jtagcat's tail (formerly tail.jtag.cat)

Selling on eBay from Estonia

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When listing on ebay.de and marking the item location as Tallinn, Estonia, one is shown the following:

Support article and bot assure that you can buy a shipping label after an order. I double-checked the item location is indeed in Estonia.

When you print a shipping label with eBay Labels, our negotiated rates let you save money relative to what you would pay at the post office or to a carrier for most services. (eBay)
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My AliExpress Android TV remotes

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I had two Android TV (one of them Xiaomi) set top boxes needing remotes. AliExpress’s selection is both bad and expensive. There isn’t really a simple remote, which would make sense to anyone picking it up. Everything wants to have 20 features and 40 buttons. Benchmarking towards something like this:

¶G20S Pro BT (VIV000600) – died after 4 months

Died after 4 months (refunded in full)
If the remote was sleeping (as remotes normally are inactive), a key needs to be pressed to wake the remote up. The key pressed isn’t transmitted after wakeup. This means most of the time you have to press the remote twice for it to do anything.
Consumed a pair of alkalines every month.
The USB dongle stops working when Bluetooth is paired with no way to switch back to the dongle.


Listing name	G20S PRO BT Air Mouse Backlit Light 2.4G Wireless Gyroscope Smart Remote Control With Voice IR Learning for Android TV Box
Sold by	KM KBT Store (via SUCCESS COURIER SL (successservice2@hotmail.com), Spain). Manufacturer Shenzhen Monaway Technology Co., Ltd (xuguowei@youyuepin.cn)
Price	7.57€ (refunded)

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Nextcloud Android: Error occurred while downloading file

Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Symptoms: Nothing can be downloaded, opened, shared.

Possible cause: Android removing unused permissions

Recovering:

Nextcloud → Hamburger Menu → Settings
(this may not be needed)

Coral USB Passthrough to Proxmox VM

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It was time to disassemble the year-long temporary Frigate machine to continue in a standardized Kubernetes setup (running in VMs). The Proxmox machines don’t have M.2 slots, but they do have plenty of internal USB ports. Passthrough wasn’t straight forward.

XtremeOwnaga documented it working, but with the proprietary driver installed on the hypervisor – which an another admin didn’t find acceptable. After a while debugging, the following conditions have to be met:

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TeliaTV Elisa digiboksiga

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

On taas aeg teha kõlblikust riistvarast prügi, et mugavndada digiprügi spetsialistide arenduskollektiivi tööd ja hoida teleoperaatori kasumimarginaal kõrgel. Keegi peab ju lisaväärtust looma, et kihelkonna vanavanemad ei kannataks dementia küüsis, vaid oskaks Amino, Motorola, Arrise ja SDMC digibokse-pulte kasutada.

Aastate jooksul on välja vahetatud telerid, kuhu on omakorda nutitelefonid sisse ehitatud. Elisale ja Jupiterile sellest piisab, kuid Telia teab, et kliendid on nõus iga aasta ekraani kohta 48€ välja käima. Kuis Inspira kanal hakkas meeldima, siis konkurendid sõltuvust ei leevenda.

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zfs-freeze: External atomic backups

Tue, 03 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I use zfs-send for backups, but not all destinations¹ support it. Backing up live systems is problematic — while non-atomic ordered rollbacks are business as usual, segmented backups lead to corrupted databases and broken restores.

Twelve-Factor Apps included: even if state isn’t derived from multiple sources, references can still break. For example, when blob storage is backed up a minute before the database, the restored application could hold a broken reference to an image, which doesn’t exist.

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VLC pitch-shifting wasn't my imagination!

Mon, 28 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

At first, I thought I was going crazy, but time and time again I heard it, and it made me sick every single time.

TW: Imperfect Pitch

Around the 4-5th second of the audio samples, the pitch returns to normal. This is an effort by VLC to keep the audio and video in sync when its cache runs out (often when scrubbing).

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Arch boot recovery

Thu, 08 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I upgraded both identical laptops. One I took with me, and it worked without any problems. Today I was puzzled to find the second machine unable to boot.

...
Waiting 10 seconds for device [...]
ERROR: mounting '/dev/mapper/luksdev' on real root

GRUB dropped the computer to emergency shell, but it wasn’t helpful. The keyboard didn’t work, including Ctrl-Alt-Del. Time for data recovery (faster than downloading the backup) from a live boot, a half-scripted reinstall, and recovering the files (~2-3h total).

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