@freakazoid@retro.social
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

freakazoid

@freakazoid@retro.social

He/him or they/them. GenX parent of two kids living in #Pittsburgh #Pennsylvania USA.

My posts get auto-deleted after 6 months.

#retrocomputing #amateurradio #space #electronics #c64 #rc2014

#nobot #noarchive #noindex #noscrape #nobridge

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

freakazoid, to random
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

https://mstdn.social/@Smith007 bot or sock puppet account. All its posts that aren't pro-Israel are bland nonsense accompanied by an unrelated image with nonsense alt text.

danilo, to random
@danilo@hachyderm.io avatar

An ongoing pattern in the AI march:

  • the hardware efficiency improves
  • the software efficiency improves

So I continue to argue that energy consumption as a PRIMARY criticism of AI is going to be unpersuasive, as incentives drive down the energy costs with time, and all critique of the energy costs is just as applicable to conventional cloud computing, which we have already accepted into our social bargain

(and which underpins every single tech salary)

so instead:

https://redeem-tomorrow.com/the-average-ai-criticism-has-gotten-lazy-and-thats-dangerous

freakazoid,
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

@danilo While I agree with your overall point, the Jevons paradox applies. The cost of energy is the primary limiting factor for both AI and cloud compute. As its efficiency goes up, its power consumption won't go down; instead they'll just do more AI, and the total power consumption will almost certainly rise. So arguments about the per operation cost won't hold up, but arguments about total energy and water consumption will. So I guess it will depend on how people think about the total utility of AI versus other energy-using endeavors.

freakazoid,
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

@danilo I'm sure a golf course does.

Pop quiz: how many datacenters does Google have?

faab64, to Israel

Massive fire ongoing at military storage facility in Tel Hashomer, Israel, May 14.

Authorities are reportedly responding to a warehouse fire at Tel Hashomer military base the afternoon of May 14. The cause of the blaze is currently unclear. There are no immediate reports of casualties.Heightened security and localized transport and business disruptions are likely in the affected area over the coming hours. Officials could evacuate nearby premises as a precaution.

There are no reports of what caused the fire, but it's one of the largest weapons storage locations in Israel.

Videos available on telegram:t.me/newsvideofa/2219?single


@palestine @israel

freakazoid,
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

@faab64 @Justis4u That account is a bot. All their non-Zionist posts are bland nonsense. But the real tell is the alt text on images they post. Nothing to do with the images.

freakazoid, to random
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

Redistribution can only have so much of an impact on inequality. We have to eliminate the things that are producing the inequality in the first place: financialization, rents (in the economic sense, of which finance is a special case), and barriers.

The wealthy will fight this tooth and nail. If making them give in requires bringing out the guillotines, so be it.

freakazoid, to mastodon
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

Anyone know a tool for doing analytics on follows and followers? I'd like to prune truly dormant accounts (no posts or replies visible even on their own server, not just ones that have made it to mine if I don't follow them) and followers who never interact with my posts.

freakazoid, to random
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

So wait did the storm go from G4 to G5 at some point?

faab64, to Palestine

destroyed the last operating cell tow in Rafah and set it on fire.

One of the key goals of Israel is to prevent the world witnessing what they are doing in Gaza. From murder of reporters, preventing foreign press to enter and destroying the means of communication, they are setup up the stage for full blown assault on and mass murder of innocent palestinians who have no where to go.

Video available on telegram: t.me/newsvideofa/2185


@palestine @israel

freakazoid,
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

@faab64 Never would have thought Team Blue could fit their heads even farther up their asses than they were in 2016. Not only did they fail to learn anything, they appear to have become even more disconnected from reality since then. And they're driving us headlong into 4 more years of Trump. Which I'm sure they'll blame you and me for.

At some point you have to start wondering if that level of ignorance could really be unintentional.

@palin

freakazoid, to random
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

"The United States government and the asbestos industry have been criticized for not acting quickly enough to inform the public of dangers and to reduce public exposure. In the late 1970s, court documents proved that asbestos industry officials knew of asbestos dangers since the 1930s and had concealed them from the public."

When has a government or industry ever informed the public of a danger in a timely manner except when they were exaggerating the danger with the expectation of profiting from it?

Government works for industry, not the public.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos?wprov=sfla1

freakazoid, to random
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

This is where AI is headed, folks. Not replacing us; killing us.

Robot dogs armed with AI-targeting rifles undergo US Marines Special Ops evaluation
https://arstechnica.com/?p=2022843

va3db, to Electronics
@va3db@mastodon.radio avatar

Seriously?

https://www.gcaudio.com/tips-tricks/cd-dvd-demagnetization/

(HT cctalk)

freakazoid,
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

@va3db "We investigated our own highly profitable products and found that they might possibly actually do something."

Yeah, sure.

freakazoid, to random
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

As expected, TikTok and Bytedance are suing the US government. I hope they win.

TikTok sues America to undo divest-or-die law
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/07/tiktok_bytedance_sue_usa/

ifixcoinops, (edited ) to random
@ifixcoinops@retro.social avatar

Alright so you know how there are RGB LED strips, where each LED is individually addressable, right? How each LED has a little chip that waits patiently for its turn to get a colour instruction from the MPU controlling it?

Has some cleverclogs invented That But For Switches, where I can get a bunch of little switches with chips built in and just run them all to the same damn pin, or am I stuck building a switch matrix like a chump

EDIT: Cheers Fedi, think I'm on the right track now. Don't worry, I'm not gonna try and do anything timing-sensitive like a pinball machine or anything haha

freakazoid,
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

@ifixcoinops You mean, like, I²C relays or something? Or do you need more than can be addressed on an I²C bus?

The LEDs essentially form a long shift register rather than using addresses, so such a thing should be fairly straightforward to build. Just need wires for data, clock, power, and ground. I seem to recall they do something a little more clever than that so you can do away with the separate clock wire (long and short pulses I think? They have tight timing constraints IIRC), but that would be harder to build without specialized chips.

freakazoid, to random
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

Apparently some people think it's a good idea to generate internal Go structs and interfaces using protobufs? How shitty does a language have to be for people to reach for a completely different language to write their types and interfaces?

freakazoid, to random
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

Can't tell you. Temporal Prime Directive.

scott, to random
@scott@typetura.social avatar

🤞🏻 Ceasefire in Gaza

freakazoid,
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

@scott And then Hamas changed their charter to accept recognition of Israel and agreed to form a government with Fatah in 2007. And then mysteriously a civil war started.

freakazoid, to random
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

The Emperor's Old Democracy

freakazoid, to random
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

I wonder how many projects end up shooting themselves in the foot when using an ORM because they fail to resist the temptation to let the ORM objects leak into their API?

I worked on one project that had to make DB schema changes every time they changed their API because of this. It made it very difficult to maintain compatibility across updates without complicating their schema, too.

freakazoid, to random
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

Is it still possible to obtain and use a cellular modem in a USB stick form factor? Everything I'm finding comes in a standalone WiFi hotspot form factor.

djsundog, to random
@djsundog@toot-lab.reclaim.technology avatar

from a followers-only post, with permission of the original author:

Itd be so sick to liberate an LRAD from the cops and use it as a speaker for a rave.
Them shits are so loud.

freakazoid,
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

@djsundog I was curious about how one might defeat those and found this video (from a libertarian) where they built a homemade one and then tested it with various kinds of defenses.

TL;DR:

  • The best defense is a standard pair of noise-protection headphones
  • Adding a riot shield or something like it works surprisingly well, allowing the tester to get right up in front of the LRAD
  • Foam earplugs are OK but not as effective as headphones
  • Electronic headphones are worthless against LRADs

https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=CXKTBQBugIA&local=true

freakazoid, to random
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

Are there 3d rendering models besides triangles (and perhaps general polygons like on the Nintendo DS) that might be possible with low-spec custom hardware?

I'm thinking along the lines of NURBS (which used to be the future), raycasting, etc.

senj, to random
@senj@cyberspace.club avatar

Democrats fixing to lose the UAW endorsement

freakazoid,
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

@aral @taki @senj Perhaps he wants to lose so Trump can "finish the job" and take the blame while the Democrats tsk tsk at him and the Republicans.

Jaden3, to random
@Jaden3@mastodon.social avatar

Fk robots taking orders at popeyes now 😑 they ain got be no Jobs left for humans soon we all fkd no cap 😫

freakazoid,
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

@Jaden3 I'm guessing they're not worse than the McDonald's ones, though, where it takes 5x as long as to order from a human cashier.

Lines rarely seem to build up, though, because nobody even comes inside anymore. They just use the drive-thru, the only place you can still speak to a human (though probably not for long).

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

The most complex task a computer pertakes in: Communication!
With other software & machines, & especially with you on the otherhand!

The actual computation we ask of them , when its not just datastorage or sending messages, is typically trivial.
Thin clients are never that thin...

This I find is the crucial piece to understanding computing.

freakazoid,
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

@alcinnz Also often the most neglected task a computer partakes in, because computation is so much easier to reason about!

blogdiva, to random
@blogdiva@mastodon.social avatar

good morning lovelies. can you smell that? it's the . i can smell all the protests blooming ✊🏾

freakazoid,
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

@Pagan_Animist @blogdiva I wish I could see some path besides slowly taking the mask off and becoming an overt empire, or quickly taking the mask off. The Democrats learned nothing from 2016, and I've seen no evidence that they're going to learn anything in November, no matter the outcome.

In fact, I'm skeptical they even care about the outcome. What happens to things important to Biden if Trump wins?

  • Trump will continue to support Netanyahu and give him carte blanche; his resolutions to send them more money and weapons will sail through Congress with little more than symbolic objections from Democrats
  • Trump will abandon Ukraine, and they will lose. But any outcome that looks good for Biden seems extremely unlikely at this point. At least if they lose because Trump abandoned them, Trump takes the blame.

What else? Did Biden go out on a limb for immigrants in any way? For abortion? For health care? Congrats to him for showing up for unions, but now the UAW is on his case for Palestine and suppressing the protests.

We have come closer to WWIII under Biden than under any president in my almost 50 years on this planet. He has not only continued, but doubled down on, Trump's belligerence toward China, and he's started a proxy war with Russia at the same time.

Meanwhile, what's Biden done about climate change? A bunch of corporate welfare and "Made in America" crap. Had Trump done exactly the same thing the environmentalists would be calling it cynical greenwashing.

Trump would be worse, but at least people would be out in the streets screaming about it instead of making up excuses for him. Only Nixon could go to China, and only Biden could start a proxy war with Russia and a genocide against the Palestinians.

I'm not saying people should vote for Trump. My current plan is to vote for Biden, but frankly I can't even imagine November right now.

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