general-chat

[late fulcrum]

I also don't know if you'll be even expected to file, but I'm guessing (again, I'm no expert) that if there's a W-4 on record that they'll expect a matching tax filing (even if you don't owe anything). The government lurves paperwork.

I know plenty of adults who are also wondering "what is all this" and "what even are exemptions" and "how do I even do this".

[umbral phoenix]

Should be able to get help from HR (if it exists) or someone in admin

[dusty citrus]

Hm

[fickle slate]

is there any reason to not just withhold 0 dollars?

[lapis bluff]

@fickle slate If I remember that form correctly, you don't actually specify how much to withhold, you give lots of other info and the system figures that out. If you get zero withholding (which, if you know where they're going with the questions, can easily be arranged), but then end up owing the government money, there can be huge penalties.

[fickle slate]

isn't it better to just end up owning the gov. money but pay it back?

(never done this before so idk)

[lapis bluff]

I'm not sure it would be a good idea to "end up owning the gov." 🙂

[fickle slate]

Cause it's like having a 0-interest loan

[dusty citrus]

They would simply rather give it back to you than get it out of you.

[fickle slate]

I though when you actually did your taxes you either paid or got the refund

hmm

[lapis bluff]

No, owing the feds money at the end of the year can result in penalties that are much more than the actual tax.

[dusty citrus]

This is a link to the Federal Government's IRS web site:
https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-withholding-tables-frequently-asked-questions

[fickle slate]

ok but like

If you are self employed, you would end up owning them money

why would it matter as long as it is paid on time?

[dusty citrus]

You're supposed to figure things out before they occur. If you can't figure it out for yourself, you're supposed to get appropriate help to figure it out.

[fickle slate]

Well like, I am assuming you don't spend all your money and leave some behind to be able to pay the taxes

[lapis bluff]

No. If you are self employed you have to do quarterly estimates of how much you'll owe and then paying them at the start of each quarter (says the self employed consultant).

[fickle slate]

that's wack

[lapis bluff]

It's the federal government. It's all way to overly complex, but they wield great power to make you do it the way they want.

[dusty citrus]

It's a culture and you get used to it.

[fickle slate]

I always thought it was just you either pay or get paid the difference but i guess not

[dusty citrus]

Generally they over-withold and you get a refund.

Don't forget about the part where they use the tax money for things you don't personally approve of.

If it was optional, people wouldn't pay it.

[lapis bluff]

@dusty citrus As it says on the bumper sticker on my car "Wouldn't it be great if our schools got all the money they wanted and the Air Force had to hold a bake sale to buy a bomb."

[dusty citrus]

BTW taxation is about 70% of your income, if you live in Finland.

[fickle slate]

and firewood is the other 30%?

🤔

Do you live there?

[dusty citrus]

I was in the Air Force. The word was 'Thanks to Jimmy Carter we don't have the supplies we need' (in 1982).

A friend of mine lives in Finland (he's an American expat).

They have pretty good social programs in Finland.

But .. 70% lol

Better be, for that kind of coin.

[lapis bluff]

But, to get a little bit back to the original question from @dusty citrus , there's a promo on the local radio station that talks about getting your first paycheck and wondering who FICA was and why he was getting your money.

[dusty citrus]

The whole paycheck system kind of implies that it's okay for someone else to have the money and decide if and when you get any.

Money being one of the very few things you can give to anyone else, to get them to give you back, say, food, gasoline, fuel oil, tires for your truck or most other goods.

Other than all those things on that list. ;)

[dusty citrus]

https://youtu.be/5c4cv7rVlE8?t=1207

[dusty citrus]

Nick Bostrom's
http://simulation-argument.com

.. the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation.

[mortal night]

kid at my school (I'm a teacher) made this super cool lego guitar. He has submitted to lego ideas (where lego lets you put forward ideas for new lego kits). It would make his decade if he could hit the next supporter milestone. https://bit.ly/2PLSOYW
Supporting is free and doesn't take long.

He's a super great kid.

[sick adder]

https://lwn.net/Articles/813691/

The simulation argument is false. I went outside and checked. Glad I could clear that up.

oh oops, this link is usable:
https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/813691/62ce44c2f407821c/

[shrewd hatch]

@late fulcrum do you know of any good inventory softwares that can be hosted on a raspberry pi

[late fulcrum]

I know next to nothing about inventory software!

[dusty citrus]

We had inventory software at the hardware store, many years ago. It was 80 columns by 25 lines for the user interface, and was (for a time) used for point-of-sale purchases.

The supplier had a version - I don't remember if that was the one we used or not.

Eventually we switched suppliers; True Value was the branding, then.

[native cedar]

people pushing the limits of the old ZX spectrum :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEl4fecZeGE

[sullen bronze]

anyone knows if its possible to install a copy of iOS on a rpi 3?

iOS 6 or 5 for example

[dusty citrus]

What makes you think that's a possibility.

[dusty citrus]

Although I do not believe it to be practical, this was asked on Stack Exchange also. And generally rejected as a good idea.

[sullen bronze]

What makes you think that's a possibility.
@dusty citrus arm compatibility, its a linux based system

and i would give it a try

¯_(ツ)_/¯

[dusty citrus]

ARM is a bit broad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_4

Apple makes their own hardware. Their software is secondary; they build hardware with design goals, then write the necessary software to support that hardware.

It is a profoundly closed system, even though, for example, Darwin was opensourced.

Apple is not really 'sharing' the way it works in other ecosystems.

They get, but they do not give.

I'm half kidding .. I really don't know, anymore.

[sullen bronze]

i mean, there's hackintosh sooo

maybe someone out there could compile a kernel with a modded version of iOS

virtualized macOS 8 works fine on the pi 3

[dusty citrus]

Maybe they do have it!

[crystal orbit]

It’s battery powered now

[sullen bronze]

@crystal orbit looks good ig

[crystal orbit]

Thanks

It’s a complete sin in terms of wiring, but it works

[sullen bronze]

well it has temp and humidity level, so thats great

[late fulcrum]

That's classic style breadboarding.

[dusty citrus]

<@&327289013561982976> Need a consult. ;)

[sick adder]

@dusty citrus what's up?

[dusty citrus]

May I DM you?

[sick adder]

yes, I'll share it with other mods in due course

[crystal orbit]

So, I'm currently using Blender to do my modeling for 3D printing, but I'm pretty sure there are better programs for this kind of stuff

What kind of 3D modeling programs do you guys use when designing stuff you want to 3D print? (Things like housing for electronics)

[crystal ore]

Fusion 360 is a popular suggestion these days. It's a commercial tool but has a free license for personal hobbyist use.

[jagged siren]

Inventor or SolidWorks might be an option if you're a student. OpenSCAD if you want to do your modeling via programming instead of mouse movements.

[cunning shuttle]

man, that moment when you go to unwrap your shinny new RPi 4 and realize they are using yet another hdmi standard and you're unprepared to adapt to it

I would second the recommendation for Fusion 360. There are a lot of great tutorials out there for it, including the Layer by Layer series. I use it for modeling for 3d printing, have used it to prepare a model for CNC. Feel like there is more community around it.

[dusty citrus]

found this display on some amp my dad found, would it be possible for me to control this with an Arduino (or a similar MCU)?

[late fulcrum]

Probably: many of those LCDs have similar interfaces (there are a few popular variants that are well supported, and many oddballs that aren't).

[dusty citrus]

photo on ebay for the same amp (Matrix Audio S4.4)

[cunning shuttle]

while browsing for some new micro sd cards it reminds me of a time when I was looking at HDD with similar capacity. In most cases the card form is cheaper too

[lapis bluff]

@cunning shuttle Hey, I have some computers in my basement museum with 5MB disk drives. And I remember a time when that seemed like way more than enough...

[cunning shuttle]

we had an apple iie when I was a kid, think we have the games somewhere still. All the choose your own adventure kind on true floppy. I have a 3.5" "floppy" disk collection. When games used to span like ten disks. I have a few zip disks floating around. Those things were A-MAZ-ING 100 MB on a single drive? insane.

[shrewd hatch]

please tell me your hiding a flopatron in your basement

[late fulcrum]

If by "flopatron" you mean a split-flip display, then yes.

[cunning shuttle]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-X-p0C0Uas

definitely not mine

@late fulcrum I want to know more about your split flip display 🤔

[late fulcrum]

It displays up to 7 alphanumeric characters, mechanically

[cunning shuttle]

was it a custom build or a a find or... ?

[late fulcrum]

Found two of 'em on eBay, with their control consoles!

But as you can see, a few of the letters are broken 😦

Wow, the toy ones have gotten expensive https://www.japantrendshop.com/gakken-otona-no-kagaku-manga-radio-wave-flip-clock-p-1906.html

[gentle musk]

Testing Discord via cordless on a MicroOrchid PC III

[dusty citrus]

@gentle musk Made it as far as Connecticut. ;)

[left hatch]

what are the server rules

[crystal ore]

Check out the #code-of-conduct channel.

[shrewd hatch]

@late fulcrum gotta know have you made or wanted to make a simpit/controlpit

[late fulcrum]

I bought some USB aircraft controls a while back to play flight simulator, that's about it.

[shrewd hatch]

i am looking to build a simpit/control pit that can do flight sims and robotic control

[late fulcrum]

Should be doable fairly cleanly these days without a whole lot of custom building.

[shrewd hatch]

the issue i am running into is that it will need a few small screens each with custom interfaces i may use some pi zero's for this but other then that it should be easy and just require a proper design

also making most of it 3dprintable would be nice

[lucid viper]

Anybody with a high stackexchange rep want to help get a model aviation stack into beta ? Please help : We only need 26 more high rep users for the Drones and Model Aviation stack exchange to get into beta. Please commit if you have a rep of 200+ : https://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/123448/drones-and-model-aircraft?referrer=MjM4OWRlOWFhYjBmMjNjMWUwMmZiYWEyZTljMTdmMzQ4MDJhYjEzNDM2OGYwMjZiNjNmZjM5ZWY2MTAwODFjOTkAw0OVkhu7_JiRD2aa-uk8zRkNGFfAs-GhqXy1Xf6z0

[high galleon]

mmmm... I think I need a Plan B for my revenues this year... I'm growing vegetables for top restaurants, and the start of the season seems compromised. If anyone need a coder ... I'm for hire.

[vital wagon]

anyone interested in working with artificial intelligence ?

[late fulcrum]

Heh, that's my day job.

[vital wagon]

i dm you

[dusty citrus]

yes me, Ive done some contract works w ML/AI

def interested in doing more

[shrewd hatch]

i have a machine for ai

[native cedar]

i just found this i was like 😮
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29dsCVFI0HM

[shrewd hatch]

well my day started with me catching a drill on fire

[late fulcrum]

So, you're awake and paying attention now? Stuff like that tends to get me to focus!

[dusty citrus]

If anyone knows python and would be wanting to try a crackme I made in like two days, deving it while sleep deprived, here you go. https://bit.ly/33pOpjW

[fickle slate]

you want to try my super simple crame i made in 5 minutes

[dusty citrus]

Sure

Btw if anyone gets the encrypted message dm me cause I wanna know how good it is, even though its kinda crap

@fickle slate

@shrewd hatch pics?

@fickle slate dm me with a link

[shrewd hatch]

fire was in the handle

[dusty citrus]

Oof ok

[shrewd hatch]

well i got my isolated usb to serial converter

[late fulcrum]

I got one too, I plan to try it to reduce the hum in my USB phone interface.

[shrewd hatch]

i got the 4 port one

[late fulcrum]

Ah, the one aimed at people using things like USB instrumentation who need it to float at various voltages?

[shrewd hatch]

@late fulcrum this https://www.tindie.com/products/saimon/4-ports-isolated-usb-uart-converter/

[slim ledge]

https://twitter.com/adafruit/status/1240026380714291200 Will be thinking of y'all at adafruit, best of luck weathering the storm ❤️ i'll be spending a lot of time working on projects & surely building up a new list of "adafruit toys i must have" to order upon your return 🙂

adafruit industries (@adafruit)

Adafruit will be shipping until 11am ET Weds March 18th, 2020 – and then we are closing our physical operations (COVID-19 – NYC) https://t.co/K3MghB6rZx

Twitter

[stuck moth]

@slim ledge thanks Dan! We'll keep having show and tell and it'll be a full hour!

[spice moss]

i dont know if I will survive if i get the virus because i am in riskgroup

[dusty citrus]

My friend lost contact with someone's relative here on the Adafruit discord and wants to reconnect with her. If you see this, please contact me (or ignore this if that's not wanted!)

I just don't remember who that was.

<@&327289013561982976> please delete the above message if inappropriate. No need to explain. ;)

[spice moss]

how are you nis

[dusty citrus]

Hi Janisku

I'm very good, thank you. How about you?

[crystal karma]

@spice moss That's a valid fear everyone shares even if not in as much risk,

[dusty citrus]

is self-censoring on the topic because people come here to relax. Important to do so. ;)

I got my posse elsewhere. ;)

[spice moss]

@dusty citrus well all this time could time to have some hardware to make but as someshipping by adafruit stops temporary but if something provide something to do then it could help

[dusty citrus]

I like to say 'shop your closet' and look for stuff in the house you ordered a while ago, received, but never made use of, yet. @spice moss

[crystal karma]

Ill be shopping my shelves for some time i think. Favorite thing is finding a half started project in a box and realising i now have the other parts i need or have collected the skill to finish it.

[dusty citrus]

omg I have a few of those.

[crystal karma]

I make Cyberdecks as my main hobby now and reusing parts is also a option i have gone with many times.

[dusty citrus]

I have a beautiful USD $50 chassis from Hammond (sloping console 20" wide!) that needs more work.

Instead of drilling a bunch of holes in it I'm playing a chess game with myself, trying to plan many steps ahead, before drilling any hole.

I ended up bolting a sheet of aluminum from the hardware store, parallel to the front panel of the Hammond chassis.

(behind it, inside)

[crystal karma]

Tried to buy a large hammond box from fry's and the shelfs were bare, they have been closing down for the past few months due to the expense of repairing a roof cave in.

[dusty citrus]

This one weighs about 5 lb. Massive.

lol that bot is sensitive.

[crystal karma]

wow

[dusty citrus]

don't take it personally.

[crystal karma]

anyway want to play some chess?

[dusty citrus]

I have to keep 'circulating' as I have a tonne of communications tasks, daily. I appreciate the offer, though. I generally play Go on IGS if I do online games at all.

https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/pandanet

Haven't been there in a few years. It used to be telnet-accessible.

(there are may Go clients that interpret at the telnet level to a full GUI experience)

[crystal karma]

i played go often throughout my youth, it was always a nice refresher after a night of chess.

[dusty citrus]

lol I'm age 60 as we stand. ;)

Hope to see 70. ;)

[crystal karma]

come on now aim high, go for 90 at least

[spice moss]

starlink mission nis

its launched

[dusty citrus]

Nah I had a very low life expectency (already past that) from a medical thing. 7.5 yrs from now that runs out. ;) lol

So 70's a good deal.

[slim ledge]

re: "shop your closet/shelves" - i think we'll all be doing that over the next few weeks, same here re: digging out some old projects! I wonder, it might be fun to start like a "hardware bartering" channel where people could trade parts they have lying around for parts they might use in a current project 🙂

[stuck moth]

@slim ledge I've want an inventory system where I could make it public to local folks. I assume we all have too many 10k resistors between us all

[crystal karma]

inventory system just for my own stuff would be nice

[stray wind]

My partner wrote one in Django for us. We've labeled all of the drawers and boxes with numbers or letters (some even with barcodes for scanning) to keep track of where everything is located. He used the Adafruit product API to pull in a ton of product info so when you scan something in, it pulls up all the info, and if you search, you can find it based on a number of queries. We can include non-Adafruit products as well. Still a WIP.

[left bay]

Anyone here know anything about composite video cables and amplifiers for running long distances? I wasn't really sure where else to ask.

[late fulcrum]

The cables are generally 75Ω coax. You can send it pretty far without too much attenuation. The amplifiers are fairly straightforward

[left bay]

I have a cable split which is increasing the resistance (of course) when connecting 2 displays. I had a spare headphone amp, and had the idea to use that as a booster, though I wasn't sure if there would be equipment damage. I'm running about 15" and unfortunately haven't been able to source better cables for this run, so thought that may help.

[late fulcrum]

The fancier displays have switchable termination so you can daisy chain them without loading down the signal.

The signal is a little over 1 volt peak-to-peak, but I doubt a headphone amplifier has sufficient bandwidth.

[left bay]

Unfortunately it's a bog standard CRT TV, whech as far as I have looked, does not. a PVM/BVM is in the future though which will eliminate this issue.

[late fulcrum]

If you're up to it, you can open it up and add a switch to the termination resistor, but that's not for everybody.

[left bay]

I considered that, though the fear of the massive power buildup that's potentially lethal is why I didn't. That is the correct answer though.

[late fulcrum]

Yes, CRT sets can hold high voltage, so it's best to leave them be if you don't know the appropriate procedures.

[left bay]

Verdict on the headphone amp is unlikely to damage the TV, though not likely to work? If it's unlikely to cause harm, willing to give it a shot at least.

[late fulcrum]

It won't hurt the TV, but I doubt it would work, however, worth a try, I suppose.

[left bay]

It's a Schiit amp (Not a typo), so it may drive it. I'll report back. Appreciate!

[left bay]

It actually worked really well. Crystal clear picture (as far as composite goes). The amp has a high/low impedance switch for output as it's meant to drive some really high resistance headphones, and that seemed to do the trick. Missing brightness restored.

[late fulcrum]

Slick!

[left bay]

Quite the wase of a $100 amp, but it was a fun thing to try. Really appreciate the assurance that I wouldn't blow anything out.

[late fulcrum]

Glad I could help.

[dusty citrus]

@left bay My brother used to run probably 30 feet of DB-15 (I think) VGA cable, keyboard cable, and mouse cable, from his workstation to a closet on the floor above him, for sonic isolation, way back in the day.

He didn't want to listen to the PSU cooling fan and the HDD spin/access motor/solenoid/servo sounds.

And he's utterly untrained in electronics.

I said something like 'you cant do that!' and he said something like 'well I've done just that'.
He wins. ;)

(He may well have used at least one extra pair of interconnects to splice two lengths of premade cable together on each line) (I don't remember anymore)

My guess at that time was: use a proper set of 'repeaters' on each line.

Ham radio operators frequently managed to supply DC current .. I think this is right .. through various cable runs, to achieve remotely sited antennas.

(A specific dongle that injects DC into, say, an RF-carrying coaxial cable, comes to mind)

[spice moss]

i hear car outside even all windows is closed and door closed

[late fulcrum]

VGA is fairly undemanding, and users don't really seem bothered by a little fall-off in crispness.

Video games sometimes used the same trick to run power and RF over a single cable. It's pretty simple to AC couple the signal (with capacitors) and DC couple the power (with inductors).

[twin thorn]

Adafruit doing OK during the pandemic?

[sturdy oyster]

Hi, just saw the video about how @shrewd spire is dealing with the new virus. Is there a list of makerspaces that they partner/work with?

[stray wind]

@sturdy oyster The hackerspaces that are signed up with Adafruit to be able to make discounted purchases can be found here: https://www.adafruit.com/distributors

I'm not exactly sure what you have in mind though.

[sick adder]

I'm having feels about opening this, I'm so used to them showing up on my doorstep like clockwork

[pure haven]

@sick adder I know how you feel, I got a padded envelope delivered today from Adafruit. I could be a few weeks till the next one.

[polar wraith]

@pure haven Unfortunately, it will probably be more than "a few weeks" before things get better. Epidemiology models suggest the only way to keep the death rate in the thousands instead of millions is to implement nation-wide extreme mitigations (closing all schools, theaters, universities, malls, and either closing businesses or using remote-only work) until a vaccine is developed and approved. I do epidemiology, not vaccine development, but those SMEs are saying we have to maintain the lockdown for 18 months (at least.)

[grave crest]

We're in uncharted territory here -- and we're all in this together.

[dusty citrus]

@polar wraith My wild guess was 'until September' as I ran a spreadsheet with different growth values.

(just simple math and projection of current growth as reported in media)

[polar wraith]

@dusty citrus A couple of points. First, I'm a professional epidemiologist. Second, the Imperial College published an excellent study using growth rates from both China and Italy. Here's my summary that pretty much covers the three response scenarios. The thumbnail is do pretty much nothing - 4 million deaths in the US alone, current mitigations - 2. million deaths. Extreme mitigations - deaths in the 10,000s.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease…/…/

These are using the SMEs' modeling software.

[dusty citrus]

That low-ball is encouraging

[polar wraith]

Yeah, but that means nation-wide closure of all schools, universities, theaters, malls, and some other gathering places, forced quarntine of symptomatic individuals and their families, social distancing for everyone in the couontry, and maintaining the controls until a vaccine is developed, tested, and approved, which, best case, is 18 months.

[dusty citrus]

I know. ;)

Spreadsheet seems pretty convincing.

I went 0.0999 as a best case.

yesterday * 0.0999 = today.

[polar wraith]

There are so many other variables....

[dusty citrus]

Michael Osterholm threw out 480k for the USA alone, on Joe Rogan podcast, no particular time frame.

[polar wraith]

Oh, hey, Michael! He and I developed the pandemic response model that was adopted by the CDC as their advice to corporations.

[dusty citrus]

OMG so he's the real deal, then.

[polar wraith]

He has a daily CIDRAP newsletter if you're interested.

[dusty citrus]

Already have it but haven't read it.

[polar wraith]

Oh yeah, he's very real.

[dusty citrus]

He did 2 hours with Joe Rogan just a week back or so.

[polar wraith]

I heard, but I've been too busy running sims and meeting with the BoD at various companies....

[dusty citrus]

I think yesterday * 0.0999 (one ten-thousandth off of 10 percent) .. is not achievable.

We're still north of 50 percent in Connecticut and New York.

[polar wraith]

I think the generally-accepted worst-case model is 80 pecent of the US population.

[dusty citrus]

No I mean growth from one day to the next (24 hour interval).

[polar wraith]

Unfortunately, that number means demand for ventilators will exceed supply by a factor of 30.

[dusty citrus]

No I mean growth from one day to the next (24 hour interval).

Joe Rogan's Sam Harris' second guest says 0.6 percent mortality off the Confirmed case number.

No I'm conflating .. Sam Harris' second guest.

[polar wraith]

It's 4 to 6 percent for {children < 5, older people > 60, immunocompromised, respiratory illness}

Other ill it's 0.9 percent until we run out of ventilators. Then it jumps to 17 percent.

[dusty citrus]

Amesh Adalja

Amesh Adalja is contrasting 0.6 percent with the 1-3 percent others say.

Amesh Adalja is contrasting 0.6 percent with the 1-3 percent others say.

[polar wraith]

Also, the growh is super-exponential. Here's an example.

[dusty citrus]

Hello. ;)

I sit with this as often as I can, to try to adjust to what I expect may be.

[polar wraith]

The numbers I stated are the generally-accepted numbers from working epidemiologists.

[dusty citrus]

My effort is to keep the absolute (endgame) number lower.

I try to clue in people I know who will listen.

[polar wraith]

That's important. A few hours ago I watched parents at a playground watch the 14 kids playing together (I counted). sigh

[dusty citrus]

I know. There's visible activity inside an office building I can see without leaving my dwelling.

[polar wraith]

Yeah, some people still don't get it.

[dusty citrus]

The Connecticut Chief Epidemiologist (or whatever his title is) .. said that we should believe there's 100x the measured case rate.

So we were at 159 yesterday at 5 pm (reporting). For him that's 15,900 infected statewide.

People aren't mapping that the asymptomatics == contagious.

They think that 159 is the correct and absolute number. ;)

[polar wraith]

Also, testing is extremely limited, and reporting is redacted. You/he are right - 100x is a good multiplier.

[dusty citrus]

phone

[polar wraith]

Ta

[dusty citrus]

My prime offender was on the line.

My prime offender was on the line.

Is out there right now, blithely delivering orders using their private vehicle.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/news--wuhan-coronavirus/

[polar wraith]

Hey, if anyone is interested, here's my code that displays very up-to-the-minute pandemic numbers on an Adafruit MiniPiTFT display: https://github.com/hukuzatuna/covid19_display

Yep, that's the paper I was talking about....

@dusty citrus I also have a stupidly complicated extended SIR model that has modifiers for things that will alter the beta and gamma values and re-integrate the differential equations when conditions change. It's not significantly better than the polynomial curve-fit, which is what I'm doing now.

[dusty citrus]

;)

I've been listening to Nick Bostrom a lot to 'cheer' me up. ;)

The magnitudes of time and so forth he deals with and thinks in are somehow comforting to me.

[polar wraith]

@dusty citrus Sean Carroll is good, too. (Many-Worlds theoretical physicist, Feynman distinguished professor at CalTech)

[dusty citrus]

Joe Rogan Experience #1439:
Michael Osterholm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3URhJx0NSw
🌤️
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Osterholm

Your endorsement of Osterholm crosses off one doubt from my list.

[polar wraith]

He's not perfect, but he's not bad.

[dusty citrus]

That's plenty good enough considering the magnitude-shift required just to understand basic numbers here.

A very simple spreadsheet should convince anyone who understands pretty simple growth rates.

[late fulcrum]

If I were delivering orders, I'd want a vehicle with a UVC/ozone sterilizer, which would normally be my private vehicle.

[polar wraith]

@dusty citrus Yeah, but my clients need very specific prediction models.

[dusty citrus]

@polar wraith I will say that I was impressed by public actions of various corporations in the past week.

[polar wraith]

@late fulcrum I agree.

@dusty citrus Me too! I was taken aback (meaning, I had to change my models) because the voluntary response has been impressive.

[slim ledge]

@polar wraith any thoughts on this "The Hammer and The Dance" article that's going around today?
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56

[polar wraith]

@slim ledge Yeah, that's a summary of the Imperial College epidemiology simulation.

Nice graph, too. 😉

It accurately reflects the most current thinking.

[slim ledge]

I guess where they differ is the Imperial College paper recommends like 3-4 months of suppression while this article claims 3-4 weeks is enough based on results in China. Suppose it's too early to tell now

[polar wraith]

@late fulcrum speaking of deliveries, I've trippled my tipping for deliveries since people are risking themselves to deliver food and necessaries.

[dusty citrus]

The only way to tell is with sufficient surveillance.

My understanding was (this is flawed, early, and simplified) that the surveillance aim, currently, is to get an idea of the percentage of positive rather than the absolute number .. as well as more rapidly identifying new epicenters (whatever the word is for that).

[polar wraith]

Yeah, but it takes 18 months (ish) to develop a vaccine. If you relax suppression before you have a vaccine, those growth curves just start again.

@dusty citrus "Hot Spots" is what SMEs tend to use.

[dusty citrus]

got it thanks!

Johns Hopkins' map the other day recalibrated for the new scale.

(the circles were getting too big by keeping the old scale intact)

[polar wraith]

That JH map is fantastic. Fast work by Johns Hopkins and ArcGIS.

[slim ledge]

Yeah 😕 I guess the hope is that time buys us some hospital capacity + possibilities for treatment. But seems like some form of social distancing will be necessary for 18 months+ even if not as strong as current suppression measures, in order to keep R < 1

[dusty citrus]

This crashes my desktop web browser but is fine on the Android handheld's Chrome:
https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19

[polar wraith]

The Maker community has come up with creative solutions! Josef Prusa is printing disposable face shields, and there's a group in Europe (I think) that built a model of a ventilator tube/connector assembly that can be 3D printed.

[dusty citrus]

It's pretty interesting that we are so well equipped as we are right now, as a world with much technology already in place down to handheld cell phones that are the supercomputers of yesteryear.

[polar wraith]

@dusty citrus My simulations pull data from that repo automatically on every run. 😉

[dusty citrus]

Their Connecticut numbers track fairly well with the state's department of pubic health.

A bit lumpy but it evens out on any interesting time scale.

[late fulcrum]

The face shields are a really good idea, they'll block coughs (from both directions) and keep people from touching their faces without realizing it.

[dusty citrus]

Honestly when I saw 0.78 growth in a single day it was kind of astonishing. I'm really hoping it's at least below 41% when the data gets larger in magnitude.

[late fulcrum]

I've read three different groups seem to have thrown medical ethics to the wind in their efforts to develop a vaccine more quickly.

[dusty citrus]

(and testing becomes more of an accurate surveillance set)

[polar wraith]

The number of confirmed cases has jumped 3,805 in the past 24 hours (ish).

Just for the US.

[late fulcrum]

That is, alas, unsurprising.

[polar wraith]

(I'm running the sim for NY. It's bad there, but I haven't looked at the plots.)

[dusty citrus]

I'm about a 90 minute drive I think from New Rochelle.

CT jumped from 159 to 194

[polar wraith]

I feverishly (no pun intended) hope nobody in our community here is unable to just stay home and work....

[dusty citrus]

May 8th: at 0.2201 (today's growth) we're 100%.

[polar wraith]

Yup. It's a bad thing.

[dusty citrus]

And that 0.2201 is the lowest 24 hour number I have seen yet.

(probably not accurate; probably a good deal higher)

159 * 1.2201 = 194 like that

[slim ledge]

(but of course, lots of factors will bend the curve to logistic growth before then... it's not gonna be exponential all the way until it hits a wall at 7 billion.)

[dusty citrus]

You would need a lot more than 7 billion uninfected to get that kind of a curve. ;)

The straight math should be the cautionary tale, however, as it deals in the correct magnitudes.

(or perhaps one magnitude of error)

Finding out the hard way is way too expensive.

[polar wraith]

Yeah, this is going to be ugly. Here's the New York progression.

[dusty citrus]

USA jumped to 16k and is now 6th on the list (was 8th on the list recently).

[polar wraith]

@dusty citrus Current (within the last 5 minutes) number for teh US is 18,755 confirmed.

[dusty citrus]

oof.

That's a stadium.

[polar wraith]

Yeah...

[dusty citrus]

And it doubles. Soon.

[polar wraith]

Yep. The code I'm using can detect the elbow when the logistic curve starts to flatten. Still going up, though.

[dusty citrus]

Now if you wave the magic wand and get real compliance with proper directives, and people do what's required, the curve is still fairly symmetrical, but it has to achieve a peak. I think?

[polar wraith]

It does. I'm not sure people will go for the measures needed, though, for the time period needed.

[dusty citrus]

When it's far too late and the consequences are plainly visible, they will.

[polar wraith]

Unfortunately, that's going to mean more people are going to die than could be.

[dusty citrus]

Yeah, I don't even know the multiplier on that.

I just want my friends to understand we don't just stamp on the brake.

That it continues, after doing everything we know how to do.

[polar wraith]

You're right. It's going to be extremely costly, either in dollars, or lives, or both.

[dusty citrus]

If people could get started early and begin to truly accept things as they are, that could help but it's still a very long funnel.

If leaving your house meant breathing vacuum, it'd be better delineated. ;)

Osterholm was quite specific and used the term 'just breathing' more than once, and 'it's like stopping the wind'.

[late fulcrum]

I still leave my house, but I don't go anywhere populated or interact with people. Fresh air and sunshine are still healthful.

[dusty citrus]

I guess the basic idea is if it's not aerosolized you can get away with 6 feet under specific conditions.

the angiotensin-renin system is the transmission receptor (ACE2).

[polar wraith]

@late fulcrum I go out too, for walks around the neighborhood. It's interesting that people will keep at least 3 meters away from each other. One person goes out in the road and the other goes into the lawn....

[dusty citrus]

That basically means lung tissue (and less reachable stuff like kidney tissue, maybe).

[slim ledge]

my main thing is i need to improve my grocery shopping game, or maybe we need to do something collectively to improve grocery shopping. still encountering long lines & empty shelves which means I don't get everything I need, decreasing time until next grocery trip 😕

i've been hesitant to burden amazon or instacart with delivery when i am not old or immunocompromised

[polar wraith]

Eyes. Upper respiratory tract. Also, it apperas to stay viable on surfaces for up to two days....

@slim ledge I do (Amazon and Safeway), but I'm immunocompromised and in a high-risk group (asthma).

And it's probably going to be mandatory if we take extreme suppression measures (which means closing businesses)

[dusty citrus]

I developed constrictive pericarditis with an assumed viral etiology after contracting 'an illness' which I take to have been 2009 H1N1 influenza, in 2014.

[polar wraith]

Ouch

[dusty citrus]

It sucked for 16 months until I was diagnosed.

[slim ledge]

ugh, i'm so sorry to hear that @dusty citrus. must make all of this all the more anxiety-inducing ❤️

[dusty citrus]

An APRN referral was how that turned around for me.

@slim ledge thanks. Well, no, almost the opposite. I know how this one goes. ;)

[slim ledge]

re: groceries, i wonder if we'll finally see a world where grocery workers/delivery people are making >$20/hr heh. hazard pay.

[dusty citrus]

I am still trying to figure out my exposure by receiving take out food at my front door using the contactless method.

[polar wraith]

@slim ledge I've been tipping my delivery people 40%.

@dusty citrus Me too. Fortunately, I have boxes and boxes of nitrile gloves (epoxy work on high powered rockets).

[dusty citrus]

Well I mean my basic question is: if someone gets anything 'on' the food, and I ingest it, how much risk did I just take? Say, the bread of a grinder type sandwich.

[polar wraith]

Unpack wearing gloves, wipe down cans/jars with biocide. Produce and cardboard I can't do much about.

I don't think there's a significant ingestion vector. But that's just intuition. I have no data to back that up.

[dusty citrus]

Right that's exactly my thinking.

I'm using angiotensin-renin as my voodoo to just claim by fiat it's ok. ;)

[polar wraith]

Aw, man, this everyone stays home thing is messing with my bandwidth. I'm reduced to 410 down....

[dusty citrus]

I hope someone on teevee comes up with a good public service announcement meme soon.

[polar wraith]

"Stay Home, Stay Alive"?

[dusty citrus]

'Some of us will make it'

that ought to sit them up straight in their chairs

[polar wraith]

Yep. I'll have to dig out my "Black Death World Tour" t-shirt. 😉

[dusty citrus]

rofl

There was a really good graphic showing like the plague of justinian and all the others we know about.

In context.

[polar wraith]

1918. AIDS. Plague. Ebola is interesting because it kills too fast. Oh, duh, smallpox.

[dusty citrus]

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/history-of-pandemics-deadliest/

[spice moss]

SARS but it was deadly

[tame saddle]

1918 is still the worst, no? i haven't been "in the numbers" much on -19; are we going to get close to 1918?

[spice moss]

also not spreading much as who got it died fast

[tame saddle]

wow. how reliable is that Pox number?

[polar wraith]

@tame saddle @spice moss is right. COVID-19 will infect more people, but the deaths will be lower (I think).

[dusty citrus]

I have absolutely no idea if any of those numbers are right. I haven't studied it to see.

[spice moss]

SARS made headcare systems prepare for it

[dusty citrus]

@tame saddle I'm using that graphic just to inventory the ones to take a look at in more detail.

I think our invention of air travel is probably indicative of how we got here but that's a wild guess.

[spice moss]

what i head that this kind of have some sars bits so if this mutate it might get more sars features so more deadly

[tame saddle]

definitely introduces a quicker, less-restrictive transmission pathway.

[dusty citrus]

If you were on foot in a caravan 1200 years ago, yeah you might spread it, but you'd arrive to the far country already in a state of immunity (for that season).

afaik if every person on earth stayed home for 5 weeks it'd go to zero.

Maybe that's just too simple (and also a gigantic 'if' on its face lol)

Ostensibly after 35 days you're no longer a carrier no matter what other outcome.

I'm totally wild guessing the 35 number there.

So let's say it's 900 years in the future and sufficient lessons were learned; they'd perhaps have 8 weeks rations mandatory for all people everywhere, to be utilized when something like this recurs.

[spice moss]

also quantum computing getting there right now but so with those coming it helps to calc these too so vaccine couldbe find faster

[dusty citrus]

I just don't have an intuition on vaccine development; it's not on my radar at all. @spice moss

7.4 billion * 0.25 infected * 0.006 mortality = 11 million (globally) so that's The Third Plague (1855) magnitude.

We just don't have any comparable macroeconomic elements to look at, I would wager.

[polar wraith]

@spice moss The virus' name is SARS-CoV-2 so yeah, it could mutate. (The disease it causes is COVID-19).

[dusty citrus]

The sharpness of the pulse and it's globality is .. just unique.

They will keep the power grids operational .. here.

Places like parts of Africa are in a whole other system of .. stuff. ;)

[polar wraith]

@dusty citrus I kind of feel the two things that are going to be a problem is medical infrastructure bandwidth and food supply chain integrity.

(in the US/Europe)

[dusty citrus]

Right.

Well once you're personally immune and you are sure you have already had the virus ..

I guess you set out on foot, if need be, but to where? ;)

Theoretically you also want to help and provide some kind of labor to help reboot things.

[polar wraith]

in Cali I would say the irrigated farming communities.

Here in Seattle - fishing.

[spice moss]

in china the things have get back in work but like ramping up steady

[polar wraith]

Texas... I dunno. Not Texas?

[dusty citrus]

I guess I'll firewall here and boggle that the mods haven't said no more. ;)

It was good to hear straight talk.

[polar wraith]

Fair. 🙂

[dusty citrus]

Thanks so much, P!

[polar wraith]

No worries. It's good to share info.

[dusty citrus]

I feel better knowing your fine mind is working on this. Truly.

is listening to podcasts or making dinner or just getting some rest.

[grave crest]

For those who are looking for cheap games to play, there's a collection of 100% free games on Itch.io [platform similar to steam, no DRM]. Some are decent, such as Bleed 1 & 2 and Nuclear Throne.

You can "claim" some of them (making them available for download later), but some are just download-only...meaning you need to act sooner than later to get the executables.

All the games have different time windows for being free, and you may donate to the creators if you so desire.

https://itch.io/c/759545/self-isolation-on-a-budget

On Steam, you can get Goat of Duty and Drawful 2 for free.

I personally have played Drawful 2, and it's a very fun game with friends -- get a bunch of them on VoIP/Discord/Zoom and have a blast at drawing things 🖌️

[late fulcrum]

I've wanted to try that, I have a bunch of Drawful friends but am unsure how to share the audio.

Looks like Goat of Duty is DOS-only 😦

[grave crest]

@late fulcrum As crazy as it sounds, Twitch might be the best way to share the audio. Every time I've played it, it's been over Twitch and with their new low latency connection, it's been awesome.

I've been thinking of spinning up a Twitch channel for some time, and this might be the deciding factor.

[late fulcrum]

Thanks, I'll give it a whirl!

[winter sorrel]

https://www.isinnova.it/easy-covid19-eng/?fb-edit=1

[teal orbit]

hey everyone, we're trying to gather up resources and coordination on another discord server, i dunno about the linking policy to other servers but if anyone wants to help out, it'd be greatly appreciated

[deep obsidian]

everyone needs to stay in doors or i'll cut ya

[edgy apex]

Hey folks, I am wondering if anyone is 3d printing any masks/shields. I could use one I am currently using a surgical mask I think adding a face shield would be a nice addition to my precautions. I am running the sandwich food pantry drive throughs off my laptop/phone with the salesforce system I setup. My job is to check people in/sign up new folks and slap a post it on the car with the order size. I am training four people to be able to use their phones to help me/do my job if necessary.
https://www.capenews.net/sandwich/news/food-pantry-takes-safety-precautions-prepares-for-more-clients/article_7a4e6b81-e946-5076-acd9-c43a2e10f118.html

DM me if you are willing to help.

[deep obsidian]

the ironic thing is, my printer is at my dads who is isolating due to COPD

[edgy apex]

This is my mobile interface for Salesforce, it's pretty easy to use on the phone. A lot of the stuff I made we don't need right now. I started making it in November, been running parallel to the existing system for 6 weeks and went live this week with the drive throughs
http://sandwichfoodpantry.org/

[supple lotus]

Hey makers that sew! Many hospitals are running out of PPE and accepting donations, even asking staff to wear bandanas if necessary. My nurse friend says these masks would be a great help at her hospital.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqlmDf6_hsY

[dusty citrus]

Yo anyone got an idea for a game to make in js or any other language ( I can learn ) while under coronavirus lockdown?

Maybe even a fun language...

Also this coronavirus crap is crazy, in my 15 years of living I haven't seen something like it. Not like thats too much time tho

Have resorted to making fast things in trailmakers on xbox. I made a boat that got 3rd place in the world and gos up to about 820 kph and a 3rd place car that goes around 350 to 400 kph, and on a small circuit too!

(My username is ProGamer244, might change it cause progamer sucks. Thought it was good at 10 years old...)

[slim ledge]

@dusty citrus find a good retro game and make a modern clone 🙂 here's a good list i saved awhile back: http://inventwithpython.com/blog/2012/02/20/i-need-practice-programming-49-ideas-for-game-clones-to-code/

[dusty citrus]

Kool

Might look into that when I get bored

[balmy musk]

i like the classic arcade game "bosconian." it's a non-scrolling space shooter and i want there to be be more games like it

here's a really weird LED

[late fulcrum]

Is it an LED glued into a curved clear piece of plastic (upper left), or a dark-cased LED (lower right). Hard to tell from the picture.

[balmy musk]

it's a coin cell in a plastic bag with a hole, and it's powering a diffused negative LED. some call it DED for dark emitting diode

[slim ledge]

neat 😂 useful for... darkrooms. and... invisibility cloaks?

maybe Elon should put some of those on the Starlink satellites that are causing light pollution for astronomers 😂

[hidden bluff]

if you could generate a trillion volt potential between earth and the moon could you get a spark to form between the two?

[crystal ore]

Generally not... a "spark" requires air to ionize in the path, so you don't really get them in hard vacuum.

[late fulcrum]

If you're curious about it, you can read up on the Paschen Curve that describes the relationship between distance, pressure, and breakdown voltage. For most of it, the voltage gets larger the longer the distance, but for part of the curve, it's the opposite, which is counterintuitive. This means that at some conditions, the voltage actually gets higher the closer the electrodes are, and the part that covers your condition, the voltage gets higher the lower the gas pressure. The Earth-Moon situation is in that realm too: the pressure is so low that the voltage required approaches infinity.

[dusty citrus]

https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_09.html

[deep obsidian]

everyone be safe this is a dark time

[hidden bluff]

for electrical control box for work, what's involved in getting european approval?

[lapis bluff]

@hidden bluff Depends on what you're doing. Why do you think you need some approval? That would determine what's required. Note: My knowledge in this area is restricted to knowing the USA rules, and occasional talks with a British friend about what it was like there.

[hidden bluff]

work will be selling a cnc that will get exported to europe

[lapis bluff]

Oh, that's not electrical approval, you mean export approval? I don't know about that but the shipping company should!

[hidden bluff]

doesn't stuff imported into europe need to be CE approved?

[viral spruce]

finally replaced the cups on my headphones after they blew out from a lot of usage. right to repair ftw

[shrewd hatch]

@late fulcrum looking at this acrylic plate do you think i should buy one of these for the pnp head to go on or should i try to 3d print a mount

(the mount i am thinking i might retrofit or designing my own to be 3dprinted)
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000096938100.html?spm=a2g0o.detail.1000013.14.91c974dcWr0d87&gps-id=pcDetailBottomMoreThisSeller&scm=1007.13339.128609.0&scm_id=1007.13339.128609.0&scm-url=1007.13339.128609.0&pvid=630773d6-9c7b-41be-a46c-0fa02684b5d7

(lazer engraver i am mounting this on for refrence)
https://www.banggood.com/5065cm-Engraving-Area-3000MW-Laser-Engraving-Machine-DIY-Kit-Desktop-Laser-Cutting-p-1268114.html?utmid=11296&cur_warehouse=CN

[late fulcrum]

Just the acrylic bit?

[shrewd hatch]

i am looking to either make a drop in mount or mount the one in the link on it

[late fulcrum]

I suspect laser cut acrylic would be more rigid, which is likely important for P&P

[shrewd hatch]

somewhat

there is compliance in the nozzles https://smtnet.com/media/images/juki-nozzles-cot.jpg

[late fulcrum]

I was thinking X/Y more than Z

[shrewd hatch]

the z is what i am having troble with as you can see i am retrofitting this onto a lazer cutter i bought

[late fulcrum]

Makes sense.

[shrewd hatch]

so do you think i should try and 3dprint a head mount to fit on the acrylic gantry or should i buy and retrofit the prebuilt

[late fulcrum]

Oh, I misunderstood your question. I thought you were asking whether to use an acrylic gantry or 3D print one.

[shrewd hatch]

nope asking if i should 3d print a head mount or buy one

[edgy apex]

My prayers have been answered! I have secured the acquisition of 4 - 5 face shields for the food pantry. They were 3dprinted by a friend and I'm going to pick them up today at no cost. He's making them for the hospital.

[late fulcrum]

I'd buy one if I wasn't in a hurry or 3D print one so I could start playing with it sooner.

[edgy apex]

I'm gonna get an ender 3

[bitter gale]

ender 3 is great

[dusty citrus]

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1243564143032098819 Elon Musk on hoarding. ;)

These three dollar headphones from Koss just won't quit. I wore out the earpads and just swapped them for pads from another set that finally stopped working, like 2-3 years ago, that I never tossed out.

The V.A. gift shop carries them; every time I go there I buy a couple and I think I still have at least 3 new pairs left, still in original packaging. ;)

KPH7 from Koss. 3100 ratings on Amazon!

The competitors' units usually fail at the wiring (from tugging on the wires).

I use a 12' extension and a 'sharing' dongle (Y-shaped connection) as a splice for stereo 1/8" connection. I tie off the 12' extension to furniture, on the rare event where I do accidentally tug on them too much, to avoid pulling whatever it's plugged into off a shelf. ;)

So I always have 3-4 feet of extension free (between me and the furniture) to keep the headset cord slack.

But more and more I rely on the Jabra Evolve 65 bluetooth headset for regular use cases, using a smartphone to feed the audio to them.

(For some reason its bluetooth dongle stopped pairing, so I don't use it) (it did ship with one).

[edgy apex]

I got some work to do 🙂

[edgy apex]

I had the idea of using 3 hole punched sheet protectors, versus cutting and punching holes in plastic. I ordered 50 for $5. you can stick something in between the layers to make it keep its shape. I found a damaged one in my room and this is what it looks like.

[edgy apex]

Ended up cutting the connectors off the 30mm jumper wires and it fits perfectly in the shield, I secured it with a little scotch tape

[dusty citrus]

Someone help me out here

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/616753594733166602/693905481563111514/20200329_143220.jpg?width=420&height=560

The squares represent empty values, and the numbers next to the boxes are answer choices for their corresponding box

I attempted to look at it like a system of equations

a + b = 8
a + c = 13
b + d = 8
c - d = 6

But the solution to that would be

a = 7/2
b = 9/2
c = 19/2
d = 7/2

Which is absolutely not right

[late fulcrum]

Hint: there are two solutions

[dusty citrus]

I give up

I went one by one for the values in the first box, and tried to see which values would make sense for the other boxes

Didn't work

[late fulcrum]

Hint 2: not all of the values have to be positive

[umbral phoenix]

trying an ||octal|| solution...

dang, got one solution

got two, and I don't think there are any more, really an outside the 'box' problem. but if your hint 2 is meaningful, maybe there are more than 2 solutions, @late fulcrum

[umbral phoenix]

With the multiple choice, looks like only two solutions. But ||if the solution set can contain any integer answers, I believe there are infinite solutions.||

[umbral phoenix]

@dusty citrus If you are looking for another hint... ||look at my first spoiler comment, the short one - it's obviously wrong, but it's on the right track. Looks can be deceiving 😉 ||

[fickle slate]

Top left and bottom right are the same

a+b=8
+ +
c-d=6
= =
13 8```

a=d

c+a=13
c-a=6
a+b=8

so the matrix would be

a  b  c  =
1  0  1  13
-1 0  1  6
1  1  0  8

a = d = 3.5, b = 4.5 c = 9.5

@dusty citrus so your answers are correct

[dusty citrus]

Seriously?

It's rigged, then

Bs

[umbral phoenix]

No, there are answers from among the choices on the page, but there's a trick (or really just a different way of looking at the problem). See my spoilers.

[dusty citrus]

You have got to be kidding me

That's a scam

[fickle slate]

ehh the only solution has fractions in it?

There can't be more than one solution cause the matrix has 1's going down the diagnal and zero's everywhere else

[umbral phoenix]

There are infinite solutions if you stick to integers but not limited to the choices on the original sheet. Two solutions from the original sheet.

[fickle slate]

not sure how you get infinite solution?

[umbral phoenix]

Once you get one integer solution, you'll likely soon after infer the rest 😉

[fickle slate]

@umbral phoenix what's the integer solution

[umbral phoenix]

@fickle slate ||try interpreting the numbers in a base other than base 10||

[fickle slate]

||that'd be silly though||

[zenith tendon]

thanks so so much to adafruit for giving people something to do when stuck at home

being creative with electronics and all and establishing a nice community hotspot

[umbral phoenix]

||perhaps, but that's the deal||

[main plank]

You will not get me covid! I now have proper coffee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6tM00CT0OM&feature=youtu.be

[main plank]

anyone playin animal crossing on the southern hemisphere?

[stuck moth]

@gritty compass is there a 3H discord already?

I'm about to make one

@glacial flax do you know of one?

[glacial flax]

I just was invited to one 🙂

[sly maple]

Today I am going on an epic hero's journey!

Filled with danger!

Quests to be done!

And treasure to be had, along with an answer to two epic questions.

1, "What do I need to get from the grocery store while my laundry is getting done? "

2. Is going out post epidemic always going to be epic?

[gritty compass]

thanks @stuck moth

[dusty citrus]

Imagine the invention of a machine that composed its own DNA, and gave it a cell to utilize its functions and synthesize its instructions

I just fascinated myself with the idea that, if we ended up making something like this, we could create abstract biological programming languages

Food for thought

[stuck moth]

@sly maple I did that yesterday. My grocery store had everything I wanted except two random things. Hopefully it won't always be that big of a deal.

[grave crest]

I'll add my anecdote to this -- I'm in suburban NJ in the shadow of NYC. So of course tensions are high and demand is even higher.

I went to an off-the-beaten path grocery store when the weather was unpleasant during off-hours, to minimize the number of people I came into contact with. Like tannewt's experience, I was able to find most of what I wanted -- maybe not the brands or flavors I'd prefer, but it was absolutely acceptable.

My plan is to go out once every two weeks, for only things that are absolutely necessary. And if you need particular items, consider non-traditional stores like Dollar Tree, home improvement stores like Home Depot/Lowes, and smaller community stores & ethnic food markets.

[dusty citrus]

Michael Osterholm (CIDRAP) seems to be uniquely discussing what works and what doesn't.

My strategy is to not breathe any air anyone else has, recently, and not to leave the house on calm-wind days (favoring a decent breeze to disperse anything in the air). Figure out the grocery delivery paths, and use those for contactless; and do take-out food transactions (also contactless, arranged over the telephone).

Since the angiotensin-renin system (angiotensin converting enzyme II: ACE2) is the cell-receptor for Covid-19, there's no evidence that surface to hand to eye transmission is occuring, so I don't focus on the feel-good handwashing meme (Osterholm says handwashing is good for other pathogens, but not Covid-19 - that 'just breathing' is the primary transmisson vector of concern).

See also: Joe Rogan Experience #1439 - Michael Osterholm, around minute 43.

On a lighter note:

This is a cake. ;)

[edgy apex]

that is one amazing cake

[gritty compass]

@stray wind for the newsletter, here is some info on Python used for Hardware (chip-level) design

“Using Python for creating hardware to record
FOSS conferences!”
● Tim “mithro” Ansell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkVX_mh5dOU (at 13:00)

LiteX used to build cores, create SoCs and full
FPGA designs.
● LiteX is based on Migen
● Migen lets you do FPGA design in Python!
● https://github.com/enjoy-digital/litex

and from https://github.com/litex-hub/fpga_101

[stray wind]

@gritty compass Thank you so much!

[gritty compass]

@stray wind this was recently used by @meager cape for the iCEBreaker board
https://twitter.com/esden/status/1236813850856411137

Piotr Esden-Tempski @[e-mail] (@esden)

Remember how I asked you all about "Risc-V programming environments for the iCEBreaker FPGA"? I present to you examples for two of the three most requested environments. C and Rust. Try it, let me know where you run into issues, send in pull requests! :) https://t.co/J5H6lZrK...

Likes

122

Twitter

@stray wind recent stream where @meager cape works on these examples
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/573112754?filter=highlights&sort=time

and my recent tweet https://twitter.com/pdp7/status/1245325840587665408

pdp7 (@pdp7)

Fun! I'm using Rust on a RISC-V soft core to blink an LED on the @1bitsquared iCEBreaker FPGA board https://t.co/l4QMLSCvnQ

Likes

120

▶ Play video

Twitter

[stray wind]

Brilliant!

[meager cape]

oh wow! Thank you for sharing @gritty compass 😄

Just as a side note, as @gritty compass is already sharing some of my work. 😄 I am streaming electronics and FPGA related content on my Twitch channel on a regular basis. We are almost done with a KiCad Let's play series where we design the next revision of the iCEBreaker-Bitsy FPGA board. If any of you are interested: https://www.twitch.tv/esden

The next project will likely be a Pmod for the iCEBreaker to hook up NES controllers to it, as we already have some of the NES system ported to that board. 🙂

[sick adder]

With this many wires there's bound to be at least two mistakes

Adapting two very different pinouts so I can drive my protomatter panel from an nRF feather instead```#if defined(SAMD51)
// Use FeatherWing pinout
uint8_t rgbPins[] = {6, 5, 9, 11, 10, 12};
uint8_t addrPins[] = {A5, A4, A3, A2};
uint8_t clockPin = 13;
uint8_t latchPin = 0;
uint8_t oePin = 1;
#elif defined(NRF52_SERIES)
uint8_t rgbPins[] = {6, 11, A0, A1, A4, A5};
uint8_t addrPins[] = {5, 9, 10, 13};
uint8_t clockPin = 12;
uint8_t latchPin = A2;
uint8_t oePin = A3;
#endif

[covert spire]

https://youtu.be/FhzUdVh0kyE

[rotund pine]

meta-topic ot whaterver: how do I find discord for android?

im searching play-store, and failing

ah, firefox, browse discordapp.com get button. never mind 😄

[rotund pine]

tonight's 1 player game: get discord working on nexus 7 - anyone know of a discord support chan?

[umbral phoenix]

My house is on track for a record-breaking month of internet data usage (previous record about 600GB). Almost 150GB in the first 4 days of April. And that's with no terrestrial broadband available in my area.

[late fulcrum]

The only terrestrial broadband available here is expensive slow unreliable cable and expensive even slower unreliable DSL.

[umbral phoenix]

The DSL here is reliable, that's a plus, but the speed hasn't budged in over a decade and no new lines are allowed. At least the mobile is serviceable.

[crystal karma]

I've been watching this guys project logs for months and its so cool seeing the final outcome of this build https://www.cyberdeck.cafe/post/nx-yamato-plus-sized-cyberdeck-with-curves-in-all-the-right-places

felt like sharing

[dusty citrus]

I live 2k feet from the telco 'central office' so DSL has always been a capped service for me. ;)

I go with 2x the minimum bandwidth they are willing to sell, for USD $25/mo, contingent upon at least basic voice telephony service.

That works out to an 'alarm monitoring' service (for voice telephony) at USD $8/month. That same service was not even offered in my mother's telco exchange, in another part of Connecticut.

The telephone support for the telco (sales, really) downsold me this service when I called them with the sincere intent on disconnection (entirely) from voice telephony service.

They still want something like USD $9-15 (can't remember) for basic Caller-ID, so I don't subscribe to that.

The alarm monitoring service ('Measured Service') incurs a $.03/min (iirc) charge for every local outgoing call.

So I have an arrangement with all frequent (local) conversational partners, to call me back (immediately) if I initiated the call. Some are used to having me ping them on 2.5 rings, hanging up before they even answer, and them (then) reading their caller-ID box to see that it was me. ;)

[umbral phoenix]

Crazy workarounds. I dropped my relatively expensive land line and ported the number to a mobile for much less (low incremental cost for an added line on an existing plan), but then the wireline carrier raised my dry DSL rate to $61/month, and won't negotiate it down like they used to 😦

[dusty citrus]

Wired service here was essential during the Blizzard of October 31 (I've forgotten the year) .. same year as Hurricane Irene (I'm in Connecticut).

All my cellular friends were out of luck during that event, as the cell towers ran on petroleum products and the fuel tanks weren't being refilled.

Wired service ran continously (entire state was down for distributed electricity/power, pretty much).

[ocean sigil]

We've had the opposite here -- We lose wired service more often that cell.... Lot's of old pine trees around...

[grave crest]

General tip: If you have a whiteboard that is scuffed & stained -- use hot water, 70% alcohol, other whiteboard markers to clean it.

Do not use super high grit polishing sandpaper. Even if it's the only thing able to remove it. You'll annihilate the finish.

Learn from my mistakes 🙂

[lapis bluff]

At this point I only have a land line is because out here in the wilderness E911 on a hardwired line is the only way to reliably get help in dire emergencies. But, I just happened to be reading the fine print and it turns out that if you discontinue service TPC is required to keep the 911 service working. The only number you can call.

[late fulcrum]

Cellular coverage here is poor, so if I want internet I need a landline.

[dusty citrus]

I wonder why diamonds like to take on a beautiful cubic crystal system

On a broader topic, how can nature be so precise. Doesn’t bismuth make perfect cubes? How in the world?

[umbral phoenix]

It's matter achieving stable low-energy states. The forces in some molecules push their bonds into symmetrical arrangements.

[late fulcrum]

For a statistical process, it works surprisingly well. Atoms bounce off repeatedly while condensing, but they're less likely to bounce back off when they're in a lower-energy configuration, so they just magically line up in neat rows.

[dusty citrus]

So cool

[vital harness]

https://twitter.com/crait/status/1247954218176131079

Jonathan Holmes 🐔 (@crait)

New game that I'm working on for the @SocietyOfPlay Cart Jam 3. It's going to be like Serious Sam or CoD Zombies, except you're a robot in a medieval setting. What do you think? #GameDev #IndieDev #GameJam #IndieDevHour https://t.co/TG8GJUPU7J

▶ Play video

Twitter

🙂

[late fulcrum]

My medieval history course didn't cover robots for some reason.

[vital harness]

🤔 IT'S A GOVERNMENT COVERUP!

[dusty citrus]

Inconceivable

The government probably wants us to think it’s a government cover up, meaning you’re a government cover up

[vital harness]

😮

https://giphy.com/gifs/cat-sad-mirror-jL1h4N5TJzLvG

[late fulcrum]

Yo dawg, I heard you like conspiracy theories, so I put a conspiracy theory in your conspiracy theory so you can perspire while you conspire to conspire!

[low moth]

Henri!

I met Henri's human at a cat con

[dusty citrus]

I just found out about the United States' alcohol tax

That is ridiculous

With a tax on alcohol this high, they better be watching their backs for a bit of a history rewind

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🍷 💵

[late fulcrum]

The US is fond of "sin taxes".

[ocean sigil]

I think you mis-spelled "syntaxes" 😉

[dusty citrus]

"Sin taxes" is "without taxes" in Spanglish. I'm getting mixed messages here

[sick adder]

https://mcuhacker.wordpress.com/2018/02/22/forsta-blogginlagget/

old but .. wow

[dusty citrus]

any ideas on how to teach arduino online without any hardware ?

[late fulcrum]

Maybe something like https://www.programmingelectronics.com/arduino-simulator-tinkercad/?

[dusty citrus]

I’m giving a shot at making Adam Ragusea’s “pizza bread” recipe

I’ve never made bread before

It smells like beer :P

I wonder what that colony of yeast is really doing

Do they break down the saccharides and make gases as waste?

Wow, what?

It makes alcohol, too?!

[covert spire]

Beer & bread both rely on yeast

[dusty citrus]

I’ve never made bread before

[late fulcrum]

And yes, they digest sugars and produce carbon dioxide and alcohol as waste products. In bread, the alcohol evaporates as the bread is baked.

[dusty citrus]

Whoops

My message sent twice

How strange

Is digestion exothermic?

I'm pretty sure it is. It's breaking down

Does that mean a rising bread gets a tiny bit warmer?

Kinda fun to turn trivial matters into curiosity streams

[dusty citrus]

My Saturday is off to a great start. Got woken up at 3am with neck pain. Then off to work at 6am.
I really want to make some progress on a prop gun I’ve been making instead. Oh well. 🤷‍♀️

Anyone got project plans for today?

[dusty citrus]

Maybe something like https://www.programmingelectronics.com/arduino-simulator-tinkercad/?
@late fulcrum I'll have a look! Thank you 🙂

[sick adder]

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fyh9qr/eli5_how_does_the_poor_mans_log₁₀_calculator/

[sick adder]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imquk_3oFf4 amazing, absolutely tiny 256 byte program

[crude trench]

Apollo 13 in real time, plus 50 years:
https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/

Click the NOW button to catch you up to NOW-50y

[crude trench]

Figured out why "Marked As Read" isn't automatic any more - using Chrome's zoom apparently messes it up, if you're not at 100%
"Marked As Read" was staying on the screen even after I'd scrolled to the end
Solution: reset Chrome zoom to 100%, then go into your settings...
Under Appearance, slide the CHAT FONT SCALING over until you're happy. (Update, on day 2, it doesn't work)

[zealous ermine]

that feeling when your discord server gets doxxed by a bot

🙃

has a user by BAZINGA! contacted anyone?

because all of my servers are getting raided

[solar hamlet]

@viscid folio @night crescent hey, you have a bit of an embarrassing typo on the blog post about NFC COPY CAT

it's "cyber" not "ciber"

[late fulcrum]

Not "κυβερ"? 🙂

[solar hamlet]

yes, but that is traditionally transliterated to "cyber" (don't ask me why)

[late fulcrum]

Or "guber" or a few other terms, in various contexts.

[solar hamlet]

or नयति

actually you can go all the way back to 𒈾𒄿𒉈

[late fulcrum]

I only tend to go as far back as Phoenician. While I'm aware of cuneiform, Linear B, hieroglyphics, etc., I prefer to treat them separately when it comes to alphabetic derivations. 🙂

[solar hamlet]

sanskrit is actually quite useful when you are interested in PIE

but usually you find it written in IPA, which is much easier to read

interesting, they actually suspect it might have been derived from some non-PIE language predating ancient greek in the area

[late fulcrum]

I ended up learning more about such things in a book on the history of math.

[solar hamlet]

about the good ol' Al Gorithm guy?

[late fulcrum]

And the Egyptian "rope stretchers" 🙂

[stray wind]

@solar hamlet I've reported it to the author. Thanks for catching it.

[solar hamlet]

awesome

[astral adder]

https://invidio.us/watch?v=2XLZ4Z8LpEE

[late fulcrum]

Now that's old school!

Speaking of old school, a friend of mine just posted this on another forum, relevant to the alphabetic discussion @solar hamlet and I were just having: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrMpoqyhXvo

[deep obsidian]

anyone here in the uk, please consider signing my petition

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/316264/sponsors/new?token=q5o79ojc5kcw8E-P1Ikh

This guy has served in wwii and now at age 99 is fundraising for the nhs he is also doing laps of his garden

[sinful lark]

Has anyone else had issues with the Adafruit website randomly going black?

[orchid zephyr]

@sinful lark huh me too

[sick adder]

Some recent cooking

[dusty citrus]

What

You like breakfast avocado toast, too?

Yes

[stuck moth]

@sinful lark @orchid zephyr There was some website issues earlier. I saw the team talking about it earlier

[wispy skiff]

https://www.countryherald.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/out-on-a-limb-kankakee-bar-toilet-paper-crane-machine-2.jpg

[dusty citrus]

https://bit.ly/3bm9ijt my first C++ program, made in a day with minor tweaking and bug fixing today. I know little about C++ so please tell me if I have commited too many sins upon the programming gods

[fickle slate]

@dusty citrus best to not to do using namespace std;

and the sizeof(board)/sizeof(*board) is bad

like I have no idea what that does or means

like that takes the total size of board, which would be 3 * 3 * 4 = 36

and then it de-references board, which results in an int

and then it devides 36 by size of int, so it gets 9?

or rather

it would de-reference to an array of 3 ints

so it's doing (width * height * 4) / (height * 4)

where as, you could just write 3 and get the same result

If you don't want to "hardcode" the size, you could do constexpr int SIZE = 3; then board[SIZE][SIZE], etc instead 😉

[dusty citrus]

Yeah, that was the way I found of getting the length of the board, also why can't I use using namespace std;?

@fickle slate

[fickle slate]

you can

best not to though

Namespaces exist for a reason to separate a library's code away from your code

So doing using namespace to get "direct" access to the functions in the namespace ruins the whole point of why it was put in a separate namespace in the first place

It doesn't matter for small stuff though

[dusty citrus]

I could hardcode the length of the board as it wouldn't change much but I usually code in javascript making games that have alot of options so the code has to be dynamic, its just a bad practice that carried over...

[fickle slate]

yea thast sizeof expression is really bad lol

also for example STD and GLM both have min() and max() functions. On top of that, Windows.h defines min() and max() as macros

So you min(), std::min() and glm::min() 😆

[dusty citrus]

Yeah, I hardcoded a lot of the sizeof bits

[fickle slate]

Not saying you shouldn't make it dynamic, but sizeof isn't very dynamic per say haha

Since it's resolved at compile-time

Or should be at least

[dusty citrus]

Yeah, I was just the first way I found to get the length of the 2d array, but in the future I may define my own class for matrixes or use another way

Likely won't change the using namespace part but I'll remember about the possible interference between libraries

[fickle slate]

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/using-namespace-std-considered-bad-practice/

@dusty citrus there's no point to "get" the length of the 2D array at runtime since it is known at compile time

[dusty citrus]

I need to read more about compile time and runtime, not that I dont know what they are, it's just that I don't think about it enough.

Will learn more though the more I make in the language.

[fickle slate]

heh yea my first piece of c++ code was trash

it was some code to setup a window with GLFW, and unfortunately it has stuck around in the code base I now use as boiler plate for all my openGL stuff

[dusty citrus]

Yeah, this is the first thing I've made in like a year (Technically the second thing ever but the first was like one or two years ago and I gave up on the language) though I do have pretty extensive self-taught knowledge for python and javascript along with flavors of the two from about 5 years of making different bots and some hardware hacking programs.

Like I have some favorates in python where I coded a program in node that turned my xbox on and off that was connected to a php a script on a website and I shared it with a discord server in which I had to tweak the number of connections to the node script cause people were spamming too much but it was funny

And one that originated with me finding a skylanders portal for the xbox 360 at a thrift shop that I then looked for ways to change the color of when plugged into my pc

I found a program in c# that changed player data like coins on the figures and reverse engineered it a little to get enough knowledge to code a program in python that used fft and pyusb to make the skylanders portal change it's colors to dance to music

I then took the thing out of its shell and put it in a box, cut a hole in that and used it as a platform for one of those glass cube sculpture things

[dusty citrus]

That was all before I got hit right in the face with high school and decided to get in shape cause I was weak af

I think I might actually revisit the skylanders portal bit and remake it

Cant find any other tinker toys over the summer cause of covid so why not?

Its time

This is the only and the best piece of artwork I have made in my life and it is held together by tape

Why 14 y/o self, just why? And yes that is an adafruit sticker

[dusty citrus]

Theres the code... Will recode with comments and proper names but its four in the morning and I'm gonna watch funny things on youtube

dm if you want the python script

will not touch this until tommarrow morning when I wake up at like 2

[dusty citrus]

I call it BlackBox cause its a board of a skylanders portal that stuffed in a box I covered in electrical tape

Anyways yes that is going exactly to the music

Was listening to some crazy crap

Seeing if it could keep up

Though there is a param to smooth it out more if you dont wanna have a seizure

[dusty citrus]

updated printout with notes on continued development. This is half made for a computer programming class in highschool. Though I was given the OK to do any project and just notify the teacher of projects I am working on because of the advance knowledge shown in the class. (We were learning javascript on kahn academy (Which I can say does have some weird rules with how to code like how it needs you to put semicolons after every line among other things...))

This may look like spaghetti cause it is... I will be planning a rewrite were I improve readability and whatnot as this would be pretty easy to rewrite due to its simplicity in the actual code

Though the concepts of the thing were learned through trial and error through about a month of tinkering off and on

• time taken to understand the usb protocol and FFT

Will not touch this until tommarrow so dm me if you see anything that could be improved on though I do not expect it due to the state of the readability. I also may know of the issue already as there are a bunch on this thing...

[gilded flower]

has anyone else had way more time for projects since the stay at home order (if you have one)

[edgy prawn]

Hi everybody, join us at r/flossCAD the dedicated subreddit for Free, Libre, and Open Source CAD/CAE software. say hi at the chat room! 👋

https://s.reddit.com/channel/sendbird_group_channel_300896_dfacaa912e069e3d3f7e55e5cedfb25483d8d68a

[late fulcrum]

I've had more time for projects, but not as much more time as I hoped.

[grave crest]

I've been surprisingly busy with other things, and that's OK. I do what I can, and try to enjoy what I do. We're in an unprecedented situation, and we're doing what we can to make the best of it.

[dusty citrus]

You have got to be joking

[late fulcrum]

Joking, yes, but to MUSIC!

[spice moss]

rocket landed by spacex just moment ago

[stuck moth]

@fair summit just did today's PE with Joe 🙂

[fair summit]

haha, I haven't done it in about a week; mostly we've been doing long walks

he's very enthusiastic

[stuck moth]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evqn3sgS1lU

ya, more entertaining than sworkit

rainy here today so it's a good day to try it

[fair summit]

and different every day; i like that

[stuck moth]

it was fun 🙂 will feel the squats too

[tame saddle]

squats. argh. the only thing worse is walking lunges...

and burpies.

[hidden bluff]

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/uv-hat-for-sea-urchins.686919/

[dusty citrus]

https://youtu.be/2MvbkehQqOY

[dusty citrus]

I've had a bunch of time

though schoolwork at home keeps getting in the way!!

[dusty citrus]

(con't from #general-tech )
@edgy apex I had an aftermarket pancake MacIntosh computer work-alike (had an ISA bus in it, among other goodies) but I had no real use for it, except learning extra stuff wrt the Mac world.
So, at the time, my brother needed daily wake-up calls, and so did another friend.
So I setup a crontab to call them both, every morning, at their appointed hour (6:30 ish I think).
That pancake Mac did that job for several months, until they both lost interest in the 'service' I was providing.
Had a really nice outboard modem on the AppleSerial bus, iirc.

[edgy apex]

Nice, I have a apple IIc+ that I play with too

[dusty citrus]

I had several Macs and clones at that time.

[edgy apex]

I get all my old tech from a computer museum 😅

I setup a vt220 with a pi zero w for their makerspace

[dusty citrus]

;) I have placed maybe a dozen usable computers with people who didn't want to spend the money for their first computer, over the years.

It was really hard to find good homes for the equipment, because most people took the all-or-nothing approach and demanded modern equipment.

[edgy apex]

My friend locally has his own museum from donated machines. Too bad it's closed rn but he has machines from the late 70s to the year 2000

[dusty citrus]

You and I always get along well here, for some reason I can't pinpoint. But 'good' productive conversation partner's (text-only) handles stick with me, after a while. ;)

[edgy apex]

Yea, we seem to be on a similar wavelength

[dusty citrus]

https://twitter.com/moody_flowers_/status/1253691612368166913/photo/1

emotionally stable monday (@moody_flowers_)

https://t.co/yedH66PiGK

Twitter

There you go. In honor of getting along well. ;)

[edgy apex]

I've been digging out old projects, I'm working on redesigning this case to properly fit a lidar lite v3. It's already coded and tested the only thing is I mounted it by screwing the lidar into the 3d printed case. It will be nice to have it properly mounted.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2832628
This is probably my best project in terms of what I have learned from it.

I took a selfie with it recently 😂

[dusty citrus]

The person in the photo looks a bit like the SEM guy (Adam?)

Did I mention RONJA recently? ;)

http://ronja.twibright.com/

[edgy apex]

My favorite part is that with the laser range finder and the GPS I can laser target positions into a web app, and it also auto adjusts the crosshair based on the range.

[dusty citrus]

I happen to be one friendship away from a pioneer of Gunnplexer diode stuff.
A good friend growing up before high school is (or was) close friends with the other guy.

http://www.advancedreceiver.com/

So now can you do basic rangefinding with LIDAR and what's the resolution with .. lesser expensive projects?

I know they used it with Mt St Helens work, well after the fact.

[edgy apex]

It's around $120 and does 40m

[dusty citrus]

40 meter range? What's the error rate (resolution in depth)?

I used to watch the lava dome grow at Mt. St. Helens on the relevant USGS website (really hi res photographs).

I have no memory of why I took an interest (at all). rofl

The Internet is like this giant library where you can indulge your curiosity, and discovery is reasonably broad and exposing of some fairly esoteric stuph.

[edgy apex]

I'm not sure what the error rate is

[dusty citrus]

Well is it 3 meters at 40 meters, or is it .. 100 mm? ;)

In classical physics I think they tend to look at 'frames of reference'.

USGS benchmarks are a good case in point.

We have one in my neighborhood.

[edgy apex]

You can measure up to 40 meters away with laser-based sensor that draws only 130 mA during an acquisition. You can easily adjust between accuracy, operating range and measurement time using the I2C command set.

[dusty citrus]

Where's that command set documented?

[edgy apex]

https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?partNumber=010-01722-00&tab=manuals

One of the thing that annoys me about the HUD scope is that it records video but doesn't show the opencv crosshair on the video the only thing on the video is the text annotation I did with picamera api.

I field tested it once at an indoor facility and it worked great. It's meant for short range and works at night too. Kids were asking me all about it and if I could sell them one 😂

[dusty citrus]

I have to get going here .. stuff to do.
I had an EGA video card (ISA bus probably) that also had some kind of NTSC video output jack (RCA).
I remember using it to generate text on the computer, and feed the RCA jack into a VCR to make 'titles' for videos.
Or something like that. ;)

So basically it was the same process as videotaping a session on the Nintendo 64 - same era and equipment for both projects.

Presumably the video deck provided a monitor function since I was able to play the video game while 'taping' it.

[edgy apex]

Ok ttyl Im heading out for a bit. Nice talking to you @dusty citrus

[umbral phoenix]

Why would Mouser designate Teensy 4.0 as restricted for export when DigiKey and Adafruit don't? I'm in the US and they're in the US, but they're holding up my order because of this. 🤷

[dusty citrus]

@umbral phoenix Maybe restriction has been lifted (I have no idea) and Mouser simply didn't either update their catalog, nor notice the loss in trade on that one item.

[crystal ore]

The classification is for hardware crypto acceleration. Oddly they classify the SparkFun board that way, but the Adafruit version on Mouser is clean. I wonder if they use different chip variants.

[dusty citrus]

Oh well that would do it. ;) good catch Ed

bitcoin supremacy thing ;)

[umbral phoenix]

Thanks. It's weird, there's no indication they are different chips (I'd be very surprised). I think they goofed, and I just picked the wrong one 😦

Mouser marks up the Adafruit version more than the Sparkfun version. Digikey does too.

[dusty citrus]

I thot all adafruit stuff sold at the same price on DigiKey as on adafruit web vending site.

like, to the penny.

so if Feather M4 Express was say $21.95 on one it was that on the other.

[umbral phoenix]

Yeah, but Teensy 4.0 is 19.95 on Adafruit, but 24-and-change on the others (for the Adafruit product).

[dusty citrus]

In our family's retail store, my Mother (who really didn't want to work at all) would just say "That's the price" with kind of a tone in her voice, to the (in her version of the story) snooty customer. ;)

She was quite sure she was gonna get paid, if she was gonna work there.

I was worse .. I'd send them to my boss' competitor. ;)

I really did not ever belong on the showroom sales floor of that computer shop.

In my thinking I was there to solve my customers' problem, not please my boss or increase his sales by default.

He literally never overheard me say anything like that, ever.
🌟

So I must have biased my (externally spoken) thoughts when he was present (or more to the point, he probably took the lead whenever he was present, and I could go back to the repair bench and do what I thought I got hired to do, in the first place).

That was 1989; we had a 100 megabyte hard disk drive on the sales floor that was way larger than any installed drive on any of our machines was.

He'd open the case of a machine, and swap out its IDE bus ribbon cable for the external drive's.

Then close the case, and leave it that way for 2-3 weeks, to do software demos with.

This guy always opened new software that got shipped to us, copied it, then had a shrink wrap machine in the back room to reseal the package.

[grave crest]

Anyone using the new 16" Macbook Pro 2019? I'm curious at what point the fan kicks on during normal usage.

[For example, my 15" MBP late-2013 used to only turn on the fan when doing virtualization or gaming, but now does it if playing a video on Twitch or Youtube, or whenever I connect a second display. And it's not quiet.]

[ocean sigil]

@umbral phoenix sparkfun has teensy 4.0 for $19.95 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/15583

[umbral phoenix]

thanks @ocean sigil I was trying to get some things that aren't in stock (otherwise I'd prefer Sparkfun or Digikey; with accounts and history there I know the process is good too)

[dusty citrus]

I had my first shipment from DigiKey in 10-15 years, a few months ago. Went off without a hitch.

[umbral phoenix]

I used for the first time a couple of weeks ago, just one minor glitch, easily resolved. Electronics companies seem to have their fraud detectors set to high (as opposed to general retailers, which almost never flag my orders).

[dusty citrus]

Yuh anyone against me refurbing an old ibm terminal keyboard and ordering a converter? If so can anyone point me to a good seller of an IBM 122 terminal keyboard? I just wanna own one of these hulking beasts and since they aren't too expensive online with a $30 converter with built in macros and whatnot anyone have info on what models are the greatest / what dates I should look out for

already have a few people on ebay I messaged about damages and stuff

I am willing to refurb by cleaning but will sink money into an already refurbed. I just don't like too many scratches if they are visible while I am looking at it on my desk lol

Don't even know nor care if it'll sit on my small desk

it'll sit in my lap if it has to

just want a beam spring and ever since I layed my eyes on the hulking 8 pound beast that is a 122 I knew I needed it. Was thinking of getting one from unicomp but after concerns about molding and the legends being off center and looking on ebay to find most listings under the price of one from unicomp I said screw it

Not one to shy from refurbing

Also if you want an update on BlackBox (Skylanders portal music vis) dm me. v 1. 2 RW (Rewrite) is done and comes with a lot of new optimizations that knock off milliseconds off of execution times.

Also with the keyboard I know that I'll have to wait until after coronavirus crap but Idc

[late fulcrum]

Easy enough to sterilize a keyboard, and no, I'm not against it, it sounds like a good idea to me.

[dusty citrus]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Rare-Vintage-IBM-3277-Beamspring-Beam-Spring-Mechanical-Terminal-Keyboard-Mint/264653394359?hash=item3d9e9251b7%3Ag%3AGbMAAOSwcIxeXJrq&LH_BIN=1

What

THIS EXISTS?

Oh yeah lemme get my keyboard drops on desk and makes the sound of haroshima x 40

[late fulcrum]

A bunch of interesting things have happened in the tactile keyboard market over the years...

[dusty citrus]

That keyboard would break my tiny walmart desk

Not kidding

You could kill someone with that thing

Keyboard warrior is an understatement

The real question is can it be converted to usb...

I mean definitely due to the simplicity of scan codes with a serial interface but still I'd be impressed if someone had the guts to custom print a pcb and go through that manufactoring process for this rare of a keyboard. Not to mention the rarity of that plug. Though this is just me guessing

[brazen frigate]

Ordered my package a few days ago, and it's shipping to my address today

Very impressed!

[late fulcrum]

It would probably be easier to just convert its native protocol to USB, which would be a little bitty board.

[edgy apex]

@dusty citrus looks like there is a ready made solution
http://pckbd.com/convert/pckbd/ibm_3277-usb_convert_intro_en.html
but it would probably be more fun to DIY

[orchid zephyr]

I love how websites that claim to have promo codes for digikey even exist

they don't even have a box to enter a promo code in. it's kinda funny

[late fulcrum]

Every DigiKey part number ends in -ND, which stands for "no discount"

[crystal ore]

Although oddly I recently ran across a number of Cypress parts there which have a "no warranty" part description, at noticeably reduced pricing. I wonder what the story is behind that...

[late fulcrum]

Me too.

[orchid zephyr]

what if they were put that way to make customers suspicious about a part, so that they would buy the marked up version?

[grave crest]

I don't think that's the case. Digikey is an established company with a strong positive reputation. I bet if you emailed their support team, they could better assist you with figuring this mystery out 🙂

[orchid zephyr]

oh i thought he was talking about Cypress's own website

[grave crest]

Question regarding video color correction -- I'm getting into video, and I've heard that having a color balance card is a good investment.

I've been looking at the X-rite passport video. What other entry-level alternatives I should I consider?

[late fulcrum]

What is a color balance card? I'm used to just using a calibrator to set my monitor parameters correctly.

[grave crest]

It's a card with a grid of colors and black/white/18% gray on it -- designed for video editing programs to auto-correct the color balance in post-production [say if you have a video that was shot with the wrong color temperature settings]

You record for a few moments with the card in the shot before you begin, that way you have a reference. Similar to how a move "clapper" helps sync audio, but for color.

It's handy to have one to sync temperature settings between multiple sources too, such as a primary camera and a b-roll camera.

[late fulcrum]

I was thinking some bizarre PCI card 🙂

Not like an ordinary Macbeth Color Checker

[late fulcrum]

<@&327289013561982976>

[ancient rivet]

@late fulcrum thanks

[orchid zephyr]

Does anyone else use flowcharts to layout your ideas before coding it?

[late fulcrum]

Sometimes. Especially for things like state machines. Sometimes I'll use a package like Graphviz where I just specify the connections and let it lay out the graph, sometimes the layouts will be arranged unexpectedly and give fresh insight into what's going on.

[frigid comet]

Does Adafruit have any good guides along the lines of "C++ programming on the pygamer"? I wanted to revisit my old career as a C++ programmer and give it a try -- just for a personal challenge. I know @viscid folio wrote some great DMA drivers for the display. Are there recommended tools? Libraries? Thanks for reading.

[loud escarp]

@frigid comet I think you'll want to take a look at the Adafruit_Arcada library, including its examples and guides that reference on learn.adafruit.com

[frigid comet]

ahhhh that makes perfect sense. thanks!

[loud escarp]

There's not much that you can do with the PyGamer that you can't with similar hardware, so examples for the PyBadge or EdgeBadge should be relatively easily adaptable as well

The one notable diff is the joystick on the PyGamer where the others have buttons

[frigid comet]

that's a great place to start. thanks again.

[loud escarp]

glad to help

[zealous ermine]

Slight progress on my space invaders machine

Screen is inverted which is strange

But it works

Kinda

[late fulcrum]

Looks like the screen is frontwards but the characters are reversed.

[ocean sigil]

They are being printed on the wrong side of the screen 😉

or look like they be OK if reflected in a mirror.

[sick adder]

should look like this (simulating the color overlay): https://tcrf.net/images/d/dd/SpaceInvadersArcTestMode3.png

some Invaders apparently used a mirror to flip the display https://forums.arcade-museum.com/archive/index.php/t-74862.html

there may also have been 2p "table" versions which flip the screen as each player takes their turn

but mame source says // the flip screen circuit is just a couple of relays on the monitor PCB

[haughty smelt]

So where is everyone posting their digikey unboxing videos? My box of happiness arrived this morning yay

[late fulcrum]

Mine showed up yesterday, but unboxing was the usual invert and remove the box, shuck it, wash hands, then go through the goodies procedure.

[stuck moth]

@haughty smelt I did mine on my stream last week. feel free to do one and post it in #show-and-tell

[dusty citrus]

Just got my own model m 122

https://www.ebay.com/itm/143552996825

Its a 1999 but look at that condition

So many keybinds will be possible

Got a soarers converter too so I can use qmk

To remap n stuff

I can have dedicated keys to save, copy, paste, cut, save as, and even possibly a lenny keybind

On the same row

Some say that they like some 2% keyboard is the best but I thing the more keys the merrier

[burnt tendon]

Oh, I've always wanted one of those.

My mom was a mainframe programmer so I was always like OMG! SO MANY BUTTONS! MUST HAVE MORE BUTTONS!

[lucid heron]

SO COOOL

How much would you sell it for?😄

[versed pumice]

Hi! This is a long shot, but I'm trying to find an essay to cite that I haven't read in years. It's about time sharing systems early in computing, and the authors experience (I belive the worked at a national lab?) of how virtually everyone started hacking the scheduluer to give themselves better priority, and the arms race to stop people from doing that, and how it was ultimately hopeless because there wasn't a concept of protected memory or privilidged instructions.

Does anyone have a link or know the title or author?

I think it's something like, reflections on memory safety and the need for multics, in different wording, but I keep finding "Reflections on Trusting Trust" instead. Which is a great essay and all, but not what I'm looking for.

[crystal ore]

This might not be it, but the references section in it seems to cover a lot of ground in that sort of territory, so your essay might be one of them: https://www.acsac.org/2002/papers/classic-multics.pdf

[versed pumice]

Thanks, I'll investigate

[late fulcrum]

My guess would be "The Unix Hater's Handbook" by Simson Garfinkel, et al (IDG Books, 1994)

Amusingly, I had a similar essay I was trying to find, a humorous one that made assumptions that the wildly varying estimates of the mass of Pluto were all in fact correct and Pluto's mass was changing, and found it matched a sine curve to an irrational power, and pointed out that eventually the sine term would go negative, and while this idea might be repellant to some, Pluto would be repellant to everything. Amazingly, I mentioned it to a friend of mine whose dad was a physics teacher and knew one of the authors! I emailed him, and he sent me a copy ("From the Ridiculous to the Sublime: The Pending Disappearance of Pluto", by A. J. Dessler and C. T. Russell, 1980 https://doi.org/10.1029/EO061i044p00690).

[versed pumice]

That seems hazardous, perhaps we should destroy Pluto before it damages our solar system

No wonder it's orbit is so wonky

I'll check out Unix Hater's Handbook, I do believe i read that at some point, so it seems like a reasonable guess. On a roll with this essay at the moment though.

[burnt tendon]

Well, I just finished a book entitled "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming"

[late fulcrum]

I'd been thinking of reading that one, how did you like it?

[burnt tendon]

Well, it's not fully obsolete despite being 10 years old

Which has really messed up planet science books

I thought it was a fun read

[late fulcrum]

Heh, more than they expected, when someone realized that their new definition of "planet" could be construed as not containing Earth.

[burnt tendon]

I'm still rooting for them to discover actual-planet-nine.

Then again, when I was a pimply faced youth, I was rooting for them to find Planet X, the tenth planet that was messing up the orbits of Uranus and Neptune.

Though, I guess I basically root for all interesting astronomical discoveries other than a dinosaur-killer meteor headed straight for us or other such disasters.

[late fulcrum]

Ah, yes, planet X. Persephone. Or Chyron, depending on which time they thought they'd found it.

[burnt tendon]

I mean, kids these days have whack exoplanets instead of whack theoretical solar system bodies.

[versed pumice]

Did y'all hear that they might've detected an FRB coming from a magnetar within our galaxy?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/exclusive-we-might-have-first-ever-detection-of-a-fast-radio-burst-in-our-own-galaxy/ar-BB13sCFX

[crystal ore]

Neat, thanks!

[dusty citrus]

@lucid heron why would I sell it? I just got it!

I have a custom built 60% keyboard and I will likely have that by this thing for even more possibilities and cause the model m has 2 key rollover unfortunately

though it isn't intrusive

and is only with certain key combos

so just in case I'll have this at standby or for gaming

(it has kailh jades)

this isn't a gaming pc except for the occasional toribash or minecraft

if you know what toribash is still then god bless you

we need you to revive the community

I have sunken 282 hours + how many I played before the game was available on steam

servers are down right now due to ddos

https://forum.toribash.com/member.php?u=4990683

heres my page

2300 games played

[versed pumice]

Lets say I have 100 rocks, and I lay them out in a 10x10 grid. And then I forget how many rocks I have, so I count 10 rocks by 10 rocks, and multiply that together. It seems like there are three ways I can think about this. I can either take 10r * 10r = 100r^2, and that seems wrong to me, because I don't think I transmuted these into square rocks by laying them out in a grid. Or I can think about it as 10r * 10r * 1r/r^2 = 100r, and that most of the time we simply leave out the conversion factor for convininece. The last way is that there are two senses of addition, one of which is a shortcut to addition - so I'm actually writing 10r + 10r + ... + 10r = 100r, and that the other sense is a cartesian product, as when I multiply 10 meters x 10 meters = 100 meters^2, and that these different multiplication operations have different effects on units. What do you all think?

(If it's easier to imagine, this was motivated by an example that calculated the size of rectangles in "square pixels," but I'm not sure that's appropriate.)

[crystal ore]

I'd say that the multiplication case is closer to "I have 10 copies of [10 rocks]", so it's 10 * 10r = 100r.

[versed pumice]

Iiiiiintersesting.

That's a good model. Thanks.

[dusty citrus]

1 rock = 3 x 3 x 3 cm = 27 cubic cm
27 x 100 = 2700 cubic cm, all 100 rocks
2700 cc / 10 = 270 cc per row
270 cc / 10 = 27 cc per rock

cubic root of 2700 = 13.924766500
That's the size of one side of the volume of all 100 rocks, in cm.
About 5.48 inches.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_packing

🛩️
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_tiling

[versed pumice]

Some fun recreational math of a similar problem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6L06pyt9CA

[sinful lark]

I think the product description for this is wrong. It says "Adafruit Black" for a blue mask.

https://www.adafruit.com/product/4599

[strong aurora]

Created a small demo on Augmented Reality Headset

Watch full video here: https://youtu.be/2ZXzMqUl2Oc

[edgy apex]

I have exciting news, the Salesforce system I created for my local food pantry is going to be the only system we are running off of starting June 1st. They are retiring the old access system on may 31st. My system has been used as the primary out of the two for the last 6 weeks.

Also found my old skull brain thing and properly light it up 😅 it makes for a good night light

[dusty citrus]

skully-mulder

[edgy apex]

The color patterns are pretty fun to play with

[dusty citrus]

What exactly is muscle memory?

Is it the brain strengthening the myelin on the axons required to perform a specific set of movements? So you don’t have to think about it as much to do the action?

[late fulcrum]

It's a kind of vague term used for practiced movements that you can do without thinking about them (much). Some think the movements are learned by neurons in the cerebellum, but hypotheses vary. It's not really myelin as much as adjusting synapses, connections, and action potentials.

[dusty citrus]

Welp I'm gettin the model m 122 today

Its being delivered to my house currently

Wont be able to use it tho cause the converter will get here friday

[dusty citrus]

https://streamable.com/4iq72x

Dere he is!

Glad I got a near mint one instead of a unicomp one

Its from 1999 and from scotland

[sick adder]

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4003164

this looks cool

[versed pumice]

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {

    size_t *ptr = malloc(sizeof(size_t));
    *ptr = &ptr;
    printf("%p %p\n", *ptr, &ptr);
    return 0;
}

user@host:~$ ./a.out 
0x7ffee8240218 0x7ffee8240218

It's beautiful.

[crystal ore]

Now you can write code using wonderful expressions like ***&**&&&**ptr...

[late fulcrum]

When I was younger, I thought I was oh so clever writing stuff like while (*++*argv)

[fickle slate]

uhmm

[versed pumice]

That is pretty clever, in the Mel sort of way.

I'm like this close to understanding how it works.

Man, I'm gunnuh have to look up the precedence to figure out if that's postincrement or preincrement. Yeah I'd be pretty upset if I found that in production code :3

[versed pumice]

Finally figured it out. That was a lot more C than I thought I'd learn today.