xobs

Apple tried that with the Newton [1]. It worked pretty well!

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soup_(Apple)

ModemManager. You need to set the variable ENV{ID_MM_PORT_IGNORE}=“1” I. A udev rule.

Standard usb serial ports show up as ttyACM#, whereas nonstandard ports that require a driver like ftdi show up as ttyUSB#. Modems tend to be standard usb devices, so ModemManager by default scans all serial ports as if they were modems. This involves sending some AT commands to them to try and identify them.

Software implementations of serial devices tend to follow the standard, so they show up as ttyACM#.

> Rust? Only Rust?

Yes, this OS is written in Rust. However, since it has a well-defined ABI, and all services are defined to use `#[repr(C)]`, and the interface is simple primitive enums, it's designed with C-like language support in mind. The hardest part in C is getting an equivalent to `#[repr(C, align(4096))]` which, last time I checked, only let you do alignments up to 64 or so without resorting to linker tricks.

> This mechanism seems ripe for squatting attacks

There are only a few services with well-known names, and they start up before things like the scheduler are running. Most things go through the nameserver service which supports things like attestation, finite-client limits, and signature checking.

> Just use standard ELF.

Sure, there's a loader available that lets you run standard ELF files: https://github.com/betrusted-io/xous-core/tree/main/apps/app...

The bootloader uses the MiniELF format because we can make assertations about things like the order of sections and about merging multiple segments, while also stripping non-loadable sections. It would be possible to just bundle all the ELF images for all programs together, but if you're generating the loader image you might as well shrink the image a bit.

> What?? No! sbrk() is a terrible interface.

Then you can call `MapMemory(NULL, NULL, [size], RWX)`: https://docs.rs/xous/latest/xous/syscall/fn.map_memory.html

The Rust runtime will, at a minimum, set up the stack pointer, zero out the .bss, and fill in the .data section. You're right in that a heap is optional, but Rust will get very cranky if you don't set up the .data or .bss sections.

> One-way messages

Messages are either one-way (Send or Scalar), or are two-way (BlockingScalar, Lend, or MutableLend). For two-way messages, the calling process inherits the quantum of the sending process, so the only penalty is the cost of two context switches.

> Interprocess communication by memory remapping instead of copying

This is true for Send, Lend, and MutableLend, but for Scalar or BlockingScalar you get 5xusize values instead, which is used for things like `msleep` or `uptime`.

You would have to stop access to other threads that might have access to the page about to be unmapped, but Rust guarantees that if you have a mutable reference, you're the only one with access to the page.

It’s normal if you use the Nvidia proprietary driver. Every notification leaks one fd, so if you get a lot of notifications it’ll segfault once or twice per day.

This was apparently fixed in version 590 of the driver which was released only recently: https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/fd-leak-with-explicit-...

If you run pw-top, you might see errors accumulating. This is usually due to an underrun from the game requesting an audio quantum that’s too low.

The fix is:

    mkdir -p ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d && echo "context.properties = {default.clock.min-quantum = 1024}" | tee ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/pipewire.conf

Basically, just force the quantum to be higher. Often it defaults to 64, which is around 1ms.

You can load additional symbols into gdb without restarting it by using `add-symbol-file`, which you can use to iterate on the symbol mapping.

I’m not even on a vpn and I’m getting an error saying the website is blocked.

My current record is $19 (including shipping!) for two assembled boards of https://github.com/xobs/soundoff which is a little device that shuts off 5V power to a USB-A port when it detects the PC it's connected to goes to sleep.

I really wish this 3D Gerber viewer worked: https://www.zofzpcb.com/

You can feed it the output from Kicad, and if you include the ipc netlist it’ll even generate models. Great for doing a check before manufacturing, especially if the viewer matches what you see in Kicad.

Unfortunately I’ve never gotten it to run in wine.

I know Altium doesn’t work, which is very important if you need to provide someone else files in Altium format. If you just want to work on designs there’s always Kicad, which is increasingly very good! But it can’t save in Altium format, and I’m not sure I’d trust it for manufacturing.

The other thing I’m missing is my 3D Gerber viewer called ZofZPCB. I’ve not gotten either it or Altium to even start.

I've never gotten passkeys to work on the Mac. Every time I try it with either Firefox or Safari says I need to log into iCloud, which I really don't want.

OVH is awful for this. I’ve given up trying to use their site and always have to open a support ticket any time I want to give them money.

There are usb-c paper tape readers: https://www.e-basteln.de/computing/papertape/overview/

They even work with phones!

That's 600 mA at 3.3V. USB should be fine, but of course you need the capacitance to deal with that. Radio PAs can be power-hungry beasts.

To clarify for the people questioning the price: it’s $74 for the version with free upgrades for one year. The “Lifetime” version with updates forever is $494.

> endless scrolling feeds only

I've got a personal policy: No websites that have an infinite scroll. That means no new Reddit, mobile Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, or similar. This also means I can't use food delivery services, since those tend to be infinite as well.

If they're paginated that's fine, even if they're infinitely so. Infinite scrolling is just a very good touchstone as to the quality and addictiveness of a site, and I'll avoid anything that has it.

For this reason I get my news through RSS and like using Discord -- both have finite ends (even if there may be a lot of content in bursts.)

The dongle was an AAUI connector off of a dedicated port. AUI was a standard, but unfortunately it was the same connector as the video connector. So Apple redesigned it. https://lowendmac.com/2007/apples-aaui-ethernet-connector/

"KIKA" just shows an infinitely-looping 10-second clip of a sign swinging that translates to "Unfortunately, you can only watch the current video if you are in Germany."

I remember reading an article that had the theory that Thai restaurants in hotels were usually very authentic under the assumption that the parents were immigrants who wanted the child to inherit the business, but the kid wanted to run a restaurant instead. It would certainly explain why you get Thai restaurants attached to random hotels in the middle of nowhere, at least.

It sounds vaguely like the Invisible Gorilla Experiment: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invisible_Gorilla

That could be GymLink, which is a simple 5 kHz LF transmission. It’s also used so that it can work while swimming.

Here’s a discussion about it: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/rf-microwave/looking-for-a-rec...

I thought Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign were very good at producing https://notarabic.com/ (at least the author calls out Adobe products in the description)

I find myself using debug_here (https://github.com/ethanpailes/debug-here) which does similar things but for desktop-class debugging. It hasn't been updated in a while, but it still works for me on Windows at least.

I never did manage to fly them. Their website just returns " You don't have permission to access "http://www.spirit.com/" on this server." Preventing customers from buying tickets isn't a good way to run a business.

It's the Cyber Security Group within Singapore's GovTech.

Try plugging in a USB keyboard to the back of it :)

That one was fun to write.

An example of a program that's atrocious about unreliable connectivity is `git` -- it has no way to resume downloads, and will abort all progress if it fails mid-transfer.

The only way I've found to reliably check out a git repository over an unreliable link is to check it out somewhere reliable and `rsync` the .git directory over.

Where I am, most of the noise comes from air conditioning and physical plant equipment from neighbouring buildings. Cars aren't that big of an issue.

Buses can be loud, but they're transient.