Like other customers, my Lenovo 9i laptop shipped with a manufacturing defect that affects the WiFi signal, causing very low signal strength and WiFi dropouts. You would not expect this kind of poor WiFI performance for a laptop that costs over £1500.00. It is a shame Lenovo are not proactively reaching out to users to address this simple manufacturing defect.

Luckily it is fairly easy to remedy by removing the bottom of the laptop, and subsequently removing 3 screws.

Attribution

I did not discoverer repair, the person who found the repair is jstuart830 on Lenovos forums: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-Yoga-Series-Notebooks/i9-weak-wi-fi-signal/m-p/5056282?page=5

Thanks so much jstuart830! ⭐

Update: I know this tool was very popular but due to Hive changing their API access it no longer works. If there is a simple way to access the API in future I will make a new tool. Please do email me if they add API access in a straightforward way without various workarounds.

Recently I was learning React and wanted to create a useful app that served a purpose, rather than only making tutorial apps that had limited functionality.

I’ve had a small script running on my VPS for awhile checking the temperature my Hive thermostat is set to, then turning it down to a more reasonable temperature if it is too high. I thought I’d take this script and remake it for wider use.

The react app has two versions: local and cloud

The local versions runs purely inside the browser, with API calls going direct to Hive. The cloud version stores the users email and password, making the requests to Hives API from the VPS.

Please feel free to try it out and let me know what you think. All the source code is public on github.

This should help people who require some of the functionality listed here: https://hivehome.uservoice.com/forums/223103-product-ideas/suggestions/6039103-landlord-mode

site: hive.thomascoward.co.uk

I have used Fiverr a few times to get various graphics and designs done. I often spend awhile going through different designers looking for an art style that I like.

Recently I stumbled across a user who does animal vector designs so I got one done of my dog. I am really impressed with the work that andirkz did on fiverr!

Click here for 20% off your first fiverr order

HyperX are a well known brand for a wide range of PC and gaming accessories such as mice, keyboard and headsets. Recently my HyperX Cloud II microphone stopped working, however they were over 2 years old so I thought it was an acceptable period of time for them to last as they were around £60.00.

I decided to try a couple of the newer and more ‘premium’ headsets from Hyper X as the Cloud II was getting on a bit and I didn’t want to replace it with the same headset.

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Getting started

This article assumes you have at least a small amount of Linux knowledge and know how to enter basic commands into putty.

First of all your will need root access to your VPS or dedicated server with Debian 9 (stretch) installed. It is recommend you start with a clean copy of Debian 9 when following this guide. This guide assumes you have root access, therefore sudo is omitted. If you do not have root access, prefix each command with sudo.

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Using Google trends is a good way to see how a topic changes in popularity over time. This is a quite a naive measurement so it’s more for fun than serious statistics.

Note: The graphs are not relative to each other, such as Reddit is not searched more than Facebook, they are only relative to each other when included on the same graph.

Reddit

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Cloudflare released access to their DNS service on the 1st of April 2018. I’ve been using it on my router since it was released. I’ve decided to run some basic tests on the DNS popular services available to the general public.

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The performance and features of the Asus Dual WAN varies per build that Asus releases, I recommend using the latest stable build released by Merlin, though in the screenshots below I am using 384.3_alpha3-g0462c71.

You can find Merlins builds here: https://asuswrt.lostrealm.ca/

Beware that Merlin has no control over Dual WAN, so issues will need to be reported directly to Asus.

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The Netgear DM200 is relatively simple to set up for use with BT VDSL (BT fibre products). The DM200 is a modem + router combo but does not have wireless access.

TL;DR: DM200 is very slow to setup the first time. Change it to Modem only mode and configure your chosen router with ISP settings.

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It is possible to use the BT Smart Hub (aka homehub 6) with your own third party router. However, if you connect the BT Smart Hub straight to your router without changing some of the settings you will most likely encounter issues.

I won’t list the reasons that you would want to use a third party router, for me I wanted to use it in a Dual WAN setup with my Asus RT-AC68U.

There are 4 steps things that need to be done to ensure good compatibility. The steps are as follows:

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