hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4433.txt

Episode: 4433
Title: HPR4433: Nerd Responce to URandom Podcast
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4433/hpr4433.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-26 00:40:44

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4,433 for Wednesday the 30th of July 2025.
Today's show is entitled Nerd Response to Urandom Podcast.
It is hosted by Operator and is about 27 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is Operator Rambles about his lead setup for his desk and server.
You are listening to a show from the Reserve Q. We are airing it now because we had free
slots that were not filled.
This is a community project that needs listeners to contribute shows in order to survive.
Please consider recording a show for Hacker Public Radio.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio with your host Operator.
So today I will be talking about my setup based on Urandom episode that sparked my interest.
I am pretty sure they mentioned in that episode about having a KVM or a USB switch.
I know there is a mention of a KVM, but I wanted to know specifically for my setup what
I found successful instead of doing the whole KVM thing or running HDMI cables forever.
I found it doing a USB switch and just manually pressing the switch on the inputs for your
monitor.
I worked great for me and I will go over some other stuff to my whole setup here that might
help other people.
So I want to go device by device.
So I have a work laptop, I have a personal laptop and then I have a USB stick and then
I have my desktop and I have the server downstairs.
So that is a media box that does a bunch of other things.
So that is a first kind of start off with the workstation in front of me is a desktop
that has a GPU in it and that is where I do the GPU stuff, LLM's, whatever, it is my
gaming machine right.
Now it has a steel series sound thing, a headset and that is what I am talking to you
on and it is a little puck and the cool thing about that is that I don't have to do anything
with audio because I use the USB switch and I plug it into a USB switch.
Now the USB switch is powered USB switch by 5 volts.
If you do not power this switch it will get wonky and just click on enough because there
is not enough voltage to run a webcam and a sound device and whatever else is plugged
into the keyboard and a mouse.
So this USB switch is actually full right now.
I have an auxiliary which I don't even know what that is for.
I use a keyboard and I use a label printer for everything, mouse and webcam.
The auxiliary, I only remember what that is for.
I think this is for my, excuse me, for my, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a,
a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a,
That's what I do is it's a manual button so I, I press the input on my monitor and then
I hit this switch on the USB switch and that's just to be mainly my desktop and my laptop.
Now, that gives me the webcam, that gives me shared webcam, shared keyboard, shared
mouse, basically everything, but the video and anything that can be plugged into the USB.
For example, I don't think I have the base-shakers I don't need for my work laptops, so let
me see where this even looks really port goes, it's kind of a good question.
So while I'm talking about that, I also have another USB hub of sorts plugged into the
work computer. Now the work computer has a single USB-C for its USB hub, so I just keep
it laying up against the workstation plugged in USB-C, and then all USB stuff is plugged
into that USB port. So basically instead of having to switch cables all around, the USB switch
is plugged into my workstation or in my workstation and my laptop, so everything switches over.
It's all one thing. So with that said, while we're talking about all that mess, I do
have kind of like a mess of cables, and I do try to label them, but I'm not sure where this
auxiliary comes in at. So I don't even know what that's even for. I do usually good about
labeling stuff, but anyways, the cool thing about the headset I'm using is I can turn it
off or I can hit the USB switch and it'll basically pull the device out from under the OS
and then shove it back into another OS. Now if you're switching between Linux Windows, maybe
I have some issues. It does tend to get squirrely sometimes. If I hit the switch a bunch of
times, there's some kind of threshold, and you'll have to actually reboot the computer, sometimes
even kill the power to the whole thing. But that rarely happens with me. So the setup is,
I keep my headset on, switch back and forth on the desktop, switch back and forth from headset
to not headset on the laptop, so it's all interchangeable, which makes it great. I have a split keyboard
for ergonomics. It's a fancy Kinesis KINESIS freestyle too, and it comes with these
little bumpers you can raise or lower it, lower it, and I also found it on my left.
I started getting carpal symptoms on my right, and I switched to a left-handed mouse and
broke my brain and also learned left-handed mouse, but that also broke everything else.
So I had a kind of repetitive stress on my left hand side, which calls me to be messed
up for about eight months to a year. I had a pretty bad pain in my left wrist that I
think is caused a pinch nerve in my elbow. Anyways, so you get older. So what I found that
works is raising my two motor. I got one raised desk, but it's got two motors here.
So everything is mounted up, and everything can come up and down more or less freely. There's no
guide wires for the steering wheel and pedals, so my son has to be super careful when he's
doing this stuff. This is entry-level sim gear, but it's all connected, so I don't
know. It's kind of not making me super happy, so my son's coming in here attaching stuff
and pushing it up and down and whatever, so eventually something's going to rip apart
either by me or my son, more importantly, and you know, let's figure that out.
But anyways, the way that it's set up is I can raise it, and then I put a, I moved the
chair and then I put a squishy, a squishy pad. And under that squishy pad, as always been
a big piece of plastic, not, not your super rot rotting floor things or even the ones
that never rot, but they also just sink down in, so they'll get all messed up and you'll
get stuck in one spot. So the ones that never crack will basically bend, right?
And you'll be left, you know, you'll try to move yourself over a little bit to left, and
you'll slide back into the hole. My wife's is like that. This one is a big giant piece of
PVC, this used for plastic building, my father does. So, or my father-in-law has a giant
place where he makes custom plastic tanks for people. So this is like a one-quarter
stick chunk of, you know, it's like $300 retail. Anyways, this is just a big piece of
plastic, you know, this house will fall and maybe even burn down, and this thing will
still be here. So it does, it's super slippery, and it does slide around a lot.
So, what I have is these, you hold, drill holes in the front of it and tilted it at an
angle, so that I can get some of the plastic part in the towards my feet, and it's
thermal, you know, it's not cold, so it's not a big metal sheet, stays warm relatively.
But I kept having problems with it every time I got up, it would slide, slide, slide
backwards. So I put two holes in it, and I zip-tied it to the desk itself. So it doesn't
really go anywhere, more or less. So that's the setup that the only difference is
you see, I have a nice Herman, what they call it, the arrow chair, and used. They don't
sell them used really anymore, because lawsuits and whatnot. So I got it used, I've
replaced the CD part, because maybe I've had something on my foot or whatever, and split
the CD part. I've been using this, it's a pretty cool chair, keeps me cool, and pretty
cold sometimes, sometimes I'll put a pillow or a cushion under if it's cold outside or cold
in the office. I do have a stupid halftun or something ridiculous, split air conditioner
unit that I put in, so I can get the room freezing or burning in several seconds. So anyways,
that's kind of the setup for that, the only drawback to this fancy chairs that I put fancy
roller blade wheels on, and it's really hard to keep it in one place, and it takes a
while to get used to roller blade wheels, much less on this super flat, slightly service.
So when I'm doing sim racing, you know, you're pressing the break through the gas pedal,
and you're still pushing yourself away. So I actually used the springboard, the squishy
pad, standing pad, and I have a mark on the actual plastic part that the chair rides on,
and I place it there, and I have to flatten it down, and then put the wheels right where
they hit in the right spot, and center everything to the wheels and the pedal and the steering
wheel and the placement of the monitor. So it's a bit of a tour of getting everything in the
right spot. So until I get my own sim rig, which I might have a small table set up behind
me for my work stuff, and then DIY sim rig with a, you know, hand me down chair or something
like that, because having to put the steering wheel on every time I want to play and race
is sometimes awful. But anyways, that's the setup kind of for the gaming stuff, and the
work computer, again, it's just an easy switch. I hit the little button on the monitor,
and that switches all the USB stuff over. I have a kind of green screen setup, a used
flood light that's half broken, pulled some of the pixels out that were janky and flickering,
used that at a reflector that reflects on my face, and then behind me, these are both pop-out
green screens, so you can get these, you know, a lot of my little frizzies. These are three feet,
one to three, four feet tall, and you don't really need anything bigger than that,
and if you're just doing head, head, head stuff, and it collapses, which is great,
because you can take it mobile, or you can hide it somewhere, or whatever. I keep it open,
and I actually hate from the ceiling with these C-clamps, or what do they call this?
They're buying your clips. I had two big hooks, well, not great size hooks.
They both hold about 100 pounds, because I'm 200 pounds, and I have some wooden holds
attached to the ceiling. So if I'm on a call, or waiting for something to download,
I can do stretching through the back, and put my hands behind my back, and do the holds,
and see how much I can hold, and then I also can do my hamstrings. So it's like stretching
everything out, if I'm idling, so it helps keep my shoulders stretched out,
upper body, kind of whatever, and I lead them dangling, so that I hit my head on them all the time,
and to remind me to actually use them. So, and you can also, you know, I also try to just
hold myself up for 10 seconds, and then when I'm ever on a call, or something might
make my hold myself up, pretty standard. They're called power guidance,
and it's different levels, so that all the way through the hole, through the hole,
to 10 millimeter holds, which is impossible. You know, you can get good at it, if you can hold
your entire body weight, well, I'm not too way too heavy, but if I was not so heavy,
I could eventually get good enough where I could hold my whole body weight on fingertips,
that's the idea for these holds, but I use it a lot of times just to stretch out,
and then strengthen my lifting, because I can't pull my own body up hardly.
Stator webcam, it's got an 8-batterned shifter around it. I think that's pretty much
the set up for the desktop. Now, downstairs is the media box. Now, the way I have that
all set up, it's Plex, and the Plex app running on the HSTC, whatever HTC,
Plex, HTC, it's a snap install. That's all pretty much whatever normal,
the way I control everything, is I use Moon Shine, and it's a Moonlight and Sun Shine,
and Moonlight is the Sun Shine, Sun Shine is a server, and Moonlight is the client,
so it's like the steam streaming service for steam, but it works for everything,
and also, if you have other launchers, it also works for that.
There is a plugin called WSP or WPL hook, and it will hook the Microsoft Scrazy Store Games,
the way Microsoft does their games, it's best backwards, and you have to do this weird stuff to get it to work.
It's called, let's see if I can find it, UWP Hook, and UWPs, like Windows,
we're not going to do a way to do games, I don't understand, it's like a security thing who does,
but you can add this UWP hook that will make steam work with Windows games,
and I've had some success with other launchers, mainly the stupid Orion,
or whatever it is, Origin Launcher for Assassin's Creed Games.
Usually, I have to run it, and then kill the client, and run it again,
so I have a button bound in Linux using Xbine keys or something like that,
so I bind the Q key to focusing Plex and killing the Moonlight client streaming client,
and then W will kill the Plex client, I don't think it kills the Plex client, it just keeps it running,
and we'll kill and rerun the Moonlight client so I can stream downstairs,
so I've got an Xbox, two Xbox controllers synced to the computer downstairs,
and it is kind of finicky with the USB dongles there, whatever.
I divide another one to get them to get it to work.
They still are kind of finicky, so what I have to do is when you hit the button,
it restarts the Bluetooth server, or Linux, waits 10 seconds,
and within that 10 seconds you have to sync the controllers,
or else when the Sunshine client runs, or the Moonlight client runs,
it won't detect that the controllers are there after you sync them,
so you have them connected.
Xbox controllers are connected, then the client for the streaming has to run,
and then you'll be able to control stuff,
I think they're both like player one, or they're both just inputs at first,
and then only after you launch the game are they split into player one player two,
so when you start the game you can control each other's their stuff,
and then it seems to work for at least Xbox, I haven't had any issues with any of that.
The other stuff I have is a dimmer in the dining room, or living room,
so that when I do press E, it dims the lights, it's way precincts,
and when I press R, it brings the lights to 100%.
So that way if I'm watching a movie or something,
if I go from gaming and bright, W and R, and it's bright,
and I have the lights all the way on, and I've got a game,
and maybe there were people over, and it was bright,
and I want to watch a movie, I don't have to get up,
because I just press on the remote.
It's a little universal remote that has a keyboard on one side,
and you flip it over, it has the mouse and navigational buttons.
You can buy those for real cheap, but you've got the same one forever.
The idea there is that, make sure I'm still recording, mumbling, and talking quickly.
The idea there is that I don't have to get up if I want to switch to TV.
I also use the Onyoko Protocol, where you see use Yatsuy for Android,
and it came a little bit to control, Yatsuy controlled Cody,
and there's no such animal for a Plex that can control both Plex and their party.
So, apparently, all your devices, all your hardware, is not universal.
There's no universal standard.
Now, there is that ACC, or whatever it is, like an HDMI-based control link makes,
but it's not standardized really either.
So, what I have is, I have the Plex app on my phone,
and the Onyoko controller app on my phone.
And between those two, I can do everything I need to do.
The Plex app is a little bit finicky.
If I start something, sometimes that three started, and then it could just connect it,
and it sends in a lot of land, and then, you know, whatever,
it seems like, once I get it started, and it's going, it'll stay.
But sometimes, I'll just, out of the blue glow, click start, play.
It'll play, and it'll crap out, and it'll be like, I couldn't play.
And then it takes like five minutes to get it to reconnect, right?
So, it kind of, the mumbles, it's gonna crap shout.
So, with the Onyoko app, I handle the base levels, the subwoofer levels, excuse me.
And volume, all in there.
And then, also, if it's Switch, whatever.
So, if I have the Switch controllers in my hand, or the Xbox controllers in my hand,
I don't have to get up, or whatever.
Also, use the Firestick app for the Firestick,
which, since it can take forever, if the server, or if the receiver is not on,
it'll take forever to boot, because I have an old Firestick.
So, the way I have it set up now is for, like, energy saving measures.
There is a control over a little power switch, or power strip, and it's not graceful.
So, basically, you set up a parent, or a control, and if the receiver is off,
everything down on the power strip, it's like six things you can assign.
Everything on the power strip will stay, will turn off.
So, they have, like, two constants, and then, like, one control, and then, like, three or four or five,
met the slaves.
So, when you turn it off, your receiver, it says, oop, that's off.
I need to turn off four or five, six, seven.
And it will shut down, it'll kill the TV, the receipt, the 12-inch sub,
the receiver, of course, and one or two of the things.
And that's all connected to a battery backup, which is plugged into a speed cable,
zero cable, or whatever, and it will shut down the server.
If it needs to be shut down gracefully, when the power is out,
the only thing that's plugged into that is, like, the internet stuff, Wi-Fi, and the server itself.
It's like a 1,500 cubic, like a 1,500, it'll run about 30 minutes.
It says, like, 60 minutes or something, but it always ends up being about 30 minutes or so.
If you like, that's pretty much it.
My Wi-Fi computer is set up, standard USB-C, not really docking station,
so there's nothing fancy there, but the cool thing about the Sunshine Moonlight setup
is that I can put OpenVPN on a tablet or anything.
So, essentially, I can bring a USB controller, or even a wireless,
an additional, because it has syncing Bluetooth multiple times to multiple.
Things is annoying and Linux and even Windows,
but if I had an extra wireless Xbox controllers,
I could sync those to my phone, and then all I would need to bring
is the HDMI dongle that has the power into USB hubs and USB-C input and output and HDMI out.
I can take that dongle, plug it in, power it with whatever USB-C's relaying around,
and then plug in the HDMI cable, and then run the VPN client and the Sunshine client,
and then basically play whatever games I want at almost full resolution with little from the lag most of the times.
I also made my dad's, who's in the boonies.
He's got one in front.
What do you call it?
The Starlink thing says this fast.
I didn't have, I mean, there's pickups here and there,
but considering it's satellite, it was absolutely insane.
Like, I could play Star Wars, Jedi Knight, or whatever that fallen order,
or whatever the newest one is, with no problems.
That's pretty much my setup.
Now, I had to purchase, well, I took my wife's old phone,
because I had no phone number, and I have no actual carrier phone number.
I've had Google voice forever, and my employer has always given me a phone that I can use to forward calls to my Google voice numbers.
I've never actually had a real phone number for probably 15, 20 years now,
and all of these sites are starting to block MFA with voice phones.
So I said, where do I get a carrier?
The cheapest carrier, I can get.
I landed on Tello, T-E-L-L-O, and I think it's like $3 a month.
You get no minutes, and like five gigs of data, or like two gigs of data,
something unlimited text, and that's all I want.
It was unlimited text.
You can't make like a five-minute phone call or something every month, just for testing.
But the way I got that set up, and I'll probably do a separate thing,
it's called Mighty Text.
Now Mighty Text, you would think you could use Google messages to see all of your MFA stuff,
but Google messages by default, blocks, Google authentication, sure fine,
and also Microsoft authentication.
So it says, please view this on your device.
That's not what I want.
The only reason I want a phone is so that I have a carrier number,
and then everything else is going to be, you know, internet-based.
So now with Mighty Text, the free version,
I can receive up to 10 or 100 text messages a month for MFA requests
to a real number over the internet with my Google Gmail, my main Gmail.
Now, you know, there's risks there, whatever.
If somebody's in your Gmail, then they can pretty much MFA to everything,
if they know your process.
But the idea there is that now, whatever somebody asks for a phone number,
I'm never going to get a failure, and then have to bind MFA to a phone
that I don't even have control over.
So if I leave the organization or whatever, I get a new phone,
and as a phone number, I'm locked out of everything.
So I've been solely but surely most of my stuff is transferred over to this new number
that can be completely digital.
So I just leave it running and leave it turned on,
and it's an old, old Samsung phone, whatever,
with a custom ROM on it, and I just let it sit there and marinate.
And hopefully, try to check on it, make sure it hasn't turned itself off.
As far as remote stuff, that's about it.
I have WLED for the House lights.
That's all on the same network.
I did have everything completely segmented by service.
So basically, every single service had to be had a security evaluation,
and each service was limited to only the things that it needed to talk to.
So, for example, like S&B on the server was locked down to only computers
that would need to talk to S&B over whatever,
which turns out to be a lot.
I was thinking for some of the flex services I thought there was maybe before services on the flex server.
And when I was running Cody, I realized it ended up being like 18 different services
that required to work for all this crap to work.
And you realize, oh, well, that's when I'm something on port, you know, in 1945.
And, oh, what is this? How is this work? Oh, well, none of that works because this works.
And I tried to get a Google streaming Chromecast to work.
And it uses that broadcast protocol.
That sounds like PNP, but it's not UPB.
And I kept having issues with it.
And I finally gave up on it because it was the old version and switched to fire stick.
And fire stick is a lot easier to set up the jailing or secure environment.
Because the way I had the firewalling set up, it was like, it would detect that it was on a local network.
But I had the way I had the firewall set up.
It couldn't...
It would say, oh, I'm on a local network, I can talk directly to the fire stick.
And I had a set up where you couldn't.
You had to go through the essentially DNS or the router to get to the correct place and had that traffic routed.
So instead of talking directly to the IP, I had it talking to my domain.
So that way, everything was like external and everything came in the same direction.
And it would get all upset that I couldn't talk to itself even though it's on the same network.
That's pretty much it.
I hope that kind of helps somebody else.
It's a lot of rambling and kind of off the cuff stuff.
But I'll say that's my setup that I've had pretty good.
I think I have a YouTube video about how to do the green screen stuff.
That's based on some other guys video.
And it works pretty decently.
You can replay and load different profiles.
Of your web game.
So there's not really need to do an episode on that.
I just have a YouTube video that basically sets all that up for you.
Other than that, that's pretty much it.
Hope this helps somebody else.
And if you're listening to this, you are why you're still listening.
But if you are, this is probably an emergency episode or a, what do they call it?
So feel free to reach out to me.
Do an interview.
I would love to interview for HPR.
And if you want to do an episode, let me know.
People's stories are interesting.
And there's a couple of folks I've got down the, down the pipeline here to hopefully give us some good stories.
But anyways, take it easy and record a show.
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