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• Worker shortage could be bad news for Oregon economy

In populous regions like Multnomah and Washington Counties - Portland is in Multnomah - half of the open jobs are "difficult to fill" while in rural areas, three-quarters are.

It's not just me saying this.

Get A Fucking Job.

Here's why I spent the night in the Emergency Room _twice_ last week, at a cost to the American taxpayer of I expect four thousand dollars:

My pharmacy had the wrong Washington Medicaid Member Number in their computer. I've had Medicaid twice; they kept trying to bill the old number, not the new one.

And just now when I gave them the _correct_ number off of Molina's Member Services website, they kept insisting that my Member # just absolutely _had_ to end in "WA". It does not!

However, they are _finally_ able to bill Molina, so by the time I get home tonight I'll _finally_ get to stop feeling like I just kicked heroin: I've been out of my Happy Pills for three solid weeks

It turns out that increasing spending and decreasing tax revenue isn't good for the bank balance.

The federal deficit ballooned to $779 billion in the just-ended fiscal year — a remarkable tide of red ink for a country not mired in recession or war.

The government is expected to borrow more than a trillion dollars in the coming year, in part to make up for tax receipts that have been slashed by GOP tax cuts.

Corporate tax collections fell by 31 percent in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, despite robust corporate profits. That's hardly surprising after lawmakers cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21.

Income taxes withheld from individuals grew by 1 percent. Overall tax receipts were flat. As a share of the economy, tax receipts shrank to 16.5 percent of GDP, from 17.2 percent the previous year.

Federal Deficit Jumps 17 Percent As Tax Cuts Eat Into Government Revenue

Some gubernatorial candidate's website informed me that I was using "the wrong version of Internet Explorer" then refused to display anything at all.

In reality, I was using Safari 4.0.5 for Windows, running under Windows 7.

It has the Activity Window so I can fix tracking pixels that are static files, but because it doesn't support the Clipboard, I can't copy out the complex URLs for Javascript pixels.

For like three years I've been stressing over how to get Mac OS X 10.4 to run in a VM or an Emulator or some such when only just tonight did it occur to me to use Safari for Windows under Windows.

However, Safari for Windows works so poorly, even in a VM that has four CPUs and 4096 MB of RAM that in a moment I'll start setting up Linux Mint 19 Cinnamon, with the aim of using Safari for Windows under Wine. Which again: it simply did not occur to me until just tonight.

I recall that Safari 3's Activity Window supported the Clipboard. I expect Apple removed the Clipboard in version 4 because the Activity Window was an effective way to get the exact URL for videos, so you'd just copy its URL out of Activity, then paste into the address bar in a regular tab and you could save that video to your storage as G-d And Nature Intended.

I'm not sure when Apple completely removed the Activity Window but it's been quite a while now.

My unit is charging even as we speak

Other World Computing included a $100 off coupon for a case of wine. While not actually a teetotaler a whole case would last me until the end of time.

If you'd like it, mail your postal address to mdcrawford@gmail.com

After I somehow work up the gumption I'm going to sing on the street so I can hang at The 'Bucks while I work on Soggy Jobs.

I'm just going to put this out there for you all to think about. If you are taking your moral cues from politicians, pundits, or lobbying groups, you've got it precisely backwards. They are supposed to be taking their positions based on what you believe. The other way around is the tail wagging the dog.

I am back in the ER starting to feel a little more rational

I made sure the firemen and the EMTs wrote down my URL so they could read living with schizoaffective disorder

Will post after I chill for a while

Vote.GOP twitter.com/EricTrump/status/1049696454292500480

And by the way, that includes our beautiful Blacks. If African-American unemployment is now at the lowest number in history, median income the highest, and you then add all of the other things I have done, how do Democrats, who have done NOTHING for African-Americans but TALK, win the Black Vote? And it will only get better!

Monday evening I decided I'd take the bus to the Emergency Room after supper as I could feel Bipolar Mania coming on, but at the time it wasn't so bad that I felt the need to hurry, so I rang up my Mom to let her know where I'd be, and told her not to worry I know all about this stuff by now as I was diagnosed with Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder in 1985.

A half hour later I realized I was not competent to eat a bowl of homemade chicken soup so I decided to expedite that bus trip. Despite being way crowded the ER got me into the back right away, where I requested Haldol, a powerful antipsychotic which is generally used only for the most severely disturbed patients, as well as so far as I know, only used in hospitals, never outpatient.

"I think we can set you up with that," said my doctor with a smile.

Three hours later I was still unable to sleep so I asked for some more. "Once you've been given Haldol they don't want to give you any more. They don't want it to put you to sleep."

"When you're manic, your only hope is to sleep." And friends, my doctor agreed and in fact gave me four times as strong a dose than the first one, and for good measure some Ativan. Most commonly used for anxiety it's also used as a sleep aid, but I never ask for it other than in the hospital as Ativan is quite addictive.

Mid-afternoon yesterday - Tuesday - the ER staff work me up then gave me the boot. I went home, slept for five more hours then felt just fine so I came into downtown Portland to work through the night.

Well now it's four AM and I'm starting to feel wired again. I decided it would be best were I to go home when the transit starts running again at five, then to do my best to sleep. I'm going to take a few days off from work.

That's going to be hard for me as I am heavily into my work, but better stir crazy than Crazy crazy.

This is written primarily in response to JID3525 by UID2828 but is of general interest:-

People are quite interested in your work with Arduino systems. Whatever you've achieved, people will pick fault. However, I understand that you are primarily interested in automotive applications. You also want something which is more open, accessible and educational than the predominant CANBus systems.

CANBus DRM

People may wonder why a serial protocol is neccesary in a vehicle when legacy designs had little more than a spark coil. Engine emission limits almost force a central computer. From there, security and convenience features make it worthwhile to spur numerous micro-controllers. A modern car may have more than 100 micro-controllers. The alternative is more than 3km of wires between wiring looms and an infeasible array of fuses and relays. At some point, it is easier to implement everything with software and a network topology. From Robert X. Cringely on Mon 5 Jun 2017:-

I was shocked five years ago, for example, when my friend Shoichiro Irimajiri told me that automobile wiring harnesses had reached the point where they cost as much to build as the engine and transmission for the same car. Irimajiri-san, who built Honda's first U.S. assembly plant in Marysville, Ohio, was then a board member of Delphi, the world's largest maker of car parts, and certainly knew what he was talking about. The future trend, he explained, had to be for wiring harnesses to become cheaper by turning into intelligent networks with single wire pairs replacing dozens of wires with hundreds of connections.

However, manufacturers have used this transition to enact substantial lock-in and a large amount of unproductive busiwork which is largely hidden from customers but extracted via increased repair costs. One of my ex-housemates was a car mechanic and from this I learned that car repair has become as tedious as Microsoft Windows licencing. Specifically, the Windows® Genuine Advantage*†☠ requires re-activation of a licence key after changing components such as processor, harddisk or motherboard. Most people out-source car repair and so they are generally unaware that the same DRM tedium is required after replacing an electric mirror. All such components are connected to a common one-wire serial bus and almost every car from almost every manufacturer uses the same bus network protocol. The specification for the bus is open but the address ranges, authentication and data are not consistent between manufacturers. If a person wonders why car repairs are so expensive, it is because an independent mechanic has to:-

1. Diagnose fault.
2. Obtain DRM component from authorized supplier.
3. Fit component.
4. Connect authorized diagnostic computer. (Purchased and maintained at own expense.)
5. Obtain first part of authentication handshake.
6. Telephone premium rate support line and get put "on hold" for 30 minutes.
7. Complete cryptographic authentication.
8. Discard old, unservicable component.
9. It may be possible for an erroneously substituted component to be installed in another vehicle. The manufacturer may set arbitrary limits on this process. The manufacturer may change the limits unilaterally. This includes revoking all support to a mechanic, vehicle or model.

Do you own a modern car or is it a smartphone on four wheels? Even niche luxury cars use CANBus with unwanted DRM. I investigated luxury car manufacturers and found that it is mostly a business of out-sourcing. This includes body panels, dials, engines, gearboxes, brakes and car hi-fi in addition to more mundane components, such as screws, switches and tires. (The history of CAD/CAM software suitable for curved body panels is tied to Prime Mainframes and, via Tandem Computers, back to our interests in reliable and documented serial protocols.)

Competitor Analysis 1: Vehicle Manufacture Assembly

McLaren specifies its own engines (but certainly doesn't test them where it assembles cars). The remainder send out CAD files or purchase from a catalog. Larger manufacturers have their own tweaking divisions so they can upsell their own products. The most ridiculous example is the heavily marketed Audi R8. Each edition is only available in one color. The trashy flecked orange convertible model was product placement during the test flight in the first Iron Man film where it is priced at US$135,000. However, it has a ZF transmission, tweaked with VolksWagen mechatronics before being assembled in a (hopefully hardened) Audi chassis. The transmission alone visits three or more sites during manufacture. This is an example of supply chains becoming increasingly global. Another example is Cherry Keyboards which was founded in the US before re-locating to Germany. It produced many switch and sensor products for automotive use before these products were amalgamated into ZF.

One safety feature which was initially available on an Audi R8 (and now more widely available) is headlights which selectively ignore rain and snow by using infrared sensors and a matrix of white LEDs. This system functions at 70MPH. I explained this to a person at my local makerspace and was told that it was technically infeasible. I replied that much of the required functionality has existed in optical mice for decades. It may have to work at a higher speed, with more elements and some calibration between sensors and lights but it is certainly feasible and commercially available.

I was less impressed with Aston Martin (which uses odd numbers for car models to avoid confusion with the number of cylinders in an engine). This was before the grifter banksters tried floating a company which has been bankrupt on seven occasions. Ford has owned various brands including Volvo, Jaguar, Aston Martin and Shelby. Few question Ford's apparent absence from self-driving cars but several advances have been made with Volvo cars and trucks. The most successful Aston Martin product, the DB9, is a salvaged failure and famous example of product placement fakery. The DB9 is also the least advanced product when compared to contemporaries. When Ford owned Jaguar and Aston Martin, a Jaguar design exceeded component cost and was transferred to Aston Martin. That's why a DB9 has a Ford chassis. It is also why the DB9 was manufactured assembled in a separate factory. However, the "DB9" which appears in the James Bond film: Casino Royale is a mock made from a DB7. Technicially, it is the best DB9 ever made - especially after mock DB9 exteriors were rolled for a stunt. The special Chinese edition Virage 88 doesn't come close.

Barriers To Entry

There's an old joke aout a man browsing in a Rolls Royce dealership. He asks the sales respresentative why the cars cost so much. The answer is "Try making one for less, sir." However, that isn't true any more. A back-of-an-envelope calculation shows that the Bill Of Materials for a car with the performance of an R8 and the strength of a DB9 is less than the retail cost of either - even for a single unit.

There are a few limitations for the aspiring sports-car manufacturer. For example, European safety regulations require approximately 30 vehicles to be trashed (at manufacturer expense) in front impact, side impact and similar tests. A similar number may be required for other jurisdictions. However, in the UK, regulations only apply to fully assembled vehicles. The UK has a long history of kit cars. The most famous is the Caterham Seven which was featured in the title sequence of the television series: The Prisoner. ("I am a name, not a number!" and then drives car model seven. Yeah, you're a unique snowflake - just like everyone else.)

In the UK, if a customer makes a token effort with a wrench and assumes responsibility for final assembly, a vehicle can be certified as street legal on a individual basis. I've seen some dangerous stuff certified as street legal, including a recumbent motor-trike with exposed continuous variable drive. It is also possible to pack approximately twice as many vehicles into a shipping container if they are sold in pieces.

I am concerned that the disparity between material cost and sale price occurs prior to the inflection point from hydrocarbons to electric. This could be like the situation where micro-controllers become powerful enough to drive VGA monitors at the point where VGA gets deprecated and replaced with something less accessible, less secure and more centralized. Or where analog headphone jacks and US$1 amplifiers get deprecated in favor of less accessible, less secure and more centralized digital protocols. Now that the little guy can make a better sports-car, the rules may change. Unfortunately, the result is likely to be garbage.

An electric train is sensible because the energy is supplied externally and therefore it doesn't carry its fuel. However, an electric car - even with the energy density and fueling/charging time of hydrocarbons - competes at a 2:1 disadvantage because an electric car carries the deadweight of a flat battery. A diesel (turbo) electric car is worthwhile. Specifically, an engine block connected to an alternator and an electric motor on each wheel with regenerative braking. This would be a hydrid with no gearbox or differential. Electrical losses are comparable to mechanical losses but it swaps precision machining for precision etching. It also provides the optimal acceleration of an electric car and the urban efficiency of a hybrid.

The next limitation is the industry specific CAD/CAM licencing (and formats) for body panels and interior. This can be skipped if a chassis is retro-fitted or a chassis has a strikingly angular appearance, like an F-111 Aardvark or the USS Zumwalt. I appreciate this loses mass market appeal but I merely suggest what can be trimmed from low volume production.

Competitor Analysis 2: Serial Protocols

The remaining limitation is the serial protocol which is used ubiquitously by car manufacturers. I don't want to diverge from CANBus to be a contrarian. I only want to diverge to reduce cost and risk. I want user-servicable parts - especially in a tight situation. I believe this is your primary use-case. The ability to tweak and customize is a welcome bonus but the penalty is that it is time-consuming, like every other open source project.

What is the point of maintaining wire-level compatibility with CANBus when manufacturers don't use consistent address ranges or data formats and lock-out third-party spares via DRM? The most standardized part of CANBus is agricultural accessories. However, in this case, ass-hattery is moved elsewhere. Most notoriously, John Deere refused to honor the re-sale of a firmware licence. Competitors have followed this poor practice. This greatly affects the capital value of a tractor and routinely requires tractor mechanics to break the law.

Are there any other serial protocols which are suitable for automotive use? Commercial aircraft use ARINC429 and larger ones use AFDX which is effectively ARINC77 tunnelled over UDP over dual runs of 100Mb/s twisted pair Ethernet. Many military aircraft use MIL-STD-1553 - except the F-35 Clusterfuck which uses FireWire. (I wish that I was joking.) I2C was originally developed by Philips to reduce wiring in televisions. This was eminently sensible when Philips made the custom chips and the televisions. Nowadays, robots use I2C for servo control and ultrasonic distance sensing and it is fairly apparent that each node is an independent micro-controller. Beyond aircraft and robots, there is RC5 for infra-red remote controls (possibly via an RC5/I2C bridge), MIDI for music sequencing, DMX for stage lighting, DALI for ambient lighting, X10 for home automation, the defunct iLink for hydroponics and several mutually incompatible protocols for Internet connected devices.

I don't suggest devising one universal serial protocol because that inevitably creates another standard while doing nothing to handle legacy cases. Regardless, many of these control protocols have very small address-spaces; typically 8 bit or less excluding reserved addresses. Even IPv6 over IEEE802.15.4 with stateful header compression and self-selection of addresses effectively has an 8 bit address-space rather than the expected 128 bit address-space. The most inane example of the art is HDMI's slow bus with a 4 bit address-space. Of course, this means that a television which implements I2C and HDMI may have a protocol with 7 bit address-space inside the device and a completely incompatible protocol with 4 bit address-space between devices. (Bring back SCART. All is forgiven.)

It is hoped that a vehicle has less than 127 micro-controllers. However, a small address-space hinders independent innovation and hinders auto-detection of optional peripheral components. A Hamming distance greater than one also increases reliability.

General Purpose I/O

A general purpose I/O expander system is of general interest because they are often implemented poorly. Multiple incompatible systems exist for Raspberry Pi systems. For some domains, this would be acceptable if basic database theory was applied to process control. (Error detection, read locks escalating to write locks, atomic commits.) More often, it is written for children or halfwits. And it is an insult to children. The typical scenerio is something akin to "Hey! I've got two Raspberry Pis connected via Ethernet and I'm running out of I/O pins. *Surely* I can get a program on one Raspberry Pi to flip pins on another?" And this is how we get pigpio and the numerous incompatible variants. Please don't use them; especially on hardware lacking parity RAM.

I first encountered this scenario when working with PIC micro-controllers. I found that PICs with more I/O were disproportionately more expensive because they came with additional RAM, ROM and interfaces which were not required. My idea, which was not unique, was to have an open or closed loop where all-but-one of the chips had identical firmware. This leads to the possibility that additional I/O pins don't have to be in the same place. For example, each node may control a cluster of car lights. The next consideration was addressing.

I didn't want I/O expanders with 16 I/O pins and then lose 8 pins to a hard-coded address. (Nor some variation thereof.) Nor did I want to maintain consistent addressing. So, I devised a protocol of three byte triples of the form <device>, <command>, <data>. In all cases, <data> is provided even if it is a dummy value. This allows upward compatibility and provides a placeholder within a closed loop serial stream for read operations. The part that I thought was particularly cunning was that the device number would be decremented by each I/O expander. It was hoped that every device could test against zero. This would allow the I/O expander at the head of the chain to be device zero. All subsequent devices would be numbered contiguously in ascending order and no I/O pins would be used for device addressing. Unfortunately, this scheme is very susceptible to bit error - before or after a triple is processed by the intended device. There is also the very fundamental problem that each byte of a triple may be mis-interpreted. For example, a command may be interpreted as a device number.

After many iterations of eliminating obvious flaws, I settled on a protocol which can be concisely be described as ATM Lite with a 28 bit address-space and 24 byte fixed-length cell bit-stuffed into a 256 bit frame. Somewhere along the way, synchronous communication became asynchronous. Actually, a dream caught that design error. In the dream, I was at my local makerspace and demonstrating a four node configuration but it didn't work. I woke and thought, "Phew! It was only a dream!" I then had the worrying realisation that the test case was depicted accurately and that designs over the previous two weeks didn't work.

My primary use-case is hydroponics and home automation - where everything is grounded. However, my choice of bit-stuffing would look hopelessly naïve in an ungrounded automotive or aerospace environment. A quick fix would be Manchester encoding where every bit is echoed with the reverse polarity. However, that halfs the bit-rate. In typical cases, such as bit-stuffing with an even Hamming distance, it is possible (and often desirable) to have an equal number of zeroes and ones to represent each valid symbol. This maximizes current balance and discourages accumulation of static. For my purposes, unbalanced bit-stuffing is sufficient. Indeed, it is desirable for low-speed software implementation. This would be re-considered if an ungrounded and/or high-speed, hardware implementation was ever required. Similar choices define the different generations of USB, although neither USB 1.x, 2.x nor 3.x are current balanced within one wire.

It is reasonable to assume that your protocol is somewhere between a toy implementation and a carrier-grade communication link. I hope that you have considered error detection in some form even if you have not investigated the art thoroughly. Indeed, I strongly recommend against a thorough investigation because you'll rapidly encounter an exotic zoo of unbalanced LDPCs where you can get too smart and zap your electronics. Despite this, minor tweaks to your protocol may disproportionately improve resilience. However, I would be the first to concede that there are diminishing returns to this process.

Circuit Design

I presume that you are a hardware engineer and that your designs are distinctly above average. For automotive applications, people wrongly assume that 12V is the maximum Voltage. However, 14.4V is typical for battery charging and 60V transients are typical despite surge suppression. Semiconductors, typically rated at 30V, are rapidly destroyed in such an environment. Irrespective of firmware quality, your designs would have increasing utility with increasing resilience to automotive electricity, US mains electricity, European main electricity and three phase electricity.

Your circuit board designs would also gain utility by providing mechanical compatibility with the fixing holes of the most common credit card computers. I assume that your design is considerably more compact but the (optional) additional area could be used for MOSFET heatsinks. In this scenario, a compact (automotive) version would be sufficient to switch headlights whereas a credit card (home automation) version would be sufficient to switch a kettle. Indeed, it may be trivial to design boards so that they can be crudely cut to the required size after manufacture. This would be particularly true if you provided, for example, eight MOSFETs and only six were required.

Successful Propagation

Your motive is neither fame nor fortune. You merely want to see your work being used rather than ignored. In particular, you are considering open source partly to obtain the most reach within formal education environments. I was inclined to agree with this approach until I suggested similar to a friend. My friend is extremely hostile to dumping a life's work on the Internet and finding that it is completely ignored. That would be particularly dispiriting. Instead, I strongly suggest charging about 10 times the component cost. This is not so that you can become an evil capitalist, spend the money on porn, hookers and blow or circuitously defend against litigious parties because you are worth suing. It is to cover unforeseen setbacks and spend the remainder on promotion to further your ideas. From the (cleverly named but concise) Lazy Man's Guide To Riches, retail price should be a minimum of three times the cost price (including materials, assembly, instructions, packaging, delivery and support) with the intention that more than half of the turnover is spent pursuing further sales. I understand that it appears pointlessly circular to take money to spend money to take money - while skimming whatever you can to cover equipment failure, manufacturing defects and calamity. However, if you do not engage in this practice then you exclude a very obvious method to leave a legacy.

I discourage the fixation on youth education. Without effacy, we attempt to stuff maximum knowledge while also expecting social success, civic responsibility, health and athletic prowess and many other goals in preparation for a career, financial responsibility and family. The pressure leads many to give up and some are driven to suicide. Although we should strongly encourage numeracy and rationality, adding proficiency electronics and micro-controllers is detrimental, especially for a kid who doesn't have an aptitude for STEM. Even in the case where the computer game, Minecraft, became a school activity, use of Minecraft for personal projects rapidly became uncool. Do you want your field to be treated similarly?

Neither do I suggest that you target efforts towards military veterans. For many people, joining the military is the best economic option even if aptitude lies elsewhere. However, it rewards failure to withold a STEM education until someone becomes a violent aggressor. Nor are they in the best state to learn after injuries; visible or hidden.

If you must target efforts, concentrate on people who are in mid career; who are stable, competent, unhurried - and heading towards divorce and homeless alcoholism when their job is suddenly offshored or automated. If you charge accordingly, you could personally extend credit to people in decline. In aggregate, you would cover the losses.

Suggested Strategy

Hardware and firmware may have independent merit. If nothing advances the art, overt secrecy may not be an advantage. However, if you strictly retain copyright, you have the descretion to gift licences to worthy causes. You can also avoid wasting resources by ignoring unofficial clones. It may be an advantage for clones to expand the market but it becomes problematic if they leave you with liability, take rewards and leave you in poverty. In general, if someone wants to do the money-getting while spreading your work then it gives you more time to use your talent. However, you are far less likely to spawn imitators if they cannot stake a career and mortgage on it. That definitely won't happen if you act like a hobbiest.

Anyone wishing to make DRM-free micro-controllers for automative applications may use any of this text with or without attribution.