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IndrekRon Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M

I know someone who listened Terry Pratchett's "Wachen! Wachen!" audiobook on Spotify while living in Germany for few years. It was so well narrated that he also acquired some peculiarities of local dialects used by specific characters in the book. Locals in Bavaria were quite surprised of a foreigner speaking such language.

IndrekRon Xerox to acquire Lexmark

Electronics can handle quite a lot. I often rinse PCBs in boiling RO water (after ultrasonic cleaning with speciality detergents for flux removal) post rework. After this, drying at 125°C for a while to get those nice and crispy again. You do not want to increase the temperature above 100°C too fast, however, to avoid “popcorning” — little steam explosions due to absorbed moisture.

IndrekRon OpenERV

The direction of flow is reversed every 30s. The cycle is short enough that due to the thermal mass there is thermal gradient within the heat-exchanger. So it effectively works as counter-flow heat exchanger. Same principle (but continuous flow) is used in rotor ERV: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_recovery_ventilation#Ther...

Heat exchanger there is usually an extruded ceramic grid (ERV) or rolled corrugated aluminum (functions closer to HRV than ERV)

IndrekRon Nokia 5110 – Back from the Dead

5110 was fantastic. I did not realize this before, but about 10 years ago needed a replacement phone quickly and had an old 5110 in storage. Charged up, powered up, switched on and in less than 10 seconds could make a call. Fantastic booting speed, very fast phone.

Found a video where the boot-up speed/usage are shown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d40KwKvCGZo

IndrekRon The marvelous disappearing capacitor

Have used that JFET trick on large area photodiode amplifiers in a satellite based radiation detector. Works quite well.

Also quite similar is actively driving the shield used in many high impedance sensor circuits (most notably capacitive touch sensing) to reduce the parasitic capacitance you would get when ground is used for the E-field shield:

https://www.ti.com/lit/an/snoa926a/snoa926a.pdf

IndrekRon Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family

Quite a few ex-soviet states, who were independent countries before being occupied by USSR, will not agree with this.

IndrekRon Apple sued for abandoning on-device CSAM monitoring tech in 2021

https://archive.ph/1xCvh

IndrekRon Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

Ireland beg to differ.

IndrekRon Forced to upgrade

If the computer here is 20 years old, then we are talking about PowerPC based Mac. So two transitions over this devices lifetime: PowerPC -> Intel -> ARM.

IndrekRon Windows 11 ISOs for ARM64 devices

I have used ARM Windows 11 with Parallels on my M1 MacBook Air to run x86 windows apps (Altium Designer) for last 30 months. Works like a charm.

IndrekRon Functional ultrasound through the skull

You are correct. 22*1.4 + 10 is, my bad.

IndrekRon Functional ultrasound through the skull

22 dB/cm/MHz, 1.4cm, 10 MHz gives ~40dB, which happens to be 4-orders of magnitude difference in power. Not sure how they got 14 orders of magnitude for the attenuation.

IndrekRon New iMac with M4

First iMac was released in 1998.

IndrekRon Fraudsters steal 22 tonnes of high-value cheddar

300000£/22000kg≈13.6£/kg

Not sure what they mean by “high value” here.

IndrekRon BYD EV teardown in Japan reveals secrets to its affordability

Kei cars are a Japanese thing. Mostly unavailable in Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_car

IndrekRon Researchers Find Cannibalized Victim of 19th-Century Arctic Voyage

Related threads recently:

Identification of officer from Sir John franklin's Northwest Passage expedition https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41723315

Franklin expedition captain who died in 1848 was cannibalized by survivors https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41706216

IndrekRon Ask HN: Can you recommend a PCB designer?

HN seems to be a really funny place for this question. You do not see many “Can anybody recommend a JS developer?” style questions here and monthly “Who is hiring” thread seems more appropriate for this.

Disclaimer: am professionally a PCB designer/EE for last 22 years.

IndrekRon Amusing Ourselves to Death (2014)

(2014)

IndrekRon Leak claims RTX 5090 has 600W TGP, RTX 5080 hits 400W

I have been running 4090 with 13900KS (both water cooled with AIO) for 18 months now. Typical power consumption during use is around 70..80W (as measured from the wall). Max I have managed to press for under stress testing is 660W. System’s 850W power supply feels just fine, should have got a smaller one.

IndrekRon Study links bananas, oats and yoghurt to greater diabetes risk in susceptible

Abstract for the dtudy with more details: https://easddistribute.m-anage.com/from.storage?image=_7kskX...

IndrekRon Computers are amazing. So why is software so terrible?

The reference here is to “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Lecture

IndrekRon Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

In most countries, including US and all EU member states, one can legally fly with firearms and ammunition. There are some rules that must be followed. Sure, you can not take them to the cabin.

IndrekRon Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

> Farming drones aren’t all airborne. I guess the ones driving around on the ground might be called robots though? At least in English.

As far as the etymology goes, back in the days a drone was a male bee, so by default airborne. You can trace that meaning back two thousand years or so. It was first used to mean remote controlled aircraft in 1946.

Of course, languages evolve and now it can mean any untethered robot; air, land or sea.

IndrekRon Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

Unfortunately machine rental math does not work out for most of the specialised farming equipment in areas with changing seasons — when combine harvesters are needed (at the harvest time), they are needed for everyone within the same time window.

IndrekRon Ask HN: Why do message queue-based architectures seem less popular now?

For example MQTT finds plenty of use with IoT device communication.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MQTT

IndrekRon PiDP-10 – a modern replica of the PDP-10

Used to write MSP430 (a Texas Instruments MCU family that was designed and manufactured in Freising, Germany in ‘90s) assembly language for a while more than two decades ago. It was mentioned with pride that the instruction set is based on PDP-11.

IndrekRon The Backrooms of the Internet Archive

It seems there is actual standard behind it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_rule_for_Camera_File_sy...

IndrekRon Feynman Computer Science Lecture – Hardware, Software, Heuristics (1985) [video]

Listen again. He describes both — single big ship the first year and many small chips the next.

IndrekRon How many photons are received per bit transmitted from Voyager 1?

/at room temperature/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson%E2%80%93Nyquist_noise

IndrekRon Unlocking the Duron and Athlon using the pencil (2007)

Estonian word is “gaasipedaal”, which pretty much means “gas pedal”. Gasoline is “bensiin”, no relation to that. The word for pedal comes from accelerator regulating gas-mixture valve (throttle) in carburettor. “Gas-mixture” here is air mixed with atomised fuel.