@jeffpc@mastodon.radio
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

jeffpc

@jeffpc@mastodon.radio

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gsuberland, (edited ) to random
@gsuberland@chaos.social avatar

people are reporting aurora sightings as far south as Texas

(as in, equivalent latitude to, not necessarily in Texas itself)

jeffpc,
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

@gsuberland Literally how? The sun ~just set here in Massachusetts.

jeffpc, to random
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

Oooh, the new defines 4 new uuid versions!
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9562.html

jeffpc, to Electronics
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

The project detour number...I lost count...is progressing quite nicely. The goal is to line up the edges. Instead of the brain-dead-simple (too high? -1 too low? +1) logic, I need to write a PID controller (or something like it) to avoid this sort of amusing to watch hunting.

Screen recording of Siglent oscilloscope. 100ns/ 1V/ Shows channel one 1Hz positive edge (and the source of trigger), and channel two a falling edge that's oscillating near the channel 1 edge.

jeffpc,
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

@jaseg The uC controls a DAC which sets the OCXO's tune pin voltage. There is definitely a delay (1s) between updates, but I think the problem is that I do the +/-1 every time the phase difference is +/-. So, if it takes 5 iterations for the phase diff to change signs, I'll end up with +5/-5 depending on the direction. Which is generally too much.

Today I intend to implement a PID controller...or something approximating one. Even just a P-controller would be a step up.

jeffpc,
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

@jaseg A simple PD controller is doing better and worse at the same time.

It could be bad constants or bad fixed point math :D

machias, to random
@machias@hachyderm.io avatar

At work demoing a new application that is admittedly very slick and efficient. I'm proud of my team's work. I'm asked about some obscure functionality. My response: "Well, we used modern UI practices to develop this, and perhaps the business should look at their processes that haven't changed since written for a user using a VT100 in 1978". Small wonder I'm still employed.

jeffpc,
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

@machias Heh, but… I despise the last decade of UIs that try to look modern* with no critical thought given to user interactions. I miss the days of HCI research informing UI decisions. 😢

E.g., it is extremely painful to watch my mom use modern web/applications. The flat UI look makes her confused about what is and isn’t a widget and she thinks that she’s the problem.

With that said, I like a good console app :D

  • “modern” being a code word for “look like every other (shitty) UI”
pid_eins, (edited ) to random
@pid_eins@mastodon.social avatar

1️⃣ So let's try something new. As we are closing in on tagging systemd v256-rc1, let's see if I manage to post a brief mastodon item about major new features of the upcoming release, every few days until the final release of v256. I figure not everyone reads NEWS files, even if curious. Hence let's start today with the 1st post: the new .v/ directories. You know those .d/ directories that are quite popular in low-level Linux packages these days? While .d/ dirs never have been formalized properly…

jeffpc,
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

@pid_eins But what is the use case? What sort of fragments need to be versioned?

SteveBellovin, to random
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

Driving back from seeing the eclipse in Vermont, I saw a car with a license plate that said “SHA-3”. Old-timers will remember the fake “UNIX" license plates saying “Live Free or Die”, which is on real New Hampshire license plates. Someone I know saw a car with what appeared to be a real version of that… (Oddly enough, both cars were Teslas.)

jeffpc,
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

@SteveBellovin I hope you were smarter than the rest of us and didn't try to drive back on Monday...

jeffpc, to random
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

I just spent the afternoon reading about PCI bus signaling. This is normal, right?

jeffpc,
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

@gsuberland Weird but really clever.

jeffpc, to FreeBSD
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

Perhaps a silly question... what's the easiest way to use in a jail? All the instructions I found just install FreeBSD-* which seems...excessive.

jeffpc,
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

@gsuberland I am currently contemplating redoing a bunch of my jails as pkgbase (instead of relying on freebsd-update). But all the howtos I found (at least so far) just install FreeBSD-* which contains a lot of stuff that the jails don't need (kernel, kernel modules, etc.).

jeffpc,
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

@gsuberland well, I'd use pkgbase to make a template that I'd zfs clone for each jail, but that's (IMO) not relevant.

The "problem" is that I can't seem to find a list of packages that correspond to base.txz or more accurately a list of packages that are required in a jail. I don't need to waste 100s of MB on what amounts to kernel*.txz, etc.

jeffpc, to Electronics
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

layout question for anyone who knows more than I do about the subject (essentially everyone)...

Is it ok to put decoupling caps under the package (like the 3 red ones in the image) or am I better off keeping them on the same side as the IC (like the blue ones)? I only have 2 layers to play with and lots of routing on one (still to do on blue), so plan to use the other as (mostly) ground plane and power anyway.

I'm asking before I do the tedious routing ;)

jeffpc,
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

I suppose the options are:

  1. keep caps on the blue side
  2. move caps to red, but outside of the IC footprint
  3. move caps to red, but it's ok for them to be inside the IC footprint
jeffpc, to FreeBSD
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

Any recommendations for a graphics card for a desktop? I've been using a ~10 year old nvidia card, but the drivers haven't been updated in a while and have incomplete implementation of libEGL (see bug 263347) which makes some 3D accelerated software (like kicad) crash.

So, even though the current card still works, the closed source nature of the "driver" is making me consider replacing it with something that works and is open source.

jeffpc,
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

I don't need a super fancy card, but some 2D & 3D acceleration would be nice to make X.org and generally boring programs on a 4k monitor not suck.

(The desktop itself is 10 years old Ivy Bridge, and overall I'm happy with it. The only real issue is the nvidia package - version 390 - that is broken and EOL'd. This is nvidia's fault, not FreeBSD's.)

jeffpc,
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

@gsuberland The way I understand the issue (and I'm not a graphics stack person at all), the binaries shipped by (and no longer maintained by) nvidia say they implement standard X version Y, but in reality they don't fully implement it. When you install the package, it (reasonably) overrides the standard mesa/whatever library. Consumers of the whole stack can query what is implemented and act accordingly. Since the nvidia blobs advertise X vY, the consumers try to use it.

jeffpc,
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

@gsuberland I've only seen kicad get tripped up.

It is my understanding that EGL is not X11 specific, and so I assume Wayland would be affected as well. I haven't paid attention to the whole X11 vs. Wayland thing... aside from occasionally dreading the inevitable breakage as software switches over.

machias, to random
@machias@hachyderm.io avatar

I have never understood the purpose of the NextDoor app. After checking it out and promptly dropping it years ago, I still get emails urging me to join again with a sample of the dialog. "Why are there so many airplanes flying over the neighborhood?" Uh, we live between an Air Force Base and a fairly busy airport. I'm pretty sure there's going to be airplanes flying over your house.

jeffpc,
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

@machias The quality varies a lot place to place. It’s served me well in rural “town” in the past, but it had its share of dumb questions. In a more urban place, it’s been complete garbage.

Questions/assertions like:

  • Has anyone seen the moon lately? What happened to it?
  • Someone keeps drugging the chipmunks near my house!
machias, to random
@machias@hachyderm.io avatar

Today I learned my ActivityPub plugin in Wordpress takes replies from Mastodon and posts them as comments to the original Wordpress entry. That's nifty.

jeffpc,
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

@machias Neat. Out of curiosity, how does it interact with comment moderation?

machias, to random
@machias@hachyderm.io avatar

I had to watch a training video at work today as to why it’s bad to put company documents into the likes of ChatGPT and we should use the internal tools instead. The fact that we even need to have this conversation at a tech company is somewhat startling. Too many folks find ChatGPT and friends to be some mystic endeavor that can do everything except empty a dishwasher. It’s a word regurgitator. That’s it.

jeffpc,
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

@machias IIRC you seemed more positive about it a few months ago. What changed?

machias, to random
@machias@hachyderm.io avatar

We are out for dinner at a restaurant advertising “wine on tap”.

jeffpc,
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

@machias is the hose connected by any chance to a cardboard box with a plastic sack full of wine?

machias, to random
@machias@hachyderm.io avatar

I encouraged my team to use ChatGPT as a code review tool, optionally, and now I feel quite dirty.

jeffpc,
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

@machias Ah ok. That's much saner... at least as sane as ChatGPT can be. As you can tell, I don't think very highly of the current generative AI hype :)

jeffpc,
@jeffpc@mastodon.radio avatar

@machias Hmmm... I don't think it is a good tool for code review since in my book a code review requires intelligent and critical thought, but I can see it being a reasonable tool for code "consistification" suggestions. IOW, suggesting how to make your code look more like the existing code without any judgement on whether or not that is a good idea.

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