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vatyson A “Sideways” supply response in California winegrapes

The burger joint was in real life “Orcutt Burgers” in Santa Maria. At the time the movie came out, I often visited a friend who lived a block from there, and we ate there regularly. It was a trip to see the movie with him and instantly recognize the restaurant in that scene.

By now the place has probably changed name or owners. It was a pretty good local flavor burger joint at the time.

vatyson Reverse-engineering a tiny 1980s chip that plays Christmas tunes

> The chip has 3 pins, but there are 8 pads on the die. The other pins appear to be used for testing. By activating one of the pins, the chip can be put into a test mode. The test mode runs through the songs at 512× speed so the chip can be tested quickly without waiting for the tunes to play. The other test pins appear to expose other internal data for testing.

This makes me wonder if you put one of the other test pins on a scope, if you'd see a pattern representing the song or sequence, allowing quick verification of the chip. I think at 512x speed, even a more limited storage scope of the era of these chips could capture the full output on-screen. Each flavor of the chip probably had an expected pattern based on ROM which could be checked.

I'm imagining a technician sitting at a test bench, having to do verification work on these all day, thankful for having a test pin instead of having to listen to the same dang beeping song over and over :)

vatyson Reverse-engineering a tiny 1980s chip that plays Christmas tunes

The block-diagram level breakdown of the different sections of silicon is really a wonderfully helpful way to look at this. It makes the zoomed in view of each section more meaningful. Then seeing the die photo of individual transistors or groups of them, next to schematic level interpretation, really drives it home. Thanks for making something so instructive.

Have you decapped other sound-making devices? The greeting card chip makes me think of the ubiquitous "laser noise" chip from countless 80's kids toys. That or one of the many kid's keyboards or baby noise console devices, that have all of the function inside a single epoxy-blobbed die. It would be pretty fascinating to see a similar breakdown of which sections encode samples, note values, rhythm and sequences, control inputs, etc.

vatyson Dracula Theme – A dark theme for many different apps

I prefer the reverse: Alucard theme for Terminal https://github.com/lysyi3m/macos-terminal-themes

vatyson A man who invented lithium-ion battery at 57 has an idea for a new one at 92 (2015)

Depending on the application and how far you want to discharge them, Li-ion batteries generally can transfer more charge when drained with DC. Each battery chemistry has different impedance curves.

See the plot in the 2nd to last page of this PDF: https://www.omicron-lab.com/fileadmin/assets/Bode_100/Applic...

Higher impedance means more voltage drop will occur across the internal impedance of the cell while trying to pull current. For an equivalent average power, pulses will have to be higher current than a constant DC.

If you pulse the battery, and it is at a low state of charge where the impedance is high, the battery voltage will effectively "droop" and your system may brown out. This means you have to shut down before you've been able to fully discharge.

So pulsed power delivery does not necessarily improve efficiency.

vatyson Why do so many brands change their logos and look like everyone else?

My favorite example of this is what I can only assume is (if real) a document made after the “new” Pepsi logo came out, to justify it with some verbose design-speak nonsense.

https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi-arnell...

Maybe it’s made up, or maybe it really represents the concept behind the logo change. Either way it’s amusingly ridiculous.

vatyson Logic, Before ICs

Yes, thanks for expanding on that. I used the ‘97 most recently so it was the part number I remembered.

The open drain ones make good level translators as well, since the output can be pulled up to a different voltage. If you find that chart, I’d love to see it!

vatyson Logic, Before ICs

And in some cases, smaller than a transistor (as commonly packaged).

74AUP1T97 comes in a variety of packages, some less than 1mm square. It’s a clever mix of gates internally which can be turned into many common AND/OR type functions depending on how you hook up the pins.

vatyson SketchUp Goes Subscription-Only

I've been using the free SketchUp (now SketchupMake) for many years, and it seems that no longer exists. I think it's been replaced with a new web-only free version. I found it to be pretty nice for simple woodworking and home projects, with a rather intuitive interface. My use was so casual and infrequent that I never really considered the paid version.

Is there a good alternative (free or reasonably priced paid) for very simple and casual 3D modeling?

vatyson The Economics of ASICs: At What Point Does a Custom SoC Become Viable? (2019)

> humanly impossible at the moment to fit it into the button of a baseball cap It’s actually pretty close, considering the size of this LiDAR module: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=93&v=xz6CExnGw9w

vatyson RF Field-Probes PBS 1 / DC to 9GHz

I’ve used the Langer probes in so many shops that I almost forgot there were other manufacturers of near field probes.

https://www.langer-emv.de/en/category/rf-passive-30-mhz-3-gh...

Generally these are connected to a high-end spectrum analyzer, but recently I’ve been working on a method to use a WiFi transceiver as sort of poor-man’s spectrum analyzer. This is useful only in applications where you want to snoop power levels in the range the chip works in. In my application we want to measure internal interference issues, within a device, where some non-WiFi subsystem creates noise in WiFi bands. Using the device’s own WiFi front-end to measure power becomes a very effective way to debug these issues.

The cool part is we did a correlation study between a $100k spectrum analyzer and the in-device WiFi chip, and across all noise sources and relevant frequency ranges the two agreed within 1-2dB. Not perfect, but good enough for our application.

vatyson Ask HN: What is the most beautiful piece of code you've ever read?

For me it's a BASIC one-liner which generates mazes

  10 PRINT CHR$ (205.5 + RND (1)); : GOTO 10

I found this specific one via slashdot[1], but something similar, which I've never managed to find/replicate, was used to generate mazes on the Atari 800 XL at my school when I was a kid.

[1] https://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/12/01/1847244/how-d...

vatyson Ask HN: What is the most beautiful piece of code you've ever read?

This is still one of my favorites. In a list of magic numbers, sorted by magic-ness, 0x5F3759DF would sit pretty high.

vatyson For Sale: America’s Largest Private Grove of Giant Sequoias

Left entirely alone, I think the trees maintain themselves rather well

vatyson Photos taken by the EPA reveal America before pollution was regulated

Ah yes, the good old days. When manufacturing jobs were plentiful and American production was second to none.

It’s important to remember the cost of what made America “great” back then.

vatyson YouTube was launched as a dating site

https://www.metafilter.com

"Best of the Web" since 1999

A broad set of interests are represented there, not just programming or technology focused. The submission quality is high, and it is well moderated.

MetaFilter has always had a pretty strong community. The addition of a $5 membership fee, similar to SomethingAwful, seems to have helped filter out the riff raff.

There's also an "ask" section, and ones for projects and music. Overall, it's a good community for general discussion of things happening on and offline.

vatyson Walmart Grocery is now offering a $98 per year ‘Delivery Unlimited’ subscription

I agree, though I might put it the other way: Amazon is less pleasant than eBay.

I've stopped using Amazon entirely, and I now get things on eBay I never thought I would back when it first started and was "the flea market of the internet"

vatyson Was There a Civilization on Earth Before Humans?

Truly. But a story which inevitably must end with expansion, cooling, and a new need to huddle around stars.

vatyson Was There a Civilization on Earth Before Humans?

Back then everything would have also been so much closer together. The universe could have been like one great bustling city. Perhaps, from that perspective, we are already in some long-tail end-of-days time. Planets and stars and galaxies are so far apart as to make travel difficult or impossible.

vatyson Ask HN: Why is there no activity indicator when an iPhone's camera is on?

Apple seems to be taking steps in that direction

https://www.apple.com/mac/docs/Apple_T2_Security_Chip_Overvi...

All Mac notebooks with the Apple T2 Security Chip feature a hardware disconnect that ensures the microphone is disabled whenever the lid is closed. On 13-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air computers with the T2 chip, this disconnect is implemented in hardware alone, and prevents any software—even with root or kernel privileges in macOS, and even the software on the T2 chip—from engaging the microphone when the lid is closed. (The camera is not disconnected in hardware because its field of view is completely obstructed with the lid closed.)

vatyson 4X

That also made me think of Spaceward Ho! I know it may be too simple a game for a “serious” 4x game conversation, but I still in joy its style of gameplay. Sometimes a game like Civ can be too deep, or demand too much time for a satisfying play through, where Spaceward Ho! is fun, quick, but still hits some of those 4x notes.

Are there any modern 4x “lite” type games like this?

vatyson Letter from Tim Cook to Apple Investors

Hover input on touch screens is cool tech but I’ve yet to see an implementation of it where it really added usability. More hidden UI just seems like more difficulty for average users.

More hidden UI in a car seems like the absolute worst place to use such a hardware feature. Drivers should have their eyes on the road, not staring at the screen while they try to get their finger just the right distance to make some UI element pop up.

Edit: the linked Microsoft demo is pretty cool, and could improve mobile devices, but is exactly what I was thinking should not be in a car control surface.

vatyson USB-C Explorer – A development board to get started working with USB Type-C

the worst thing about having read the USB PD specification is having to live with this knowledge

Having done the same, I agree completely

vatyson New Logo and Identity for Library of Congress

Libraries are quiet. An all-caps logo is the branding equivalent of yelling.

vatyson GlobalFoundries Stops All 7nm Development

Exactly. GF is making lots of chips on 130 and 180 nm process. There’s a lot out there that isn’t bleeding edge CPUs. We’ve got power chips, port controllers, high speed linear re-drivers. Not every ASIC needs tiny transistors, in fact many use comparatively huge ones and it makes no sense to use an expensive process.

I don’t see GF going away any time soon. They’re a huge player with a lot of customers.

vatyson A constant loud clicking or crunching noise in her head stumped doctors

To Stankovic, chief of the division of otology and neuro-otology, the problem did not sound idiopathic; she suspected that Behforouz had inadvertently fractured a tiny delicate bone in her middle ear called the malleus.
When she examined the records of Behforouz’s previous hearing tests, Stankovic realized that the results had been misinterpreted. Behforouz didn’t have sensorineural hearing loss — damage to the nerve. Instead, she had conductive hearing loss, a problem with the way sound is transmitted. The difference is important because some forms of conductive hearing loss can be fixed through surgery.
Malleus fractures, which prevent sound from being properly delivered to the middle ear, are rare, Stankovic said, and probably underdiagnosed. She said researchers at Mass Eye and Ear have studied 13 patients with the fracture and “every one had the same story”: sudden hearing loss after what doctors call “digital manipulation.”

Moisture “provides the perfect pressure seal,” Stankovic said, and force can result in fractures to the bones in the ear, which are the smallest in the body. Behforouz had an additional risk factor: osteoporosis, the bone-thinning disease.

The lesson: keep your fingers out of your ears!

vatyson Capybara

I assumed this would be about the DSP engine from Symbolic Sound. Though I am a fan of the large rodent creatures with a chill attitude.

vatyson What's My Color IQ?

6 with night shift on

0 with night shift off (0 is perfect score)

Interesting how much the yellow shift impacts the ability to discern color difference. My night shift slider is only about a quarter of the way up.

Good reminder to not do color critical work with night shift on.

vatyson Inside the 76477 Space Invaders sound effect chip

This reminded me I have two of this chip sitting in my parts bin, with nice little DIP format adapter boards even. It bugs me that I bought the chips ~18 years ago and still haven't done anything with them. My project queue needs some reshuffling. I should start making synth modules again.

Or I should find myself a Blacet Dark Star Chaos module. I should have bought one when I had the chance.

vatyson Show HN: Visualizing disk IO activity using log-scale banded graphs

Yes, I’d love to be able to do this kind of y-axis scaling in Grafana. I was just messing with a network I/O bandwidth graph in Grafana this morning and thinking about log scales. It hadn’t occurred to me to band it by binary/1024 orders of magnitude, but I like the result here.