• 3 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I did IT for my company on the side of my job for a year or two.

    Prolific problem where windows would disable the microphone but every single “windows tool” said it was working perfectly fine except teams would say it was not available.

    The only possible fix that someone on the internet found was to download an old sketchy file from a 3rd party source for an archived version of their “pre-help-assistant AI slop” audio troubleshooter, and run that and it would immediately say “oh, it is disabled, let me re-enable it for you”

    Even though every tool, setting, and even registry said it was enabled.

    Microsoft has the worst audio.




  • I find it very confusing to get a good workflow with it + calibre.

    I sync all of my books (and use readarr for organization or occasionally grabbing books from dead authors) via syncthing. Then calibre web won’t ingest any new books I copy to the folder, so I have to go to desktop calibre to add them manually, then it will sync the database and calibre-web has a built-in task for scanning any database changes so then the book will show up.

    Seems like a clunky method and I would think I am doing it wrong, but I haven’t found a way for calibre to scan books already organized in folders in its book directory.


  • I have made laundry lists in the past of things that either you can’t do with windows, or you need to regedit and hack around it. Literally basic as fuck things.

    Hell, until a year or two ago, you couldn’t open the location of a file from a file search, and it obscured (and still does) the full path of the file in the search pane. Not to mention how bad the search is in general.

    Don’t get me started on the “modern sleep” bullshit lol




  • Yes but they hide that as much as possible.

    • No longer warranty
    • No specs that indicate longevity
    • also has bullshit WiFi/touchscreens because it is so cheap to integrate for them

    If you are extremely lucky, there is a review for that model somewhere that isn’t just paid advertising, but outside of the US with less-used models, that is pretty much a fantasy.

    For example, even on the most expensive 1400€ Series 8 models Bosch (traditionally one of the best quality washers in the EU) now instead of a drum with bolts and a gasket, plastic welds their drum covers so it doesn’t last as long, breaks at the seam, and is almost impossible to repair correctly.

    And their specs say the size, capacity, programs, and a few useless features like automatic dosing, lighting inside, and “led display” , and that is it.


  • As an engineer, hybrid works best for many of us.

    Design phase can be wfh with some in-person idea sessions or important meetings because I have yet to be at an online idea session that was as productive as in-person being able to draw things out and visualize better, and people tend to not speak up or just check out and agree at the end in online meetings.

    Testing phase has to be mostly in person for lab tool access and collaboration on physical things.

    I have worked with a contractor that did everything from home and had a whole home lab, but it was a big time sink and cost shipping parts back and forth 5 times and you couldn’t physically probe behaviors together which leads to slightly different setups and sometimes different results.

    Socially I moved to a place where I had no friends so I like getting social contact at work since in Belgium, it is extremely difficult to make new friends after you are done with school because of a culture of not talking to anyone else unless people are obnoxiously drunk lol. I like wfh on overwhelming days and in-person on days where I want more social contact.

    That being said, I work 100% in office now because I live a 12 minute bike ride from work, so very easy.


  • This is also why people should seriously think about if they are ready to have a kid or want to have a kid.

    Millions or tens/hundreds of millions of kids have parents that never really wanted them and just gave in to the biological clock and/or social pressures and the kids have a shitty childhood. It sucks to be unwanted, and kids can really feel it.








  • So I am in the designing of the circuit and PCB stage right now.

    The usecase is for Meshtastic/Meshcore nodes because those sit outside in a tree or in a high place outside year-round and are solar charged. I am designing it as a RAKwireless Wisblock power module that will be charged by 2, 5V, 200mA small solar panels in series. The whole project will be released on Codeberg like all of my home projects.

    Later I can copy the circuit over to other PCBs for more general formats. One of my future projects is going to be an 8S pack BMS for driving a 12V water pump for off-grid rainwater collection barrels.

    I am targeting 2S systems now because then the entire sodium cell can discharge if the system voltage is set to 3V and I don’t need any buck/boost, just a buck which is significantly cheaper and easier on the batteries.

    I am using an STM32C011 as a custom BMS + buck charger because my original idea of using a very cheap, small mixed signal FPGA (greenpak SLG47105) wouldn’t work well for sodium because it didn’t have enough comparators to have a soft constant voltage region (gradually increasing CV voltage from 3.8V per cell to 4V along with the natural current decrease to prolong charge cycle life), it will have overvoltage/over current protections, 1A or 2A max current, resistive battery balancing, and some safety features and an I2C readout.

    (Sorry, wall of text)



  • We have heat pumps at my job for our factory.

    They are literally useless around of below freezing in the experience here.

    They exchange heat so they blow out air colder than outside air, then their entire radiator gets completely covered in ice, then it has to switch off and then the entire factory cools off while they have to turn on the resistive heaters to defrost themselves, then they turn themselves back on and because they are covered in water from defrosting, very quickly freeze again and the whole cycle repeats while the factory is very marginally warmed up during the cycle.


  • Alright I can answer this because with all the shit there have also been a ton of cool tech that isn’t fascist, and ton of instances of the community building something awesome:

    **Commercial things: **

    • Sodium Batteries (I have a 18650 shipment on the way for my custom charger)

    • Solar panels have dropped in price so dramatically that they are viable for hundreds of millions of people

    • Prusa and Bambu have made 3d printing not just a hobby, but very functional and practical. Now people themselves can replace broken parts, create new functional parts and tools without having to make their entire hobby and personality trying to fix and optimize their 3D printer

    • MCUs have blasted off the past 10 years. nRF has revolutionized the Bluetooth space with nRF52 and newer. ESP has brought WiFi to literally everyone in any device they want with whatever processor strength with no antenna design. STM is very friendly to hobbyists and has everything for motors, and NXP makes performance beasts (and all non-US companies doing the great things of course) and they have all become so much more dramatically efficient.

    • Multiple MCU companies have switched to open source toolchains that are inter-compatible, more portable, and transparent, making embedded development much less relying on shitty half-baked manufacturer libraries that are incomplete for different offerings.

    • FOC motor control and bringing it to the masses have created a huge step in motors and have made implementing efficient servos actually viable for open source projects

    • RLCD is an up and comer that gives epaper-like reduced eye strain and outdoor visibility while having an update rate of an LCD.

    Maybe older, but still great:

    • open source hardware companies like adafruit, sparkfun, olimex, etc… Have made electronics so much more accessible to actually do useful things with.

    • epaper displays being widely available for power savings in small devices

    **Community Projects: **

    • HomeAssistant has gone from an enthusiast system 10 years ago, to literally the best, and easily customizable automation system that supports every

    • Meshtastic and Meshcore bringing community location services and communication to everyone for a very cheap price

    • Docker and Podman. They have revolutionized the server space.

    • The leaps and bounds made in self hosting software in general is incredible and taken self hosting from a quite risky and very very complicated technical endeavor to do safely to a medium difficulty hobby project that is 100x less of a time sink. Not only that, but commercial software has genuinely good replacements Traefik/caddt, crowdsec, docker, immich, paperless-ngx, jellyfin, mealie, syncthing, nextcloud/opencloud, *arr suite, etc…

    • The fediverse, still in early stages, but I don’t need to explain the impact

    • Gadgetbridge, turning smart wearables spying on you and selling your biometric data to insurance companies to just plain useful local devices for looking after yourself

    There is more, but this is already long