Saigonautica

Ages ago, I had built a tool to monitor the mains power frequency with resolution of some microseconds. I looked at my old assembly code, and realized with better optimization and optocoupler choice, I could probably get that down to some hundreds of nanoseconds.

The original idea was to try and correlate phase jitter to space weather, essentially using the mains power system as a sort of radio telescope. I never did get it working (although I did not have much time to try, either). I was able to see interesting things like generators spinning up to maintain the frequency though.

Will open source the hardware when done. I am not an astronomer, just some random fellow that investigates things at depth for no particular reason.

That's a fascinating article! I live in Viet Nam, and it seems a bit like the section about us is overblown though.

There are some short fuel queues these last few months (about a 2-5 minute wait), and a couple of the sketchier petrol stations did some price speculation then shut down. It's more or less business as usual over here though.

My weekly fuel costs went from 50k VND (about 2$) to 60k VND (about 2.50$). My commute is pretty typical for Ho Chi Minh City. A lot (not all) of our taxis and gig workers also switched to electric vehicles some time ago.

Shipping costs, and the price of imported or fresh produce did go up noticeably though. Or the quality went down.

Not especially (I don't live in the USA though).

I do wonder if I could automate the expression of uncontroversial opinions in the public sphere though. For example things about movies, music, or sporting events. These are valid interests that I simply don't have. I have at times been regarded with (I think) unfair suspicion for not engaging with social media to a meaningful degree.

Nice. I tried to submit a project on the former. However CloudFlare seems to be blocking me from submitting the form.

This is a common issue for all of us in Viet Nam though, not sure if there's anything you can do your side. I'll figure out how to get my submission through later :)

After moving to Asia, it did seem that fewer of my colleagues remarked on my choice of SMT for everything. I hadn't really thought about it until now!

Custom PCBs are even cheaper here than in North America, and longer workdays meant I had less time for hobbies. That probably made me double down on my choice.

I don't own much fancy equipment, just a cheap hot air rework station. I've found that mixing in fresh gel flux into my solder paste to get the right consistency made a big difference, enough that I never really needed more tools.

After doing that, I just sort of smear some near-ish the pads (perversely, often using a THT resistor), drop the parts in approximately the correct position with tweezers, and heat it up gently. Surface tension handles the rest. Once in a while, an 0402 resistor shifts out of position, but otherwise it just works. I'd probably need better tools for BGA.

What I love best is that SMT microcontrollers can be very, very cheap. I like the attiny10 (36$ for 100 computers! What a wonder!). There are plenty that are under 10 cents each, but I rather like AVR assembler, and their datasheets are very good.

I mean, it caused me to emigrate to a growth economy. If I stayed in the West, I don't think I would have been OK.

I hear you.

I worked as a consultant for a company where the CEO one day, they just started using AI chat for everything. Every question you asked, they just forwarded it. Same thing for company strategy, major decisions, presentation content, and so on.

Initially, I was really annoyed. After I took a deep breath, and read through the wall of text they sent (to figure out how to respond), I eventually realized it was slightly better than their previous work. Not like, night-and-day better, but slightly better.

Since then, I've been playing with the idea of 'hiring' an AI to manage my freelance and personal work. I would not be required to do what it says, but I could take it under consideration and see if I work better that way. Sort of like the ultimate expression of "servant leadership".

I find this argument fascinating overall!

I don't really use YouTube, but when ads play on random videos and it irritates me, I just close my eyes, the simplest version of content-blocking. (If the ad is painfully loud, I may also cover my ears in contexts where this is not extremely socially awkward)

Can we say it's immoral for me to close my eyes? Can someone's business model be the basis of an argument that it's immoral for me to exert this simple bodily function?

Is there some contract that I've signed where people have the right to my attention in any context? If they've based their business model on the assumption that this consent exists, and it does not, is it fair to say that the business model should fail?

When I first visited Asia 13 years ago, this is the feeling I got too. It's wonderful and intoxicating and new.

It spoke to me so strongly, that I immigrated and started my first business. Not to China, but nearby (Viet Nam). It was a very tough road, I never ended up particularly wealthy, but I have no regrets.

I'm trying to make an RF lightning detector small enough to trivially add to my motorbike.

I live in Viet Nam, and driving through bad storms this time of year is pretty miserable, and they happen fast and are local enough that weather prediction is not terribly useful.

There are a lot of problems with EMI. Lots of ungrounded brushed motors everywhere that make the RF bits hard. If I succeed, I'll publish the PCB designs.

I've also got some educational products in production right now, about Vietnamese history. I'd share a link, but my website probably can't handle the traffic right now.

While I realize I'm not entitled to read this website, I'd like to report it seems to be geoblocking me in Viet Nam. I get a 403 Forbidden.

I was totally ready to consider blocking US IP ranges too, if there was a good reason. I run a small business and 0% of my customers are overseas.

Oh, I loved working on this problem years back.

My strategy was simulate my possible next guesses against all possible codes, then pick the option that had the highest number of possible outcomes (sometimes this strategy is called MaxParts). It looks like the author's approach works for similar underlying reasons.

Besides this, I applied some optimizations for the starting move, and some further optimizations on considering 'irrational' guesses -- e.g. choosing a code that had already been eliminated as a possibility, because it returned more information (this was rare, but possible).

I ran my code against all possible games of 4,6 mastermind (I win in an average of 4.2778 guesses), and found that some starting guesses were more optimal than others! The pattern "AABC" (e.g. red-red-yellow-green) was the best performer. Perhaps this is a way that the author can improve their algorithm just a tiny bit.

An ESP32 module suitable for hobby use is about 4$ here in Viet Nam. You can get the "raw" ones for maybe 0.50$ less. We're near China, so electronic component price is usually higher than Chinese prices by 1-20% (modules and hobby components on the higher end). If you're ever curious about prices, the good online retailer here is thegioiic ('World of ICs', we love naming businesses 'world of something' here).

Locally, 4$ is probably "more money" to us than 5$ is to you.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a marvel that we can have something so good so cheaply -- but correcting for cost of living, it feels less affordable for us here in Asia.

Anyway, not a criticism. Just sharing a slice of life from over here in case you were curious.

I can't help but imagine this is just a USB flash drive.