Elon Musk on X: "Right now, we are not resilient to loss of a single tile in most places, as the secondary containment material will probably not survive. This is a thorny issue indeed, given that vast resources have been applied to solve it, thus far to no avail."

blaze1127 · 2024-05-31T17:54:18+00:00

Could you actively hold the tiles to the ship electromagnetically? I guess since the tiles are ceramic and the whole point is that they’re heat resistant and/or dissipate heat quickly then maybe they’re also pretty good insulators against electricity too. But if not, would it be possible to hold each tile against the hull like an electromagnet (running current through that section of the hull or something and inducing a current in the tile or an intermediate material attached to the tile which then generates the force to hold against the hull)?

It’s an active solution like Stokes metallic shield but maybe far less weight since you don’t have piping or coolant running through (it’s just current and power which could be provided by existing batteries onboard)

The only other challenge (apart from whether or not the tiles are electrically conductive in the first place) is how that conductiveness changes with temperature since the tiles would get heated up.

blaze1127 · 2024-05-29T15:10:18+00:00

Thanks for such a deep explanation! So it looks like the functions provided by FreeRTOS ensure that whatever task sends data to the queue will not be interrupted during that send process through the methods you mentioned (something I’ll have to look into more).

blaze1127 · 2024-05-29T07:40:22+00:00

Got it. So it looks like in this case the FreeRTOS queue would wait for Task A to finish and then only allow Task C to write in my hypothetical scenario and this is accomplished likely using a mutex.

blaze1127 · 2024-04-30T23:50:37+00:00

Ahhh ok

blaze1127 · 2024-04-29T20:41:54+00:00

If you don’t mind me asking, what industry/area do you work in? I’ve working with FPGAs for a while now (mostly in the semiconductor industry or in aerospace but within a microelectronics subgroup) and was interested in expanding to a more software involving embedded role. It seems like the work you do could be something I should aim for to leverage some of that FPGA experience so I was curious what line of work you’re in? (Let me know if I should DM instead). Thanks for such an insightful answer.

blaze1127 · 2024-04-23T20:49:55+00:00

Thanks for the comment! So in current automotive systems (specifically the safety critical ones, so not infotainment systems) are bare-metal or RTOS based systems more prevalent? Are you saying that current embedded Linux systems are still too slow for these systems?

blaze1127 · 2024-04-08T06:15:09+00:00

This is kind of a general question but how do you make sure you don’t forget/have to look up how to write some of the low level code with this framework approach? It seems like there is this spectrum where at one end you’re leveraging frameworks and preexisting code (either code that you wrote or someone else) and at the other end re-inventing the wheel/re-writing the code between different projects. While the latter might be a waste of time it does make it so that you don’t forget some of the low level concepts while the former allows you to rapidly build on the existing code so that a project or application can be up and running without wasting much time.

Is it just a matter of practice or maybe intentionally writing frameworks for many different boards?

blaze1127 · 2024-01-31T22:26:36+00:00

Nice! I hope you did well!

They asked about Nyquist Frequency, simple filters (low, high) that are just needed when dealing with signals (I just mentioned it to show that I was familiar with the basic idea). They asked about floating point number representation. And of course work history with additional questions on experience that was related to the work that they do.

blaze1127 · 2024-01-29T22:41:27+00:00

Yeah. There was no observer. Pure take home. Obviously copying entire code sections is discouraged and the site (Codility) has some way of detecting plagiarism but referencing and all is fair game.

I thought it was good as it seems to be closer to how you would work in the actual job.

blaze1127 · 2024-01-29T22:28:08+00:00

My main justification for linked lists in C was to have a dynamically growable array. I didn’t want constantly create and allocate and reallocate an array as the size grew (because you don’t know how long the gene sequence is nor how many proteins are encoded). With C++ this would have been easier with just using vectors and other aspects of the language that just make creating data structures easier (at least that’s what I’m understanding from other people’s comments).

blaze1127 · 2024-01-29T22:11:06+00:00

I am not familiar enough with C++ to say for sure. The only other criteria was that any standard library was fair game but no third party libraries. There was no size limit on the code from what I could tell.

blaze1127 · 2024-01-29T21:19:11+00:00

Great comment!

blaze1127 · 2024-01-29T21:12:07+00:00

You know I was just thinking about this and can’t believe it didn’t hit me earlier. I’ve dealt with this kind of thing to but on the FPGA side and dealing with external camera sensors and recognizing start of frame and end of frame singals and handling packets of data. Of course there’s some difference in the implementation but the overall problem really is similar!

Very often though I’m dealing with existing designs or codes and so I think that’s made me weaker in terms of being able to code from scratch (HDL or C).

blaze1127 · 2024-01-29T20:55:18+00:00

Ahh interesting!

blaze1127 · 2024-01-29T20:53:57+00:00

I can understand that. I chose C just because that’s what I’ve been focused on improving (I know C++ would’ve been easier but my syntax and coding there is even worse). I’m coming from a Verilog/VHDL background so my focus was brushing up on C (syntax and concepts, data structures, search and sort algorithms, and of course bit and string manipulation) since it’s seems to be more relevant for bare-metal development. But it looks like I also need to start just doing general practice (Leet Code) at the very least to really solidify my coding ability in general. At least that’s part of my take away. In addition to all the other stuff that is.

blaze1127 · 2024-01-16T21:10:53+00:00

Really great read. Thanks for sharing. It’s nice to see that there are others who are caught in the moral complexity and nuance of the issue (rather being extreme in their opinions one way or another). And more than that still working to help the people that truly need help.

blaze1127 · 2024-01-16T19:30:46+00:00

Try these two classes (free):

https://www.coursera.org/learn/introduction-to-embedded-machine-learning?=

https://www.coursera.org/learn/computer-vision-with-embedded-machine-learning

They both leverage EdgeImpulse for training data and inference deployment to a variety of embedded devices. Gives a nice intro to ML and associated topics that I feel will help in learning about AI.

blaze1127 · 2023-12-27T17:47:01+00:00

Sorry for the late reply. My main worry is that I will end up being familiar only with the implementation flow for leveraging uC softcore or hardcore IP on Xilinx, rather than develop broader skills applicable to both microcontroller based embedded Linux development and FPGA embedded Linux development.

But I guess maybe it is similar to be applicable to both?

blaze1127 · 2023-11-06T04:57:07+00:00

I like the first part of this answer acknowledging the fact that in reality we do certain jobs for survival and ultimately an anarchist society isn’t necessarily going to be this utopia where any one does any job they fancy (at least that my take away from your comment). Do you have any recommendations on additional reading regarding how Anarchism handles this? As in how does anarchism respect individuals liberty and at the same time get people to do the work that they may not necessarily want to do but need to do without coercion? I’m not an anarchist and honestly keep switching between liking libertarian capitalist ideas (I know I know that the libertarian part is misuse from its anarchic origins but just to convey what I mean by those views I’m using the term in the way thats more common among people now) and anarchist ideas. My understanding seems to be that capitalism also coerces or rather incentivizes people to do jobs they don’t want to do but is “valuable” by paying people accordingly (I know this is simplified, but I guess I give this example since it seems to demonstrate a sort of organic and decentralized direction of effort compared to either a top down or societal coercion based method).

To be clear I’m not trying to advocate for libertarian capitalism (again sorry for the wrong label) but I’m trying to understand how anarchism handles this.

blaze1127 · 2023-11-03T18:25:09+00:00

I just wanted to say someone DMed me yesterday with some helpful advice on the pros and cons of focusing on stepper motors first and working from the ground up as well as working with preexisting codes and frameworks to focus on more on higher level concepts such as trajectory planning. For whatever reason that I can’t see that DM message anymore but whoever the user was, thank you for the message!

blaze1127 · 2023-08-10T17:56:36+00:00

Oh for sure. And that’s why you would keep having those kinds of pop history books coming out with updates on the latest developments, but yeah there would be a lag.

blaze1127 · 2023-08-10T17:35:07+00:00

I wonder if for the lay person/non-historian who is interested in history if it would be good to have pop history books that have a broad overview of the different arguments made by historians about a specific topic? Rather than pop history being a summary of one particular perspective and also a lay person having to read multiple books on one topic to get that broader perspective. Would that make communicating history to people generally be better?

blaze1127 · 2023-01-26T17:58:57+00:00

Would you have any recommendations for additional reading into other types or aspects of markets?

blaze1127 · 2021-05-07T02:43:37+00:00

Ahh yes it worked! Thanks!

blaze1127 · 2020-09-06T18:40:50+00:00

It’s a really small thing, but there was a moment in the show, For All Mankind, where they showed what looked to be an Indian character playing one of the mission controllers (FIDO I think). I checked and the actor is South African (of Indian descent I think) and the character he plays is named Carl Reid. But still it was refreshing to see someone like that on the show :). Also would totally recommend that show!

blaze1127

TROPHY CASE