deadbeef's recent activity
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Comment on Which Kindle/e-reader are you using? in ~books
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Comment on Without saying where you live, where do you live? in ~talk
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Comment on Mysterious, thoughtful games? A genre I can't define in ~games
deadbeef LinkI'd mention NaissanceE, a monochromatic puzzle game which is pretty much about figuring out how dark and light affects the world in order for you to find the way. I quite enjoyed the experience.I'd mention NaissanceE, a monochromatic puzzle game which is pretty much about figuring out how dark and light affects the world in order for you to find the way.
I quite enjoyed the experience. -
Comment on What have you been listening to this week? in ~music
deadbeef Linklaamaa - seven weeks Chippy goodness.. "stars be my guide", the first track, brought a tear to my eye. I am amazed by what people can produce on the Dirtywave M8. his album synthesizer greatest...laamaa - seven weeks
Chippy goodness.. "stars be my guide", the first track, brought a tear to my eye.
I am amazed by what people can produce on the Dirtywave M8.
his album synthesizer greatest vol 1 also has some gems. -
Comment on Best Linux Distro for gaming/noob in ~comp
deadbeef LinkOne more distro alternative: Solus. I use it with Steam. It's been rock solid for me so far.One more distro alternative: Solus.
I use it with Steam. It's been rock solid for me so far. -
Comment on Email forwarding services in ~tech
deadbeef LinkI use AnonAddy, and I'm quite happy with the service. I have never noticed any mail delivery issues, and I appreciate the configurability (several recipients, custom domains) and the ability to...I use AnonAddy, and I'm quite happy with the service.
I have never noticed any mail delivery issues, and I appreciate the configurability (several recipients, custom domains) and the ability to respond via the aliases.
I'm paying for the pro tier.I haven't really used any other services, but did use
+and.for adding labels for a while.
That would still expose my "actual" email address, though.
And if one of the labelled addresses end up on a spam list it might be a hassle to actually get it blocked, depending on your email service provider and/or email clients.
In AnonAddy, it's just a matter of flipping a switch for the leaked alias address in the control panel, and it'll stop forwarding them to my actual email address. -
Comment on The big misconception about electricity in ~science
deadbeef Link ParentSorry, I think I somewhat confused your comment and the question posted by OP... 😬 My bad!Sorry, I think I somewhat confused your comment and the question posted by OP... 😬 My bad!
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Comment on The big misconception about electricity in ~science
deadbeef (edited )Link Parentedit: Meant as a response to the question posted by OP. Misplaced reply. It sounds like you're are assuming that what you observe at the bulb is that it is either on or off, as if the energy...edit: Meant as a response to the question posted by OP. Misplaced reply.
It sounds like you're are assuming that what you observe at the bulb is that it is either on or off, as if the energy transferring field is basically static, apart from expanding in space. But it's not. There's an electric wave travelling along the wire when you close the switch, and it doesn't "see" that you've cut the wire until it actually reaches that point, from which the wave reflects back in the other direction.
This is basically how radio transmitters work*. It is not weird that you're able to measure any voltage variation on the bulb in such a scenario. The voltage won't stabilize at "on"-level, of course.
*) For radio transmission, you tune the length of the wire (antenna) according to the frequency to get standing waves.
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Comment on Trackers: The sound of 16-Bit in ~tech
deadbeef Link ParentThe Polyend Tracker and XOR Nerdsynth were briefly mentioned near the end, though, around the 38 minute mark.The Polyend Tracker and XOR Nerdsynth were briefly mentioned near the end, though, around the 38 minute mark.
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Discworld short film, Troll Bridge, released on YouTube
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Comment on <deleted topic> in ~misc
deadbeef LinkI've been curious about self defense laws in the USA. This was quite informative, and the comic format made it a lot less "dry" and more memorable read. Thanks for posting this!I've been curious about self defense laws in the USA.
This was quite informative, and the comic format made it a lot less "dry" and more memorable read.
Thanks for posting this! -
Comment on Debugging Folklore in ~comp
deadbeef (edited )Link ParentThank you! And good question -- that sentence certainly warrants some explanation. First of all, I should have written "was possibly the culprit" since several characteristics of electronic...Thank you! And good question -- that sentence certainly warrants some explanation.
First of all, I should have written "was possibly the culprit" since several characteristics of electronic circuits will be temperature dependent. And I'm not a physicist or chip designer, but AFAIK, the main mechanism is temperature's effect on resistance and capacitance. I'm sure some other tilderino can explain it better than me.
But which characteristics will change with temperature? The most relevant in this case would be:
- oscillator frequencies -- clocks will drift from the nominal
- voltage references -- detection thresholds* for digital level (0/1) will change
- charge leakage -- f.ex. memory can keep its level for longer at low temperatures
- electrical noise -- lower temperature means less noise, which is usually good
The customer wasn't really using any peripherals/functionality of the MCU that we could in any way see causing the issue at lower temperatures. The initial failure analysis team had already ruled out the main oscillator, which was driving the system clock, as a possible cause. So, in our experience, there simply weren't that many culprits left to choose from.
Memory that is uninitialized after power-on doesn't necessarily contain a random value. You should rather consider it an unknown value. And it can be affected by bringing the temperature up or down before turning on the power. I believe that's mainly due to the detection thresholds for digital levels varying with temperature, but it's likely also in combination with f.ex. the change in charge leakage.
Also.. There is one detail that I forgot to mention, which reinforced my suspicion that memory was involved: I actually had to leave the device powered down for a minute or two in order to reproduce the issue in the climate cabinet. It seemed more likely to me that this was due to residual charges having to leak/disperse rather than the device temperature having to sink all that much.
*) Digital input/sensing circuits are generally specified with two voltage thresholds:
- VIH, above which they are guaranteed to detect a signal as logical 1
- VIL, below which they are guaranteed to detect a signal as logical 0
The range between VIL and VIH is the undefined range, where you don't really know what level your signal will be detected as. But there's a threshold somewhere in that range where the sensed value switches. That's the one I meant above. The sensing circuit can also have a hysteresis in there, but that's not really relevant in this context. :-)
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Comment on Debugging Folklore in ~comp
deadbeef (edited )LinkI'm not sure if this is interesting to anyone, but I have a debugging story to share. I probably made it way too long. Sorry! Some years ago, I worked as an applications engineer for a...I'm not sure if this is interesting to anyone, but I have a debugging story to share. I probably made it way too long. Sorry!
Some years ago, I worked as an applications engineer for a microcontroller (MCU) manufacturer. Part of my job was doing technical support, which 99% of the time boiled down to figuring out what part of the documentation the customer had missed or misunderstood. But every now and then, we'd get cases that indicated actual hardware problems, i.e., either a design flaw or a QA issue with our MCU.
One such case came from a manufacturer of electronically controlled heating lamps (possibly propane powered -- not an ideal situation) , who reported that some percentage of the MCUs would randomly run at 1/8 of the configured speed in their product when started up. They noticed this because their product took 8 times as long to boot up, LEDs were blinking slower, etc. This was extremely curious, since the system clock of these MCUs was configured at production programming time and there was no changing that configuration at runtime. Changing the configuration required an external tool, and the change would be permanent, not sporadic as this customer saw. What could be going on here?
We already knew that software couldn't change the system clock, so clearly, it was a hardware problem. One possible culprit could be that the system voltage in their design was not within specifications, i.e., it did not rise at an appropriate rate at power up, or it was not stable enough, which generally causes undefined behavior in electronics. However, the MCUs had integrated brown-out detection and power-on reset circuitry, precisely to mitigate against these sorts of problems. Perhaps there was a weakness in our design?
Suspected failures with the MCUs themselves were always initially investigated by the team that did the verification and characterization of the MCUs, as well as defining and implementing the production tests. Customers would send us a few specimens of the failing product, and this team would try to reproduce the issue and determine if the failure was in any way "our" fault, i.e., due to design flaws, production issues or lacking documentation. But.. This team couldn't find any problems with the hardware -- not in the customer's design and not in the MCU. So, it appeared to be a software issue after all. Great! And so the case ended up on my desk.
The team had been able to reproduce the issue, though, and made some observations which were helpful to me:
- the failing specimens had to be cooled down for the failures to occur
- serial communications actually ran at the normal speed
The latter essentially confirmed that the system clock was running at the correct speed, configured during programming of the MCU. And the temperature dependency was an indication that uninitialized memory was the culprit. But it wasn't clear where things could be going wrong. The customer had sent us their full source code, and it seemed ridiculously complex for such a simple product; basically a heating lamp with timer and adjustable power. It used a homegrown OS, with several concurrent tasks and timers. Perhaps the problem was in their task scheduler?
At this point, a month had already passed since the customer sent us devices for failure analysis. The customer was getting rather irate, demanding that we "fix our MCUs". They were not pleased when told that we couldn't find any problems with the hardware..
I started by digging into their application code, but after a day of looking through their ~30k LOC, I couldn't identify any cases of unitialized memory being used. And so, I decided to move on to on-chip debugging (OCD) in the hopes of uncovering the cause, the idea being that I could inspect the MCU's runtime configuration and behavior in detail when this issue arose. But OCD entails connecting an external tool to the MCU, which changes its operational parameters, plus enabling OCD in the MCU, which changes certain aspects of its behavior. There was a chance that all this would prevent the issue from arising at all.
As mentioned, the MCU had to be cooled down for the issue to arise, so it made for a time-consuming issue to reproduce. I stuck everything in a climate cabinet, with only power and the debugger's USB cables coming out, powered everything off and gave the MCU two minutes to cool down, before turning things back on in the correct order for OCD to work. I then spent nearly a day trying to reproduce the issue. Of course, the issue never, ever arose in this setup.. sigh
So, it seemed like the way forward was to make minor changes to the customer's code, program it to the MCU, then run it without any of the regular debugging capabilities. Of course, I needed a way to get information out of the MCU in a non-invasive way. For that purpose, I could bit bang on one of the unused general purpose input/output (GPIO) pins of the MCU. But what to investigate next?
One hunch I now had, was that the hardware timer used for their OS' task scheduler was not triggering as frequent as it should. So I added code to toggle my bit bang pin (high<->low) every time that interrupt handler was entered. It was a dead end -- the interrupt timing was fine. But this lead me to another idea: might other interrupts be triggering and keeping the CPU busy? For example, an interrupt triggered every time one of the buttons was pressed and caused one of the GPIO pins to change state. Could something be causing that interrupt to trigger constantly? It turned out that this was not the cause, either. I quickly found that none of the interrupts enabled in their code was triggering.
That's when I got my eureka moment: the factor of slowdown made perfect sense if the MCU was constantly jumping into and returning from the default interrupt handler (one which does nothing). So, I made all the interrupt handlers bit bang individual numbers on my debugging pin to identify which one it was. And voilá, I found it! The "EEPROM ready" interrupt was constantly triggering. That interrupt should only trigger when enabled, and the on-chip non-volatile memory is ready to be written to. But the code was in fact explicitly disabling all EEPROM-related interrupts. So why did it trigger??
At this point, I started looking into the disassembly of the code which should be disabling the EEPROM interrupts. The failure was basically in a single line of code which should write the value 0 to the EEPROM control register (EECR). The code compiled to do this essentially copied the value from a specific CPU register, let's say R0, into EECR. But I did not see R0 getting set to 0 before this. How strange! How could this ever work? I did one more experiment, and my suspicion was confirmed: sometimes, the bit which enabled the "EEPROM ready" interrupt would be set to 1 in R0 before its value was copied into EECR.
I now realized the problem was somehow related to the toolchain, so I dug into the documentation. That's when I learned about the initialization routines that are supposed to run before the application. I learned that R0 should have been initialized to 0 by that code. The toolchain expected it to be so. It relied on it for optimization. Oh my! Getting close now!
The final piece of the puzzle was something I've not told you about yet, because I hadn't given it much thought myself before this point in the story: the customer's bootloader, which could be entered by pressing a specific button on the device at power-up. The code which detected the button press acted as a separate program, which the customer invoked in such a way that it executed before the initialization code. So when did the initialization code actually run? Finally, we get to the root cause: the customer had linked their code in such a way that the initialization code only ran if the bootloader was entered! If the MCU started right into the application, no initialization was done. The content of CPU registers such as R0 would basically be random when it entered the application. That's a sure-fire way to get undefined behavior!
I sent my report to the irate customer and offered to help them fix their project, but I never got a response back. I presume they quickly got too busy putting their bootloader to good use.
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Comment on What has your experience been like buying digital music? in ~music
deadbeef (edited )LinkI've bought a bunch of music from 7digital. You can do it all in the browser, but they have an app for convenience as well. Most releases are available in several bitrates and formats. I have...I've bought a bunch of music from 7digital. You can do it all in the browser, but they have an app for convenience as well. Most releases are available in several bitrates and formats. I have bought a couple of bad releases, i.e., with glitches from bad CD rips, but their support is always quick to respond (refund and take the release offline pending a fixed release) when I report.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
deadbeef LinkI recently started playing Squad, a military FPS which is really focused on cooperation and communication. I've played a fair number of multiplayer FPS-es over the years, but at some point I...I recently started playing Squad, a military FPS which is really focused on cooperation and communication.
I've played a fair number of multiplayer FPS-es over the years, but at some point I didn't really have fun anymore. I was basically just grinding for unlocks and awards.
Squad is not arcade-y. You spend a lot of time without any action, e.g., travelling between objectives, building bases, patrolling, sneaking into enemy territory and waiting for the enemy. You need to chat with your teammates to be successful at your tasks, and you have plenty of time to shoot the breeze (pun intended) in between them. Also, there is nothing to unlock. No upgrades.
Squad has made me appreciate playing multiplayer FPS again. :-)
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Comment on What have you been listening to this week? in ~music
deadbeef LinkFor this week, I'll mention two albums that I've listened to a lot: Leprous' latest album, Pitfalls. I'd call it melancholic prog metal. At the bottom is a good track if you want to check it out....For this week, I'll mention two albums that I've listened to a lot:
- Leprous' latest album, Pitfalls. I'd call it melancholic prog metal. At the bottom is a good track if you want to check it out.
- The soundtrack for the game FAR: Lone Sails. It's jazzy, ambient, melancholic, orchestral.. Quite interesting. The game itself was so-so.
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Comment on What are you doing this weekend? in ~talk
deadbeef LinkI'm trying to spend less time gaming and watching garbage on Netflix, and more time learning new things. So, inspired by some of my colleagues, I'll be trying to learn me a Haskell for great good....I'm trying to spend less time gaming and watching garbage on Netflix, and more time learning new things.
So, inspired by some of my colleagues, I'll be trying to learn me a Haskell for great good. I don't have any real projects in mind yet, but think some Project Euler exercises may lend themselves to it.Also, since I took up the hobby of skateboarding this spring, I'll probably also spend some time practicing in our building's basement parking. At the moment, I'm trying to get better at tic tac-ing.
I'm also trying to get back into a routine of exercising regularly, so I'll spend some time at the gym. I got a membership around 3 months ago, but probably only went there 5 times since then..
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Comment on Squarepusher - Vortrack [Fracture Remix] (2019) in ~music
deadbeef (edited )LinkLovely. This was exactly what I needed to listen to now. Thank you! Selection Sixteen was my introduction to Squarepusher, and is actually still my favourite album by him. Hoping this new one will...Lovely. This was exactly what I needed to listen to now. Thank you!
Selection Sixteen was my introduction to Squarepusher, and is actually still my favourite album by him.
Hoping this new one will be on par. :-) -
Comment on <deleted topic> in ~talk
deadbeef (edited )LinkMy wife and I are going on a bike vacation in Denmark next week, so we'll be giving our bikes some care. They've been stowed away for almost two years at this point, and before that they'd been...My wife and I are going on a bike vacation in Denmark next week, so we'll be giving our bikes some care. They've been stowed away for almost two years at this point, and before that they'd been left out during a winter or two. It'll be interesting to see what state they're in now..
I'm also learning how to skateboard. I bought a longboard about a month ago, in an attempt to make my daily commute a bit more interesting. But I'm not yet at the point where I'm comfortable skating out in the streets, among other people. That's all right though. I'm patient. And I was fully prepared that it would take a while to learn this. You'll probably find me practicing in our building's basement parking area, which has ample space.
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Comment on Microsoft Teams is now officially bigger than Slack in ~tech
deadbeef Link ParentIf you don't mind command line interfaces, there's a Slack-plugin for WeeChat. I use it at work. But I do use Slack's web client in parallel sometimes for file transfers and searches, so.. Maybe...If you don't mind command line interfaces, there's a Slack-plugin for WeeChat.
I use it at work. But I do use Slack's web client in parallel sometimes for file transfers and searches, so.. Maybe it doesn't count as a "good" option.
I use a Boox Nova Air C, which runs Android and has a color e-ink screen.
It doesn't have a nice "grip", but the case (which I haven't bought yet) looks like it would provide that.
The color screen is, of course, nowhere near as vibrant as an LCD screen. But I'm reading through a collection of Neil Gaiman graphic novels, usually at bedtime, and I think it's fine - I don't yearn for more color range.
It also has internal speakers which are good enough for podcast listening, but no good for music.