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Use-Case Evolution Guide

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time13 min
Views1.2K

Modern product development demands more and more sophisticated designs. This in turn leads to the increased complexity of both demand and implementation. Business is flooding the architecture and development teams with the new and changed requirements. Development teams are struggling to understand what the business demand is and find the best product increment strategy. One of the widely adopted conversational methods is the Use-Cases. This guide is intended to shed light on the process of the requirements development and maturing.

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Building firmware for Orange PI i96 (Orange PI 2g-iot) from scratch

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time14 min
Views1.5K

Hellow my name is Dmitry. Once I bought "Orange PI i96", but unfortunately producer not update it firmvere very long. Last firmwere kernel version is 3.10.62 but kernel current at time this article writing (russian version) is 6.5.1. And so I decide build my own firmware from scratch, and do it from sourse completely.

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Mastering ChatGPT

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time7 min
Views2.3K

In today's rapidly advancing technological landscape, natural language processing and comprehension have become essential components of everyday life. Leading the charge in this arena is OpenAI's ChatGPT API, renowned for its exceptional ability to understand and interact with human language. Imagine elevating ChatGPT's functionality to new heights, enabling it to carry out specific tasks based on commands given in natural language. This article aims to shed light on the potential of incorporating function calling into the ChatGPT API, thereby enhancing its utility. I will illustrate through practical examples how such extensions can unlock a myriad of opportunities and applications.

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The next steps after a good meetup on Portable SystemVerilog Examples for ASIC and FPGA

Reading time4 min
Views918

The meetup on January 14 at Hacker Dojo in Mountain View, California, went well, although not as planned - we spent almost all the time talking instead of doing hands-on exercises. The room we booked can fit 30 people and approximately 30 people did show up. The quality of participants was high: approximately half were familiar with hardware description languages and another half came from various software topics. 12 people filled out the questionnaire despite the fact that I forgot to bring 30 pens.

The discussion during and after the presentation was focused and very meaningful: microarchitecture and education, EDA infrastructure / build scripts, open-source ASIC design tools, the economics of ASIC design and manufacturing, high-level synthesis, transaction-level modeling, ASIC prototyping using FPGA boards, FPGA embedded in ASIC (Menta), new FPGA manufacturers (Gowin) and new design languages - Chisel and SpinalHDL.

Four persons came to me after the meeting to discuss their participation in working on open-source portable SystemVerilog examples, and another seven expressed this intention in the questionnaire. So we are meeting again in Hacker Dojo on Sunday, January 21, at 2 PM, this time not in the classroom area, but in the common shared area.

Generally, I am thinking of having regular meetings, probably on a weekly basis for a small team of developers of the educational materials and on a monthly basis for a wider audience, discussing various design and verification topics.

There were two correspondents of Slavic Sacramento who recorded the video of the presentation. They are going to make it available soon.

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Why x^0 = 1 visually

Reading time3 min
Views1.2K

The traditional definition for the operation of exponentiation to a natural power (or a positive integer) had introduced approximately as follows:

Exponentiation is an arithmetic operation originally defined as the result of multiple multiplications a number by itself.

But the more precise formulation is still different:

Raising a number X to an integer power N is an arithmetic operation defined as the result of multiple [N by mod times] multiplications or divisions one by number X.

Let's figure it out under the cut! >>

Wie ich ein einfaches Monitoring von Kanälen mit Benachrichtigungen an Slack ohne Erfahrung gemacht habe

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time3 min
Views652

Arbeiten im technischen Support brachte zusätzlich zu allen Aufgaben die Pflicht mit sich, die Kommunikationskanäle zu überwachen. Dies wurde über den Grafana-Dienst realisiert, der die erforderlichen Metriken aus Zabbix bezog. Da die Art der Arbeit jedoch bedeutete, dass man nicht immer an seinem Arbeitsplatz sitzt, kam mir die Idee, dies ein wenig zu automatisieren und Benachrichtigungen auf das Telefon oder zum Beispiel in einen Messenger zu erhalten, falls ein Kommunikationskanal ausfällt. Allerdings hatte ich keinen Zugriff auf das Zabbix-System und auch keinen erweiterten Zugriff auf Grafana.

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What is it about IT. And when will it all end

Reading time21 min
Views1.6K

Yes, we need IT

The foundation of our civilization is tools. We didn't just evolve to a state that allowed us to use them, we began to improve them ourselves. The tools are becoming more intricate, more efficient and more perfect. It can be a hammer, an industrial robot, or a monetary relationship. 

Some of our tools are difficult to grasp or comprehend, they are more like an element or a subject of study: the Internet, the media, the transport system. It is even difficult to call them tools, rather it is a reflection of our activities. For simplicity, we will call everything that people do with their own hands a tool, meaning that they speed us up, make our life easier and more comfortable.

Why do we need tools? On the one hand, they help to solve emerging problems, on the other hand, they raise the standard of living. We enjoy creating tools. I would say it's one of our instincts. 

For the functioning of our body, we need some amount of mathematics. The processes in our head reflect this math into our language. We can write the language in the form of symbols. With the help of symbols, we can convey the discovery of one person to another or a thousand others. This allows us to build more and more complex tools. And most importantly, we really like it: the brain encourages us every time we invent or achieve something. Therefore, our tools are developing with us. The mechanisms of their development and improvement are sewn into us.

Migratory birds fly south in autumn, north in spring. It's their instinct. Ants build an anthill — it's their instinct. If people are left in satiety and peace, they begin to encode secret messages in the Bible, create complex etiquette, form mathematics, experiment with materials.

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Affordable as a Bus, Comfortable as a Taxi: A Promising Type of Public Transport for Large and Medium-Sized Cities.Part1

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time40 min
Views2K

(Jean-Claude Mézières)

Translation provided by ChatGPT, link to the original article in Russian

Link to Part 1: «Preliminary Analysis» (ру / eng )
Link to Part 2: «Experiments on a Torus» (ру / eng )
Link to Part 3: «Practically Significant Solutions» (ру / eng )
Link to «Summary» (ру / eng )

1. About this series of articles


1.1 Central result


If I haven't made a critical mistake, I have discovered an astonishing passenger transportation scheme with unique characteristics. Imagine this scenario: you are in a big city and need to get from point A to point B. All you need to do is walk to the nearest intersection and indicate the destination on your smartphone or a special terminal installed there. In a few minutes, a small but spacious bus will arrive for you. The bus is designed for easy entry without bending, and you can bring a stroller, bicycle, or even a cello inside. It provides comfortable seating where you can stretch your legs. This bus will take you to the nearest intersection to point B, and you will reach your destination without any transfers. The entire journey, including waiting at the stop, will take only 25-50% more time than if you were traveling by private car. Based on my estimation, in modern metropolises, this type of transportation will be widely adopted, and the cost of a trip on such buses will be similar to the fare of a regular city bus.

Surprisingly, the reasoning behind these findings is based on relatively simple mathematics, and perhaps even a talented high school student, under fortunate circumstances, could have guessed them on their own. The practical significance of the topic and the modest level of mathematical requirements prompted me to make an effort to write the article in such a way that the reader could follow the path of discoveries, learn some research techniques, and gain a successful example to explain to their children the purpose of mathematics and how it can be applied in everyday life.
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GNU radio 802.11 black box optimization

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time5 min
Views3K

In this post I'll share my experience in adjustment of WiFi physical channel. The channel was implemented on a software defined radio (SDR) platform. WiFi looks like a very complicated thing standardized over hundreds of pages. Could a non-expert with a PC and a couple of 100$ devices (HackRFs) somehow improve it? Here I try to develop a WiFi optimization approach basically agnostic of protocol implementation details. There's some math and Python programming in it.

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How we designed the user interface for an enterprise analytical system

Reading time5 min
Views1K

In 2021, we were contacted by an industrial plant that was faced with the need to create a system for analyzing processes in its production. The enterprise team studied ready-made solutions, but none of the analytics system designs fully covered the required functionality. So they turned to us with a request to develop their own analytical system that would collect data from all machines and allow it to be analyzed to see bottlenecks in production. For this project, we created a data-driven UI/UX design and also developed a web-based interface for the equipment monitoring system.

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Music on the Commodore PET and the Faulty Robots

Reading time26 min
Views3.1K

After completion of the System Beeps, I wasn’t planning to make another stand alone album release with the pseudo polyphonic music, as I felt the topic had been explored enough. This, however, wouldn’t mean I couldn’t apply the experience and skills gained to make more utilitarian stuff, like an actual retro game OST or an old school demoscene project. Such an opportunity arose in Autumn 2020, as David Murray of The 8-bit Guy Youtube channel fame announced his new game to be in development, the Attack of The PETSCII Robots for Commodore PET and some other Commodore 8-bitters. As I previously worked with David on his previous big release, Planet X3 game for MS-DOS, and this was a perfect opportunity to satisfy my interest towards the pre-graphics era PCs as well as apply my vast experience both in the minimalistic computer music and 6502 assembly programming, I offered my services that had been accepted. Besides the sound code I also had hopes to participate as a music composer this time.

Unfortunately, this time the project didn’t went well on my side, and lots of issues of all kinds eventually turned it into a small scale development hell (you can learn more from a series of posts at my Patreon blog)  The end result was that my code and sound effects were only used in the VIC-20 port, and music for other versions has been created by other people. However, I was left with the full working code of the sound system for PET, and a number of music sketches. It would be a pity to file it into the archive, PET projects aren’t a frequent thing these days, so another chance to use the stuff wouldn’t come any time soon. So I got the idea to develop my music sketches into full songs, and release it as an alternative OST, and having David’s approval it has been done and released in the Winter 2021 as Faulty Robots, a small music album for PET that is available as a digital audio release and a runnable program for the actual PET computer.

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Polema plant mastered production of new powders for import substitution

Reading time1 min
Views512

In this article, we are talking not of desktop 3D printers like the Creatbot DE but about powders for the production of metal parts.

The Tula powder metallurgy plant Polema (part of the Industrial and Metallurgical Holding) has mastered the production of high-entropy alloys and NiCrAlY coatings for import substitution in aircraft construction and other industries. These alloys are suitable for the manufacture of products using 3D printing.

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Let’s deal with WeChat — the second most popular messenger in the world

Reading time5 min
Views3K


  • A short excursion into WeChat;
  • About the platform, the version of the application, the utilities used and the decryption of the executable file;
  • • About two protocols (old one and new one);
  • About serialization of objects;
  • Used cryptography and key exchange;
  • About headers and hash-functions;
  • About the exposures found.

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Chaos: 3,000-HP Car from Spyros Panopoulos Automotive

Reading time2 min
Views1.4K

“This is not even a hypercar — it’s an ultracar,” — this is how race car driver Spyros Panopoulos prefers to call his brainchild, whose company is going to present the most powerful production car in the world, stuffed with 3D printed parts and ready to put to shame Formula 1’s SSC Tuatara and Bugatti Chiron.

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