blippage

21 ms·

211.
by blippage 5y ago
My own view why the Pi succeeded: they understood the market. They were prepared to innovate. Everyone else seemed to be a "me-too". Sure, others came out with products that were more powerful, but then they cost more, and some of
212.
by blippage 5y ago
One things I'd like to see come out of RISC-V is a kind of microcontroller/microprocessor hybrid. Hobbyists are doing amazing things with the RP2040 PIO system (I haven't been able to wrap my head around it personally), inclu
213.
by blippage 5y ago
I think of the Game of Life as not-quite-right excitable reaction-diffusion systems. The advantage of the latter is that they have a mathematical representation as a parabolic partial differential equation. They can exhibit such patterns as
214.
by blippage 5y ago
On the subject of bridge whimsy ... an American (Rpbert P McCulloch) bought London Bridge for $2.46m. The rumour was that he thought he was buying Tower Bridge. This seems to be a debunked theory. however. https://www.onthisday.c
215.
by blippage 5y ago
I just did a quick google for the PS/2 mouse/keyboard protocol. It looks pretty straightforward. It's something that a mere mortal like me might be able to implement, or better yet, be available as a peripheral on a microcont
216.
by blippage 5y ago
When my dad was doing some household maintenance he sometimes used to explain the procedure to the dog. On a couple of occasions I've given short technical talks my dog. She just used to sit there with a look that said "I'm n
217.
by blippage 5y ago
Well, if you like a challenge, you could always get yourself a husky. If they don't want to do something then they'll certainly provide some amusement value. Apart from parrots, huskies seem to be the only animal species capable o
218.
by blippage 5y ago
Gotta laugh. Seems that we are no longer customers, but consumers; like some open-mouthed whale hoovering up the plankton. Feed me, feed me now! > While retailers have indicated that they are seeing an increase in items returned to store
219.
by blippage 5y ago
A couple of ideas: * make Pong. pygame if a good place to start if you want to make things as easy as possible. * play with microcontrollers. There's a lot of fun to be had with making LEDs blink, hooking up displays, etc.. I'd re
220.
by blippage 5y ago
An old firm I worked for had their router switch in the toilet. Not literally /in/ the toilet you understand, but above it, on a shelf. Was that really the only solution they could come up with, I wonder?
221.
by blippage 5y ago
FFS, enough with the April Fools nonsense already. Back when Slashdot was relevant I used to stop reading it on 1/2 April due to the low signal to noise. Please downvote April Fools posts so that we're not wasting time reading gar
222.
by blippage 5y ago
As the saying goes: keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out. The more that things are discussed, analysed, out-analysed, over-analysed, the more they devolve into a cacophony of views. Particularly with hot-button topic
223.
by blippage 5y ago
I think Jordan Peterson had a comment about that. You get rid of people you think are rubbish, but then the top people begin to wonder if they're next. So they leave, because they have options, whilst the whole company slowly slides in
224.
by blippage 5y ago
Debian Stable user here. I used to use Win 7, which I was happy with. I never used Win 10, except at a library. The chances are minimal that I will install wither Win 10 or 11 on my machine. Why should I pay beaucoup dollars for an OS that
225.
by blippage 5y ago
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under Communism, it's just the opposite. — John Kenneth Galbraith
226.
by blippage 5y ago
Cue South Park's parody of Steve Irwin. "I'm going to jam my thumb in his butthole, this should really piss him off."
227.
by blippage 5y ago
One thing I've noticed is that is seems more recent movies lack character observations. Everything is done is in service of the plot. I think it was in Doctor No there was a conversation between Q, M and Bond. Bond's favourite wea
228.
by blippage 5y ago
I wanted to write a memcpy() routine for a microcontroller. I wrote a naive version where I copied from src to dst one byte at a time. You can find algorithms which are more efficient than this, which will typically copy 32 bit words at a t
229.
by blippage 5y ago
The best explanation I've read about monads was actually in a blog, written in Python. When you jettison the burrito analogies, category theory and all that stuff, it's actually not all that bad. I can't find the page, unfort
230.
by blippage 5y ago
Just a few days back, when an greybeard I followed on Twitter announced that he set up a TikTok account for his investing blog, I came to this sudden realisation: everything has become Pinterest. I joked to him about how he was an e-boy now
231.
by blippage 5y ago
As a fairly blackpilled guy who isn't a feminist, I'll try to avoid being too controversial. "But I wonder if the dating apps, with their illusion of endless possibility, subtly encourage us to keep shooting for the best of a
232.
by blippage 5y ago
> convivial weapon I had a quick chuckle at that. It reminds me of an old joke: a bullet has your name on it, a hand grenade is addressed "to whom it may concern", and a mortar shell is posted general delivery.
233.
by blippage 5y ago
I can't remember the exact criteria that Taleb mentioned that led me to believe that great things might come of RISC-V. So I'll fall back on the "optionality" argument. Vendors, particularly small vendors, can experiment
234.
by blippage 5y ago
I follow some of the writings of Nassim Taleb. I came to the conclusion that RISC-V will "succeed" because there's no way for it to fail. It's like Linux. I don't think licensing fees to ARM are a problem per se, it
235.
by blippage 5y ago
I've never owned a Beagle. I discovered earlier this year that they were open hardware and even had real-time capabilities. It struck me that this is what the Pi should have been. Then I saw the price. So I'll be sticking with Pis
236.
by blippage 5y ago
Can you get the size of the moon using similar triangles? You have to know the distance to the moon. But presumably you can calculate it because you know its angular velocity (it takes about 28 days to revolve around the earth). When you kn
237.
by blippage 5y ago
I think there are actually two different purposes to notebooks: technical, and "emotional". I now keep notebooks for technical purposes. A note will typically take a page or two. I have a contents page, too, where I list the headi
238.
by blippage 5y ago
I tried FreeBSD a couple of years back, and X Windows seemed buggy. I mean, come on, this is something that should have been sorted out by now. Maybe if one were into speed and minimalism, and didn't want a GUI, then one of the BSDs is
239.
by blippage 5y ago
I've downloaded Zephyr, but haven't produced anything useful with it. I was put off by the learning curve. It also suffers from a lot of these OS's do: layer upon layer of abstraction. I also hate everyone's weird and wo
240.
by blippage 5y ago
"On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a

More ›