Webtagr - Technology News Summarizer

DIY Artificial Sunlight: A Software Engineer's Hardware Adventure

2025-03-27

Inspired by a YouTube video, a software engineer embarked on a project to create artificial sunlight at home. Rejecting the bulky parabolic reflector design, he cleverly employed a grid array of multiple lenses and LEDs. The article details the entire process, from 3D modeling and PCB design to CNC machining and final assembly, including challenges faced and solutions implemented. While the final product's brightness fell slightly short of expectations, it achieved a satisfying geometric effect and provided the author with valuable hardware engineering experience.

Deterministic Uniform Disk Sampling: A Novel Algorithm

2025-01-27

This article presents a deterministic algorithm for generating N uniformly distributed points on a disk with diameter D. The algorithm divides the disk into M concentric rings, proportionally allocating points based on ring circumference. It then samples in polar coordinates, converting to Cartesian coordinates for the final point locations. The algorithm cleverly handles the relationship between point count and ring radius, and provides a simple integerization method, ensuring exactly N points are generated.

Are All Clocks 30 Seconds Behind?

2025-01-06

The author proposes a seemingly crazy idea: all clocks are 30 seconds behind. This isn't about time zones, leap seconds, or relativity; it's about everyday clocks. Through calculation, the author shows that because most clocks only display minutes, ignoring seconds, the average error is 30 seconds. They argue that if clocks rounded instead of truncating, the average error would be 0. The author further explores how people perceive and express time at different scales (years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds), noting that at the minute scale, intuition leans towards rounding, which conflicts with clocks' truncation. Therefore, they believe all clocks are 30 seconds slow.