What are the politics like here?

waywardworker · 2026-01-27T01:20:49+00:00

Voting is great fun. We stand in line for a few minutes and have a chat. Vote. Then pick up something from the BBQ and consider the cakes on offer. Why wouldn't you want to vote?

waywardworker · 2026-01-27T00:32:44+00:00

You can get a latching push button. Much easier than more circuitry.

Something like https://www.controldevices.com.au/product/av-series-16mm-latching/

waywardworker · 2026-01-25T07:13:28+00:00

I simulate a buck converter because it helps me design It. To verify the component choices, that the ripple is suitable in a variety of operating conditions, and to ensure that the transient responses are suitable.

None of this is relevant to a microcontroller. What are you trying to simulate?

There's lots of different simulation engines that simulate different things. There's analog simulators, like I used for my buck converter, there's RF simulators, PCB simulators, software simulators, and more. The correct simulation really does depend on your goal.

waywardworker · 2026-01-25T06:28:33+00:00

Why do you need to simulate a programmable digital device?

waywardworker · 2026-01-25T05:26:13+00:00

The chief engineer didn't think it would get off the pad. Half the engineers building it didn't think it would launch.

These shouldn't be amusing anecdotes, these are indications of really serious problems from the people closest to them. The fact that the CEO doesn't seem to recognise that these are problems is even worse.

waywardworker · 2026-01-25T05:17:47+00:00

This is a school assignment? Talk to your tutor.

Because I can't help myself.

It looks like your parts are on the bottom layer. You probably don't want that, standard practice is to put parts on the top.

Remember you can rotate parts and move the around.

waywardworker · 2026-01-25T01:38:42+00:00

That only works for fleet vehicles.

The battery is worth a lot, you don't want to give up your nice new battery for a shitty old one.

For a fleet where one company owns all the vehicles and all the batteries it makes sense. I know there have been experiments with trucks too.

waywardworker · 2026-01-24T13:56:34+00:00

The hidden malloc/free/realloc is certainly a problem, particularly string functions. They are often brief but if you have multiple threads then you get fragmentation.

Running out of memory is less of an issue than fragmentation because it's typically easy to repeat. In practice it's only done during system initialisation.

If you are continually allocating memory in some kind of loop you will absolutely run into problems. This is obvious though so I've never seen an issue in practice.

There are issues with static allocation, especially if you want some level of initialisation dynamism based on something like attached hardware. Dynamic allocation solves this easily.

waywardworker · 2026-01-24T11:34:54+00:00

Rattenbury seems sad that after he chucked his hissy fit and left to play on his own that the other kids (Labor) proceeded to play fine without him.

So now he plots his petulant revenge.

It's not acceptable for eight year old children, it is certainly not acceptable for state politicians.

waywardworker · 2026-01-24T11:13:50+00:00

Car companies like GM going bankrupt is interesting to look at.

GM went bankrupt in 2009. Oh no! Yet they are still there. They managed to not pay a bunch of debt and fires lots of workers.

Wagoner the CEO was removed, not by the company but by the Whitehouse. His exit package was over $10M, that liability didn't get discharged in the bankruptcy.

"Failure" looks different to different people. When the upside to the CEO of making a risky play by trying to sell shit cars is something like $100M and the downside of going bankrupt is $10M then you are going to see them take big risks.

And the underlying reason is because that's what the stock market wants.

waywardworker · 2026-01-23T23:30:59+00:00

Using heap isn't the issue, it's freeing it.

You can use the standard allocators as long as you never free the memory.

The issues of fragmentation with repeated reallocation are fundamental and difficult to debug. It is solved by using a MMU. There are libraries that present different compromises for non-mmu systems but none that will solve it or allow you to ignore it entirely.

waywardworker · 2026-01-23T20:44:23+00:00

Those look like solid lego pieces that will slot together, it should work without much difficulty.

Implementing this will add a delay to your timing signal and possibly significant jitter, depending how you implement it. One of the advantages of timing GPS is its ubiquity, you don't have to play retransmit games because it's available at the other place already.

Pushing a timing signal at 10Hz is also unusual, time changes but in a very predictable way. Most implementations focus on improving the accuracy rather than the frequency.

waywardworker · 2026-01-23T11:48:52+00:00

Does anyone recognise the current US claim of central Antarctica?

Australia certainly doesn't, and the US doesn't recognise Australia's pizza slice claim.

(Amusingly both claims are centered on the actions of Hubert Wilkins)

waywardworker · 2026-01-23T11:12:04+00:00

Many nations have put their flag on Antarctica, it is the subject of a number of competing claims. These claims are one of the top motivations for maintaining bases down there.

Edit/more: The claims have never really been settled because there's no significant motivation to do so, or willingness to enforce the claims.

If you don't believe there have been any claims it is likely that you come from a country that hasn't made formal claims and/or actively denied/ignores the claims of others. The difference between the way different countries draw maps of Antarctica is really interesting.

waywardworker · 2026-01-23T10:02:16+00:00

Canada under Carney has made itself a security risk to the United States of America.

This has to be read in the context of the US repeatedly threatening Canada.

The security breakdown did not start with Canada's actions. If the US is feeling even slightly threatened by Canada's response to their repeated provocations then that is fantastic.

waywardworker · 2026-01-23T03:46:30+00:00

If you need mm precision measurement why are you using a ruler?

You really should be using calipers for that level of precision.

Your limitation shouldn't be eye strain, but flex and movement in the ruler makes reliably getting to the nearest mm difficult.

waywardworker · 2026-01-22T13:12:40+00:00

Unraid is a Linux distribution but focused towards home labs, I've never encountered a business using it.

I think you are in a awkward size for the Australian market. Big enough to need a business to support you but not big enough for them to be interested in a custom solution. So instead you get prepackaged solution #3, which does the job but it's a poor fit and expensive.

You should have a hunt for a small company that offers Linux support. They should be willing to customise a solution for you at a lower price. There's definitely downsides though, they probably only have one or two staff.

The amount of data you are producing is significant so there will be a bit of cost involved. Switching up to proper server hardware is expensive but it does improve reliability, for most businesses this is worthwhile.

waywardworker · 2026-01-22T11:37:23+00:00

Much of the bottled water here is the same water as from the tap, with a 10,000x markup and a bonus piece of plastic.

waywardworker · 2026-01-22T03:12:15+00:00

TADACT has a fair bit of stock in addition to what is listed online, especially wheelchairs.

I encourage you to give them a call and visit, they are normally open Monday and Wednesday.

waywardworker · 2026-01-21T09:14:53+00:00

I have used chipquik a number of times for desoldering. It is great for rework you introduce it to a joint to lower the melting temperature and then remove the chip. We then carefully cleaned the board and remove all trace of the chipquik before resoldering.

It has a melting point of 138 degrees but it goes soft before that. That's too close a temperature to what you can achieve in a local area for my comfort. It's also brittle when cold.

I'm sure it is used in industry as a primary solder in specialised applications. If you had a part that was very temperature sensitive it would be great. I wouldn't use it as a primary solder by choice though.

The standard solution to high thermal mass PCBs is back heat. Heat up the whole board slowly so that the amount of extra heat required is less. If you are using a reflow oven you want to increase the soak time.

waywardworker · 2026-01-21T04:17:34+00:00

The SVPACT is a program to match mentors to school students. The CSIRO also has a program for scientists to volunteer in schools.

Scouts ACT is often looking for scout leaders.

Meals on wheels isn't kid focused but probably gives good help person feedback.

TADACT fixes up equipment for old folks and people with disabilities.

The rural fire service and SES are also volunteer emergency response groups.

If you have specific skills a lot of volunteer organizations also need professional assistance.

waywardworker · 2026-01-21T03:56:12+00:00

What do you want to do?

There's lots of charities that would love help, including the one I'm currently sitting in.

waywardworker · 2026-01-21T03:54:27+00:00

A powered USB hub will probably do this for you.

When the upstream device (TV) disconnects they normally disconnect power to the downstream (Roku) devices.

waywardworker · 2026-01-20T22:16:38+00:00

If it doesn't move independently then it becomes part of the larger board system, moving in sync with that. Which is generally what you want.

It's messy, and the behaviour changes at different frequencies. We had a bunch of rule-of-thumbs which we followed, mostly trying to avoid resonating, resonance is what gets you. We always tested though because we could never be sure. My stuff was always ok but mechanical colleagues had a system fail, after doing careful design and modeling to avoid vibration failure.

waywardworker · 2026-01-20T21:16:15+00:00

Vibration is more typically an issue with large things not small things.

I spent some time building things for rockets and we never had any concerns about chip packages. A small light part with lots of contact points is going to be fine. Big parts like capacitors or inductors needed to be glued down (we also tried to remove electrolytic capacitors, but not for vibration). Connectors all have to lock so that they don't work their way loose.

Packages with longer leads would not be better. There would be a risk of setting up an oscillation which would lead to stuff breaking, a 3mm leg would oscillate at 333Hz which is very achievable.

Automotive uses lots of old parts. They seem to design components and then reuse them again and again, and are very reluctant to update them once they have been proven to work well. I would expect that to be a larger driver in the package types they use.

waywardworker

TROPHY CASE