I’ve begun to pay for Kagi.com

I wouldn’t say that it “blows my mind” or anything, but simply that it seems to work as expected (which is more than what I can say for Google). There’s also a “Fediverse” button on Kagi.com, so it can search lemmy.world (and more??).

Lemmy, the social network, started off as a leftist hangout spot.

From the perspective of “Open Source developers who are anti-Reddit pro-Fediverse”, it makes a lot of sense for Leftist/Communist and anti-corporation leaning people to hang out.

After all, the more extreme the viewpoint, the more driven to action (ie: write tens-of-thousands of lines of code and release for free) people get. In some regards, its the nature of Open Source + volunteer effort to attract a more extreme ideology. IE: Free Software is driven by ideology, not by money. So you get ideological people, especially when the software is small and niche.

The July 2023 Reddit Blackout was a big challenge for Lemmy’s old community and the new community, as the new community basically “invaded” a large scale leftist hangout spot. But hopefully we all learn to work together and the nature of our neighbors moving forward.

I think anyone here (likely everyone?) is at least on the anti-corporate anti-Reddit side of the discussion. Which is enough of an alliance to keep us together, for now.

It does mean that we’ll have to keep up with the far-left old-timers on this network who wish to push their viewpoints. But they are the legacy and the start of Lemmy in some respects, even as the hypergrowth (starting in July 2023) has moderated the community pretty severely.

The 13th month should be called eleven, because it’d come after December (10), our 12th month.

It’s len(str) in Python. Not str.length.

Is it wrong that I’m stuck trying to figure out what language this is?

Trying to figure out what string.length and print(var) exist in a single language… Not Java, not C# (I’m pretty sure its .Length, not length), certainly not C, C++ or Python, Pascal, Schme or Haskell or Javascript or PHP.

The Chu Ko Nu was more of a party-trick than a real weapon though. The amount of power behind each bolt was miniscule.

The actual “rapid-fire warbow” the Chinese used was the lol rocket-launcher. (Or really, Koreans did it first, strapping Chinese rockets to a bunch of arrows and lighting all of them at the same time, causing devastating effects on the battlefield). See Hwacha: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwacha

Zhuge Liang’s biggest battlefield contribution in practice was probably the popularization of the “Ox Cart”, aka the Wheelbarrow. The Shu’s army could march further since they had such contraptions powering their logistics. Kinda funny to think that things like Wheelbarrows were still the stuff of sci-fi in the year 200 AD, but that’s where technology was in practice.

EDIT: The fact that Zhuge Liang’s lanterns (aka: hot air balloons) got practical usage back then is incredible though.

Honestly, if it doesn’t end with people getting impaled on spikes in front of his castle, I have a tough time believing it was Vlad, lol. Pretty much everything ended with “And then they were impaled to serve as a warning to everyone else” like every damn time.

Alibaba in some ways.

My understanding of Alibaba (and the 1001 Arabian Nights) is that they’re closer to Arabic “Duck Tales”. Fantastical stories more designed to woo children with crazy powers and nearly illogical plot structures. However, 1001 Arabian Nights became absurdly popular in Europe, far more popular than well-respected Arabic Heroes. (Much like how Duck Tales is a children’s story in American culture, but way more popular in Europe for some reason). Or for the American equivalent: us importing young-adult shows from Japan (lots of anime) and the American adults consuming it.

For someone “like King Arthur”, an adventuring Hero that’s well respected in the culture that they’re from (ex: English respect King Arthur and see him as high-culture), Arabic Heroes are closer to Sinbad the Sailor instead, rather than Alibaba, Aladdin, or Scheherazade.

Unfortunately, if an Arabic tale came to Europe in the 1500s to 1800s, it would be called “Arabic Nights”, because the original 1001 Arabian Nights was just so popular, every translator in Europe would basically add it as one of Scheherazade’s sub-stories. So its difficult from a Western / English-speaking lens to see what is, or isn’t, respected high-culture stories.

I’m looking through Wikipedia and have come across Antarah ibn Shaddad, a Guardian of the Nativity (Yes, “that” Nativity, Jesus’s birthplace). Such a hero sounds far more similar to King Arthur as a heroic figure to look up towards. (A lot of 1001 Arabian Nights are filled with rather disgusting and backstabby characters and aren’t really “Heroes”).

Its hard to overstate how “legendary” the names are of Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

The Sun family who controls Wu (one of the Three Kingdoms), is the same Sun family who wrote Sun Tzu’s Art of War.

There is this legend / history from Romania called Vlad Dracula. He was a Voivod (would be roughly a Count in Western nobility, but with more military powers) who brutally murdered the rich and corrupt Boyars and gave order and safety to the poor.

If you ignored the hundreds of impaled men, women and children in front of his Castles… Legend says he kept gold at the center of his towns to prove that all thieves were dead. If anyone openly stole the gold at the center of town, they’d be impaled.

Perhaps Vlad Dracula was too brutal by Western European standards. But IMO, there seems to be overarching tales of someone who stood up to the corrupt Nobility and actually enacted a sense of justice between both Robin Hood and Vlad.

Obviously, it’s 100% myth by the time people are telling stories of the Count Dracula who drinks your blood. But as a nobleman of the years 1400s or so, his true story is so difficult to separate out from the myths and legends. Whoever was for real, he was clearly brutal to have caused so many myths to be written about him.

Going further East, there are the many Tales of Baba Yaga. A powerful and brutal witch of Siberia. There’s all kinds of stories of Baba Yaga, but she usually has Twins or Triplets form, a Dancing Hut and powerful and brutal (but ironically fair) Magicks.

I wouldn’t say that Baba Yaga is like King Arthur… But Baba Yaga very similar to the evil and brutal Morgana of Arthurian lore. But Baba Yaga has no peer or equal. There is no King Arthur or other set of knights to save society from Baba Yaga wrath.

Even further East are the Fables from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms of China.

The TL;DR is that China had a massive civil war at the fall of the Han Empire in the year 200AD or so. This Civil War lasted three generations.

As the Han Emperor was stolen by the evil Dung Zhou, the 12-way Coalition army tried to save the emperor. It was too late however, China fell into a war and the 12 warlords soon entered a period of free-for-all, vying to control all of China.

The armies kill and or subsume each other until the rise of Shu, Wu and Wei. The ‘winners’ of that period of chaos. And then the real crazy shit starts happening.

They utilized Magicks to create battlefield conditions: unlikely wind that spread fires through enemy camps. They find legendary weapons. Single men fight against armies of a thousand or more.

This crazy Wizard/Inventor named Zhuge Liang invented hot air balloons and used them as communication between troop formations. No wait, this one is actually true and not a legend.

Lots of Chinese Magic and History here as the three-way free for all causes a natural set of alliance (Shu and Wu were weak early on) but then later when Shu grew more powerful, Wu and Wei staged a careful betrayal killing the God of War: Guan Yu (one of the main generals of the Shu. This is “That long-beard Guy riding the Red Horse” you keep seeing in every Chinese Restaraunt)

Romance of the Three Kingdoms is somewhere between King Arthur and the Bible in terms of importance to Chinese Culture. Even modern Chinese understand that whoever wrote the book was a Liu Bei fanboy (aka: obviously biased / favors Shu in every situation). But the book is incredibly influential to Chinese Philosophy. Many sayings and parables about the importance of scholarship and science (Zhuge Liang and Sima Yis inventions to change the course of battle), the importance of order and fairness (even the brutal warlord Cao Cao of Wei was well known and well-regarded as a fair king). The importance of recruitment efforts, and other such parables / philosophy regarding how societies can gain advantage over each other. Not just battle, but through economic power, legends, and more.

Chrono Crusade is maybe the closest you’ll get

Chrono Crusade is a Miko x Yokai adventure story except the Miko is a Nun and the Yokai is a “Demon”.

Mikos are known to use archery to defeat Yokai. No wait, its a nun and westerners use guns, right? And they meet all kinds of Yokai… like good yokai, bad yokai, friendly yokai. No wait, western culture doesn’t have Yokai, they call them Demons. So good demons, bad demons, friendly demons…

Nothing wrong with that :-) Switching up the setting is fine but its not especially “Christian” in theme.

You expect a country of Buddhists and Shinto to make a Christian anime?

There’s Evangelion, which is closer to how we Westerners take Buddhist holy texts and say random techno-mumbo-jumbo in our SciFi stories (ex: Stargate).

Similarly, Angel Beats takes the Christian idea of Purgatory except it’s all Buddhist / Zen enlightenment based because Japan doesn’t get Christianity lol.

There is Death Note, where some characters are explicitly Catholic and a few Christian references pop up kind of elegantly. (L washes the feet of Light Yagami for example). I wouldn’t call the plot especially ‘Christian’ otherwise but this does deserve mention as an Anime that at least got the meaning behind the Christian references they chose.

Digimon Season 1 might be the closest thing to Christian. Kids get powers as they invoke the power of Virtues like Courage or Faith. Two Digimon turn into literal Angels and one of the bad guys is ‘Devilmon’, who was weak to the angel Digimon. Season4 has a fallen angel named Lucifer (well… Lucemon. All Digimon have a -mon on the end) who goes evil as well. Season4 is more random / less elegant with the Christian references as Cherubimom and Seriphmon (angels) don’t really represent Christian ideas anymore IMO.

But Season1 Digimon was the closest you’ll get IMO

But this is really rare. Christianity is treated as an exotic religion / weird Character trait more often than not (much like random Buddhists show up in Hollywood to round out a cast or add a bit of exotic flair).

I dunno. Hellsing Ultimate? Irish Catholic priest is pissed off at a Protestant Vampire who works for the Queen in the 1990s… is referencing ‘The Troubles’ too soon?

Obviously not a Christian story given the huge amounts of hyperviolence. But the Christian references were at least kinda-sorta correct…

Universal Paperclips is one of the best clicker games.

In particular: because it isn’t a clicker game. It only starts off as one. There’s only about 2 sections IIRC that are “clicker”, the start (before auto-clippers kick in), and then the quantum computer.

I guess you have to launch your first 20 or 30 probes at the space stage and that’s done one-click-at-a-time… but I don’t think that counts as a “clicker” game since its so few clicks in the great scheme of things. At no other point is rapid-clicking that useful.

I had a pretty standard linear-list scan initially. Each time the program started, I’d check the list for some values. The list of course grew each time the program started. I maximized the list size to like 2MB or something (I forget), but it was in the millions and therefore MBs range. I figured it was too small for me to care about optimization.

I was somewhat correct, even when I simulated a full-sized list, the program booted faster than I could react, so I didn’t care.

Later, I wrote some test code that exhaustively tested startup conditions. Instead of just running the startup once, I was running it millions of times. Suddenly I cared about startup speed, so I replaced it with a Hash Table so that my test-code would finish within 10 minutes (instead of taking a projected 3 days to exhaustively test all startup conditions).

Honestly, I’m more impressed at the opposite. This is perhaps one of the few times I’ve actually taken the linear-list and optimized it into a hash table. Almost all other linear-lists I’ve used in the last 10 years of my professional coding life remain just that: a linear scan, with no one caring about performance. I’ve got linear-lists doing some crazy things, even with MBs of data, that no one has ever came back to me and said it needs optimization.

Do not underestimate the power of std::vector. Its probably faster than you expect, even with O(n^2) algorithms all over the place. std::map and std::unordered_map certainly have their uses, but there’s a lot of situations where the std::vector is far, far, far easier to think about, so its my preferred solution rather than preoptimizing to std::map ahead of time.

To that end, the SAM9x60 is fantastic for widening the space for folks working in that high-end of the spectrum. But until someone or some entity produces a volume run of an SBC or drop-in module utilizing it, I can’t see why a rapid-development project inclined to use an RPi (middle end complexity) would want to incur the effort of doing their own custom design (high end complexity).

I feel like the SAM9x60D1G-I/LZB is close enough to a plug-and-play “compute module”, but you do have a point in that a compute-module isn’t quite a complete computer yet.

TI’s AM335x / Octavo OSD335x chips have a huge advantage from this particular criticism you have. These chips are behind the Beaglebone Black, meaning you have all three (Beaglebone Black / Green as a SBC for beginners, OSD335x SiP for intermediates, and finally the AM3351BZCEA60 (or other specific versions) for full customization.

At $50 for the SBC / Beaglebone Black, its a weaker buy than Rasp. Pi. But the overall environment and knowledge that Beaglebone Black represents a full ecosystem to the “expert” PCB layout (and includes an in-between SiP from Octavo systems) is surely one of the best arguments available.

Microchip obviously isn’t trying to compete against this at all, and I think that’s fine. TI’s got the full scale concept under lockdown. The SAM9x60’s chief advantage is (wtf??!?!) 4-layer prototypes for DDR2 routing. Its clearly a far simpler chip and more robust to work with. Well, that and also absurdly low power usage.

Rasp Pi’s power usage, be it the RP2040 or the Rasp. Pi products in general, always have had horrendous power-consumption specs and even worse sleep/idle states.

How many layers does the Orange Pi Zero pcb have?

Answer: Good luck finding out. That’s not documented. But based off of the layout and what I can see with screenshots, far more than 4 layers.

A schematic alone is kind of worthless. Knowing if a BGA is designed for 6, 8, or 10 layers makes a big difference. Seeing a reference pcb-implementation with exactly that layer count, so the EE knows how to modify the design for themselves is key to customization. There’s all sorts of EMI and trace-length matching that needs to happen to get that CPU to DDR connection up-and-running.

Proving that a 4-layer layout like this exists is a big deal. It means that a relative beginner can work with the SAM9x60’s DDR interface on cheap 4-layer PCBs (though as I said earlier: 6-layers offer more room and is available at OSHPark so I’d recommend a beginner work with 6 instead)

With regards to SAM9x60D1G-I/LZB SOM vs Orange Pi Zero, the SAM9x60D1G-I/LZB SOM provides you with all remaining pins of access… 152 pins… to the SAM9x60. Meaning a full development board with full access to every feature. Its a fundamentally different purpose. The SOM is a learning-tool and development tool for customization.

Well, my self-deprecating humor aside, I’ve of course thought about it more deeply over my research. So I don’t want to sell it too short.

SAM9x60 has a proper GPU (albeit 2D one), full scale Linux, and DDR2 support (easily reaching 64MB, 128MB or beyond of RAM). At $3 for DDR2 chips the cost-efficacy is absurd (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/issi-integrated-silicon-solution-inc/IS43TR16640C-125JBL/11568766), a QSPI 8MBit (1MB) SRAM chip basically costs the same as 1Gbit (128MB) of RAM.

Newhaven Displays offers various 16-bit TFT/LCD screens (https://newhavendisplay.com/tft-displays/standard-displays/) at a variety of price points. Lets take say… 400x300 pixel 16-bit screen for instance. How much RAM do you need for the framebuffer? (I dunno: this one https://newhavendisplay.com/4-3-inch-ips-480x272px-eve2-resistive-tft/ or something close).

Oh right, 400 x 300 x 2-bytes per pixel and we’re already at 240kB, meaning the entire field of MSP430, ATMega328, ARM Cortex-M0 and even ARM Cortex-M4 are dead on the framebuffer alone. Now lets say we have a 10-frames of animation we’d want to play and bam, we’re already well beyond what a $3 QSPI SRAM chip will offer us.

But lets look at one of the brother chips really quick: Microchip’s SAMA5D4. Though more difficult to boot up, this one comes with H.264 decoder. Forget “frames of animation”, this baby straight up supports MP4 videos on a full scale Linux platform.

Well, maybe you want Rasp. Pi to run that, but a Rasp. Pi 4 can hit 6000mW of power consumption, far beyond the means of typical battery packs of the ~3-inch variety. Dropping the power consumption to 300mW (SAMA5D4 + DDR2 RAM) + 300mW (LCD Screen) and suddenly we’re in the realm of AAA batteries.

So we get to the point where I can say: I can build you a 3" scale device powered by AAA batteries that runs full Linux and supports H.264 decode animations running on a Touch-screen interface, fully custom with whatever chips/whatever you want on it. Do I know what it does yet? No. Lol, I haven’t been able to figure that out yet. But… surely this is a useful base to start thinking of ideas.

So yeah, I think that’s basically the two paths the modern hobbyist have taken. If we need “custom” electronics, its “obviously an Arduino” (or similar competitor: MSP430, ESP32, STM32F3, Teensy, etc. etc.). We prototype with DIPs and then make a cheap 2-layer board that uses the microcontroller + the custom-bit of wiring we need and call it a day. Whereas the “Computer” world is a world of Ethernet, CANbus, PCIe, SD-MMC connectors and whatever. Its about standards and getting things to easily fit into standards, and far less about actual customization.

And these two paths are separated in our brains. They’re just different worlds and we don’t think too much about it.

I wanted to talk about SiP chips but I couldn’t find the space for it. I guess where my overall point is… is that today’s entry-level MPUs can create “custom Arduino-like” designs, except with the full scale Linux / Microprocessor level of compute power (well, on the low-end at least. All of these MPUs are far slower than Rasp. Pi).

I was talking about SAM9x60 earlier, but TI’s / Octavo System’s SiP based on AM355x has a very intriguing demo that you won’t believe.

This OSD335x SiP is a BGA system-on-package, fully bootable Linux computer. Complete with DDR2 RAM, onboard Flash for a file-system, Power-controller, and yes, even a PDN/power network to ensure smooth and consistent bootups.

What’s suddenly available here, is that you can boot up a full scale Linux-box in a 20mm x 20mm size, even with some of the dumbest PCB design imaginable. The amount of sophistication that’s going into these chips today is unreal… and is making “build your own SBC from scratch” possible on a hobbyist’s budget, scale, and study.

So what today represents is: “Why not go full custom design with MPUs?” Yes, we traditionally have reached for MSP430 or ATMega328 for this problem, but maybe its not so bad to design around a more powerful system in practice. Now different manufacturers have gone with different routes here. Ti is working with Octavo Systems and pushing these SiP of course, Microchip is sticking with open-source hardware and documentation for people more comfortable with PCB design (though a SiP is also available from Microchip for on-board DDR2, but without the power-controller like Octavo System’s solution), etc. etc. All to varying levels of simplicity, configurability, and so forth.

I ended my post with the joke about drones because… that’s the most obvious initial good use of this tech I can immediately think of. Drones are size/weight constrained (the lighter you make everything, the lighter your motors can be, and the lighter your battery can be, making everything lighter again). So big heavy connectors, while good for compatibility, are a big detractor. You want to build a full custom PCB-design that removed everything unnecessary, you really want to save every gram possible and make everything as light as reasonable. If you’re just going to slap an Ethernet cord and a CANbus onto a computer, I don’t think these SiP or MPUs are really that useful (might as well buy a Rasp. Pi at that point).

But if you need a customized design with specific specs to weight and power-usage, well… custom is your way to go. And custom MSP430 (16-bit or 8-bit competitors or Cortex-M0+) leaves much to be desired from a programming perspective.

I did make this community mostly for experimentation. “Meta” discussion, where we talk about Lemmy itself, seems like one of the best ways to experiment (pings, replies, federation, etc. etc.). I do wish to encourage as much experimentation with a more casual environment.

So yeah, that’s the overall idea behind this “BestOf” community. I can’t say I was very active in the Reddit side of things, but the need for it on Lemmy (especially as users seem confused about pings / federation / etc. etc.) is much more needed, so that yall can feel like learning the platform better!

Feel free to ask me any questions about Lemmy. I’m part of the July-rush of Lemmy users (back when Reddit first started having shenanigans).