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Unfortunately for us software types, somebody with an EE degree can go into software and then pivot back into RF engineering. I doubt that somebody with a CS degree could (as in, I think they'd be intellectually capable of it, but they'd never get hired).

As someone with a EE degree followed by 12 years of SWE work, that pivot is quite daunting. A degree is just a piece of paper to get you an entry level job to do some real learning IMO

i have done firmware development, pcb design and light ee work and basic rf and antenna design professionally with zero degrees. like anything else it’s a matter of getting your foot in the door first, then outperforming the academic nerds with zero experience

Why are people who don't have degrees always so weird about it?

yea, so so weird about sharing how they’re optional.

That might be what you intended but saying "outperforming the academic nerds with zero experience" comes across as bitter and arrogant.

With the exception of firmware development those are all designer tasks that have never required a degree.

i have never seen any listings for any of these jobs not stipulate a degree being required.

Coming from somebody in the half-deaf community, please, medical science, find a cure for the problem that I have that needs to be fixed.

Thank you for saying this so energetically and straightforwardly. To the greatest extent possible, we should endeavour to call things what they are.

At the risk of turning this positive thread negative, there exist deaf people who would deny their children the opportunity to hear, and very little makes me more furious than society's willingness to tolerate this form of child abuse.


> Much ink has been spilled

Ironically...


It's still the same number of clock cycles, though, isn't it? You're using some extra circuitry during the SUB, but during the XOR, that circuitry is just sitting idle anyway, so it's still six of one/half a dozen of the other.

It all depends on the CPU architecture, if it supports something like out-of-order execution then both parts of the CPU could be in use at the same time to execute different instructions. Realistically any CPU with that level of complexity doesn't care about SUB vs XOR though.

In an OoO CPU it won't even hit an execution unit because it's handled as a dependency chain break.

Also, because SUB is implemented internally with XOR, so it's normally the same gates, with different signals selecting a different function.

XOR can do everything in 1 cycle (which is hopefully far, far less than the clock). SUB-if done the simple way-has to take n cycles where n is the number of bits subtracted.

That's just not true. You think subtracting/adding 64-bit numbers actually take 64 cycles?

There is sequential implementation of ripple carry adder that uses clock and register, this will add 1-bit per cycle, but no body uses this for obvious reason, it's just a toy example for education. A normal ripple carry adder will have some delay in propagation time before the output is valid, but that is much less a clock cycle. You can also design a customized adder circuit for 4-bit 8-bit 16-bit etc separately that would greatly minimizes the propagation delay to only 2 or 3 levels of gates, instead of n gates like in the ripple carry adder.


Right. In other words, the clock cycle is already made to be long enough to allow a word-sized SUB to settle. An XOR-with-self surely settles faster, but it still has to wait for that same clock cycle before proceeding.

> but no body uses this for obvious reason, it's just a toy example for education.

SERV has entered the chat!

It has one upside besides education, and that is that it can be implemented with fewer gates. If you for some reason need parallelism on the core level rather than the bit level, you can cram in more cores with bit-serial ALUs in the same space.


SERV also implements xor bit serially too though.

What do you mean by cycles? A ripple-carry adder needs to wait for the carry bits to ripple through yes, but there's no clock cycle involved.

Maybe they mean gate delays?

> it takes 40 univac instructions to run a single risc-v instruction

Which is wild, given:

> The computer’s original purpose was to be used by the Navy to read in radar signals and direct artillery

I'd really be fascinated to see how that was done on such a primitive machine, shame that's probably been lost.


The radar "reading" was done by first plotting analog radar signals to the antique rotary radar displays. Then there would be human operators with a light pen, marking each radar signature on each radar turn.

So the Univac would receive input coordinates for each target and track those in memory each turn.


I've seen people suggest that throughout the years, but it's never worked out for me. To get anything meaningful out of a printed book, I've had to read them cover to cover. There used to be worthwhile reference books, but those have moved on to the internet.

I like doing both. Skimming through the interesting parts first, them re-reading from start sequentially.

> undermine every single citizen's privacy

Well, we might as well be realistic - none of us have had any privacy for a very, very long time. It's just that our governments can't quite yet use it against us the way they'd like to without revealing the scope. The goal here is really just to add some additional plausibility when our privacy _is_ violated.



> Of course they're ideological. That's the whole point

Yes, but their ideology _was_ free-speech absolutism. This move, and this statement, suggests that they're moving away from that ideology to one of selectively free speech.


Being a free speech absolutionist DOES NOT mean plastering your speech everywhere, including Twitter. Those are clearly two different concepts.

Also, literally nothing about this says anything about other people's speech. Them deciding not to use twitter doesn't mean you can't, obviously.

I feel like everyone is losing the plot a bit. Are we understanding the words we're saying before we choose to say them?


So because EFF does not post their news in my small Australian home town newspaper they're not free-speech absolutists?


They’re not trying to stop anyone else being on X or saying anything there or anywhere else.


what are you even talking about? they arent suppressing free speech, they are leaving a platform. this might be the most bot-like response ive ever seen, if youre not a bot then go outside, read a book, just log off my goodness.


Please explain. How does this suggest they no longer value free speech?


That’s not what the comment you replied to said.

They said the EFF’s ideology use to be free speech absolutism.

From the EFF post linked to that we are discussing here:

Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day.

<snip>

neither is pushing every user to the fediverse when there are circumstances like:

<snip>

Your abortion fund uses TikTok to spread crucial information.

You're isolated and rely on online spaces to connect with your community.

That very much makes it sound like the EFF values free speech, but only if that speech is speech they agree with.

What about if your anti-abortion fund uses X to spread crucial information. What about if you’re isolated and rely on X to connect with your community?

What if you’re not a young person, a person of color, queer, an activists, nor an organizer?

The EFF used to be free speech absolutists, it’s evident they be taken over by progressive liberals who favour free speech they agree with.

Look in to the history of cases they have litigated. There’s definitely at least some where I disagreed with the content of the speech, but agreed with the right to say it and that the EFF were correct in supporting the case.


>> Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day.

> What if you’re not a young person, a person of color, queer, an activists, nor an organizer?

People who aren't young, of color, queer, activists, or organizers, use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day, too. There's no good reason for an organization to have a presence on every social media platform under the sun, but there is one for limiting the overhead you have to do (and also for minimizing social media usage in general).


> the business owner is aggressively pushing his political views

That's always been the case with Twitter - Dorsey was just as bad, but just with a different set of political views. (Views that, I presume, the EFF is aligned with).


My father passed away last year from complications due to Alzheimer's, but for years before he died, he struggled to work streaming services and modern "smart" TVs. We got him one of the few models of DVD players that we could actually still find and a lot of used DVDs because he _could_ use those.

OP here might be misremembering DVDs, here: the physical media skipped or froze intermittently and the players themselves were finicky; we ended up replacing it about three times in just as many years. Streaming services are overpriced, but they do _work_ consistently.


> OP here might be misremembering DVDs, here: the physical media skipped or froze intermittently and the players themselves were finicky

In my teens my friends and I watched probably hundreds of DVDs, and they almost never had a problem. Skips & freezes were almost only ever a factor for highly scratched copies, more typical of those from Blockbuster than anything we picked up in the $5 bargain bins.

I don't think I've ever encountered a "finicky" player, either. I don't even know what that'd mean.


I have programmed well over hundreds of DVDs, and I can assure you, there were finicky players. Apex players were infamous on how cheap they were, and finicky is an appropriate word. DVD had a spec, and there were parts of the spec that Apex players did not do well at all. The spec allowed for random play. Apex players cheaped out on an PRNG type of ability and came with a saved preset list of random values. If you programmed a disc with random playback, it would playback exactly the same way every. single. time. It really sucked when we were programming games using the random feature. The spec allowed for 99 titles. Any where over 50 titles, and there was a better than not chance that an Apex player wasn't going to even recognize the disc. There were other quirks too, but I'm hoping the point was made


About half of the DVDs and Blu-rays I get from the library skip at some point in my PS5. They're usually not visibly scratched, though usually the scratches that matter are on the top not the bottom.


I started just ripping everything when the studios started adding unskippable ads... I had a rental copy of Friday, still have never actually seen it, there was a bad scratch and it froze after 30+ minutes of unskippable previews.

I've never had a really bad player though... I have seen players that had issues with burned disks, but not mfg (unless scratched rentals).


The only problem I've ever had with Blu-Ray players is that as the player gets older the trays eventually start having trouble ejecting. Other than that, I've never had one have any play trouble, even with scuffs on the discs.

Meanwhile, my streaming box randomly loses network connectivity, despite having a wired connection, and I have to restart it, before I can stream anything.


Okay I have dvd players that work fine even still. DVDs need care - scratches and fingerprints are bad (though the error correction on a good player will make it less noticeable). I think the lifespan of a dvd player may be in its design (where dust may get to the laser?) or the environment (humidity or temp may play a role?)


It's possible that DVD players are extremely low quality now, since there are very few people still buying them.


They are, after the second Walmart cheapass dvd player died, I bit the bullet and got an Xbox Series ProMax X 360 Copilot whatever.

It's a glorified blurry player, and it works fine as such.


As they say, you get what you pay for.


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