Silicon Valley Redneck

And speaking of "Can't anyone...?"

Hello, Mr. Ford!  Want to know a nifty secret to selling pickup trucks?

See, when a prospective buyer comes to your web site and picks out a pickup-truck configuration, he's probably looking for more than pretty pictures and a price.  Chances are he'll also want to see the specs for the configuration he's chosen.

You know, dimensions, weight, maximum laden weight, maximum trailer weight?  That kind of stuff?  Stuff that people who are seriously shopping for serious pickup trucks want to know?

The guy who selects "maximum tow package" probably wants to know how much he'll be able to tow with that.  Toyota provides this information (not as accessibly as one might wish, but at least it's available).

Is there a secret part of the site?  A hidden link?  A tab that doesn't show up in my browser?  Are shoppers expected just to know this stuff already, or are they supposed to go visit dealers to find out?  Visit a newsstand for a copy of Ford Trucks Quarterly?  What?

At least they do provide nominal pricing, unlike purveyors of commercial lawn-mowing equipment.  Nominal price for what seems a reasonable configuration of an F-150 is roughly on par with nominal price of a known-suitable Tundra (which, alas, has the horrid new-Toyota styling).  But I don't have functional specs to compare!

Can't anyone do database development?

Tale of parking-ticket woe here (via Battle's Warm Blog).

I'd heard, long ago, the tale of someone with vanity plate NONE getting lots of spurious tickets in the mail; that was at least explicable in terms of minions of the law writing NONE on citation forms if a license plate was absent.

This, though... it sounds like the both the DMV's online registration-renewal system and a privately-operated, for-profit parking-fine collection system can't tell the difference between 'NULL' and NULL.  Which is important; one is a string (or character array) value, and the other is a keyword denoting the absence of a value.

If your database system can't tell the difference, it's not doing even the most basic input sanitization.  So what happens when Bobby Tables sneaks his name into an ALPR system, eh?  Or simply types it into the public-facing registration-renewal form?

Afterthought:  Now, just a doggone minute, here.  There's no freaking way the database should have been seeing the un-quoted NULL.  This is incompetence above and beyond the call of stupid.  This is...

... It's the coding version of taking the highest-profile inmate off suicide watch, putting him in a private cell with a bunk bed, a sturdy sheet, and no working surveillance cameras, and assigning that zone a pair of overworked guards who'll conveniently take a three-hour nap.  This is, like, Boeing-grade idiocy (but at least the DMV's database isn't in control of an aircraft... that we know of).  It's even worse than Google Finance (or at least worse than what I know of Google Finance's technical issues).

And remember: computers don't argue.

Work update

About done (as of late yesterday) bashing my head against the Verilog... with a couple of things mysteriously still not working, but I figure I'll just work around those in the C code, and sort out the remaining Verilog issues eventually on an FPGA eval board with a lot more test points..

Still quite a bit of C to be written, and no doubt I'll be longing for a multitasking RTOS (this project, like its predecessors, runs on the bare virtual-metal of an AVR core synthesized in the FPGA).  Busy afternoon today; busy weekend ahead.  Assuming nothing goes horribly wrong, Monday should be time to merge my code with some fiddly changes ToasterCo's engineers have made to the pre-fork code, and then they can commence integration and testing on the real hardware.  And maybe I'll have an excuse to go hang out in their air-conditioned lab!

I don't know much about Facebook Messenger, but....

Scandal reported here this morning; according to some of yesterday's accounts, some of the other Big Internet companies had been doing similar things.  Of particular concern:

Basically, if you allowed Facebook Messenger to automatically transcribe your voice calls, and the antisocial network's machine-learning code couldn't work out what you said during your nattering, an audio clip of your voice would be shared with a human to listen to and figure out what was said, according to Bloomberg on Tuesday.

Emphasis mine.  Now, by you and your here... does that mean only one side of the conversation would be transcribed?  That doesn't sound very useful.  And if both... what if one party to the conversation is in a two-party-consent state at the time?  How many wiretap statutes are worded in such a way as to apply to Messenger?  Did Facebook even consider this?

"Have you stopped deporting your wife?"

Surfing the Interwebs while waiting for the Verilog to compile, I find that β₀ (who is a furry) has proclaimed thusly:

Legal. Undocumented. Refugee. Asylum Seeker. The distinctions don't matter to President Trump. If you're an immigrant, he believes you have no place in this country—even though, for 243 years, immigrants have made America the greatest nation the world has ever known.

So, um.  What about Melania?

Oop!  Compilation complete.  Back to work now.

And I thought microwave ovens were bad.

With regard to user-interface design, that is.

Back in the olden days, nukers had two controls: a slider for power (OK, actually duty cycle, but notionally power) and a knob for time.  Simple, intuitive, and easy to adjust.

With the newfangled ones, it's all buttons.  Want three minutes at half power?  Push the POWER button six times, BOOP BOOP BOOP BOOP BOOP BOOP, then the QUICK MINUTE button three times, BOOP BOOP BOOP, then the start button, BOOP.  Push a button one time too many, and you have to push STOP/RESET and start all over.

And don't get me started on knobless automotive UIs that require pressing some tiny, illegibly-labeled physical button to get a touchscreen into the right mode so you can select a submenu to tune the radio.  Or a GPS touchscreen UI with obvious touch buttons that do not-very-useful things, but you have to read the (not supplied) manual to find out that touching the screen where the buttons aren't is how you get to the important menu.

El Reg now tells the tale of how one of our destroyers came to collide with a tanker.  Truly horrible UI design is involved.

The investigation found multiple causes but among them was confusion created when throttle and steering functions were split between two different consoles. Control of the port and starboard throttles was split between two helm stations so when a helmsman thought he was slowing both throttles in fact he was only slowing one causing a sharp turn into the tanker.

What the actual...?

Did the ship designers learn UI design from watching Star Trek: The Next Generation?  Does anyone take human factors into account nowadays, or is looking cool the sole consideration?

The question simply must be asked.

"Ghislaine."

Is that an Eddorian name, or what?

I mean, if you wanted to give your daughter a name to inspire high-level villainy, how much better could you do?

Afterthought:  ... Or did someone think it just sounded Eddore-able?

Architecture

In some areas, it is the custom for henhouses to be above ground level, on piers or stilts.  There's apparently a reason for this, though I'm not clear on what it is, and I'm too lazy to look it up.

But... just in the interest of cultural misappropriation... how about a henhouse on people feet?

Hey, Rocky! Don't forget the rabbit hutch in the form of a giant inverted top hat.

Update:  Texas girl says, "... off the ground to keep the snakes out."  That's one; I can think of some other plausible reasons, and Rob in the comments here suggests protection against dirt-based threats to the wood.

Brain keeps going out of focus

I've made a fair amount of progress on that pesky Verilog project for ToasterCo.  Now I need to finish up the state machine for the other side of the protocol... and, while (with the new structure I came up with for putting important parts of the logic outside of the state machine) it ought to be straightforward, it keeps looking complicated.  And now I'm not sure which clock I should be using, even.

I really need to take a hike break and come back to this, but it's much too warm out there.

Gresham's Law strikes again

Looking at flashlights, a step up from the pocket-sized ones I have scattered around that run on 14500-size (or AA) cells.  So probably something that takes an 18650 lithium-ion cell.

Then there'll need to be a supply of 18650 cells.  Which... ugh.

There seems to be a bimodal distribution on Amazon: a few name-brand 18650s at exorbitant prices, and a profusion of off-brand ones with prices all over the place, reviews all over the place, and often wildly improbable claimed capacity (9800 mAh, yeah, right).

Also, searching for "18650" turns up a bunch of cells that aren't even the right size.  Maybe purveyors of AAAs are throwing all manner of keywords into their descriptions, including 18650, 14500, and so on, just on the off chance that someone looking for a particular size will decide to buy a product that doesn't fit instead.  How this makes any business sense evades me... unless they're planning to fold up their tents after a week and re-open under a different name.  Hey, apg will spit out all the business names you want, right?

Wasn't all that long ago, Amazon had a fair selection of plausible 18650s.  But everybody and his Tesla wants them, so many false suppliers crop up, and they crowd the legitimate ones out.

Anyway: lots of bad money, or 18650 cells, and very little of the good.

Update:  Seems the same thing may be happening on Amazon with some popular brands of, fer pete's sake, socks.  Many recent reviews to the effect that either the manufacturer has completely dropped its standards or these are counterfeit.  Erosion of trust, yes.  We may see some sort of supply-chain certifications for consumer goods emerge, as they have for critical mil/aero items.  But I hope the ones for consumer goods will be a heck of a lot cheaper.  (Six pair of socks: $20.  Certificate of authenticity: $600.)

I think Amazon needs to start policing its bazaar, or at least have some sort of highly visible vendor trust scores.  (Such scores need to incorporate a bunch of factors, and the initial visual presentation should indicate, at a glance, both how positive, or negative, the vendor's score is and how reliable the score is (based on length of experience, number of reviews, number of sales, and whatever else).  It's important to differentiate between a zero (neutral) score because a vendor is new and a zero score because the positive and negative reviews exactly cancel out!)

Yeesh.

So here I am, taking a little break from bashing my head against Verilog and other things, reading some Internets...

Jazz Shaw notes that some sciencey type, writing in a recognized journal, is suggesting that we need to capture and dissect some of those bug-eyed monsters that are buzzing our planet in their flying saucers.  And, in typical right-wing anti-science fashion, Shaw proceeds to suggest some reasons that this is a Very Bad Idea.

Well, as the song has it:

Don't start an interstellar war; it has no helpful uses.
If people ask you "what's it for?", you'll only make excuses.
If thirty trillion folks get hurt,
You'll go to bed with no dessert!
Don't start an interstellar war.

Really, guys.  Assuming that flying saucers are a thing... and that they're owned and operated by a civilization with technology far in advance of ours... initiating hostilities seems like a really dumb move.

If we had clear evidence of hostile intent, that'd be different.  But, as things stand now, we don't even have evidence that saucer-flying BEMs exist.

Hmph.  Time to figure out what's for dinner.  After dinner, more work.  Heed also the bonus verse:

Don't barbecue the alien and eat him with your fingers.
His shipmates might not understand, and first impressions linger.
Your behavior should reflect
Good breeding, taste, and etiquette.
Don't barbecue the alien.

(Song: Frank Hayes.  Bonus verse: no idea; I think I heard it from Fred Capp.)

Some progress.

Well, I managed to get one side of the Verilog project working... or at least emitting consistent output; I still need to validate the output, somehow.  Then I need to get the other side working.   And write a moderate mess of C code.

Ah, the stuff that needed fixing... signals I hadn't gotten around to connecting, incorrect choice of mast clocks for certain modules, a state transition missing some important details.  But it's somewhat cleaned up now, and I've figured out how to use PulseView (the latest version, not the outdated one supplied with Debian 8) and one of the Saleae-knockoff mini "logic analyzer" pods to capture the signals; alas, there's no handy off-the-shelf-and-tested protocol decoder for the protocol I'm supposed to be emitting, so I'm having to resort to less-informative methods.

Today, not much progress.  I've had a nasty headache all day.  Seems to be largely sinus-related, which I guess makes sense given what the local air looks like this week.  I've also been disoriented: woke up this morning, looked at the clock, saw that I'd slept in and it was now a few minutes after 5, checked the early-morning Internets, then noticed that it was a few minutes before 5.  Which, unless I did the time warp again, would seem to indicate that I misread the clock the first time.

Anyway... got a bunch more work to do the next few days, plus various other stuff on the calendar fragmenting my work days.  I sure hope this headache goes away.

Update:  Why are there so flippin' many variations on a 16-bit CRC?  At a first approximation, my calculation matches what an on-line CRC calculator gives for my test message... except that's with a couple of option boxes unchecked that maybe are supposed to be checked.  Methinks I need to generate a test message from another, supposedly-good source, and then try to replicate it using my logic.

Update 2:  Weird CRC problem fixed.  But... in the process... I set up a path whereby I could read out the CRC as a 16-bit value and report that.  Which came out wrong, in a different impossible way.  I still don't have a handle on that, but since it's strictly a debugging path, maybe I can just ignore it?  (Possibly a bad idea; unsolved mysteries in one's code are Bad News.)

Going quiet for a few days

Or at least I'd better.  Got a huge list of stuff to catch up on, and I've been useless much of this week (too much caffeine, not enough sleep, and a lot of dozing off at my desk when I tried to focus).

Got to make some real progress on this project for ToasterCo, as well as dealing with various Family Stuff.  Ergo, time for severely rationing the Internets.

Kind of missing an important point

James P. Sutton at NRO: Why the GOP Has Declined in California.

Thing is... when I first started paying attention to California politics (as opposed to just accepting what I was told), I noticed that (a) the Democratic Party was irredeemably corrupt, and (b) the Republican Party was utterly useless.  Basically, the California Republicans were fine with being the minority party and having no actual responsibility for anything (despite being blamed for everything), so long, presumably, as they got their share of the boodle.  That was right around 1990.

Yeah, every once in a while some Republicans would do something conspicuous outside of government.  The Party, though, was already in a permanent-minority-party mindset, and, so far as I could tell, lacked the organization to be anything more.

So the rot goes way back, and I don't believe it has anything to do with the Latino vote.

I agree, though, that the new, neofeudal socioeconomic structure heavily favors the Democrats... and the new election system heavily favors the party in power, which, again, is the Democrats.  But the CA GOP's problems are much older than those factors.

SMBC puts an old poem in slow motion

Today's SMBC.

Old poem:

This is the tale of Frederick Wermyss
Whose parents weren't on speaking terms.
So when Fred wrote to Santa Claus
It was in duplicate because
One went to Dad and one to Mum-
Both asked for some plutonium.
See the result:- Father and Mother-
Without consulting one another-
Purchased two lumps of largish size,
Intending them as a surprise,
Which met in Frederick's stocking and
Laid level ten square miles of land.
Moral:-
Learn from this dismal tale of fission
Not to mix science with superstition.