linker3000

This is an important point but often it's existing docs and files that cause the most grief, with subtle issues like differences in font rendering or line spacing.

For example, I wanted to make a simple change to a Word doc in Libre Office that included a side bar/column of text in a fixed size table on multiple pages. In Word the layout looked great.

Unfortunately due to font subtleties, in Libre Office the side texts overflowed the tables and the last sentences were cropped. It took some fiddling to make things fit and look as good as the original, but in the process I had to make the font smaller which lost some clarity. I did play with line spacing but that got fiddly.

In summary, a 5 second edit of an existing document laid out 'just so' perhaps 5 yr ago ended up becoming 20 minutes of hassle.

New docs could be laid out better and differently to make future edits easy, but that ignores the large legacy of existing stuff that many will have.

I didn't know there was a competition.

Would you buy a car that's been thrown together by a immature production and testing system with demonstrable and significant flaws, and just keep bringing it back to the dealership for refinements and the fixing of defects when you discover them? Assuming it doesn't kill you first?

These tools should be locked away in an R&D environment until sufficiently perfected.

MVP means 'ship with solid, tested basic features', not 'Ship with bugs and fix in production'.

I tried HA back in the day and got YAML-bound trying to get various sensors and controllers to integrate and work reliably. I revisited HA a couple of times over the years, but by then had become cosy with Node-RED and saw no strong reason to change. I understand HA's now more configurable through the front-end GUI, which is nice.

I've just integrated an office UPS with the Node-RED stock dashboard to log status, mains voltage and battery charge state - it took all of 5 mins, including the time to install the UPS NUT plugin for Node-RED via the GUI.

I love the ease of the visual, block-based configuration, and the ability to add codable function blocks to process and modify data.

The only things that are not so great in Node-RED are the dashboard look and feel, and the dashboard setup tools.

Edited.

No, Jeff just changed his mind and decided that sending a card abroad was problematic.

Found it: https://meta.superuser.com/questions/3720/three-free-video-c...

I used to be a major contributor on Superuser then one day the SO team had a competition to ship a reasonably decent spare graphics card to the most worthy requestor, based on a community vote.

I won in behalf of my young son, whose graphics card had just expired, but when the SO folks noticed I was in the UK, they decided shipping the card to me was too much effort and didn't send it.

That's when I decided my knowledge and free input would be better appreciated elsewhere and I quit. That was perhaps 12-ish years ago and I think I've been back a handful of times just out of curiosity.

Yep, I was learning C++ and could not understand an example in one of Stroustrup's books, so I posted a query asking for help, giving my thoughts and confusion.

I was roundly berated for not reading carefully enough, until one lonely soul piped up and said that actually there was a typo in the book's example code.

I'm only a hobby programmer and the experience wasn't encouraging.

A few people have implemented file transfers over Meshtastic. I believe there's a repo out there with Zmodem over Meshtastic.

The devs involved apparently tried...then MeshCore became a thing.

You can read between the lines here.

About a month or so ago now in the alphas.

Right now, Meshtastic's core comms protocol is based on flood messaging - no significant smart routing, although the Devs have recently introduced some route discovery features on private channels, but not in the public one.

MeshCore started out with the concept of static router nodes as well as clients, so it performs better if there is a router nearby to use, otherwise it falls back to flooding.

I'm currently managing several Government contracts for a third party, and the GDS + Government Technology Code of Practice are woven into the contracts and milestone evidence we have to provide. The two standards are clear and sensible.

I have had many meetings with Government back-end and dev staff and they all seemed knowledgeable, rational, non-beaurecratic and keen to listen as much as talk. They are also accessible and helpful.

Yes, however in the UK and EU the patient is the Data Subject and has legal rights on what processing is done with the data about them.

"If you ignore all the glaring flaws it's a wonderful plan!"

I'm adding that to my stock of meetings comments.

I fire up Brave for WebUSB for flashing ESP32 devices. It's Chrome, but less Googly.

It's seamless-ish.

Sometimes the more aggressive privacy settings stop some sites from rendering properly unless you add canvas exceptions, for example Openstreetmap and UK National Rail.

I'm happy to make the effort.

/Librewolf on desktop, Waterfox on mobile.

2014-2017 I worked for HGST, just as it was being assimilated by WD.

There were definite hardware differences between drive categories back then, and as well as the firmware adjustments, there would be things such as additional accelerometers to detect and help protect against shock (eg: portable drives), higher quality bearings and head/head mechanism differences.

But, or course, that was then and I can't speak for now.

Well, I read the HN headline and said to myself, I bet this requirement is pitched as "...to enhance the user experience...", and, yep, it's there.

That's akin with a response to some incident where companies "Take [user security etc.] seriously", when the immediate thought is, yeah, but if you did, that [thing] probably wouldn't have happened.

Dunno why I wrote all that - I don't use Google search, because I wanted to enhance (aka unenshitten) my search experience.

IMHO The 5 should have been a separately-branded product line because it's not the best fit, cost-wise for someone just doing blinky, sensory, roboty stuff that would work fine with a 3 or 4.

Well, if you are in the UK or some EU countries, Cello has a range;

https://celloelectronics.com/shop-televisions/?filter_produc...

My typo. Should have been Lucee (corrected)

https://docs.lucee.org/guides/updating-lucee/migrate-from-ac...

Adobe wanted £24K for a ColdFusion maintenance licence. We were code frozen into an old version and didn't actually need any support or upgrades as we were migrating to a new and different platform. They also wanted another £24K for the dev instance we retained in case any issues turned up with our old code. Adobe had changed licensing terms and so dev instances needed full licencing too. This instance was spun down for most of the time.

In effect, they wanted £48K for nothing.

Yes, Lucee was in our future, but I left before that came to be.

About 3yr after leaving that company, Adobe tracked me down via LinkedIn and my personal Web site and messaged me using my personal email address to put them back in touch directly with someone at my old job who could pick up licence negotiations.

I told them to phone Head Office - they said they'd done that but had not received a return call. I very politely told them to fu....go away as it was not my problem.

Check out http://www.searle.wales/

Hoo yep:

https://z80kits.com/product-category/basekits/

https://smallcomputercentral.com/

https://j4f.info/start

http://www.searle.wales/

To name a few.

Steve's book is fascinating and a good intro to the architecture, but some of the chips used are quite obsolete (even more so that the mainstream obsolete ones!) and so building a computer from that book would be very challenging.

1. Create a mouse that needs Cloud services.

2. Need revenue to pay for the Cloud services.

3, Charge mouse users for the Cloud services.

It's the (stupid) circle of life.

This is how I work.

Having a dog means that I can record updates and additions as I walk varied routes around the area.

Updating the map later using its Web interface is very satisfying and much more worthy than doomscrolling through social media (which I don't really do anyway).

Care to share the sheet? It sounds like it uses a good mix of parameters.

Some jester tagged one of the houses on a new build estate near to me as the Burger King UK headquarters on Google Maps.

/Got it removed.

I was a freelance trainer and specialised in NetWare and networking at the time. I was very busy (UK) working for the likes of Barefoot computer training (Aris), Skytech, Azlan, Comtec, Expertise, QA and others.

I was also a systems and networking installer.

Some training companies insisted that their trainers were 'Novell Certified' - and indeed I was, because to purchase, install and get support directly from Novell, your organisation (in my case, my own company with me as sole employee) you had to have one person qualified as a Certified Netware Salesperson (I think that's what they called it), so I paid for and passed that exam. I never bothered with CNA, CNE or ECNE, although I did write official material for them.

That reminds me - I also wrote some of the original CompTIA A+ Service Technician training material, and ended up delivering it and running train the trainer courses around the world.

Again, one company asked me whether I was A+ Service Technician certified, and I said I wasn't, so to deliver training for them, I registered, popped into their exam room and took the cert during a morning break in training. Happy to say I passed - helped somewhat by the fact that I wrote some of the exam questions!

I don't remember that. I do remember that with 2.12 and 2.15 I occasionally had to use a hex editor on disk drive-related files to make the drives work with certain hardware.

I also recall having to key-in hard drive defect tables as part of the install.