@Flute I know it’s not really a gallery site, but I do know that bluesky’s API actually allows you to specify timestamps for stuff. I may have messed around with them a bit to make a post from 800 years ago VwV

@Flute pfffftt, if you'd like to! I was thinking about releasing the code for mine publicly anyways, so I'd be more than willing to share it! (once I actually finish it, eheh)

@Flute Yeah... one step closer at least x>. And, fair enough! Will still be awesome to see for sure. I need to rewrite my own hit counter someday myself...

@Flute I’d love to see it if you go about making it! I know I would definitely add it to my own site if you’d make it public.

(also final update on the original counter, though I don’t want to discourage you from trying to make your own, I think you might be able to get it to work if you use https://images.weserv.nl/?url=cgi.boingdragon.com/count/[your account name]/0.gif&output=gif&n=-1 instead of what you’ve got currently. the end bit there just makes it render a gif, which it doesn’t seem to do automatically xP)

@Flute Yeah… had a peek at it, it sadly seems (from my minimal testing) like it determines unique hits based off of IP addresses, which any proxy would lose. HOWEVER, if you’re willing to put in a little work getting it set up, they DID have downloads for the old C version of the counters! Looking at the code, it’s certainly… “charming,” the entire animation is generated from pixel arrays, and I’m unfamiliar with CGI so I can’t actually vouch that it’s safe to run this on a webserver exposed to the internet. It is an option though, hah…

https://web.archive.org/web/20120302143410/http://boingdragon.com/downloads.html

correction: sadly it’s just one part of two parts needed, you’d just point the actual boingdragon account you made at your own webserver, hah. It DOES still generate images, though you have to figure out what to pass to it, and I feel bad poking through and changing someone else’s work without permission

@Flute Ppffft. I need to get some fun bird stickers for my hardware eventually... something to go with my pentium stickers xP

@Flute Looks awesome!! Love how it looks from the outside, and I gotta appreciate the bird sticker on the GPU, lol. I need to try and use differently shaped cases more...

I think wilds may be out of my computer's league... just a little bit.

@Flute Surprisingly, despite all I've put it through, it's still going just as strong as ever! Server does everything I need, and for my desktop the bottleneck seems to be my GPU usually anyways

And hey, the anniversary edition beats an older pentium at least!

@Flute Hah! I still use a 3770K for my main desktop, and a W3550 for my server Both definitely still outclassing even the anniversary Pentium (even without the overclocking I've done) but still. Funny to think how old they've gotten!

@Flute
WOO! I've been waiting for so long, and it's finally out!! I've been too busy to play much so far but I can't wait to sink even more time into it than I did for the demo!

Just ordered the monster hunter Seikret plushie. I know in my heart they will be fully worth it no matter what

Stuck between wanting to somehow modify my Toshiba Satellite 100CS into running a modern OS (or at least somehow using the lovely thick case it has for different hardware altogether), or just preserving it. I miss thick laptops…

I’ve worked for weeks to try and get my laptop’s CPU undervolted so that it would run cooler, but no matter what I do, it’s blocked by Dell’s UEFI (it’s to prevent a vulnerability, which, while I understand, I also want to be able to use my computer effectively), and it’s not possible to disable or downgrade… regardless of whether or not it’s an effective change for me to make, I bought the processor that came “unlocked” and now that’s been taken from me >:P

I trusted Dell for the longest time but I don’t think I’m going to bother with any of their stuff anymore, this is hardly more than a con in my eyes, I spent extra for these features!

shoutouts to javascript:void(0); the hero and main character of making me despite single-webpage applications

there’s nothing more frustrating than when I middle-click something that isn’t a plain anchor link and it doesn’t open in a new tab because it’s javascript silliness and doesn’t have a fallback a href

progressive enhancement is one of the best things anyone can do for a website and I’ve yet to have my mind changed on that

I reached a new level of Pagliacci'ing myself: I googled something and got exactly one result: ME.

we did it, we've now reached raptuh

Facts about hardware are not copyrightable.

People tend to ascribe magical properties to copyright, as if any kind of information whatsoever is copyrightable. That's not how it works.

Copyright is intended to protect creative works. Hardware devices are not considered creative devices, they are functional. They are protected by patent rights, not copyright – and patent rights only protect the ability to reproduce the device, not describe it.

This means that PCB layouts are not copyrightable. By extension, nor are circuit netlists (i.e. the "information" within a circuit schematic). (Yes, this has interesting implications for open source hardware! You can attach licenses all you want to OSHW, but they only protect the actual source design files - anyone can just copy the functional design manually and manufacture copies and ignore the license, as long as they change the name to not run into trademark issues/etc., any firmware notwithstanding)

IC masks are protected under a very explicit law in the US. They weren't before that. By extension, nothing else about the chip design other than possibly firmware is copyrightable.

If you go and make an x86 clone or an unlicensed ARM core, Intel and ARM won't go after you for copyright violation. They will go after you for patent infringement, because the ISAs are patented. Talking about the architectures and writing code for them and any other research is perfectly fine. The only thing you can't do is reimplement them.

This is why projects like Asahi Linux can exist. If somehow just knowing how hardware works were a potential copyright violation, none of this would be possible.

What this means is: it is entirely legitimate to inspect things like vendor tools and software to learn things about the hardware, and then transfer that knowledge over to FOSS. You may run into license/EULA issues depending on what you do with the source data specifically (think: "no reverse engineering" type provisions), but as far as the knowledge contained within is concerned, that is not copyrightable, and the manufacturer has no copyright claim over the resulting FOSS.

This includes copying register names. I have an actual lawyer's opinion on that (via @bunnie). I tend to rewrite vendor register names more often than not anyway because often they are terrible, but I'm not legally required to.

The reason why we don't just go and throw vendor drivers into Ghidra and decompile all day, besides the EULA implications for the person doing it, is that the code is copyrightable and it can become a legal liability if you end up writing code that drives the hardware the same way, including in aspects that are deemed creative and copyrightable. This is why we have things like the clean-room approach and why we prefer things like hardware access tracing over decompilation.

But stuff like register names and pure facts about the hardware like that? Totally fair game.

Fun fact: Vendor documentation, like the ARM Architecture Reference Manual, has no copyright release for this stuff in the license. If register names were copyrightable, then anyone who has ever read ARM docs and copied and pasted a reg name into their code would be infringing copyright. They aren't, because this stuff isn't copyrightable.

Am I a good birdie?

I just wanted to make a placeholder texture and things got out of hand ._.