Games.

Back in late 80s I managed to get my hands on a first computer, this being Sinclair Spectrum. Not greatest machine around, but for me it was awesome machine - despite other devices likes Commodore 64 or upcoming Amiga 500 being so much superior technically. I was way too young to really learn programming then, so it was mostly experimenting. And I loved games. I wanted to make games. But without knowledge, that didn't happen.

Next I got a PC. Actually my dad got one, for his work, a PC AT, a 8086 (way back when that actually meant specific thing!) with single-color display, and I was allowed to play with it. As he tells it, when I called him and asked him "how do I load the shuttle to this autocad?", he knew that I'd be okay with computers. This was, after all, when user interface meant DOS and command like, yet I had managed to start the program myself...

And after that hardware upgrade after upgrade. Every step on the way games got better and I'd love to make them. Did make some, too, although they weren't really popular.

Later on I went to work as a software developer so much of the interest kinda withered away. As far as I've understood it's quite usual - you don't really want to do same things as hobby you do for work. But the yearning never died out, it just got kinda supressed.

Even now I still like to play with game ideas. One part own engine, with OpenGL (screw directX and its platform lock-in), one part Unreal engine, one part Cryengine (because go underdog!), part GoDot (because open source) ... These ideas never get very far, mostly because time shortage, because games these days take a lot of effort, but it's still a fond dream of mine to someday get something really finished.

I still got a head full of ideas. I've got this one, kinda based on this one Valerian comic I read long time ago. Not that specific story or characters or even universe, really, just idea loosely based on the very general idea or surroundings in that comic, and I'd love to make into full single-player RPG (with capital R, very unlike latest Fallout excuse-of-a-RPG). But it takes lots of programming - and more importantly, lots of graphics and audio, neither of which I don't really have any talent - nor time - for.

But I still can dream...

High cost of free breakfast

Way too often I see bean counters ruining things. The following may or may not be completely accurate, as part of it is what I heard, and part of it is my own deductions. Read with some care.

I worked briefly at Nokia in late '90s. I was essentially subcontracting; work for hire, as the company I worked for was not Nokia itself. Nevertheless, even back then it was obvious (to me) that the company culture was fairly toxic and I would not be returning after my (short) period there. For example, I was implementing some small(ish) feature to an upcoming phone, which I did, and this was then shelved because it (as I was told) would have competed with some other (more expensive, I guess) phone model.

Since this happened to be during the boom period, a lot of the work force there was like me - young people in their early twenties, many being just second to fourth year students of the nearby university or higher trade school (I am not exactly sure how education translates here, so this has to do for now.)  And like so many young engineers, they liked to work slightly odd hours - like 12 to 8 PM or so. Which understandably is a small problem for management - how do you arrange meetings when people aren't there?

So Nokia chose to offer a free breakfast for all employers, only available in the morning, before 9AM or so. The idea being that free breakfast would encourage people to come to work earlier, and thus making management so much more easier as everyone would work somewhat similar hours. Breakfast wasn't anything too fancy I think; some bread, porridge, juice - generally cheap but filling stuff.

Unfortunately this didn't last long. Someone somewhere decided that this is actually something that is called roughly taxable benefit, which means that people would have to pay taxes for the value of the food (essentially paying taxes of money they never had in the first place). This of course didn't go over too well and free breakfast was shortly gone.

Another great idea ruined by zealous accounting practices.

Never assume...

Another post about travel. And there will be some harsh language and possibly disturbing themes involved. Consider yourself warned.

Just recently I watched some travel show, the episode was about Cambodia. And pretty much instantly I wanted to go there, again. We were there, my wife and me, just over ten years ago (damn how time flies these days...)  I've posted about this before, but there's just something different there, something that keeps tempting me to go back, unlike Thailand and Vietnam (which do have a kind of draw too, but just lesser one). I haven't visited Laos (mostly due to time constraints on previous visit) so I really can't speak of it.

When I entered the country, I already knew of the recent history of the place, Khmer Rouge and all. But when you read something like that from the books, it doesn't really click, not like when you see it yourself.

I wonder if that is true for everything (news) we see in TV these days... But I digress.

First stop was (coming from Thailand, so this was quite natural) Siem Reap and Angkor Wat. We took only one day to see it. Looking back, it is a shame, but back then we had a (relatively strict) schedule. But still, of course we were there on sunrise, as well as apparently hundreds of other people.

And still, the place is amazing. Pictures will never do it any justice, you just have to see it yourself.

We ran through all these absolutely gorgeous places, just barely appreciating beauty and all the work that was spent creating the place, the history (well, what we know of it) and so on. 

...Then, moving on. Phnom Penh, the capital.

Like I just said, when we're just reading about it or seeing pictures, we don't really understand. I knew of the places, had seen pictures of this before, but it never clicked the same. But actually visiting Tuol Sleng and Killing Fields is so much more real than anything pictures can show ... Shit. It still brings me down when I see the pictures I took and remember the place.

All the misery. All the horror. All the fucking waste of human life caused by fucking ideology, by a dream of agrarian society where there is no place for intellectuals.When you could actually touch the remains of the victims (but please don't, like the sign says; I of course didn't), you understand - and it hurts, it really hurts. Photos or videos can never express it. You just have to be there. But still, I highly encourage you to do visit these places. Do experience the human misery. In the end, it is enlightening. I am not saying it has to be this one, exactly, as there are other similar sites (like WWII concentration camps in Europe.)

Despite this, Phnom Penh was nice place. We had our adventures there (I think I did mention the late night taxi ride at some earlier post), we took a river boat for a cruise (got a bit more than we paid for, thanks to our (I think French) co-passengers who apparently made a sweet deal with out captain) and all that.

And moved on again, to village of Kep. It was not really planned, but passing through the village some local tourism promoters entered the bus and asked us (the general us, all the tourists there) to visit the village. I think we were the only ones that actually took the offer - after full two seconds of consideration. And I don't regret it for a second.

Small, very quiet, mainly fishing village by the sea. There really weren't that many foreign people around, maybe few dozen, max. Recently I took a look at the current map and I think it has grown a bit since - but I could still find the places we visited. I'd really love to visit the place again. As well as all the other places there. I don't know why, but Cambodia really felt different than Thailand or Vietnam (I'm repeating myself here, sorry.)  Too bad I never managed to find the places that sell fried insects (ants and spiders, I think) - I would have loved to try them. Ah well, next time.

And no, we didn't visit (in)famous Thunder Ranch. There's just something about the whole concept that seriously rubs me the wrong way...

But finally to the actual topic of the post. While we were at Kep, there really weren't that many tourists around, maybe few dozen max at the entire area. Nevertheless, one day we were there, having breakfast, just the two of us, and there was maybe one other person in the hotel restaurant aside of us. We were discussing our plans for the day and what not (in Finnish, obviously), and this other fellow, finished with his breakfast, gets up and walks past us - greeting us in Finnish. This took us by surprise, but since we hadn't been discussing anything insulting or volatile, it was no problem. But this really carved in proverbial stone a wisdom I had heard at some point earlier:

Never, ever assume that people around you can't understand what you are saying.

No matter where you are in the world, no matter how obscure language you are using, these days it is highly likely that someone around you will understand what you are saying. So keep your shit to yourself. Just behave like a civilized human being, for fucks' sake.

I did warn you about rough language at the top, didn't I?

Universal Basic Income

At this moment robots and automation are starting to take over jobs, and quickly. Some estimates talk about full half of (human) jobs being gone within US (or Europe) in twenty years. At this moment unemployment of 10-20% is bad news, but with these projections we're talking unemployment of about 40-50%! (of course, assuming that no other jobs materialize to replace these that are lost. Estimates of that vary, from none to all - but let's just assume that just about one third to half of the jobs lost are replaced with new jobs.)

Now, one might argue that progress is slower than this and robots can't really take over all those works, but even half or quarter of that figure will be pretty disrupting.

This is where UBI - Universal Basic Income, or perustulo as it is called in Finnish - comes in. Society with that many people with no income really can't function properly. And this is putting it mildly. Note that I used word income here - people with no work not may not be very happy, but if they don't have unemployment benefits or other income either... well, that is the point where things turn ugly. Bread and circuses have been benefit to rulers since days ancient, but when population can't afford them, they (and modern equivalents) lose their calming effect pretty quickly.

And people really expect about half of the current work force to be unemployed without society experiencing a serious meltdown? Not gonna happen.

UBI will be necessity. Yeah, there are problems, very serious ones, starting with the one where there isn't sufficient amount of government income anywhere (read: taxes) to fund any serious UBI scheme. Not even close. Now. But it is doable, but many people (I suspect myself included) will balk at the tax figures (both personal and corporate) that needs to be implemented.

And I'm completely ignoring the other problems raising the corporate tax rate will cause. Like corporations moving elsewhere. Or just moving their money elsewhere, at least on paper. But then again, that is exactly what they are doing now anyway...

But still, I do think that this is something that absolutely must happen, or the nice societies we have here will experience one serious cataclysm that will turn things very, very unpleasant. We do have the means to make it happen. We can - nay - will make it happen eventually.


But that being said, want to hear the really bad news?

US, Europe and similar countries have maybe total of 1 billion people, out of total world population of maybe 10 billion (estimated; now the figure is 7B but it will go up yet) when proverbial shit really starts to hit the fan.

So, assuming no major changes elsewhere, total of maybe some 10% of world population would enjoy the benefits of UBI. Remaining 90% of population would still be out of reach of any such plans, realistically. So they will have no jobs, no income and pretty much no hope either.

You think the current situation in middle east is bad?

I fear we haven't seen anything yet...

Hardest part of electronic design

What is the hardest part of designing a board?

No question about it, it is selecting the connectors.

Over the years I've picked few favorite MCU types I like to use. For applications needing a bit more power (as in processing power with loads of peripherals) I'd go for STM32 ARMs these days. For lesser needs, possibly some PIC24 series chip. For really low power, MSP430. I'm familiar with all of these (and few others, too) and can design a circuitry around them pretty quickly.

Familiarity is a bonus, too; I recently even had a customer calling me a bullshitter when I told him that his board was pretty much done (that is, schematics and layout) in less than 20 hours - and this included design meetings with said customer, studying some dozen exotic parts they needed and making library parts for them. But since I could base the "usual" difficult parts (MCU with parts around it, and DC/DC converters) on things I had done previously, rest was fairly straightforward, especially since board wasn't lacking space (so routing was fairly easy to do).

Whenever I have to use some unfamiliar but complex MCU, I usually have to spend maybe hour or two just reading manual and datasheets before I can even get started with it. You know, minimum necessary components, how peripherals work, or clocks and so on. More complex the part is, more time is spent just studying it. So I prefer to stay with ones I more or less know. This means that less of my and customers' time wasted there. But sometimes there is a special need that calls for some special and/or exotic MCU. Well, then I just have to quietly sigh and start reading.

I got a bit sidetracked there, but continuing. Same goes for DC/DC converters. Most of the low-power (speaking of current, less than 1 amp or so) is relatively easy. If I want really good one, I go for a Linear's devices - although they tend to be a bit more expensive. Others make nice chips too, but often quiescent current consumption is a killer - if my board will typically be using some 1mA or less on standby (which is 95% of the time - remaining time would be some 20mA on running, with occasional 300mA peak), it's out of the question for buck converter to use another 3 to 5 mA on top of that, especially in a battery-based product! .. and way too often I have to actually go and read the datasheet to find that value, since they don't really advertise it. With that kind of wasted current, no surprise, really... But still, relatively simple stuff.

Most of the remaining stuff is then either common as dirt (like chip resistors and capacitor) or something less common, but with good datasheets they're simple to use. Although there are nasty surprises there too sometimes.

But those connectors. Yeah, I know, there are literally hundreds of thousands of them, but that kinda is part of the problem. Even if you have figured basic parameters - like pin count, through hole/SMD, single wires/ribbon/other - out, there's still massive amount of options. And then you need to start picking them out by price and availability. That nice cheap connector you picked for this one-time 50-board product? Sure it's nice, available in rolls of 5000 pieces only, thank you. Hope you noticed this before ordering the boards...

In some cases it's easy, either surroundings (like existing devices) forces some type of connector or customer has his favorite already, but remaining time...

I've wasted way too many hours just browsing connector catalogs already. Really.