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zwieback

9,238 karma · joined May 8, 2009

Engineer at HP
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zwieback··on Playing with the STM32MP2
The idea is to move realtime-ish stuff to a popular processor many people have worked with and moving the Linux stuff over to an appropriate platform.

When it came out we used STM32MP257 to demo a quadrature encoder debugger/logger (for internal use, not a product) since the IO supports easy interfacing of encoders. The micro's peripherals (SPI, I2C, GPIO etc.) are easy to program at the register level and you can run a simple mainloop+interrupts thing on the micro, then run Linux for your UI, networking, etc.

The fact that there's not much activity around these kinds of platforms (CPU+micro or CPU+FPGA) suggests it's too hard to combine the two in a way that makes sense for enough people, easier to just use standard components and have them side-by-side on the PCB.

It is nice to have them on the same die, though, for people like myself who like to work on both ends but don't know how to make their own PCBs.

zwieback··on Are You Enjoying Our Linguine? (2025)
In other words: nothing has changed since Henry James wrote about Americans in Europe.
zwieback··on Cursed circuits #4: PLL frequency multiplier
Very cool. Can this be used to make a better quadrature encoder multiplier? The ones we get in our programmable rotary encoders are pretty crappy when the input frequency wobbles.
zwieback··on The Science of Satiety per Calorie
As a former Swabian I'm a bit hurt that those beautiful Brezeln get such a low score
zwieback··on How England misplaced its first king
Generally Aethelstan gets pretty good coverage on TRIH and the episodes on that era are some of my favorites. Also, the VIP membership tier is called "Athelstan" if I remember correctly.
zwieback··on Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP
Learned from this post that Gmail web had POP! Now I'll be mourning loss of a feature I never even used.
zwieback··on State of AI-assisted software development
I find AI coding assistants useful when I'm using a new library or language feature I'm not super familiar with.

When I have AI generate code using features I'm very familiar with I can see that it's okay but not premium code.

So it makes sense that I feel more productive but also a little skeptical.

zwieback··on A forgotten medieval fruit with a vulgar name (2021)
Not sneering in any way, I love those groups and visit when I get a chance. Also a big fan of our local university's tree collections, they are on a mission to preserve variety of specimens.
zwieback··on A forgotten medieval fruit with a vulgar name (2021)
Sounds intriguing, want to try one now. This is the kind of thing Home Orchard Societies wet their pants over. Probably grown right next to their pawpaw tree.
zwieback··on That boolean should probably be something else
Maybe for the DB domain author is talking about but the nice thing about a bool is that it's true or false. I don't have to dig around documentation or look through the code what the convention of converting enum, datetime, etc. to true/false is. 1970/1/1 (I was four years old then, just sayin), -6000 or something else?

Nullable helps a lot here but not all languages support that the same way.

zwieback··on Ask HN: Why is it called "Vibe Coding"?
The real vibe coding is when you hear the core memory vibrating
zwieback··on Carmakers Are Embracing Physical Buttons Again
I'm glad to hear that but only if the buttons, wires and connectors are high quality. Pretty sure one of the reasons for everything touchscreen is cost. My mom's BMW has a sort of joystick/knob/button that controls what's displayed on the screen which is an okay compromise.
zwieback··on Carmakers Are Embracing Physical Buttons Again
What happened, did you just get stranded and they came and replaced the car?
zwieback··on 20 years of Git
Of all the many source control systems I've used git has the worst usability yet it's my favorite
zwieback··on Ask HN: What are your contrarian views?
Windows is a good OS and Visual Studio (not Code) is the best IDE.

Also, I really don't like marine mammals at all. Possible exception for otters

zwieback··on Image Processing in C (2000) [pdf]
For hobbyists that's enough, for engineers often okay (I find myself in that situation) but for scientists "good enough" means nothing.

Optical metrology relies on accurate equations how a physical object maps to the image plane so in that case analytical solutions are necessary for subpixel accuracy.

I'm worried about how often kids these days discount precise mathematical models for all use cases. Sure, you get there most of the time but ignore foundational math and physics at your own peril.

zwieback··on Effect of chewing hard material on enhancing cognitive function
Haribo
zwieback··on Show HN: Scripton – Python IDE with built-in realtime visualizations
wait a while and there will also be advertising every time you boot up and at random other times
zwieback··on Show HN: Scripton – Python IDE with built-in realtime visualizations
I wonder how many "traditional" engineers are Mac coders. I work at hp so not many Macs around but in our R&D and especially in manufacturing and test&measurement Mac-only would be a problem.
zwieback··on Show HN: Uscope, a new Linux debugger written from scratch
Everyone here seems to thing GDB is awful. It's been a while for me but I remember using front-ends like Eclipse's CDT or similar and didn't find that experience so bad. Do most people use GDB straight-up? I haven't done that in probably 15 years although it's nice to have a lightweight command line on small embedded systems.
zwieback··on Show HN: Uscope, a new Linux debugger written from scratch
Oh yea, we used both SoftICE and Periscope. I loved the pushbutton to fire off an NMI directly on the ISA bus. It was sad when your device driver crashed but it was a fun experience to push that button.
zwieback··on Battery-powered electric ferry service to connect Spain and Morocco
That's very cool. In Oregon we have an electric ferry across the Willamette but it has overhead power lines, like a train.
zwieback··on Adding iodine to salt played a role in cognitive improvements: research (2013)
Good to know, must have gone up since I moved away in '92
zwieback··on Adding iodine to salt played a role in cognitive improvements: research (2013)
I grew up in Germany where iodized salt and flouridated water aren't the norm. Now I have bad teeth and can't wrap my head around the latest changes in the C++ language...
zwieback··on The past, present, and future of UI at GitHub
I've only used Github desktop briefly so I can't say much about it, was commenting on the web UI. I suppose if I was using a lot of GitHub functionality vs. just using github.com as a repo things might be different and I'd give Github desktop another try.
zwieback··on The past, present, and future of UI at GitHub
Github is the worst of the web GUIs I use regularly. Started bad and only got worse, luckily 99% of my gitting is via PC based tools. Maybe this is the kind of app where the GUI should be modeled on client side developer tools and not modern web UIs.
zwieback··on Turn any bicycle electric
No idea how the e-bike guys here did it but Schwinn had a bike for a while (my wife owned one) where the freewheeling was in the bottom bracket, it was called "FFS". It's pretty freaky and wasn't popular. You can see it in action starting at 0:30 here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dwpnxh_Vxpk

zwieback··on Liskov Substitution: The real meaning of inheritance
If I remember correctly, Liskov didn't talk about inheritance but subtyping in a more general way. Java, C++ and other, especially statically typed, compiled languages often use inheritance to model subtyping but Liskov/Wing weren't making any statements about inheritance specifically.
zwieback··on Japan's original decluttering guru (no, not that one)
What she says makes sense: “It is about returning people to a state in which parting with things feels natural.”

That's the whole problem, if you're a hoarder it doesn't feel natural. Maybe you can step through the process and declutter but unless you change your brain you'll just re-accumulate.

zwieback··on Maintaining and sustaining soil health
Also PNW, Willamette Valley, I've had standard compost pile forever and for a few years I had a few chickens. It was amazing how well the poop worked and I had such absurd amounts of worms in my compost that I fed some back to the chickens.

The only problem is that it does take a while for the poop to turn into compost and with the constant addition of fresh poop it was hard to time. I have two piles and do a yearly changeover, that keeps it easy.

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