𞋴𝛂𝛋𝛆

  • 57 Posts
  • 332 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • OCR tool+ to autogen a suggested alt text. The path of least resistance needs to be lowered.

    Alternatively, inverting the paradigm is likely to cause less issues and push back. Add the automated tool the the end user in need of the version. This obviously creates the issue of data quality and trust, but for the smaller group. What if there was a reply field silently posted to everyone’s notifications feed indicating anonymous instances of the tool being used to fill in the gaps for alt text? The message would need to be opt out or carefully presented. Perhaps it could be possible to modify the post itself via the tool? Better yet, make the alt text field a Wikipedia style affair anyone with an account can edit, but with a lock available to the OP. That would create much more healthy awareness of the need for alt text, as people posting the content will see the places where gaps are filled by an automated tool. It gives them the chance to edit. This does little to initially improve the experience of the most active alt text users, but it creates a strong cultural shift in awareness that should improve the situation greatly in the long term IMO.








  • Complex social hierarchy is a super important aspect to account for too. In the proprietary software realm, you infer confidence in the accumulated wealth hierarchy. In FOSS the hierarchy is not wealth, but reputation like in academia or the film industry. If some company in Oman makes some really great proprietary app, are you going to build your European startup over top of it? Likewise, if in FOSS someone with no reputation makes some killer app, the first question to ask is whether this is going to anchor or support a stellar reputation. Maybe they are just showing off skills to land a job. If that is the case, they are just like startups that are only looking to get bought up quickly by some bigger fish. We are all conditioned to think in terms of horded wealth as the only form of hierarchy, but that is primitive. If all the wealth was gone, humans are still fundamentally complex social animals, and will always establish a complex hierarchy. This is one of the spaces where it is different.


  • Measure it’s resistance if in a pinch. If it is in the kilohms range it is a thermistor. If it is super low resistance, it is a thermocouple. 10k ohms is the most common thermistor used in nearly everything consumer related. Nearly all common thermocouples are the same type too. It has been awhile, but IIRC they are k-type. The main difference in function is heat range. The thermistor is for lower temps and is less linear across the range in the cheap common ones. The thermocouple is two different types of wire welded at a junction at the tip. The heat causes a tiny voltage potential due to the different metals bonded together.

    At scale of mass manufacturing, the thermistor is a fraction of a penny, while the thermocouple is a few cents. However the thermocouple requires an analog amplifier circuit to function, so this adds complexity in electrolytics. A thermistor is stupid simple and only requires a resistive voltage divider and any voltage threshold trigger circuit, so like a zener diode, capacitor, and single transistor.

    The packaging of the sensor is the only thing you are paying for, and that is just for its mechanical mount and position, maybe some heat mass stability. A thermistor cannot handle direct flame temps, but a thermocouple technically can. In practice only the packaging of the sensor will contact a flame in some cases. Thermocouples are more rare but usually in any appliances that use natural gas. Thermistors are the third or third and fourth connection in most battery packs and found in almost anything with heat or temperature sensitive constraints.

    In a pinch, all you need is the same sensing element. A coat hanger or anything similar may be a way to improvise holding it in place… should you ever need it.

    The other type of common temperature regulation is a mechanical switch that uses a bimetal strip that deforms to close contacts. These will not work with the other two. Any device you hear a faint audible click from when heating, is using this type of temperature regulation. Typically old dumb coffee pots, clothes irons, etc. Thermistors are used in most small devices with some type of digital interface and a battery or heat.




  • I have no confidence it will work or last. I’m not committing to anything either, but at a minimum I need the flattest image possible, meaning a square lens to object from a distance where perspective distortion is minimized. The largest camera sensor (silicon die) will produce the flattest image with less perspective distortion. Each image must contain a known measurement, such as a little machinist’s ruler or other. The point here is that the lines of known measurement must be as close to single pixel accurate as possible. I will not take the time to straiten or correct for errors, - if I have the time and feel like making something. The result will likely be ugly and might not work or last. I need to know the angles and sizes of those protrusions to utilize them like a dovetail. I do not trust anyone’s measurements, especially my own, and I have no desire to dial you up for the ‘measure thrice print twice, measure once unfinished dunce’ - rule. I need the Cartesian planes of X, Y, and Z, (right, front, top) at a minimum.

    I probably do not have time within my project, but if I’m bored and waiting on a long print, maybe.


  • The cheapest fans available often have a lot of injection molded plastic that squeezes out of the gaps of the metal mold when the plastic parts are formed. Removing this may help some.

    The cheapest fans now come with the small motor shaft embedded into the frame with a tiny ball of metal formed at the end of the shaft. The ball is what prevents the shaft and fan blade portion from coming out of the housing. This type of bearing and retention cause more friction than a design that uses a bushing and a small plastic retainer ring. They type with the retainer ring are usually floating in the magnetic field. The little plastic retainer ring on the shaft end is only present in cases where the fan is dropped causing more force than the magnetic field will hold onto. If a person such as yourself, presses on this type of fan at the fan blade hub, you will feel the magnetic field and see the hub deflect and then return to the center of the field. Spinning it will feel frictionless. With the ball shaft type, there is little deflection and it feels like a bit more friction when comparing two side by side.

    With the ball shaft type, most of the noise will be coming from the friction and transmitted through the body of the enclosure. If you isolate the fan with some damping between it and the enclosure it will reduce the noise considerably. Damping the enclosure, and adding rubber feet between any table or surface may also help.







  • Most chips are made in China. This is bigoted nonsense. Just because some US billionaire is not in the middle means nothing. Every single one of your overpriced marketing ““brands”” is shipping stuff that says made in China somewhere on it. Nearly all chip packaging is done in Asia too, even for so called US companies. Silicon has been a global thing this whole time. The USA is mostly incapable of foundry logistics as these places use large quantities of hazardous materials you will mostly find mentioned under war crimes use. Having that stuff driving around in the primitive backwards USA is stupid dangerous. Rail connections are the only option and even this infrastructure is ancient unreliable garbage that results in bigger catastrophes. Buy Chinese. They are pro community far more than anything in the USA Flock fascist Epsteinian surveillance state. Chinese DRAM ain’t on the Epstein STI list.


  • My experience may or may not apply here… In automotive paint refinishing back 15+ years ago, 2 part epoxy primers are special. Most primers are (were) 2k urethane. These are similar to automotive 2k clearcoat in how they work. They both have similar thicknesses, leveling after wet coats, and to a lesser extent - drying properties. With drying properties, the surface levels within a minute or so but it forms a surface film and the back side remains tacky for longer. (Where they differ is that clearcoat takes much longer to fully cure, like weeks to months, while primer is workable within an hour or less.) Epoxy primers are high build fillers. They get hard as a rock and are a pain in the ass to sand down. The two main reasons for using an epoxy are for super rough large surfaces, and this the the relevant bit here, they are used to seal the surface.

    In paint, there are a ton of nightmare situations. Like let’s say some brake fluid got on the paint in a crash, or some idiot used rattle can enamel on a car. Often what happens is that the repair I am doing is not the first time the panel has been repaired. While I would like to clean the issue completely and use typical 2k primers, the previous repair may have used epoxy and buried something terrible. I’m not going to strip the whole panel and have to spray additional adjacent panels to color match when I did not estimate this in the cost quote. Epoxy seals out EVERYTHING. With stuff like spray can enamel, the painted surface never cures. It remains reactive to the solvent of anything sprayed on top of it. If ABS trim or bumper covers are exposed to acetone, similar issues with reactions will happen, unless 2 part epoxy primer is used. Epoxy primer is impermeable in the context of automotive paint; it is the nuclear option. Everything else allows some solvents to pass through it over time.

    If you have ever touched the paint of new cars and noticed the softness, that is uncured clearcoat that is still venting solvents in small quantities. This is also why jams painting inside of the seals is kept to a minimum clearcoat thickness. The thicker the clear, the longer it will take to fully cure. As an ex pro painter, that softness tells me a lot about a finish too. It actually starts forming around 5 minutes after the clear is shot, just after the fingerprint test does not pull a string when removed. That is the first moment when I am able to barely graze the surface with fingertips and not damage the surface. It is still very wet underneath at this stage.

    Hopefully that illustrates how even the hardest of painted surfaces is still able to allow stuff to pass through it. If you want to stop that stuff, you need a paint that is made specifically to seal everything.

    That said, the seals and other materials also need to be up for the task. Most of those are likely just dust seals. How you deal with corners is critical. Just look at stuff like Pelican cases.