Hackaday Links: March 24, 2019

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It has come to my attention that a few of you don’t know about Crystalfontz, an online store where you can find displays of all types, from USB LCD displays to I2C OLEDs, to ePaper displays. Thanks to [arthurptj] for that tip. Yes, Crystalfontz is cool, but have you ever heard of Panelook? Oh boy are there some displays at Panelook. Here’s a 1024 by 768 resolution display that’s less than half an inch across.

The comments section of Hackaday has been pretty tame as of late, so here’s why Apple is the king of design. It’s a question of fillets. There are a few ways to add a fillet to the corner of an icon or a MacBook. The first is to draw two perpendicular lines, then add a fixed radius corner. The Apple way is to make everything a squircle. The ‘squircle’ way of design is that there are no sudden jumps in curvature, and yes, you can do this in Fusion360 or any other design tool. This is also one of those things you can’t unsee once you know about it, like the arrow in the FedEx logo.

The ESP8266 simply appeared one day, and it changed everything. The ESP32, likewise, also just arrived on the Internet one day, and right now it’s the best solution for a microcontroller, with WiFi, that also does things really fast. Someone over at Espressif is dropping hints of a new microcontroller, with a possible release on April 1st (the same date that Apple released their competitor to the Raspberry Pi). Is it RISC-V? Is it 5V tolerant? Who knows! (Editor’s note: it’s not RISC-V. Though they’re saying that’s in the pipeline.)

The Verge got their hands on an original iPhone engineering validation unit. It’s a breakout board for an iPhone.

San Dimas High School Football Rules

There’s a screwdriver in your toolbox that has a cast clear handle, a blue ferrule surrounding the shaft, and red and white lettering on the side. Go check, it’s there. It’s a Craftsman screwdriver. It’s an iconic piece of design that’s so ubiquitous that it’s unnoticeable. It’s just what a screwdriver is. It’s a prototypical screwdriver. Thanks to the rise of resin and turning craftsmanship, there’s now a gigantic version of this screwdriver.

[The 8-Bit Guy] posted the following message on his Facebook on March 19th: “Just FYI – somebody hacked and totally erased my website. So, it’s going to be down for a while.” At the time of this writing, everything looks okay, which brings up the larger question of why Facebook is still a thing. We’re on a gradient of coolness here, and the sooner you delete your Facebook, the cooler you are. I, for example, deleted my Facebook during the Bush administration, and we all know how cool I am. I’ll never get to the singularity of coolness of kids who never had a Facebook in the first place, but the point remains: delete your Facebook old man.

[SirEdmar] wants to bring Fusion 360 to Linux users. Autodesk wants the same, and they tried a web-based version of Fusion 360, but… it’s a web version of Fusion 360. Right now the best solution is Wine, and thanks to [SirEdamr] 360 works in Wine.

Bing translate does Klingon! How well does it work? Not bad, it could use some work, mostly with non-standard vocabulary:

31 thoughts on “Hackaday Links: March 24, 2019

  1. Contrary to Brian’s supposition, me never having had a facebook (despite being squarely in the target demographic when it was new and popular), has never been a source of coolness.

    1. my facebook account lasted for about 13 minutes. its like every bad web design feature all thrown together in mess of an interface that looks like it was designed by an apple user.

  2. A friend had a great camera better than 10 years ago with a half mega pixel viewfinder. It quit though and he gave the camera to me. Enough res to manually focus. Most were just good enough to frame the shot. This was before swing out screens.

  3. “I’ll never get to the singularity of coolness of kids who never had a Facebook in the first place…” Never had Facebook, never will, I p*ss liquid nitrogen! (But the doctor says a little penicillin will clear that up.)

  4. “The comments section of Hackaday has been pretty tame as of late, so here’s why Apple is the king of design.”

    Says the guy who had his comment removed, and yes I noticed.

  5. I’d like to know if it’s possible to DIY something akin to a Remarkable digital writing pad. Because that thing seems to cost way more than it should. There are much cheaper options but they can’t store the pages – you have to take a picture of the screen.

  6. Panelook seems to have a nice list of displays, large and small, but I’d be hard pressed to find one small, rugged, and cheap enough to cram into the surface of the keys of a keyboard. It’s one thing to have a programable keyboard. It’s another thing to have the symbols on the keyboard programable too (with illuminated as a bonus) :-) …I can dream :-)
    The closest thing I can think of right now would be to have a projector cast an image onto a blank keyboard, illuminating patterns on the keys. If your fingers are on the keys they block the projection but you wouldn’t be able to see them anyway. In fact you would likely see the characters on your fingers which allows you to know what key you are on without moving your fingers. …could be cool :-)

  7. Just one small problem with the whole Apple Squircle thing. As noted on the Wiki page you link to yourself: “Apple Inc. uses a shape that resembles a squircle in its iOS mobile operating system as the shape of app icons, but it is not actually a squircle but an approximation of a quintic superellipse”

    I get that you like baiting the comment section and mentioning Apple is sure to get the clicks, but aren’t there better ways than spreading lies and bullshit?

    1. I think it’s really cool that Apple corners don’t have tangents. But that’s not worth hundreds or thousands of dollars to me. Sorry, I don’t buy into walled gardens. Been burned too many times on that one.

  8. “There’s a screwdriver in your toolbox that has a cast clear handle, a blue ferrule surrounding the shaft, and red and white lettering on the side. Go check, it’s there.”

    I can guarantee you there is no Craftsman screwdriver in my toolbox. I’ve never even seen one.

  9. I don’t have a cellphone or a Facespace. Not for lack of trying, just no one returns my calls or letters.

    Brian Benchoff was my Facespace friend but unfriended me because he was “too busy”. Now he’s Twittering all the cool Tesla kids with their skinny jeans and dot com 2.0 money. We used to buy Apple products together, you know, before Apple was cool. Oh well. At least he’s happy.

    I once thought I’d create a Facespace account just to change my relationship status to “In a relationship” then add a few ‘friend’ accounts… just to see what that feels like.

    My last remaining family member just passed away Sunday so I better go deal with that now.

  10. With some much attention to detail, how comes that Apple came with the charging method of the Apple pencil 1st Gen????

    It has been spotted how stupid, dangerous it was at the first demo!
    And why can they make a revision for Gen 1 and Gen 2 iPads pro???

    There are other design flaws in their product but this one is the most facepalm in the universe

  11. “It has come to my attention that a few of you don’t know about Crystalfontz, an online store where you can find displays of all types, from USB LCD displays to I2C OLEDs, to ePaper displays. Thanks to [arthurptj] for that tip. Yes, Crystalfontz is cool, but have you ever heard of Panelook? Oh boy are there some displays at Panelook. Here’s a 1024 by 768 resolution display that’s less than half an inch across.”

    Electric Dollar Store.

    https://electricdollarstore.com/

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