qiqitori

Analog computing, one thing I'm glad I learned a little about! Also made part of the tennis for two game, and occasionally think about adding features. (Course, knowledge of digital electronics keeps interfering. In fact I used two 74-series logic chips in there.) Here's my build log, with everything that makes me cringe after a few years left in tact: https://blog.qiqitori.com/2024/08/implementing-tennis-for-tw...

Smartphone UIs are a devastating blow to humankind. They make a real computer just redundant enough that people buy smartphones instead of computers and then just don't do anything that can't be easily done on a smartphone. Furthermore, as doing anything productive is so painful on smartphones, people just passively consume stuff instead.

Especially seeing how M5Stack is majority-owned by Espressif.

I think it's a bit iffy to argue that the bootloader code is covered by the GPLv3. In programs for standard computers running a big OS, the distinction lies in whether you are linking a library into your program. If the GPL code isn't a library but an external program, it isn't linking, and OK by the GPL. Now on to the bootloader code: in order to flash your device you have to put everything into a single image file. I guess the claim is that this process constitutes linking. But I don't think that is how most people think. Some possible arguments:

When linking, symbols pointing to addresses are involved. The main program calls functions in the library, and you end up with a whole program. On the other hand, a bootloader just does its thing and then jumps to a fixed address in the main program. The main program doesn't call anything in the bootloader. (Note, the Linux kernel has a special clause that explicitly allows the userland to programmatically interface with the kernel.)

I realize this sort of depends on the microcontroller toolchain. I'm familiar with a few, but not much with STM32 stuff. If the toolchain is dumb and implements the bootloader in a way that resembles linking, i.e. making it possible to resolve all the symbols in the bootloader from the main program then it could very well make the bootloader subject to the GPL.

IIRC this was talked about in Cory Doctorow's Enshittification book. Here's my bookmarklet to get rid of sponsored results, it's survived a couple years:

    javascript:document.querySelectorAll(".s-result-item:has(.puis-sponsored-label-text)").forEach(function(e){ e.remove()})

A while ago I learned that very early versions of 3.5" floppies didn't have the auto shutter mechanism and you had to open and close the shutter manually. (I think that was probably just used on some Japanese Sony machines.)

Can we also ban Java projects? Don't really like that language.

https://www.amazon.com/Maths-Proofs-Lean-First-Steps-ebook/d... I like this author and a while ago found that he'd published a book on Lean!

In the end I wasn't able to read it on my ebook reader and reading it on a PC or smartphone kinda makes it annoying to read on the commute. So I've only read the first two chapters or so but it seemed like a lot of fun. All this talk about using Lean in AI-powered proofs kinda makes me want to pick it up again.

If you want to make all developers working on a project happy about the way the project is being designed/implemented, it's best to reduce the number of developers to 1 or less.

How much time is spent interfacing between userland and the kernel? Can you try to get it to run as a kernel module? :)

Also in case your CPU is old enough, did you try disabling CPU bug mitigations?

No, it is impossible to keep them. Computers are not that far advanced yet. The melodies can only be played by pressing a button located at the end of the train.

My line lost its departure melodies in March this year :/

I once wrote a tool that helps with finding mistakes in OCR'd fixed width text, https://blog.qiqitori.com/2023/03/ocring-hex-dumps-or-other-...

Basically it just clusters same characters and asks the human to find the problems, which is easy when you're looking at a series of pictures like ssssss5sss.

The UI is kinda least-effort. Should ask a modern AI agent to make it look nice and intuitive, sometime maybe.

I've found that Gemini Pro is surprisingly good at 3d reasoning. To back that claim up, I've had it create:

A WebGl program that takes input like X123 Y123 Z123 via WebSerial every 100 ms and builds an object out of the resulting path. Required some performance optimizations (just had to tell it what to do). Also asked it to make the corners nicer and it did. (To be fair, I'd already asked a lesser model and put some things in the prompt to nudge it the right way.)

Various OpenSCAD models. E.g., remote control holder with 5 slots, staggered heights, slight slant because it looks cool, and the slots all have different depths. One shot. It implemented the slant/tilt using a shearing matrix. 100 points.

I'd kind of considered printing a rather small thing (seriously, 3x3x3 cm or so) in grey using this technique (using white and black filament). It told me it'd require 140 (== number of layers) filament changes and it'd take 5 hours. (In fairness, if I wanted to print 10 at once it'd probably take a similar time.)

So... honestly it's kinda silly IMO. If I wanted to mix colors in a hacky way I'd just... wait, hold my beer.

Hmm? Airbnb isn't on the hook?

I cannot fathom why USB-C would make any difference. It's not like USB-C is intrinsically better for this use case? If you're doing hardware development, your desk is likely full of in-development crap anyway and a micro USB cable more or less won't make any difference whatsoever, nor is the Pico likely to the only thing needing a micro USB cable.

Edit: one thing I can think of where micro USB connectors are better: if you broke off the connector, it's much easier to solder it back on.

I just checked an old note I found, maybe it was noclflush actually. Affected one or more versions starting with 2.6.32-754.

I came across a CPU bug that prevented Linux from booting on 3rd gen i3/i5/i7 CPUs. Did a bunch of printf debugging until I was right before the freeze. Then found something relevant in the CPU errata. It could be "fixed" by passing in noapic. I had a decent writeup on the old CentOS forums, but they're gone, and I don't have a copy of my writeup anymore.

That's nitpicking, IMO. It's still 99% true. There are just two "Mini-Shinkansen" lines, they only run once or twice per hour, are shorter than non-Mini-Shinkansen, and only a relatively short part (distance-wise) of their journey is spent on the slow tracks. There are non-Shinkansen trains on the Mini-Shinkansen portion of their journey, but not very many. (Also the word "shinkansen" implies new tracks.)

Watched it! I know it's from a US perspective, but where I live (Japan), $42000 is quite a lot! Definitely premium car territory. (E.g., Lexus RX base model)

IMO the car has a lot of bells and whistles that many drivers (probably!) don't really care about. But I guess car fans like this kind of stuff. The active noise cancelling feature might be nice, but wouldn't be surprised if we see regulation on that matter at some point. You kind of need to be alert of your surroundings, etc.

I keep seeing "underequipped technologically relative to their Chinese peers" on HN. What kind of stuff is missing? This is not a loaded question, I only drive a couple times a month, and the vehicle I'm driving is an older Prius, so I probably lack imagination. EVs are supposed to be technologically pretty simple, most of an EV's value being in the battery packs. I've been thinking about upgrading, perhaps to a Nissan Sakura (which probably doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles either).

Now I kinda wish my Prius had a 3.5mm aux-in jack but I get by with an FM transmitter.

Learned about superheterodyne receivers. Recently I've been studying up on RF technology, happened to come across superheterodyne receivers a short while ago, decided to research them today, saw that Technology Connections had a video on them, watched it, and felt reasonably enlightened.

Apart from the deaths from workers falling off the roof or from wind turbine towers (though these might be the only type of deaths included in these figures):

If mining deaths are included, coal, oil, gas and uranium probably do not look favorable at all, but renewables aren't perfectly safe either: there was a bridge collapse at a copper/cobalt mine in Congo two months ago that killed 32. Solar and wind use more copper per energy unit than other technologies, and solar and wind indirectly require battery technology. Lithium batteries contain lithium and cobalt. (Lithium mining seems relative safe, but 70% of cobalt is mined in Congo, which is known for artisanal mining, and the above-mentioned accident indeed seemed to happen at such a mine.) Wind, especially off-shore wind uses more concrete and steel than other power generation technologies (hydro seems like it'd use a lot too?), which could be explored too. (Course, these metals are recyclable, so you only mine them once.)

Battery factories also produce deaths sometimes, e.g. recently https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwaseong_battery_factory_fire, and batteries in operation as well as discarded batteries sometimes produce deaths too.

IMO, file another report and if you're asked to prove your identity again, a good way to prove it would be to put a text file somewhere under your domain that re-states your claim, adding the date and time.

I built a basic version of Tennis for Two a while back, using regular op amps. Some modern oscilloscopes have bad X-Y mode implementations, but most non-extremely-cheap scopes are probably decent enough. https://blog.qiqitori.com/2024/08/implementing-tennis-for-tw...

I'm also planning on selling a kit in the near future!

Not sure if it's really unprecedented, but I think all wars should be like that. Go kidnap or kill the leader but please leave everyone else alone. Also by all means go and capture the US' leader if you think you need to retaliate.

He also drove his ex-wife into depression, who later committed suicide.

> American companies need to start designing in China, not just made in China.

Why does China have a bunch of electronics companies? Because people outsourced all their manufacturing to China. So all non-China has left, barely, is the hardware design. Cool, so let's outsource that too? So all non-China has left is, oops?

Determining whether there is an actual labor shortage is pretty difficult. In many cases:

* Doing the work in a completely different way would eliminate the need for more people doing the labor. In the case of Japan, there is a lot of small farmland. In the case of the US, farmland tends to be huge. I guess smaller farmland is more labor-intensive. Consolidating smaller strips of farmland into a larger piece of farmland may improve labor intensity. But that means that one person gets to do the farming for a higher margin and everybody else loses their profession.

* Lots of farmland is being worked by elderly people. At some point you can't do it anymore. Somebody not working in agriculture would have to give up their current job and go into agriculture. It's difficult to predict whether that will happen.

* Labor shortage often means "we can't find anybody who is willing to do it for 1000 yen per hour so there must be a labor shortage".

BTW, there are a lot of abandoned houses in Japan; many of them will come with some amount of farmland that could be used, but isn't used.

Used this possibly 20 years ago! Time flies like a banana.