Analog computing, one thing I'm glad I learned a little about! Also made part of the tennis for two game, and occasionally think about adding features. (Course, knowledge of digital electronics keeps interfering. In fact I used two 74-series logic chips in there.) Here's my build log, with everything that makes me cringe after a few years left in tact: https://blog.qiqitori.com/2024/08/implementing-tennis-for-tw...
Smartphone UIs are a devastating blow to humankind. They make a real computer just redundant enough that people buy smartphones instead of computers and then just don't do anything that can't be easily done on a smartphone. Furthermore, as doing anything productive is so painful on smartphones, people just passively consume stuff instead.
Well, smartphone was more for an example. My main point was to highlight the absurdity of the summarily dismissing a PC GUI by the top poster. CLI is great, sure, but it's not a means to the end for me at least.
In rare cases, even the "CLI native" tasks are easier to do in GUI, like for example sifting through a really big log dumps with long lines, or configuring a really long configuration file, or editing a giant nested JSON.
Even a basic shell prompt is better done as a GUI so that background job output doesn't interfere with the next command you type. Heck, you could even have one window per job, or tabs.
> Smartphone UIs are a devastating blow to humankind.
This, right here, is EXACTLY why the general public has a big “eeeeeeeeh nah” reaction to anything Linux and actually prefer mobile UIs. Your elitist “ehrmahgehrd GUIs are for dumbstersss learn to use a terminal you newb” just shows you are completely out of touch with reality, and worse than that, you seem to wear that as some sort of badge of honour “I’m such a greybeard, a true wizard of computing”.
I think it's a bit iffy to argue that the bootloader code is covered by the GPLv3. In programs for standard computers running a big OS, the distinction lies in whether you are linking a library into your program. If the GPL code isn't a library but an external program, it isn't linking, and OK by the GPL. Now on to the bootloader code: in order to flash your device you have to put everything into a single image file. I guess the claim is that this process constitutes linking. But I don't think that is how most people think. Some possible arguments:
When linking, symbols pointing to addresses are involved. The main program calls functions in the library, and you end up with a whole program. On the other hand, a bootloader just does its thing and then jumps to a fixed address in the main program. The main program doesn't call anything in the bootloader. (Note, the Linux kernel has a special clause that explicitly allows the userland to programmatically interface with the kernel.)
I realize this sort of depends on the microcontroller toolchain. I'm familiar with a few, but not much with STM32 stuff. If the toolchain is dumb and implements the bootloader in a way that resembles linking, i.e. making it possible to resolve all the symbols in the bootloader from the main program then it could very well make the bootloader subject to the GPL.
Even as far as linking goes... If you're not actually deriving from the code in a copyright sense then the GPL is limited in what it can demand. The advice from the FSF on linking is not exactly unbiased. The part about the intimacy of the communication between pieces of code seems a lot more solidly based in copyright law.
IIRC this was talked about in Cory Doctorow's Enshittification book.
Here's my bookmarklet to get rid of sponsored results, it's survived a couple years:
A while ago I learned that very early versions of 3.5" floppies didn't have the auto shutter mechanism and you had to open and close the shutter manually. (I think that was probably just used on some Japanese Sony machines.)
Interesting! I tried to find a demonstration of the manual shutter. This is the closest thing I’ve been able to find. Apparently, it was one of the earliest Sony models to feature a semi-automatic shutter.
In the end I wasn't able to read it on my ebook reader and reading it on a PC or smartphone kinda makes it annoying to read on the commute. So I've only read the first two chapters or so but it seemed like a lot of fun. All this talk about using Lean in AI-powered proofs kinda makes me want to pick it up again.
If you want to make all developers working on a project happy about the way the project is being designed/implemented, it's best to reduce the number of developers to 1 or less.
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