For those folks looking for programmable #sensors or #controllers or other devices that are easily customized, I recommend Phidgets. A 🇨🇦 company, based in #Calgary, #Alberta, that has been around for about 20 years.
I have used it for sensor projects (heat and humidity) and a fun #RFID project.
Huge library of projects available in a lot of languages (C, C#, Python, Java, and more).
Lots of online support. Most devices are backwards compatible, but there have been new standards (e.g. RFID) which require reader up grades. Well made, inexpenaive.
I've replaced my PC, 'though I couldn't afford it, and my old PC was fine, thanks to Micro$oft's equivalent of invading #Greenland. To support Windows 11 and its #AI feature, that will take me months to track down and disable.
So the move away from my old PC is non-reversible. I must work out all those things, that will later lead to "Oh, why didn't I do that BEFORE I started?!!"
I've filed away my downloaded music, text, and webpages.
Shortly, I will get rid of the rubbish that's accumulated in my Downloads folder. Then, I will clean the old PC, emptying the Recycle Bin etc. Then I'll back up the files Windoze will allow me access to, and also back it up as a drive image.
And now the question I need your #help with, all you #PC gurus:
Wouldn’t it be nice to enhance your PC’s performance “with just one click?” Microsoft's PC Manager is a single, streamlined utility app that collects all of Windows’ performance optimization settings. So, how’s it work? @’s Michael Muchmore took it for a spin:
A Google content violation notice, regarding a cartoon-style 3D character resembling an old PC. It prints a poo emoji on a sheet of paper coming out of its backside.
Retro-futuristic 3D artwork, showing a Commodore 64 computer depicted as a spaceship in war with a Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer spaceship, with Earth in the background.
"[A] small cohort of teenage computer enthusiasts from the Princeton, N.J., area flaunted a clever work-around: They borrowed an acoustic coupler—a forerunner of the computer modem—and connected it to a nearby pay phone. With this hardware in place, the youngsters dialed in to an off-site minicomputer.
The teenagers called themselves the RESISTORS, a retronym (they picked the moniker first and then matched words to the letters) for “Radically Emphatic Students Interested in Science, Technology, Or Research Studies.” The trade publication Computerworld gave the RESISTORS front-page billing—“Students Steal Show as Conference Opens”—and noted how the group drew a “fascinated crowd” of computer professionals. A reporter even suggested that the RESISTORS represented the vanguard of a small-scale social movement as the teens sought to engage with their counterparts from “underprivileged areas of Trenton” and introduce them to personal computing.
In the modern history of computing, a story about a small cohort of teens “playing” with computers might seem tangential. But the previously untold history of the RESISTORS highlights the fact that, years before there were machines called personal computers, some people regularly accessed computers for activities unrelated to their professional lives. Motives varied, but entertainment as well as the display of technical prowess mattered. Just as important, the story of the RESISTORS expands our sense of the hobbyist community beyond later and better-known groups like the Bay Area’s Homebrew Computer Club."
After it was deemed not to be good enough for Windows 11 by Microsoft, I salvaged my dad's old computer (2nd gen Intel Core i3) and turned it into a Linux server.
I am considering using it as a lab for my pet projects and experiments, replacing a ~4 EUR/month Hetzner server (cx22) in exchange for a comparable CPU power and similar cost in electricity bill and plenty more RAM and storage.