Sylvain Miermont @miermont@qoto.org

Early call to gauge interest: Who's seriously interested in attending a paid training on oscilloscope probing theory and practice, some time in the early summer at my lab just outside Seattle? It will be a one-day, in-person event including 4+ hours of lecture and lots of hands-on lab time for everyone on some very nice equipment (16 GHz oscilloscope, 28 Gbps BERT, multiple VNAs, and more).

I've done a few test runs with friends and I think I've finally got it refined to the point I'll be ready to do the class for paying students in the near future. Course notes are open source https://github.com/azonenberg/electronics-training/tree/master/oscilloscope-probing so you can take all the notes home after, you're mostly paying for the in-person instruction and lab access.

It will cover many different kinds of probe ranging from the classic passive R-C divider probe up to modern double digit GHz active differential probes, pros and cons of each design, non-idealities and limitations, and how to get the most out of your measurements.

This will be an in-person event hosted out of my lab with a very limited class size, 4-6 students, to ensure everyone gets enough lab time. Special introductory pricing of $1000/seat for industry professionals. If you're a student/hobbyist and would love to attend but can't afford the full price, ping me and I'll try to make something work out.

I'm tentatively shooting for the weekend of June 8th or 15th, but subject to change based on student availability etc. I plan to make this a regular thing so if more than one class worth of people are interested it will happen again for sure.

This will be a COVID-safe event, masks are (at minimum) strongly encouraged, and may be mandated if anyone attending has specific health concerns. The lab is a "cleanishroom" (engineered for very clean air with multiple HEPA filters etc, but not ISO 14644-1 certified) and additional portable filtration units will be present in the classroom.

‘Where can you hide from pollution?’: cancer rises 30% in #Beirut as diesel generators poison city - https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/apr/22/where-can-you-hide-from-pollution-cancer-rises-30-in-beirut-as-diesel-generators-poison-city "#Lebanon’s economy and electricity system are broken and much power is now generated locally, with devastating effects on air quality and health" grim

Big tech: Move fast and break things!
Everyone: ok, we've broken basically everything now. What's the next step?
Big tech: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Everyone: 😬

I forgot to post these tiles I saw at the train station yesterday

We urgently need more @emf sponsors - if we do not secure more, we will have to make tough decisions.

Tickets cover base costs, but sponsors pay for lovely things like our free childcare and talk transcription. Every little helps!

Find out more here: https://www.emfcamp.org/sponsor

Wrens are natures dial-up modem

If being chronically ill has taught me anything it's that dynamic "in the background" measurement with a high sampling rate is pretty vital for getting insight into a very unpredictable crisis event

All the teeth bared attitudes about measurement in software kind of obscured that for me and I am coming back to the things I KNOW are true about this

What gets represented in our models of the world as the base rate of key events in our world, that matters

TYPEWRITER ARTIST

You definitely didn’t know about such capabilities of a typewriter.

It turns out that with its help you can not only print text, but also create pictures . The main thing is to think everything through in advance and be patient.
#AureFreePress

Occasionally another friend tests and validates my "put a temperature data logger in your fridge" campaign. Today someone found their fridge at SIXTEEN DEGREES.

Most UK fridges have terrible thermostats and over-temperature alarms are rare. I am convinced this is responsible for a vast amount of food waste.

https://elk.zone/chaos.social/@jonty/111015093316903368

So, why are so many executives and investors overlooking this very basic reality that code produced is code which must be maintained, and that an acceleration of code produced thanks to gen AI means ~more risk~, not just more $$$?

I have friends who are Principal Engineers asking themselves this very question right now.

And in response, I point us to the classic Upton Sinclair quote:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

" we analyse data from the European Banking Authority to show that existing financial accounting frameworks might inadvertently be creating disincentives for investments in low-carbon assets. We find that differences in the provision coverage ratio indicate that banks must account for nearly double the loan loss provisions for lending to low-carbon sectors as compared with high-carbon sectors" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-024-01972-w

If you see a long German or Swedish word, first of all, don't panic. It's more scared of you than you are of it. Secondly, take a closer look and you'll see it's actually just three normal words in a trenchcoat, huddling together to deter predators (French and English).

This is a semi-solid aluminum 3D printing! Unfortunately, according to Ric Fulop (CEO and co-founder of Desktop metal), it can't be commercialized because the temperature control is very difficult and, when it fails, is very problematic. Nevertheless, it's an impressive demonstration.

Source: https://twitter.com/ricfulop/status/1774497991857946689

#3dprinting #metal #aluminum #extrusion #desktop_metal

The answer to the Q. 'Why is the UK facing water shortages despite record rainfall?' is essentially, we do too little to harvest & retain water, seeming happy to let it flow back to the sea...

As always in the UK it comes down to a lack of investment in infrastructure. And that is merely another reflection of the corrosive short-termism of our political class.

So, our problem with water is just exemplary of the omnicrisis into which the country has fallen.

#water
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/01/why-uk-facing-water-shortages-despite-record-rainfall-explainer

The reason why #Threads and #Mastodon are incompatible is that Mastodon is a community, and Threads is a market. That's it.

It's not big Fed vs small Fedi. It's not platforms vs protocols.

It's communities vs markets.

Communities are supportive and markets are extractive. Communities answer to those who must live with decisions made. Markets answer to money.

And wouldn't you know it, those contrasting forces influence people's behaviors, goals, and motivations for engaging with others.

There was a post on /r/DataHoarder on Reddit with concerns about the future of Internet Archive. Brewster decided to respond.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1bswhdj/comment/kxm65da/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

On a more positive note:

While this is a sad day for Open Source Software, I also feel a lot of pride for the community.

Please look with which grit and transparency this was analyzed. Usually such analyses take years.

Compare this to last year how everyone had to pry every detail out of Microsofts nose when they lost the skeleton key for their cloud.

I combined two of my #3dprinted seven segment displays with a geneva drive mechanism, so now they can count from 0 to 59! #3dprinting

The problem with Test-Driven Development is that you have to think about what you want the code to do before you write it. And that ruins the surprise.

DC polarity reversal cable is a handy friend! 🔌⚡🔄

Once in a while we find products that have center NEGATIVE DC power jacks and they really make us mad because who keeps around both positive and negative polarity versions of every voltage? now, hopefully USB PD https://www.adafruit.com/product/5807 will solve this long term, but till then this 2.1mm DC flipper flopper adapter will connect in to out and out to in and voila - your standard center-positive is now center-negative. or vice versa! how handy