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Loosely inspired by how much people seemed to enjoy a similar question I asked on Games about unappreciated titles. But answers don't have to be media related (they still can be though).

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[-] Knusper@feddit.de 62 points 1 year ago

Sound engineering. Most people think sound is somehow sine waves and that's it. And well, that's technically correct on some level, but you can layer sound waves on top of each other to create triangle waves or square waves or what specific instruments happen to sound like: Waveform diagram showing flute, oboe and clarinet. They have very different, repeating squiggly lines. Source

And well, these aspects have implications. Like with an oboe, even the basic waveform is quite interesting, so it's excellent for solos.
On the other hand, with a more boring sound, like a sine wave, you can do relatively wild things in terms of melody or combining them into intervals, and listeners won't feel overwhelmed as quickly.

And then you've got the fun field of drums. You can often just take white noise (or pink noise etc.) and just make its volume drop off rapidly and that already sounds similar to a drum.
Which is again interesting on the boring/interesting spectrum. That noise signal adds a short moment of chaos into the mix. But then we often make drums play quite structured rhythms to entertain a different boring/interesting spectrum over time.

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[-] beizhia@lemmy.world 48 points 1 year ago

Linguistics. Did you know English and Bengali are related? They share an ancestor about 5000 years ago. Russian, Latin, Farsi, and Greek, and lots more are in that family too.

Do you know what languages are not related at all, absolutely 0% aside from borrowings, even though if you know a bit about em they seem like they should be? Japanese and Korean.

[-] davepleasebehave@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

you might enjoy reading about Champollion and how he deciphered the hieroglyphic system.

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[-] GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world 46 points 1 year ago

Connections.

I love the stories about how seemingly disconnected events at different times and in different parts of the world actually have a connection. Like how some random chance meeting of two people 100's of years ago started a chain reaction that ended up with us having some cool new technology or idea.

[-] Justas@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 year ago

Jeri Ryan, who played 7 of 9 in Star Trek, was married to Jack Ryan, who was a Republican senator. Allegedly,, Jack liked watching her have sex with strangers. They got into a sex scandal that led to Jack Ryan losing the re-election. The man who won that election was, then a political upstart, Barack Obama.

[-] misterundercoat@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

So ... there's this BBC television series presented by Jim Burke that you might enjoy.

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[-] funnystuff97@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago

FPGAs, love the damn things. They're circuits that you can re-program at will after they've been manufactured! If you build, like, a 2-input AND gate, that's all it will ever be. It can only take in 2 inputs and AND them together. But with an FPGA, they're manufactured to be versatile; you "program" the circuit you want to achieve onto the chip, and it will achieve that functionality! You can make a 2-input AND gate, slap it onto a bread board, and have yourself that nifty little AND gate, but if you later decide you wanted it to be a NAND gate, just reprogram the chip and like magic, what was once an AND gate is now a NAND gate. They're great!

I wanted to get into FPGAs when I was making some custom boards with MCUs but I really had a hard time finding a good idea for a starter project with them. How did you get started? Any recommendations?

[-] funnystuff97@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

The "print hello world" equivalent of FPGAs is to make an LED blink. That teaches you how to use an FPGA's clock, divide it down to a frequency the human eye can actually see, and route it out to a pin (the LED on your board). Then you can experiment with your catalog of digital circuit building blocks using buttons, switches, LEDs, and 7-segment displays. You can make your own custom logic of ANDs and ORs to display different logic.

Some super beginner projects I found fun back in college:

  • Create a counter, and increment the counter every time you press a button. That's the easy part. Then display the value on a 4-digit 7-segment display. It's harder than it sounds, because you have to learn about time multiplexing! (At any one instance in time, only one digit is on, and the other three are off. Human persistence of vision makes us believe all 4 digits are being shown at once, but in reality, the system cycles through each digit, flashing one on for a few milliseconds, then turning it off and moving to the next one. Implementing this takes effort!)

  • Learning Finite State Machines and then implementing your own is fun. I made a "vending machine" state machine once, where different buttons corresponded to inserting different coins, and then once a certain amount of money was put in, you could select which beverage you wanted, the machine would "vend" (an LED would flash), and then change is administered. Another fun and classic FSM is the pattern detector, where you input a series of 1s and 0s, and the machine will blink an LED if it detects a certain pattern in the sequence, say, 11010. This one is a lot harder than it sounds, because it requires a lot of thinking of the different edge cases! If I input 111, for example, the system shouldn't be like, "well he inputted 111 but I was expecting 110..., so I'm gonna start over", because I could input "111111010" and the pattern is there, just at the end. This one teaches you how to draw state diagrams and Mealy/Moore machines!

  • Then you can get into using peripherals, like RGB LEDs, gyroscopes, graphics on a screen, ethernet connections, etc. You just need to learn the protocols and follow the correct logic in your own logic. It's a lot of copy and pasting at first, but if you put in the effort to understand what you're copying, you'll pick up on it fast.

Really, the world's your oyster, all you need is a development kit and a program that will synthesize/place&route your Verilog or VHDL.

And if you'd like to start at the very, very beginning, HDLBits is an amazing resource to learn Verilog: https://hdlbits.01xz.net/wiki/Main_Page

Let me know if I can ever be of any assistance :)

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[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 33 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Theology. I've read so many religious texts from all sorts of religions and while many people might discuss the organizations of religion a lot, or make fun of religious people, I rarely get to talk about the belief systems and their cultural relevance to various peoples both now and in the past or even discuss the possibilities of God and what God may be if one existed. I don't study for the belief itself, I personally am an atheist; but knowing these belief systems helps understand people a bit better. Plus some of them are actually full of kick ass stories. Hindu is insane with space battles and shit.

[-] redballooon@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Tell me more about Hindu space battles.

[-] Pips@lemmy.film 8 points 1 year ago

As someone who grew up with those stories, I'm also curious what are considered space battles since I don't recall any.

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 8 points 1 year ago

The Vehemas and some of the wars depicted where they used them are pretty spacey.

[-] clumsyninza@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I think it's more abstract than "space"

[-] frankPodmore@slrpnk.net 11 points 1 year ago

I'm also an atheist who's read most of the major religious texts, and you're right, this is the best way to read them. If I'd sat there going, Ha ha, this is all very illogical, I can prove this didn't happen... well, I wouldn't have had a lot of fun!

I love the bit early in the Mahabharata where two brothers keep fighting and causing chaos. Eventually the gods get annoyed at them and turn one of them into a turtle and the other into an elephant. BUT! They find a shallow lake, so that they can keep fighting, but that causes loads of flooding, so then another god (who's a bird) comes and picks them up and puts them in a giant tree.

Absolute classic, pure mad mythology.

[-] Snorf@reddthat.com 6 points 1 year ago

Are you telling me a bird picked up an elephant? That's preposterous!

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[-] Adalast@lemmy.world 32 points 1 year ago

I literally cannot answer this without seeming like a pretentious, arrogant ass. Anyway, quantum field theory, high energy physics, condensed matter physics, generative art, computing algorithms, arcane math theories (meaning difficult to understand, not magical), procedural art, simulations, awesome places to visit in the world, Factorio, the channels I watch on YouTube. Honestly, I don't have anyone around me who cares about or understands most of my hobbies. They all love me and care for me, just not the stuff I like.

[-] misterundercoat@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

What they don't understand is that the factory must grow

[-] Adalast@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

And grow it shall. Nice to meet you fellow engineer. Nauvis deserves to be paved for being in the way of our ships.

[-] Very_Bad_Janet@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

awesome places to visit in the world... the channels I watch on YouTube.

Those sound like two possibilities for general interest conversations. (You don't sound pretentious btw.)

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[-] DeVaolleysAdVocate@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

have you watched the youtube series 'the biggest ideas in the universe'? it's got about all that (no art). That PBS space time channel is additionally quite fire

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[-] kugel7c@feddit.de 6 points 1 year ago

Contrary to some of the other comments here I think what you are saying is pretentious, but also that it's good, It's Good to be pretentious, at least sometimes.

I try to think about it like this sometimes: "Don't be a gatekeeper, but also try to hit the in joke when appropriate.

[-] hperrin@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago

Cassette tapes. They may not have the most accurate sound, but they have a cool, unique sound, and they feel really nice to hold. People who love vinyl often hate tapes. I love both.

[-] Very_Bad_Janet@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago

I have fond memories of making or receiving mixed tapes. It was very labor intensive to produce and imperfect (start of the songs often cut off, no smooth transition between songs, last song might also be cut off on the end) but that was part of the charm.

[-] klemptor@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago

When you called up the radio station and placed a request so you could tape it but then the fucking DJ talks over the intro so every mix tape you make with that song has his dumb yapping baked in

[-] Snorf@reddthat.com 5 points 1 year ago

I also love both for their unique sounds, but i attribute that to having grown up with cassettes.

[-] drummerguy520@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I recently started collecting cassettes since a number of metal bands release on the format. Everyone always has an odd reaction when I start talking about why I think they're cool.

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[-] Quazatron@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago

Computing history, obscure operating systems, movies and music my friends never heard about, fringe humour nobody gets.

[-] vivadanang@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

You might enjoy Cathode Ray Dude on youtube. Really obscure 80s-00s stuff.

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[-] clumsyninza@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Can you give an example of fringe humour that comes to your mind ?

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[-] FireTower@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I should probably add something of my own. I like failed firearms designs that had some features that makes them objectively better if you overlook all the downsides. Or generally anything where one person made it because they thought it was cool and no one with better judgement stopped them.

Like the Gyrojet pistols, unlike traditional pistols they used rocket projectiles. This meant two major things one the guns didn't need to have any pressure bearing parts and could be made incredibly light compared to normal pistols (.88lb/.4kg vs ~2.2lbs/~1kg), and the down side they reached maximum speed much slower than normal cartridges.

This meant that in practical terms a target close enough might not give the rocket sufficient time to accelerate to effective speed and wind would have a greater effect on the projectile. Hence they don't make them anymore.

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[-] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Chess! I suck ass at it so I don't fit in with actual chess players, and everyone I know is totally disinterested in the game. I can only fuel my love for the game by watching Gotham trash talk 1200 rated players when I know that I'm a lichess 700

Astronomy! Not astrology! No, that's not a smudge on the lens, that's M3, and it took me an hour to find it in this Bortle class 7 suburb with my 4.5" dob, and I'm damn proud of myself for that

Anime! No, I haven't seen Naruto, or DBZ, and I ain't got time for One Piece. How's about Shinsekai Yori, Haibanei Renmei, or ACCA? Nah, nobody I know has seen those, even though we're in our late 20s and are a bit old for shounen at this point

[-] Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 5 points 1 year ago

Hey fellow chess lover! I'm like 900 on lichess :-D

It's such a rich game it's incredible, and the history about it. Crazy actually.

[-] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 year ago

Morrowind.
True conspiracies. Cryonics.

[-] FireTower@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It seems like Morrowind has a tiny cult following in the TES fanbase still. The AI Dagoth Ur memes took off a few months ago.

[-] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I am surprised by morrowind memes more often than I would expect(never), but I mean in real life. Even gamers that I meet in GameStop have rarely ever played Morrowind. But it's cool, I can take it way too seriously online anyway.

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[-] Very_Bad_Janet@kbin.social 15 points 1 year ago

Asian beauty items, specifically kbeauty and jbeauty skincare. I love hearing about people's skincare routines and new niche items, ingredients and brands. But my friends irl aren't really into beauty (everyone i know is so pragmatic lol).

I really love beauty empties- I used to follow subreddits related to finishing beauty products, aka panning them (panning meaning hitting the metal pan at the base of powder cosmetics; panning has come to generally mean using up your products). There is something so satisfying about using up your stuff and I like vicariously experiencing it through other people. I mentioned that I was saving my empties for a few months to review which ones were worth repurchasing and my friends laughed at me, thinking I was joking.

[-] FireTower@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

I don't wear make up but as someone who once got all the toothpaste out of the tube I can relate. Knowing that something got used to it's fullest is quite satisfying.

[-] rockandsock@lemm.ee 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Obscure 80s and 90s hip hop records that very few people have heard of because they sold less than a couple hundred thousand records, some much less

Classic black and white films and TV shows. No one I know in real life enjoys these.

[-] clearedtoland@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

Because I was an insomniac pre-adolescent, I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners are some of my most comforting memories.

[-] Very_Bad_Janet@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

Can you give us some examples of both? Some that you think we will find obscure and some that you yourself find obscure?

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[-] Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 5 points 1 year ago

You should digitalise those and share them (I mean it would be very cool if you did!), I'm sure lots of people would like it, they just haven't got the time/energy/possibility to find those kind of things.

I'd be interested for example :-)

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[-] jagungal@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

The State Emergency Services of Australian states. Basically, they're state government funded volunteer rescue agencies that focus on floods and storms. They also provide other rescue services outside of major population centres, like vertical rescue and road crash rescue. I think it's a great idea because we get enough severe storms and floods that a specialist agency is worthwhile, but there can be years between large scale events, so having the surge capacity of a volunteer agency is great.

It's a similar story with the CFA/CFS/RFS/NTFRS¹/TFS¹/whatever's happening in WA¹, but instead of rescue they do firefighting. Their main ("combat") role is fighting bushfires, which happen seasonally so surge capacity is important. However, in country areas they also provide structural and vehicle firefighting services. I'm aware that the US have a similar situation with volunteer firefighters though, so I'm not so keen to teach grandma to suck eggs.

¹These agencies are metro and rural firefighting agencies, so their combat role is all fires, not just bushfires.

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[-] SuperSpruce@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 year ago

Googology. The "study" of ridiculously large numbers. It's a rabbit hole of recursion and mathematics that starts with stuff like googolplex (10^10^100) and never really ends.

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[-] Caesium@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Rhythm games, 100%. I am a fair bit obsessed with them but I have yet to find a friend who truly Gets It. They either only like music, or they like games. Somehow never the marriage of the two.

[-] flubba86@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I like music, and I like games. But I loathe rhythm games. I'm so bad at them. I have pretty good rhythm in general, but those games kick my arse and frustrate the heck out of me.

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[-] Vodik_VDK@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

I feel like people could benefit from what I know about Butt Stuff™.

[-] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 year ago

NA and NULL values.

In R (programming language) they have some interesting differences. You can think of a vector as a train with many cars, and each can hold a number. Let’s say I have train with three cars and I store the number 2, 3 and 5 in them. That would be a normal well behaved vector (2, 3, 5).

I could take away one of those numbers and leave that seat vacant. It could look like this (2, NA, 5).

If I tell you to find the third number in that vector, that’s easy. It’s 5. If I tell you to find the ninth one, that just doesn’t make sense and the answer would be NULL.

So in other words, NA is a vacant seat with no number sitting in it. NULL is a place where there is no seat to begin with.

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this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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