technomalogical

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I don't think that's been the case for a long, long time. Almost every new game on modern consoles and PCs will see one (or many) updates in its lifetime. Game cartridges, things we used to think of as immutable, are merely storage devices for delivery of the original game code. Two recent games I purchased for the Nintendo Switch, on cartridge, both required a download before I could play them.

It does now. But will that be the case in the future? History seems to indicate that the interfaces and paradigms will continue to change. There will be an awkward period (now?) where you need to know both types of interfaces, but there may be a period where touch, voice, or other interfaces replace the now-archaic file cabinet metaphor that the desktop uses today. Look at Windows and all the metaphors that a child today has no context with which to relate: a manila folder, a file cabinet, a floppy disk, an address book, a wall calendar. It seems likely that this will change, and with it the need to understand today's (and that of the last 20-30 years) desktop computer.

FPGA still has some advantages over ASIC development:

- development speed of FPGA over the typical ASIC lifecycle is much shorter

- the ability to field-program and correct a design flaw can not only save expensive iterations, but also to add new hardware features essentially as a "firmware" upgrade (provided the FPGA in the system has extra capacity)

There will always be a place for ASIC, but FPGAs provide some capabilities that are not available (impossible?) for ASIC.

My first thought: I wonder if I can invoke this with ctypes from Python? I'll check this out, thanks!

They've also lowered the price significantly since then. Entry-level units can be had for $199, much less than the $399/$499 launch prices of the PS4 and Xbox One, respectively.

My nephew has been making Transformers out of his LEGO sets for a few months now. I asked him how many hinges he had (thinking he must have a lot). He said "I dunno... 2?"

I went to the LEGO store and raided their pick a brick wall. He'll be getting lots pieces that are hinged, wings for transforming planes, and tons of small plates for decoration. I think he's going to like it.

LEGO has increasingly made a number of pieces with Studs Not On Top (or SNOT, as the adult LEGO community refers to them). These allow you to attach standard bricks in a number of different directions and angles.

My wife's aunt just gave us one of those this summer! I had never seen one made of denim before, I didn't realize it was a marketed product.

I'll add my anecdote: my family and I visited friends in California this past summer for vacation. We visited the local Fry's and I saw these and picked up a pair. Our friends' oldest son was mildly interested, but didn't see the appeal. We looked at the peripherals on the boards and decided to make a remote sensing thermometer that we'd put in the freezer. Literally 15 minutes later, we had built working code in the block editor for both components (the broadcasting thermometer, sending the latest temperature once a second, and the receiver which showed the data) We popped it in the freezer and watched as the temperature slowly creeped down to below freezing. He was amazed that we could build something like that so quickly. Our friends went out and purchased their own micro:bits the next day :)

The database is opened immutably, so my guess is you’d either make a copy and update or regenerate it from another source (a la Simon’s CSV to sqlite tool. You could have a symlink that points to the current DB

As someone with a budding interest in this, are you finding this stuff on the web? Any specific sites or books where you're finding these implementations?

Your hobbies make my hobbies look pathetic. Kudos :D