gsuberland

gsuberland, 7 months ago to random

just checked a major review site and not a single smart TV was released in the past two years without integrated ads that you can't opt out from or disable. that's depressing.

gsuberland, 1 year ago to random

It's #eurovision time!

gsuberland, 4 months ago to random

JAXA are hoping to touch down on the moon in the next 5 minutes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvXLt3ET9mE

gsuberland, 10 months ago to random

woke up at 4am so I've cranked the headphones up to "the tiny bones in my ear are bleeding" volume for some early morning drum and bass

gsuberland, 8 months ago to random

I really really wish that the operating system thread schedulers integrated with energy performance counters (CPU, GPU, and platform) to provide a reasonably accurate report of how much energy each thread and process has consumed (not including stuff that'd be invisible, like energy used during storage accesses, of course).

I want to open Task Manager and see how many watt-hours each program has consumed, and the average power usage in watts. I want to see this aggregated long-term by program.

gsuberland, 9 months ago to random

there's a popular anarchist account (anarkitty) here that posts a lot of aggregated memes and such, who follows and unfollows people repeatedly if they don't follow back, and who seems to be blocking people if they mention this behaviour (even just a polite query).

I mentioned this a while back and had a bunch of folks reply and say they had the same experience.

might be benign but seems like engagement farming and I would advise folks to use caution when interacting (esp. more radical stuff)

gsuberland, 18 days ago to random

today is "attempt to bring up the CO2 sensor boards" day.

I am remarkably nervous about this.

gsuberland, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to random

[serious, no joke replies or guesses / autotranslation please]

do I know anyone native or otherwise very fluent in Chinese who can tell me the correct term for a plated edge connector, like you might find on a PCIe card? specifically the "gold fingers" style connector feature you would find on the PCB side, not the plastic connector it slots into.

I've had an absolute nightmare trying to communicate this feature to a Shenzhen-based PCB vendor and I would like it to be easier in future.

gsuberland, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to random

welp, so much for the US keeping their helium reserves publicly owned.

they kept it going for a while after backlash from medical professionals and the public, but the site and mining rights are now up for auction :(

(this matters because helium is an irreplaceable resource for the operation of MRI machines, and there are very few natural deposits on earth - afaik just three major ones including the Texas site)

https://realestatesales.gov/gsaauctions/aucalsrh/?sl=FTWOR722026001

gsuberland, 1 year ago to random

thinking about it, instead of using a buck-boost setup I think I'm gonna redesign my CO2 sensor boards to use USB-C PD. the max current pull is right up against the 900mA limit for 5V, so if the supply is only giving 4.8V then it's gonna sag and make the MH-Z19Ds even less accurate

gsuberland, 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago) to random

UEFI getting owned by the vendor logo parser code is extremely on brand.

Tons of time and effort put into securing platform stuff and it gets popped anyway because execs want the laptop to show the user a Lenovo logo for 3 seconds on boot even though it's already printed right there on the fucking laptop.

gsuberland, 4 months ago to random

I swear I've seen at least a dozen people in the last month alone complain about multiple failed components and continuous hardware issues and build quality issues in framework laptops. for how much those things cost it's deeply disappointing to see.

gsuberland, 4 months ago to Electronics

today's fun #electronics tip: you can detect the state of two switches or buttons using a single input pin on a microcontroller that supports internal pullups (which is most of them) as long as you don't need to detect both being pressed at once.

to read the button state, turn the internal pullup off, read the pin, turn the pullup on, and read the pin again. if the value changed, no button is pressed. high both times = top button, low both times = bottom button.

try it: https://www.falstad.com/circuit/circuitjs.html?ctz=CQAgjCAMB0l3BWcMBMcUHYMGZIA4UA2ATmIxAUgpABZsKBTAWjDACgAncMFEYw7rzAYBVSvDYBnQeBEyUNKlQgAzAIYAbSQzYAlGfxmEaUU4upKo0BGwDu88ywEKlnEE5Av3YAdkJ5TFDQJAHNvX39wkGw8E1d7Dy8mPCovSCl3FM9HLNw48BB1LR0uZKo8zPLI1OC2MLLoyIaY-PTpBqSs4VECou03Bu7Kvh6guD1hwwbjUypzJEsYG3tWXi8fVPN0gFlwQk3U-GzLFGs2AA9wFAhhcjHwLJMfEABLADsAFwYON80AHUkAAcAK4aDTAwFsABGIFyaxInjIUAu4BoARQ9DQ8No2RA2wAwgBVNhAA

gsuberland, 7 months ago to random

we know that null pointers are all zeroes, but what if we want to talk about cases where an invalid pointer is dereferenced with a value in or around the null page, but whose value isn't literally zero? what do we call it then?

my suggestion: "dull pointers"

gsuberland, 5 months ago to random

oh no, Linus has done a data erasure video. I actually know how NIST SP 800-88 rev1 works, so if I watch it I'm going to be annoyed for a week.

gsuberland, 1 year ago to random

AKG K712 Pro headphones arrived.

initial impression: these are garbage :(

I can't tell if they just sound bad right now because I'm so used to neutral mids, or if they need a few hours burn-in, but everything in the mids and lows sounds muddy and closed off, whereas everything in the highs sounds brash and fatiguing. I'd compare them to a cheap hi-fi speaker from the 90s.

gsuberland, 4 months ago to random

there's a saying in electronics that there are two types of PCB designers: people who make antennas on purpose and people who make antennas by accident.

and having looked at a bunch of designs made by big companies recently, I think more PCB designers should go be antenna designers instead, because they've clearly got some innate skill at it which is currently untapped.

gsuberland, 7 months ago to random

spending millions on "recycle your plastic to save the earth!" advertising campaigns and packaging print updates followed by "well we could recycle your plastic but that sounds like effort and would probably cost money so we put it on a boat (fuelled by HFO) and dumped it somewhere else" is pretty much exactly how I envisioned the plastic recycling industry working, so I'm glad reporters finally looked into it and confirmed it.

next one to make you sad: glass and paper recycling.

gsuberland, 17 days ago to random

of course my car decides to start throwing Engine Malfunction messages and randomly going into limp mode on the Sunday immediately before the bank holiday Monday when I'm meant to be driving to EMF, meaning I can't get it to a mechanic for diagnostics let alone a repair in time.

OBD-II scanner shows nothing at all, inbuilt test mode shows two generic DTC codes that provide no useful information other than it's maybe a sensor doing something wrong.

ffs.

gsuberland, 1 year ago to random

If you ever come up against a device potted in epoxy, I can definitely recommend boiling it in water. I used a remote temperature probe (intended for smoking / BBQing) to keep an eye on it so it didn't boil over or boil dry. Keep it at 98°C for 15 mins or so, take it out, use a box cutter to slice a criss-cross pattern in it, put it back in for another 10-15, take it out and cut the loose layer of epoxy off, repeat until mostly depotted. Try to go evenly so you don't expose electronics early.

gsuberland, 10 months ago to random

we really need a new standard for mounting PCIe cards in computer cases without sagging. so many problems with cracked PCBs (particularly around the slot key) and cracked SMD joints of PCIe Gen5 slot connectors from GPUs with heavy coolers, especially if sellers make the mistake of shipping prebuilts with the card installed in place.

gsuberland, 8 months ago to random

spent this evening (and early hours of the morning, ugh) pulling all my energy usage data for the past 18 months and getting it into grafana.

wasn't the huge price hike at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine all about natural gas? if so, why is my gas £0.07p/kWh while my electricity has skyrocketed to over £0.30/kWh? my supplier doesn't even use gas sources, it's all solar and wind >_>

sorta feels like profiteering bullshit to me.

gsuberland, 11 months ago to random

at some point I'm going to have to write a blog post talking about the significance of bit depth in linear PWM LED drivers when applying a gamma curve, and the challenges involved when designing the driver electronics that attempt to solve non-linear brightness performance.

gsuberland, 10 months ago to random

Bored and a bit too tired to carry on playing Dyson Sphere Program, so ask me anything. Electronics, lighting, lasers, colourimetry, Windows internals, security, whatever.

gsuberland, 19 days ago to random

JLC order arrived! 🎉