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Corroded @leminal.space

What technical issues did you ignore for an extended period of time?

On my old phone I had an issue with the proximity sensor and front facing camera. This led me to holding my phone backwards to take photos and being unable to hang up phone calls.

I think I put up with this for a year and a half.

I did end up figuring out the issue with the proximity sensor but opening up my phone to reconnect the camera module was too much effort for me.

98 comments

  • Used an OG Google pixel until about a year ago. Had to replace the battery a couple times but otherwise still mostly ran like it was brand new.

    Have a Samsung Galaxy. Screen cracked by itself several months after getting it, however I was busy, didn't have time to take it in and got used to it. Now the warranty is expired so I can't get the screen replaced anymore. I cope by believing they wouldn't have replaced it and would have told me it was somehow my fault despite using a fairly heavy case and not being a phone-dropper/slammer.

  • Oof, there's many.

    Let's start with my older phone (Moto G5s Plus). Right since I got it, the camera focus was broken. When trying to focus, it would just vibrate and make rattling noise. HOWEVER, I found a "solution". Hitting it just right from the back and shaking it side-to-side worked. I used it like that for 4 years.

    My current phone (Poco X3 Pro)has many software bugs. Some I probably don't remember as getting around them is a muscle memory.
    Let's start with audio. The left and right microphones are swapped. Thus I flip it around (left-handed) when recording videos. This actually affects a few different MIUI-powered phones as I found out.
    Wallpaper bug:
    This started appearing since I got my phone back with MIUI global instead of EEA after both MOBO replacements (yes, and both were in warranty). The lockscreen wallpaper gets stretched top to bottom after reboot, but isn't affected by resolution. Homescreen wallpaper gets stretched if resolution is different than native, otherwise it gets zoomed in.
    "Fix:"

    1. For homescreen, create a black rectangle with resolution of 1080x2400 and insert the desired wallpaper into it, but slightly smaller, in center.
    2. Set it as wallpaper
    3. Reboot the phone
    4. When asked for PIN, lock the screen first, wake it up, and just then enter the PIN. This fixes the lockscreen wallpaper.
    5. Unlock the device and stay on homescreen
    6. Pull down the notification bar, decrease and then increase brightness

    Done! The wallpaper now has correct aspect ratio, it's just a bit fuzzy due to upscaling.
    Images created in Termux not visible to Google Photos:
    Go into Google Files, rename the file to something else, then change it back. Done!

    Files from Termux counting into "System storage":
    Same fix as above.

    Uploads to OneDrive from Android crashing:
    The solution is to use Firefox in Termux. Yes, desktop Firefox.

    Poco X3 Pro screen not rotating:
    The "solution" is opening Accelerometer and Gyroscope in PhyBox

    MTP reporting different timestamps:
    I do backups with rsync. Unfortunately, I did so over MTP, not realizing the timestamps are adjusted in some odd way. Now, unless I wish to re-do the whole backup, I have to stick to MTP. Unfortunately, I had issues with gvfs on Manjaro, so I can't get CLI access to MTP.
    Solution: Use Linux Mint for backups over MTP.

    Memory card slot not working in Manjaro for 2 years:
    Solution: None. Some update brought the drivers after 2 years.

    School network being unrealiable:
    Solution: Connecting to both Wi-Fi and mobile data at once and running my own HTTP proxy server in Termux.
    Warning: The username and password isn't encrypted in case of HTTP proxy. The proxy will likely also allow access to localhost by default. I'd recommend to null-route those requests. There may be more security issues.

    ProtonVPN client being mostly broken on Arch:
    Solution: Connecting to ProtonVPN on my phone and running proxy server on it.

    School proxy server limiting network speed based on MAC addresses:
    This one was used long time in past and kept as a backup. Unfortunately, it was needed again. It limits the speed to around 0.2Mbps if the MAC is unknown, which among other devices includes newer school PCs.
    Terrible solution: Cloning MAC of one of the least used ancient desktops and using that on my laptop. I also bought RTL8152B USB Ethernet adapter, and burned that MAC into its eFuse memory (permanent). Pretty convenient.

    Ok, I guess that's enough.

  • My lovley Logitech gamer headset from like 2014 started to loose volume overtime on the right ear. So I just manually adjusted the volume of the right ear to about 60% while the other one had 39%. Over the years that gap grew bigger and bigger. I still use them but they sit at a configuration which now changes every week or so. The right ear sits now a 132% and the left on 39%.

  • My laptop (Framework 12) sometimes does not start. It seems the hard drive is just not found, or the part used for decryption. I just restart at most 3 times then it works.

    I have automated, tested, daily backups in case something goes boom.

  • My hard drive making dying noises.

    I didn't lose anything though. (except money on a new one)

  • My old note 9 stopped charging via the USB port. Ended up having to get a wireless charging dock. Worked so well that I still use it instead of wired charging.

  • I had a car with a leaky radiator. I would fill it up with water in the morning and drive to work. If I didn't it would start overheating. I don't remember filling it again on the way back. Put up with that for weeks. I think I only got it fixed because the weather warmed up and it was no longer sufficient to cool it. Or maybe it was the same problem as the heating not working and after a few weeks of wearing multiple layers and getting absolutely frozen I finally got it fixed. They may have been two separate issues/occasions, this was around 2003.

  • I didn't ignore it, but I did have to put up with it for months:

    Discord would just never recognize that my PC was being left idle, so I would never get notifications on my phone, which constantly left me gaslighting myself into thinking my friends were ignoring me, or just didn't have any reason to message me all day.

    I contacted Discord support at least once over it, and they couldn't do anything to help me figure it out, since I had all my settings set properly to have it switch over to mobile notifications after 1 minute of inactivity.

    After a shit ton of googling, I found out that certain devices, namely third-party xbox controllers, could cause a PC to never actually go idle, and then I found a tool to help me check if my PC is idle, started unplugging things one-by-one, and found out that my 8bitdo Arcade controller was the thing keeping my PC from going idle.

    The issue popped up with an etsy-bought Guitar Hero controller further down the line as well, but thankfully by then I knew how to troubleshoot the issue. Bonus points, my new fighting game controllers don't have this problem.

  • I didn't add a power switch to my 3D printer for nearly three years. Wasn't that bad, I had it plugged into a power strip and would use the switch for that to turn the printer on and off.

    I'm not sure my laptop's discrete GPU works anymore. which is fine for the away mission web browser machine it currently is, hell if I need to do graphical work or something I can ssh tunnel to my desktop.

    I used an old Dell monitor with a column of dead pixels for a shockingly long time. Thing just had a line of red down it about 1/3 of the way from the right edge. Ghosting and other artifacts have started to show. I still use it as a backup-to-a-backup on an old machine but it is out of main desktop service now.

  • I don't know if ignoring is the word for it, but I don't trust for shit the dashboard warnings in my car. I'm pretty sure they don't report issues. I haven't tried to have it checked, but the car is old and I try to pay attention in some other ways.

    • Especially in older cars, the warnings usually are fully legit - as in, there is no software stack in-between that could be buggy.

      However, it's important to note that quite often the probe fails before the car. Meaning that if the oil probe is signaling oil level too low, it might actually be the probe or its wiring that is damaged. This shows up as the same error because hey, it is rather important for the average user to have that warning should the oil level actually be too low, so they make "I cannot know" look as scary as "It's broken" just to make sure you go to the repair shop with that.

      • I'm not sure what it is but I've gotten no warnings when oil levels were dangerous, I only noticed because I checked the oil stick. Anyway the temperature gauge seems to be working and I keep an eye on it as much or more than the fuel.

  • Back when I was still using Ubuntu MATE about half a year ago or so, I started having this really odd problem where signing into my account after a reboot would bring me to a blank screen with only my desktop background and nothing else. No taskbar, no panels, not even the cursor if I recall correctly.

    Some furious Googling brought me to a serverfault thread that suggested that switching to tty7 with CTRL + ALT + F7 followed by ALT + F1 to switch back would alleviate it... and it did! But the problem returned on every login.

    So for about six months I just had that as part of my routine on any reboot. Log it, switch to tty7, switch back to tty1. It was stupid and I hated it. Mostly because I didn't understand what I was doing or why it fixed anything.

    On a tangent, this is precisely the thing that makes people intimidated by Linux, I think... it's not so much the inability to do things. Rather, even when you are given a way on a silver platter, you don't feel like you're really in control because you don't know what the black magic incantation really does. It's a truly horrible feeling.

    I never did resolve the problem. I eventually nuked that OS and paved over its ashes with Debian Testing + KDE Plasma 5, and I haven't looked back.

  • Right now, my phone's front camera is busted since 1 and a 1/2 to 2 years now.

    But in the past, usually issues with my PC. First was the CPU or my motherboard, I still don't know which one was the problem, but it would freeze and I needed to hard reset. Ended up changing both, so the issue went away.

    Then it was my GPU, it would crash frequently on some titles and had heavy stuttering. It would downclock extremely for a brief moment all the time, but only when at 99% usage. I had to hard reset all the time too, had to RMA it twice before the issue was fixed.

    And lastly it was my SSD. I still have this 1TB nvme, where again it would just freeze and require a hard reset. I knew it was the SSD because there was some indication on the logs of my system. I ended up buying another one, but I should still RMA the old one because I think it's still under warranty, just need to check it.

98 comments