The Computer And General Tech Thread - Software, Hardware, Questions, etc.

[Raphael]

Does anyone know of a good, reliable and, most importantly, trustworthy Android screenshot app? My phone's regular screenshot function doesn't work for some reason - when I do the things that, according to the manual and the internet, should produce a screenshot, I don't get a screenshot - and I'd like something that doesn't spy on me or upload anything to the cloud.

[Raphael]

How weird is it when people who send emails with pdf attachments still include a turn-of-the-Millenium-style "You'll need Acrobat Reader to open this file; here's where you can get it"-note near the end of the year of our Lord 2025?

[alice]

How weird is it when people who send emails with pdf attachments still include a turn-of-the-Millenium-style "You'll need Acrobat Reader to open this file; here's where you can get it"-note near the end of the year of our Lord 2025?

It's the equivalent of that text on album covers which reassures you that the disc within is playable with modern "compatible" styluses.

[Raphael]

Recently, there was a problem with my Mom's laptop. The Wi-fi wouldn't work. Rebooting the laptop didn't help. Neither did turning her router off for ten minutes and then turning it back on again. Trying to see if I could diagnose something, I logged into my account on her laptop, which is the Admin account. And wouldn't you guess, for that account, the connection worked fine.

I was pretty confused by that. I took advantage of the fact that the connection worked for the Admin account to install updates, but that didn't help, either. Finally, I opened the tool for managing network connections and looked at the Wi-fi connection in question. There was a box labelled something like "everyone may use this connection." It was checked. I unchecked it, and then checked it again after a moment. That did solve the problem.

[Raphael]

I've come to the conclusion that if you create a graphic in Inkscape, and you want to turn it into a png or jpg image file, you should not use Inkscape's own export function. That will make any curved lines look ugly and artifact-ridden. Instead, you should open the graphic in Inkscape and use your computer's screenshot function. Then, you should use another graphics software of your choice to crop and scale the screenshot as needed. That way, there's a good chance that curved lines will end up looking nice and smooth.

[bradrn]

I've come to the conclusion that if you create a graphic in Inkscape, and you want to turn it into a png or jpg image file, you should not use Inkscape's own export function. That will make any curved lines look ugly and artifact-ridden. Instead, you should open the graphic in Inkscape and use your computer's screenshot function. Then, you should use another graphics software of your choice to crop and scale the screenshot as needed. That way, there's a good chance that curved lines will end up looking nice and smooth.

I can’t say I’ve ever experienced that myself. Could you give an example?

[Raphael]

I can’t say I’ve ever experienced that myself. Could you give an example?

Sorry, I had deleted the exported files that I'd been unhappy with, and now I somehow can't reproduce the problem.

[Travis B.]

zeptoforth 1.15.0 is out, the first release in a while. While its feature list may not seem long, I made this a minor release because it added single-core platforms for the RP2040 and RP2350, which constitute a significant change.

[Travis B.]

I now have a working software implementation of SHA-256 for zeptoforth. I wrote it in anticipation of developing support for the RP2350's hardware SHA-256 peripheral, as not all supported platforms have such a peripheral, as I wanted to familiarize myself with the inner workings of the algorithm ahead of time, and so I would have something to test against. I have also implemented a test suite which it now passes.

This implementation is based closely off an SHA-256 implementation by Alain Mosnier, itself in turn based off the pseudocode in the SHA-2 Wiki article.

[Travis B.]

I have started a new project, zeptoforth for RISC-V, or zeptoforth-V for short (the original zeptoforth is for ARM Cortex-M). It will initially target RP2350, as I already support the RP2350 and it is the only RISC-V hardware that I currently own.

This is with a view towards an eventual Raspberry Pi Pico 3, which I have heard unsubstantiated rumors as to that it may be RISC-V-only (the RP2350 is dual-bootable into both ARM Cortex-M and RISC-V).

This is also to familiarize myself with a new processor architecture, as I have never worked with RISC-V before (even though I did work with MIPS, RISC-V's spiritual predecessor, in college at the assembly code level).

[rotting bones]

I'm impressed Forth is still making inroads. I remember making a simple editor in Forth around the 2000's, and it was already ancient by then.

[Travis B.]

I'm impressed Forth is still making inroads. I remember making a simple editor in Forth around the 2000's, and it was already ancient by then.

The biggest advantages of Forth is that it combines both interactivity and low-level access to the machine in ways few other languages provide ─ usually you get one or the other (e.g. you typically get a REPL with high-level languages like Python and Lisp and low-level access with languages like C and assembly where you are normally stuck with the write-compile-flash-test loop*). Forth provides both a REPL and assembly-like access to the machine in one language.

* Yes, there do exist interpreted C REPL's, but they are few and far between, and I haven't heard much about them.

An additional advantage of Forth is that it has very strong support for metaprogramming which puts C macros to shame, and is largely matched only things like Lisp macros and Template Haskell. It is very easy to write new Forth words that generate code on the fly, and to do things like develop new control structures entirely in Forth.

But yeah, Forth is an old language and most Forth people are old ─ I am young as Forth people go, and I'm in my early 40's.

[MacAnDàil]

My printer started printing out Europe and the People Without History by Eric R. Wolf but I do not recall considering sending it to print. Has anybody else had a document print out by accident like that?

[Travis B.]

My printer started printing out Europe and the People Without History by Eric R. Wolf but I do not recall considering sending it to print. Has anybody else had a document print out by accident like that?

I have accidentally opened up the print dialog on my web browser before, but I have never actually accidentally printed something.

[alice]

My printer started printing out Europe and the People Without History by Eric R. Wolf but I do not recall considering sending it to print. Has anybody else had a document print out by accident like that?

Sorry; that was me. I was wondering where it had gone!

[Travis B.]

I've released zeptoforth 1.15.1.1, which amongst other things was an attempt to fix a power-on issue with zeptoforth on the PicoCalc which I had been unable to reproduce for some reason but which other people had complained about, and it turns out that the fix was successful per testing by one of the people who had previously experienced the issue.

[Travis B.]

After releasing zeptoforth 1.15.2, I decided to write some more demos for the PicoCalc.

The first was a clock demo. Here is a screenshot:

CLOCK1.PNG (2.96 KiB) Viewed 3824 times

The second was a bouncing quadrilateral demo. Here is a screenshot:

BNCEQUAD.PNG (23.76 KiB) Viewed 3824 times

[Raphael]

Neat!


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Unrelated: I recently had to scan some paper documents. Here's what my scanner app showed when I started it:

sfs.jpg (71.91 KiB) Viewed 3814 times

Does anyone else think that the designers and/or programmers of the app missed an opportunity by not phrasing that as "Scanning for Scanners"?

[Travis B.]

Does anyone else think that the designers and/or programmers of the app missed an opportunity by not phrasing that as "Scanning for Scanners"?

They probably thought of that, and ruled it out as involving too much alliteration.

[alice]

A bit OT, but: Perhaps due to Star Trek, "scan" always sounds very science-fictional to me and feels jarring when I read it in, say, a fantasy context, e.g. "The thief descended the stairs into the inn's common room and scanned the crowd for potential targets".