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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 10th, 2023

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  • This would work but assumes the primary use of the machine is Windows and derates your performance under Linux significantly due to USB speeds. Even if you’re storing your data on the Windows HDD, NTFS drivers are dog slow compared to EXT4 and other *nix filesystems.

    Also some BIOSes are a pain to get to boot off removable drives reliably so it really depends on what your machine is.

    I’ve used Linux as a primary dev system for well over a decade now, and with the current state of Windows I’d really recommend just taking the leap, keep your Windows box if you need Windows software and build a dedicated Linux workstation.



  • That’s a valid point, the dev cycle is compressed now and customer expectations are low.

    So instead of putting in the long term effort to deliver and support a quality product, something that should have been considered a beta is just shipped and called “good enough”.

    A good example I guess would be a long term embedded OSS project like Tasmota, compared to the barely functional firmware that comes stock on the devices that people buy to reflash to Tasmota.

    Still there are few things that frustrate me like some Bluetooth device that really shouldn’t have been a Bluetooth device, and has non-deterministic behaviour due to lack of initialization or some other trivial fault. Why did the tractor work lights turn on as purple today? Nobody knows!


  • My type is a dying breed too, the guys who do their best to write robust code and actually trying to consider edge cases, race conditions, properly sized variables and efficient use of cycles, all the things that embedded guys have done as “embedded” evolved from 6800 to Pic, Atmel and then ESP platforms.

    Now people seem to have embraced “move fast and break things” but that’s the exact opposite to how embedded is supposed to be done. Don’t get me wrong there is some great ESP code out there but there’s also a shitload of buggy and poorly documented libraries and devices that require far too many power cycles to keep functioning.

    In my opinion one power cycle is too many in the embedded world. Your code should not leak memory. We grew up with BYTES of RAM to use, memory leaks were unthinkable!

    And don’t get me started on the appalling mess that modern engineers can make with functional block inside a PLC, or their seeming lack of knowledge of industrial control standards that have existed since before the PLC.





  • Liftoff is fun, I’ve always recommended FPVFreerider for serious training, it’s more stripped down and focuses on absolute core flight functionality. Less tuning, more flying.

    The graphics are basic but that means you’ll never drop a frame even on a potato at 165Hz, the flight controls are insanely tight. Likewise this was the software I paired my radio with and learned to fly.

    It’s also only a couple bucks and there’s a freeware/demo version floating around out there too.





  • Unfortunately not as the oil is impregnated into very small pores during manufacturing. This is the “sol-gel” part of the process, a way of creating a solid and liquid in very close contact.

    The oil is effectively bonded to the surface creating a “permanent oil film” which is why it works so well. You can think of the long tails of the silicone molecules being trapped in the pores.

    However once they escape there’s no putting them back. Seasoning cast iron is a totally different process involving polymerizing light oils into a solid coating.


  • The secret of these coatings, which is deeply buried and requires some research, is their “sol-gel” structure.

    Basically they are like a sintered bronze “oilite” bushing, where oil is stored in the pores between the bronze to lubricate the surface.

    In this case the oil is silicone oil, and while it performs amazingly and is totally inert and harmless it sets a lifespan for the pan. Once the oil is depleted, the pan is worthless.

    I’ve gone back almost entirely to cast iron and stainless steel, though I do have one Greenpan that I save for scrambled eggs and similar.