retSava

Joined 14 years ago

Karma
2,567
Submissions
709
Member since
Sep 26
Co-founder, VP eng at Thingsquare

Feel free to hit me up at [email protected] if you want to talk!

Avid fan of all kinds of tear-downs and reverse engineering, even the non-reversible kinds and those that leave a few parts behind after reassembly. Also, "How it's made" :+1:

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Recent submissions

Comment · 3 months ago
Yes, TFA article says they never activated any power-saving, so the idle loop is more or less just staying in active mode, which has the same power consumption as doing calculations.

But one thing the article didn't point out is what hardware peripherals each firmware activated by default. Eg, activating UART might use default pins and activate an UART RX on a pin, which might incur a mA-order penalty. Hence, a useful first step in optimizing power is to identify what functionality you need and ensure all else is always powered down (eg uart rx, clocks and timers, radio peripherals.

Comment · 3 months ago
As an off-topic remark, I've used the qoitech arc power analyzer quite a bit and it's quite nice and easy to use, when your DUT is <5V and low amps. There's also the Nordic PPK2 kit, which is cheaper but I haven't tried it. Both are aiming at the crowd that prefers a simple, handles-most-use-cases, little USB-connected box that runs the client on your computer, rather than a separate bulky thing with screen and whatnot. Trade-offs of course though.
Comment · 6 months ago
It is. You can basically check out the company linkedin, people in similar roles/YoE, then google their name to find out their birthday, then just call our IRS. Ask for declared income for year X, X-1 etc. This gives you an anchor as parent said. It's a way to change the power imbalance when negotiating. I know friends that do this when applying for jobs. There's a law coming that makes this basically worthless, since the salary range for the role must be declared openly with the ad. And that btw is one of the first questions I ask when talking to hiring manager or HR, to find out if it's a good fit.
Comment · 9 months ago
To add and not nitpick, but to add the 'a' to the subjective, we make a verb out of it. But it's not immediately obvious what that means, could also be "to put in a cabinet" (which would be my interpretation). Languages are fun :)
Comment · 9 months ago
A fun thing you can do with this excellent sw is to slice a 3d object into slices to cut with a laser cutter. Ie you'll get a bunch of layers of eg cardboard or plywood, which you can assemble into a large object. Increase layer height to thicker than your material to create gaps in between. This operation is the basis for some very nice looking creative stuff you can find on etsy or even high-end wood working stuff.
Comment · 9 months ago
Yup, an important caveat. And sometimes, it may not be available, due to it not legally being allowed to be sold there (eg not following relevant regulations). And that's a valid enough reason for it not to be sold there, regardless of seller.
Comment · 9 months ago
Yup, an important caveat. And sometimes, it may not be available, due to it not legally being allowed to be sold there (eg not following relevant regulations). And that's a valid enough reason for it not to be sold there, regardless of seller.
Comment · 9 months ago
It's far easier and efficient to have the seller be responsible for what they sell, rather than every buyer learn relevant regulations and research whether any potential buy follows that.

And regulations are necessary since many sellers are without ethics/morals and simply want to sell.

The cost to the individual can be huge (eg cancer, home burnt down), and the society as well (environment etc).

I get the line of thought that "a simple product search engine like Amazon" shouldn't be held responsible for every single small item sold, but I think they should. The information and power balance is incredibly offset here.

Don't forget that Amazon is one of the largest companies on this planet, to a large extent because they take this shortcut of "money first, responsibility later". So I do blame Amazon (among others). The old discussion of privatization of profit and society takes the risk and cost...

Comment · 9 months ago
This is one of many exploitative habits of Amazon. Others include not ensuring products follow regulation, eg on hazardous substances (lead, etc), or on electrical safety. They also make your local {book, game, hobby, ...} shop go bankrupt.

You don't -have- to buy there, if you have the financial means I urge/recommend/encourage you to buy locally or from a responsible seller. Even if they are slower, less things on offer, etc. You probably already know some small local stores you would be sad to see shut down. Support them! (if you don't already)

Comment · 9 months ago
It's like with cars - better performing drive trains (et al) is used to increase the power envelope instead of lowering fuel consumption, since that leads to more sales allegedly.
Comment · 10 months ago
I was at the Fagradalsfjall eruption at 2023. Had been to Iceland for two weeks w wife and daughter, and on the last day (since the signs were there) I decided to postpone travel home for two days (w + child wanted to go home). On my last day, the hike opened up and I went at approx 2100 hours to the volcano. That was an approx 10 km hike one way.

Amazing experience. A bunch of us were stupid as can be, but got as close as approx 50 m. Sounds really dangerous, but the sputter were not that violent yet, and the ground sloped away from us. Still, really stupidly dangerous (the sputter wall could've broken down, wind direction change, etc). But it didn't. Lots of moss fires, and walked into a small slope and immediately felt a sting in my nose and lungs from trapped gases so took that as a nope and went back.

Started walking back at 0130 something, boarded flight at 0600, fainted (I had done Mt Esja in the morning too). Sorry other passengers, it was inconsiderate of me and I was an asshole for that. But... that experience...!

Comment · 11 months ago
IIRC lego had two actual patents: the basic brick, and the classic figure. The brick is expired while the figure isn't. Hence you can find "alternate" bricks, but not figures. They do own a shitload of trademarks, and aren't afraid to enforce them (which they legally must or they risk losing the TM).

Fun story: my wife ordered a couple of those "alternate" sets, and none inflicted on Legos patent nor TM (no lego branding, not a copy of a lego set, etc). The Swedish customs acted on their own (baffling to me) and stopped the package, sent her a letter in stark wording to accept forfeit. She challenged this, then Lego's lawyers got in contact with us and, using the figure patent, claimed this was a copy and we should forfeit or they would sue her. Very harsh letter, very stark wording.

Left a very bad taste in my mouth, haven't bought any Lego (or alternatives either) since.

Comment · 11 months ago
It's not just cost and ads. It's having the possibility to reduce attempts to manipulate my inner reptile brain. With various clients, you can disable shorts, recommended, you have sponsorblock, you can replace youtube-face-thumbs with actual thumbs and get crowd-sourced titles that better reflect the contents.

I also don't need to manually go set speed to 1.75x and enable subs in english, it's a one-time setting. _Further_ I can download a video locally, for whatever reason (later viewing, bw throttling, risk of deletion, etc).

As if that weren't enough, I don't have to watch videos logged in, my client is just set up to download my select channels.

I now see zero use of a youtube account.

Comment · 11 months ago
I would assume, yet _another_ standard. There are a bunch of them, and product builders are taking a long long time to properly implement, and often buggy. And they often result in the consumer need to buy yet another gateway/router, and learn the ins/outs and quirks of another protocol that won't work properly in years, all the while two new competing standards have been introduced. An example - how long has Matter existed? Yet, it hasn't had a profile for smart plugs with energy monitoring (eg the 12$ IKEA one). Such a basic use case...

And all this so Samsung et al can siphon off more user data and show more ads.

I fully understand the consumer viewpoint.

But, it's great news imo with sub-GHz (Suzi)!

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