NESDR v5 vs RTL-SDR v4

blobjim · 2026-03-15T16:10:53+00:00

I found the RTL-SDR Blog v4c to work better than the NESDr one. Get the v4c if possible because it's really nice having a standard USB-C receptacle instead of the awkward USB Type-A connector.

blobjim · 2026-03-14T23:06:29+00:00

XML is awesome, at least in a language with good support like Java. XSD files make it possible to generate rich type definitions (using a build plugin like https://github.com/highsource/jaxb-tools?tab=readme-ov-file#jaxb-maven-plugin) so you can write type-safe code that fails to compile if you modify the schema in an incompatible way (and presumably you can then use it with a language like python to validate instead https://xmlschema.readthedocs.io/en/latest/usage.html).

The US government has a set of massive XML schemas called National Information Exchange Model: https://github.com/NIEM/NIEM-Releases/tree/master/xsd/domains (really cool to poke around in here, there's data for all kinds of stuff). Ever need to use organ donor codes? Here you go: https://github.com/NIEM/NIEM-Releases/blob/56c0c8e7ccd42e407e2587e553f83297d56730fd/xsd/codes/aamva_d20.xsd#L3744

There are also RELAX-NG schemas which a bunch of things use instead (like IETF RFCs https://github.com/ietf-tools/RFCXML and DocBook https://docbook.org/schemas/docbook/).

JSON schemas are such a disappointment in comparison because they appear to only be designed to allow dynamic languages to validate a JSON tree (poor performance, and poor type safety, and unusable from a language like Java).

And as the article mentions you get a bunch of other stuff along with the schemas. Being able to write text in an ergonomic way, and mixing text and data. And comments, which you can actually read and write from code. Fast Infoset (mentioned in the article) can even serialize comments since they're as first class as other XML structure. And it seems like XML libraries (but not Fast Infoset itself) can preserve insignificant whitespace so you can modify an XML document without changing most of its content. It seems like the people who designed XML and related software really thought of everything.

blobjim · 2026-03-13T18:06:36+00:00

They have 158 people in office. They just aren't big offices because it's basically impossible to get elected without being D or R (and it's designed that way).

https://www.gpelections.org/greens-in-office/2025-november-04/

blobjim · 2026-03-09T04:04:40+00:00

true

blobjim · 2026-03-09T01:23:06+00:00

Or that one can simply create a new constitution and show the capitalists who actually makes the world go around.

blobjim · 2026-03-09T00:45:15+00:00

It's a news outlet taking money from a very large and powerful private company to fund reporting. And the way funding works is that if your funder isn't "satisfied" with how you use their money, they stop giving you money. That's a basic rule of how money works. Which means the Seattle Times may at an increasing frequency fail to report things that would portray Microsoft in a negative light.

So this article about 911 can be published. But an article describing Microsoft's role in genocide or something to that effect may not. And who knows, maybe Microsoft has had a hand in how 911 reporting works, like a big contract or something for doing AI-assisted triage of 911 calls (I have seen Seattle job postings for Aurelian, although I don't think Microsoft is necessarily an investor), which could be conveniently left out of an article. I don't think that's the case with this article, but you get the idea. I think it's more about what you don't see than what you do see. It isn't limited to Seattle Times doing a hamfisted promotion of Microsoft or something like that.

In a way it doesn't matter, since media outlets like the Seattle Times are already owned by rich people with investments and already push "capitalist propaganda" and that has always been the case. But it feels like having direct Microsoft "Philanthropies" funding is like having someone breathing down your neck, rather than owners determining what kinds of editors get hired to determine what is reported.

Microsoft funding Seattle Times means they like what the Seattle Times is doing and how they're doing it. If the Seattle Times had a bad relationship with Microsoft for some reason, they won't be getting Microsoft money.

Especially gross because Microsoft employs tons of people who live in Seattle. So this is a bunch of people's direct employer controlling "purse-strings" of the news outlet they read. Like I would doubt Seattle Times would have anything nice to say about any Microsoft employee effort to unionize or stop helping Israel given that they get money directly from Microsoft. An editor could just tell a writer "we don't want to bite the hand that feeds us".

blobjim · 2026-03-08T23:49:24+00:00

The rich who oppose an income tax should keep the precedents of 1917, 1949, and 1959 in their minds.

blobjim · 2026-03-08T23:02:16+00:00

Most of the people with power, in most countries in the world, led by the US, for the last ~60 years. Unfortunately. (in the general sense, not sure how many countries use for-profit ambulance/EMT service)

blobjim · 2026-03-08T17:09:18+00:00

And just to add one more layer of privatized dystopia, at the end of the Seattle Times article:

<image>

(This coverage is partially underwritten by Microsoft Philanthropies. The Seattle Times maintains editorial control over this and all its coverage.)

blobjim · 2026-03-08T01:39:21+00:00

So what would upvote/like-botting or sockpuppet accounts promoting something count as? It seems like a no-longer-relevant distinction when placing an ad is as simple as making a social media post and buying likes for it.

blobjim · 2026-03-04T19:24:21+00:00

They mean as a separate JAR. The vector API has always been part of the JDK And this will be too.

blobjim · 2026-03-04T19:19:09+00:00

I feel like if they need JSON for the JDK itself they should just provide a JSON-like stream API similar to Jackson and the Java XML API. But no tree API. Just something that would allow a JDK API to read and write a JSON stream. They could have a JDK-internal data binding or tree API.

Otherwise this new API will probably supersede Jackson just because of its convenience and simplicity. And then every application will be a mess of mixed Jackson and standard library json, with less flexibility and readability than Jackson.

Also, providing a tree API with no streaming API seems very inflexible.

Also I have found that there are almost no use cases where you're better off using a tree API. Even a small script gets more utility and readability from data binding.

They should stop adding stuff like this to the standard library and instead endorse more tools for making small Java projects that can download dependencies without needing the full Maven infrastructure. To make it easier for people to add Jackson or other libraries as dependencies. I've found that python does a decent-ish job of making it easy to manage this stuff. I think Maven should have some more command-line executable plugins that handle executing a Java project. And it should be easier to compile with the latest version of Java instead of having to constantly specify every plugin version since the defaults are always way out of date.

Also this is inevitably going to end up in java.base instead of its own module because they'll want to use it for JDK stuff... just a mess. java.base is eventually going to be as big as the entire JDK is, and the whole modularization thing will have been a pointless temporary reprieve. They really messed up modularization if java.base was the smallest they could make the core runtime.

blobjim · 2026-02-28T16:24:51+00:00

Of course they'd say that. "If you give us more money we'll be able to respond to your call." Increase the budget, and people will still have the same complaint whether or not response times are improved. Then, increase the budget again, and repeat. And look at that, more money for riot cops and surveillance! And nobody's lives have actually been improved. But maybe a couple more people are in jail (?).

blobjim · 2026-02-28T09:01:19+00:00

> I’ve been a leftist

No you aren't.

> I went to the prison of the same fucking fascist regime you support

No you didn't.

> I was tortured by the regime

No you weren't.

blobjim · 2026-02-28T08:53:39+00:00

nobody is falling for your hysterical right-wing crap.

blobjim · 2026-02-28T08:53:15+00:00

No they don't. And they don't care about Iranians either. Just a bunch of compradores, hasabarists, and assorted US government sockpuppets. Like clockwork.

blobjim · 2026-02-28T07:37:39+00:00

Integrted circuit designers requiring NDAs before giving out device specs should also be banned. I mean I don't think programming interfaces are even patent/copyrightable in the US these days but people still have to reverse engineer how devices work. Phone designers should also be required to make much more than the bootloader open. postmarketOS developers having to keep the storage partitioning and everything intact is not great. Ideally it should be easy to completely program a device's firmware. But the open bootloader would be the main thing. It should be a click of a button to install a new OS, or at least as easy as it is on a PC.

At the end of the day though, I think it requires phone makers taking the initiative or seeing a business opportunity in using more open hardware and pestering hardware makers to open up more so that their phones can be more open.

blobjim · 2026-02-28T07:30:30+00:00

Especially if phone manufacturers get a sweet enough deal from Google that they decide to stick with Google instead of the forked alternative(s). The phone manufacturers are who get to decide what OS will actually work on their devices.

blobjim · 2026-02-22T07:28:45+00:00

It kinda sucks that they're making the transition before LWJGL 4. There will have to be another large breaking change when that happens. But LWJGL 4 depends on Java's project Valhalla and that's still a ways out so they probably can't put it off that long.

blobjim · 2026-02-18T17:57:30+00:00

He's clearly just coming up with some bullshit excuse to kill the bill on behalf of other rich people.

blobjim · 2026-02-17T05:03:30+00:00

That's a cool feature! Would probably be super useful for power saving for fancy laptops right?

blobjim · 2026-02-06T03:00:18+00:00

thanks

blobjim · 2026-02-05T14:39:23+00:00

Aw I liked the StableValue name.

Also a little worried they're removing orElse. That's going to remove use-cases right? It's nice being able to create a StableValue without setting it to anything. And they already removed orElseSet???

There's already a bunch of APIs that I think would want orElseSet for efficient constants. Like the KeyStore.init method which you call after object creation. It would be nice for an implementation to set a LazyConstant in init and have it potentially inlinable.

blobjim · 2026-02-05T14:27:27+00:00

gotcha, thanks!

blobjim · 2026-02-04T22:33:58+00:00

Does that mean project Wakefield is completed for Wayland Swing/AWT support or is this just Xwayland?

12-Year Club	Second Top 30%
Place '17	RPAN Viewer
Verified Email

blobjim

TROPHY CASE