Why are we running python on microcontrollers, exactly? It's the wrong thing in production, so why is it the right thing for education? Training upcoming engineers to use the right thing for the job is pretty fundamental; running an interpreted language on bare-metal hardware flies in the face of building that intuition.

Today's microcontrollers may be more powerful than you realize. It's not just the 8-bit processors running at 2MHz anymore. An ESP32 is a dual core processor running at 200 or 400MHz. They don't run a high level OS (just FreeRTOS).

And the RPi Zeros are really powerful 32-bit ARM or RISC-V processors running at several hundred MHz as well.

Python is perfectly fine for these processors. And you might think it's overkill, but so what? Most of these tasks are one-offs. Perhaps someone doing a bit of cosplay wants to have some lights on their costume, or drive an LCD. You expect them to contract out someone to do the software which is likely just displaying a bunch of graphics or cycling some LEDs?

Heck, some things in the maker world have become ubiquitous - like a CYD. It stands for "Cheap Yellow Display" because it's a stupidly cheap 2" LCD (in a yellow frame) that can be hooked up to a ESP32 board and with a few libraries you're drawing graphics on it with a total spend of under $10. One off projects.

The high end microcontrollers are pushing out the old 8-bit AVRs and PICs (which mainly hang around for legacy use nowadays), and the RPi Zero ones RP3050 and 2050 processors are pushing down the ceiling of 16-bit and even 32-bit ARM microcontrollers.

Heck, you mourn the day because it's easier to blink an LED with a 3 cent Chinese microcontroller than it is using "traditional" methods (e.g., a 555).

There are thousands of barrels of nuclear waste rotting away on the floor of the ocean just off the coast of southern California near Catalina island. That was the previous plan for disposing of nuclear waste: just dump it in the sea.

The barrels have decayed to the point where attempting to collect them would almost certainly cause them to rupture and spill their contents. They will rupture and leak if left as they are -just not all at once.

Water is actually a really radiation shield. It's why it's used as a moderator in nuclear reactors. Contrary to popular belief, water is required for the reaction to continue. It's a moderator, because what happens is the two neutrons emitted during fission of uranium come out too fast to be properly captured by other uranium atoms to spur ongoing fission. Water is used to slow down those neutrons to where they are more readily absorbed by uranium. The problem is, water is also used to cool the reactor, so while the reaction stops or slows down significantly, a tremendous amount of heat is still generated from the remaining reactions. Thus a "meltdown" refers to the fuel rods exceeding the melting point of uranium and it melting and pooling at the bottom of the reactor.

That said, the casks at the bottom of the ocean, as long as they stay there, will actually be fairly safe even if they rupture. Even the wildlife can get fairly close (inches) before it becomes dangerous to them.

So sadly, no three-eyed Simpsons fish is likely to happen.

Not in any way trying to diminish work developers put into this effort, but with all due respect, how difficult can it be to re-write utilities such as cp, mv and rm?

To do basic functionality? Not hard. Busybox and toybox implement the "90%" use cases of those utilities inside them.

To achieve POSIX compliance requires more work - you're adding stuff that handles edge cases and little used functionality.

To achieve GNU coreutils functionality with GNU extensions is a bit more work on top of that.

Uutils though achieves full GNU compatibility AND GNU bug compatibility. That is, odd quirks and stuff in GNU coreutils are replicated in Uutils as well.

The goal is 100% compatibility so you can take out GNU coreutils and replace it with Uutils and not notice a difference. There were plenty of edge cases where the default scripts Ubuntu used didn't work under Uutils in odd cases.

GPLv3 is an issue for some - especially embedded systems. Most use a form of busybox or toybox as a result even if size is not a consideration, so Uutils can fill that role as well (there has been a openembedded recipe for Uutils for a while now as a supported replacement for coreutils).

It should also be noted that many of the utilities also run faster than their GNU counterparts

Is it true though? I was watching a series of documentaries on the Ultima games, and it seemed their best work came out of the worst conditions. When Origin was small and the devs basically lived out of the office (and smelled like it), they were at their peak.

Or maybe it's that people have different views on and requirements for contentment.

Back in the 90s id was a small company of a handful of people who worked late. When Doom got released they all made out like bandits - the id parking lot was famous for the number of Ferraris that were parked in it.

Origin in the early days I could see being the same - they were pushing the frontier of computing in the early 90s and people in general were excited about computers. Heck, the company probably gave them pretty nice machines to work on, and if you were a computer geek in the 90s being handed a top end system to work on, it would be a form of contentment to just be there working it and pushing it hard.

But these were the pioneer days - like the early days of the dot-com era where similar things happened. The fact that people were getting stupid rich quick only served to provide the excitement going into it.

These days though, videogames are old hat, there's no quick money anymore and it's basically a mature industry. Back in the startup culture where you literally could get-rich-quick things were different.

You might compare it with the AI boom going on where money is being thrown around. I'm sure the people jumping between OpenAI, Meta and Anthropic getting those million dollar signing bonuses are working in pretty terrible conditions, but hey, if you're getting paid a million dollars a year with a million dollar signing bonus in a field that's booming, well, you don't really complain - you ride the gravy train.

Because when the bubble pops and the salary for AI developers plummets, if you managed your money right you can be set for life after the layoffs.

Contentment for many people is more than just money. Job satisfaction comes into play as well - and money can help with this, but also things like responsibility and other things. A small game development team might be fun to work with when you come up with an idea and everyone gets excited to add it to the game. Usually a sure sign of contentment is people that inadvertently work long hours because they're so excited at what they do they forget time exists. Contrast with someone who watches the clock and the interminable wait for 5pm.

It's one reason why WFH was popular and companies found their workers worked more - they were able to work, then deal with family business the work more to the point where they put in extra hours just because. You can take a smoke break at the office, but that doesn't compare to being able to spend quality time with your kid for 15 minutes during a break.

Unionizing takes several steps. First, you have to sign enough interest cards to even begin the process. 30% is about right - you show there's a significant interest in people joining the union. Then you have the certification push - that is, a general vote on if you want to join the union or not. That takes a simple majority - if it fails, then no union. It's basically 30% of people saying they're interested in joining a union.

As for a "monopoly on labor" you have to realize the power mismatch that's going on here. Basically gig workers are disposable - they have no power at all the employment relationship. It's take it or leave it. (This applies to most other workplaces as well). The company holds all the power and your option is to either starve or work at whatever the company says they'll pay you.

Unions basically try to combat that power inequity. Progressives aren't against monopolies, they're against unfairness. The key is fairness - everyone has a fair shot at getting a job. The fact you're about to be homeless shouldn't be a determining factor in what you'll accept for a job.

Trump's vision of how the 50s and 60s were - that was the era of the strong union where the C-suite was paid less than 20 times the janitor. Where even the janitor was paid enough to own a home.

Of course, that's why we're never going to return to those times unless the politicians start reversing course on greed and start giving workers power through unions. Union busting is basically why they make up only 10% of the workforce in the US today through right to work laws and other things.

Progressives aren't generally in favor of monopolies because they generally lead to unfairness. But in the unbalanced power dynamic of employer-employee relations where for most employees they have little to no power to dictate working conditions, a monopoly on labor suddenly becomes a powerful thing to equalize the power dynamic and strike a fairer deal.

YouÃ(TM)re not wrong, but the issue with flock and similar is not so much being witnessed in public as it is being algorithmically analyzed and suffering consequences as a result. Which is an erosion of the presumption of innocence. It also provides a an easy tool for stalkers/oppressors/paychopaths that is really difficult to defend against.

The big thing with Flock is the Flock "social network" of cameras. That is their heavily advertised feature and what makes Flock cameras different from all other ALPRs out there.

You see, when Flock started, they sold their cameras to private individuals to monitor vehicles passing through their property (HOAs, parking lots, etc). But each was basically isolated from each other - just because Home Depot had Flock cameras doesn't mean your HOA could get information on that.

But then Flock started selling to governments, and they realized they could offer a big network. If your city joined the Flock network, then your city LEOs could search across the entire Flock network. The more cities that joined, the more valuable this access was.

And that lead to the problems of today where the network is abused by people for purposes that were not law enforcement related, like stalking romantic interests, exes, etc. Because the network was nationwide, this mean if your ex moved to a new city with Flock, they could be tracked just the same. No justification beyond some arbitrary "case" needed.

Flock sells it as "track a stolen vehicle across the nation". Which is far less effective since a single license plate can hit many different vehicles because many states have similar license plate number schemes. A stolen motorcycle lead to a takedown of a family in an SUV because their license plate matched except state. Because of oddball New Jersey license plates, Jaguar (the car company) have to re-plate their entire fleet of vehicles because the Flock camera only reads the big numbers on the Jersey plates, which match another stolen vehicle. Studies of the effectiveness of the alerts reveal it to only be about 20% effective.

All the other ALPRs like Axon(Taser) and such, either record it local to the city, or limit the network to where they are, so the city only has access to the city's network of cameras. Sure you break the nationwide stolen vehicle thing, but honestly do you think car thieves are stupid enough to ride around with stolen plates for more than a day? It's one of the first things they change.

And Flock knows the problem - as cities cancel their Flock subscriptions, the network gets less valuable. It's why when cameras get taken down, they're often replaced by Flock. A city who cancelled their Flock contract reclaimed all the cameras, only to find new ones put up. Basically it's like the city loses access but Flock retains the right to keep spying. Either that or they're like weeds.

They should release it on Playstation as well, with some nice long Microsoft and Xbox bumpers during load.

Supposedly a big reason PlayStation cancelled it was because Kojima wanted a physical release as well. And with Sony ditching discs (and repurposing their Austrian pressing plant), well, that wasn't going to happen.

Sony's no-more-physical plan has also caused some games to be forced to release in December 2027 because of it.

If a physical release is going to be mandatory then it bodes well that the next Xbox (Helix) will have the option for a disc drive.

The whole budget thing was just a cover - the timing of all this happening lines up with the whole Sony scrapping physical media.

The problem isn't with what the law says it is trying to do, the problem is there is no way to tell who the kids are, so we have to force everyone to ID. There is no site on the internet that I need to use bad enough to provide an ID. None. Would rather not use the site than provide my ID. Full Stop.

Given how much data Alphabet, Meta, etc., have on people, they can figure our your age just from the data they already have on you.

I mean, when McDonald's has 512 pages of information on you that include your ordering habits and such, your age can be inferred from all that data. I'm pretty sure Meta and Alphabet and everyone else already has a pretty good idea what your age as well.

IÃ(TM)d rather see them bring back the big manuals. Microprose games came with great supplemental info.

Many GOG downloads include a PDF manual. These big box templates are just templates to produce your own box as well, so it's basically the same thing

Rust does help somewhat, but, as Linus put it "Rust can prevents some errors, but it does not prevent logic bugs".

But in general, memory errors are some of the most common causes of a large variety of issues - using vulnerabilities. If you're not carefully tracking lifetimes of memory allocations (and in a kernel where the code is re-entrant, this gets tricky fast) it's way too easy to have issues like a use-after-free or a memory leak.

At best, it's a kernel crash. At worst, it's a privilege escalation bug.

If Rust at least helps keep memory issues at bay, that's in general a win.

GPUs just complicate the memory management even more since there will be times the GPU needs to own the memory and that can be complicated especially if blocks get moved around.

1. Most campground owners don't want you drawing 32A for hours. Their wiring infrastructure was designed with assumption it would only see the intermittent spikes in usage typical of an RV.M

Never owned an RV, then?

The RV parks provide several - 15/20A outlets (110V) are basic trailers. 30A outlets (240V) are standard for RVs, and 50A for land yachts. The AC units alone typically draw 10A each constantly, plus all the other electrical loads. You get an RV using the 50A socket and you can count on it using 30A pretty consistently.

It's why many RVs have programmable load centers - if you need 50A but are at a place that can only provide 30A, you tell the load center you only have 30A and it'll coordinate the AC units and other high power loads so you're not actually going to trip the breaker.

RVs are not the most energy efficient things out there. The AC units are designed for compactness and weight, and the inch of insulation allowed doesn't provide much R value. In fact, one purpose of the generator units on an RV is if you're travelling through the desert (e.g., Death Valley, CA), the vehicle AC may not be able to maintain temperature. In this case you need to start the generator and run the AC units along with the vehicle AC.

Probably the most common L1 charging globally is 230V 10A. 120V is pretty rare, only the USA and parts of Japan that I know of but I am sure there is others. Likewise that 100 mile figure is well above the average daily commute globally. L1 charging is fine for the vast majority of commuters.

L1 chargers operate at 110V.
L2 chargers operate at 220V

If you're in a place that uses North American power, you have L1 charging. If you're in the rest of the world, you have L2.

A 220V 10A outlet is still considered an L2 charger. In a place like Europe, this is quite sufficient for their needs as well (given in many places in Europe, your entire house only gets 30-60A total, maybe 100A if you're lucky. Most North American homes get at least 100A for the past half century or more, and the past few decades 200A is common).

Oooh... 240 single phase... the EV charger issue is you can only pull so many watts or amps on your house wiring (if you have 480V, give us all your address).

If you're an average person, you can often get by with L1 charging.

The average BEV will get between 3-5 miles per hour on L1 alone. If you charge 10 hours overnight (come home, wash, eat, sleep, wake up, morning routine - that's at least 10 hours), it means you'll get around 30-50 miles of range. A commute is typically around 20 miles round trip, so adding a few miles for a couple of errands and 30 miles a day seems good, which is basically an overnight charge.

L2 chargers might be needed if you travel more extensively on a frequent basis - perhaps you're the 2 hour RTO commuter with a 100 mile round trip commute.Though if you have EV charging at the office, this can offset the need.

L1 gets you surprisingly far - you don't need a full L2 setup at 40A (9.6kW) with a 50A plug to use an EV. Many times you can get away with a much smaller install,

Treating a BEV like a gas car is like using your cellphone untill it's empty, then scrambling to find a charger where ever you may be at that point in time. You can charge an EV anywhere there's power, and opportunistic charging should be something you do. Putting your cellphone on the charger before you sleep is something you do to have a full battery in the morning.

Gold cannot be transferred electronically due to its physical nature

And it's extremely inconvenient to transfer it physically. It's so inconvenient that when the Dutch central bank decided to transfer its holdings from the US to UK, it did it electronically.

That is, it sold its gold holdings in the US and then bought them back in London. So no physical gold moved around. Presumably whoever bought the gold in the US wants it there, but physically moving it is now a Them problem.

For small amounts, gold is transferred electronically - private holdings often have gold located in many places. You can buy gold from them, and some amount of the holdings is marked for you. But the physical gold bar itself isn't actually allocated unless you ask for it.

The thing is, it's not hard to protect the grid. The Sun is monitored and if something like this happens, it can take anywhere from hours to days to hit. Which means we have plenty of time to start protecting things. They don't come out of the blue, we have plenty of warning.

And the best way we have to protect the grid is to turn it off. This can be a bit inconvenient, but if you have say, 24 hours notice that the power will be shut off for a few hours, it's a lot easier to prepare for. Transformers are easily grounded out and much of this can be done remotely.

Sure, we will burn out of a few transformers - because sometimes there's critical infrastructure that needs to stay up, but we can pick ones that were due for replacement anyways, and ensure we have ways to route around problems. Many power lines are redundant in that they can be fed from multiple substations - traditionally not for load balancing and such, but if a transformer fails, the load it powered usually can be picked up by another one somewhere else.

It will be disruptive, yes, but it's not hard to protect, we have advance warnings when this happens, and can shut down the grid, ground out power lines and transformers and other infrastructure so everything is at the same potential (remember, current needs a potential difference - a shorted transformer to ground offers none). Essential facilities can operate from generators or batteries (substations have massive battery banks so they'll be online for days). Power line communications are usually done over fiber optics as it's something that can be safely run along high voltage cables, and fiber optics are not vulnerable to stray currents.