HeyLaughingBoy

Memories. A long time ago I used to sell a little board that plugged into a printer port and added a power driver to the outputs and some buffering to the inputs so they were 12V-tolerant.

Forgot about that until you mentioned it.

[sigh] I've lost track of the number of times that I've suggested that instead of an ESP32 with small TFT screen for some web or BLE enabled project that doesn't require any I/O, you could just use a cheap phone or tablet and make life much easier. I'm downvoted every single time. I guess some people take pride in doing things the hard way.

I live on a small farm a few miles from the closest town. It's not totally pitch dark, but on a clear night you can see the Milky Way and sometimes on my way back inside after doing evening chores, I'll just stand there staring up at the sky. It never gets old.

Does feel a bit eerie on moonless nights when the coyotes start howling though.

Part of the difficulty in understanding the problem for others is that they simply don't drive very far, very often. Our pickup has a range of over 750 miles with a full tank. It's not unusual for the tank to have to be filled two days back to back: my wife drives a lot. When you're driving that much, the last thing you want to do is stop if you don't have to.

Even in peacetime, training accidents kill an expected number of military personnel each year.

Or, you know, just use a different license?

I can't possibly take this at face value since it's obvious that people (businesses) pay others many tens or hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars to build software for them. So, what do you really mean?

I've been holding on to a couple of fanless industrial PCs as much for their cases (I could drive my truck over one, and it wouldn't even make a dent) as for any possible future uses. As time moves on, being able to use them looks less and less likely.

My experience with hardware engineers, at least IRL, is very different. They love to talk about their work. However, I used to be an EE so that probably helps.

As for Reddit, there's a lot of "bury head in sand and problem will go away" behavior when it comes to AI. People are understandably worried about their jobs, but they're certainly not doing themselves any favors by downplaying AI or looking for "tech niches where AI isn't yet."

Copperhead is very interesting. I do some embedded systems consulting on the side, but I've never enjoyed PCB layout very much. I briefly investigated using AI for it the last time I had to do a board, but it wasn't very helpful.

"I got five kids to feed"

It's funny. As a SW dev working on medical devices, I've done at least two catheter ablation machines that I can think of, but I never knew the specifics of exactly what problem it solves. I mean, I obviously know in detail what the device is doing, just not the why.

And it's specific to just that type of device: anything else I've worked on that I can remember ATM, I know what they are used for.

Huh. I was actually thinking about him a few days ago. Is he still among the living?

I remember posting on PM about 15 years ago asking how to fix a mistake I kept making and he gently smacked me on the head and basically said just learn to do it right in the first place. Which was really the only good answer!

I had a co-worker who was an experienced software developer but had never worked on a system that interfaced with the physical world before.

For quite a while, he hated having to test on real hardware because all sorts of failure modes that he couldn't predict: belts stretching, mechanisms hitting each other or not lining up properly and losing position, etc. kept happening and interfering with his nice "this will only take 15 minutes to test" estimates, making it an all-afternoon affair.

OTOH, it was that unpredictability and having to deal with weird stuff that I liked about programming embedded systems.

That's not a valid comparison.

A Jira log is not part of a Quality Management System (QMS). An aircraft maintenance log is. If you fake data in the QMS, software or not, for a regulated industry, I can assure you that it won't be taken lightly by the regulators.

Try forging the software validation test records for that airplane's flight control system and see what happens.

I don't think you guys are really disagreeing with each other. Just that one is using a colloquial definition of "missing" and the other, a technical one.

This really made me think about what got me interested in programming and I have no idea. In HS, I had a Physics teacher who had a TRS-80 (Model 3, I think) and he would let us use it during Lunch for whatever. But I was already interested at that point. We had a "programming" class where we programmed some kind of computer in some unknown language, but again, I was already interested in programming before then: that was just the outlet.

Really have me wondering now.

To paraphrase what I recently said to someone I haven't seen in 25 years: one of the greatest gifts that ageing has given me is increased self awareness.

I think this is just a Jira/bitbucket thing. If you add a feature branch, that's how the naming convention defaults. I've been seeing it for years.

PayPal? I sign in all the time. If you're referring to the popup to add a new authentication method, you can just escape past it.

I was confused by this (because I rarely carry cash) until I saw your response below. I think OP might be using credit/debit card interchangeably? I don't use my credit cards unless I have to, but my debit card is used daily.

It's probably mostly labor cost. An 8x10 shed kit starts at under $US2k but if you pay someone to assemble it, including electrical, the price will go up very quickly.

I know someone who builds horse shelters that are larger than that, but a fraction of the cost, delivered. I've actually been thinking that if I wanted an outside office, I'd ask him to custom build one with the fourth wall closed (horse shelters are 3-sided) and I'd insulate and sheetrock it myself. IIRC he did our 10x30 one for about $2k, including delivery.

Around here, the cutoff for needing a permit for a "permanent structure" is 10'x12' which is a pretty good sized outside office.

I guarantee you that it's always been the case.

I'm sorry, but why is this a surprise?

That "just" is really doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Economics is what makes this country work. If converting to renewables makes more money, that's what will happen and the people making the money will find a way to justify it politically.

I was surprised by this too. From a background in writing code to control precision pumps, I have a good idea of what 50 µL looks like and it seemed like an awfully small amount. But I don't know how concentrated the oil is.

FWIW, I had an Indian co-worker who took peppermint oil frequently and said that it was very good for his upset stomach.

To be clear: the question isn't illegal. What is illegal is using it to discriminate against a protected class, so as a result, no interviewer with half a brain will ask those questions.

Usually not if you already have a day job. But that's completely orthogonal to the original statement.

Dunno about that. I live in the US. I can start a small business today and the only thing I'd have to do differently is file an additional form on my taxes next year. Yes, that's a simplification that doesn't apply to every situation, but it is still completely accurate.

So I can go out and kill my neighbor without having to worry about consequences, then? I mean, just say the word: he's been pissing me off recently.

Do you have an actual use for them? I might have a few tubes of Z80-CTC & SIO in the basement if I haven't given them all away yet.