HN user
Main playing field is electronics and low-level, deterministic software (have also done the startup/IPO thing).
More interested in the challenge than the money, to be honest.
Current challenge is bodyrocket.cc (small start-up, I'm the CTO). Reach me as neil on that domain.
For many years there's been a linux router and a DMZ between VDSL router and the internal network here. Nowadays that's even more useful - LLM's are confined to the DMZ, running diskless systems on user accounts (without sudo). Not perfect, working reasonably well so far (and I have no bitcoin to lose).
Check out VPN's in Australia (Australian citizen currently in the UK)
Named after Michel de Montaigne? [0] His Essays are well worth a read - could reasonably claim to be the first blog.
Technical founder in the VR/AR space here. Not in a rush so have discounted YC in the past, still may be worth a short chat. Use the "Apply" link on the RFS page?
Great song (albeit sort-of not written by them, fits the band perfectly though). Lucky enough to see NMA live a couple of times pre-lockdown, no option but to settle for the live stream for the 40th anniversary.
Not so black and white, but I still thing the Sex Pistols GSTQ is a great song (also Anti-Nowhere Leagues 's "So F*king What!", much more FTW). Never a fan of the Diana bandwagon either.
Yet, likewise to me the Queen always earned the respect shown her. Colouring the establishment by the actions of some is just too black and white thinking for me.
How do they charge per advert? If I was paying someone hundreds - or thousands - of dollars, I'd certainly expect some degree of personal service.
Body Rocket: Brighton, UK. Multiple positions, remote mostly ok depending on the position but you'll need to work onsite at times.
We're a start-up focused on aerodynamics, and specifically (for now) on cycling. About to move from research to production, what we do is measure drag force on the cyclist in real time via embedded loadcells/aero sensors and far too many on-bike ARM processors (some running linux, some bare-metal).
Positions available are embedded engineer (nrf5x, C, lightweight DSP, linux too), data analyst/database leader and mechanical engineer (solidworks). As a small company (getting on for 10 full-time staff), we're less formal than most. If any of the positions sound interesting, happy to discuss informally.
There's a multi-particle version of this at the Brighton Fusebox (UK, [0]) for anyone who's got interesting ideas of how to use it.
[0] https://www.thefuseboxbrighton.com/events/1414958717/acousti...
Pretty much my first on-site service job: the company I was working for made motion-control systems for animation, controlled by a PDP-11. The customer was an animation studio, so dead in the water without the system working. Problem was it wasn't booting, so I had to go on site, open the side of the cabinet and reposition the goose-neck lamp used as the light source for the paper-tape reader. Problem solved, happy customer.
Brand-new they were pretty white (and gray)
The LSI-11 and 11/23 jumped to 173000 at startup, so (re)booting them was just hit halt on the front panel and then enter '173000G' in ODT (the built-in octal debugger). If necessary, it would only take a minute or two to type in a bootstrap somewhere in RAM and execute (my boss at the time could do that faster across the toggle keys on the front panel of his larger PDP-11 than I could type it in).
I coded several bootstraps for PDP-11/23's, managed to get 4 different devices (DX,DY 8" disks, MX 5.25" and MZ 3.5" disks) complete with CLI into 256 words (2x256 byte OTP ROMs). Careful coding time, since one had to send the listing off to someone who could burn the ROMs and post them back.
Over 6 years, 2x the performance in single-core and 4x (for 2.5x the cores, depending how you count) seems surprisingly low compared to stuff I've read (not experienced yet) with the M1.
Yeah, my dog read that story.
Yes, lots of old superstructure was made of wicker/wood/whatever was to hand. There will be a metal frame under it, of course, but wicker is perfectly strong enough (ever been in a hot air balloon? The baskets are usually wicker, and strong enough to hold 8 people of more).
Here's another pic of wicker usage on an old bicycle/motorbike:-
http://hazeii.net/images/2004/pioneer/p16.jpg
Very amusingly, it's possible to check the numberplate of that bike on the UK gov. website vehicle MOT page [0]. That bike was registered 31st December 1913 - so it's a mere 108 years old now.
Every year the Pioneer Run goes right past my door, lots of pre-1915 motorised bicycles and motorbikes going from London to Brighton. It's always a riot, and amazing to see these old machines on the road - I've taken many pics over the years, but here's my favourite sidecar one from 2004.
One not really unforgotten but definitely little known is Wisley Airfield [0], right beside the A3 heading into London. Came across it one day on a long bicycle trip, while I suddenly found myself in the middle of a mile-long runway. There are footpaths and a bridleway across it, so it's easily accessible. It also has the interesting feature of armco strips across it, which I think are to stop people from using it for impromptu drag races.
[0] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Wisley,+Woking/@51.30916...
That's one trick I've often seen deployed against the older generation (were salesmen more moral in the past?). I vividly remember a salesman getting quite angry because he was trying to slam my mother in exactly this manner, and my "well, we'd like to think about it" really pi*ed him off.
It's interesting how often on Amazon Prime I'll add one relatively obscure product to my basket on the promise it'll be delivered tomorrow, then add one more of the same and the delivery goes out for a day (or more).
On common products though, the whole FOMO "Only X left in stock!" is just a big ignore for the sales tactic it is.
In the tech world, it also seems to stem from insecurity (I'm sure many here have held their tongue in meetings when someone with little experience talks well above their level of competence in the subject).
Very much agree on not taking Watson's word for it. As for Franklin, it would be nice to think the Nobol committee would have agonised long and hard had she lived long enough to make it an issue for them (given at most 3 people can share a nobel, her early death ruled her out - a fact often ignored).
On easy, 7 correct and 0 wrong was enough to tell me that yes, I can (I have been reading Nature for years though).
...or because they're out there, and when they notice us they'll splat us like we'd splat an ant nest with no more thought than that.
I'm familiar with both, and have Pi's bit-banging at 8MHz. It's not hard-realtime like a PIC though (where I've bitbanged a resistor D2A hung off a dsPIC33 to 17.734475MHz). It's an improvement over the years, but surprisingly little since bit-banging 4MHz Z80's more than 4 decades ago, where resolution was 1 T state (250ns).
It's not much appreciated, but the Microbit V1 is an nRF51 and the V2 is an nRF52. Download the SDK from Nordic Semi [0], grab a copy of ARM GCC[1] or Segger IDE [2] (free for nRF5x, complete with drag'n'drop firmware upload [2a]) and you have a powerful Bluetooth LE/2.4GHz radio/LED blinky development environment (whatever platform you're on).
[0] https://www.nordicsemi.com/Software-and-tools/Software/nRF5-...
[1] https://developer.arm.com/tools-and-software/open-source-sof...
[2] https://www.segger.com/products/development-tools/embedded-s...
[2a]https://www.segger.com/products/debug-probes/j-link/models/o...
Straight-forward example of non-square pixels is the Raspberry Pi 7" LCD display. Viewable area is 155x86 and resolution is 800x480; simple plotting of a circle on it is visibly non-circular because the horizontal and vertical pitch are different.
Generally anything low res is hand-designed on a pixel by pixel basis (whether monochrome or limited colours). For fonts the lowest legible is 5x8 (depending of your definition of 'legible', e.g. the alphabet as printed on a seven-segment display).
You could look back at early graphics fonts/icons, e.g. early X11 or after that Mac and Windows for inspiration. Also graphics LCD displays (e.g. one or two lines of 16 chars) and then there's the BBC Microbit with its 5x5 display - lots of creative stuff there, the stock demo it comes with does text and graphics (and the code is online).
As the new kid on the block, I skipped TECO for KED (which I have a soft spot for to this day). Sometime around '85, had to write a VT100 emulator for some newfangled Z80 box just so it could be used it as a terminal for my personal PDP-11.
You should watch them mating, the on-water shenanigans are nothing.
Max Headroom, 1987 [0]:-
Edison Carter checks out the cops busting into some girl's apartment. He and his colleague want to know the score, and the cop pulls back a cushion showing how she's hotwired her TV:-
Janie Crane: "An off switch?" (looks shocked)
Metrocop: "She'll get years for that. Off switches are illegal!"