general-chat

[dusty citrus]

But there is one problem

I dont know how to code in C++

Neither in python

[fickle slate]

what do you need that for

[dusty citrus]

I mean

I want to learn programing and I want to write code for my raspberry pi and arduino to do what I want

[dusty citrus]

I remember when I was 4 or 5 years old I was fascinated by microorganisms

I would watch documentaries over documentaries nonstop

I wondered about it for a bit, and I pulled this Google Search out of my head

How do I remember this......

[late fulcrum]

A tool people had wondered about for decades, then found in various pathogens and then used for their own purposes.

[fickle slate]

breadboards are expensive

[fading violet]

@dusty citrus what do you want ?

[late fulcrum]

Breadboards are expensive, but useful enough for me to buy some.

Some people just make custom PCBs to start with.

[fickle slate]

i don't have that faith in my design working off the bat 🤔

[late fulcrum]

Same here, which is why I'm fond of solderless breadboards.

[jagged siren]

Expensive compared to what? $6 for a normal size one, down to $4 for the tiny size.

[fickle slate]

expensive compared to what i would expect the raw materials to cost

it's just plastic and metal strips

[jagged siren]

40-pack of 6" jumper wire is $4. Plenty of other non-consumable examples like that. Might be other places with either of those cheaper than Adafruit, haven't done an investigation.

[fickle slate]

https://www.amazon.com/Breadboards-Solderless-Breadboard-Distribution-Connecting/dp/B07DL13RZH 10$ for 4

https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/BusBoard-Prototype-Systems/BB1460?qs=sGAEpiMZZMve4%2FbfQkoj%252BMKfHcrhax3Nxvd0rBB2Mxc%3D 14$ for 1

granted there may be a difference in quality, but still

I should have specified that i meant on mouser

[jagged siren]

That might be a "Mouser is expensive", then?

[grave crest]

I'd imagine there could be a quality difference between them. Depending on your usage and tolerance for DOA/breakage.... and then, some stuff is just naturally more expensive.

You can't go wrong with the curated products in the Adafruit store -- and as an added benefit, your purchase helps continue awesome guides, products, etc.

[late fulcrum]

The cheap ones tend to go flaky quickly which can be quite frustrating when trying to get something working - unless you're looking for lots of practice debugging weird intermittent issues

[grave crest]

I always say -- get one or two known good ones. Test them, make sure they give predictable results. Then if you want, take the cheap way out and roll the dice. You might get an equivalent. Or you might have exactly what @late fulcrum mentioned -- a rat's nest of flaky, intermittent issues.

But for a beginner or sometimes just starting -- rarely I'd recommend getting a low-end piece of hardware. It's such a fast and effective way to discourage progress.

[late fulcrum]

I spent money it took me a long time to earn decades ago on quality breadboards, I'm still using them. I've had cheap ones start getting unreliable in a couple of weeks

[grave crest]

"Buy cheap, buy twice."

[late fulcrum]

"The person who buys quality tools only cries once."

[quiet urchin]

Can I get some feedback on these logos I’ve been working on for the last few days?

[late fulcrum]

Why would you use a sans-serif typeface for body text?

[burnt tendon]

I dono, folks have used Neue Haas / Helvetica as a body text font for plenty of stuff.

For me, the orange underline looks messy, like a spellchecker flag or an accidental hyperlink.

[late fulcrum]

There does seem to be a fad of using sans for body text, and a lot of people do it, but IMHO it looks bad and is harder to read. I agree with you about the orange underline.

You could specify a fixed-width typeface as well, since a robotics organization might end up publishing source code. I suggest one that makes it easy to distinguish between 0 and O, and 1 and l. The usual one is Courier, but I prefer Lucida Console, Andalé Mono, and Menlo. There are variants of Courier like Courier Code, that better differentiate lookalike glyphs. Some folks like Courier Neue, but I find it ugly. I'm also not a fan of semi-slab efforts like American Typewriter.

Even if you choose to specify a sans typeface for body text, all three of your families are sans: you might want to offer at least one serif face for variety.

I do like the hexagonal lion logo.

[quiet urchin]

Thanks! I realized I forgot to put Times new Roman on the sheet

We use Seti and the carbon formatter for code presentations

[tawny sonnet]

Test sleeve lookin good. Now to dye all 50 butterflies on the final garment

[analog belfry]

Test

[tawny sonnet]

Pass

[slim ember]

I finished my Velocity Character Sheet! https://twitter.com/dvanw6/status/1161416760324526080

Dvan (@dvanw6)

I finished my Velocity character sheet!

Twitter

Heres a character design for an assignment! Her name is Naoko! https://twitter.com/dvanw6/status/1161419399082864640

Dvan (@dvanw6)

Heres a character design for an assignment! Her name is Naoko!

Twitter

[vital wagon]

hi

how ya people doing ?

[dusty citrus]

hi

[dusty citrus]

so i just had a Ainol Novo 7 Paladin came in the mail today

[dusty citrus]

can i learn Z80 assmebly by using a emulator?

[vital wagon]

🤣

[burnt tendon]

Yah, you just need to spend time with the tooling to make sure that you can get your Z80 code running properly in an emulator, @dusty citrus

[dusty citrus]

I mean

I'm thinking programing on a z80 emulator is easy as typing the code down onto a notepad on your desktop and then telling the emulator to run the code

[burnt tendon]

Well, you need the toolchain.

So, you'll need a z80 assembler or compiler, then you'll need some way to get the code into the emulator, et al

[late fulcrum]

You can probably find a Z80 assembler easily enough, but I still advise hand-assembling a small program just to see how the mnemonics map into instruction bits. An emulator is a great way to learn (as I mentioned when you asked earlier), especially if it's the kind of emulator that will let you monitor processor state, memory locations, and the like to see what the CPU is actually doing.

[dusty citrus]

Is there any book that I can learn from?

[fickle slate]

i never bothered to figure out how mnemonics map into instruction bits

🤔

[late fulcrum]

There are lots of books out there.

[dusty citrus]

itll be pretty difficult programming for the z80

but

one step at a time

i will learn

[sick adder]

Toast with local peaches, tomatoes, and microgreens, just the thing before I start messing with circuitpython this morning

[stray wind]

@sick adder Bring enough for everybody, if you're going to post stuff like that!

[late fulcrum]

@dusty citrus It's really not that difficult, especially with an emulator. My advice is to start small, perhaps an OUT instruction to turn a LED on, then a countdown loop to delay for a bit, another OUT instruction to turn the LED off, another delay loop, then a jump back to the beginning?

You could also get fancier and use an XOR instruction to toggle a value and use that to control the LED. The other obvious one (and in fact a common one to start with) is the usual "Hello, world!" program. Put the "Hello, world!" bytes in memory with some sort of terminator, then send them out a serial port (possibly a simulated one) one at a time.

There's a description of a similar process for a different CPU (a 6800 in this case) here: http://roland.cordesses.free.fr/Motorola6800MEK_4.html

[sick adder]

@stray wind come visit me and I'll treat you. It wouldn't ship very well.

[fickle slate]

i once again suggesting learning how to program ti84 calcs

[covert spire]

I like my TI89

[vernal gale]

from the cheapskate that brought you $10 logic analyzers, $3 calipers https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000048499900.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.1cfd4c4dt2j9ly

they're no mitutoyu's but hey, they're $3!

[sick adder]

hm well that's unusual. my whole linux desktop locked up while flashing (segger) my nrf board.

[late fulcrum]

Hydraulic Press Channel did a showdown of cheap digital calipers

[grave crest]

@late fulcrum Do you recall what was the takeaway from their testing? Or did they just flatten them? 😛

[burnt tendon]

Yeah, were they impressive or just in-press-ive?

[late fulcrum]

They actually took turns testing them against some other calipers including some really cheap all-plastic ones. They performed pretty acceptably.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koGBgPDActE if you're curious

[tawny sonnet]

All right, I finished my butterfly dye project! Well, the dyeing part of the project; I still have to make it into clothed

And I was feeling silly so I put up a time lapse video of the process on my Instagram. Everything looks cooler at 20x

https://www.instagram.com/p/B1VPuhRDNNW/?igshid=ao3n8ra1w1zn

It was nerve-wracking because it's not easy to recover from mistakes on this kind of dye job short of bleaching out the botched print and starting over (and discharge agents are not very reliable, in my experience) - it was a big relief to finish this part, since I don't have time or spare fabric to do it again if necessary

[burnt tendon]

I mean, it gives you a certain mental clarity, however.

My drawing got better when a drawing teacher took away my eraser.

[tawny sonnet]

Mentally screaming NO MISTAKES NO MISTAKES NO MISTAKES at myself for a few days straight isn't good for my mental health, though

[covert spire]

As I heard of a great meditative garden that has a crazy long slide, as people would enjoy the garden, then crazily ride the slide.

[late fulcrum]

I remember a "motivational speaker" at our company once who said "Can you make zero mistakes for one second? Just one second? Sure you can. Now just do that over and over for 8 hours a day." Unfortunately for that charlatan, I have a good grounding in statistics, human performance, psychology, and debate. I cut him to ribbons in front of the whole company.

[lone ocean]

Heyo

Just joined since I'll start doing Arduino stuff soon

I'll make my final exam in physics and take colors as the topic and wanna make a color mixer with my Arduino and an RGB LED

[late fulcrum]

Sounds like a good project.

[dusty citrus]

have you guys ever thought of dumb ideas?

i thought about creating a super computer out of Pentium 4s

[late fulcrum]

I come up with all sorts of dumb/nutty ideas (like a vacuum tube Ethernet hub). I think I told you about the University of Maryland's "ZMob" effort to build a parallel computer out of 256 Z80 boards connected together.

[dusty citrus]

Actually

That's pretty interesting

How were they able to control each individual z80?

[late fulcrum]

They had a bus (which they called a "belt", for some reason) connecting all the boards together with ribbon cable. I think one node was the "communication" node that serviced user requests and sent jobs to the other nodes for processing.

Doing a little reading, the "conveyor belt" was a 48-bit wide bus that implemented a "slotted ring" architecture, and the control computer wasn't one of the moblets (which is what the individual Z80 nodes were called), but a VAX 11/780.

I remember playing with the thing, they had some real reliability problems because the node boards were pretty big (about A4 paper size), and there were issues with board warping causing intermittent connections, so usually only a subset of moblets was working at any given time.

[jagged siren]

ZMOB: A Mob of 256 Cooperative Z80A-Based Microcomputers -- https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a081346.pdf -- I need to forward this on to another group, they'll lose their minds on this one.

[late fulcrum]

Oh, good find. Chuck Rieger and Mark Weiser built the thing.

[abstract violet]

RE: Monster M4SK - Not sure where to ask this and perhaps the learn guide will have this detail, but I noticed a seesaw chip on the left (back of pcb).. How is it used in this setting ?

[umbral phoenix]

Interesting question. Adafruit has put Seesaw on products before when there are a number of buttons, to keep from using too any GPIO pins. With two SPIs, cap touch, STEMMA I/O, and 3 buttons, probably some of that is offloaded to Seesaw.

[abstract violet]

@umbral phoenix yeah looks like the buttons are through the seesaw chip... sharp eyes 😄

For a moment there I thought the display is also handled by the chip, but it doesn't seem to be the case for this featherwing either:: https://www.adafruit.com/product/3321

[umbral phoenix]

But maybe the backlight and display reset like the MiniTFT. Joystick adds a lot of inputs. I understand the desire to preserve GPIO. Adafruit seems to especially prioritize the analog inputs... some peripherals will use the same digital inputs as others (FeatherWings will often have jumpers for this case), but I haven't come across anything using up the analogs yet.

The TFTs seem to be usually SPI, for speed I assume (though PyPortal is a parallel interface)

[sick adder]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMj7G-U3LW8 possibly the best binging with babish yet, and also the most relevant to makers

[tame saddle]

Power ISA is being open sourced: https://www.nextplatform.com/2019/08/20/big-blue-open-sources-power-chip-instruction-set/

[late fulcrum]

I see they're providing an FPGA core as well, so we could buy some chips and play with it ourselves. This is one architecture I'm not going to try to build up from individual 7400 logic gates!

Similarly, remember MIPS? Them, too. https://wavecomp.ai/wave-computing-launches-the-mips-open-initiative/

[dusty citrus]

ok

this

is

EPIC

more architectures for me to play around with!

[burnt tendon]

Part of why RISC V was created to be a slightly more modern teaching architecture than MIPS.

MIPS or a simplified version thereof is how I learned computer architecture

[dusty citrus]

i really need to learn about CPU architecture

but

my highschool does not teach that

[late fulcrum]

Most high schools don't teach that. 😕

However it seems to me you've already learned a lot about CPU architecture, and are continuing to learn more.

[dusty citrus]

i mean

i would have so much fun learning in high schools

playing around with a whole bunch of CPUs

[late fulcrum]

It would be fun to do that instead of some other high school class, but instead we do that kind of learning at home.

[dusty citrus]

I really want to be with other kids who are interested in CPU architecture's

And it seems like everyone else seems different from me

[late fulcrum]

That's both the beauty and frustration of the internet: you can find other people who share an interest, but they're spread all over the world (and we're all different ages).

[dusty citrus]

True true

But hey

At least I'm learning something early that will prepare me for my future job

[steady pollen]

TIL, about a tool call gstack which can be used to print info about userspace thread's stack

[dusty citrus]

yeah

@dusty citrus Im in 7th grade and it seems like nobody has similar interests to me

thats why i joined this discord

so i could have some people to talk to, and also the bonus of being able to have help

[burnt tendon]

I mean, to be fair, I'm mumble mumble years old and I was totally a 7th grade misfit where nobody else cared about the stuff I thought was cool

[late fulcrum]

I too am mumble years old and was a 7th grade misfit. Alas, there was no internet then, so I just sat around and tinkered with vacuum tubes from trashpicked electronics.

[dusty citrus]

yeah

i think electronics stuff is pretty cool

😎

[dusty citrus]

decode this color into a word

484900

thats the html value of it

you can use online conversion calculators to get a word out

solution is

||convert html color value to rgb, convert each rgb value into ascii which gives you a sentence, which says HI||

[fickle slate]

you could of just said "read this ascii text encoded in hex"

[dusty citrus]

Alright it's pretty hard trying to find a way to program on a z80

I'm better of using the ti 84 it program the z80

[late fulcrum]

0000 D3 00    OUT  0
0002 C3 00 00 JP 0000

That's a fairly easy Z80 program.

[dusty citrus]

What does it do?

[late fulcrum]

Send the contents of the A register to I/O port 0 repeatedly. A few more instructions could let it toggle.

[dusty citrus]

I really need a book on assembly language for the Z80

[late fulcrum]

Steve Ciarcia's book "Build Your Own Z80 Computer" (ISBN 0-07-010962-1) includes good details on programming it.

There's also the Z80 Software Gourmet Guide & Cookbook I mentioned on August 12 when you asked 🙂

[dusty citrus]

I have a book called digital computer electronics

That's how I learned most of my knowledge from that book

[late fulcrum]

Sounds like a good start.

[burnt tendon]

Oh man, I remember checking out the Ciarcia book a zillion years ago.

From the library.

Never built a Z80 computer, tho, part of why I'm building the 6502 now.

[late fulcrum]

There are useful web sites out there too like http://www.z80.info/ which has a "Software Tutorials" section.

The prolific and informative Ken Shirriff writes about Z80 topics repeatedly http://www.righto.com/search/label/Z-80

[dusty citrus]

I feel like I should learn assembly on my raspberry pi

[vernal gale]

arm assembly is a lot more complicated than say, 6502

did you mean arm assembly or were you thinking of running emulators and assemblers for other architectures?

[dusty citrus]

I mean

I dont know how to start on programing for the Z80

I dont have the neccessary tools

And a emulator and assembler is kinda complicated

[vernal gale]

still less complicated than arm assembly

if you wanna learn arm assembly go for it, but not because it's easier than z80

because it's not

[dusty citrus]

I guess I can try to go through the pain of learning Z80 assembly

[burnt tendon]

So, this is kinda cute: https://www.tindie.com/products/8bitforce/retroshield-z80-for-arduino-mega/

[dusty citrus]

That's...

Epic

I have a arduino mega

[burnt tendon]

Yah.

I mean, there's a few problems.

If you want to write ARM assembler for your Pi or x86 assembler, you might run up against annoyances with dealing with a modern OS and syscalls and stuff

Whereas the level of getting-started complexity on an old standard IBM PC running DOS or a Z80 machine running CPM was really really low.

Like, the way I became comfortable with assembler was writing code in a higher level language and then writing bits and bobs of it in assembler.

Which does constrain the problem while giving more evident results.

Either way, a lot of it comes down to "what is fun?"

There was a small number of dorks at my high school and optimizing functions in x86 assembler was a game we'd play.

And I remind people that that was not actually a useful skill we were building. We were just dorks and people who picked CS as a major in college and who don't code for fun are Entirely Valid, worth of respect, and arguably not any worse at programming than I am.

[dusty citrus]

I'm gonna save up on books

For programming in assembly

[late fulcrum]

I didn't find ARM assembly difficult

[vernal gale]

but you would agree it's more complex than z80, no?

[dusty citrus]

Or just create a virtual machine from scratch inside the Arduino IDE and then program that, using rules you specify.

[vernal gale]

lol

[fickle slate]

z80 is ez

hook up arduino, z80, and ram on a single data/address bus

write arduino "bootloader" to write a z80 program into ram and then reset the z80

pretty sure I told you the pinouts some months ago

And I have source code you could use

[cunning shuttle]

does anyone have a good source for clear acrylic/plexi in the 1/8" range? stuff is a lot more expensive than I remember

[late fulcrum]

I came from a 6800/6502/1802 background so ARM with its register rich, load and store style and orthogonal instruction set felt natural to me. Z80 still showed it 8008 roots and felt awkward.

[dusty citrus]

There are so many 8 bit CPUS that it's really complicated

[tight hill]

i can't wait for more RISC V cpus

[dusty citrus]

True mate

Or

Lets create our own RISC V CPUs

[late fulcrum]

Why not Power-RISC VI?

[dusty citrus]

Y E S

That will be possible

If IBM makes PowerPC open source

[tight hill]

i also can't wait to see what Adafruit contributes to RISC V

[dreamy solstice]

I want to see a larger form factor raspberry pi

with a socketed RISC cpu

and a single ddr4 sodimm slot on the bottom

[tight hill]

that can accept a compute module

[dreamy solstice]

maybe even a mpcie slot

[late fulcrum]

Make one?

[tight hill]

thrown in a usb -c thunderbolt 3 as well

[dreamy solstice]

making such a device would be difficult to make at home

[tight hill]

i don't have enough breadboards

[dusty citrus]

We can build our own RISC V chips

Just use the website from si-five!

@tight hill and also, adafruit did join the RISC V foundation

[patent ibex]

@solar hamlet very nice work on the pew pew m4! looks very slick,

[solar hamlet]

thanks

[umbral phoenix]

TFW you find the bug that had you questioning the nature of reality.

[late fulcrum]

I know that feel

[dusty citrus]

praying mantises seem like the only insect that seems to acknowledge our existence

[tame saddle]

i love mantises. i could watch them just hang out and swivel-head longer than most other things. 😄

[dusty citrus]

Wish I can keep one as a pet

[solar hamlet]

I think the mosquitoes notice us as well, though I wish they didn't

[dusty citrus]

Let's just make our blood toxic for mosquitos

[dreamy solstice]

nice

[dusty citrus]

Yeah

We wont inject cyanide in our blood

[late fulcrum]

I found a mantis just before the first freeze one year and took it home. I fed her any bugs that blundered into the house. She lived until February and laid four egg cases, which I put outside in appropriate spots.

[dusty citrus]

Did she die?

Oh wait

Yeah

It did

[dreamy solstice]

so, I recorded this sfx from a game, and I'm wondering how I can recreate similar sounds in this style,

[proven geode]

@dreamy solstice If you're on a Mac or iOS, the free GarageBand app has a lot of sound effects, especially in their add-on sound packs.

Additionally, https://freesound.org has a lot of raw material that you could layer to build sounds in that style.

[dreamy solstice]

thanks

that works perfectly

cause I am on macos

[vernal gale]

lol just saw this on github jobs https://jobs.github.com/positions/d7c1a573-88b7-4027-b92a-1f85e9147252

anyone wanna make the next nRF52?

should get them on the adafruit job board

[dusty citrus]

i was using all the commodore emulators

[floral urchin]

Any software test engineer here? Is it a good position to learn programming as a novice or it's entirely different from what I expect?

[late fulcrum]

I'm a programmer, but I have some friends and co-workers who are test engineers. While we both deal with software, it's in different ways. As a programmer, I'm more concerned with how it works, but the test engineers are more concerned with what it does. Their job is to break my software, and tell me how they did it, for example "If I click on the City button, then fill out the text box, then click on the City button again instead of the Submit button, it erases my input."

Traditionally, test engineers are more familiar with user interfaces, and programmers are more familiar with algorithms, but there are programmers out there with user interface expertise. As for myself, I love test engineers, the help me build better, easier to use software.

[floral urchin]

@late fulcrum How exactly does test engineer break your software? I know there's automated and manual testing can be done, but that's the info i get from googling

Since my mindset as a test engineer was to be able to learn from other engineer's code, as well as suggesting improvements from bug/issue reports

[burnt tendon]

There's a bit of a problem where a lot of times test-engineers are seen as a level below regular engineers.

Like, in terms of pay grade, Software Engineer III was grade mumble mumble, Software Engineer in Test III was grade mumble mumble minus one, and Software Engineer II was grade mumble mumble minus two.

The problem is that there's a set of roles, software engineer being one, software test engineer being another, where good programming skill is required, but a particular mindset is required.

A good software test engineer is worth their weight in gold, because they can spot edge cases, understand a whole stack of testing systems, et al. But, as I said, they frequently get no respect.

Like, in the dark ages of Windows, a software test engineer was often a trained monkey pushing buttons, because there was no way to automate things like that... but at this point, test engineering is a specialized trade unto itself.

And I kinda feel like, especially at the junior level, it's semi-abusive to shove someone into testing and then keep them "stuck" in the trade.

Sometimes people are that good, otherwise they are just non-test engineers stuck in a track.

Like, some things test engineers have done is created complete "mock" subsystems to wire up the code under test in between.

Or orchestrating QEMU so that you can fire up a set of emulators to automatically test the process of installing low-level software on a piece of hardware.

Or figuring out the best way to automate a fake browser for the way a given piece of software works.

[floral urchin]

From my understanding, usually they let juniors take the role of test engineers to slowly let them catch up with the software team, but I'm deciding whether its a good move to be a test engineer (an intern to be specific). Even I put test engineers below normal engineers, as you dont get to tinker programming as much as normal engineers

But I do want to grow as a developer and develop the skill set that lets me pinpoint bugs and issues better

[burnt tendon]

Yeah, if testing doesn't call to you, you might end up stuck in an abusive spiral.

[floral urchin]

In terms of what test engineers do on the desk, how many % time is used on writing reports, manual automated test, develop automated test, etc?
But I get the gist of what software test engineer does from your input, I'll try to make the decision wisely, thanks a lot!

[burnt tendon]

Like, sometimes the test engineer ends up being the person who has to apply process and order to a team.

Ideally, it's mostly automated testing, but frequently manual testing ends up being part ofi t.

Like, when I have been in charge of teams that had test engineers, they were doing as little manual testing as we could muster and we had excellent coverage with fully automated testing.

[grave crest]

As someone who was a former Software Developer Engineer in Test --- I'm in agreement with @burnt tendon.

The pay and perception was SDET = SDE-1.

And they absolutely use different skillsets. Failure to test will result in a failed product -- testing is essential. And it's best to do it lock-step with development, not as an afterthought.

Automation is how everything in the industry is moving. Having fully automated test frameworks that can perform regression testing, clearly document the results in a business format/dashboard -- that's transformative to a business.

But traditionally in the past, testing was manual poke and hope within the interface. Hence the lack of traditional respect.

[burnt tendon]

Ops is the same thing! It used to be "Log into a machine, run scripts, follow prompts"

Now it's "Figure out how to make things run well atop a kube cluster when nodes appear and disappear, etc. with all of the operations requiring judgement carefully runbooked and everything not carefully automated"

[grave crest]

For a testing role, those who'll succeed are those who wake up in the morning with an evil gleam in their eye, cackle in their voice: "Well, my pretties....let's see who we get to break today! Buwhahahaha!" And you're good at doing so too. Finding bug nests, have a broad understanding of the code while specializing in particular subsections.

For me, my specialty was fonts, paragraph formatting, smartart objects, and XML. But I tested parts of the entire application. I remember reading prolifically about OpenType, an example of the research I did to specialize.

[floral urchin]

@grave crest So being a software test engineer doesn't mean that you are worse in programming than a software engineer right? It's just that test engineer has a specific sets of skill to find bugs?

[grave crest]

Exactly @floral urchin. It's a different mindset, different set of skills & tools, with a different goal in mind.

It depends on the job itself, as the line between the two is blurry from place to place. Some testers don't write the code itself, others have a hybrid role of writing code & testing. Some do manual testing, yet some might do scripting + testing frameworks.

But a tester is looking to break things, and figure out why they broke....eventually leading to fixing them & preventing them from ever breaking in the first place.

From my perspective, the best software developers do test-driven development. They write the tests first, and then write the code around them -- forever changing the approach they take to development. It's more solid, robust, and usually fewer bugs that way.

[floral urchin]

The part that I'm worrying about is that I do want to be a sort of hybrid, find things that break, and fix it myself too. I guess it depends on the company that I'm going to apply to.

[grave crest]

That's a good, healthy approach.

[tame saddle]

TDD is interesting. I occasionally read/listen to podcasts on it.

[grave crest]

I believe in a hybrid model, it yields good results. Otherwise, it can turn into fierce arguments between the "testers" and "developers".

[floral urchin]

Alright, I think after reading what @grave crest wrote, it's more clear to me what I want to pursue. I'll just try my best for the interview tomorrow 🙂

[tame saddle]

Best of luck!

[grave crest]

As for topics to look up -- unit testing, edge cases, testing automation, TDD.

They're looking for someone who'll be a good fit with the team's culture + has the core skills + is able to learn. Good luck 🙂

They might ask you to design test cases for a "candy bar vending machine". It's a common boilerplate question for testing interviews. They're looking for logical, structured thinking -- focus on one area/set of features, then move to the next.

Or they could open up Notepad [or any application] and say -- ok, find me bugs. Show me edge cases. [For example, you have a field to fill out that takes a number. What happens when you put in a letter? Punctuation? Wildcards? -1? 0? Empty? Spaces?]

@tame saddle Any particular books & podcasts you enjoy regarding TDD?

I haven't touched development in a professional context for a while, just wondering what's new and interesting out there 🙂

[floral urchin]

I have to say, this is the most comprehensive answer that I get from discord
Can't thank you guys enough 😭

[grave crest]

👍

[burnt tendon]

Yeah, I have to say, I'm testing obsessed and also operations obsessed, but I've never had an explicit testing or operations title.

There is the career role for power-generalist who can actually fit enough of the whole stack into their brain

The example problem there is "Starting with just a company credit card, can you build out the infrastructure for a team such that when there are individual staffs for operations, performance, testing, security, engineering, and IT, none of them hate you"

Also, this is one of my favorite testing toys. This is the Python version, but there's equivalents in a bunch of languages: https://hypothesis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

[tame saddle]

@grave crest no books yet, just articles along the way. And Brian Okken's Test & Code podcast: https://testandcode.com/

[proven musk]

Made a 32u4 Raspberry Pi pHAT :)

It’s for GIMX converter (converts mouse+keyboard input into PS4 DualShock protocol so you can play shooters with mouse+KB)

ICSP header is the fav part ;)

[vernal gale]

shiny new role @late fulcrum

[dusty citrus]

This is the biggest kanji character to date, with 84 strokes

taitō = 3 cloud kanji on top (tai) and three dragon kanji on the bottom (tō). Basically meaning “Dragon in flight”

Pretty cool

[dusty citrus]

So, statistics are kind of weird.. if I have a ten percent chance of developing a disease, and I take a supplement advertised to decrease my chances by 80 percent. 0.1 * 0.8 = 0.08.
My chances are two percent now. But then I take a supplement said to increase my chances by 20 percent. Would that be 20 percent of the 2 percent I have now? Or 20 percent of the 10 I started out with?

[late fulcrum]

Either way: it comes out to the same thing (0.096 or 9.6% chance).

[dusty citrus]

So, if it was 20 percent of my 2 percent, then I would have 2.4%. But if it was 20% of the initial 10. I would add 2 percent to 2 percent, leaving 4 percent chance

I don’t get it

[umbral phoenix]

I don't think you could conclude anything without more data.... there could well be combined effect of the two supplements (when taken together) that complicates the math.

[late fulcrum]

80% of 10% is 0.8 * 0.1 = 0.08, so your chances are 8 percent with the first supplement. If you then use the second supplement, you increase your chances by 20%, so you can multiply 0.08 * 0.2 = 0.016 and add that to 0.08 to get 0.096, or you can just multiply 0.08 * 1.2 and still get 0.096.

Or you can take 20% of 10% = 0.20 * 0.10 = 0.02 and add it to the original 10%: 0.02 + 0.10 = 0.12 (or again, just multiply the original 10% by 1.2 to get the same 0.12. Then take 80% of that, yielding (again) 0.096.

I think you have this issue: when you interpreted "increase your chances by 20 percent" as "multiply by 0.2", but it's really either multiplying by 0.2 and adding to the original chance, or simply multiplying by 1.2 (100 percent + 20 percent).

So: first supplement alone: 8% chance. Second supplement alone: 12% chance. Both supplements together: 9.6% chance (whichever way you calculate it, you get the same answer because multiplication is commutative).

[dusty citrus]

Oh god

I'm getting flashbacks from 9th grade

I would get really stressed from algebra

[dusty citrus]

@late fulcrum I see the misunderstanding, I said the first supplement would decrease my chances by 80%, not lower them to 80%

And the second would increase them by 20%

[late fulcrum]

My mom was a math teacher so I learned algebra before kindergarten

[dusty citrus]

Now that’s pretty good

[rotund echo]

Which nixie tubes should I pick up for a clock? IN-14 or ZM1332? I also thought about IN-18 but it's REALLY expensive and apparently shouldn't be driven with 74141/k155id1 driver IC. Also if you have other suggestions you can post them as well.

[dusty citrus]

Casting Out Nines
for adding a column of figures

0 + 9 = 9  8 + 1 = 9  7 + 2 = 9 ..

   5280 6
   4096 1
 + 2048 5
 ======
  11424 3


   5280 6 = 8 + 2 + 5 = 15 = 1 + 5 = 6  (or  15 = 15 - 9 = 6)
   4096 1 = 6 + 9 - 9 + 4 = 10 = 1 + 0 = 1  (or 10 = 10 - 9 = 1)
 + 2048 5 = 8 + 4 + 2 = 14 = 1 + 4 = 5 (or 14 = 14 - 9 = 5)
 ======
  11424 3 = (horiz.) 4 + 2 + 4 + 1 + 1 = 12 = 3 (1 + 2 .. or .. 12 - 9)
            (vert.) 6 + 1 + 5 = 12 = 3

It also works with 11 instead of with 9 but I have forgotten the exact method.

[hardy rock]

x * 10 = x * (9 + 1) = x * 9 + x

when you add a digit to the next-lower one, you're essentially replacing 10 * x with x

summing the digits of a number doesn't change the remainder when divided by 9, which is what you get

and when you add a series of numbers, the remainder of the sum will be the sum of the remainders modulo 9--add the digits again!

for 11, add pairs of digits at a time. it works because 99 = 11*9, so you can replace 100 * x with x

86415 -> 6415 + 1600 = 8015
8015 -> 15 + 160 = 175
175 -> 75 + 2 = 77

therefore 86415 is divisible by 7 since 7 divides 77 -- double the value of the pair of digits to preserve remainder by 7!

(insomniac with math tendencies--this is what I think about when I can't sleep!)

[dusty citrus]

that is awesome ;)

I'm intending on figuring out how to do decimal multiplication using only binary (for a Forth project).

The cheater way is to just write the algorithm in C and then copy the answer back into Forth.

Forth already provides for multiplying by two (shift the bits to the left one place) or division by two (shift right).

[hardy rock]

Good luck with that! Sounds like fun. 🙃

I once wrote a binary divide-by-3.5 function in 6502 assembly language. Needed it for Apple II graphics. It used the repeating binary representation for the fraction 1/3.5, multiplied by adding for 1 and not adding for zero, then shifting. I tested it to see how many times the loop had to run to give the right answer for all 256 values. And no one else ever saw what I did. 😢

I'm testing out the Discord emoji 👺

[dusty citrus]

Haha. My first intuition would be to consider 3.5 a special case of 7. ;)
My mom accidentally noticed I was doing 'long' division the hard way when I was a kid, and showed me the short way.
I must have missed that day in school -- nobody caught on that I hadn't learned the short way.
I think that was, like, the only time either parent noticed anything I was/wasn't doing in school, and corrected it.

[hardy rock]

My dad taught me long division because I asked where the batting average in the sports pages came from. But yeah, other than that it was usually, "We're trying to watch TV."

"averages"

And yes, 1/7 in binary is .001001001... 1/3.5 is twice that, so left shift to double it: .010010010... 6502 doesn't even have hardware multiplication, let alone division. I would've divided by 7 the same way. (Most folks used a lookup table but I was tight for space and the code was ~a dozen bytes.)

[dusty citrus]

;) There was a 6502 'laboratory' gadget/assembly .. complete with the manuals that shipped with it .. on a shelf in a hospital's electronics repair department (complete with Faraday cage to adjust the doctor's pagers RF innards).
I was their delivery driver from an electronics parts house. In .. 1979 or so.
I was going to ask them for it, but I didn't.

So if 1/7 works I wonder if many odd numbers work. (or repeating binary patterns, I suppose).

[hardy rock]

Fractions like 2^m / (2^n - 1) work well because they only have one 1 bit per repeat cycle, so you don't have to do many adds.

[dusty citrus]

BTW, for calendar date math, the fiction "March Zeroth" (last day of February) is pretty handy.

[hardy rock]

I'll have to look into that. First I've heard of it!

I think I see where you're headed though

[dusty citrus]

Just google for Conway's Doomsday algorithm. Article on Wikipedia.

Though I prediscovered it before hearing of Conways' thing.

[hardy rock]

Except for the leap year goofiness, the dates are all relatively the same.

The 4th of July, my brother's birthday, my birthday, and Halloween are always on the same day of the year.

"week" not "year"

[dusty citrus]

An old blind guy gave me part of it (he was a church calendar math enthusiast). He said "A year is a day" which was an observation about the progression of January 1st from year to year.

[hardy rock]

Oh man, some people have even less of a life than I do! 😁

Looking at the Wikipedia entry now. Yeah, I see now.

[dusty citrus]

 $ cal 1 2017 ; cal 1 2018 ; cal 1 2019

    January 2017      
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa  
 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  
                      
    January 2018      
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa  
    1  2  3  4  5  6  
                      
    January 2019      
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa  
       1  2  3  4  5

He was nuts about 'bissextile' which is a reference to the first day prior to the first day of March (the last day of February).

Turns out it was Roman calendar reference.

The Romans counted backwards from a holiday.

The Ides and Calends were two reference points in that system.

[hardy rock]

Convenient that July 4th and Halloween are Doomsdays.

[dusty citrus]

https://www.thoughtco.com/roman-calendar-terminology-111519

Yeah when you work with Conway's algorithm, 7/11 registers also as 7/4.

Another helper is when you lay out a two facing pages for a week's calendar (in a loose leaf notebook) you can remove a page to get a difference of 10 between a Monday and a Thursday.
When you're using Julian dates (365 days of a year) this helps lay it out faster.

(As in Monday, 2 September and Thursday, 12 September).

So your left-side page has Mon Tue Wed and the right-side page has Thu Fri Sat Sun.

One 'leaf' in the notebook is a 7-day week (front and back of the paper are used for this).

[hardy rock]

That's cute! I'll try to remember next time I'm laying out a Julian calendar. 😁

(Not mocking you. I spend/waste all kinds of time on stuff like this.)

[dusty citrus]

Even when they're mocking me I don't notice it unless there's a tone of voice I can hear. ;)

Those funny hats they made me wear, though ..

[dusty citrus]

my d-link wont turn on anymore
old one i wanted to turn into a network switch
family used it since 2010 until the ISPs starting giving out their own
only Ubicom32 based router i had

[hardy rock]

RIP✝

[late fulcrum]

Might be fixable? It may just need a new power supply (if it's separate) and/or a couple of capacitors.

[dusty citrus]

tested the external power supply, it was at 12v as it should be, also congrats on communtity helpers

[atomic hornet]

Pretty. X-ray?

[echo agate]

Yep, needed to check the solder balls under a couple parts

[atomic hornet]

What's the device? I don't recognize it from the pinout.

[echo agate]

It's DDR3 DRAM

Pretty common for DRAM chips to have the big empty middle row

[atomic hornet]

That's pretty cool. I've never seen an x-ray of a DIMM before.

[dreamy solstice]

what are those rods?

[atomic hornet]

Through-boards?

[dreamy solstice]

oh

right

[echo agate]

They're vias 🙂

[atomic hornet]

Oh, that's what they're called. TIL

<-- software geek, not hardware

[dusty citrus]

found this in the dvd writer drive i used to have in one of my PCs

[dreamy solstice]

what's so special about it?

[dusty citrus]

early mediatek chip

where i normally find Renesas ASICs instead

[dreamy solstice]

ah

[dusty citrus]

Guys I'm making Minecraft hosting (1.3€/GB RAM). How it should be named? Plz no popular hosting names ty. Tag me for any ideas.

[sick adder]

TFW the silkscreen says "3V" and the meter says "5V"

@dusty citrus bespin

[dusty citrus]

@sick adder friend decided already touchyhosting

[fickle slate]

how can I connect two planks of wood so that they can spin relatively to each other?

like two 2-by-4s

[jagged siren]

Do they need to spin freely, just move without much effort, or what? Any constraints on thickness?

[fickle slate]

green being the axis of rotation

and yea i would want them to spin freely

[jagged siren]

Something like https://www.caseyswood.com/shoppingcart/zen-cart/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=231_10 could work.

[fickle slate]

yea

what about if i sortf of want on plank hanging off the side of another?

[jagged siren]

I have no idea what that is representing. Rotating is rotating, I’d think.

[fickle slate]

i guess a normal bearing + dowel rod would work there

[vernal gale]

didn't there used to be a digikey channel?

anyhow, if y'all could not crash password reset when it contains a symbol, that'd be great 😛

[late fulcrum]

Yeah, there was a DigiKey channel for a while. We still get the icon, at least.

[fickle slate]

yall think it would be possible to modify the ROM of a car's computer? 🤔

for older cars i would assume they just got an (E)EPROM somewhere

[covert spire]

You can't exactly just pop some in, but it is

If you're trying an older car, it will require a new computer

They didn't design cars with open source concept

[fickle slate]

A really old car probably has a 8088 or something

[covert spire]

Well, 2006 & newer is more of computer, before that was something else

If it's really old, you're lucky if it has that

[fickle slate]

Wym?

[covert spire]

Depends on manufacture, it could be nothing more than data logger for censors, or basically 555 timer for fuel.

They made them to be cheap & compact circuit boards

Then again, it is possible to have 8088, if it was when it was in "affordable" range to their buyers

[fickle slate]

Well why wouldn't a car have a computer if they can fit it in

Usefull for a bunch of stuff

[covert spire]

There is being useful, & bottom dollar.

Which is why aftermarket exists

Especially now it's common for people to add a computer into older cars.

[fickle slate]

well past a certain year, bolting a CPU onto something became cheaper then designing a circuit from more discrete components

easier too

[covert spire]

2006

[fickle slate]

why 2006

single-die CPUs became cheap in what? early 80s?

[covert spire]

That was when it became a push for computers to calculate with new parts & censors

Well, just because it hit market doesn't mean engineers are gonna throw it into their product. Rationale is to make sales happen, so unless there is people willing to pay for it. Only then it'll become included. Automatic came out in 1920's it wasn't commonly added until many decades later

[fickle slate]

But my point is that it would probably be cheaper to have a single CPU plus I/O logic handle everything then many discrete circuits

[covert spire]

That also depends on what you view as 'cheaper'; a beta product which could lead to payout for recalls, & lost of customers. Or creating what you trust most

[fickle slate]

Perhaps

I mean I am just speculating here, might research later

[covert spire]

Yes, there were manufacturers that jumped on that chip, but then again it depended on who blew out chunks of cash for engineers to develope to the new stuff on market.

For instance BMW was one of first to go towards computers.

Yet Honda now has it even, way decades later

[fickle slate]

What about the thingy where you plug a thingy into the car's computer and it sends error codes

[covert spire]

That was the circuitry I was mentioning about censors. OBD, is literally nothing more than gives a number if a sensor reads back negative.

It's great for troubleshooting car issues, but that lesson was best learnt trying to work on 1960's Cadillac when you don't have such a thing, & more features than any modern vehicle

I have had a vehicle where that was all my OBD circuit done.

Then again, fuel injection, more sensors have been added to vehicles since

[fickle slate]

I think you meant to type sensors not censors :P

[covert spire]

Yea, I tired

Holy typos batman!

[hardy rock]

@fickle slate Ford sold millions of cars with the EEC-IV engine computer starting in the mid 1980s. I had one in a 1985 car with a turbocharged 2.3l four-cylinder.

Based on an Intel chip. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_EEC#EEC-IV

There's a hack that's been around for a long time, using a service port to override the internal PROM with an EPROM of your chosing. https://www.tweecer.com/tellmore.htm

As that page says, the next-generation Ford box uses flash memory and can be reprogrammed over OBD-II.

[vernal gale]

if someone wants to give me the community helper role I'd be down

I spend a lot of time in here answering random questions, I'm no expert, but I do what I can

[vernal gale]

shiny yellow ☺

[covert spire]

https://youtu.be/ACGSzBXKONo

[vernal gale]

oof

[sick adder]

Instead of working on CircuitPython tonight, I'm going to an outdoor bluegrass concert. Where's the :banjo: emoji when you need one?

@vernal gale congratulations and thank you (re: community helper role)

[vernal gale]

Ty

[sick adder]

well that didn't go particularly well. My USER PORT micropython device did successfully echo characters into a terminal program running on the Commodore, but it didn't seem to receive anything entered, and then after a few minutes the Commodore stopped showing video. My friend whose system this is was perfectly happy(?) to say it could be the old C64 PSU for all he knew, but of course I worry that it was obviously my hardware that did it. 😦

and this is at the office so we don't have any diagnostic equipment. booo

[vernal gale]

probably just ancient capacitors drying up

[echo agate]

If I remember correctly, C64 power bricks had heat issues, too.

[vernal gale]

yeah they're pretty bad

[finite monolith]

According to youtube (8-bit guy I think), the old C64 PSUs tended to fail in the way where they start sending much too high a voltage, so there's a risk to your MCU too

also, Lasers! Is there anything they can't do?

[vernal gale]

yeah probably a good idea to put a voltage regulator on there if there isn't already

I built two tapuinos today, an atmega328 based sd-card tape drive

for C64

also an eeprom game boy cartridge and flash cart programmer

still need some of the connectors though

and my C64 is out of commission until I get the PCBs for my modulator replacement

hopefully get those next week

we need an oshpark emoji

wow, needsmorejpeg

[sick adder]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4APWK3VVxA more at the intersection of tech and food

@vernal gale the update is, my friend has diagnosed the problem as being the PSU. Happily in this case it was just under-voltage on the 5V rail. so we will continue experiments with micropython on the USER serial port soon

[vernal gale]

look forward to it

[sick adder]

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3354131 I didn't even know I needed this

[umbral phoenix]

LOL, just fired up an old late-90s Mac after 15 years of collecting dust. It won't talk to modern HTTPS servers b/c there are no common encryption algorithms left available. But HTTP is fine. Next up: see if '80s Macs (System 7) can still get on the internet.

Haven't seen this user-agent in a long time Mozilla/4.7C-NSCPCD (Macintosh; U; PPC)

[late fulcrum]

PowerPC!

[umbral phoenix]

The older machines are 680x0, that will be fun. I downloaded Mosaic for the PPC, it had more trouble than just HTTPS... it's HTTP/1.0 with no Host: header, so it can't talk to shared hosting servers. CircuitPython is HTTP/1.0, but fortunately does include the Host: header (and of course speaks modern HTTPS).

[burnt tendon]

IIRC you can set up a proxy.

[umbral phoenix]

Thanks, yes I may do that, for Host and for non-sensitive HTTPS sites.

[torpid belfry]

I miss the old 68030-based Macs. Those were fun.

[dusty citrus]

E

[dusty citrus]

E

[vernal gale]

@stuck moth excited for celeste chapter 9?

[stuck moth]

yup! not sure when I'll have time to play though

[vernal gale]

yeah I haven't even gotten around to beating the main game yet

almost there

[sick adder]

ooh found a time next week to work further on the micropython + C64 USER PORT serial adapter. The going theory is that because the board is not asserting one of DCD, DSR, or RTS, the first C64 terminal software we tried will not transmit anything. I'm not entirely confident of this, but it is the first theory we will test, by asserting those lines manually.

need to also look at getting proper "UART console" working in circuitpython, because micropython on an esp32 (the only one I got to work with micropython console switching/duping) is a bit of a drag without usb filesystem!

and to further complicate things, the C64s live at my friend's place, not mine

[proven geode]

I guess you need GoToMyC64. 😄

[sick adder]

oh my goodness that is an awful/terrible idea

let me know when it is available, I would like to subscribe to your beta software

[vernal gale]

too bad I sold my spare c64 already lol

[finite monolith]

Samsung has their dev program that lets you try your software on one of a pile of their physical phones with some sort of remote control interface. You should totally do that for a C64

I'm glad I don't have a C64 or I'd totally be registering that domain and starting to work on code right now:

[vernal gale]

the main problem is that doesn't help them develop hardware

among others

[late fulcrum]

Hmm, I have a broken C64 someone gave me, I should see if I can get it going again.

[vernal gale]

probably a bad PLA

could be lots of other things, but that's usually what goes first and takes down a whole system

is it a black screen @late fulcrum?

[proven geode]

Enjoy this restoration of the “portable” Commodore SX-64.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXlblGvNtOs

[vernal gale]

if you like C64 restoration videos check out Jan Beta

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-5ePRSixyisZaFdPCKZLT_clZ2ML4O_J

[jagged siren]

No full-size TV required, so that qualified as portable. See also http://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/macbag_gr_st1.jpg

[dusty citrus]

Ah yes

The Macintosh

[sick adder]

oooh

[late fulcrum]

That's a clever approach for side-emitting LEDs, and may be easier to hand-solder than ordinary surface mounting of those packages.

[proven geode]

@smoky grotto I'm hoping that's a disk drive with a built in airhorn that warns my friends and family when it's 90% full.

[sick adder]

Ooh got my pi4. It's as slow as any other pi I've had at updating packages.

And the fan shim makes it not fit in the case I 3d printed

But the fan is quite quiet

765Mbit/s download which is as good as any other wired machine in the house though. Upload was bad for some reason though, 4Mb/s

[dusty citrus]

What the heck is the law of information conservation?

That is so confusing

[smoky grotto]

No its a part of a sorter

I already made a that part with the 3d printer

The darkgray part is the steppermotor
The rest is 3d printed

[torpid belfry]

Folks who have higher-end keyboards, how often (if ever) do you remove the keycaps and vacuum/brush out the collected detritus?

[smoky grotto]

never

i got the corsair platinum k95 rgb

[torpid belfry]

I've got a K70 red, and I just hoovered out all the hairs and other odds & sods

Now I'm not disgusted by looking down at my keybaord

between a beard and a cat

it was yucky

[smoky grotto]

yea i go alot to lanparty's and then it is under the chips ect. i have a pencil for it 🙂

[late fulcrum]

Every couple of years, I'll pull the keycaps off my Matias Tactile Pro. I'm not particularly messy and (usually) don't eat while using the computer, but it was all full of hair (human and cat), dust, and bits of stuff.

[umbral phoenix]

Recalling a bunch of 6502 comments in here awhile back, saw these and thought they might be of interest:

[late fulcrum]

That's a little boggling.

[hardy rock]

A while back I was doing something with a 16gb microsd card and realized that it was basically the square of a 140k 5.25" Apple II floppy disk. It held ~140k bytes for every byte on the Apple floppy. And it was small enough to worry about losing it in the carpet if I dropped it.

[dusty citrus]

found an Actions chip in a tablet that said it used a snapdragon

no photos yet

[umbral phoenix]

Sneakernet keeps getting better and better.

[dusty citrus]

yes i agree

[amber jungle]

when will the Adafruit MONSTER M4SK - DIY Electronic Eyes Mask be in stock?

[proven geode]

@amber jungle As of this moment, Digi-Key has some MONSTER M4SKs in stock:
https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/4343/1528-4343-ND/10419155

[sick adder]

Why didn't they call it "liftsy bitsy" https://www.adafruit.com/product/4363

[proven geode]

@sick adder
or pee-wee Wi-Fi
or bonsai Huzzah

[dusty citrus]

I was wondering

Does 5G actually kill people?

Or harm them

[sick adder]

No

[dreamy solstice]

just a myth made by the technophobic baby boomers

[dusty citrus]

Because my friend says that 5G gave people headaches and stomachaches and killed 300 birds! But I still dont believe that

[proven geode]

@dusty citrus There's a lot of that going around. Here's a recent NYT article about it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/12/science/5g-phone-safety-health-russia.html

[dusty citrus]

I just want the actual information that 5G harms people

I want faster internet

I want faster mobile data

My friend is brainwashed by all these fake articles

[proven musk]

I clean mechanical keyboards twice a year.

My newest keyboard (GMMK TKL) is hot swappable and has Zealios V2 which are the true higher-end MX profile switches.

Other keyboards

[covert spire]

Partly I'm not fully awake, so my memory may be failing me

What anime is that avatar from?

[proven musk]

Hatsune Miku. Not anime actually

[covert spire]

Ah hah

[proven musk]

She's a vocaloid

[covert spire]

All of them are eh?

Yea, vocaloids are super popular at conventions

Not as much as Boku no Hero Academia, but . . .

[proven musk]

I'm from Japan and vocaloid is bigger than boku no hero here in Japan

[covert spire]

Ah hah!

Well, that is cool

[proven musk]

Zealios V2 switches btw

[covert spire]

It's only still slightly growing popularity here in US, but I think people immitating their performance on stage is helping

I just checked a review video while ya was posting pictures of keyboards

I'm not big into RGB keyboards

Majnly because it's hard to find key covers I want

[proven musk]

I don't mind RGBs. They're cool

[covert spire]

Then again, I already gotta turn off my computer due to all the rgb lights

Mobo, speakers, etc

[proven musk]

Oh :/

[covert spire]

Rebuilt keys?

[proven musk]

No

DIY macro pad ;)

[covert spire]

Oh, nice

[proven musk]

Thanks!

[covert spire]

Next keyboard I want to do is to make mine closer like one from Net-juu Susume

[proven musk]

Ohhh

[covert spire]

Yea, I repainted keyboard like it, but it's basic keyboard. Now I want gamer keyboard in same colour

Also Japanese key covers instead of Russian

[proven musk]

Gamer keyboard? So you want a keyboard with switches like MX Red or Speed Silver?

[covert spire]

MX Red

[proven musk]

Oh, it's a good gaming switch

Speed silver is good too

[covert spire]

Yea, not sure which I'll end up preferring, but everyone I know recommends the MX Red

[proven musk]

Yeah, Red is battle-proof and a safer option

[covert spire]

Yea, battle-proof is main reason they tell me, since I tend to also use old typewritters

So, slamming keys are too easy when I am in middle of a game.

[fickle acorn]

I believe I have fallen in love with Daft Punk

[dusty citrus]

I will buy myself a gigatron TTL computer

But the shipping price is really surprising

[vernal iris]

ms!ping

[rare birch]

:greencheck: pong! 227ms

[vernal iris]

ms!help

[rare birch]

MakerSandbot Commands

❯ All Maker Commands

ms!code - Code Database: For more info on CodeDB, run ms!code.
ms!addcode - Add code to the Code Database. Run ms!code for more info on this command and it's args..
ms!3D <search/id/user> (search/thing id/username) - Thingiverse.
ms!product <id/search> (id number/search) - Adafruit Store.
ms!learn <random/search> (search) - Adafruit Learning System.

❯ Other Useful Commands

ms!shorten (full-url) - Bit.ly url shortener..

❯ Bot Information

ms!info - Get info about the bot.
ms!server - Get the invite link to the MakerSandbox server!.
ms!invite - Invite the bot to your server.
ms!suggest (Suggestion Name) | (Suggestion) - Request bot features.
ms!ping - See how fast the bot reponds!.
ms!opensource - Get a link to the MakerSandbot github page!.
ms!help - Shows all commands for the bot.

MakerSandbot Commands · Sep 13, 2019, 3:10 PM

[vernal iris]

ms!code

[rare birch]

➜ Code Database

<:codedb:434134534867648512> ➜ You Have Reached: Code Database!

Read about Code Database Below:

How It Works

CodeDB is a One-Of-a-Kind code feature! You can upload custom-code with a cool name to the databse, and it will be added to the list of codes. This means that it will be up until we do a code recurculation, when we take down your code so we have space for new code!

How do I access the code?

Just run ms!code list to get a list of the code cards and therir ids. Then run ms!code open (id) to open the code on that database!

I wanna add code!

It's super easy to add code! Just run ms!addcode (code-name) - (code-lang) | (code-description) | (Code-NO-MARKDOWN) and it will be up there! Also... we have added an extra feature for people who post to the code database: A Vurtual Maker Badge, and 200 free MakerCoins per-post. DO NOT ABUSE THIS OR YOU WILL BE BANNED FROM THE DATABASE + MONEY COMMANDS!

Code Database · Sep 13, 2019, 3:10 PM

[late fulcrum]

@dusty citrus The Gigatron is an interesting approach, especially the "programmable gate" stye ALU.

I would have done it a little differently, but they got it working, which counts for a lot.

[dusty citrus]

Thing is it seems more interesting for me

And I could mod it

Or do a whole bunch of stuff

[late fulcrum]

It is a nice TTL build without using a TTL ALU (but using a bunch of ROM and some diodes to emulate sequencer/decoder/gate functionality).

The main thing I would have done differently, to keep it pure TTL, would have been to implement a TTL LUT (like used in an FPGA) instead of the diode-based programmable gate. I think it would have been faster and more elegant, but I freely admit it's a personal choice, not an engineering one.

One interesting observation of that (and many other) SSI/MSI based computer projects is that a surprising amount of the chips are basically registers/counters. The actual compute logic is a surprisingly small fraction of what you see. There's a similar effect in early CPUs, where a large chunk of the silicon is occupied with registers/counters.

This was particularly noticeable in the RCA 1801 two-chip CPU. One chip was the logic and some of the counters, sequencers, and registers. The other chip was the program counter and the rest of the registers (the 1802 was basically the same CPU but in a single chip).

[dusty citrus]

Did people actually manage to build a IBM mainframe from the 60s using TTL gates?

And that does sound interesting with early computers just being counters and registers

[hardy rock]

@dusty citrus IBM mainframes used vacuum tubes in the very early 1960s, discrete transistors after that, and "Solid Logic Modules" (logic blocks soldered up from individual transistors) for the System/360 which came out in 1964! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Solid_Logic_Technology

7400-series TTL chips weren't even around until 1966.

There were some crazy people doing really hard stuff back then.

[burnt tendon]

So, there's this project: https://www.ludd.ltu.se/~ragge/vtc/

To madbodger's point, that design uses capacitors for register storage

[dusty citrus]

It looks like it was not updated in a long time

[burnt tendon]

yah

[dreamy solstice]

that's cool

[vernal gale]

I'm watching youtube on a Commodore 1701 monitor. Hardcore mad-ladding it right here

twitch too

[late fulcrum]

@lucid jackal @dusty citrus Ben Eater just came out with a video breadboarding a 6502 and writing a "Hello, world" program for it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnzuMJLZRdU

[dusty citrus]

Yes!

The electronics Bob Ross is back!

[late fulcrum]

Heh, I was just comparing Mustie1 with Bob Ross the other day (but Mustie is the Bob Ross of repairing small engines).

[dusty citrus]

Does the 6502 have general purpose registers?

[late fulcrum]

The 6502, like the 6800, has a somewhat creative approach to registers. Onboard, it just has the accumulator and the X and Y index registers, which can only sort-of be used as general purpose registers. However, it also has "page zero" addressing, which provides special short fast instructions to address data in a particular page in memory. In effect, this gives 256 general purpose registers, but they live in RAM instead of onboard.

In my opinion, the most register-rich of the early CPUs was the 1802 with its whopping 16 16-bit registers.

More precisely, the early single-chip CPUs. For example a DEC KA-10 also has 16 registers, but it's a machine the size of a refrigerator, not a single chip.

[umbral phoenix]

@late fulcrum That's a really good video.

[dusty citrus]

But is the 6502 easy to program for?

[late fulcrum]

I think it is, it has a pretty orthogonal instruction set and a straightforward architecture, but I'm probably biased, coming from a 6800 background, it felt pretty familiar.

When you get down to assembly programming, personal taste tends to become a dominant factor.

[dusty citrus]

I feel like the 6502 will be difficult to program without any general purpose registers

[hardy rock]

@dusty citrus I made my living writing 6502 code for a few years. It's actually fun once you get used to it. You learn to make do with what you have. As @late fulcrum says, you store values mainly in memory, zero page if they're really important. Things don't stay in A, X, or Y for very long.

The lack of hardware multiply and divide operations would probably throw most people more than the registers. But there's still much love for the 6502 on the internet, lots of resources for it out there.

[umbral phoenix]

It's all binary... you can do anything with three (carefully chosen) instructions 😉 (one and two get a little more painful https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7847384)

[dusty citrus]

I guess I can try to play around with the Z80 and the 6502

[finite monolith]

I imagine the registers on a 6502 aren't any faster to access than the RAM so register vs page0 didn't make much difference. In contrast to modern CPUs were going to RAM might take 1000 times as long.

[hardy rock]

@Luminescentsimian Correct, two clock cycles for either, but three clock cycles to access memory outside zero page with a 16-bit address. And we really did count those cycles.

I should add though that it wasn't really one or the other. You loaded A or X or Y from memory or stored A or X or Y to memory, or you added a value in memory to A. Most operations (excepting "increment A" and such) involve a register and a memory location.

[shrewd hatch]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD_cFzi9xf0

[torpid belfry]

Well, dang it, my pihole ate itself.

That was an annoying last hour reconfiguring my network around it.

[proven juniper]

I think it's their first shown. Sound like based on the idea of show & tell + ask an eng.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPV6Kuh_SS8&feature=youtu.be

[dusty citrus]

Yes

Its circuit man

[woeful forge]

I wish adafruit would just slow down. They make great products, their documentation and learning resources are second to none, and they have created great communities. But they bring out a product, it goes out of stock and seemingly they have moved on to the next big thing. I really want to buy a Pygamer but waiting for them to restock... Gosh it's frustrating. Sorry if I'm misinformed, but I feel it has to be said... Please adafruit, make enough for everyone who wants to buy one.

[frail blade]

@woeful forge Digikey has them in stock. https://www.digikey.com/products/en/development-boards-kits-programmers/33?k=Pygamer&newproducts=1

[torpid belfry]

@woeful forge How do you know how many to make on your first run? Make too many, you wasted money that you could have used for other things and you're sitting on inventory (especially if you find you need to make revisions).

It's a hard problem to solve

[woeful forge]

@torpid belfry I agree it is a difficult equation and I do truly want adafruit to be successful. I just think the excitement, anticipation and build up to some recent products like the Pygamer and the NeoTrellis M4 before it would have warranted bigger initial production runs. They both went out of stock so fast.

@frail blade Thanks for the link. I'm in the UK. When international shipping and import duties etc are added it all gets a bit expensive. I've been waiting for notification that Pimoroni have it in stock.

Maybe I should just be kicking myself for not ordering fast enough.

[floral urchin]

I'm currently need an app to run on android pie, it is tested to work in android lolipop, will it be guaranteed to work as usual?

[dusty citrus]

Pygamer?

I actually do want to play around with creating games on simple consoles

[late fulcrum]

There are a lot of nice platforms available these days for crafting games. I had a lot of fun writing simple games in BASIC on an Atari 800. I'm thinking of trying my hand at doing the same with a VIP2K, and possibly learning CHIP-8.

[dusty citrus]

Any of you heard that the 8 bit guy is creating his own 8 bit computer?

[woeful forge]

@late fulcrum I was writing games as well back in the eighties - not very good though - on my C=64, PET and BBC Model B. I still have the C=64 I bought in 1983 and my wife's Atari 800 XL.

@dusty citrus The 8 bit guy has never done anything about the BBC Micro which is sad because it is the progenitor of Raspberry Pi and everything ARM powered eg. almost all mobile devices and most of adafruit's products.

[late fulcrum]

There are some good writeups out there on how the original ARM CPU works. It's an appealing approach, and the ISA is fun to work with.

[dusty citrus]

I hope I can get my hands on a RISC V dev board

So that I can do programing on it

Using C++

Or maybe assembly

[lyric hull]

okay so

who knows a bit about tvs?

[late fulcrum]

TVS like transient voltage suppressors, or televisions, or something else?

[lyric hull]

televisions

i have kinda a shaded area on mine and would love to know the cause

[late fulcrum]

Ah. Is it an analog or digital television, and CRT or flatscreen? Also, what shape and location is the shaded area?

[lyric hull]

lcd

ccfl backlit

about +-2 in from the sides appears lighter

its very apparent on a dark screen

[late fulcrum]

That's an odd one. Is it a sharp, distinct difference, or gradual?

[lyric hull]

sharp

shall i share a pic?

its more distinct on the left hand side

i initially thought it was the psu burning the lcd

but then it should be fine at a cold start no? lcds recover dont they

[late fulcrum]

That does look like a burn.

[lyric hull]

i have no idea

[umbral phoenix]

Does the display itself get hot, or is it (or has it been) in the path of something that exhausts heat? I saw something like this when an LCD display was in the path of some electronics heat flow, but this is more dramatic.

[lyric hull]

display itself gets hot

its a rather old lcd

[blazing pond]

A similar thing happens with the phone I just replaced, an LG V10. That's just what happens to LCDs when they overheat. The big question is, is that normal (i.e. a design flaw) or a fault in your particular device.

[lyric hull]

i think

its not just age

but since i use it as a monitor is on quite alot

ccfls get hot man

[umbral phoenix]

Time for Dark Mode

[lyric hull]

i wonder

do you guys think it will be reduced if i put in washers

then again dunno if i can

but it seems permanent

as its there on a cold start too

i do wanna upgrade it tho

will when i have funds

[lyric hull]

Mad I actually have another question for you

if you arent too busy

[late fulcrum]

I'm in and out

[lyric hull]

okay well, how much KNOWLEDGE do you have about phones?

like roms and stuffs

[late fulcrum]

Not a whole lot: my phone knowledge is mostly older stuff.

[lyric hull]

ahh kk

[abstract violet]

For anyone who is looking for a great resource for free templates to make Kamen Rider (Power Rangers etc) helmets for halloween using EVA Foam -- I found this channel :
https://www.youtube.com/user/batmannabe/videos?view=0&sort=dd&shelf_id=12

Maybe make it light up with a monster m4sk or other Adafruit stuff eh? @thin rose @spare ether

Better preview image for the link above

[dusty citrus]

Is confedyank still here? Its bobaFETT.

[covert spire]

Yo yo yo

Sorry, helping a buddy making Hogwarts house robes

We got side-tracked on books to carry to sell being idea that we're wizards

[dusty citrus]

Hey @covert spire, its been a wild ride trying to get my tech back in order after the nuking of my phone and computer. You upgrade to general license yet? Or was it extra you were working on?

[covert spire]

Not yet, I been studying more to morse code

I am Slytherin after all

[dusty citrus]

Morse code isn't necessary, if you are still in the us that is

[covert spire]

I am in US, I know

I just debated whether it's Slytherin or Ravenclaw

[dusty citrus]

I need to get back to the dihs and dahs myself

I need to get my antennas set up now. I moved into the boonies

[covert spire]

Ahhh, that would cause lost of tech realms

But, great oportunity to garden at home

Also less rules against antennaes

[dusty citrus]

My PC was filled with dust

So I decided to clean it out

[late fulcrum]

Looks like a heatsink blew off?

[dusty citrus]

It didn't blow off

I removed it

Since I was lazy to use a vacuum cleaner

To clean the heatsink

I just brought it to the kitchen

And banged it on the side of the sink

And

Dust got off

[late fulcrum]

Heh throw it in the dishwasher?

[dusty citrus]

But what about the fan circuits?

I want my PC to go up in smokes and my mom running into the living room asking

"Where is all the smoke coming from?"

[late fulcrum]

I meant the motherboard. The case, you could take apart and clean most of it fairly easily with a brush.

[dusty citrus]

I just used a damp paper towel and wiped it everywhere

[dusty citrus]

Uh I need help

So

My xbox one S

A ethernet cable is stuck in its ethernet port

Nevermind

I managed to do it

[versed pumice]

@dusty citrus FYI that heatsink glue is super toxic, personally I wouldn't want it in my kitchen

So I've heard anyway, the SDSs I've found don't look terrible.

[dusty citrus]

?

I didnt glue my ethernet cable into my xbox

[versed pumice]

I was talking about banging your heatsink on the kitchen sink

But perhaps I misunderstood.

[dusty citrus]

Well

Not thernal paste is on the sink

[dusty citrus]

What would happen if I washed my face too much, and didn’t let my face oil over at all

[dusty citrus]

Dry out?

[cyan canopy]

Hello All. New to Discord. Just bought a PyRuler to get started on learning some coding.

[late fulcrum]

What happens to some people is their skin is unhappy about the dryness and starts to both get flaky and produce copious amounts of skin oil, leaving them with an oily, flaky face. This happened to a friend of mine, who finally saw a dermatologist who recommended the counterintuitive approach of using a moisturizer for an oily face. It worked, too.

[dusty citrus]

So

I was luckey

I found some wireless earbuds

But

The problem is

The battery is swelling

[late fulcrum]

Time to replace! However, working on earbuds is generally difficult.

[dusty citrus]

Well

Uuhhhh

Will it not explode?

Because I think it became bigger

[dusty citrus]

Where can I get a replacement battery?

I cant seem to find the one that fits

[cyan canopy]

what size lipo is it? more than likely a 1 cell and something like a 200 mah. Try looking in the hobby/ rc world for something. Hobbking.com maybe? 2c

[lyric hull]

okay so

stupid question

im trying to forward ports on my routher

but i dunno how

idk if the wan port is udp or tcp

so um unsure where to put each value

[late fulcrum]

Hmm, that's oddly worded.

Which service did you want to forward?

[lyric hull]

im kinda estranged to this, no idea whats going on

i tried the protforward app, works well but needs full version

warframe requries ports UDP:4950, 4955 and TCP 6695-6699

im trying to get those to forward

as well as trying to amp up the speeds on my torrent client

(backwards country, backwards internet, hence gotta download to watch anything

okay nvm, seems its something wrong with the game

one thing thatsbothering me is this

but this routher is wonky

i need to find the best setup for it to work with my sim to get the most possible throughput

[lost condor]

I just had to share this super deceptively labeled USB battery pack

6600mAh...but at 3.7v.

Not the 5v output.

[floral urchin]

^that's actually not deceptive, all power bank manufacturer uses mAh at battery spec, cause higher advertised capacity in mAh
Another point to think about is that with the addition of quick charge, charging phone at 9v or 12v would change how you calculate capacity in mAh. So to evaluate raw battery capacity, either look at capacity at battery nominal voltage or using watt-hour(Wh)

here's my power bank, luckily mine specifies both capacity value. 16000mAh is battery capacity, but discharging capacity at 5.1v is 10200mAh.

[lost condor]

Do they all use mAh at the battery voltage? Maybe this one is being less deceptive than my other ones that don't specify

[floral urchin]

most of it yes

[lost condor]

I always figured it was at the discharge voltage (and that's what I used when determining battery size for a project)

Welp, learned something then.

[sick adder]

If I use a billion lines of FOSS code a day and write 10, I suppose that's "mostly consume"? Seems hard for anyone to "mostly contribute". Maybe I misunderstand the question...

[umbral phoenix]

LOL that's a really good point.

[vernal gale]

<3 the c64 learn guide

[dusty citrus]

Did the server go down for anyone else?

[sick adder]

This place is cool. Pricing the led strips in my head though.

https://borderless.teamlab.art/

[hoary turret]

I finally have a reason to get the Amazon spy.......https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/09/25/samuel-l-jackson-first-celebrity-voice-amazon-alexa/2447992001/

[late fulcrum]

Heh, he's been available for Tomtom GPS units for years.

[covert spire]

He's also done Waze & few others

[valid dagger]

question to the people with a k40 laser. There is a display with the laser power percentage on mine. Is there a maximum value that I should not exceed? I assume the 100% will kill the lasertube?

[late fulcrum]

It won't kill it instantly like a diode laser but I suppose it might impact the lifetime

[hidden bluff]

we stay below 70% power

[fickle cave]

The Hackerspace i3Detroit is doing a live steam all weekend. Laser cutting and circuit python abound.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnA6b5jt91M

btw, it is a fundraiser for our patronicity campaign
https://www.patronicity.com/project/i3detroit_expansion_1#!/

[late fulcrum]

Steam powered Circuit Python laser cutter?

[fickle cave]

oh yes

[dusty citrus]

So I had been thinking of ideas of building a portable raspberry pi computer

Where I can do coding

And maybe some java minecraft on the go

Any suggestions?

@dusty citrus What exact environment do you plan to work with this, in? Library? Someone's kitchen table? On the bus or train?

[late fulcrum]

An Atrix dock makes an easy route to a portable Pi. It includes a battery, power supply, screen, keyboard, and trackpad.

[dusty citrus]

I kinda would want to bring it anywhere

Mainly school

Because I go to school

[late fulcrum]

Alternatively, you could use an ordinary USB powerbank, an old LCD from a laptop with an adapter, and a keyboard and trackball.

[dusty citrus]

I kinda do want it to be portable

Not to big and not to small

[late fulcrum]

The Atrix dock is super portable, but a little small. A lashup with an old laptop LCD could end up more or less laptop/notebook size.

[dusty citrus]

I used to run a cast-off IBM (Lenovo build) laptop with Oberon running on it, because 15 seconds after I powered it on, there was Oberon, ready for me to type into a text document. Solve the 'tryingo to get it to go to sleep and wake up properly' problem by not bothering with sleep at all - powered it off completely.

This was very effective for quick editing sessions on the road.

I had been eyeing on portable raspberry pi computers that has a mini keyboard and a small screen

Kinda like a size of a smartphone or a Nintendo switch

Even a full-sized keyboard and display seem slow to me, so I wouldn't give up at least the full sized keyboard. The Dell Mini 9 had a keyboard I found too small to be productive on (but still better than anything handheld, and I could just barely touch type on it - just wide enough).

[late fulcrum]

For really small, look at the #keyboards channel 🙂

[dusty citrus]

I guess I can live with netbook small raspberry pi computer because I dont need that much space inside it

[late fulcrum]

There's other stuff out there like a GPD Win or a Mirabook: if you could find a cheap broken one and graft a Pi into it, you'd have a great little palmtop computer.

[dusty citrus]

Then I can create a special dock to slide the palmtop in and it creates a full fledged desktop

If I wanted to create my own case to build my laptop

I would need to get my hands on a 3D printer

[late fulcrum]

While you could 3D print a laptop case, it wouldn't be very durable.

[dusty citrus]

I guess I'm better off getting something thats a bit more mainstream

Like something with a x86 CPU

And besides

ARM cant run x86 code

The one thing only the Pi can provide that nobody else really can - is a development environment for programs meant to run on .. the Pi. ;)

[late fulcrum]

ARM can run X86 code, just not very fast.

[dusty citrus]

I had seen videos of it runing windows 10 and it was really slow

Windows xp on the raspberry pi would be amazing though

[covert spire]

Maybe Rasp Pi B+

Which I'm waiting for

[late fulcrum]

I've run Windows for Workgroups 3.1 on a SparcStation 1.

[dusty citrus]

I notice nuisance telemarketers absolutely never call after 9 p.m. Which tells me that (since they aren't obeying the Law, anyway) there's no money in after-9 harassment.
That means people are giving them what they want before 9 p.m. but wouldn't, after 9 p.m..

[umbral phoenix]

I set my phone to only ring for people in my addres book 🙂

[late fulcrum]

I harass them any time they call.

[umbral phoenix]

I'm too cheap to subscribe to Jolly Roger, but that would be awwesome.

[late fulcrum]

Reading them (fake) credit card numbers with randomly varying speed and volume infuriates them. One called back four times to give me more insults and imprecations. I claim victory.

[dusty citrus]

I physically owned a machine (no special retailer) that was able to somehow count rings or something. Many years ago. And if the caller did the right thing, it'd ring through to the answering machine. If the caller didn't do the right thing, it wouldn't. Pretty sure it was based on ring signal counts. I've forgotten just how it worked, but it implemented some form of 'the whitelisted callers know what to do' protocol.

[late fulcrum]

I've thought of taking an old CLEP or voice synthesizer modem and creating an unending automated attendant that whatever you press, you get 10 more (randomly generated) choices. People I actually want to hear from get the secret code or whitelisted. Unfortunately, I work from home and have clients all over the world, so I have to answer random calls.

[dusty citrus]

I just wait 5 seconds after answering the line. Removes a lot of the will to continue, for unwanted calls.

[late fulcrum]

I answer brightly "Hello?" and always press the keys to talk to the representative, who quickly comes to regret their life choices.

[dusty citrus]

Haha.

I have a friend who claims he got some voice recordings from the official woman who did them for the (local) phone company. He has some kind of fancy PBX stuff. He uses her voice to mess with telemarketers and such.

[late fulcrum]

I just have an old Phlink phone interface, some old modems, and a very nice headset.

[dusty citrus]

I'm using a Jabra Evolve 365 bluetooth headset with a cordless base that accepts Bluetooth for my POTS needs.

[late fulcrum]

And a lot of familiarity with infuriating vocal habits.

[dusty citrus]

Neil DeGrass Tyson did a YouTube vid recently about the future of space. Something about the audio was intensely distracting to me, and he was constantly physically interacting with the podium, setting off decaying mechanical oscillations getting into the microphone at .. oh about 2 Hz or so.

[late fulcrum]

I'm using a Plantronics M22 interface unit with their H101 binaural headset, connected to a ZoomSwitch ZMS20 USB interface so I can switch between my computer and phone line.

[dusty citrus]

Are you tethered or is that wireless?

[late fulcrum]

Yeah, it's tethered, I have little patience with wireless headsets.

One nice thing about the headset is that I can continue to do paying work while ignoring the telescammer, occasionally saying "What?" to keep them going. I had an auto warranty scammer on the phone for 46 straight minutes before I explained that I wasn't buying.

If everyone did that, they'd be out of business in a couple of weeks.

[dusty citrus]

Haha.

I have a nuisance friend who does all the talking. It always amazes me how long he can go on for without feedback.

[late fulcrum]

The "you won a vacation" ones are like that. They'll drone on for 10-15 minutes, listing all the features of the (weirdly expensive for a free vacation) that you'll (never really) get.

[dusty citrus]

I used to think I was better off pretending to cooperate with anything mentions police (police benevolent this and that) telemarketers.

Now I usually challenge them directly, since I know for sure it's not a live human voice.

They did us a big favor by going to all robots.

[late fulcrum]

I used to fall for those too, thinking that the stickers they sent would reduce the chance of getting a traffic ticket. Turns out that police don't care about the stickers (they know most of the money ends up in the scammers' pockets) and if they do, you can easily run into rivalries, so if it's a state sticker, a county cop probably will sneer at it, and vice versa.

[dusty citrus]

"Quick! What's twenty two divided by seven?" is my standard Turing test. A human will always have a non-programmatic response that is a credible testimony to their actual humanity.

[late fulcrum]

My standard answer to that is "What?"

[dusty citrus]

A close friend has been dating a cop a long time; I asked him about this and he basically said that we cannot accept any kind of gift.

He was actually unhelpful to the 'but what if I wanted to do something nice for the police' question. He had no suggestions at all.

That tells me all I need to know about telephone solicitations on the same subject.

[late fulcrum]

Most of those are actual licensed charities (not good ones, mind you, most of the money goes to profit and to fund more fundraising), so the magic phrase "Please put me on your no-call list" will hold them off for their standard waiting period (generally a year). Not a huge advantage, as many of them have an annual solicitation cycle anyway. If you're lucky, the company doing the calls (it's usually contracted out) will put you on their master "no call" list, and they won't call you for any of their clients for a while.

[dusty citrus]

My phone company wants a pretty big hit for caller ID so I haven't had caller ID for several years, now.

[late fulcrum]

I also refuse to pay for caller ID. Weirdly, even if you don't answer, the scammers make money via "dip fees" that your phone company pays them to get the calling number (which is usually spoofed anyway). The phone company would love to recover that money by selling you the information, but I'm disinclined to pay for mostly garbage data.

[dusty citrus]

I got a lot of dead calls where I did nothing special to dissuade them from speaking to me, yet they never spoke one word (the inbound caller). Like a lot of those.

[late fulcrum]

If we gave phone companies the ability to refuse to route calls from foreign networks who violate their terms of service, it would all be over fairly quickly. The scammers would be isolated on their own network, only able to call each other, and we would be insulated from them.

[dusty citrus]

The only think I could think of was 'wrong gender' .. that they were targeting women for their 'market'.

[late fulcrum]

Yeah, I get a lot of dead calls too, when the autodialer gets more answers than it expected, and there are no scammers available to take the call. Even their "your call is very important to us" (um, YOU called ME) recording eventually runs out of ports .

[dusty citrus]

Oh I get it. That makes total sense.

[late fulcrum]

I had some fun with the "microsoft tech support" scammers, who would want to get a remote session into my computer, using a (stolen) key to the software they're using. I'd go to the vendor's website, find the "abuse" link, and enter the key there. I'm not exactly sure what happens then, but the scammers suddenly become very angry when I do it.

They probably have to go buy/steal a whole new key before they can resume scamming.

[dusty citrus]

When telemarketing was first on the rise, enough to notice from 'background' volume (typical # of calls per week, prior to the rise in frequency) .. I was pretty sure the phone company was selling my 'he just hung up the phone' signal to telemarketers.

Haha you get even in ways I've never even heard of, before. ;) rofl

I noticed today that my new Motorola headlamp (wear it on your head) has a flicker freq low enough to notice while washing the dishes. The water undulates enough to pick up on it.

So I shone it on some fan blades, thinking I was going to have to look through the fan blades, like you do to see the refresh on a (vintage) 50 Hz refresh, B&W compact Macintosh.

I realized I just have to shine it onto the blades, and look from the same side as the light. ;)

I do the same thing with the knobbies on my bicycle front tire -- ride under a 60 Hz sodium streetlight, and adjust my speed to time perfectly with the light flicker. ;)

I don't remember how it worked, but the turntable we had (for 33 1/3 vinyl LP's) had a strobe strip along the rim; probably relied on 60 Hz line frequency to do its thing, to calibrate it.

Google has a hit for 'turntable strobe' for the same idea.

[dusty citrus]

Hey, I don't know if this is appropriate to ask here, please remove it if not, but, do alter-egos denote the presence of psychopathy?

[tame saddle]

@dusty citrus i don't think its inappropriate. and while i know that Dissociative Identities are in the current DSM, I would highly suggest that question be posed to a mental health professional. (sorry if that seems like a non-answer, answer. its just a field that truly benefits from a professional.)

[dusty citrus]

Gotcha, thanks

[slim shard]

random discarded idea:
raspberry pi case thar incorporates a Circuit Playground Express using a serial link, to do whatever cool stuff comes of it

[dusty citrus]

It was called Distinctive Ringing - a phone company service. I think it was meant for when you have two separate pairs of wires providing two phone numbers to, say, your desk telephone.

[fossil gust]

Howard the robot driving fish

[floral urchin]

Hey mecanum wheels 👀

I'm doing a project with that type of wheels too

[dusty citrus]

Guys

What is a good LED to use if I want to make an LED cube with RGB

Isn't there a type of RGB LED with a 10-bit color decoder inside?

You just send it a serial color code through that line, and it will create it, I think

[dusty citrus]

apa102

You could basically hand-send the entire RGB sequence to apa102 I think. Doesn't seem to require synchronous timing.

https://cpldcpu.wordpress.com/2014/11/30/understanding-the-apa102-superled/

https://github.com/wa1tnr/atst_aa_rev03a/blob/testing-ee/main.c#L247

https://www.adafruit.com/product/3195 BLINKT
easy to program - I did mine on bare metal ;)

[dusty citrus]

Can an NPN BJT take about 1.5 amps?

Does anyone have some part number for this?

1.5A at 5V

[late fulcrum]

For an LED cube, you could use these https://www.adafruit.com/product/1938

[dusty citrus]

bitbanged apa102 for Arduino IDE:
https://github.com/wa1tnr/apa102-demo

[slim shard]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOpMrVnjYeY

[dusty citrus]

@dusty citrus Maybe
https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/diodes-incorporated/APT13005SU-G1/APT13005SU-G1DI-ND/4570492

[hardy rock]

@dusty citrus 2n3055 is a classic NPN power transistor. I've still got a few in Radio Shack blister packs. 15A at 60V.

TIP31C is another golden oldie. Smaller TO220 package, 3A at 100V.

[late fulcrum]

There are a whole lot of NPN BJTs that can handle 1.5A at 5V. The TIP31 mentioned is a nice choice, common and easy to breadboard.

[dusty citrus]

I remember I was trying to create a micro capacitor bank using ceramic caps in parallel

So me being a genius

I put a cap that was not ceramic

And I almost had my house filled with smoke

I could I have put the caps in series

[late fulcrum]

Whoops! What kind of capacitor bank?

A quick look through DigiKey looking for a 1.5A, 5V NPN BJT brings up the 29 cent SS8050 and the 86 cent ZTX649, among others. Those two are in TO-92 (ish) packages that are really easy to breadboard.

There are, of course, other exotic choices like the 2N3421 in a mil-spec metal can TO-5 package, but at over 21 dollars apiece, it would not be my first choice unless I needed those qualities for some reason.

Yow, there's a 2N1485 in a metal TO-8 package for a whopping $361.46! It's a "non stocked" item, but they happen to have 4 of 'em lying around, should you want them for some reason.

[vernal gale]

@late fulcrum saw this and thought of you https://www.ebay.ca/itm/1985-Motorola-16-32-Bit-Microcomputer-System-Components-Data-Book-500-pgs/113702679147

[hardy rock]

I might have one of those but it wasn't where I expected to find it. I did come up with a couple of sister volumes however.

Also, a 1985 single-volume "phone book" edition of Inside Mac...

[dusty citrus]

https://twitter.com/localghost1/status/1178228093321990144

localghost (@localghost1)

https://t.co/K9JE1bsXYT

Sweet dreams are made of this @elonmusk @Erdayastronaut

Twitter

[dusty citrus]

@hardy rock Back in 1987 I got a job where they told me that if I hired on, they would teach me how to program Macintoshes. "Oh cool" I thought. My first day at work my "education" consisted of them handing me a copy of Inside Macintosh. Then basically I got a "get to work". Ended up being a fun job, but wow what a learning curve!

[dusty citrus]

I’ve been watching a romantic comedy anime, and I don’t know, but it looks like calling someone by their first name, and not their family name shows a really high level of closeness.. I didn’t think it would be that bad

Their way of calling each other is weird to my western mind. And I’m trying to learn the language, so I should get with the system

[late fulcrum]

@vernal gale The computer I learned on came with a box of manuals and guides. Since the 6800 chip by itself cost $175 or so (back when that was a lot of money), Motorola sweetened the deal somewhat by offering the nicely packaged documentation set with the evaluation board.

[dusty citrus]

6800? For $175?

That's insane!