IncidentalIncidence

I can tell you with confidence that DACs can only convert digital sound data into analogue, and that’s due to the audio jack being older than digital audio.

Right. But the principle is the same; hardware that isn't compatible with pre-existing systems has a control circuit, and a digital interface. The digital computer sends instructions to the controller, and the controller carries out the instructions.

An analogue device isn’t compatible with a digital device, much like how digital sound data (songs, audio tracks in videos, system sounds, etc…) and analogue audio don’t technically work.

Correct. That is why there is dedicated control circuitry designed for making analog and digital systems talk to each other -- as there will be for optical analog computers and every other type of non-conventional computing system.

It's true that conventional systems will not, by default, be able to communicate with analog computers like this one. To control them, you will send the question (instructions) to the control circuitry, which does the calculation on the hardware, and returns an answer. That's true for DACs, it's true for FPGAs, it's true for CPUs, it's true for ASICs.

Every temperature sensor, fan controller, camera, microphone, and monitor are also doing some sort of conversion between digital and analog signals. The light being emitted by the monitor to your eyes is a physical phenomenon that can be measured as an analog value (by taking a picture of your computer monitor on film, say). How does your monitor produce this analog signal? It has a control circuit that can take digital commands and convert them into light in specific patterns.

Using an analogue device to accelerate something requires at least some information to be lost on translation, even if the file size is stupidly large.

I don't think you've understood what analog computers are used for (actually, I'm not sure that you've understood what analog computing even really is beyond that it involves analog electrical signals). Analog computers aren't arbitrarily precise like digital computers are in the first place, because they are performing the computation with physical values -- voltage, current, light color, light intensity -- that are subject to interference from physical phenomenona -- resistance, attenuation, redshift, inertia. In other words, you're really worried about losing information that doesn't exist in a reliable/repeatable way in the first place.

A lot of iterative numerical methods need an initial guess and can be iterated to an arbitary degree. Analog computers are usually used to provide the initial guess to save iteration flops. The resolution just is not that important when you're only trying to get into the ballpark in the first place.

In other words, this computer is designed to solve optimization problems. Say you're getting results based on the color and intensity of the light coming out of it, right, like you might get values of tides based on electrical voltage on an old desktop analog computer. It's not that relevant to get the exact values for every millisecond at a sampling rate of a bajillion kilohertz; you're looking for the average value that isn't falsely precise.

So if you were designing an expansion card, you would design a controller that can modulate the color and intensity of the light going in, and modulate the filter weights in the matrix. Then you can send a digital instruction to "do the calculation with these values of light and these filter values". The controller would read those values, set up the light sources and matrix, turn on the light, read the camera sensors at the back, and tell you what the cameras are seeing. Voila, you're digitally controlling an analog computer.

why's everybody on twitter so mad? did they want someone else?

I would use one of the tools listed in the archwiki; I have an intel chip so I've never used any myself.

Once you find a tool that can undervolt, usually the recommendation is to lower the voltage incrementally until you see unstable behavior and crashes, than raise it back to the last good voltage, then run a stress-test to verify.

just the readme for throttled

it would be the same way expansion cards work now; it would have digital control circuitry that can communicate with the analog circuitry.

We already have expansion cards that can do this. Audio cards are an example of an expansion card that convert between digital and analog signals.

Even things like graphics cards, ASICs, or FPGAs; it's not a different type of signal, but it's an architecture that isn't compatible with the rest of the computer because it's specialized for a certain purpose. So there's control circuitry that allows it to do that and a driver on the computer that tells it how to.

would recommend it to everyone. I don't use it every day, but there are a million and one ways to brew with it, it's very handy for traveling, it's super easy.

I use it particularly for when I'm at the end of a bag of coffee and don't have enough left to do a French Press or a pour-over -- I have a couple of Aeropress recipes that use 10-12 grams.

that's a great tip, thanks for posting

I kind of wish I had played with ROMs and stuff earlier. I still like the idea, but I don't use it because I use mobile payments so much that it would be a PITA not to have that working.

specifically battery life for my University classes

try undervolting your CPU/GPU. That was the first thing I did when I got my thinkpad and it improved the thermals and battery life significantly.

Not true breakage usually, but eventually I got tired of having new surprise bugs in shit that was working fine before.

yep, considering switching to nixos for this reason.

NixOS is a bad choice for a new user. EndeavourOS is okay, but arch-based distros (even ones with nice graphical installers) can get overwhelming for a beginner if an update breaks something and you have to figure out why and fix it, which isn't an irregular occurence for me. Wouldn't recommend tumbleweed for similar reasons.

I think the best mix of easy customizability, beginner-friendliness, and stability are probably offered by fedora and mint, personally.

yeah I agree that that's the big question.

Interestingly, Dortmund has had a ton of injury issues, to the point that they fired their head physio last year over it. The fired physio says that his theory is that it's due to have two different surfaces at training -- apparently Tuchel wanted to have a training field with the same surface as the stadium, so the facility has two fields -- one is hybrid like the stadium, one is natural. The fired physio says his theory is that moving between the surfaces during the same session is what's causing the injuries.

I don't know if that's accurate, but their willingness to let him go now for relatively cheap could reflect not just a lack of confidence in his ability to stay healthy, but also (or maybe even moreso) a lack of confidence in their own ability to keep him healthy.