Experimental demonstration of energy harvesting from the sky using the negative illumination effect of a semiconductor photodiode: Applied Physics Letters: Vol 114, No 16

This is some seriously cool technology!

via Experimental demonstration of energy harvesting from the sky using the negative illumination effect of a semiconductor photodiode: Applied Physics Letters: Vol 114, No 16

How to fix Error 0x80300024 when installing Windows

So, trying a fresh install of Windows onto the second of two drives installed on this new computer. (The second drive was an SSD)

Every time I’d try to install, Windows returned error 0x80300024.

Fortunately, this fix was simple. There was an MSR partition on the first drive. Deleted the MSR partition and that let Windows install onto the second drive!

Summary: A partition on the first drive was preventing Windows installing to a second drive.

PSA: Mixing Modular PSU Cables Can Kill Components

via PSA: Mixing Modular PSU Cables Can Kill Components | GamersNexus – Gaming PC Builds & Hardware Benchmarks

Found this to be true! I had two modular power supplies, both from EVGA. Thought they would have standardized their PSU layout.. but nope.

That magic blue smoke came out of the dvd drive so fast…

Dexter Haslem’s WiFi Tweaks

Windows 10 Wifi Tweaks

Wifi has never been great on windows 10, especially after the latest ‘fall creator update’. One of my wifi cards no longer works at all, despite working on this same exact version of windows before a clean install!

Anyway, I’ve found a few ways that seem to make the wifi slightly more consistent, so here they are.

STEP ZERO: WIFI ADAPTER NAME
We will need the short name of the wifi adapter and the easiest way is with **netsh*.

To list wlan settings run the following in a cmd or powershell (Win+X):

netsh wlan show settings

PS C:\Users\Dexter> netsh wlan show settings

Wireless LAN settings
———————
Show blocked networks in visible network list: No

Only use GP profiles on GP-configured networks: No

Hosted network mode allowed in WLAN service: Yes

Allow shared user credentials for network authentication: Yes

Block period: Not Configured.

Auto configuration logic is disabled on interface “Wi-Fi”
MAC randomization not available on interface Wi-Fi
Look for the quoted part after interface, in this case my adapter name is Wi-Fi. Alternatively, you can go to

Control Panel -> Network Connections

And that will have the same name. We’ll need it for the rest of the steps.

FIRST: WIFI AUTOCONFIG ON/OFF BATS
Save these two in batch files so you can easily run them as needed:

WIFI_AUTO_ON.bat netsh wlan set autoconfig enabled=yes interface=”Wi-Fi”

WIFI_AUTO_OFF.bat netsh wlan set autoconfig enabled=no interface=”Wi-Fi”

Replace “Wi-Fi” with the adapter name from the first step!

Now you can right click on WIFI_AUTO_OFF.BAT and run as admin before playing an online game. For me, this seems to help with the persistent, roughly 1 minute apart ping spikes.

SECOND: DISABLE TUNING HEURISTICS
This one is a bit harder to quantify but in my highly non-scientific testing, my ping appeared to be more stable overall after turning off auto tuning. Note this is machine wide and seems to be related to TCP window sizes. I’ve encounted no side effects but..

netsh int tcp set heuristics disabled
netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled
netsh int tcp set global rss=enabled
Disable dat heuristic tuning

Hopefully this helps others eek out a remotely usable wifi experience on windows.

April 12, 2018
NetBSD cross-compiling

via Dexter Haslem