The Thinkware U3000 Dash Cam was delivered to me in October 2023 and has been in use for far too long without a review. Sorry about that Thinkware, some health things came up. The unit I was given is powered by an OBDII connector (or or alternate 12v power adapter,) and adds features my other dash cams didn’t have such as a parking mode that will trigger and record events when your car gets bumped, or someone walks in front of the camera.

As readers of Pocketables might recall I recently had some health issues, so the first interesting test the U3000 got was being installed and running for almost two months off my car battery without my car being started. It was still running fine when I started being able to drive again and I had no warnings or any indications that the battery was low at two months. I had expected that I would be jumping the car, but yeah, worked fine. This may be because the unit is timed to turn off after a couple of days however, just discovered that option after I wrote this.

The U3000 records up to 4K on a front camera, and at 2K on a rear camera (I did not get the version with the rear camera,) and records to a sufficiently fast SD card. From there video can be exported to an app, or you can pop the SD card out and read it on a computer.

The unit has pretty decent night vision, claims to have red light camera, tailgating, and lane departure warnings. However living in a state with only one county with red light cameras, and only having the front camera, I’m not sure how that works. My vehicle also has lane departure warnings so I have never enabled that.

I suspect the red light camera alert is one of the internet based features rather than a hardware feature, and that will require you to connect to your hotspot on your phone or vehicle, or just drive very very close to your house. There are a host of Thinkware Connected features, but on this unit you’ll be required to supply nonstop Wi-Fi for this unit at least.

I’ve found that I don’t miss the screens my other cameras had, I barely used them anyway but I do miss the rear camera just for completeness and wish I’d gotten that, but I get and review what I get and review.

Ooh, one neat thing it appears you can watch from a remote location if the unit is connected to the internet. I don’t have the ability to safely do this but could be neat if you’re managing a fleet or want to know how your kid is driving.

U3000 nitpicking

As with all dashcam apps I’ve reviewed, I really don’t like it. At least not the Android implementation. It’s not terrible, but there are things about it that really are annoying and incomplete feeling.

We’ll start with the videos. You want a video off the the camera you transfer it to your phone. Once it’s on your phone it’s in the app’s private data and if you want to do anything with it, such as upload it to YouTube to send to the police you have to open the app and move it to an album. Once it’s in an album Android can manage and do whatever you want with it.

I however see no practical use to hide the videos from the rest of the Android system. There should at least be an option for where to place them because if you download the videos, get out of your car and walk over to an officer, to get the video you need to launch the app and it needs to connect to the dashcam… if it can’t it will just hold you hostage until it times out attempting to connect which appears to be about 30-45 seconds. At that point you can now go into the app and view videos from there, choose to export them to an album, from a file viewer toss them to YouTube, and then send the officer a link as there seems to be no share option in the app. Far too complex a process after you’ve just witnessed an accident.

While the resolution is indeed 4K, in lower light some artifacting is a bit over the top when people are speeding past you as shown below.

In both of the above the overall picture looks fine, but you’re more than assured that while it’s 4K you’re not going to be getting that without artifacting and image loss. Pretty much standard on devices that aren’t taking 500+MB a minute for video recording, but a pain if you want to pick out a license plate. I really wish there were an “I want to record this at 2 gigabytes per minute” option so I could slap in a 128GB and have 60 minutes of video I could count the speckled berry bird crap on car windows at 500 feet, but no. This is the case for everything I’ve reviewed as a note.

Night video is pretty good, unfortunately all my night video has slid off of the card and I’ll have to record some more at some point.

My kids have complained repeatedly about their desire to turn the notification off about how many events have happened since the car was shut off as it annoys them. I don’t see an option to change that, but also it is not much of an annoyance to me.

During the 7 months I’ve been reviewing this (once again, sorry on that delay Thinkware, got a freaking tumor to blame,) really not a whole lot has happened. I’ve recorded a couple of crashes, used the video to report some people who need a talking to, and handed over the video once to police. Everything was recorded well enough to see what happened, although you might not be able to tell who was looking where.

It’s a really neat dashcam, and I never thought I would dig a device without a screen as much, but I do really appreciate it just being out of the way and recording. I never notice this while driving. I never am distracted by a light flashing on and off, and I am never worried that it looks like I have something worth breaking into my car to steal because it doesn’t look like much more than a dashcam.

I also wish there were some voice option where I could trigger it to mark something as important so I can go back and find it later. I’ve taken to just giving the camera a whack which will mark that video as an incident/potential crash.

And finally – I don’t know how to stress how much I absolutely hate glued on product. I just went through this with my last dash cam and although I didn’t have any of the issues with this one I had with that, it very much limits one moving the unit around if you’re not happy with placement or switching vehicles. While I’ve got it mounted in the center, I’d love to move it to the passenger side just to get it completely out of my line of sight. Ah well.

Instruction manual is also only online and can be found here.

Overall

While I only had the front camera kit, you can grab the full kit at Amazon and add features such as a rear camera, tailgater alarms, and added ability to capture a more complete scenario when someone speeds by you and then immediately wipes out. You can also grab it from a non-tagged link on the Thinkware Store.

Thinkware U3000 Dash Cam six and a half months review by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

A couple of years ago a friend of mine had his gmail hacked. His initial complaint was that a whole bunch of banks and website suddenly had started sending him signup information to the tune of 30-50 an hour. Most of these were overseas and he said he had no idea what was going on and I informed him his gmail had most likely been hacked and he was being used as a legitimate email address to reply to things and to change his password and sign everyone out right now.

He said he’d get to it after work… I told him he’d be sorry, get it now before it spreads. He didn’t.

TL;DR – two tales from my recent past that most of the details are omitted.

Of course shortly after this they changed his password and signed him out, and rather than a couple of minute change your password sort of thing it became an ordeal as they discovered his financial history and started working their way into that and various social media that just requires an email verification for lost password. Every major service needed contacted as they’d gone to them, changed the password, changed the email address, took control of the account.

He didn’t lose anything that I know of, but recovering took days and he’s being spammed by financial institutions, foreign social media sites, and otherwise lives with an email box that’s the result of being used as part of an attack. Could have been stopped quite a bit sooner but yeah… take an emergency break from work before you have to take days off of work dealing with this. It wasn’t a human doing this it was a bot and could have been stopped sooner.

I know another man who got scammed by a crypto group that had a great looking app, and site. All was fine and dandy until he attempted to pull money out of the thing and they required a deposit to get his money out. Oof… I’m not sure exactly how, but assuming the app he was using for this crypto scam gained hackers access to his Facebook, Apple ID, Email.

See here I’m conjecturing as we don’t know how they got his Facebook, just that one day his 3000+ followers started getting a fake blog about how this person had just got a certificate of training in crpyto exchange… this wasn’t truly too far off for him so I didn’t call him until the next post a day later where he was claiming to have made a lot of money and was holding up a sign saying so. This was out of character.

I called him, he’d been hacked, they got access to all his bank accounts, apple account, anything that required his phone/sms they had intercepted. I’m not really sure how this was done because nobody found out or investigated too deeply. He ended up having to get a new phone line and Apple account in order to regain control. But he waited a couple of days while an IT guy was begging him to go and report this to the police and grab a phone he could operate off of and start reporting it.

The couple of days and thinking it was just a Facebook hack and not immediately contacting all financial institutions and issuing a fraud alert cost him thousands. Now people who get hacked like this generally get their money back, but he’s a business so that looks like it’s not going to happen. At least that’s what I’m hearing. No idea on if all his email was compromised but one can imagine.

During all of this he sat on it for a couple of days because he had other things he needed to do. I suspect had he acted at the outset the money wouldn’t be gone, but I don’t know for sure. Now he’s got the fallout from everything that happened to deal with for the next several months, and I believe his FB may still be compromised and scamming people.

I talked to the IT guy who was helping him through this and during the recovery they called Facebook supposedly and it ended up being a scammer trying to get their credit card number to “pay Meta’s costs for your negligence.” He also had Apple support supposedly calling up that sounded a bit scammy.

In either of the above examples I don’t know that jumping on it immediately would have changed much, but not making eliminating a hack a priority ended up costing one thousands, and the other weeks.

Make it a priority, take the time off, it’s an emergency and not just changing a password event. If you’ve had the email you use for social media or banking compromised make the assumption that those places all need contacted.

I’ve now known two people who didn’t think getting hacked was a priority and found out it was by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

Google Fit, the ultimate hub for third party fitness trackers, but strangely never worked with Fitbit even after Google acquired them, is the next plot at the Google Graveyard with an estimated dead-by date of 2025. The existing APIs at least.

Even with this news however there’s no reason to worry because there are two other half baked APIs that sort of work and are surely going to be good by the time they pull the plug… just like Play Music was a complete product when they EOLd Google Music…. just like that…

It doesn’t mean that your absurdly inexpensive Chinese fitness tracker that worked with Google Fit will be useless…. except it does.

There is a migration guide for developers, but there’s very little helpful information according to Ars Technica who I’m linking below rather than lifting a paragraph that’s about equal to what I’ve written.

Your Fitbit account is also evidently being shut down and migrated to your Google account. Looks like a bunch of half baked solutions still.

While the Google Fit APIs may be changing, the platform doesn’t appear to be listed as the next plot in the Google Graveyard… but yeah, your cheap watch is going to stop working. They’re also talking about Google Health, which is probably going to actually replace Fit.

It’s going to create a mess. Google’s good at doing that.

In other news it appears they took the Fitbit dashboard off of the website which means that they finally aren’t telling you to install Flash to do food tracking.

Google says F’it to Google Fit APIs by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

My Pixel 8 Pro has been pretty solid lately, but this changed yesterday when my kid took it for a few minutes to play some YouTube videos on the ride home. I don’t think she had anything to do with it as the only thing she had done was disable Bluetooth (my car has a 3 second delay on Bluetooth audio which makes it completely useless for watching videos.)

When I got home I noticed it was in Do Not Disturb mode… huh, maybe kid accidentally hit that while trying to hit Bluetooth, so I disabled DND and noticed shortly that I could not tap to wake the phone. I could press the power button but tap to wake was no longer working. There was an icon that indicated navigation or driving mode was in effect but no way to spawn it, and I attempted to open maps and nothing. Just nothing would work map-related. Finally had to choose to switch programs, scroll way over and find maps, close it by swiping.

Things seemed to return to some normalcy and I didn’t notice anything else odd with the device yesterday, but today my alarm didn’t go off. I plan for things like this and have a backup alarm but after I got up the phone was face up, working, knew what time it was, and the alarm was set. It just didn’t go off. I decided it was time to reboot the phone.

Phone being rebooted I set to checking work email while the kids got ready for school only to find that I could not open emails, I could only select them, requiring me to manually close gmail and reopen it after which it appeared to work normally.

As it’s close to Pixel update time, I suspect Google has pushed something in advance.. that or my phone became possessed.

Of all the failings I’ve had with Google products, the alarm is a new one.

An odd day so far with the Pixel 8 Pro (clock, maps, DND, gmail) by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

A long time ago I was contacted by a PR firm about Monopoly Go! I passed on any coverage of the thing because I really don’t have too much time for anything, let alone an app version of a board game that notoriously ruins families. Cut to about two months ago when my wife showed me a screen and asked if I thought I could predict where the third diamond ring was.

I told her where I assumed it was, and it was there. This repeated several times a day with my choices being far more accurate than they reasonably should have been able to be leading me to the conclusion that there was trickery the likes of which I had seen before in another game I quit because it became world-consuming. That game had most of my fellow players spending $30 a month just to be powerful enough to not be fodder. The choices didn’t matter, you got what you got and it was predictable.

One day we went out and she left her phone at home and when she got back I heard “arrrrrr… the Walrus destroyed me!” and I gathered a mutual friend had 1) been sucked into the vortex that is Monopoly Go! and 2) raided / stolen / something to that effect while my wife was away from her phone. She never forgot her phone after that.

Movie nights started to become an effort to explain what she had missed because she looked away at her phone to attack a co-player I assume. “Well, if you’d been watching the movie you would know that person died in a car explosion.” She developed the ability to tune out her surroundings to I guess go another round, I’m not exactly sure what she’s doing, just that she has a group of opponents and she’s sticking it to people in said group.

I still am asked to find the last diamond ring regularly, and I find it or I know before I choose that I have not found it and have no clue why I know this. I still find this odd and am wondering if there’s a tell on the screen I’m not consciously picking up on.

It is evidently a neat little game and addictive in its free form, but reminds me a bit of the tricks Last Shelter and other world-building games institute to keep you coming back day after day. The reviews tend to indicate that there may be an invisible pay to play glass ceiling, but that’s not something I’ve been asked to look at and none of my Google Play Millions have been requested (I’ve got $41 something for reasons).

The children ask when she’s coming back from Monopoly Go! and I just don’t know.

I’m curious about this game, but someone has to feed the cats.

I lost my wife to Monopoly Go! by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

Thought I’d lay down what happened with two of my fiber modems this past year. They were the old style that looked like these BGW210s, although I can’t say for sure if that was what they were as both were removed by AT&T.

The first was at my house, and the issue was it straight up refused to factory reset and was being a butthole. Yes, that’s the correct terminology, being a butthole. I’ve been in IT since the 90’s and that’s right there in the manual. Butthole. “Do not subscribe to the equipment’s butthole.” It refused to play nice on Wi-Fi (acted slower than Glitch getting the second episode of the Amazing Digital Circus out,) and would slow down to a crawl for no apparent reason.

We managed to troubleshoot it on the phone to somewhat working level, but it was being really funky when attempting to do anything with the Wi-Fi (like being so slow you couldn’t load the admin page,) so it got swapped out for a beige abomination which has so far given me no trouble.

The second, which was also a black tower from 2018 if I remember correctly, started figuring out when I would leave my workplace and slow to a crawl. This was after the Nashville Electric Service had power off to our building for several hours and nobody informed me because they didn’t want to bother me post hospital. As such rather than me dancing around and shutting things off like a graceful little IT fairy, power was yoinked from the AT&T equipment (they said no UPSes. Not me,) and my guess is this is when the black fiber modem at work was injured.

It came back as something different, darkly disturbed and exceedingly annoying. Every day around 5:20am and 2:40pm the unit would slow down. Nothing too epic at first but connections would drop, lookups would fail, if you could connect to a speed test you were getting great results but quite often you would connect and be informed by the webpage you just loaded that there was no internet connection. I was usually driving to get my kid when the slew of calls would come in. “The fiber calls for you Paul… it beckons” and I’d have to pick my kid up and by the time I got back to work it was completely fine again.

The AT&T app said it was broken, but not much more beyond that. A tech was dispatched, we discussed what I was seeing, he said the old black thing was old and to swap it out with the new 1990’s beige thing, which looks exactly like the one I’ve got at my house. Swap completed I once again proceeded without any issues.

So if you’ve got an old black fiber wireless gateway from many a moon ago… I think it’s their dying time. They were released in 2016, have lived a long life, it’s time to put them out to pasture if things are getting strange and you have stripped away all other possibilities…

Sorry Ol’ Yeller… that’s what I named mine due to the yellow cable…

<bang>

Why… why are you getting back up? <bang>

No… this can’t be! <bang>

Stop! <bang> <bang> <bang> <bang> <bang> <click> ayeeeeiiii!

Had two issues with old AT&T fiber modems this year by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

The last update of Chrome added the ability to ask Google’s AI Gemini questions directly from the address bar thus reducing the necessity to press “b” and watch it autofill to bard.google.com which redirected you to Gemini’s landing page.

To access Gemini on a current version of Google Chrome on a desktop type @gemini followed by your question. A full page will appear an you’ll continue any conversation in it.

It does not appear to be working on Chrome Mobile at the moment with my attempts at conversing with Gemini returning horoscopes for my other half cusp.

This doesn’t appear to be more than a fancy redirect at the moment, but it’s something new to let you know that Google has an AI too and you should play with theirs more than Microsoft’s, which wedged its AI into Edge and the online office products I’m told.

Currently no AI model can tell me if there were a third AI model constantly asking the large language models questions and then processing and asking more questions about the nature of existence and self whether it would achieve some sort of self-awareness, or perhaps just a book deal and someone making money off of sentient AI propaganda.

Also no AI model seems to be interested in telling me why my screenshots universally look like garbage on this computer… so obviously AI has failed.. nah..

It’s a neat shortcut, I feel Bing’s much more intrusive approach is going to win out however.

Because everything has to have AI in it, Chrome stuffs it in by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

I got an unexpected credit from Google for my two nightblind Nest Cam IQs. They were well out of warranty and I suspect that someone decided that being as I have a blog with ten of readers perhaps extending an olive branch would be a nice thing to do. It was. I’m not sure if I mentioned it in the previous article but these cameras are expected to live 5-8 years and mine lived 5 years and 3 months (for one) and probably right under 5 years for the second one. They lived as expected and I suspect started their night vision issues when we had temperatures near or below zero for a few days.

The credit, along with my credit from some Pixel purchase and discount for being a Google One subscriber ended up getting me their three pack bundle of the battery camera I’ve never been particularly fond of. I’m mostly not fond of it because attempting to export video clips is just a pain in the butt and handing things over to the police or a neighbor it’s easier if I just capture my screen and then post it on YouTube for them.

They didn’t have to extend the olive branch. I’ve dedicated quite a bit of my time to reviewing (unfavorably) their Nest WiFi and subsequent customer service interactions where I was told that the most generic and standard internet connection was in fact very strange and I needed to put my fiber modem, or work network, into a different mode. (Psst. I review Wi-Fi here as well as other stuff, I know what I’m doing. It wasn’t a complex network.)

I will be going three more cameras into the Google ecosystem. My night blind cameras still work perfectly fine for basic daytime use and I think I’m going to bring them to the office inside and create some grand and terrible experiment utilizing the known faces feature.

While it’s true I would not purchase their new cameras with the current software, I’m pretty much locked into the Google Ecosystem from the other cameras and as such this was a pretty cool thing on Google’s part to do.

So yeah, thanks Google. I mean it.

On to the creepy stuff however… and it may be just me as I suspect there’s a database of bloggers who have received Google’s sweet deep kiss and complained loudly about it (free stuff,) they contacted me on my personal email. There are ways to find it on Pocketables, but still a bit unexpected. My Nest Cams IQ that failed however were not free stuff, they were me wanting to play in the Nest playground since I really did love the thermostat.

I don’t have exact stats, but in the five years I’ve had the cameras I’ve been contacted by the police three times for events that went on at the apartment buildings across the street, recorded a shootout between idiots at a car dealership 500 feet from my kid’s bedroom.

recorded idiots shooting at a parked car who were actually caught by the police because the police were in a parking lot filling out paperwork 200 feet away, recorded my youngest attempting to run into traffic (she claims she didn’t, I’ve got video,) caught a cat vandal (below)

Watched as FedEx destroyed my lawn and left $500 of packages in the middle of the yard in the rain, watched as an army of slugs made a mass migration across my front yard to the neighbors, and caught video of a crazy man leaving a threatening note in the neighbor’s mailbox.

I’ve had video of people probably checking out whether they thought they could steal packages without being caught, mailbox thieves, missing animals, etc.

The Nest Cam IQs really served their purpose, and the rest of the Nest family of cameras has served to keep my kids honest, figure out what jacket they lost at school, and check in on the cats from time to time. The doorbell, well that’s been kind of a disappointment but that’s a different story.

I’m glad I’ve had them. I am going to miss the Nest Cam IQs software (Nest app)… hopefully they’ll get the Google Home app/webpage up to the level that the Nest app was six years ago… I can hope that it’s not another Google abandoned project.

And finally, while I made a joke about being in an abusive relationship with Google, if you’re in an abusive relationship be it with a corporate monopoly or a terrible partner, seek help and get out. Life is too freaking precious to let something as valuable as you are be abused.

Maybe this time Google won’t beat me… they’ve changed, Donnie… they swear they’ve changed! by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

While Mint is promising price locks and such, they’re now fully a T-Mobile company and will probably begin to operate like the Magenta one with new offerings only for new plans and regularly losing all your billing data to the dark web. Oh well…

I feel like there should be a Minty Mobile logo but I’m out of time today..

You can see their page for what’s coming here

Notable additions are a scam shield, a $15 a month commitment, free roaming in Canada.

Actually that’s all the additions listed.

T-Mobile puts the T in Mint. Er, no they just fully own Mint now. by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

January 2019 I purchased two Nest Cam IQs, and other than a bad cable that fried two cameras in a row it’s been a pretty unremarkable experience. Both of them however decided to stop working at night five years and 3 months into service.

It started with one of my front cameras. It went to night vision all the time at first meaning daytime was unrecognizable and nighttime was just normally bad video. The camera out back started looking like I was looking at a completely destroyed piece of reddish cellophane at night.

Both cases I suspect are due to the IR filter that gets moved into place at night. The damaged one for the rear camera looks a bit like water intrusion turned to ice and expanded on a gel filter, and my guess for the front yard camera is that the mechanism that moves the filter into place is no longer functioning. Either way I have no night vision on two cameras, and suspect it probably had something to do with them being extremely cold earlier this year.

The other functions of the camera work fine, so for daylight they’re great and for me, with a whole lot of cameras to test, it’s not a huge issue but is kind of annoying when you’re no longer able to purchase the same cameras and functionality with Nest Aware, and the current Google offerings are not something I would consider (I got one, the Home App still an incomplete mess. Enough of that.)

My nest cameras are failing by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

This will be a running review of the NARWAL Freo X Plus until it’s complete at which point this line won’t be here. I will update it as anything new occurs.

TL;DR – running review, good hardware, software needs work.

The NARWAL Freo X Plus is a sub $400 vacuum with a lift/drag mop and a 7-week onboard storage dust bin that can be either reused or tossed (separate bins included) and on paper it’s on par with my current favorite vacuum minus Google Home/Assistant support and a vibrating mop. This hasn’t replaced Rhonda, people who managed to turn these reviews around in under a month of use concern me for their attention to detail as I’m planning to run this like I run a long haired dog grooming shop.

The Freo X Plus features a tangle-free brush, 7800Pa suction, Tri-laser navigation and obstacle avoidance, LiDAR SLAM 4.0, and claims it will not be bumping into things. It also does mopping and vacuuming in one pass with a slightly retractable mop.

Narwal Freo X Plus specs

NARWAL Freo X Plus unboxing and initial impressions

Due to a microphone issue the unboxing video I shot is going to be edited to be a silent film reminiscent of the 1920s inspired by the film Hundreds of Beavers and will be coming later. This was like every puck vacuum I’ve ever opened with the exception of the two disposable dust bins they include. The disposable bin’s bag, and the bags that surround items to protect them are the same thickness and I almost ripped through one as I thought it was stuck on a filter. Don’t rip anything. It’s not required.

There’s a nice thick manual you’ll never use, and pulling off the foam protector and two taped on shipping tabs you’re ready to go. My Freo X Pro was not initially. I could not get it to power on until after I plugged it into the dock. This may be in the instruction manual. I will look and edit this if it is, but it is something to note that I needed to put it on a charger the first time.

Registration requires an email address and that appeared to be it. A code is emailed, it shows up a minute or two later, enter that and you’re ready to go. The software warned me it only worked in 2.4ghz mode, but worked fine on my AP that handles both.

I was informed my firmware needed updated and then informed that the update failed almost instantly. A few attempts get it to download and update, but the app never registered that the vacuum had updated and I eventually exited the app and came back in.

I chose a room at my work that in theory was vacuumed recently but people keep going in there to scream (no, I really have no idea why.) Figured it would be a good first test. as the room looked fairly clean with one little piece of paper no bigger than a pinky fingernail sitting near a corner.

Now, the software looks a whole lot like the software I’ve used on Roborock so there’s a chance I just blew through something important but after a nice and short room mapping session I thought I was ready to go. I chose vacuum and mop, as I expected that maybe it would pick up the plastic chair protectors on the floor as a mopable surface, and said go.

The very first thing the NARWAL Freo X Plus did was make a quick hard turn, grab the power cord, and proceed to spend about a minute and a half fighting, knocking the base around, and completely destroying the setup. It finally escaped and I repositioned the station directly underneath the power outlet and hung the cable up carefully so it could not do that again.

I wandered out, came back a few minutes later and it had docked and I got that the cleaning was complete. The little piece of paper was still where it laid.

I started the unit up again to clean, it came out about two feet, turned, went to the wall, turned, came back, turned and went to the docking station telling me it was done. I tried pressing the button up top, same results. I told it to mop only. Same results. Told it to vacuum only. Same results.

I decided to delete the map and try again. After my second quick mapping, on the first run I decided to stay for the entire thing. It drove to three locations in the room, turned around at each, and went directly back to the base unit.

I went to edit the map and evidently everything it had mapped was listed as don’t vacuum/mop. Changing this to ignore resulted in the vacuum actually working although it does concern me why it would discover and then default to don’t clean here.

I ran the unit again, the piece of paper on the ground was removed, and things looked pretty good. It vacuumed up a fair amount of dirt, about what I would expect our cleaner’s vacuum to have left. It also vacuumed up a spider that is alive and I can now never touch the thing again.

I decided to run the unit again and choose extreme power… whoo hoo. a while later (24 minutes if I remember correctly,) I got the notification that it was done and successful. I opened the app and noticed the puck indicating the vacuum was not at the base station. I went into the office and yeah, it stopped. No reason given. No error message saying something prevented it from returning to the dock. Just stopped. Appears to have done a good job, but it stopped. Worked once, then done. Screw it boss I’m taking a nap right here.

I have attempted to wipe and restart and there is no evident option to do this from the software.

Evidently I chose vacuum and mop assuming it would not mop my carpet. With however my map is set up however that was not the case. Maybe the carpet sensors are not detecting my carpet as carpet. I have now manually set it to carpet.

Thus far

Keeping in mind this review isn’t done

• Software needs some work
• Vacuum is fairly quiet compared to other less powerful vacuums
• Doesn’t detect plastic floor coverings as a different surface – no mopping for them
• Obstacle avoidance doesn’t appear to avoid low hanging wires
• You have to remove the entire top to access dust and water containers. Attempting to access water container knocks it out of the charging dock.
• Chairs, tables, etc do not appear to be recognized. They are avoided but this makes defining no go zones a bit difficult.
• 3D view doesn’t show cleaning progress, no detected furniture or obstacles listed (maybe after more than 5 runs?)
• No hair tangled on brush, but too early to go “whoo hoo!”
• No recall / return to home from the app? (button works)

Wrapping up for the moment

I can not manufacture time and enough dirt and hair to complete the testing this needs at this point but at the moment I speculate that a software and firmware update are going to make this an extremely good little vacuum, but at the moment due to the experience the NARWAL Freo X Plus is a bit frustrating and I consider just ok. We’ll see tomorrow when I throw it in a room it needs to mop and vacuum.

Early May

The Freo X is slightly better than any other vacuum I’ve encountered at being able to pull USB cables out of it while it’s running, but unfortunately it still will run over easy to spot obstacles which considering it doesn’t have a camera I guess is to be expected.

I notice it occasionally bumps into what I’d call the chair leg category. It’s great at avoiding chair feet, but if you have a thin vertical thing it will often whack into it. It seems to do very good at not whacking into walls, desks, desk chairs, but put a cast iron patio chair there and it can’t see the legs.

There doesn’t appear to be a consistent option for “just figure out and clean this room.” Most vacuums I’ve run across have a smart clean, but this when I pressed the power in another room worked once and then demanded it be returned to the base. Nothing would get it to try and work in another room.

The vacuum so far (11 runs two rooms) appears to work well. It does corners better than anything I’ve noticed, picks up dirt a stand up vacuum missed. It’s better than anything I’ve reviewed in the price range by far, but not as good as some of the higher priced units I’ve run across.

Needs a major software update on Android and a re-working of how things are done… since it appears to be the same software others are using, copy their workflow. Just clean the room you’re in if I press the power button. Gimme a “map new room” option without having to go through multiple menus.

I point out the flaws because it could be the best and so far a software update I think could make it the best and on par with robot vacs twice the price.

Where’s the NARWAL Freo X Plus available?

You can grab a NARWAL Freo X Plus on Narwal’s website or on Amazon.

NARWAL Freo X Plus running review by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

Robosen Robotics Teams Up with Hasbro to Debut the World’s First Auto-Converting Decepticon – Megatron!

By Combining Robosen’s Industry Leading Robotic Expertise and Proprietary Servo Motor Technology, Along with One of the Most Beloved Franchises, Megatron Ushers in Next-Gen Robotics Which Will Provide Fans Hours of Endless Entertainment in an Immersive App & Voiced Activated Experience

(Los Angeles, CA and Shenzhen, China)—April 25, 2024—Robosen Robotics Innovation, Inc – a leading innovator in the field of consumer entertainment robotics, today announced during a Hasbro Pulse Fan Stream, the World’s First Auto-Converting Decepticon leader – Megatron! Joining the growing line of TRANSFORMERS robots created by Robosen and licensed by leading toy and game company Hasbro, the Flagship Megatron enters the battle against the Autobots with Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and Grimlock already available and on the market for order. The Flagship Megatron, first Decepticon collectible in the range, is now available for pre-order at Robosen.com and will retail on pre-sale for $899 USD for a 30-day window before moving to its standard price of $1,199.

After over 3 years of rigorous R&D, the talented team at Robosen has successfully produced a new, awe-inspiring conversion process with Megatron changing from robot to tank instantly, via app or voice!  Coupled with a comprehensive set of functions, including automatic convertible movements from tank to robot, a new and more fluid bipedal walking algorithm, integration of 112 ultra-bright LEDs, an arsenal of incredible included weapons, and a brilliant silver-metallic finish that embodies the true essence of the ominous leader. The Flagship Megatron is poised to dominate any Autobot that stands in his way at a staggering 21” tall and is equipped with 36 servo motors along with 118 microchips powering it from the inside.

Robosen continues to develop a truly interactive experience for the millions of TRANSFORMERS fans worldwide, with its ever growing cast of TRANSFORMERS robots, which can now stage engaging scenes through Mini-Theater (a feature within the app), bringing these beloved characters to life right before your eyes!  With all this astonishing technology and capabilities built into the Flagship Megatron, Robosen completes the savage leader in the most authentic way possible – building in the treasured talents of Frank Welker, the original voice of the 1984 G1 Megatron himself!  Going into the studio specifically for this launch, Frank Welker recorded over 270+ unique lines and beloved phrases, which allow users to experience Megatron like never before, and in the most genuine way.

“We have been eagerly waiting to launch the most incredible, high-end TRANSFORMERS robot available on the market,” said Hansen Su, Founder and CEO of Robosen. “Our engineers have brought Megatron to life! Through the 50 engaging actions built in – the original voice of Frank Welker – to the most amazing converting process we have been able to achieve. Megatron in either tank or robot mode will bring any fan pure joy when they see it for the first time!  It’s a beautiful product – we can’t wait for customers to get theirs!”

“Released in time for the TRANSFORMERS franchise’s 40th anniversary this year, the Flagship Megatron offers an exciting expansion to our existing line with Robosen as we introduce the first Decepticon to the mix. Now, fans can play out the battle between good and evil with stunning, state-of-the-art bots as we honor the franchise’s legacy and embark on the next four decades of action and adventure,” said Casey Collins, President, Licensed Consumer Products, Hasbro.

All Robosen products and collectibles are meticulously designed and crafted with state-of-the-art, high-grade metal alloy parts, combining a classic industrial design with the most cutting-edge robotic technology, while providing an ultimate entertaining experience filled with programming, and pure fun!

About Robosen

Robosen Robotics Innovation Inc (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd, is a leading innovator in the field of robotics, leading the way in digital drive technology, artificial joint driving algorithms, force feedback technology, artificial intelligence, and programming. For more information, please visit https://www.robosen.com

About Hasbro

Hasbro is a leading toy and game company whose mission is to entertain and connect generations of fans through the wonder of storytelling and exhilaration of play. Hasbro delivers play experiences for fans of all ages around the world, through toys, games, licensed consumer products, digital games and services, location-based entertainment, film, TV, and more. With a portfolio of over 1,800 iconic brands including MAGIC: THE GATHERING, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, Hasbro Gaming, NERF, TRANSFORMERS, PLAY-DOH and PEPPA PIG, as well as premier partner brands, Hasbro brings fans together wherever they are, from tabletop to screen.

Hasbro is guided by our Purpose to create joy and community for all people around the world, one game, one toy, one story at a time. For more than a decade, Hasbro has been consistently recognized for its corporate citizenship, including being named one of the 100 Best Corporate Citizens by 3BL Media, one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies by Ethisphere Institute and one of the 50 Most Community-Minded Companies in the U.S. by the Civic 50. For more information, visit https://corporate.hasbro.com or @Hasbro on LinkedIn.

© 2024 Hasbro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

About TRANSFORMERS   

The TRANSFORMERS brand is a global powerhouse franchise with millions of fans around the world. Since 1984, the battle between the Autobots and Decepticons has come to life in movies, TV shows, comic books, innovative toys, and digital media, bringing incredible “MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE” experiences to fans of all ages. The brand’s enduring connection is made possible by its rich storytelling and characters: the heroic Autobots who seek to protect all life, and the evil Decepticons who seek to conquer the universe. The TRANSFORMERS brand is a Hasbro franchise.   

Looks like Megatron’s unleashed (just a press release) by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

After surgery I had a couple of months of recovery that involved me watching a whole lot of YouTube. One of the things I really focused in on was lockpicking. It’s like solving a puzzle to me and I have thus far enjoyed doing it.

TL;DR – more on Paul’s hobby, nobody is forcing you to read this. Want more Android content / submit some.

It’s taught me a new way of thinking of security. I mean, not that the average criminal isn’t just going to bash in your door with a sledgehammer, or cut your lock off the shed, or just take your bike because over half the bike locks out there are garbage.

I bought a few locks the past couple of weeks. I’m not locking anything up, I just wanted a variety to practice with.

The lock above I managed to open using shims, picking, and I used a comb (yes, I know it’s the wrong style lock to use it on now,) and using said comb evidently managed to hit something behind the keyway and open it. Only managed the comb open once. This was my first shimming and easier than expected.

I bought another lock that I can’t pick without a disc detainer tool. Eh, my bad. I did however discover that they’re using only one key for the entire lock run because my key and the product key are the same, and other reviewers of the lock have mentioned they have the exact same key pictured on the Amazon page. So if you ever see a “top security” branded lock and want to open it evidently that’ll cost you $8.99 if it’s the one I have.

I also picked up two combo locks to try out my decoder tool and yeah, nothing. I feel nothing. I can sort of slow the wheels down but there’s no difference in feel. The time I spent attempting to decode the wheels I could have easily sawed through the locks. May be shielded, may be I am no good at it. Who knows.

Fun times. I have a training lock I need to assemble and practice on, and a couple of doors to attack, but that’s for another day. I’ve got to plow through working on some reviews now.

I picked my second real lock (and didn’t a couple of others) by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

I get about 200 emails a day in my Pocketables email pitching me various gadgets, books, Turtle Rescues for some reason, telco updates, etc. I have subscribed to a total of 1 of these emails and the rest are the result of various companies putting me into a list they sell to various buyers who are told I am interested in their verticals.

TL;DR – short blog on fake research used for SEO

And for the most part they’ve been pretty on brand…

Recently I started getting expert commentary from, I’m going to say, not experts. At least not experts in their fields currently.

The format is the same – some interesting piece of commentary on how your air purifier is going to kill you or that charging your phone overnight will burn your house down and about a page and a half of text that could be generated by ChatGPT and contains the wisdom of 2006 without any of the collective learnings of the past 18 years.

I caught my local news station using one of them the other day, a fairly innocuous tidbit I’d passed on because it wasn’t phones, gadgets, or anything to catch my attention. A shout out to the source was mentioned and amused me they hadn’t checked it, or were ok sourcing an online casino ranking website as a researcher.

But the format is the same, research, some text, claiming someone’s an expert and if you use their research link to them. The researchers tend to be casinos and gambling sites, web developers looking to increase their SEO, personal injury lawyers, and other people known for their researching capabilities.

The findings presented are generally in the format of the articles that ruined the internet in 2012 with the methodology maybe mentioned but no table data given or links to where the data was pulled, and that would be all right if everything were correct… but it’s not usually.

It’s never done by firms that specialize in research… never…

So yeah, if you see “a new study has revealed…” or “a cell phone expert on why you should/shouldn’t” maybe bear in mind a lot of these are now the result of asking ChatGPT to study something and then comment on it, and they were not checked for validity because the expert producing them is not an expert in that field.

Along the way I ran into shitty research by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

Unknown Tracker Alerts is a feature in Android that will look for Bluetooth trackers and report if any that are separated from their owner are in operation around you. This should tell you when someone has planted a tracker on your car, but should not tell you when Dave walks in with his keychain Tile finder (since it’s not separated from him for any length of time).

Here’s my story – A friend of mine dropped off her car for a couple of weeks and asked me and my wife to drive it occasionally to keep the battery juiced and the wheels not dry rotting. She’s in another state, will be back in two to three weeks, no big whoop. I mention this because she is currently separated from her AirTag on her keychain (in my possession,) and a Tile tracker sitting in her car.

I didn’t think anything much about this yesterday as I drove her car around, but then realized today that either both of her trackers have died in one week in my possession, or the tracker finder simply is not working on the current version of Android on my Pixel 8 Pro (yes, it’s turned on). Alternately she left some device in her car which is telling the trackers they’re still connected to the owner.

Checking the documentation on Android’s Unknown Tracker Alerts it lists Apple AirTags by name, and Find My Device network compatible trackers, where Tile is listed as one such.

Initiating a manual scan similarly nets no unknown trackers. Both of these are separated from the owner for over a week, and device they were set up on (presumably her phone) by several hundred miles for a week now. I would suspect I should be getting alerts.

Have you ever gotten an alert? Know any reason why I’m not? Would be interested to know why it’s not working as I drove for at least 50 miles yesterday in that car.

Not attempting to manufacture outrage, really just wondering if anyone has ever seen a warning when traveling with someone else’s trackers separate from the phone they were paired to.

The next day (I don’t write these all at once)

I checked with the owner of the tags who said it’s possible the batteries were shot, and I just so happened to have a pack of CR2032s laying around so I replaced the AirTag battery (which was listing as weak but not dead according to my battery tester,) heard the beep from the AirTag (have not investigated the tile yet) and I drove around yesterday with a functioning AirTag that is not mine sitting in my car waiting for an alert.

It never came.

I manually scanned for unknown trackers, no trackers detected. This was odd as I was right next to it. Went and manually scanned again and Android finally found the AirTag tracker.

I now have the AirTag found from a manual scan, but this does not seem to have ever alerted me that a tracker was around. I drove in with the AirTag today, no alerts… not sure if there will be any due to finding it in a manual scan.

Pixel 8 Pro, current Android revision (April 2024)

Updates

At 19 hours of having the new battery in I was informed a device was traveling with me. Now, whether this is 19 hours or several days (since the last battery did have a charge,) I’d really rather cut that down to a few minutes personally as if someone plants this on my car I don’t really want it sitting broadcasting my location.

The alert (first picture up there) was what I received this morning. The first detected time is probably when the manual scan caught it. That tracker was within 50 feet of me most of the day. Second picture is several miles away from my house where it had pinpointed the tracker. Yeah I’m not doxxing myself.

It feels a bit like someone could slip this on your car at the bar, use it, come and rob you/whatever, and be gone before the tracker alert ever kicked in.

I was able to make the tracker beep and locate it (knowing exactly where it was anyway) but yikes.

Does Android’s unknown tracker alerts work for anyone? (updated) by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

The Narwal Freo X Plus is a new puck robo vac from Narwal that brings something new to the table: “Guaranteed 0% tangle rate with pet fur and long hair up to 16 inches.”

Right now I am in the process of testing and reviewing the Narwal Freo X Plus. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I don’t have a whole lot of hair or filthy floors to really give it a good short turnaround review (it was received last week). A real review is going to come later when it’s been used and exposed to a real environment. Consider this marketing for the review rather than an endorsement.

If like me most of your interactions with your robot vacuum involve taking a knife and removing hair from a large lump that used to be the brush, you’ll know what a difference this could make.

The Narwal Freo X Plus appears to be a more self-contained version of the Freo X Ultra with a minimalist docking station and slightly less suction, however having not reviewed that one I can’t go line by line comparing them.

7800pa suction tops the charts in terms of tiny but mighty suction, although as we’ve discussed previously that it’s airflow that counts more than suction power. Both really, but we’ll see.

It packs nearly two months of onboard dust and waste storage, a removable disposable storage bag, and claims to be able to avoid bumping into things utilizing multiple LiDAR systems to do so.

Like my beloved Rhonda, it has an intelligent lifting mop that will lift a third of an inch so that it doesn’t drag smelly mop water across your rug.

The software looks cool… at least in the previews. Reminds me a bit of the Xaomi/Roborock software and I wonder if they aren’t the same thing (this is how early I am in testing this).

Anyway, I will have a review when I have it tested. The Narwal Freo X Plus looks like a pet-lover’s dream, but so have many other vacuums I’ve tested before that made this claim. We’ll see how it fairs against two shorthaired cats and three longhaired humans.

There is / was an early bird discount using code NARWALNEW001. I am assuming this was on their website.

The Narwal Freo X Plus should be releasing on Amazon today, and also on Narwal’s website. I’m posting this after the embargo hour and neither link is showing in stock or orderable.

Reviews from Vine (Amazon’s free review program) tend to indicate it’s currently well loved, however these are first week reviews of free product and I highly doubt anyone can give this a thorough review until they’ve lived with it a bit.

Narwal Freo X Plus specs

Anyhow, I expect to have a rundown of how it fares against a whole lot of hair shortly.

Have started the running review of the unit here

Narwal Freo X Plus introduces a tangle free main brush in a small footprint vac by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

Meta has thrown their version of Ai into the fray against ChatGPT and Gemini with a no-account-required Ai that is accessible at meta.ai. Signing in using Facebook allows you to see previous chats and presumably remember other interactions.

Meta’s image generation is surprising as it generates images while you’re typing. It generates slightly faster than I can type so there’s something at every word.

It also has the ability to create a video of quite a few of the changes it made during creating your final image. Just from this it missed a chunk, but I’m not sure how much AI bandwidth actually needs to be devoted to my attempts at creating a bar scene with a guinea pig and a cockatiel looking at an HTC EVO 4G and checking social media while a kung fu fight is breaking out behind them.

As LLMs go it’s really fast, which I enjoy after watching Copilot (chatgpt) slowly type out the answers.

I threw some questions at Meta Ai, most were “help me remember this” but it seems like there’s a popular culture filter it’s seeing the world through (in other words, a couple of old novellas I was attempting to figure out the names of it did not have much of a clue on.)

Side note – if you happen to have read a short story about a person being introduced to an Ai that generates historical figures that teach us that our pronunciation of Latin is incorrect and that AI Napoleon must be banned from internet access, drop me a line. I couldn’t get any of the 3 major AIs to look into old Sci-Fi.

The instant image generation makes this amazing, the lack of internet and ability to research sort of puts it into my “check back later” category because I need current, not late 2022. My needs, however are not yours. This does some terrific image generation, text generation, but can’t do my research for me. This may be incorrect, it does appear to have some 2024 info I’m just not seeing much of it in my queries.

The hands are, as AI goes these days, terrible. The above image sort of got it right but most have hallucinating hands, elbows, etc. The dirty picture filtering algorithm is in full effect and somewhat laughable. Try and put a semi-transparent hat on someone doing yoga, it blurs things out because obviously transparent hats on women already doing yoga mean I’m going for nudity. But imaging a transparent hats with a woman under them doing yoga is fine.

Meta AI claims to have video generation via /video… however when I use it it just looks up videos that are on Facebook or Instagram… which it does appear to be connected to. Attempts to search for videos that I produced that are on Instagram or Facebook failed however… not really sure how this video searching is going.

Pretty awesome, needs some work, but all of them do. For now, as much as I dislike it, copilot is what’s working for current news, Meta appears to be seeing information from a couple of months back (at least on my site,) Copilot sees info from us a week ago. That said, Meta does not appear to have hallucinated anything other than hands.

You can try it at Meta.AI

Meta AI is a thing now, if you’re interested in a barely-connected Ai by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

A long time ago we started a cutover to Google Fiber. Our turn up date was to be February 1, 2020 and instead it ended up being April 4th, 2024 after literally years of not being able to get it working someone decided to actually take charge and get it done.

On April 4th they turned up the connection and that in itself was quite unexpected… this was the third time I’d signed up for a Google Fiber / GFiber account (when they can’t install for months they make you reschedule and eventually delete you if you don’t reschedule an install,) and I had no expectations it would install this time. Third time’s the charm (or 37th depending on if you count all the contractors who showed up over the past 4 years.)

April 4th post install they showed me a speed test, I conducted one of my own, things seemed fine and I went ahead and ordered the equipment I needed to use this as a secondary connection.

I actually had ordered it before, back in 2020, but that router ended up replacing a fried one in 2022 and I never really expected Google to come through so I did not have a router waiting on deck.

For the next few days I waited on my router to show, got it configured (correctly I will mention, I initially thought the router was to blame for this next part,) and hooked up and huh… suddenly GFiber is doing 5mbit down and about 500 up. I remove the router and plug in my phone and it’s high 600s both ways (this is due to the limitations of the USB to ethernet and Android, the connection I’m sure is going around 900)

Plug in my laptop and it’s 5mb down, 500 up (yes, I have down and up in the correct order, this is strange.) Try speedtest.net, google speed test, etc. Odd.

Desktop connected directly to the line that goes to the modem returns similar results. 5 down, 500 up. Phone returning 600/600. Huh… strange isn’t it? (hint: desktop has ipv6 disabled)

I finally figured out that IPv4 was the culprit. If you were only on IPv4 the download speed was limited to 5mb. I suspect the upload speed was only limited to 500 or so due to the download speed being throttled.

When on ip4 speedtests kept popping me out in Cupertino, CA… that’s a long way from Nashville, TN. Switching to or enabling IPv6 on the desktop suddenly resulted in 800/800 range. Same with the laptop. It felt like I was on the world’s slowest fiber VPN.

I contacted everyone who had worked to get this working in the past two months, no avail… one out and two not responding. Called tech support and told the person what I had done and was asked to do it again. Rrrrr… they are dispatching a tech on Monday because that is the only time that worked.

Said tech will show up, and if the problem is still there will say it’s a provisioning problem.

Sometime last night the IPv4 download speed problem went away. I came into a mostly functioning GFiber unit that is no longer limited to 5mb downloads on IP4. However the unit is still not functioning correctly as I have multiple devices plugged into the thing and the app can’t find my router or any device connected.

The web version of the GFiber modem can see devices with no issues.

The MikroTik also shows as a router in other pages on the board… going to guess my account isn’t provisioned in correctly there as well.

There do not appear to be any user facing controls to link the GFiber app to this modem. There is no way to tell the modem that I am using a router (which appears to be a feature of the app, which doesn’t see devices.) I can’t forward all traffic, restrict traffic, block mac addresses, or do pretty much anything I need to do to get this usable.

Fun times. I suspect at this point that it has never functioned properly, but is limping along and probably unnoticeable if you’re not looking.

And as of 10:40am it’s back to being 4.7mbit download / 489.62 upload

GFiber finally started working for a few minutes (and it was glorious) by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

Like Google’s VPN? Too bad.

Like far too many good things that come out of Google, it is going away. There will be a Pixel VPN variant spun off, at least until they finish digging the grave for it over in the Google Graveyard.

I didn’t use Google One VPN much, and I suspect anyone seriously wanting a real VPN didn’t because it didn’t encrypt traffic while using phone data, only on Wi-Fi. A good VPN is tasked with more than just protecting you from the leaky Wi-Fi, it’s for protecting you from crappy website tracking (and your phone’s carrier,) and if I left a tab open and walked out of Wi-Fi range, well there you go. WebsiteX could now piece together who you are from advertising networks.

That said, it was a useful little took to protect while joining sus networks. Just not a service I would remotely rely on if I were doing anything that could get me tracked and killed by state-sponsored actors. I wonder if this is why it wasn’t used much.

The VPN was included as part of signing up for Google One, which I had to do when I exceeded my free Google account storage limit.

If you’re looking for a replacement for Google’s VPN please be aware that websites recommending VPN services typically make 50% commission rates referring you to a VPN service and have a $30 reason quite often to say “VPNX IS THE BEZZZT!” I did some VPN reviews a while back and realized that I could not actually test whether they worked as stated or not without committing a number of crimes for YEARS, a felony or two, or pissing off the head of some country that sanctions state-sponsored remote executions.

None of those tests did I have interest in finding out that the VPN actually kept logs or backdoors or some way to identify me.

With that in mind, I’ve used PIA as a VPN. It has sufficed. Do your research, pick your own, realize when you get a “free” one that you are paying for it one way or the other. Also support blogs that bring you things you like without them having to resort to becoming 90% advertising and VPN of the week pushers. Really, ask what commission rates are now. I had *great* financial incentive to sell out.

Google killing useful service people weren’t using because they knew Google would kill it – VPN edition by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

I mentioned before I decided to take up lockpicking as something I could do following surgery while I recovered and was awake for 8 minutes at a stretch. The videos on each lock are usually short (depending on who you’re watching,) it involves puzzle solving, and it’s a relatively low cost hobby that teaches you magician tricks and can get your 1970’s filing cabinet you lost the key to open.

I have no idea how many McNally Official, Lockpicking Noob, or Lockpicking Lawyer videos I watched, nor how many I slept through post hospital, but it was a fair chunk of them.

I picked up these little beasts at Amazon. Priced at $12 for two I figured it was probably a fun starting lock as it looked like it could be picked with an errant glance, and I was at that point beyond noob. By real lock I need you to understand it’s not a trainer lock, I’m not saying anything beyond that. The manufacturer claims they’re real and offers protection.

The hardest part I had was the little rivets all around the key area which blocked my turning tool in the position I’d practiced using the practice locks.

Raking opened it in a few seconds, single pin picking opened in under 30. I repeated over and over again and the times were about the same on either lock (both are keyed the same, and I am slow).

I hit it a few times and was unable to pop the lock that way but I’m also sans hammer. Plans are to shim it, take it home and break out the hammer (you would think I’d have one at work, but no,) but I’m stuck until I build some shims or go home for the day, or buy a hammer for work.

Eh, fun times.

Quarter million dollar surgery, now I have skills to break into school lockers given enough time.

Lessons I learned on my first real locks picked

• If you watched on a 60+ inch tv screen you will find that it feels like you’re working with miniatures
• The turning tools I purchased in a set were too large to fit in and not block the keyway. Luckily I had very tiny tools from a freebie pack I was sent for a software demo / lockpicking intro.
• Oddly I had no issues identifying what pin I was on on a real lock where I used my imagination, I did have issues on a transparent lock
• Being able to defeat $6 worth of lock somehow does not make me king of the world

I picked my first real lock yesterday by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.