Pascal programmers are confused.

Kung Fury still has the best spine joke.

Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 (which make up Volume 1) is repeatedly mentioned to be special and fundamental to the rest of the book series.

Well maybe if you started on book 1 chapter 1, you’d know how to read these books.

Why didn’t you start with the fundamentals book Volume 1?

You just jumped directly into complex combinatorics and then complained that the material was too difficult.

Then the next Billionaire with a massive ego and huge budget comes out and makes another one.

Or we get Jack Dorsey making a new company for a 3rd time.

My post above is 376 characters, which would have required three tweets under the original 140 character limit.

Mastodon, for better or worse, has captured a bunch of people who are hooked on the original super-short posting style, which I feel is a form of Newspeak / 1984-style dumbing down of language and discussion that removed nuance. Yes, Mastodon has removed the limit and we have better abilities to discuss today, but that doesn’t change the years of training (erm… untraining?) we need to do to de-program people off of this toxic style.

Especially when Mastodon is trying to cater to people who are used to tweets.

Your post could fit on Mastodon

EDIT: and second, Mastodon doesn’t have the toxic-FOMO effect that hooks people into Twitter (or Threads, or Bluesky).

People post not because short sentences are good. They post and doom-scroll because they don’t want to feel left out of something. Mastodon is healthier for you, but also less intoxicating / less pushy. Its somewhat doomed to failure, as the very point of these short posts / short-engagement stuff is basically crowd manipulation, FOMO and algorithmic manipulation.

Without that kind of manipulation, we won’t get the kinds of engagement on Mastodon (or Lemmy for that matter).

Because Threads and BlueSky form effective competition with Twitter.

Also, short form content with just a few sentences per post sucks. It’s become obvious. That Twitter was mostly algorithm hype and FOMO.

Mastodon tries to be healthier but I’m not convinced that microblogs in general are that useful, especially to a techie audience who knows RSS and other publishing formats.

https://taxheaven3000.com/

I thought Patrick Boyle was a rap specialist music major?

Is there some kind of read protection that may be enabled on the PIC? Do I just need to unsolder the PIC and put it in its own dedicated circuit for pulling the firmware?

There are protections on Atmel chips (aka AVRs) made by the same company (Microchip).

Do you have a more specific part number? PIC16F is a large family of chips.

First hit on Google was this list made by some Redditor: https://www.reddit.com/r/Betamax/comments/z8cun4/films_that_only_exist_on_betamax_or_alt_editions/

In any case: the big advantage of Betamax (and VHS) was how easy it was to get home-recordings done. An entire generation of family photos / family events (birthday parties, etc. etc.) are on Betamax and likely lost.

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Flash still got it good.

Consider the entire generation of 1970s and 1980s Betamax footage that is basically lost today.

When format wars snap to one side: VHS vs Betamax, HD-DVD vs BluRay, Flash vs HTML5, QuickTime vs DivX… The losing side basically loses a ton of footage.

For the most part, we know how to play Flash right now and mostly how to upconvert it or otherwise archive it. That’s not true of all formats.

Yeah, there’s a wide variety of digital solutions out there.

I think I got a bit nerd-sniped at the opportunity for 6uA temperature sensors and the possibility of this battery-powered application lasting for a very, very long time. It will cost me a little bit of effort but 1-point calibration at room temperature should get me within +/-0.5C accuracy anyway.

This is a battery-powered project, though 4x AA NiMHs offer 2000mAH, so a ~5mA overall project is still 16-days of power. ~1mA x2 sensors is probably fine though.

The real issue is that the AVR DD actually comes with a factory-calibrated temperature-sensor on board. So woopsie, I should have just read the documentation for this microcontroller a bit better!!

Note: I’m a hobbyist as well. Still, I think these tools are clearly well designed to solve real problems (even if I haven’t attempted all these project ideas yet… I can see why Timers / EVSYS / CCL exists).

I 100% agree with the crux of your statement: the #1 goal of any programmer is to get something, anything working. You only keep working on it if its not sufficient to specs. Alas, the real world demands performance that even raw clocks cannot deliver.

Let me walk you through my thoughts on a simple MPPT tracker concept. Solar Panels can deliver varying amounts of power depending on cloud coverage, but also based on the amount of current drawn by a circuit. Using a boost (or buck) converter to change the current drawn (and assuming you have a Lead-acid “sink” that can absorb any extra power being generated) can lead to far more energy captured by the solar panels.

The first element you need to build is a boost converter. A high-efficiency boost converter consists of inductors + nmos + pmos. (The textbook bang-bang nmos + diode arrangement loses efficiency. Replacing the diode with a pmos is possible with a computer: just turn on the pmos whenever the diode “should” have turned on and you’re good).

This naturally leads to TCD

Lets say you’re building a 2MHz boost converter. The timings in the above waveform must be very well calibrated and consistent for the boost converter to function well. If the dead-time slips, you either lose efficiency of the boost converter, or you accidentally turn both the nmos + pmos on at the same time, leading you to accidentally short Vcc to Ground. Every part of the waveform is in fact realtime and MUST have exact timings matched at all times to function correctly.

A 2MHz boost converter with even a 200MHz processor gives you only 100 clock ticks per boost-converter cycle. And remember that within this 100-clock tick loop you need to handle a real-time dead-time / nmos-on / dead-time / pmos-on sequence of signals. Now add in all the logic for everything else you need to do (like MPPT) and I think it becomes clear that you don’t have enough CPU time even at 200MHz. Doesn’t matter if you use a simple loop or an interrupt, the number of clock cycles available here is actually quite low.

On an AVR DD however? Just set the clock to 16MHz and PLL to x3 (TimerD runs at 48MHz), and TimerD can handle all the dead-time/nmos-on/dead-time/pmos-on logic by itself, with more than enough processing power to spare for other tasks.

EVSYS does interact with timers by the way. Its not that EVSYS is ‘useful’ by itself, far from it. Its that timers are the powerful element at play here (allowing AVR to punch far above its weight class in practice). EVSYS’s main benefit is extending the applicability of timers.

From the perspective of “realtime” problems, where timing-specific on/off bitbanging is of utter huge importance… that’s where EVSYS / Timers / all these complex peripherals really shine. Finding the right situations (ex: MPPT controller) where it all lines up seems to be the key however.

You don’t want to add all this complexity to a “normal” project. You only add it because the project already was complex (which realtime-requirements always add gross amounts of complexity).

I just realized I wrote a wall of text saying that bit banging is less efficient lol and didn’t even cover EVSYS much. Ah well, hopefully it’s still good discussion for ya.

The “Event System” is really good for that too.

The Event System (EVSYS) enables direct peripheral-to-peripheral signaling. It allows a change in one peripheral (the event generator) to trigger actions in other peripherals (the event users) through event channels, without using the CPU

The most simple of logic / signaling doesn’t require the CPU anymore. Its truly a system where combinations of pieces leads to a large number of simple designs.

“Modern AVR” is very much about these peripherals. No, you don’t get as much compute as the 32-bitters (Cortex M0+ or whatever). But by being able to do so much dumb logic without waking up, AVR reaches into absurdly low-power design spaces. There’s just so much that can happen while sleeping now, its kind of insane.

simple logic

Alas, its not very easy to design like this. But that’s what makes it a fun hobby at least! “Simple Logic” but… it ends up touching like 5 different peripherals tied together with the Event system in not the easiest to understand initialization code to write…

These new AVR DA / DB / DD / EA / EB series over the past couple of years is really excellent IMO.

I feel like “x16 Programmable Gain Differential 12-bit ADC” on the AVR EA should give you a reason to check things out! CCL (Four 3-LUTs + 2 1-bit memory cells) can operate while the processor is in sleep states, allowing for some customizable glue logic.

These timers today are certainly more powerful than what came out 15 years ago too.

Each AVR series has a “secret weapon” that’s pretty cool. AVR DB has 3x OpAmps. EA is that x16 PGA Differential 12-bit ADC like I said. EB has these new waveforms.

This post: https://lemmy.world/post/16422711 shows off how to use Timers, CCL and the event system to create a bang-bang Boost converter that operates even under CPU sleep (since its all Timers / Peripherals).

With a more advanced timer like Timer E, that same design can upgrade to a nmos+pmos totem pole Boost Converter somewhat easily as well. (Replace the diode with a pmos + use TimerE to configure dead-time + complementary on/off signals that can operate all during standby-sleep).

I mean, when people point out that Joe Biden is a Neocon who supports Israel and USAs rightful dominant place in the world… Erm I agree with that and want to vote for him.

I’m a Neocon. And proud of it and can defend a lot of my positions.

What pisses me off about the new wave of conservatives is that it’s all reactionary. There is no guiding philosophy.

With regards to neoconservatives: I know we get a bad rap since Bush. But events like Ukraine show the importance of us being the stalwart defenders and stepping up to challenges around the world.

But thats the thing. I’ll tell you that while proudly wearing my colors as a Neocon. This ‘Libs of TikTok’ bullshit is just fucking awful politics. We can’t actually work or talk around our issues when people are pretending to be on the wrong sides of debates

Politics shouldn’t be about ‘owning’ the other side. Politics should be about effectively communicating our beliefs to each other, especially our disagreements. And finding compromises where possible.

Anyway, it’s Joever to some extent so I guess all in on Kamala. She’s still acceptable to my philosophy if only because Trump + JD Vance is such a bad choice. So y’all got my vote this year, at least temporarily.

Unlike you and your ilk, I’m willing to go outside the safe zone (fkn lol) and interact with people who have different opinions. Only cowards stay in their little bubbles chit talking day in and day out. And that’s a knock at both leftists and rightists.

I’m a Republican. This area is outside my safe zone. But outrage politics affects us all and I judge people who engage in it harshly.

But sure. Judge me harder daddy. I haven’t stated my opinion yet, I’m simply pointing out that you’re engaging in outrage politics and you probably shouldn’t be flexing on that.