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>... accused of having "a lot of spare time". I find this rather offensive.

isn't strong enough to me. Essentially when someone tells you you have "too much free time" they're saying:

"I judge the way that you're spending your time to be completely worthless."

I walk away at that point. We obviously have different priorities and values, and I don't have enough "free time" to want to discuss it with them.

robotguyon Convert standard Geiger counter to RNG

Much safer to buy Uranium on Amazon. That’s what I did. It really freaks people out when you pull out a small metal can with a RADIOACTIVE sticker on it.

You can also get uranium glass beads and radioactive watch hands on Electronics Goldmine.

robotguyon Beej's Guide to Network Programming (1994-2023)

I bought a paperback of this many, many years ago and used it to write a MUD in C. Good times...

I think maybe I should get a copy of the new version because I don't understand IPV6 at all.

robotguyon Where does my computer get the time from?

I worked on an embedded video system once where no one took into account the slight difference between the encoder and decoder clock frequencies. If the encoder was slower, no problem, you dropped a frame every once in a while. If the encoder was faster, you would buffer frames up to the memory limit of the system. Since these systems were typically left on for weeks at a time, the pilots would eventually discover the video they were using to fly a vehicle was several seconds in the past. Luckily this was discovered before initial shipment and the code was changed to drop everything in the buffer except the latest video frame.

robotguyon Ultra-wealthy people are working remotely from their superyachts

I mean, that sounds like just a few tweaks to the setting of "Snow Crash"

robotguyon Ask HN: Those with ADHD. What's a hobby that never gets boring?

My metahobby is collecting hobbies.

No really, I realized years ago that I had to embrace the change and I try to dip my toe into any hobby that appeals at the time with as minimal monetary outlay as possible. I find interests tend to resurface after a while, and the skills/tools/materials for one can generally be used somewhere else down the road.

robotguyon What’s the world’s oldest language?

I have a cuneiform tablet sitting right here on my desk. In English it says:

Never gonna give you up

Never gonna let you down

Never gonna run around and desert you

Never gonna make you cry

Never gonna say goodbye

robotguyon You're a cyclist who was just struck by a car driver. Why it was your fault

Not saying this is for everyone and it definitely isn't the way it SHOULD be, but I personally subscribe to the Sangamon Taylor/Neal Stephenson philosophy of cycling:

“If you've put yourself in a position where someone has to see you in order for you to be safe - to see you, and to give a f&%@ - you've already blown it.” ― Neal Stephenson, Zodiac

robotguyon A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

Reminds me of a story: I was in college physics in fall '89 and our professor was telling us how he and his son spent the summer in Alaska prospecting for whatever material was all the rage in superconductors at the time. He was explaining that when superconductors broke the liquid nitrogen temperature, it was a game changer. He said "If you buy it by the gallon, liquid nitrogen is cheaper than beer."

To which a student replied "You buy beer by the gallon?"

robotguyon The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

Reminds me of a story: I was in college physics in fall '89 and our professor was telling us how he and his son spent the summer in Alaska prospecting for whatever material was all the rage in superconductors at the time. He was explaining that once superconductors broke the liquid helium temperature, it was going to be a game changer. He said "If you buy it by the gallon, liquid helium is cheaper than beer."

To which a student replied "You buy beer by the gallon?"

robotguyon Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

I’m still using Alien Blue, which at one time WAS the official Reddit app. It’ll be interesting to see if it actually stops working.

robotguyon Math That Goes on Forever but Never Repeats

Did the original paper come out before they realized "the hat is actually one of an infinite family of aperiodic tiles"? Because I feel like the team really missed out on a PR opportunity by going with a "hat" over an APERIODIC MONOTURTLE.

robotguyon DJI Mavic 3 Pro

>I can get really boring on applications of acoustic design

I found that fascinating. TIL about the car tire noise.

I think you've got the right kind of audience here.

robotguyon The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

>While “those who can, do; those who can’t teach” is funny, it’s usually so, so wrong.

Right? I have found that teaching is a skill like anything else and is usually orthogonal to whatever skill is under discussion. It'd be like saying "Those who can, do. Those who can't, bake."

I think a more useful saying would be "Don't assume that just because someone can DO it, that they can TEACH it." i.e. Engineering professors :-(

robotguyon Mouse scroll wheel acceleration, implemented in user space

Back in the late '90s I hacked a Genius NetMouse[1] to have pressure sensitive resistors under the scroll rocker (plus USB instead of RS232). The harder you pressed the faster it scrolled. It worked great. I need to make another...

[1] http://www.tcocd.de/Pictures/Peripheral/Genius/netmouse.shtm...

robotguyon Setting up an electronics workshop

What I typically tell people is "solder will stick to the part that melts it." If you melt the solder with the iron tip, it will stick to the iron. If you use the iron tip to heat the joint and melt the solder with the joint, it will stick to the joint. The physics isn't correct but it's served me well as an easily remembered rule-of-thumb.

robotguyon Setting up an electronics workshop

Something I've found that helps is to snip off a section of wick and hold it with a pair of ceramic-tip reverse tweezers so you don't have the rest of the roll leeching heat from the section of wick that you are using.

robotguyon I don't like making the best things

I really love the way Ira Glass puts it:

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, and I really wish somebody had told this to me.

All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there is this gap. For the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not that good.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase. They quit.

Everybody I know who does interesting, creative work they went through years where they had really good taste and they could tell that what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. Everybody goes through that.

And if you are just starting out or if you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you’re going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.

I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It takes awhile. It’s gonna take you a while. It’s normal to take a while. You just have to fight your way through that.

—Ira Glass

robotguyon Europium UltraGlow Powder – Green

If you liked Edmund Scientific, you might check out American Science and Surplus: https://www.sciplus.com/

robotguyon An engineer has built and programmed an all-robot band

Have you seen Yellow Drum Machine? https://youtu.be/_RyodnisVvU

robotguyon The science of having ideas in the shower

I’m convinced that it’s the hot water on the back of my neck opening up blood vessels and increasing oxygen to my brain.

robotguyon Fun, danger, and 70s airplane toys

I keep trying to explain this to my friends in the aquarium and terrarium hobbies.

"I want to build a tiny one. It'll be so cute."

"It's going to crash in 30 seconds if you so much as look at it funny."

robotguyon JFK Assassination Records – 2022 Additional Documents Release

Now I'm picturing a séance and the medium is saying "That's nice Charlene, but this lady would really like to speak to her late husband, Bob, now."

robotguyon A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

Schematics HAVE TO define which components are in the circuit and how they are connected (unless you really want to write net lists).

Schematics SHOULD help readers to understand what a circuit does.

Especially in, let's say, "prosumer" boards (like boards designed by small companies for hobbyists) I keep seeing schematics that are designed to make it easy for the dev to get them done and NOT to communicate the circuit theory.

It's exactly like writing code without any formatting or comments. As far as I'm concerned connecting components by net name is as bad or worse than a GOTO.

\rant

robotguyon The Child Is the Teacher: A Life of Maria Montessori

For the Montessori aspect, yes, there are a bunch of “Montessori” schools that don’t really follow Montessori principles (at least there are in my area.) If you want to find a school that does actually implement Montessori principles, you have to do research (looking for membership in an association like the American Montessori Society is a good first-pass filter) and interview the school. There’s no substitute for due diligence for this.

My wife, a Montessori preschool teacher for 30 years, calls these unaccredited schools Monte-sort-of.

robotguyon Ask HN: Learning robotics/electronics beyond Arduino?

You could try a Raspberry Pi and some motor controller hats from Pololu. You could then use any language that has a GPIO library.

robotguyon Ask HN: Hobby coding that doesn’t feel like work

I would agree that the fun/work line is different for everyone, but I would also submit that a really low bar can also lead to an interesting hobby life over the long term.

I would consider that I give up on stuff pretty early when it becomes "not fun [1]." I'm in my 50's and I've been doing it for a long time. Since I'm always obsessed with something and each time I try something I get at least a little better, I have built up a pretty decent background in a lot of different areas and the amount I can accomplish before something becomes "not fun" gets to be more and more. I like to say I have a Metahobby: I collect hobbies.

I know this isn't a viable solution for most, but at least it's an alternative to feeling crappy about not finishing stuff. Also this:https://youtu.be/GHrmKL2XKcE

[1] For hobby projects. In my career, I know it's work, someone's paying me.

robotguyon Gratitude is a secret weapon for attracting more opportunities

>even when it is obvious that the person is faking it (eg. social etiquette), people seem to be accepting of it in general.

I have found in my career to hold off judgment of "fake sincerity" for two reasons:

A. If the person cares enough to fake it, that's at least a step in the right direction.

B. Over the course of time if the other person continues to radiate "fake sincerity" and no other negative traits, I just assume that I'm too cynical and my judgement of real vs fake sincerity is flawed. apply feedback and adjust as necessary.

robotguyon More than you cared to know about PC fans

3-wire is: TACH, DC, GND

4-wire is: PWM, TACH, DC, GND

https://noctua.at/en/what-pin-configuration-do-noctua-produc...

robotguyon Poxi: A Modern GeoCities

Poxy was my first thought also: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/poxy

Just a data point, you do you.