn't do things that way.

[Travis B.]

I downloaded emails to my computer back when I was in college but since I graduated (and hence stopped using my university email address) I have been using Gmail, where I have just left my email on the server so I can access it more conveniently no matter what machine or device I am using.

[Raphael]

I have a general question about routers for LAN/WLAN/Wifi:

Is there a good reason to get a new router for your home, if your old one is still working fine? That is, is anything bad going to happen, or more likely to happen, if you keep using your old router?

With prices for new routers being what they are where I live, I'd say a new router, low-to-medium price range, would be within my "essential purchases" budget, but clearly above my "buy because it might be nice to have" budget...

[Travis B.]

I have a general question about routers for LAN/WLAN/Wifi:

Is there a good reason to get a new router for your home, if your old one is still working fine? That is, is anything bad going to happen, or more likely to happen, if you keep using your old router?

With prices for new routers being what they are where I live, I'd say a new router, low-to-medium price range, would be within my "essential purchases" budget, but clearly above my "buy because it might be nice to have" budget...

Why are you considering getting a new router?

[Raphael]

Why are you considering getting a new router?

Because my old one is, I think, five or six years old, which is quite a lot in technological gadget years. I honestly don't know enough about routers to be able to tell whether age is in itself a bad thing in a router that's still working fine. Which is why I'm asking.

[Travis B.]

Why are you considering getting a new router?

Because my old one is, I think, five or six years old, which is quite a lot in technological gadget years. I honestly don't know enough about routers to be able to tell whether age is in itself a bad thing in a router that's still working fine. Which is why I'm asking.

If your current one is running fine I don't see why one would get a new one - it's not like the software that it is to run is getting continually larger and slower, as is wont for PC software.

[Raphael]

Ah, thank you!

[Raphael]

Now, a question about batteries:

Can a (rechargeable) battery, once it stops working well enough to be useful, be replaced with a different one that has the same size, shape, and voltage, but a different capacity in Ah or mAh? Or is something bad going to happen if you try that? I've got this vague notion that, as long as a battery fits in its compartment, what's really important is the voltage, and a change in capacity should only change how long a charge lasts, and how long recharging takes. But I wonder if I might have missed something.

A quick web search on the subject gave me this Metafilter thread:

https://ask.metafilter.com/30954/Can-yo ... Ah-ratings

But people there seem to be mainly talking about using several batteries with different capacities in the same device at the same time, which might mess up the batteries in various ways, and that's not what I'm thinking of. I'm thinking of a device with one compartment holding one battery.

[Ares Land]

I confirm it doesn't matter. I've done just that with e-cigarettes without problems.

[Raphael]

Thank you!

[bradrn]

(moving this to the tech thread so the question’s on-topic)

… a lot of the graphics skills I learned especially while making banknotes has come in handy with the process of preparing articles, posters, and communications, since I've created a lot of graphics for that work (and, except for one, I used the skills to edit and produce all the images in my thesis by myself!).

Out of curiosity, which technologies do you use for graphics? For myself I tend to use Inkscape, Paint.NET, Tikz+LaTeX and occasionally Blender for general graphics, and Matplotlib or MATLAB for graphs (and of course some more specialised ones like ChemDraw), but I still am somewhat dissatisfied with how some of my graphics turn out.

[doctor shark]

(moving this to the tech thread so the question’s on-topic)

… a lot of the graphics skills I learned especially while making banknotes has come in handy with the process of preparing articles, posters, and communications, since I've created a lot of graphics for that work (and, except for one, I used the skills to edit and produce all the images in my thesis by myself!).

Out of curiosity, which technologies do you use for graphics? For myself I tend to use Inkscape, Paint.NET, Tikz+LaTeX and occasionally Blender for general graphics, and Matplotlib or MATLAB for graphs (and of course some more specialised ones like ChemDraw), but I still am somewhat dissatisfied with how some of my graphics turn out.

In general, just actually the former two: Inkscape and Paint.NET, but partly because these are the programs I've been using for the past 10+ years (in some cases!). ChemDraw is my go-to for chemical structures, and I've used some plotting softwares (eg. ProFit), but especially for schematics for papers, my preference is to just use Inkscape where possible (and to export the graphics and finish in Paint.NET, if relevant). My scientific posters are always made in Inkscape as well. In recent times, my fellow group members have started using BioRender, which is web-based and pretty useful, but, not being a biologist or adjacent person myself, it's not as useful for me.

Banknotes, anymore, are made using a mix of Inkscape and Paint.NET.

The big tip I have actually is to just use something, get familiar with it, and also practice doing silly things: that ends up helping a lot when it comes time to make more serious things. I always tell my students that the most important thing is that you at least know how to use something and use it well enough for what you need, especially if time is tight for thesis writing. (Which often happens!)

[Raphael]

Unrelated to any recent discussions, here's some advice I learned recently that might theoretically be useful, though it only applies in a very specific situation:

If you have an Android phone with two SIM slots, then, even if you're only using one of the SIM slots, in order to get data access through the cellular network, you might still need to tell the phone specifically which SIM slot to use for that purpose. If you don't, you might not be able to get data coverage through the cellular network at all. Unfortunately, I don't know what names the menus and sub-menus you have to navigate through in order to do that have in English, or whatever language your phone is using unless that language is German.

(In German, it's " Einstellungen 🠊 Netwerk & Internet 🠊 SIM-Karten 🠊 BEVORZUGTE SIM FÜR Mobile Daten ".)