Skip Navigation
Jump
I legitimately want to run Linux as my desktop OS, please tell me how to meet my requirements.
  • I didn't say it was unobtainable. But it might look/behave quite different than the tools you are currently using.

    As for Microsoft Exchange, I only use that for work, and my employer would not allow me to connect from my personal machine anyway. I am not saying that you that you have to give up your favorite tools... but I am saying that it you are putting up so many fences then you might as well stay with what you have.

    14
  • Jump
    I legitimately want to run Linux as my desktop OS, please tell me how to meet my requirements.
  • No.

    If you ever so carefully paint yourself into a corner then the corner is where you will be stuck. How badly do you want out of your corner?

    There are FOSS and SAAS options that could work if you wanted them to... but whether they will depends on you.

    Meat eaters trying to become vegetarian for ethical reasons often fail because the "un-meat" options out there don't meet their standards. Success almost always requires some letting go and re-adjusting. If you are not open to that then don't force yourself to put up with something you don't really want.

    66
  • Jump
    What is the reason for asymmetrical connections?
  • You are being obtuse. Fiber and cable and DSL are not "ethernet standards" and Ethernet is not used for last mile connections. Re-read the excellent explanation.

    4
  • Jump
    Mermaid: Diagramming and Charting Tool
  • I will just say that I think mermaid is great. I use it via the DiagrammeR package in R and via Quarto. In addition to manually typing in diagrams I sometimes write ad-hoc code that helps me visualize my data (and source code) by emitting one of the relevant mermaid syntaxes.

    2
  • Jump
    Idiomdrottning - FOSS is so dumb
  • I would say you are lucky. I lived in my college town for 20years and it started out chock full of co-ops in the 80s and by the time I moved away they were all hardly recognizable or gone. Food co-ops, housing co-ops, internet co-ops... all mutated away from shared labor or were replaced by sole ownerships.

    My wife works for an employee-owned engineering company, but they are anything but FOSS in their culture.

    I hope these intermediate management structures that combine expertise and collective ownership grow more. But it still isn't a slam-dunk that should be assumed to be the stupidly-obvious approach unless such organizations compete with the grifters... and then their success won't be due to the fact that they are using FOSS but that they present a track record of success as an organization.

    1
  • Jump
    Idiomdrottning - FOSS is so dumb
  • ... and there are a gazillion examples where no community forms and the founder burns out. Cheers where it works, but some projects aren't sexy enough to attract a self-sustaining community, and when you don't preselect success stories but choose according to external needs that hit-and-miss experience starts to look less obvious and more like the thing only "smart" people can succeed at.

    My objection is to the idea that FOSS is easy... it does require some smarts to succeed with.

    3
  • Jump
    Idiomdrottning - FOSS is so dumb
  • Don't get me wrong... I am all for FOSS and I avoid walled gardens, but people have a hard time remembering to take the trash out to the street on the right day. Spending time driving garbage trucks monthly in the local waste management Co-op is not going to fly well. That problem gets solved using money... homeowners are taxed and the local government either hires garbagepeoples directly, or more often they hire a company that takes care of the problem.

    Upshot there is money rather than co-op ownership, and frequently for-profit contractors win the day over government ownership. Contractors supply GaaS, we just have to get the bin to the street. So the equivalency here is the need for the public institution known as city government to retain ownership of the waste management system. Not quite "the people", since getting co-op volunteers is, well, erratic at best. And there are a ridiculous number of people out there who are vehemently against government management of actual organizations like this. I am for it, but over and over I see "privatization" win elections.

    So I am not seeing how pitching this as "stupidly obvious" will win when "obvious" means hiring a contractor nearly every time.

    9
  • Jump
    Mystery surrounds US woman found starving and chained to tree in India
  • I know, I am just someone on the Internet, but I was acquainted with someone who fasted for 40 days... twice (a little over a year apart I think)... in pursuit of some kind of spiritual enlightenment. He started out a little on the heavy side, and ended up, well, emaciated. Anyway, he did have water, which is where I think this woman's story falls apart.

    18
  • Jump
    side projects
  • bit of a cutthroat way to characterize what you "like". Might actually make the interviewer downvote you for threatening their position.

    1
  • Jump
    Impedance, floating
  • Resistance is like shocks on a car... push hard to compress and it compresses faster. push less hard (voltage) and it doesn't move as fast (current). Pull it (negative voltage) and it expands (current flowing the other way). Resistors resist (voltage against) flow (current).

    Capacitors you sorta seem to get: current flowing in one direction through a capacitor builds up voltage the remains after the current stops... like the force in a spring builds up as it compresses and when the motion stops the force is still there.

    What you seem to confuse with resistance is inductance, where the force (voltage) on an air hockey puck makes it speed up (current flow), and when the force stops pushing it it just keeps moving (current keeps flowing).

    The general term for these voltage-current relationships is impedance, because in the general case where voltage or current is oscillating or rapidly switching on and off you get some effects that resemble resistance (voltage pushing back on current or vice versa).

    Final concept is that any time you have something trying to force specific levels of current or voltage on a pin, the "setter" (whatever is doing the forcing, typically referred to as the "source") has impedance and so does the "getter" (whatever is being forced, referred to as the "load"). If you have a fishing rod and you want the tip to move slowly, you can easily move it where you want it to go, but if you want to shake it fast it won't move as far (the weight of the tip is like inductance resisting the motion with force/voltage).

    So, a microchip pin might have high resistance to ground but also high capacitance to ground... and a quick pulse of voltage will immediately cause current to flow into the empty capacitor, and if the capacitance is big enough the voltage won't change much, or will require more time to change. High capacitance has low impedance... it sucks up any available current as the desired change in voltage happens. interestingly, there are two options for making the pin voltage change faster... increase the current level being used by the source (by reducing impedance within the source so it can get out to the pin easier), or reducing the amount of current required to change the pin voltage by raising the impedance to ground inside the chip package (that is, reducing the capacitance inside the chip package).

    When the source impedance is very very large, that is like having the signal generator probe laying on the bench instead of connected to the pin. When the source impedance is large and the internal pin impedance is large, then any stray electric or magnetic fields can push the pin voltage around easily. This is what they call floating... and if the microchip is reacting to those erratic voltage signals then the circuit as a whole will behave erratically as it tries to react to noisy input.

    An output pin usually (but not always) has a lower source impedance than a tri-state input in its high impedance state. If you connect it to a floating input then the input stops floating and follows whatever the source is forcing it to.

    An input pin usually has an input impedance similar to the source impedance of sources connected to it... this generally allows the input to be controlled most quickly. Inputs whose voltage doesn't change quickly tend to be less useful than ones the do change quickly bandwidth and clock speeds can be faster.

    If you try to connect microchips built with different technologies together (e.g. CMOS vs TTL) then they may not communicate quickly or with minimal wasted power because they have different typical impedances (and voltage levels).

    2
  • Jump
    Foreign Policy: Trump’s Crypto Turnaround Heralds an Economic Nightmare - The former president is pitching a new grift.
  • Technically he can claim he has said "vote for me, you won't have to vote for me again" because he won't be running again... someone else will. This is the kind of doublespeak he has used before. He doesn't want to "clarify" though unless he gets cornered in, say, court.

    Of course, if he is really playing the Julius Caesar card then there won't be any more voting to worry about.

    1
  • Jump
    A necessary reminder that our work/life structure is flawed
  • I view college as training for dealing with deadlines and some logic practice (e.g. this essay isn't coherent; math exam next Wednesday). I never see people come through the door ready to go... it takes a few weeks before even the most basic tasks can be delegated. Their writing still sucks 90% of the time, and their math is usually shaky (lucky we have automated many steps with computers.)

    I agree that the pace at which all this goes is exhausting and more breaks are needed, but the third world is still full of people working overtime to overtake these "professional" jobs that colleges purport to prep workers for. Don't go to an overpriced Ivy League school and take on debt and expect a 20h week... go to a govt sponsored school and be prepared to compete with the remote workers working for the company that is undercutting your employer. Welcome to globalization.

    8
  • Jump
    EVs Aren't the Future, Hydrogen Is
  • If the goal is reducing CO2 emissions, then electricity will be used to break H2 from water. Currently most H2 is extracted from natural gas, which produces CO2 as a by-product. That is, H2 needs to be used as a chemical energy storage mechanism for low-carbon energy sources such as solar, wind, or (ick) nuclear.

    Problem with this is that the round trip efficiency of electricity to H2 and back is around 30%. If you use the H2 in a combustion system then you might get 35-40% efficiency. LiION batteries are around 90%.

    So once you solve the materials handling problems with H2 you are still left with a very expensive energy storage mechanism.

    Of course, Lithium is a limited resource so we are going to need more storage mechanisms anyway, but pronouncing H2 as the future is misleading at best.

    2
  • Jump
    Microsoft is reportedly banning Palestinians in the U.S. for life for calling relatives in Gaza
  • Having used the web version of Office at my job, I know I would not pay for it. It is compatible-ish, but severely lacking in features, enough so that I don't trust it to render properly or maintain the formatting entered using the desktop app. If that is good enough then there are lots of alternatives.

    3