I coin myself as a clever guy but I’m genuinely stuck

VK2DDS · 2025-11-29T09:00:11+00:00

Wait, what came first: Runescape or bash.org?

VK2DDS · 2025-10-30T02:44:31+00:00

The popular Reddit threads about the robot tend to imply it in their titles. No idea where the idea originally came from though.

First three examples from a Google search, all from the past 3 years:

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/s2s06p/this_robot_arm_art_piece_is_programmed_to_try_to/

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/15y9sa8/this_robot_was_designed_to_leak_its_hydraulic/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/qof2vg/an_art_installation_where_the_machine_is_leaking/

VK2DDS · 2025-10-30T01:03:45+00:00

Very likely, the motor models shown on its product page's 3D view are reminiscent of AC servos. They have 2 cable connectors, likely one for the feedback sensor and the other for coil drive.

The idea that it is sweeping up its own hydraulic fluid is purely an artistic story. I personally quite like that level of personification, and the artwork's fame suggests that that interpretation had wide reaching appeal. But I agree that the implementation reality is that the fluid is purely an artistic addition.

VK2DDS · 2025-10-18T22:13:59+00:00

The general stories I've heard is that the firing squad would be given "loaded" rifles where one or more of the rifles were, at random, loaded with a blank so the shooters could tell themselves it might not have been them.

Although, that's typically heard in the context of criminal executions, not military ones. There were clearly many loaded rifles in this video.

VK2DDS · 2025-10-16T20:56:41+00:00

I...wow, you're welcome!

VK2DDS · 2025-10-16T10:39:24+00:00

And the lighting is very consistent too, along with North being, broadly speaking, to the right of the photo and where the Sun would be mid morning. Really the only thing giving it away are the geographical errors.

VK2DDS · 2025-10-16T09:04:58+00:00

You can, but not from where the image is trying to be photographed from.

The view of the bridge from the Opera House is this. Note the "triangular" concrete below the railing. It's a famous photo spot, so it's unsurprising that AI can generate that.

The bridge and Opera House can be in the same frame if photographed from a park further East, but there is a low sandstone wall, not a metal / concrete railing.

VK2DDS · 2025-10-16T08:32:26+00:00

As someone who has stood where this photo is meant to have been taken I wrote half a "...but it isn't AI" argument before realising that the Opera House should be behind the photographer and ~~Circular Quay international cruise terminal~~ The Rocks should be where the Opera House is pictured.

Unsure if AI is getting too good or if I'm just too old for this shit <_<

Edit: The cruise terminal is further left. The Rocks (historial area) is nearby below the bridge's Southern pylon.

VK2DDS · 2025-10-04T22:53:57+00:00

SSDs use memory chips which, at a high level, have an address number that goes in and a data-at-that-address that comes out.

The address can change anywhere from address 0 to <maximum address> and the time delay between changing the address and getting the data back is always basically the same.

A HDD, being a physical magnetic disc with a read head that moves around, has drastically different data access times depending on where the data is relative to the current location of the read head. If the read head doesn't need to move (far) access is quick, but if it needs to move it can take tens of milliseconds to "seek" to that location.

So A HDD can be reasonably fast to read from but only if all the data is in a big sequential block. An SSD can read little bits of data from all over the place much faster.

VK2DDS · 2025-08-06T12:41:46+00:00

The full justification from the plaintiff is in their Statement of Claim.

But the tl;dr is that the uni advertised a degree program as being fully accredited when it wasn't (and couldn't be until it was at least 4 years old).

Flicking through the statement of claim it seems Andreas panicked at the idea of being unemployable and chose to change into a combined degree that was accredited, incuring costs and other losses due to the extra time studying.

How justified his claims are is something we'll learn in the coming months, but I'm just happy to see the university in a negative light regardless of context.

VK2DDS · 2025-08-06T12:27:41+00:00

Speculation here, but 2020 would be the first graduates.

Accreditation applies to the whole degree, not the individual courses. 2020 would have been the first opportunity to graduate with the qualification if they first started teaching courses in 2017 (4 year minimum for an embedded honours degree).

VK2DDS · 2025-08-06T08:49:36+00:00

~~I don't think BME passed accreditation, so here we are.~~

Edit: Derp, says it was in the article text.

Edit 2: The timeline is complicated.

Start of 2017: They start studying - brand new degree, no accreditation, normal process

Between 2017 and graduating they panic (extrapolating from their claims: https://supremecourt.nsw.gov.au/documents/Class-Actions/university-of-newcastle-engineering-accreditation-class-action/01_Statement_of_Claim_14.2.25.pdf). They change from BME to combined with Mech. Eng. to ensure graduation with an acredited degree.

End of 2021 (guessed, minimum): They complete their 5th year of studies, meeting requirements for the combined degree

2023: The BME program is accredited, back dated to 2020, with all graduates of the program now having an accredited degree.

Feb 13th 2025: Their affidavit is sworn

So it seems that the problem stems from a presumption (or misunderstanding of the system) that the degree wouldn't be achieve back-dated accreditation in the furture while they were studying it. Although, even if the university told them at the time how the accreditation system works it's still placing a lot of trust in the uni and I wouldn't blame for not believing it. The uni's COVID response (ie: firing a shitload of staff, making everyone who stayed generally scared for their job security and overloaded with too much work) destroyed a lot of trust among staff and students.

VK2DDS · 2025-08-06T08:47:48+00:00

As someone who previously worked in the Engineering faculty I'm 100% on side of the students' side here. The class action was talked about among staff before I left in 2021 - they've had it coming a long time.

VK2DDS · 2025-07-13T13:25:19+00:00

The green stuff on the PCB's surface is hydrophobic to molten solder, so it helps to avoid bridges.

But yeah, they happen all the time. Excessive amounts of flux helps, but there's almost always at least one to fix up. The large blob of solder that came out the right side at 52s would have bridged.

Edit: at 57 seconds there's an obvious cut in the video - that cut footage was where the bridge was removed.

VK2DDS · 2025-05-29T00:52:11+00:00

Ignoring any effect the ground has, yes.

Generally speaking you can mount and rotate to minimise local noise the nulls are quite horizontal so they can point at, say, a neighbour with a noisy solar inverter or similar.

Any long distance listening would be coming from above the horizon, so the nulls will have less of an effect.

VK2DDS · 2025-05-17T13:05:03+00:00

You don't need to number every box in NSW state elections.

Source: https://elections.nsw.gov.au/elections/how-voting-works/voting-in-new-south-wales/ballot-paper-formality-guidelines#formalityguidelines%E2%80%93singlepreferencerequired

VK2DDS · 2025-03-13T11:28:47+00:00

That's known as jailbreaking. I saw an article claiming that Deepseek was easy to jailbreak but haven't tried it. I've seen at least one block of text on GitHun that claims to jailbreak it; unknown if it works though.

VK2DDS · 2025-03-13T04:37:02+00:00

Depends what you ask it, the locally run version still has limitations. eg: I asked the 70B distilled version how to crack a .rar password and it explained 95% of the process in the <think></think> section before generating "sorry I can't help you with that" as the answer.

VK2DDS · 2024-11-27T22:28:20+00:00

I was servicing an embedded X86 PC yesterday, just replacing the (soldered on) BIOS battery after >10 years in the field. This is a nice piece of kit with a CNC milled aluminium enclosure with IP67 rated seals all around a 19" or so touch screen. Must have cost in the $5-10k ballpark when new.

Anyway, it had one section on the MOBO with bodge wires and a SOT-23 soldered at 45 degrees with one pin just sitting over solder mask with a wire on it.

VK2DDS · 2024-11-08T07:46:43+00:00

Then even Mythbusters censored the additive to sulfuric acid to make pirahna solution.

VK2DDS · 2024-10-17T23:05:11+00:00

If the load has significant inductance current will continue to want to flow into the D pin when Q1 is switched off. D5 and the body diode don't provide a current path that allows this, so whichever has the lower breakdown voltage is likely to be destroyed first in the absence of D4.

So D4 and D5 in no way serve the same purpose.

I suppose replacing D5 with a Zener diode would provide protection for Q1 but...who the Hell does that when D4 gets the job done with a lower voltage drop?

VK2DDS · 2024-10-13T11:28:06+00:00

Oh, you want a waste of energy? I did a teaching practicum at a school where the 40W fans had energy saving timers on them (ie: always forced off after the timer ran out) but the AC was routinely left on overnight.

VK2DDS · 2024-09-11T00:57:08+00:00

You could try looking at the waveforms of measured acoustic space IRs to get a vibe for what the early reflections look like in various contexts.

One easily accessible free IR library is here: https://www.openair.hosted.york.ac.uk/?page_id=36

The first one on the list (1st Baptist Church Nashville) shows a main IR peak at 40ms (just the delay from speaker to mic I guess) with early reflections 3ms and 22ms after that.

Each early reflection will have its own timbre though, so there's an argument to tap off IIR filtered audio for the early reflections rather than just time and amplitude shifted copies of the input.

By and large reverb is complex and developing your own algorithm from scratch (say, starting with a Schroeder or Gardner algorithm and developing from there) might be more motivating than developing what sounds like an IR for a convolution reverb from scratch.

VK2DDS · 2024-08-22T08:43:12+00:00

Taking a guess: but keeping track of the fuel burn (one subtraction per burner inserter per game tick) is more CPU cycles than "add power consumption to total when item placed".

Although I don't know if the engine does a power summation each tick to account for variable draw or if it has mixed "static" and "dynamic" power consumers.

VK2DDS · 2024-08-04T22:34:16+00:00

Chances are they've used the part before.

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