I work with 32MHz microcontrollers at work and you can do plenty with them. It’s a different world from say general CPUs where speed is king. You’re often more concerned about timing reproducibility than outright clock rates. There are also considerations about power consumption, electrical noise, functioning in extreme environments, etc. that may inform your decision to go with one controller over another.

I think it was in the late 90s when a vicious ice storm took out power lines everywhere and the whole downtown core was plunged into darkness for the better part of a month. Fortunately, out where we lived in the suburbs, the power mostly ran underground and was restored pretty quick.

But then my wife got a panicked call from a distant relative who said she couldn’t reach her daughter studying at the university and could we look in on her? So we found her and offered her the guest bedroom for as long as she needed it.

At first, it seemed to be working out? Then it began to emerge that she was some sort of evangelical Christian who was frustrated that we were not eager to convert. I sort of thought taking in a refugee was a fairly Christian thing to do, but whatever.

Eventually, she demanded I take her back to the dorm. I told her downtown is still dark and cold, but she said “I don’t care. You guys are so boring!” So I carefully drove her back around downed trees and power lines and dropped her off.

I felt pretty bad about it and we prayed she’d be ok. A couple of weeks later, the relative called again and thanked us so much for taking care of her daughter and that we went way beyond the call despite how things turned out.

This makes me think of my late grandfather. He had been a civil engineer for the US Navy who spent several years working in the Panama Canal Zone. He told me this story of a senator showing up one day with cost-cutting on his mind. He focused on one line in the budget: mosquito control. “Mosquitoes? There are no mosquitoes here! What a colossal waste of money!” The whole area became pretty much unliveable within a year of his returning to Washington.

In Sweden, about 40,000 users have joined a Facebook group calling for a boycott of US companies – ironically including Facebook itself – which features alternatives to US consumer products.

The Made In Canada Facebook group now has 1.2 million users, which is pretty insane considering the population of the whole country is 41 million.

He seems to have manufactured quite the crisis. Is this what he meant by bringing manufacturing back to America?

Lately, I’ve been listening to The Martian. I’m kind of a sucker for synthy orchestral compositions and that soundtrack is just so hauntingly beautiful.

Living in Ontario Canada, I immediately think of things our premier Doug Ford has done or is trying to do. Right out of the gate, he tore down a wind farm near me that was 90% complete and had to pay millions in legal fees for breaking the contract on the taxpayer’s dime. More recently, he’s on a rampage to tear out bike lane infrastructure and build some giant tunnel under an already huge highway to expand its capacity.

Is it not a net benefit to China in that the US drawing inwards expands their global influence? And they must be laughing at what carnage Trump is inflicting on the North American auto sector at a time when China is surging ahead with EVs.

This highlights the folly of trying to lock down the Canada-US land border. If you really wanted to cut down drugs and human trafficking, you’d focus on ports of entry to the continent. The border is just way too long. Only an idiot would try to police its full length. If you think it’s only the 4000 miles from Maine to Washington State, you’re forgetting that extra 1500 miles with Alaska.

I do agree with you that summer is overrated. I don’t hate it per se, but feel it not up to the hype. There are things I dread about the summer. The bugs (particularly ticks with their lyme disease which seem to be everywhere now), the allergies, the heat waves with their oppressive humidity and crappy air quality, the anxiety-inducing state of my yard, and in general, just becoming a sweaty mess after performing even the most minor of errands.

It’s not all bad though. I appreciate the longer daylight hours, the improved fresh produce, the better motor control when not having to wear heavy clothing, and not slipping all over the place on the ice.

I guess I feel every season has its pros and cons, yet somehow summer in popular culture enjoys this vaunted reputation above all the others which may be undeserved?

Oof.

Or oeuf, as we sometimes say in Canada.

Reminds me of when I was up in Iqaluit (far north in Canada). The best way I could describe it is imagine Mos Eisley if it were on the planet Hoth.

Ah ok, thanks!

What caused the jump in the first place? I only just opened an account myself because the folks who run my home instance lemmy.ca started up pixelfed.ca about a week ago and I decided to check it out.

I was actually in both the Bay Area and Portland last month and have to agree. Let Oregon have this one. Even the people in Portland had bigfoot energy. Big scruffy men with tons of facial hair, flannel, and those longshoreman beanies. And I actually picked up a Sasquatch field guide someplace that was the most amazingly detailed document on a cryptid I’d ever seen.

Digital services tend to be an area where the US enjoys huge trade surpluses. If that pandora’s box is opened, it’s going to be really bad for the tech giants when retaliatory steps are inevitably taken. I thought this was why Trump was trying to keep the tariff war focused on material goods?

I know in Canada, FB stopped serving news when they refused to contribute to a government fund to help the struggling domestic journalism industry which they were scraping content from with reckless abandon. Personally, I’m happy to see one less stifling algorithm-fed echo chamber. It’s like a breath of fresh air.

This is awesome. Thanks for doing this!

Well the gist of the interview was that American intelligence services are in chaos right now after their top-level management got expelled and their “eye is no longer on the ball” in terms of threats from Russia, China, etc. with new personnel being brought in who have no clue what’s going on.

Correct me if I’m wrong but as an outside observer, it seems to me you have your big oil Republicans and your fuck the government solar off grid types. When they clash, I just sit back with some popcorn.

Ouch. Well if you wanna take your chances in Canada, definitely advertise your senior COBOL dev skills! ;)