Oof, had a scare that I'd managed to pick RP2350B pins such that two UARTs alias each other, and I couldn't run both at once. But it turns out it's just the Zephyr pinmux headers which are bullshit, not matching the datasheet at all. Phew.

(In any case it's possible to use the life-saving PIO block to spawn yet another UART into existence with any pin)

Reminder that most employers (including my last one), and all the local schools etc, are sending people back in after 5 days, regardless of whether they're still in superspreader status or not.

This is a continuation of a Biden-era (yes Biden) policy which set isolation at a *maximum* of 5 days, because they were afraid the economy's feelings would get hurt. There's even a video snippet of Biden admitting there's no scientific basis.

But people claim there is, because reasons.

Darn it, feeling almost entirely better, like just a lingering cold, but still getting an instantaneous, super-luminous T line. I am a practicing "do not expose people while T line" so... that's probably at least another 2 days :(

Very much enjoying working my way through [paperback] The Three Body Problem, but it's littered with so much unnecessary "male gaze", throughout. Like, cannot introduce a woman in the book without commenting on how the sunlight reflects on her hair or something.

Raspberry Pi calling their programmable IO "PIO" was... I guess the obvious choice, but ffs it makes grepping for it annoying, given the ubiquitous existence of "gpio" everywhere.

“The culture on X today is remarkably friendly and inclusive. It is a cheerful place.” is probably the single most breathtakingly tone deaf and wildly inaccurate line I have read in tech journalism in literally decades.

The words “half-life” are important and if you search for NyQuil advice you’re going to get chat bot output which doesn’t understand how this works, because it needs math.

10-12 hours half life doesn’t mean it’s ineffective then. It means it’s still 50%. So that 6-pints-drunk becomes 3-pints. 10-12 hours again (a full day), 1.5 pints. Another 10-12 hours, 0.75 pints. So exactly lining up with my experience.

Occurred to me this was before I knew of the existence of pharmacokinetics. Half-life is apparently 10-12 hours, so that bloody explains. This is how it affects everyone, just most people don’t react as strongly. Must be so many driving on NyQuil out there.

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@0xabad1dea/117427929316787408

Dunno about anyone else, but if I have even the smallest dose of NyQuil, that’s 36 hours of feeling like I’m 6 pints drunk. (This is apparently not most people’s severity). While also doing nothing to help me sleep. I cannot stand the stuff.

The answer is... NO? Nobody makes a USB-PD *BMC only* logic level converter? There's a few quirks to it which make it non-trivial, not entirely small, and I assumed someone would make an IC which does all this for you?

Hey lazyweb/lazyfedi, anyone know of a chip? Just the analog PHY, not a whole FUSB.

[I am aware of the various hack-a-day etc write-ups, but oh boy they are NOT compliant implementations]

FUSB302BMPX -> $0.90, dropping to $0.45 at >3000 units. Yep, that's a fairly large cut to the BOM cost. Although I would have to put a comparator/opamp/FET where it was, which would likely be _larger_.

I'm guessing somebody has made a chip which is *just* a 3.3V logic level converter for USB-PD, right?

Hey, one of my medications turns out to be made in the factory featured in the most recent John Oliver, that's a... fun thing to discover.

Yep, many examples out there. Would certainly be a large hardware cost and complexity reduction to roll my own CCn pin RX/TX. I don’t mind the software.

Wondering if it would be feasible and reliable to use Pico "PIO" to implement USB-PD comms. You can do manchester encoding RX/TX with ~600kHz edges easily enough. It'll need some analog magic to translate the variable voltage input to CMOS 3.3V.

The required IRQ latency is a bit troublesome, though, but hey there's a whole *second core* I'm not even using.

Pretty sure there's plenty of people who've already done this.

Then again, the cores on RP2350 run so fast and efficient, there's no point trying to "offload" the CPU. I can probably get the repacking down to 1-2 cycles per bit. Even the shittiest C loop is taking less than 1% of max performance.

Just hoped maybe I could find a _neat trick_ to get this for free. Wasting that memory bandwidth will probably end up more power than just using the CPU.

Oh dear, I have come up with a very silly way to get Pico PIO to do the bit twiddling for me: instead of having the CPU repack all the data so that it's aligned for the PIO program to copy into pins on each cycle, have each PIO instance *drop 7x 32bit reads*, and start them all offset by 32 bits.

Yuck.

So they'll each pick up the data for the 1 pin they're targeting, then drop the data for the 7 they're not. 8x the total bandwidth chomped.

Still, not a large DMA, maybe... I can stomach this.

Not to mention there are plenty of human-built, open/free art applications out there, already in existence, and the existence of slop-built ones takes away from them.

No, two wrongs etc etc, don't install the Craft apps.

"The internet is the web. But apps are also the web." I mean how can you still tune in after reading that opinion? [over a decade ago, while debating whether apps such as facebook are silos or not]