@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

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!

freakazoid, to mastodon
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

While folks are thinking of leaving , just a friendly reminder that let a known TERF (Alex Gleason) join the project and only kicked him out because of conflict over code.

ajroach42, to random
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

Take more photos. Shoot more videos. Print more pictures. You'll be glad, when time passes

freakazoid,
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

@ajroach42 My problem is organizing them all. They are basically all in a giant pile right now. Any recommendations?

freakazoid,
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

@ajroach42 Digitally.

freakazoid,
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

@ernie Looks interesting, though the fact that they require Docker or some other kind of container solution is annoying.

@ajroach42

freakazoid,
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

@ernie It's not so much that I dislike Docker, it's more that I question the capabilities of any dev team that's only able to make code work if they set up the entire OS.

@ajroach42

freakazoid, to random
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

Kind of sick of the anti-Arab racism I'm seeing from turtleisland.social's admin. Just soft-blocked another user on there for boosting a post from him that depicted an indigenous woman holding up a sign saying "Indigenous against Arab colonialism" who was trying to force her way into a group of protestors and claimed it was "assault" when they physically prevented her from doing so. (She claims there were more violent actions, but mysteriously the only videos show no such thing.)

If you think indigenous people can't be racist or support a colonialist project, you are wrong.

freakazoid,
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

I certainly would not call for a fediblock against an instance dedicated to indigenous people, but at the same time we should not be giving anyone a pass for racism.

freakazoid, to random
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

Is the TikTok ban a sign that Google and Meta have figured out how to cozy up to DC?

freakazoid,
@freakazoid@retro.social avatar

@LALegault And an engineering director from Meta was Biden's Director of Technology in the White House from 2021-2022. And another engineering director from there became CTO of the Republican Party.

I guess (new) Silicon Valley has been gradually insinuating itself into DC for a while now. IBM had certainly learned its lesson, then Microsoft. I suspect Google always knew.

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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