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adamrmcd

395 karma · joined September 28, 2011

DevOperationalizationing all the things!

adam [at] array [dot] org

http://twitter.com/#!/adamrmcd

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adamrmcd··on Turning my ESP32 into a DNS sinkhole to fight doomscrolling
Neat idea, but my takeaway is I had no idea that DNS also runs on UDP/53.. I always thought it was TCP only! #TIL

The author cites it as performance reasons, but at this scale, even the uplink to cloudflare, would be negligible, no?

adamrmcd··on Have you ever seen soldering this close? [video]
Using a hotplate is like driving with one eye closed. Sure you’ll get there, but your accuracy will suffer!

Though I’ve had many a SOICs magically realign on the hot plate — they were pretty forgiving — it’s not worth it to run without proper temperature profiling, even if it’s from a hacked toaster oven :)

adamrmcd··on I'm So Old: Web Edition
The 1x1.gif was the most versatile and common image on all my websites.

Perfect alignment of text and images every time!

adamrmcd··on Ask HN: What simple web apps do you wish existed? Seeking ideas for sample apps
I've always wanted to build an "I told you so" webapp.

Something that would store phrases associated with people with an incremental counter. Obviously the list of phrases, people, and counts are unique to the user.

This way I can say to my daughter, "I've told you <checks webapp> 46 times now to clean up your room!"

Dumb, but fun :)

adamrmcd··on Internal pull-up resistors are insufficient for I2C
I am not an expert, but I think it depends on your MCU. (Some may have better implementation of a soft-pull-up than others.)

I've only implemented i2c on esp32-s2, and left the pullup footprints unpopulated at first. Eventually I came to the same conclusion and put two 10k resistors on and called it a day. Cost was negligible.

adamrmcd··on Ask HN: Who Remembers “Abort. Retry. Fail?”
You randomly try changing every IRQ jumper?
adamrmcd··on Ask HN: Who Remembers “Abort. Retry. Fail?”
A random thought from the same era popped in my head a few days ago:

> What was the difference between extended memory and expanded memory?

10yo me never did figure out why Kings Quest would play with one and not the other.

adamrmcd··on Creating a pick and place control board with the RP2040
I am absolutely loving the author's explanation on WHY each component was selected, placed, and caveats.

The interactive schematics and gerbers are subtle but very effective.

Overall a very clear design and tone I really need to follow for my own PCB projects.

adamrmcd··on Ask HN: Is there a good reason for disallowing some characters from a password?
Unless you're manually injecting 0x08 into a database record, isn't it your keyboard that interprets your backspace into the UI layer. There's no way to type a backspace without literally pressing backspace :)

Regarding the null, if it's C based, theoretically your password just stops there. All other chars after that would be ignored.

Now I wonder, what would other non-C languages do if they see 0x00 in a string?

adamrmcd··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (August 2022)
Coincidentally, I was just looking at backups from my BBS from the same era.

I wish I had a way to retrieve the data, assuming it's even still good.

I remember using a parallel port driven magnetic tape drive to record them. Probably a device that tar(1) was originally designed for :)

What medium did you use?

adamrmcd··on Ask HN: How can I get data on watt-hours power use per day from my MacBook?
Wow, this utility is insane.

Looks like some raw data the OP can use is available here:

  ioreg -l -r -n AppleSmartBattery
adamrmcd··on Show HN: IoT device to warn you of a supernova hours before Earth is destroyed
Docker container.
adamrmcd··on Ask HN: Why is Perl considered a bad language?
20 years ago this was my go-to language. Its CLI was very easy to develop your own system to combine grep, sed, awk, uniq, etc into awesome one liners, and for producing more complex file and network manipulation techniques.

One huge challenge I had was the inability to read other people's Perl code. There were dozens of ways to solve the same problem, and I had extreme difficulty reconciling my own understanding of "perl" with other people's code.

adamrmcd··on Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
I loved playing The Witness with my daughter.

"Where are the bad guys?" "No one is here, honey. Just us."

Reminds me I should revisit Myst and Riven.

adamrmcd··on Plain Text Calendar
Often I use cal to find the previous or next month. I never understood why two parameters it assumes `cal mm yyyy` but when one parameter is provided assumes `cal yyyy` instead of `cal mm`.

ie, I just want to see April of this year: but `cal 4` returns Jan-Dec 0004 CE <!>

`cal -3` is perfect!

adamrmcd··on E Ink Gallery 3
There are full updates and partial updates. The former involves refreshing the whole display multiple times to remove ghosting, and a complete redraw. The latter is a targeted change at specific coordinates, which typically involves going from white to black. Very fast, but it's a single point/block at a time.
adamrmcd··on Ask HN: Heavy Metal Music for Programming?
I've been on a Jazz kick for the past few months -- cocktail jazz, cooking jazz, lounge jazz playlists on spotify -- but it's starting to lose its effect coding.

Animals as Leaders is exactly the tangent I needed. Thanks!

adamrmcd··on Ask HN: Why do Americans speak about family by their names, like we know them?
Canadian here, and I do this too.

Part of the reason is that it's like passively introducing the person, or reminding the listener of the person's name, without the listener needing to ask.

I have a horrible time remembering names, esp. co-workers' spouce/kids names. I appreciate it when they do this.

EDIT: Western Canadian, and Shauna does this too :)

adamrmcd··on Why isn't HN plagued with bots like some other websites?
Now I'm curious. What is the overall population of HN?
adamrmcd··on ᐊᐣᑕᔚᐣᐦᐃ ᐁᐏᒋᑭᐍ ᐅᑕᐱᓇᒪᐣ ᓂᒪᒪ ᐅᑎᔑᑭᔑᐍᐏᐣ ᒷᔦ ᐃᐡᑿᓭᐠ
The CBC has never done this before: posted a complete article in an indigenous language on the main English site.

An awesome read that brings home the point of the people trying to keep their native languages alive.

adamrmcd··on In Moscow, McDonald's packs up, radio falls silent and the brain drain begins
I was in Moscow in 2008 and one of my fondest memories was visiting GUM (pronounced "goom") right in Red Square. Three or four stories of shops ranging from perfume to electronics to butchers.

I remember arguing with my mom loudly in English in its halls, and kids would come up to us to practice their english and try to help us :)

At the Motorola store in GUM I bought an unlocked Motorola ROKR with Cyrillic T9 keys, for the equivalent of US$200.

Our tour guide smiled on how much GUM was such a social hub for Russians since the 1920s. I couldn't comment on how the haves and have-nots viewed the location, or what it stood for over the years or today, but it was obvious to me its social status.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUM_(department_store)

adamrmcd··on Ask HN: How does one go about bringing a hardware product to market?
I'm currently facing similar challenges/goals. I've found the book by Alan Cohen to be very helpful, even to increase the coverage of what I know I don't know.

> Prototype to Product: A Practical Guide for Getting to Market

Highly recommend it

adamrmcd··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (March 2022)
Wow, first time I've ever seen a vacuum fluorescent display integrated resume minigame :D

The detail here is amazing. Well done

adamrmcd··on Dip Switch USB Stick
A form of two-factor authentication? (Something you have + something you know.)

Simply set the value to match a rotating 8-bit token and plug-in to login :)

adamrmcd··on Google relents: Legacy G Suite users will be able to migrate to free accounts
> Naturally, this move led to a huge outcry outside (and apparently inside) Google, and now, the company seems to be backing down from most of the harsher terms of the initial announcement. [..] > the company is surprised by how many people this change affected.

I would expect that this system is too complicated to simply run `select count(*) from users where status = 'legacy'` but I'm certain they knew exactly how many free-loading "businesses" would be affected.

Too late for me, already started my migration to Fastmail.

The article does address paid content, which is good, but my larger concern is still with my Cloud Identity. I've used my custom domain under Google as authentication on hundreds of third-party sites.

If i use this migration tool and move to @gmail.com, will third-party sites still recognize and honour my custom domain Google login credentials?

adamrmcd··on Ask HN: Gmail account security
So happy to see this. I've started the transition of my 25-year-old .org domain from Gsuite legacy to you tonight :)
adamrmcd··on Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying
Exactly the same boat here. No email notifying me of the change either.

Plus, what about all the third party web sites that offer nice buttons that say "Sign in with Google"?

If you used your legacy Gapps domain to authenticate, do you think they all provide easy implementations to migrate your Google-one-click-authentication account to a same-email-new-local-password account? Hell no.

adamrmcd··on A circuit-level redesign of the Game Boy Advance
Totally understand. No intention of building, but I am working on a project of a similar scale (very different context) and would be curious if you're available for contract work. (ie, review my work for best practices, etc.) Given no other way to contact you but publicly here, I've posted a FR on Discord, if you are interested :)
adamrmcd··on A circuit-level redesign of the Game Boy Advance
Had a blast reading through this and your CGZ work. Nice job!

Can you post the schematics? I'm really curious on how you changed things (LCD bias, debounce circuit, etc.)

Also, can you post a pic of the back with components populated, outside of the case?

Thanks!!

adamrmcd··on 'Amazon knows more about you than your best friend or your doctor'
Until the opposite effect occurs:

https://xkcd.com/576/

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