Posts by aparrish@friend.camp
(DIR) Post #AvVJOdnsTXJigMX3I0 by aparrish@friend.camp
2025-06-25T21:44:47Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@aeva wtf "AI is outpacing the social contract" is such a toxic and naive framing. people who are training AI models are *breaking* the social contract. "AI" and "the social contract" aren't even moving in the same direction
(DIR) Post #Avx4T98bLWCXtt9Jk8 by aparrish@friend.camp
2025-07-09T00:25:12Z
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ok fediverse i need help with a question that has been surprisingly resistant to web searches: when did it begin to become common (or at least not surprising) for microcontrollers and processors to run at 3.3v, rather than 5v (or more)—especially in embedded and portable contexts? who was the first vendor in this area who was like "sure, let's take a chance on 3.3v"? (did it happen in industrial applications before it happened in consumer electronics?)
(DIR) Post #Avx4TDGC1EeOgajR8C by aparrish@friend.camp
2025-07-09T00:28:42Z
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(my main points of reference are: game boy in 1989 was 5v, game boy color in 1998 was 5v but with 3.3v sram for some reason, game boy advance in 2001 was 3.3v. but when i was learning arduino etc in 2006, pretty much everything was still 5v)
(DIR) Post #Avx4TDIfs0dSoHtQ00 by aparrish@friend.camp
2025-07-09T05:52:29Z
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(to be clear to any future commenters in the thread, I understand the reasons behind the change from 5v to 3.3v, and the benefits/tradeoffs of using lower voltages. that is all easy to learn through web searches. what i meant to ask for is *specific examples* of early uses of 3.3v-only microcontrollers and processors, especially in consumer electronics. a history question, not an electrical engineering question)
(DIR) Post #AxSbC669EBsbfxg4lE by aparrish@friend.camp
2025-08-22T15:38:55Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
me: google search, can you help me find commentary on Walt Whitman's poetry written by Black scholars?google search:
(DIR) Post #AxSbCB4uiCrb7a8f20 by aparrish@friend.camp
2025-08-22T15:58:33Z
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this happens all the time with google search: the algorithm seems like it's set up to drop search terms that would make the results usefully specific, in order to present results associated with more common and/or generic queries. it's not just annoying (having to go back and put quotes around words just to make sure they're not ignored), it's normative—what it communicates is "lol sure. here's what non-weirdos are searching for"
(DIR) Post #AxdG2mRKzECXnmrdey by aparrish@friend.camp
2025-08-28T14:44:24Z
0 likes, 2 repeats
what if instead of investing $500 billion in GPUs and data centers, we'd invested $500 billion in like... HyperCard
(DIR) Post #AxdG2neUToJhYs1eng by aparrish@friend.camp
2025-08-28T14:51:00Z
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ridiculous premise, obviously. because if computers were extensible, efficient, easy-to-use machines that people can use to make things and solve problems, people wouldn't need to buy new devices every year to keep up with the system requirements of their software subscriptions
(DIR) Post #Ay2k7GPxKJa5VlGo1g by aparrish@friend.camp
2025-09-09T16:50:04Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
i love living in the future, in which i have to hold my web browser very gingerly so it doesn't replace the thing i'm reading with the carbon farts of a stochastic white supremacy machine https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/shake-to-summarize/
(DIR) Post #Ay2k7HfweLxtPdl5aS by aparrish@friend.camp
2025-09-09T16:51:47Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
"get bent, firefox product team"—ancient proverb
(DIR) Post #AyK0bchS5fdCUX7lJI by aparrish@friend.camp
2025-09-17T20:41:04Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
this is my prototype for a game boy on a bus backplane, inspired (obviously) by the rc2014 and https://smallcomputercentral.com/ (among others). the backplane connectors break out every pin of the Game Boy SoC (the DMG CPU, to be specific), so you can pop in/remove cards that interface with any gb peripherals, or plug into the address/data buses directly. in the 2nd photo i'm using a pico 2 to convert the game boy's video out to ascii (to send over serial for debugging purposes)
(DIR) Post #AyK0bgzg7qaToDgNH6 by aparrish@friend.camp
2025-09-17T20:46:25Z
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I was also inspired by game boy dev boards like iceboy's https://iceboy.a-singer.de/ and gekkio's https://github.com/Gekkio/gb-hardware but i'm excited by the extensibility that you get with a backplane (e.g., put as many devices on the bus as you want!). the setup will hopefully make a bunch of my rp2xxx-based mod ideas easier to prototype, but i also think this could be a good setup for music performance or livecoding. i maaaayyy also try to port cp/m or fuzix or something
(DIR) Post #Az2bdio7PI8GgZyEBE by aparrish@friend.camp
2025-10-09T18:14:35Z
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so i have an array with several thousand elements, ~50% of which are empty. the empty elements aren't uniformly distributed over the length of the array. (it's a hash table.) i want to select a non-empty array element at random. is there a clever way to do this that (a) is constant time (or close); (b) doesn't require a second data structure; and (c) isn't just sampling at random in a loop until you get a hit? (this is for an embedded application so RAM is at a premium)
(DIR) Post #Az2clYL6JJjOUThC6a by aparrish@friend.camp
2025-10-09T18:33:48Z
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@louis that would either be O(n) (iterating through the array to find the non-empty elements) or require a second data structure (an array that has the indices of non-empty elements)
(DIR) Post #Az4dQgkMLTkskr2qwa by aparrish@friend.camp
2025-10-10T17:56:23Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
this is such a strange post! the "also" in "I'm also pro open source" leaves open the implication that being "pro-LGBTQ" and "pro-immigrant" is separate from being pro-foss, and that sustaining the latter might require compromise on the former. personally, i'm in favor of foss *because*—and frankly *only to the extent that*—it brings about autonomy and liberation for LGBTQ people, and immigrants, and the marginalized people of the world in general. otherwise wtf are we even doing here
(DIR) Post #Az4eQNCF8IDI4hV7JI by aparrish@friend.camp
2025-10-10T18:12:29Z
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@neauoire my absolute 100% most generous reading of the situation is that the whole organization is careless in what they do and say, and not especially trustworthy... which isn't really what I want from the company that i buy my most important and expensive tools from
(DIR) Post #B0sxhFtHNSPp3cfnwu by aparrish@friend.camp
2025-12-03T21:01:15Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
you know i'd never stopped to consider how annoying tulip mania must have been for folks who just wanted to grow a few pretty flowers in their front garden https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/after-nearly-30-years-crucial-will-stop-selling-ram-to-consumers/
(DIR) Post #B1FKu5riXCC49X9TWa by aparrish@friend.camp
2025-12-13T21:21:55Z
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i'm trying to figure out how this works, especially the stuff in the lower half. it's part of the Game Boy Color's LCD power circuit (schematic adapted from https://wiki.console5.com/tw/images/e/e6/Nintendo_GBC_Schematic.png). COM is a ~4.6kHz 50% duty square wave, 0–5v; the cap (C35) turns it into ±2.5v. the NPN and PNP BJTs appear to use the pot's voltage to add a variable DC bias to this square wave (ranging from 0v to ~2.5v). but i don't get WHY this works and/or why they did it this way (continued)
(DIR) Post #B1FKuLj5Z2nZLPEoIS by aparrish@friend.camp
2025-12-13T21:43:36Z
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learning things from the middle-out (i.e., diving into hands-on work and filling in the basics as needed) is fun, and usually works out pretty well for me, but it can be less than optimal in cases like this where I feel like I could save hours of frustration if I actually took the time to learn freshman stuff like thevenin's whatever and kirchhoff's whatsit and how to read a transistor datasheet without my eyes glazing over
(DIR) Post #B1tEbtCsIgtSkJ8WBc by aparrish@friend.camp
2026-01-02T23:34:58Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
say what now