Igor Forgor

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  • 45 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 7th, 2023

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  • Dimmers will typically use a triac which cuts up the sinusoidal waveform. It doesnt actually lower the amplitude per se, but it limits the fraction of the time the waveform is on. Kinda like this. This means that a lot of the time the led isnt gettingas much or any power. The average power will be lower, and if the LED driving circuitry isnt designed to compensate for this, the LED will flicker.

    Clarification on triacs: they get turned on a certain fraction of the way into the cycle. Triacs will stay on until the voltage across them is 0. Conveniently the zero-crossing of the AC wave (when the wall voltage crosses zero to start foing negative or from negative to positive) does just that.



  • There are ways to get IDs which arent as stringent. Theres also the ITIN:

    many use the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, or ITIN, which allows immigrants without Social Security numbers to legally file tax returns and claim the income reported on their W-2’s to the IRS.

    This way they dont need to give a SSN. Legally everyone is required to pay and it might be held against them when trying to gain citizenship. Showing they paid their taxes can work in their favor in showing good moral character. Theres nothing legally that would explicitly help them it might be good for their case.

    Though there are many undocumented immigrants who are paid “under the table” for their work and do not pay taxes on their income, many others do pay in the hope that it will someday help them become citizens. Much of the evidence for this motivation is anecdotal, but various attempts at comprehensive immigration reform legislation over the last decade, including the “Gang of Eight” bill S.744, have included provisions like “good moral character” and “paying back taxes” as requirements for obtaining legalization. A provable history of paying taxes is seen as one way to show good faith, should such a bill ever pass.

    Source





  • Via uses chromium for the WebUSB api which firefox didnt implement because its a security nightmare. Vial is not as polished but is an open source standalone software

    Red/brown/etc originate from Cherry MX switches (the style of keyswitch) and each color is a different kind of swotch with different tactile feel and sound. Red are linear. Imagine a mushy rubber button with no feedback. Brown has a tactile bump that is more typical of a keyboard where theres a bit of force before it actually actuates. I settled on holy pandas for now which were similar to browns but a stronger tactile feel.

    I’m not 100% sure how good it is but as long as you read reviews to understand what the shortcomings and strengths of the board are, most keyboards should be fine. From what I’ve seen in a quick google search, this particular keyboard is probably ok, but some people have reported this company’s keyboards randomly dying and little to no support. Reputable brands will obviously guarantee no funny business but with the tradeoff of cost. I would recommend joining some communities (e.g. the discord communities like MechGroupBuys) and asking around for more peoples experience with budget keyboards if the cost is a concern.




  • What I did was buy a keyboard with the features I wanted, (100%, volume knob, rgb, hotswappable switches), then got a set of switches and keycaps to swap in.

    If the board has soldered switches you probably will never be changing those.

    Red switches are terrible. Feel super gross. Brown switches are ok, but I found them to have too weak of a tactile bump. Holy pandas have a stronger tactile bump and are what I’m using right now bc I found the browns a but disappointing

    Keycaps have standardized profiles/shapes; I have “OEM” keycaps. Each row has a slightly different height/shape which makes it a bit more ergonomic. There are others with identical row shapes.

    It should act like a standard USB keyboard if its running QMK / ZMK and will work ootb with linux. Only thing is that any QMK keyboard is going to be a bit annoying to configure (change layout or rebind keys) on linux (e.g. with VIA or Vial). You have to be using a chromium based browser that is not sandboxed (snap or flatpak may interfere) and you might have to add some udev rules but its not a huge problem.


  • Linux wont take off until the friction for new users is low enough that the layman can resolve issues without resorting to techniques outside of their understanding and patience. Even as someone who uses linux, there are a ton of things that should have a GUI / just be a context menu entry. If you can get the same amount of work done with a button click rather than typing out a complicated command line string, you might as well use the GUI, right click menu, etc. and make it easier for the typical person. People these days can barely use tablets, and those already dumb things down to icons you tap. Unfortunately, making it accessible to the lowest common denominator is what makes things popular a major factor in making things popular





  • Also if you want a domain but dont care about the actual address, a .xyz domain composed entirely of numbers with less than 10 digits is $1-2 + same as renewal fee per year. $1.22 for me on porkbun

    Just be sure to redact the whois information bc you will get a call from scammers trying to get you to register your domain on some “internet map” for a small fee acting as if its some step in your setup process you havent done yet