litchralee

@litchralee@sh.itjust.works

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Using a PWM controller as audio AMP?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Based solely on this drawing – since I don’t have a datasheet for the PWM controller depicted – it looks like the potentiometer is there to provide a DC bias for the input Aux signal. I draw that conclusion based on the fact that the potentiometer has its extents connected to Vref and GND, meaning that turning the wiper would be selecting a voltage somewhere in-between those two voltage levels.

  As for how this controls the duty cycle of the PWM, it would depend on the operating theory of the PWM controller. I can’t quite imagine how the controller might produce a PWM output, but I can imagine a PDM output, which tends to be sufficient for approximating coarse audio.

  But the DC bias may also be necessary since the Aux signal might otherwise try to go below GND voltage. The DC bias would raise the Aux signal so that even its lowest valley would remain above GND.

  So I think that’s two reasons for why the potentiometer cannot be removed: 1) the DC bias is needed for the frequency control, and 2) to prevent the Aux signal from sinking below GND.

  If you did want to replace the potentiometer with something else, you could find a pair of fixed resistors that would still provide the DC bias. I don’t think you could directly connect the Aux directly into the controller.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Using a PWM controller as audio AMP?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  are not audio drivers but PWM drivers

  They can be both! A Class D audio amplifier can be constructed by rendering an audio signal into a PWM or PDM output signal, then passed through an RC filter to remove the switching noise, yielding only the intended audio.

  That said, in this case, using the unfiltered PWM output would work for greeting cards, where audio fidelity is not exactly a high priority, but minimal parts count is.

  This made me wonder if normal PWM controllers could be used to drive more power full LEDs.

  What exactly did you have in mind as a “normal PWM controller”? There’s a great variety of drivers that produce a PWM signal, some in the single watt category and some in the tens of kilowatts.

  Whether they can drive “more powerful” LEDs is predominantly a function of the voltage and current requirements to fully illuminate the LEDs, plus what switching frequency range the LEDs can tolerate. Some LED modules that have built-in capacitors cannot be driven effectively using PWM, as well as anything which accepts AC rather than DC power. You’d need a triac to dim AC LED modules, and yet still, some designs simply won’t dim properly.

  My idea was to just remove the potentiometer and feed in music from Aux at that point.

  You’ll have to provide a schematic, as I’m not entirely sure where this potentiometer is. But be aware that the output current needed to drive a small speaker is probably insufficient to light up a sizable LED, nevermind the possibility of not even having enough voltage to meet the required forward voltage drop of the LED.

  Is there a chance of this working?

  It might, but only if everything just happens to line up. But otherwise, it’s likely that it won’t work as-is, due to insufficient drive current.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you were (falsely) accused of murder, but you have records of your phone at home with youtube videos being played, can you submit those records as a sort of Alibi to exonerate you?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  A phone playing a video would not be sufficient to establish that you were at home, but merely that the phone was powered on somewhere. But if YouTube had records that indicated your phone was connecting using an IP address at your home, then the phone’s location could be ascertained.

  But that still doesn’t say anything about where you are, since not everyone – even in 2025 – carries their phone every time they leave home.

  But if YouTube also registered a Like on a video at a particular time, and it can separately be proved that no one else could be at your house and no one else connected to your home network, and that your phone was not modified in such a way to fake such an action, then this would be enough circumstantial evidence to convince a jury that you were probably at home.

  And if home is nowhere near the murder scene, then this could be a defense.

  Maybe. As you can see, a lot of "if"s are needed to string together an alibi, let alone a good one.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If one were so inclined, could you take your plot of land, parcel it up into 1-meter-squared (or smaller) sections, and sell each of those sections to different people/companies?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  In much of the USA, the county-level is the administrator for deed recording and for land parceling. Municipalities (eg cities, towns) within the county may have their own zoning rules, and so the question can be divided in two:

  1-meter-squared chunks

  Zoning laws can enforce minimum lot sizes. For example, an agricultural or business district might disallow plots smaller than 5 acre or 2000 sqft, respectively, because anything smaller would become economically infeasible for those purposes. A legitimate goal of zoning is to make land more economically productive, and plots that are oddly-shaped or impractically small would be counterproductive. The county and cities would also be concerned with tax revenue per area, which scales up with productivity of land (for whatever use is permitted in zoning). Note: I’m not a fan of American-style zoning, which has proven to be quite overburdening and frequently racist over the last 100 years.

  But setting aside zoning, there’s also the matter of land administration. Subdividing a parcel into smaller lots is common, but since those small lots will take up ledger and deed records at the registrar’s office, that adds a non-insignificant cost per plot. Easily several hundred dollars per subdivision, as the process is normally meant for larger real estate transactions in preparation for development.

  sell each of those sections to different people

  Land transaction costs in the USA are not uniform throughout the country, but they often amount to several thousands just to verify title to land. Part of the problem is that most states don’t keep an authoritative land registry that shows exactly who owns what. Instead, title insurance companies make money by assuring the title after a process that investigates the land’s title history. Here in California, that history often has to be traced back to Mexican land grants in the 1800s, which is kinda nuts just to sell a small home.

  Sure, for a 1 sq meter plot – which no one should ever buy using a mortgage – the buyer might not need/want title insurance. But the lack of title provenance inflates purchase prices, simple because people do want to know that they’re actually buying something real and it’s not a worthless deed.

  (as an aside, it’s entirely possible in California and other states to sell a deed for land you might own, but which the seller makes no guarantee that they do in fact own. It’s kinda like a fork in cryptocurrency, where if the fork is later rejected, then that part of the ledger history is entirely dead and you’re SOL. Again, we could really use a central land registry…)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you were to launch a rocketship parallel to the earth, on wheels, how big would the ramp have to be to get it into space?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You can’t just point your spacecraft into space, give it a boost and be flying off into the void forever.

  To be clear, is the reason this is not sufficient for flying forever is due to orbital mechanics making “point and shoot” not feasible if aiming for the void? Or because the boost isn’t sufficient to escape the planetary system’s influence and thus still predominantly subject to its gravitation pull? Or both?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How is spontaneous betting (as portrayed by comics and movies) supposed to work?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  shouting style betting

  I don’t have the answer to your question at large, but your description reminded me of the old method of how stock trading floors used to work. My understanding is that it involved lots of yelling and hand signals, with video of the whole process likely available online.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is having a lawyer present during police interviews "opt in" rather than "opt out"?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Here in the USA, we have numerous substantive and procedural criticisms of the legal system, and while IANAL, the latter is of particular interest to me and is the in domain of your questions. I will try to address each in turn, since they kinda build upon each other.

  Shouldn’t [providing a lawyer] be the default and not require the suspect/subject to actually ask for one?

  To get to the answer, we need to step back and get examine what the exact obligation is. In the USA, the specific right in question is the individual’s right to choose legal counsel. That is, a person has the final authority as to who will represent and advise them in legal proceedings. This right isn’t unlimited though, and it doesn’t mean that they ought to be represented by a specific lawyer for free. But rather, the right means that no one else can make that decision on that person’s behalf.

  But in the Anglo-American formulation of what a right is, it is also an obligation upon everyone else. Specifically, the government is obligated to not interfere with a person’s free choice of lawyer. This was poignantly and recently examined by the federal court in DC, as it pertains to the executive’s attacks on the law firm Perkins Coie, where the federal judge ripped the government for interference with due process rights, from which the right to choice of lawyer.

  But there’s a wrinkle with rights: if the liberty it affords is the ability to choose, how would choosing nothing be handled? That is, if a person wishes to not choose, how can they affirmatively decline to choose? There are – and it’s a foolhardy exercise – criminal defendants in the USA that plainly choose to represent themselves in court, with no lawyer to aid them. The general rule for a “unilateral” right such as this one is that it is “optional”, where affirmative actions are needed to involve the right, otherwise the default is that the right isn’t invoked.

  And that sits fairly well in the breath of rights that civilians enjoy, such as the right to travel the public lands (eg walking or riding a bicycle on the street) to the First Amendment’s right to petition the government. After all, no one from the govt is phoning people up every day to ask “do you wish to unicycle on Main St today?” or “would you like to comment on the city budget next Tuesday?”. More clearly, those rights are fairly obvious when they wish to be used, or when they don’t wish to be used. (Though I grant you that the latter implicates a right to notification, but that’s a whole different matter)

  The system of rights gets even more complicated when someone holds two opposing rights. For example, in the USA, everyone has both the right to free speech, plus the right to silence. In that case, it absolutely forces the matter, because the absence of speech is very much a matter than can be criminalized. For example, failing to say something under penalty of perjury. How this is handled gets complicated, and generally speaking, such actions or inactions have to clearly show intent to invoke (or not) the specific right. This is precisely why it’s important to say “I wish to invoke my right to silence and to an attorney” when arrested, because otherwise the government’s obligations are confused, since the rights are confused. That statement unquestionably clears up the situation for how the govt must behave.

  Basically, in order for the govt to meet its obligation not to interfere with someone’s choice of lawyer, it would not be proper if they then proposed a lawyer by name to represent that person. Even just making such a proposal is coercive, since the govt holds most of the power and clout when in court. Instead, if the person voices their request for a lawyer, then that sets into motion the apparatus for verifying their eligibility for a public lawyer from the Public Defender’s office – btw, these offices are woefully underfunded, so contact your representatives to fix this! – and then finding such a lawyer to represent the person.

  All of this stems from due process, and the “Miranda warning” is the practical implementation of due process. Since if someone doesn’t even know they have a right, it might as well not exist.

  I think the only question should be “do you have your own lawyer you like to use, or are you happy enough with the court-appointed one?”

  This is the obvious question, following notification that the right even exists. But again, if the appointed lawyer has already been selected and it’s only a trinary choice - your own lawyer, this specific public defender, or no one – then that’s still somewhat coercive. It precludes the possibility of having a different public defense lawyer, of which the existing process already handles.

  When I say that the public defender’s office finds a lawyer to represent someone, they do so while mindful that not every lawyer can represent every client. After all, Greenpeace wouldn’t want a lawyer that’s also currently working a case for Chevron, the oil giant. Conflicts of interest may arise, as well as any other scenario that would make said lawyer less effective at their job: zealously advocating for their client.

  But again, this isn’t an unlimited right of the person, so a case cannot be delayed indefinitely because the client doesn’t like any of the public defender lawyers. But a case can absolutely be parked due to no available public lawyers, though if this happens, courts typically have other avenues to clean the logjam but without infringing on civil rights.

  Has there ever been any attempt to make that the norm in any countries?

  I’m only vaguely familiar with Anglosphere jurisdictions, and haven’t come across a system that improves on this situation. Though quite frankly, if it’s going to happen, it should be tried at the state level in the USA, where there’s the most room and latitude for improvement.

  I’m not even sure opting out should be allowed, but I’m open to hearing reasons why that would be a bad system

  The coercion issue from earlier can be turned to 11, if the govt is operating in bad faith. Imagine, for example, that the govt charges someone with bogus accusations, then bribes a corrupt lawyer from out-of-state to come represent the defendant against their will, who will then “throw” the case and land the defendant in prison. There are a lot of norms and procedures that would have to be violated to do this, but that’s kinda the point: defense in depth is equally applicable to computer security as it is to civil rights.

  An institution that assumes good faith govt will be hard pressed to deal with a govt that acts in bad faith. I make no excuses for the numerous American federal and state-level judicial fails, but when it comes to institutions that will uphold civil rights, individual liberty with regards to accessing the legal system is crucial.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Am I weird for avoiding flying on prop planes, and only fly on jets?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Answering the titular question, I personally don’t find it weird that someone might avoid certain types of aircraft, in the same way that some people strongly prefer certain aircraft. For example, the big windows and the more-comfortable pressurization of the Boeing 787 is appealing for some. But alternatively, some might prefer the modern Canadian design of the Airbus A220.

  Objectively speaking, though, propeller planes is a very wide category, and I’m curious which specific aspect you want to avoid. Piston-powered propeller craft are basically non-existent in commercial passenger airline service, with the exception of small “puddle jumper”, 15-seat air taxi services. Such airplanes tend to be loud and also use leaded gasoline – hilariously still called “low lead” despite apparently having more lead additive than what motor gasoline had in the 1980s.

  Then there are turbo prop aircraft, like the ATR-72, which are basically a propeller taking power off of a jet engine core. No lead here, and noise is slightly less bothersome due to continuous jet combustion, but the sound of the propeller remains. Though this is offset by the lower cruise speeds, so less “wind noise”.

  If perhaps the concern is about propeller failures, bear in mind that commercial passenger aviation is exceptionally safe, across all aircraft types. The propulsion method is small-fries compared to the backend support and logistics of an airliner and ATC, plus having two pilots, and all manner of other things which blend into the background but are essential for safety. Pretty much only the elevator would be safer than air travel, even accounting for some rather unfortunate recent incidents here in USA airspace.

  That said, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that propeller and jet fan failures have had fatalities in living memory, with a notable event being the blade ejection of a Southwest Boeing 737 that pierced the fuselage and partially ejected a passenger.

  Overall, I personally have zero qualms about commercial passenger propeller aircraft, and up until the Boeing 737 MAX fiasco, most people did not care at all which type of airplane they were boarding. Since that event, booking websites added filters to allow excluding specific types of aircraft by model. But I’ve not seen one which excludes by propulsion type.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wifi Portal⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  But how do they connect to your network in order to access this web app? If the WiFi network credentials are needed to access the network that has the QR code for the network credentials, this sounds like a Catch 22.

  Also, is a QR code useful if the web app is opened on the very phone needing the credentials? Perhaps other phones are different, but my smartphone is unable to scan a QR code that is on the display.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wifi Portal⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not immediately understanding what the user scenario/story is. Would a family member open this web app on a desktop computer, in order to obtain the WiFi credentials to configure their phone or tablet?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are standing seats on airliners actually going to be a thing?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Setting aside whether such seats are actively hazardous to passengers for anything more than a short-haul flight – they almost certainly are – we can fairly easily rule out the possibility based solely on one of the more important airline test criteria: evacuation time.

  For all commercial passenger airliners, the primary limiting factor for economy seating is how to get everyone out of the airplane in an emergency situation within the stipulated time, in ideal circumstances. In the USA, that time is 90 seconds, based on research that the inferno post-crash due to ruptured fuel tanks would only allow the plane to remain intact for about two minutes. Front that article, the largest passenger jet in the world – the Airbus A380 – could evacuate 873 people through 16 doors on two dual-aisle decks. A typical short-haul, single-aisle Boeing 737 has only six doors and carries a maximum of 230 passengers with the still-being-certified 737 MAX 10 variant.

  The benefit of having more doors and more aisles must not be understated, but even then, another limiting factor is takeoff weight. Using the 737 MAX 10 as an example, the difference between its empty weight and takeoff weight is some 40,000 pounds. But 230 people already makes around 20,000 pounds, so the aircraft already cannot be fully loaded with its intended 44,000 pound fuel capacity. Packing more people into this aircraft would steal even more capacity and leaving the aircraft unable to support transcontinental USA flights.

  But supposing that was overcome, and flights with so-called standing seats were only about 2 hours long or so, the problem would be with seat durability during a crash scenario. Jet airlines seats are designed to absorb energy, since excessive G-forces would kill a human, well before any fire might get to them. A seat which relies on legs for vertical support would be unable to adequately absorb downward forces from a hard touchdown, nor from forces from hitting an obstacle or being rammed from behind. These two directions are what humans are best able to cope with, and a standing seat steals these benefits away.

  Thus, a seat that complies with energy absorption requirements would be at least as thick as existing seatbacks, and would probably be thicker or heavier, further reducing available payload.

  The only conceivable revenue service would be one where economy class uses so-called standing seats, in order to free up room for business or first-class seats, staying within the existing seat limits for existing aircraft. However, the time to board such an aircraft would be noticeably slower than with a conventional seat aircraft, so at some point, such an airliner would need to consider whether a stopped aircraft loading passengers is better value than an aircraft which can be quickly turned around for another flight segment.

  All of these factors point to a technical inability to squeeze more passengers into less space. And remember that there’s no free lunch: a “standing” passenger frees up space between rows, but requires more height at each seat. At least from my experience, one cannot stand up in a conventional seat, without hitting the ceiling. How would a typical 5 ft 9 in (175 cm) American be able to use a “standing” seat safely?

  I personally discount the possibility of “standing” seats deployed on existing and proposed aircraft, so it would be at least 10-20 years before we even see such a thing for revenue passenger aircraft.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Besides money/capitalism, why are tech companies trying to push AI text generators over search engines?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Money and incentives are very powerful, but also remember that these organizations are made of humans. And humans are vain.

  Amassing station and power can scarcely be divorced from the history of human civilization, and even fairly trivial things like the job title of “AI engineer” or whatever might be alluring to those aspiring for it.

  To that end, it’s not inhuman to pursue “the next big thing”, however misguided that thing may be. All good lies are wrapped in a kernel of truth, and the fact is that machine learning and LLMs have been in development for decades and do have a few concrete contributions to scientific endeavors. But that’s the small kernel, and surrounding it is a soup of lies, exaggerations, and inexactitudes which somehow keep drawing more entities into the fold.

  Governments, businesses, and universities seem eager to get on the bandwagon before it departs the station, but where is it heading? Probably nowhere good. But hey, it’s new and shiny, and when nothing else suggests a quick turnaround for systemic government, economic, or academic issues (usually caused by colonialism, fascism, debt, racism, or social change), then might as well hitch onto the bandwagon and pray for the best.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Digital buffer works for a bit, then stops, turning it off for an hour resets it to working again⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  BTW, you might consider posting about your finished results at !micromobility@lemmy.world . We enjoy all things bicycle-related there, especially when it’s solving a unique problem or solving it in unique ways.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Digital buffer works for a bit, then stops, turning it off for an hour resets it to working again⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  (sorry for the long delay)

  From your description, I’m wondering if the internal pull-up from the bike computer might actually be an active output, and that the open-drain buffer is causing the bike computer to give up sourcing that pull-up voltage. That is to say, if a larger-than-expected current is drawn from the bike computer, it might trigger a protection mechanism to avoid damage to its output circuitry.

  To that end, I would imagine that either: 1) an inline resistor to limit drain current, 2) a push-pull buffer, or 3) both, would help rectify the issue.

  My suspicion is based purely on the fact that getting stuck low for an open-drain device could be an issue “upstream”. If it were stuck high, I wouldn’t normally suspect this path.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Digital buffer works for a bit, then stops, turning it off for an hour resets it to working again⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  For your edit #2, can you post a schematic of the relevant part of the circuit? It’s a bit hard to imagine how things are arranged, especially where your pull up resistor at the output of the buffer is.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Digital buffer works for a bit, then stops, turning it off for an hour resets it to working again⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If I had to guess, perhaps the buffer circuit is going onto latch-up due to ESD spikes, which is then locking the open drain to conduct, which is why you’re seeing a LOW output.

  When in doubt, I suppose you can tack on more decoupling capacitors nearby the buffer’s Vcc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Digital buffer works for a bit, then stops, turning it off for an hour resets it to working again⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  When the buffer gets into this glitch scenario, is the output stuck at high or low?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Typically, business-oriented vendors will list the hardware that they’ve thoroughly tested and will warranty for operation with their product. The lack of testing larger disk sizes does not necessarily mean anything larger than 1 TB is locked out or technically infeasible. It just means the vendor won’t offer to help if it doesn’t work.

  That said, in the enterprise storage space where disks are densely packed into disk shelves with monstrous SAS or NVMeoF configurations, vendor specific drives are not unheard of. But to possess hardware that even remotely has that possibility kinda means that sort of thing would be readily apparent.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not a pilot but have always looked to the open skies with dreams and admiration. I think we need to unpack a few assumptions.

  something that’s very forbidden in the aviation world because of lightning

  Weather (WX) has always been an integral part of aviation, as early as the lighter-than-air (ie hot-air balloon) days. The strength of human kind is no match to what nature can throw at us, and so instead we adapt to what nature gives us. On one hand, nature provides niceties like prevailing wind and thermals, to allow us to build runways pointing into the wind and for gliders to gain altitude. On the other hand, nature can decide that an Icelandic volcano shoots hundreds of thousands of tons of particulate matter into the air, grounding all commercial flights in European airspace.

  Resilience becomes the objective, to safely operate revenue aircraft in the face of fickle natural phenomena. And this is achieved in a multi-layer approach, with resilience baked in at every step. The aircraft itself, the crew, the airports, ATC, and the regulators, they all are trained and briefed on known hazards, which is part of why commercial aviation is one of the safest modes of travel, sans maybe the elevator.

  Unlike volcanic activity or windshears/microbursts, thunderstorms and lightning give plenty of warning through day-ahead WX forecasts, as well as onboard radar. These are not fool-proof – for example, radar can be shadowed by nearby precipitation, hiding enormous thunder clouds beyond. But despite how terrifying it may sound to fly through a storm, it isn’t impossible and certainly not unmanageable. But it does take preparation, and requires sufficient margins so that if anything starts to look awry, there’s an escape path.

  Often times, the escape path is just to climb away.

  Lightning struck the plane … which could’ve been catastrophic

  There are many things which are potentially catastrophic for aircraft: loss of engines, loss of pressurization, a lithium ion battery fire in the cargo compartment, a medical emergency while overflying the mid-Atlantic.

  But while a gut-reaction would be to outright avoid risk, human endeavors can make no progress like that. So instead, worst-case planning means developing procedures for when not if something bad happens.

  Aircraft are designed to take lightning strikes, and although the Boeing 787 uses a lot of composite material, it too has provisions for lightning.

  the report for this incident

  Seeing as the incident here occurred on 17 March 2025, I wouldn’t expect the Japan Transport Safety Board (JTSB; the air safety regulator, equivalent to USA NTSB) to have published a final report. There might be a preliminary report, but this is not that.

  This appears to be a collection of ADS-B data, a mention of damage to a control surface, and a Twitter post about airline compensation due to diverting from Haneda (HND) to Narita (NRT).

  Were it not for the control surface damage, this incident might have fallen below the threshold for reporting, since no source suggests there were injuries and I don’t see – having not watched the video – an emergency being declared by the pilots. Diversions are not wholly uncommon, for a number of operational or WX reasons.

  I’m pretty sure if a US or European pilot did this, they’d get their license revoked

  I think this is wrong, based solely on the robust safety culture in both the USA and in European airspace. Safety culture means that procesures are developed to manage risk, these procedures are regularly practiced, are updated with the latest available recommendations, and non-wilful deviations from procedure (aka mistakes) will be addressed by additional training, not by punishment.

  As Mentour Pilot eloquently reminds viewers of his YouTube channel, if punishment were metted out for every mistake, then it’s a disincentive to report mistakes, which makes safety worse for everyone.

  No doubt, there are pilots which have operated grossly outside the bounds of acceptability, like flying an empty jet into coffin corner, or allowing a child to fly the plane. Such accidents are reported precisely because they blew through every layer of the Swiss cheese model of accident causation, and tragically took lives.

  So with all that out of the way, I think we can still try to answer the titular question.

  A scheduled passenger airliner tries to get passengers from airport A to airport B. A lot of prep is done in the background to make this happen, organizing the ground crew, flight crew, and backend operations at the airliner HQ. Most of the time, the flight is uneventful and arrives as expected. A few times, there might a go-around, but pilots are trained to not shy away from doing a go-around, and have the reserve fuel to do so.

  With any sort of damage on approach, be it from a bird strike or lightning strike, the pilots will have to: 1) secure the plane, usually by initiating a go-around to buy valuable time and get away from the ground, and 2) assess the condition of the airplane and make a plan. In this case, the airplane diverted to a nearby airport, which was probably the backup destination airport.

  As mentioned before, WX is fickle, and a storm can easily creep over the airport when the plane is within radio contact. And even if the storm was already over the arrival path, if the indications are still suitable for landing – eg low crosswind, no tailwind, no predicted windshears, no prior pilot reports of landing troubles – then the pilots will have discretion to continue their approach.

  For a healthy safety culture, the airliner’s own procedures have to place the pilots as the ultimate decision-makers once a flight is underway, and so while it’s unfortunate that damage occurred unexpectedly, nothing from the minimal available information suggests this amounts to a systemic or procedural error, nor wilful malfeasance.

  The fact that the airliner returned to service days later means this might simply be slightly more than mundane happenings. Though it would be prudent to keep an eye out for a future report from the safety regulator.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Acquired HPE DL380 G9 - Questions about what is done for self hosting on them these days⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Congrats on the acquisition!

  DL380 G9

  Does this machine have its iLO license? If so, you’re in for a treat, if you’ve never used IPMI or similar out-of-band server management. Starting as a glorified KVM, it then has full power control authority (power on/off, soft reset, hard reset), either a separate or shared Ethernet connection, virtual CD and USB, SNMP reporting, and other whiz-bang features. Used correctly, you might never have to physically touch the machine after installation, except for parts replacement.

  What is your go-to place to source drive caddies or additional bays if needed?

  When my Dell m1000e was missing two caddies, I thought about buying a few spares on eBay. But ultimately, I just 3d printed a few and that worked fine.

  Finally, server racks are absurdly expensive of course. Any suggestions on DIY’s for a rack would be appreciated.

  I built my rack using rails from Penn-Elcom, as I had a very narrow space I wanted to fit my machines. Building an open-frame 4-post rack is almost like putting a Lego set together, but you will have to take care to make sure it doesn’t become a parallelogram. That is, don’t impart a sideways load.

  Above all, resist the urge to get by with a two-post rack. This will almost certainly end in misery, considering that enterprise servers are not lightweight.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨if pure water is not conductive why would condensation be an issue for electronics?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Wireless water, coming right up: www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_QfX0SYCE8

  In all seriousness, not all participate sticks to water vapor, if said particulate is non-polar – the lipid envelope of one SARS-CoV2 comes to mind. It would be more effective to clean the air using a furnace filter taped to a box fan, and it’s only up from there: electrostatic filters or actual air cleaners with a filter.

  That said, some console humidifiers push air through essentially a large sponge, and that can already be effective at trapping larger particulate, although not effective for tiny virus-sized particles.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨if pure water is not conductive why would condensation be an issue for electronics?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If water vapor was the only thing airborne, then this would be mostly plausible. But the reality in any typical environment is for small particles of dust, soot, microplastics, COCs, etc to be in the air, in addition to the usual suspects of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, etc. Some of those will increase the conductance of water, when condensed upon a cool surface. Think of water vapor as a lint filter that floats around the room until it lands on something.

  But even in a hermetically sealed environment with only the typical atmospheric mix of oxygen and nitrogen and other trace elemental gases, and then water vapor, there’s still a problem. Air has a conductivity – measures in Siemens, the inverted unit of Ohms which is resistance – of 3-8 x 10^15, meaning it will not conduct much at all. But compared to condensation upon a PCB in this sealed environment, DI water has a conductance of 5.5 x 10^6. That is 100,000,000x times more conductive, although it’s still a tiny amount.

  The reality is that all circuits and electronics leak small currents here and there, even through the air or through their PCB substrates. But the sum total of these leakage and creepage currents will be negligible in all but high-voltage cifcuits. Though that’s only under the rated environmental conditions.

  When air is fully saturated at 100% humidity, some of those currents become noticeable. And for high-voltage switchgear, it can become an issue very quickly. But iutright water on most circuit would be disastrous due to arcing or shorting, or both.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How would legal procedure change if every citizen eligible for jury duty was aware of jury nullification?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Supposing that any change did materialize, it is a bedrock principle of legal procedure to not change substantially just because the outcomes have noticeable changed. That is to say, if there was anything like a sudden drop in conviction rates, it would be improper for the judges, appellate justices, and defense and prosecuting attorneys to do anything different than what they would have done prior. That’s kinda the point of having a procedure: to follow it and see what happens.

  The source for such changes would have to be brought legislatively, since – at least in the USA/California – that’s how changes to the law and civil/criminal procedure are made. Sure, entities like the Judicial Council of California would be making recommendations, but it’s on the Legislature to evaluate the problem and implement any necessary changes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  TIL

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The remarkable thing is that modern chip-and-pin cards do support that sort of “offline” transaction, although fortunately without the carbon copy paper. Specifically, a non-networked credit card terminal can present a transaction to the chip, the chip will cryptographically sign this transaction in a unique way, and the terminal will store it for later submittal to the credit card company, when an online connection is possible.

  For a typical “online” transaction when there are no connectivity issues, the third step would send the transaction immediately to the credit card company, so they can have the option of declining the charge. The cryptography is otherwise the same, and it’s why offline transactions are possible.

  Some vendors like SNCF (the national rail operator) in France use offline transactions for their ticket vending machines at rural stations, where there’s no guarantee of being within mobile phone service. The card issuer also usually programs some safeguards to prevent abuse, such as X number of offline max and then an online transaction is mandatory, or a limit on the value of purchases (eg $50 max for offline). After all, there cannot be a check against one’s credit limit when offline.

  In the USA, it is exceedingly rare for credit cards to be issued as chip-and-pin, and while offline transactions can be performed with chip-and-signature cards, it’s rarely enabled since most/all terminals in the USA have been online since the introduction of electronic credit card processing.

  Contactless chip cards might have changed the calculus though, since there is no PIN at all for these transactions. So perhaps issuers might allow a few offline transactions when contactless.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  For buses in particular, bear in mind that liquid fuels typically require pumping, which usually uses electricity. So gasoline or diesel pumps might not be available, even if the underground storage tank has fuel. Here in California, a lot of public buses are fueled with Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) which in theory could have already been compressed at the depot, but this would only last so long, since it takes energy to run the compressor, assuming the natural gas pipeline is unaffected.

  Obviously, electric buses and trolleybuses need electricity. So at this point, perhaps the only bus that would be totally immune is an omnibus, that 19th century people-mover that was drawn by horses. But consider the “emissions” from a horse though…

  In all seriousness, the contingency plans for a transit agency will vary depending on where you are in the world. For American transit agencies, most don’t even offer service on Sunday or holidays (very strange in the land of hyper religiousness; no bus to church??) and any labor strikes usually result in every service being closed, sometimes including essential ADA operations.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In the United States; is it illegal to use a single serve wrapped slice of Kraft cheese as a postcard?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  At the very minimum, this type of mail would incur the $0.46 non-machinable surcharge because it’s smaller than one of the minimum USPS dimensions for postcards, namely that one size has to be 5 inches (127 mm exact). You may also have issues with it being too floppy for basic handling by the postal carrier, especially if it was previously left in a warm mailbox.

  But perhaps a more practical issue may arise first: will stamps even adhere to the wrapping of a Kraft Cheese single? If you cannot affix postage, that’s the most immediate impediment.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Infinite interrupts except when logic analyzer is connected. Tried a pull-up resistor.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Switching noise is naturally the first place to look, when an IRQ is firing rapidly and unexpectedly. But have you verified that your IRQ handler is completely handling each interrupt event? And that another interrupt event while handling the prior one will not lead to unusual behavior?

  It could very well be a rare, spurious interior firing due to noise, but then exacerbated by an IRA handler that doesn’t clear properly, leading to high speed sprioois events.

  What are the approximate sizes for the internal and external pull-up resistors you’ve attached? And what is the impedance for the actual interrupt source, when it actually fires?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If I snapped you back in time 650 years right this very second, how would you use your current knowledge to succeed?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  no rubber for seals

  Modern synthetic rubber would indeed be unavailable, but I vaguely recall reading something to the effect that early steam engines used leather seals or something like that.

  But yeah, there’s a lot of missing prerequisites for machinery. Even simple rotary power – like from a windmill or waterwheel – would suffer from being incapable of long distance transmission

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  should

  when it comes to legality

  This needs clarification. Are you asking about the legal status of Character AI’s chatbot, and how its output would be treated w.r.t. to intellectual property rights? Or about the ethical or moral questions raised by machine-generated content, and whether society or law should adapt to answer those questions?

  The former is an objective inquiry, which can be answered based on the current laws for a given jurisdiction. The latter is an open-ended, subjective question for which there is no settled consensus, let alone a firm answer one way or another.

  I decline to answer the latter, but I think there’s only one answer for the objective law question. IANAL, but existing fanfiction does not imbue its author with rights over characters from another author, at least in the USA. But fanfiction authors do retain copyright over their own contributions.

  So if an author writes about the 1920s Mickey Mouse character (now in public domain) but set in a gay space communist utopia, the plot of that novel would be the author’s intellectual property. But not the character itself, which remains public domain. However, character development that happens would be the author’s property, insofar as such traits didn’t exist before.

  What aspects of this situation do you envision would require different treatment just because it’s the output from a chatbot? Barring specific language in a Terms of Use agreement that transfers ownership to the parent company of Character AI chatbot, machines – and gorillas – are not eligible to own intellectual property. The author would be the human being which set into motion the conditions for the machine to produce a particular output.

  In conventional writing, an author does not relinquish ownership to Xerox Corporation just because the final manuscript was printed using a Xerox-made printer. But just because an author uses a machine to help produce a work, that will not excuse plagiarism or intellectual property violations, which will accrue against the human being commiting that act.

  (I express no opinion on whether intellectual property is still a net positive for society, or not)