[-] mreiner@beehaw.org 16 points 6 months ago

CTRL+R to search previous commands can help cut down on the number of times you have to scroll up!

[-] mreiner@beehaw.org 7 points 7 months ago

I mean, if a car doesn’t see a cyclist until the last moment, swerves to avoid it, and hits something else, the cyclist being there created a dangerous situation for the driver.

Even just considering a driver hitting a cyclist, the driver still has to live with that outcome for the rest of their life. Unless your expectation is that the driver is a psychopath who only cares about the condition of their vehicle, which I suppose is a possibility.

[-] mreiner@beehaw.org 9 points 7 months ago

Respectfully, an article from four years ago that I cannot read in full without creating an account, which seems to just reference a calculator from FT that is over a decade old at this point (whose sources I also cannot seem to find) doesn’t impress me. Do you have anything more recent, preferably that sites sources, that you can share? I’m genuinely interested in what data is actually worth

[-] mreiner@beehaw.org 6 points 8 months ago

I also feel many don’t understand the full extent, either. They’re used to using fairly secure devices in their everyday life (often not realizing how much the software they install is also spying on them), so why wouldn’t these IoT things also be secure?

In my experience, it’s all very vague and ethereal until the risks are highlighted for them. “So what if Google can read all of my emails? What could they possibly do with that information, anyway; why should I care?” is an example of a portion of a real conversation I’ve had.

[-] mreiner@beehaw.org 6 points 8 months ago

The original “clicker” remotes were really neat tech! The way it worked unfortunately limited the number of buttons you could have, but still ingenious.

https://www.theverge.com/23810061/zenith-space-command-remote-control-button-of-the-month

[-] mreiner@beehaw.org 21 points 9 months ago

That was a fun read, thank you.

[-] mreiner@beehaw.org 18 points 9 months ago

Technically, WebKit is Apple’s rendering engine (Safari).

Google uses Blink, which is a fork of WebKit, but is its own thing now.

So, you can still use Safari without directly contributing to Google’s de facto rendering engine monopoly.

[-] mreiner@beehaw.org 17 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Not going to lie, I found your back and forth interesting (and mostly sided with the other person), but the argument was lost for me when they attacked you directly.

You are right, SpaceX brought down costs (in dollars) to move mass into space which has opened many new doors. We can argue and disagree about what the broader and long term costs and outcomes of that change might be, but I didn’t get the feeling you were being a fanboy or unreasonably lavish in your praise.

Kudos for walking away from the conversation.

24

I just watched Joe Scotto’s new YouTube video, where he walks you through the basics of setting up KiCAD and designing a simple macro pad PCB. I am actually super excited to use this knowledge to design my own stuff now!

[-] mreiner@beehaw.org 13 points 10 months ago

Have any sources to back up your claims?

According to KBB, the average American drives around 37 miles per day. That means that the overwhelming amount of driving could be accomplished by a plug-in hybrid, let alone a fully electric vehicle. When it comes to the occasional long road trip (what, once a year or less for the average person?), is it worth burning - and paying for - gas for the thousands of miles that could be easily covered by even the most pathetic of electric vehicles' range without issue just so you can save a bit of time pumping fuel and hitting the convenience store rather than stopping a bit longer to charge up? In those cases, it may even be cheaper to rent a gas vehicle for the occasional road trip if if is that big of a concern for you.

Your use case may be different than mine, but I can't think of too many trips where I couldn't stop for a half hour here and there to charge up a bit. Most people, especially people with kids, have to stop periodically anyway, so use that time to charge up and you won't even notice. It's true that, especially in the particularly sparsely-populated western United States (speaking from a US perspective), some route planning may still be required, but that will get better as more people buy EVs.

Why are battery swaps even entering the conversation? Are engine swaps a concern for most people purchasing a new car? According to J. D. Power, every EV in the US comes with at least an 8 year or 100k mile warranty on the battery. Some manufacturers, like Hyundai, have a lifetime warranty on the battery. Most batteries are expected to last somewhere between 100k - 200k miles, which is often longer than the rest of the car will hold up and certainly competitive with combustion vehicles.

If you want a serious argument detailing a real struggle with which EV manufacturers and the market/government must contend, then here you go: apartment dwellers. From a US perspective, you pretty much have to own your home or work somewhere that provides charging parking spots to be able to fully take advantage of the benefits of an EV. While using a public charger is a viable option, it is more expensive than charging at home (though, in my research, it is still cheaper than gas).

EVs make sense for a super-majority of the driving that takes place today by normal people in North America. If you don't own your home, want to tow a boat, or travel hundreds of miles a day on a regular basis, then EVs will serve your needs somewhere between "fairly well" to "not at all".

If "range anxiety" is the only thing keeping people from pulling the trigger on an EV, I strongly suggest they consider the possibility of renting a car for the rare cross-country trip if finding a DC fast charger every once and a while and spending a little extra time at each stop isn't a viable option for them.

[-] mreiner@beehaw.org 5 points 10 months ago

Aww, now I’m feeling nostalgic

[-] mreiner@beehaw.org 5 points 11 months ago

Today I learned that I actually set up secure boot properly. Neat!

[-] mreiner@beehaw.org 10 points 11 months ago

I paid for Reddit Premium for years to help support the service and legitimately remove ads. If I remember right, it was around $4/month, so $48/year.

5

Hello!

I've ventured far too deep into the custom ergonomic columnar-staggered mechanical keyboard rabbit-hole, and I think I've finally found myself at my endgame (for now, anyway lol): the Hillside 46.

TL;DR:

Please see "questions" section at the bottom regarding why, how, and if I should use the ESD protection on the right-half, left-half, or both halves of this split ergo-mech keyboard build.

Background:

In constructing this board, I came across a part of the circuit design that has confused my non-expert brain: the ESD chip and decoupling capacitors. At a theory level, I understand that it protects the board from electrostatic discharge (presumably, specifically, the microcontroller) and the damage it can cause. What is weird to me is that this is the only keyboard out of the several split-mech-ergo boards I've built that have featured this protection circuit, and even within the Hillside family of keyboards, the version with 46 keys that I built seems to be the only one with this protection circuit which makes the decision even more perplexing to me.

Given that this is a split-keyboard design with a reversible PCB, there are footprints for the SRV05-4 ESD chip (datasheet here) and decoupling capacitors on both sides of the PCB though they appear to be wired up differently depending on the side of the board you're using (schematic here). On the "top" of the PCB (left side of the keyboard), you would solder the ESD chip with pin 1 at the top-left position. I did this and everything works fine.

On the "bottom" of the PCB (right half of the keyboard), the connections to the pads seem to be mirrored from the "top" of the PCB, but it looks like that was done so in a way that would not allow me to invert the ESD chip, with pin 1 at the bottom-right of the footprint, and still have everything work. I definitely can't keep pin one at the top-left of the footprint on the "bottom" of the PCB, so I'm kind of stuck as to what to do.

Questions:

  1. Are the ESD chip and decoupling capacitors necessary or just nice to have?
  2. If they are necessary or very useful, do I really need them on both halves of the board?
  3. Looking at the Gerber file, it seems like I might be able to mount the ESD chip to the footprint on the underside of the right-side PCB and still have it functional; is that correct?
  4. What is this ESD circuit protecting against, exactly? I assume it's potential voltage spikes on lines that shouldn't have them that can occur if I were to unplug one end of the audio cable while the keyboard was still plugged into power/USB; is that correct?

Thanks in advance!

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mreiner

joined 1 year ago