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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • I’m no expert in New York City governance; I’m not even on the same coast as New York. West Coast, Best Coast.

    With that said, NYC’s size and structure is not too dissimilar to that of a US State, save for a unicameral legislative body (New York City Council). Matching that, the Mayor of NYC is the head of the executive, with powers to appoint commissioners to various agencies and civil/criminal courts, as well as executive functions like administering city services like fire departments, police, and tax collection.

    Meanwhile, the 51-member Council is headed by the Speaker, who presides over the body and controls the order that legislation is considered. So far as I can tell, the members are elected by district, every four years, so that each district has roughly the same population. So far, these procedures parallel those of US State governments.

    As for the interplay between the Mayor and the Council, the defining criteria of any government is how it achieves its policy objectives, in passing the budget. Like with the California Governor, the Mayor’s office will propose – and later execute once duly-passed – the budget and the Council will consider and approve or reject it. The final budget is sent to the Mayor for ratification, but can also be vetoed. In this case, the Council can vote to override a mayoral veto.

    So for the titular question, with regards to only the structure of the government of NYC, yes, the Council could very much block much of what a future Mayor Mamdani wants to achieve. The Council could do this by passing laws that mandate minimum fares for transit, forcing tax breaks for the wealthy, and anything else that directly counters his policies. But he could veto such laws, and the Council would have to muster some 2/3 of the votes to push it through.

    In turn, though, a future Mayor Mamdani could potentially use his executive control to direct the transit system to vary (read: change) the tariff structure so that bus routes in less well-off neighborhoods become free. Within the parameters of existing law, the Mayor could also instruct the Police Chief to do (or not do) certain things, and this wouldn’t be within the Council’s direct control except that they could have a Council committee do an investigation and raise new legislation. But that goes back to what the Council can and can’t do.

    Essentially, there’s a fair amount of ground for a progressive NYC Mayor to deliver campaign promises, except that the budget and existing laws will require working with the Council. But as a practical matter, if a future mayor wins a substantial fraction of the city-wide vote, it would be strange that 2/3 of the Council could be in staunch opposition.

    And that budget vulnerability can actually be a negotiating tactic. Here in California, setting aside any broader opinions about the policies and wisdom of the currently second-term Governor of California, he managed to negotiate a bill to cut red-tape for housing (or roll-back environmental laws, depending on who you ask) and tie it to the state budget, due end of June. So when push comes to shove, when the budget is coming due, there would suddenly be room to negotiate, even with bitter enemies. No one respects a government that cannot pass a budget on-time.

    I personally am of the opinion that when a legislative body wishes to obstruct, or when an executive wants to pursue a policy, then neither should half-arse it. A future Mayor Mamdani should force the Council to publicly reject what he wants to put forward, each and every time. Let the people of NYC see who is actually fighting for the citizenry, and who is kowtowing to monied interests. Commentators often talk about “spending political capital” when doggedly pursuing a policy, but that’s kinda the job: do it right, or step aside and let someone else do it. NYC deserves the best mayor they can get.


  • 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.


  • 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.



  • 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, simply 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, and not a process based wholly on easily-forged deeds…)

    If I wanted to ensure that my land would never be used for a shopping mall or sports stadium

    The simple answer is to donate your land to a conservation group, who often buy land to protect it from development. They can and do pay market rates, but if you did want the land to be something that isn’t a wildlife preserve, then alternatively, you can sell the land but retain the development rights. That way, you (and your heirs) would retain a choice in whatever future development happens, though how long this deed restriction lasts will depend on jurisdiction. Or you can sell the development rights to a conservation group, so that the party owning the land and the party owning the development rights are separate entities with different objectives.




  • 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 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 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 comes from.

    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, not wanting a 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 mention something relevant when 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 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. People unfamiliar with the legal system might just go along with it, unaware that the govt is there to prosecute them, not necessarily to aid them. Instead, in the current system, if the person voices their request for a lawyer, then that sets into motion the court’s 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.


  • 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.


  • Insofar as the skills hierarchy that software engineers develop well after learning to write in a programming language, I’m left wondering what scenarios or industries are the most “vibe coding” proof. That is to say, situations that absolutely require from day 1 a strong sense of design theory, creativity, and intimate knowledge of the available resources.

    Musing out loud, history has given us examples of major feats of software engineering, from the Voyager spacecrafts, to retro console games squeezing every byte of ROM for value, to the successful virtualization of the x86 instruction set. In these scenarios, those charges with the task has to contend with outerworldly QA requirements and the reality that there would be no redo. Or with financial constraints where adding an extra PROM would cascade into requiring a wider memory bus, thus an upgraded CPU, and all sorts of other changes that would doom the console before its first sale. Or having to deal with the amazing-yet-arcane structure of Intel’s microchip development from the 80s and 90s.

    It is under these extreme pressures that true diamonds of engineering emerge, conquering what must have appeared to be unimaginably complex, insurmountable obstacles. I think it’s fair to say that the likes of NASA, Sony and Nintendo, and VMWare could not possibly have gotten any traction with their endeavors had they used so-called “vibe coding”.

    And looking forward, I can’t see how “vibe coding” could ever yield such “ugly”-yet-functional hacks like the fast inverse square root. A product of its time, that algorithm had its niche on systems that didn’t have hardware support for inverse square roots, and it is as effective as it is surprising. Nowadays, it’s easy to fuzz a space for approximations of any given mathematical function, but if LLMs were somehow available in the 90s, I still can’t see how “vibe coding” could produce such a crude, ugly, inspirating, and breathtaking algorithm. In the right light, though, those traits might make it elegant.

    Perhaps my greatest concern is that so-called “vibe coding” presents the greatest departure from the enduring ethos of computer science, a young field not too tainted by airs of station. This field, I like to think, does not close its doors based on socioeconomic class, on the place of one’s birth, or upon the connections of one’s family. Rather, the field is so wide that all who endeavor for this space find room to grow into it. There is a rich history of folks from all sorts of prior occupations joining into the ranks of computer science and finding success. The field itself elevates them based on what they contribute and how they solve puzzles.

    What strikes against this ideal is how so-called “vibe coding” elevates mediocrity, a simulacra of engineering that produces a result without the personal contribution or logic solving to back it up. It is akin to producing artwork that is divorced from the artist’s experience. It embodies nothing.

    To be clear, the problem isn’t that taking shortcuts is bad. Quite the opposite, shortcuts can allow for going farther with the same initial effort. But the central premise of “vibe coding” is to give off the appearance of major engineering but with virtually no effort. It is, at its core, deceitful and dilutes from bona fide engineering effort and talent.

    Circling back to the earlier question, in my personal opinion, something like the Linux kernel might fit the bill. It’s something that is now so colossally large, is contributed to by an enormous user and developer base, and fills such a sizable role in the industry, that it’s hard to see how “vibe coding” can meaningful compete in that space.


  • litchralee@sh.itjust.workstoSelfhosted@lemmy.worldWifi Portal
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    1 month 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.



  • 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. From 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 maximum takeoff weight is some 40,000 pounds. But 230 people already accounts for around 20,000 pounds, so the aircraft already cannot be fully loaded with its full 44,000 pound fuel capacity. Packing more people into this aircraft would steal even more capacity and leave 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 then 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 human legs for vertical support would be unable to adequately absorb downward forces from a hard touchdown, nor from forces from the jet hitting an obstacle ahead 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 equally thick as existing seatbacks, and would probably be thicker or heavier, further reducing available payload.

    The only conceivable cabin configuration would be one where economy class uses so-called standing seats, in order to free up room ahead 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. The savings of even 10 minutes per flight can make the difference between a low-cost carrier being profitable or carrying losses every year.

    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?

    It would also eliminate under-seat bags to anything except maybe a clutch handbag, and then the quandary of where the extra people’s carry-on luggage would go. For wide body jets, it would actually be more reasonable to create an additional deck by repurposing the cargo hold, but such provisions are akin to building a new aircraft variant outright. Nevermind that passenger aircraft actually make a decent amount of revenue from cargo/freight carriage.

    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 future revenue passenger aircraft.


  • 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 political, 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.



  • (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.

    If you still have the original configuration, measurement of the drain current would be valuable info, as well as the current when the buffer is omitted (when the motor and bike computer are directly attached, a la factory configuration). That would indicate if perhaps the currents are too mismatched.





  • 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.

    To be clear, the mobo has a built-in HBA which you’re using, or you’re adding a separate HBA over PCIe that you already have? If the latter, I can’t see how the mobo can dictate what the HBA supports. And if it’s in IT mode, then the OS is mostly in control of addressing the drive.

    The short answer is: you’ll have to try it and find out. And when you do, let us know what you find!