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A year or so ago I bought a Yamaha sound bar for our TV. It has fantastic sound quality. Then a few months ago, I discovered it can receive the sound signal via Bluetooth. That opened a new avenue. My laptop has Bluetooth. So I paired the two. Now I can play my music collection from the laptop via Bluetooth through the sound bar. Fantastic music quality. All hail Bluetooth! 
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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But there is more: last year I visited the grave of king Harald Bluetooth in Jelling (Denmark).
The grounds and museum are really impressive, read: Jelling - Wikipedia[^]
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Off-tracking completely:
For thirty years, Norwegians have argued whether 'internet' is to be spelled 'internett' (double t) in Norwegian. IP buffs insist that Internet is a proper name, The Internet. You cannot translate a proper name! (And please disregard the fact that by distinctions taught at universities in the 1980s, when IP really started to grow, The Internet doesn't technically qualify as an internet at all, but as intranet!)
Then comes BT, named after an honored Norse king. We Norsemen are so proud of it that we do not want to honor 'Bluetooth' as the proper name of the technology; lots of people (including quite a few of those insisting on 'internet' in its English form) call it 'Blåtann'.
Going one step further: When you visit the grave of old Harald, is that the grave of Mr. Bluetooth, or of Mr. Blåtann?
If I go to England to see the grave of Winston Kirkebakke, would you think that would be a proper way to refer to the British prime minister during WW2?
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You have a point, but I'm afraid people won't understand what I'm talking about when I use the real name.
Sorry about that!
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Winston Kirkebakke. 
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Or should that be Uinnstonn Kjørkjill? Or Vinnerby Kirkebakke? 
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Rather Vinnstein - the origin of the 'ston' part is 'stone'.
There is a small handful of Norwegian boy's names starting with 'Vinn', and many ending in 'stein'. If I was introduced to someone named Vinnstein, I would think of it as an unusual name, maybe a little old-fashioned, but certainly within Scandinavian naming traditions.
I am not sure that I would immediately associate it with 'Winston', due to the different stress pattern.
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You should be happy that this is not a forum for HiFi freaks
Traditional BT sound codecs were never accepted as anywhere close to HiFi. LC3, The newest codec standard, and the one pushed for the Bluetooth Low Energy variant (rapidly displacing "classical" BT), is a great step forward, based on twenty-five years experience with "psycho-acoustic coding", such as MP3 and HE AAC. It is probably the first BT sound standard that will be accepted by the HiFi buffs. But is so new that it certainly is not supported either by your sound bar or by your laptop.
One LC3 quality I think more important than HiFi: It was designed for minimal latency (i.e. delay in coding/decoding) - a requirement pushed by gamers with BT headsets, wanting sound effects in perfect sync with images. When playing music stored on your laptop, it means nothing. But I wish IP phone had a (lack of) delay comparable to POTS / ISDN. The delay is the single reason why I hate talking with friends on the phone nowadays. I have a long-term hobby project of setting up a SIP client with LC3 codec to see if that would be more acceptable. (Problem is that this is #37 on my list of hobby projects ...)
For the HiFi, I will be in the first row to applaud if you play your old-codec sound to a HiFi buff, telling him that you are using the new LC3 codec, and he praises the sound quality ... I know of no area more affected by placebo and other psychological factors than sound quality. For those who know nothing about LC3, older codecs are probably perfectly fine!
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Definitely not the last to get there...
I had to look up what exactly a selfie-stick is...
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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I love this widget. It's a system-on-a-chip powered by a Tensilica Xtensa LX6 processor, with integrated WiFi, Bluetooth, BLE, and "ESP-NOW" radio protocols, a hardware TCP/IP stack, a generous array of I/O options including ADCs, DACs, UARTS, I2S, SPI, I2C and digital inputs and outputs, all on an array of about 36 remappable (software multiplexable) pins.
All for like $5-$10 for one already on a development board you can use.
That's the great part.
Why is it awkward?
It has about 320kB of usable RAM, and about 4MB of flash storage. The RAM is a bit on the generous side. I rarely use even half of it. The flash program storage (once you account for on-flash system files, over the air updates, "eeprom" and library code) is utterly anemic. The bluetooth stack alone is huge. Then you add in the WiFi support so you're using all the major radio comms features and you're looking at like 40% of your program space being used before we even talk about the code you've written that uses it. It is basically not possible to use all the major features of this device with the small amount of program storage space you are given.
Furthermore, things look bad once you start using most of the space, since no toolchain i've used supports incremental patching of the uploaded firmware - i don't think it's possible.
You're stuck uploading 4MB over UART at max 921600 baud every time you make a change in the code.
If you're lucky enough to have a not-so-common WROVER-dev-kit you have onboard JTAG via USB but you can't upload with JTAG, only debug with it.
Because the dev cycles are so long and it's slow or not possible to step through debug it, it means you probably aren't going to use both of its dual cores unless you're very brave and very patient. The second core is just going to run the network stack and spend most of the time idling.
So it's a curious choice of technology.
If it were me i would have
1. Increased the flash size to 8MB
2. Allowed for upload via JTAG
3. Cut the 2nd core
You can get single core ESP32s variants but they're not very common.
You can get Espressif to make you variants but it's not cheap. They also have some variants they sell on custom order like the WROVER.
One of these days a chinese company like Espressif is going to figure out that they'd make a mint doing end to end manufacture-to-order of the SoCs all the way to building custom PCBs protos that use their SoCs as well and then they are going to dominate the industry until everyone starts doing it too because any amateur will be able to proto like a pro using those services.
Real programmers use butterflies
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honey the codewitch wrote: It has about 320kB of usable RAM, and about 4MB of flash storage. The RAM is a bit on the generous side. I rarely use even half of it.
Sounds like a limited Amiga from 30 years ago.
Ode this, to Denise and Fat Agnus.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Yeah but it's a lot smaller, runs at 240mhz, and runs on a lot less power. The dual core 32-bit CPU is significantly more powerful as well. I also think there's more I/O.
Real programmers use butterflies
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honey the codewitch wrote: Yeah but it's a lot smaller
Thanks to no development on Amiga side in 30 years.
honey the codewitch wrote: The dual core 32-bit CPU is significantly more powerful as well
Didn't exist back then; but the power came not from the hardware, but the OS.
honey the codewitch wrote: I also think there's more I/O.
I think roses are red. Still, the ones in my gardens are not.
Ever used it? Or OS/2 warp? Or QNX4?
240Mhz is a luxury. Look up the specs; and we talking multitasking there.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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For no reason of which I am aware, I suddenly began to compare certain aspects of my careers (real life: chemistry vs. continuing story: programming).
A particular aspect of the two that really distinguishes the two is the type of results one expects.
With a computer program it is a series of steps/procedures/what-ever's that are deterministic. I am using the term 'deterministic' to imply that the results of specific input exactly defines the specific output. That is, in fact, the real point of using the computer: exactly predictable outcomes. It cannot be a mere 99.9999% predictable or, if you think of it and how many operations take place for almost anything calculation of consequence, that one-chance-in-a-million of uncertainty would make it useless. It sort of follows one of Einstein's quotes to the effect that 'insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results'.
Now contrast that with chemical processes. They're really all statistical. For any of you who've taken organic chemistry, you know that you are looking for a "% yield" - in other words taking a bunch of stuff and putting them through a process has a multitude of outcomes. Not only that, but let's say you have a 70% yield as a predicted outcome (from previous information). You still will not likely see exactly 70% but will, if your "recipe" was well documented, have an expectation of something like 70±10 % as the yield. So there's uncertainty at two levels: what the reactants will do when they interact and a bit of kismet. Throw in that your starting materials are real substances that will "invariably vary" and it completes the fog. In organic chem lab, your product generally started out looking like (and was part of) a tar.
All that being said, it works damn well and chemistry is part of everything around you that makes life good. Forget popular opinions - nearly everything you look at required chemistry to bring it about.
Now, for computers, you could break that determinsitic paradigm you have built the perfect Turing Test. For chemistry, there are some reactions that are essentially "quantitative" meaning that all of the reactants go to a single product limited only by the relative proportions of the reactants (something might be in excess). A beautiful example of the latter is the preparation of cobaltus tetrakis(thiocyanato)mercurate. You mix solution of two salts and, after an induction period, it begins to form a brilliant blue snow storm, continuing towards this single inorganic polymer product until one reagent is totally exhausted. It is, however, a rare thing. I tried to find some videos of it but they were made by bored hacks. Here's a still[^]
So now, I'm in a world of a + b always gives c as before it was c (and some d, e, f, . . . ). In a way, we have it easy. As long as the plug isn't pulled or coffee spilled.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Garbage in, Salad out. 
If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.
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theoldfool wrote: Garbage in, Salad out
The words of a Jedi Compost Master ! ?
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Or the words of someone who hates what my grandfather called "rabbit food".
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Just consider this about rabbit food: rabbits have a pretty good time making more rabbits. That food is definitely good for something!
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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The words of a ?Jedi Compost Master dreamer.
If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.
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Chemistry has no "undo" button.
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W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote: Now, for computers, you could break that determinsitic paradigm you have built the perfect Turing Test.
Your ways of finding one needs refinement.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote: the results of specific input exactly defines the specific output
It surely doesn't always feel that way 
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If you're not part of the solution, are you part of the precipitate?
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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"... there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem." -- Despair
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Said every pharmaceutical company executive on the planet.
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