Custom PCBs are even cheaper here than in North America, and longer workdays meant I had less time for hobbies. That probably made me double down on my choice.

I don't own much fancy equipment, just a cheap hot air rework station. I've found that mixing in fresh gel flux into my solder paste to get the right consistency made a big difference, enough that I never really needed more tools.

After doing that, I just sort of smear some near-ish the pads (perversely, often using a THT resistor), drop the parts in approximately the correct position with tweezers, and heat it up gently. Surface tension handles the rest. Once in a while, an 0402 resistor shifts out of position, but otherwise it just works. I'd probably need better tools for BGA.

What I love best is that SMT microcontrollers can be very, very cheap. I like the attiny10 (36$ for 100 computers! What a wonder!). There are plenty that are under 10 cents each, but I rather like AVR assembler, and their datasheets are very good.

I worked as a consultant for a company where the CEO one day, they just started using AI chat for everything. Every question you asked, they just forwarded it. Same thing for company strategy, major decisions, presentation content, and so on.

Initially, I was really annoyed. After I took a deep breath, and read through the wall of text they sent (to figure out how to respond), I eventually realized it was slightly better than their previous work. Not like, night-and-day better, but slightly better.

Since then, I've been playing with the idea of 'hiring' an AI to manage my freelance and personal work. I would not be required to do what it says, but I could take it under consideration and see if I work better that way. Sort of like the ultimate expression of "servant leadership".

I don't really use YouTube, but when ads play on random videos and it irritates me, I just close my eyes, the simplest version of content-blocking. (If the ad is painfully loud, I may also cover my ears in contexts where this is not extremely socially awkward)

Can we say it's immoral for me to close my eyes? Can someone's business model be the basis of an argument that it's immoral for me to exert this simple bodily function?

Is there some contract that I've signed where people have the right to my attention in any context? If they've based their business model on the assumption that this consent exists, and it does not, is it fair to say that the business model should fail?

It spoke to me so strongly, that I immigrated and started my first business. Not to China, but nearby (Viet Nam). It was a very tough road, I never ended up particularly wealthy, but I have no regrets.

I live in Viet Nam, and driving through bad storms this time of year is pretty miserable, and they happen fast and are local enough that weather prediction is not terribly useful.

There are a lot of problems with EMI. Lots of ungrounded brushed motors everywhere that make the RF bits hard. If I succeed, I'll publish the PCB designs.

I've also got some educational products in production right now, about Vietnamese history. I'd share a link, but my website probably can't handle the traffic right now.

I was totally ready to consider blocking US IP ranges too, if there was a good reason. I run a small business and 0% of my customers are overseas.

My strategy was simulate my possible next guesses against all possible codes, then pick the option that had the highest number of possible outcomes (sometimes this strategy is called MaxParts). It looks like the author's approach works for similar underlying reasons.

Besides this, I applied some optimizations for the starting move, and some further optimizations on considering 'irrational' guesses -- e.g. choosing a code that had already been eliminated as a possibility, because it returned more information (this was rare, but possible).

I ran my code against all possible games of 4,6 mastermind (I win in an average of 4.2778 guesses), and found that some starting guesses were more optimal than others! The pattern "AABC" (e.g. red-red-yellow-green) was the best performer. Perhaps this is a way that the author can improve their algorithm just a tiny bit.

Locally, 4$ is probably "more money" to us than 5$ is to you.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a marvel that we can have something so good so cheaply -- but correcting for cost of living, it feels less affordable for us here in Asia.

Anyway, not a criticism. Just sharing a slice of life from over here in case you were curious.

I redesigned it to be much smaller and cheaper (surface-mount), made it an IoT device, and various other changes. Will order PCBs in a bit, hopefully it works well.

We don't have anything like Blitzortung in SE Asia as far as I know, and it would be pretty useful to me to detect lightning storms before they hit. The obvious application is to add it to my motorbike (driving a motorbike in a heavy storm is a necessary but miserable part of life here).

Bigger picture, there's no market for it, simply because it's cheaper to not buy one (I live in a very cost-driven market). However it would be useful to me personally.

When it stopped happening in the spring, and started again in the fall, it became obvious -- my apartment was too cold. The heat from the first failed boot sufficiently heated up the system to boot the second time.

Canadian winter for you, I guess.

I used to buy the rice grown in Fukushima prefecture because it was sold at a significant discount, during the short and financially disastrous period where I tried to immigrate there.

Next up is a small lamp for migraines. I noticed that dim red light is much more tolerable to me than anything else. I mean obviously, darkness is ideal, but you need to do other stuff like eat and drink eventually if it's a persistent one.

So I designed a quick circuit to use fast PWM (few Mhz, so no flicker) to control a big red LED. I'd like it to be sturdy and still functional in 50-100 years, so made some design choices for long-term durability. No capacitors, replaceable LED and so on.

A simple project, but it's a busy month and I need something easy this time.

Here in Asia they cost 5-8$ each to make depending on exact part choice (total cost including boards and components).

I open sourced the hardware / firmware if you want some: https://github.com/seanboyce/servermon

I used to use scripts etc to do it. However this tells me what I need to know in a glance, so I like it better.

I like to use the TM1640 and RGB LEDs. It's cheap, works well, requires a minimum of external components, and can convey a fair amount of information. It can also drive a 16x8 LED matrix if I do want something screen-like.

Usually I'll control it with a Wi-Fi MCU like the ESP8266 or Pi Pico W. Total component cost, including board, sits around 5$ each with a minimum quantity of 5.

It's designed as a public good that lets you look up businesses by their tax ID. It's mandatory for the company owner to put their phone number and address there. The address is periodically verified by an actual person. It gets scraped heavily, and inserted into a whole sub-genre of similar websites with mostly identical features but with faster and better search. I've even seen people print it out to make "phone books" that are sold at trade shows!

As you might expect, the resulting increase in (fairly sophisticated) scam calls makes me unlikely to pick up my phone. So I'm not actually reachable there with a call, but I might get a text! For my websites, registrar info for those ties in to the system above using digital signatures. So using only a domain name, you get the company license, a theoretically valid phone number, and a very probably correct address.

It's a mix of good and bad, but overall I really like the system. Looking up other companies before doing business with them has saved me and my colleagues from a number of bad deals, e.g. not the real company owner, or misrepresentation of the scope of their company license.

It's really great for tourists though, it does a good job of connecting one of the major tourist areas (Thao Dien) to the city center.

I'm hoping that later extensions will do more to alleviate traffic, e.g. head out towards Nha Be or something. Although I hope to move to a quieter city long before any of that.

Anyway:

1. Good midrange Japanese cooking knives. I got one on a steep discount, and now I understand why people pay a premium for them. I even bought a second one.

2. Good brands of Chinese engineering equipment. I bought a Siglent oscilloscope instead of a Hantek / Uni-T one. Before that, I had only bought the cheapest tool sufficient for the job.

I found as I've reached middle-age, I just have a bit less energy to spend struggling with things I use daily. So in these roles I appreciate something that's better quality than I strictly need. I don't come from wealth, and am a notorious cheapskate even by local standards -- but those two things were able to change my mind!

How will that erode laws that are undesirable to AI companies? Does AI take over, only because we no longer want to spend the effort governing ourselves?

Will AI companies (for example) end up providing/certifying these 'human representatives'? Will it be useful, or just a new form of rent-seeking? Who watches the watchmen, etc ?

I think it would make an interesting short story or novel!