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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)NY
Posts 7
Comments 116

Is there a community where I can get news about technology as in science, as opposed to "drama involving tech companies"?

I'm just not interested in hearing what bullshit FAANG is up to, I want to talk about linux kernel patches and raspberry pi revisions and maybe hear what people other than grifters are doing with neural networks.

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What Film Are You Surprised Didn't Get A Sequel?
  • The Road to El Dorado was the pilot for an animated series that never got greenlit. Massive missed opportunity, I would love to see "the continuing adventures of three latin rogues and a horse"

  • What would you buy if you could?
  • I dunno if I'd want to magically buy myself the ability to draw; I'd rather magically be able to afford a big house and pay an artist to live with me and draw whatever they want and maybe commission them to draw me with my comfort characters.

  • command line util to encode/decode framed packets?

    I'm currently trying to set up a homebrew cassette tape storage format, but trying to use existing tech where possible. I was excited to see that minimodem already exists for converting an audio stream to a byte stream, and is even available in termux for android, so I could decode cassettes with my phone! However, I'd like some sort of higher-level tool to encode and decode "packets" or "slices" so that I can add error correction. I'm sure this sort of thing must exist for amature radio purposes.

    I could write a script that cuts a file into slices, with checksums and redundancy for each slice, and then pads them with null bytes so I can isolate each frame when decoding. What I want is to find out if that's already been done. I've heard of AX.25 packets but I can't find a tool that does that with stdio.

    15

    What field do you work in, and how many digits of pi do you use?

    This article says that NASA uses 15 digits after the decimal point, which I'm counting as 16 in total, since that's how we count significant digits in scientific notation. If you round pi to 3, that's one significant digit, and if you round it to 1, that's zero digits.

    I know that 22/7 is an extremely good approximation for pi, since it's written with 3 digits, but is accurate to almost 4 digits. Another good one is √10, which is accurate to a little over 2 digits.

    I've heard that 'field engineers' used to use these approximations to save time when doing math by hand. But what field, exactly? Can anyone give examples of fields that use fewer than 16 digits? In the spirit of something like xkcd: Purity, could you rank different sciences by how many digits of pi they require?

    123

    What tools do I need to record data on a cassette?

    Following the advice here I tried recording data to a cassette. I'm using maxwell tapes and a "tomashi" walkman with a mic input. The output is extremely noisy and I have very high data loss. I tried recording music and that's very noisy too. I'm guessing I need a better recording device? Why does it matter though? Or am I missing another step?

    1

    Steam input gyro aiming feels great

    Following this tutorial, I tried gyro aiming on my Dualsense controller, which has analog triggers and gyroscopic motion controls. I set gyro to act as mouse, activated by a right trigger soft pull. If you use Steam with a controller I highly recommend this; it gives you almost as much control as a mouse and keyboard! Along with a few other custom rebinds, this gives me a console-ish experience on Minecraft Java :)

    9

    People who got a Dualsense Edge for Steam Deck, how would you rate it?

    It's been long enough that I'm sure someone besides me has shelled out the $200 for a DS5+, since it's a bluetooth controller with a touchpad and grip paddle buttons. Is it worth it?

    Edit: To clarify, I own a Dualsense, but I'm lusting after the Dualsense Edge revision.

    9

    Fitness / Exercise games for PC / Steam Deck?

    I have a steam deck dock in the living room, with a dualsense and some joy-cons paired to it. Are there any games similar to Ring Fit that work well on PC/Steam? Do I need a new controller or can I use these?

    5