dragontamer

joined 1 year ago
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[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 1 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

Well, it keeps getting worse until some point. But it took like a decade of shitty CDOs of CDOs finally collapsed in 2007.

It got to the point where strippers (and other not so wealthy people) where buying 2 or 3 houses aiming to flip.

Bubbles always bubble longer than expected


And if Trump does the trillions in tax cuts like hes trying to do, then the economy floats longer

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 1 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

overdue

That's the problem. Bubbles keep growing until they don't. And there's no way to know when that will pop. This AI crap has been growing since 2016 AlphaGo or even 2012 IBM Watson.

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago

Trump doesn't do what he says he will do. Its pretty much random.

The reliable grift, such as anti-immigramt hate and anti-muslim stuff is obviously coming. And as awful as they will be, I'm not convinced that it will have an obvious effect on our economy.

When we start looking at things like Elon's grift or other Billionaires he's with, the stock market, crypto coins and other assets will go up. It seems unlikely to me that a crash would necessarily occur at the right timing you desire (this is bad for us in the long term. But the modern corporate economics world has become very good at hiding fraud and kicking cans down the road. Elon especially).

If they can hold most money together and make their supporters money (see Cryptocoin and Tesla stock right now), then they have a winning economic message for their core supporters.

Or do you think anyone actually gives a shit about how middle America will feel from this?

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm not about conceding the information space.

What I'm saying is that without an allied media that you can actually trust to get the big news out, then people will be wondering about When Did Biden Drop Out again.

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world -1 points 1 day ago (6 children)

What if the economy doesn't tank?

The President doesn't have that much control over the economy. That's a fundamental truth.

There will be awful policies but there's no guarantee of an economic collapse here.

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

I appreciate the viewpoint.

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

This is an election where people didn't even know Biden wasn't running anymore, as Google Trend searches of "Did Biden Drop Out of the Election" skyrocketed during the election.

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

And to be red, you have to want to take rights away from women and round up the immigrants.

Bwaaahahahaha. No.

To be Red doesn't mean that. Republicans are just better at logrolling than you Democrats are.

If your allies are stinky racists, you roll up your sleeves and try to be a good Republican and make new arguments for your side that can drown out the racists. Why? Because allies are needed for power, and working with people you disagree with is more important for the cause than tearing down your allies.

Democrats need to become more RealPolitik. They need to be less ideal and more self serving if they hope to win elections in the future.

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

If you want to look anywhere, look at the users on far-left fringe websites that engage in deliberate misinformation campaigns

It's not the fringe websites I'm concerned about. I'm talking about the big payouts: Twitter, Gamma ebook, TikTok and Instagram.

Fringe websites are where they test ideas and arguments. When they honed the correct message they likely migrate to spreading that the arguments of division to the mainstream sites. Possibly (in the case of Twitter and TikTok) with algorithmic boosts to the arguments.

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

And you think you can do that when your opponent literally controls the outreach of your messages?

There is a +Elon Musk boost to Elons messages on Twitter. Furthermore, all the pro-Ukrainian posts systematically become NSFW and hidden from the timeline. Even when it is totally safe to view (like cute cat videos being shared by Ukrainian soldiers).

How the fuck do you get your message out on Twitter when Twitter specifically is being used to suppress your message?

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Sure, that's also sounds like a good disruption strategy.

The goal is to separate and disrupt us. And they will have fully paid specialists who strategize and are savvy on the latest arguments.

Anything that gets Democrats to tear each other apart is the goal. So we need to be careful about the whispers on the internet, and be more careful about thinking about who those whispers serve.

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Or maybe, being a naive fool is how the left loses elections.

The Republican right explicitly builds media to serve them and tries to use media as a tool for control. And it works.

You can fight against the laws that empower this money system. But if you naively ignore the power structure and reality of today's media landscape, you WILL BE DOOMED TO LOSE.

If you want to fight against it that's.... Fine. I get it. But you need power first and the current level of power Democrats wield is too low.

 

Hey Gaza / Free Palestine guys,

I'm pissed about the Kamala loss but that's not important right now. I need to know what media you were using.

Where did Free Palestine/ Gaza memes and discussions start?

I'm worried that the discussion is a right wing disinformation campaign designed to make us tear each other apart. I cannot find any legitimate politician (even far left ones like Bernie Sanders, AOC, etc. etc) that would have pushed the message of 'Joe Biden / Kamala is just as bad as Trump on the issue of Gaza'.

The only ones who would push that message are right wing trolls who try to separate us. So now I want to track down and confirm my suspicions. Who meme'd this? Where did you hear it? Was it Twitter? TikTok? Reddit? Facebook? Instagram?

 

Despite all the doom scrolling, Harris has a comfortable lead in the electoral college right now.

The time for vibing is over. It's too late to change anyone's opinions (especially because national level events like debates are over). Harris will finish her Media Blitz soon (including a Fox News showing) while Trump retreats into his shell hoping no one notices how damn stupid his mouth is.

This is the time for doing. The focus should be on voter drives and other get out the vote pushes. It's mid October, and the October surprises are against Trump and in our favor.

It's not the lead we wanted but it's a lead nonetheless. Don't talk yourself out of believing this lead because of a bad poll or two.

 

I've preferred Pixel phones for the last few years but I've heard that Pixel 6/7 had 5G connection problems (Pixel 8 apparently has a better modem, but I think I'd rather stick to a Qualcomm design for now).

So onto looking for my next phone.

I haven't considered a Samsung smartphone in years because I hated their TouchWiz stuff. But apparently they got rid of that like 8 years ago and have had multiple versions of updates. Can anyone comment on how good "One UI" is compared to stock Android? How much bloatware does it feel like? And what kind of customizations did Samsung do to the UI exactly?

I'm also looking at Asus Zenfone 11, but I figure the "mainstream" choice today is Samsung, so I'll also have to seriously consider Samsung phones.

 

cross-posted from: https://dubvee.org/post/861635

Not OC: Just found this on my old hard drive while grabbing some other stuff.

 

This meme gave me a laugh. Deserves a BestOf flag :-)

 

Hey everyone, as you all have noticed, I've slowed down on posting topics here.

My main problem is that my main search tool (search-lemmy.com) has seemingly disappeared, so I don't really know how to search Lemmy for good posts.

Lemmy's subscribed / all feeds leave much to be desired as well. So I don't think I've been finding as many posts deserving of a topic here from just the #1 votes or whatever.

Still, maybe we can discuss how we plan to find good posts and bring them to discussion here. Does anyone have good research methodologies they'd like to share with the peanut gallery?

 

  • Move 1: 1 point
  • Move 2: 1 point
  • Move 3: 4 points
  • Move 4: 4 points
  • Move 5: 1 point
  • Move 6: 1 point
  • Move 7: 4 points
  • Move 8: 1 point
  • Move 9: 4 points
  • Move 10: 6 points
  • Move 11: 7 points
  • Move: 12: 8 points
  • Move 13: 7 points
  • Move 14: 7 points
  • Move 15: 7 points
  • Move 16: 7 points
  • Move 17: 7 points
  • Endgame Bonus: 10 + 10 + 7 + 7 + 2 == 36 Endgame Bonus
  • Total Score: 113

Note that while this is "optimal" placements, it is not the best sequence in-game. For example, sequence 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 are going backwards. I'm not sure how to rewrite my program to account for the top-down placements per round however. So there's still work to be done.

This was a relatively simple brute-force bot that exhaustively checked all possibilities for the best possible placement. So I'm pretty sure I've go the best placement here. Well, maybe it was more "Dynamic Programming". I worked backwards: I calculated all possible 17-placement endgames (there's only 1.081 million of them, aka 25-choose-17), and then back-calculated all possible moves back to move#1.

Then I calculate from move#1 forward, choosing the best endgame move now that all possible endgames have been searched. Chess-programming fans would know this as a "Tablebase" approach.


EDIT: Searching the ~60 million possible optimal games proved to be difficult, as my computer ran out of RAM at 2GB (ummm... I got a 32GB system here. WTF Windows?). I'm sure there was some compiler flag I messed up on.

But I did a few heuristics and came up with the following board:

This is a 17-placement across 5 rounds with as many placements on the "top" of the board that I could find with my program.


EDIT:

  • Optimal 11 Placement: 58 Points
  • Optimal 12 Placement: 63 Points
  • Optimal 13 Placement: 73 Points
  • Optimal 14 Placement: 82 Points
  • Optimal 15 Placement: 91 Points
  • Optimal 16 Placement: 99 Points
  • Optimal 17 Placement: 113 Points
  • Optimal 18 Placement: 123 Points
  • Optimal 19 Placement: 136 Points
  • Optimal 20 Placement: 147 Points
  • Optimal 21 Placement: 163 Points
  • Optimal 22 Placement: 174 Points
  • Optimal 23 Placement: 192 Points
  • Optimal 24 Placement: 211 Points
  • Optimal 25 Placement: 240 Points

 

As computer programmers, our code runs on a wide variety of machines. From 2TB of RAM dual-EPYC servers with 128+ cores/256 hardware threads, to tiny single-core Arduinos running at 4MHz and 4kB of RAM.

While hobbyists and programmers around the world have become enamored with Arduinos, ESP32, STM32 Pills, and Rasp. Pi SBCs... there's a noticeable gap in the typical hobbyist's repertoire that should be looked at more carefully. This gap is the entry-level MPU market, perhaps best represented by Microchip's SAM9x60, though STM's STM32MP1, NXP i.MX ULL, and TI's AM355x chips tightly compete in this space.

I hope to muse upon this category of processors, why its unpopular but... why maybe today, you should give it a closer look.

Impedance-controlled 6-layer PCBs USED to be too complex for a hobbyist... but they're accessible today

This section's title says it all. Typical MPUs require PCB complexity that... at least 10 years ago, was well beyond a hobbyist's means. In the 2010-era of the fledgling "Maker" movement, 2-layer PCBs were the most complex you could hope for. Not just from a manufacturing perspective, but also from a software perspective. EagleCAD just didn't support more layers, and no manufacturer catered to hobbyists to make anything more complex. Paying for $500 NRE fees each time you setup a board just wasn't good on a hobbyist's budget.

But today, OSHPark offers 6-layer boards (https://docs.oshpark.com/services/six-layer/) at reasonable prices, with tolerances specified for their dielectric (and therefore, impedance-controlled boards are a thing). Furthermore, KiCAD 7+ is more than usable today, meaning we have free OSS software that can lay out delay-matched PCB traces, with online libraries like UltraLibrarian, offering KiCAD Footprints and Symbols sponsored by Microchip/Ti/etc. etc. There's also DKRed's 4-layer service, JLCPCB's services from China and plenty of competitors around the world that can take your 6-layer+ gerbers and give you a good board.

We live in a new era where hobbyists have access to far more complexity and can feasibly build a bigger electronics project than you ever dreamed before.

The classic team: Arduino and Rasp. Pi....

Arduino and Rasp. Pi stick together like peanut butter and jelly. They're a barbell strategy providing the user with a low-cost, cheap, easy-to-customize chip (ATMega328p and other Arduino-level chips) operating at single-digit mW of power... with a large suite of analog-sensors and low latency and simplicity.

While Rasp. Pi offers Linux-level compute solutions, "grown up" C++ programs, Python, server-level compute. Albeit at the 6W (for Rasp. Pi 4) or beyond, so pushing the laptop-level power consumption. But... that gives us a good team that handles a lot of problems cheaply and effectively.

Or... is it? This barbell strategy is popular for good reasons from a problem-solving perspective, but as soon as any power and/or energy constraint comes up, its hopelessly defeated. Intermediate devices, such as the ESP32 have popped up as a "more powerful Arduino", so to speak, providing more services (WiFi / Bluetooth, RAM and compute-power) than an Arduino can deliver, but is still far less than what Rasp. Pi programmers are used to.

What does a typical programmer want?

SAM9x60: ARMv5 at 600MHz, 128MB DDR2, Linux 6.1.x, dual-Ethernet 10/100, USB in 28mm x 28mm

When Rasp. Pi launched a bit over 10 years ago with 256 MB and a 700MHz processor and full Linux support, it set off a wave of hobbyists to experiment with the platform. Unfortunately, Rasp. Pi has left this "tier" of compute power, chasing the impossible dream of competing with Laptops / Desktops. IMO, the original Rasp. Pi 1 hit a niche and should have stuck with that platform.

This SAM9x60D1G-I/LZB SOM module is a mouthful to say. But at 28mm x 28mm its roughly the same size as a US Quarter. But... at $60 it sounds like a bad value. Okay, it is a bad value, but stick with me here, this represents far more than you might think.

SAM9x60 chip is fully open source, and fully documented at https://linux4sam.org. You get a full builtroot environment, a fully documented stage1, stage2, and stage3 (UBoot) bootloader. You get all 2000+ pages of documentation. You get PCB layouts, you get fully open source Linux drivers and kernel modules. You get the full "make" available from Microchip's github. The openness to this chip is insane, especially if you're used to Rasp. Pi.

And perhaps most importantly: SAM9x60's reference design fits on 4-layer boards. (This is an INCREDIBLE feat of engineering. Microchip has spent a lot of effort simplifying this 233-BGA chip and trying to get it onto the simplest means possible). Note however, that I'd personally only be comfortable with a 6-layer design here. (SAM9x60's reference design is signal/ground/power/signal stackup, which is frowned upon by modern PCB theory. signal/ground/power/signal/ground/signal would be a superior stackup... and 6-layers is cheap/available today anyway, so might as well go for 6-layers). In any case, the 4-layer demonstration reference board (https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/Appnotes/AN_3310_Connecting-SDR-and-DDR-Memories-to-SAM9X60_00003310a.pdf) is far more documentation and discussion than you'd ever hope to be released by the Rasp. Pi group. The openness to this platform is like night-and-day.

While the SOM completed module is costly, truth be told it "represents" the platform and is likely not intended for mass usage. The true benefits to SAM9x60 (and other entry-level MPUs) is that all the chips are readily available at fair prices, and can be custom-assembled to your needs. At $8 per SAM9x60 and at $3 to $5 for 128MB DDR2 (depending on vendor), and at $3 to $5 for the power-chip, you'll get a minimal booting Linux box with a fully custom PCB design doing whatever you want... with a fully customized motherboard / PCB doing whatever you want.

Another Devboard: https://www.microchip.com/content/dam/mchp/documents/MPU32/ProductDocuments/UserGuides/SAM9X60-Curiosity-User%27s-Guide-DS60001783.pdf

4-layer design again, though this time using the SiP module (on-board DDR2 to minimize the need to run impedance / delay-matched lines all over the place). This devboard costs $130, but the openness is likely well worth the costs. Its truly a design you can build on top of and customize yourself.

Cool... but why would I need this?

Well, to tell you the truth... I don't know yet. Power-constraints are the obvious benefit to running with these chips (SAM9x60 + LPDDR RAM will use 1/10th the power of a Rasp-Pi4, while still delivering a full Linux environment). But beyond that I'm still thinking in the abstract here.

I'm mostly writing this post because I've suddenly realized that a full custom MPU comparable to first-generation Rasp. Pi is doable by a modern hobbyist. Albeit a well studied hobbyist comfortable with trace-matched impedance controlled transmission line theory on PCBs, but I took those college-classes for a reason damn it and maybe I can actually do this.

Its a niche that 10 years ago was unthinkable for hobbyists to cheaply make their own SBCs from scratch. But today, not only is it possible, but there's 4 or 5 different vendors (Microchip's SAM9x60, TI's AM355x, STM32's STM32MP1, etc. etc.) that are catering to hobbyists with full documentation, BSPs and more. We're no longer constrained to the designs that Rasp. Pi decides to release, we can have those 2x Ethernet ports we've always wanted for example (for... some reason), or build a bare-metal OS free design using only 8MB of SRAM, or use LPDDR2 low-power RAM and build a battery-operated portable device.

Full customization costs money. Whatever hobby project we do with this will cost far more than a RP4 or even RP5's base price. But... full custom means we can build new solutions that never existed before. And the possibilities intrigue me. Full control over the full motherboard means we have absolute assurances of our power-constraints, our size, the capabilities, supporting chips and other decisions. Do you want LoRA (long-range radio?). Bam, just a module.

And you might be surprised at how much cheaper this is today than its ever been before.

Conclusion

Thanks for hearing my rant today.

This form factor is really intriguing to me and I'll definitely be studying it moving forward as a hobby. Hopefully I've manage to inspire someone else out there!

And... yall are just going to make a quadcopter with this, aren't ya? Sigh... well... drones are popular these days for good reasons...

 

Ian Cutress muses upon rumors around SiFive, the forerunner of high-performance RISC-V cores.

 

Thanks to the 15mm x 15mm ATSAMA5D27 package from Microchip, this company created a 20mm x 20mm Linux computer roughly the size of a coin.

Small computers have been getting posted over at Hacker News, so I figured I'd share this one here in !technology.

 

Consolidation is a big requested feature. Well, we can do that today with bots. Instead of Reddit-reposting bots, lets use Lemmy-bots to repost and consolidate Lemmy communities together.

EDIT: The community will need to be moderator only, the bot should be a moderator. Posts/comments should be mapped to the original topic. I think the only feature needed from Lemmy-developers is some way to globally link to a topic? But we can kind of work around that issue by making a consolidation-bot / consolidation-community be server-specific?

 

So I've got this dumb idea, but who knows, maybe it will work?

Lemmy seems to support uploading content, and .mp4 seems to be universally supported on modern web-browsers (phone, Windows, Linux, and Mac).

There's a number of animations that can be described in textual form: Chess puzzles, Go puzzles, and other boardgames. Or video game strategies (Age of Empires 2 build orders. Starcraft). Factorio designs, etc. etc.

For example, in the game of Tetris, strong players would help teach the game to newer players through the use of Fumens. This particular Fumen is represented by the base64-encoded data: v115@BhilFeAtglR4Beg0RpBtR4Ceg0RpAtzhAeh0JeAgWW?AURVSASYNuEw488AQr78AwKY5DkoBAAvhBtsuAAlsBzgQ4I?eR4CeRpwhBeglQ4CeRpwhAeAtglFewhBthlEewhAtKeAAPX?AS1STAS4kcDnoo2AMoo2AQieeEFcxCA, which could theoretically turn into a .mp4 animation describing the different positions of the game of Tetris.

So if a strong Tetris player wanted to discuss a Tetris position, they'd enter Fumen (Javascript), create the rendering, and then call the bot with (!fumen2mp4 v115@BhilFeAtg...), and then the bot would reply by uploading a .mp4 of the Fumen positions, to allow different Tetris players to communicate about the game.

I recognize that's a lot more work than a typical bot, but hey, lets exchange some of the more "difficult" ideas that might be worth working on.


Again: many games require this kind of visualization to have good discussions. Tetris is one obvious example, but so does Chess, Go, maybe Settlers of Catan, Magic the Gathering, and more.

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