Thanks to all who work on #xfce, I never felt so comfortable with a window manager since #windowmaker a decade ago.
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Thanks to all who work on #xfce, I never felt so comfortable with a window manager since #windowmaker a decade ago.
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undefined stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe shared this topic on
Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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Don't Worry Darling is much better than the first half led me to believe. Crazy twist that I didn't really see coming, though I guess the clues were there.
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Drunken eBay Purchase Becomes Motorized, Speaking Dalek
Not every impulsive purchase on eBay leads to possession of a wooden Dalek, but when a friend did exactly that, [Tony Goacher] did his part to turn ‘Dalek Bob’ into a motorized and remote-controlled unit of impressive stature.
Fitting wheels to shafts and motors to a frame can be a bit tricky when none were made with the other in mind.
The purchased Dalek is made of wood and, with the help of two bolts, is of sufficient size to trap a human inside. There’s a bench of sorts upon which the captive can sit, and with some effort, shuffle the surrounding frame awkwardly about. The scale of the Dalek is impressive, but it was clear the effect of human-powered locomotion was lacking. The solution was to install wheelchair motors, tires, and an ESP32-based remote control.Quite a lot of work went into mounting the motors and wheels, and the challenges will be familiar to anyone who has done hobby robotics. One can choose ideal motors and wheels, but making them fit one another can be an entirely different story. Shafts and hubs are of different sizes, motor mounting doesn’t quite match the platform, and it’s all a bit like fitting a square peg into a round hole. But with access to the right tools, it’s nothing a little metalwork and welding can’t solve.
For the control system, the ESP32 (with a beautiful CNC-routed custom PCB) sets itself up as a wireless access point that serves a web-based control panel for piloting, and controls two H-bridges to drive the motors. What’s more, it also provides a sound board from which a second operator can trigger appropriate phrases and sounds from the Dalek.
Some folks prefer their remote-controlled Daleks plush and cute instead of large and looming, but we like the smooth movement and imposing stature of this one. Watch it all in action in the video, embedded below.
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I'm working on a new JavaScript/TypeScript library for natural language translation powered by LLMs. I want a name that feels elegant, memorable, and reflects the essence of translation.
I've narrowed it down to four candidates from different linguistic roots. Which one do you think fits bets?
Xindaya (信達雅): Derived from Yan Fu (嚴復)'s Three Pillars of Translation—faithfulness (信), expressiveness (達), and elegance (雅).
Vertana (वर्तन): Means transformation, turning, or process. It evokes the fluid and sacred process of transforming meaning from one language to another.
Glosso (γλῶσσα): The root for tongue or language. It's the origin of terms like glosssary and polyglot.
Fanyi (飜譯): The direct and minimal term for translation. It's punchy and honors the long-standing tradition of translation in East Asia.
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@FraEmme bello! E auguri in ritardo!
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@xconde Thank you, it's beautiful here! We visited the blowhole in Kiama yesterday, at a wine tasting right now :)
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Simulating Driven-Dissipative Quantum Spin Dynamics on Consumer Hardware
Physics simulations using classical mechanics is something that’s fairly easily done on regular consumer hardware, with real-time approximations a common feature in video games. Moving things to the quantum realm gets more complex, though with equilibrium many-body systems still quite solvable. Where things get interesting is with nonequilibrium quantum systems.
These open systems are subject to energy gains and losses that disrupt its equilibrium. The truncated Wigner approximation (TWA) is used as a semi-classical method to solve these, but dissipative spin systems proved tricky. Now however [Hosseinabadi] et al. have put forward a TWA framework (PR article) for driven-dissipative many-body dynamics that works on consumer hardware.
Naturally, even with such optimizations there is still the issue that the TWA is only an approximation. This raises questions such as about how many interactions are required to get a sufficient level of accuracy.
Using classical computers to do these kind of quantum physics simulations has often been claimed to the ideal use of qubit-based quantum computers, but as has been proven repeatedly, you can get by with a regular tensor network or even a Commodore 64 if you’re in a pinch.
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아, 맞다. 이제 슬슬 FOSDEM 2026 發表 準備 해야겠구나…
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@Whimsy welcome 👋
