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Comment Arduino "commitment to open-source is unwavering" (Score 1, Informative) 31

Arduino responded to this recent drama just a few days ago, saying "Our 20-year commitment to open-source is unwavering" with a good explanation of the new T&C.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.arduino.cc%2F2025%2F1...

I believe Arduino is sincere with their statement.

One man speaking with Adafruit's social media accounts seems to feel otherwise. He probably believes he's doing good by raising the alarm. Maybe some of the points have some merit? But the tone really looks like an attempt to stir up drama and harm Arduino's reputation.

Adafruit does have history with Arduino. In 2015 when Arduino had serious internal division and conflict, Adafruit was manufacturing brand name Arduino Uno under some sort of license deal. That arrangement ended sometime in 2016. Adafruit quickly launched a product line of essentially Arduino clone boards named "Metro". Does any of that matter? Maybe, maybe not. But when reading what really looks like an attack on Arduino's long-established reputation coming from official Adafruit channels, best to keep in mind those 2 companies have a history.

I also have some history with Arduino, having made an Arduino-compatible board and contributed code and help over the years. I've personally met the Arduino developers and Arduino leadership folks several times at conferences. They are genuinely good people who've poured a lot of effort into trying to good in the world.

Maybe Arduino change for the better or for the worse with Qualcomm. I don't have a crystal ball. But I'm trying to keep an open mind and not get caught up in fear over basically boilerplate legalese.

Comment snapd is Ubuntu's Windows Vista moment (Score 3, Interesting) 42

Pretty sure it was snapd that drove this decision. It's truly horrible for real daily desktop usage, causing many seconds lag for app startup and certain operations like selecting files to attach to email in Thunderbird.

Snap / snapd is pretty much like Windows Vista when the world was so used to Windows XP.

FWIW, I've used various Linux distros for my main desktop machine since 1994. Never in all these years have I seen anything like snapd which makes a high end desktop feel so sluggish.

Comment Re:I would rather eat grass (Score 1) 300

People who financially benefit from a Ponzi scheme before it implodes tend to believe they are involved in legitimate work.

Whether Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme, I don't know. But one thing I do know for certain is people who are making money almost always believe they are doing good, even with plenty of evidence is contrary.

Comment Re:On Wednesday (Score 1) 126

The real champagne celebration is still days away, and who will be celebrating remains to be seen.

Trump receives a huge number of additional bonus shares if the stock's price stays above $17.50 for 20 trading days, and lesser amounts at $15.00 and $12.50 thresholds.

I believe were at 14 or 15 trading days so far, though which day officially counts as the start isn't clear (at least to me).

Comment Re:Fools respond (Score 5, Informative) 106

Believing vaccine risks outweigh their benefits probably mean you have consumed a lot of misinformation about both the risks and the benefits.

Vaccine risk is extremely low. Any death which occurs within 3 months of the vaccine is counted by VAERS, regardless of the cause. That number is currently 17,392, which gives a worst possible case of 0.0027% of all people who received the vaccine. But every death even if not possibly related is counted in that total. Actual investigation of side effects has found incidents of Myocarditis, TTS, GBS are extremely rare (measured in parts per million), and usually even the serious cases are rarely fatal if treated.

Source:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronaviru...

Benefits are substantial. It's been well established that the vaccines greatly reduce severity of the disease and change of death, especially if boosted within last several months. That's a huge benefit.

Source:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scientificamerican...

Anti-vax misinformation tries to say the vaccine has no benefit because you can still get COVID. Plenty of studies show recent vaccination does reduce the odds, so there probably is some benefit (only needs to be tiny to outweigh the extremely low risk) but the benefit of less severe disease when you do get it is a huge benefit.

What is dangerous is misinformation! The results are clear. Before vaccines, the densely populated states suffered badly and the more rural areas were much less affected. Now the situation is largely reversed, where populations more inclined to accept vaccination have lower per-capita death, and those following right-wing misinformation mostly have higher death rates despite having a natural advantage of less dense population to spread the virus.

Sources:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.statista.com%2Fstati...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.texastribune.org%2F2...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcnews.com%2Fhealth...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pewresearch.org%2Fpo...

You said you'd be willing to hear out any plausible explanation. I'm afraid the only plausible explanation is you're terribly misinformed about the risks and benefits. If you really are willing to hear (seems unlikely) just read a few of those sources for truthful information about the vaccine risks and benefits and the real world results of the misinformation you're probably consuming.

Comment Re:Utter bullshit (Score 4, Informative) 125

Integrated circuits were co-invented in the late 1950s by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor. While it could be argued modern electronics would still exist as they do today without Kilby, it is a fact the process of fabricating multiple transistors was co-invented in Texas and California.

While Sunnyvale "silicon valley" in California gets the most attention, a pretty substantial number of ICs are also designed in Austin "silicon hills" in Texas with good portion of the US-based IC fabs in located Dallas. Many of those chips (especially Texas Instruments) are "analog" types which have fairly mundane functions like controlling the special signals to pixels on displays and localized power supplies like the ones which convert your PC's 12 volt power to much lower voltage and higher current in close proximity to power hungry chips like CPUs & GPUs.

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