Graham Sutherland / Polynomial

he\him

heavily ADHD.

into electronics, windows internals, cryptography, security, compute hardware, physics, colourimetry, lasers, stage lighting, D&B, DJing, demoscene, lepidoptera, socialism.

I am mothman. LÄMP 💡

nullsector/laser team @ EMF Camp

lasers & lighting orga @ NOVA Demoparty

I sell funny warning stickers at Unsafe Warnings: https://unsafewarnings.etsy.com

all posts encrypted with ROT256-ECB.

header photo by James (npub17qh…xe2r)

Web: https://poly.nomial.co.uk
Blog: https://blog.poly.nomial.co.uk/
Warning Stickers ⚠: https://unsafewarnings.etsy.com
Streaming: https://twitch.tv/gsuberland

Last Notes

2025-09-05 16:04:51 UTC

yesterday's weird discovery is that every regular sized carrot I have tested is almost exactly 100kΩ end to end with sharp probes stuck in it. a couple of them come out at 100.0k on the dot.
inb4 NIST carrot-based electrical resistance metrology reference

2025-09-04 18:20:46 UTC

- reply

ah, ok, so this is specifically about friction in the process of moving from the legacy X11 compositor to the new Wayland stuff. suddenly this makes a lot more sense. thanks.

2025-09-02 13:09:20 UTC

- reply

the one that always gets me is when you have a company that's facing an existential legal challenge over worker rights or malpractice or something else horrible, and the stock goes *up* because they're in the news and investors view them as being unilaterally profit-focused and unencumbered by morality.

2025-08-29 05:46:18 UTC

No NUT November? but how am I supposed to monitor my UPS?

2025-08-24 03:22:39 UTC

- reply

LTT built a machine for this and they have testing data up on their labs site. the trick is generally to calibrate out servo delay with a camera, then move at a constant velocity and measure the time deltas between key-touch, bottom-out, and incoming message. repeat for mean, median, percentiles.
since the goal is product testing, key scan delays are included in the latency.

2025-08-20 12:48:29 UTC

new-ish bit of UK law you should be aware of: the DMCC Act 2025.
it prohibits drip pricing, requiring the full price of products and services to be stated upfront, including any fees, taxes, charges, or other payments that the consumer will necessarily incur if the consumer purchases the product. if the amount cannot be calculated at the time of sale, full information must be provided on how that pricing will be calculated, and it cannot be hidden away in T&Cs. this includes freight & delivery.

2025-08-14 13:21:29 UTC

- reply

and while you're at it, make sure you choose a backup solution that gives them privacy by separating access to their data from yours.
something like Backblaze's local encryption password feature, for example.

2025-08-09 03:11:41 UTC

asymmetric coplanar differential striplines are weird

2025-08-04 02:22:14 UTC

- reply

citric is just as effective without the hazards, and cheaper

2025-08-04 02:16:57 UTC

- reply

I have two related ones and they're about cleaning.
first: most kitchen and bathroom cleaning products are just citric acid with perfumes and dyes added. that includes coffee machine cleaner. it's a phenomenal descaler and it's safe to use on metal, ceramic, plastics, glass, rubber, basically anything. buy a kilo of it as powder, super cheap. it'll get brass and copper looking brand new in minutes.

2025-08-01 16:05:13 UTC

listening to Mac Glocky's "what if Alien Ant Farm wrote Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen" again.
every time I listen to it I am awed by how flawless it is. not just in production quality, but also in how well he captures the artists' idiosyncracies. immense talent.
https://youtu.be/v6hWq0UT3yo

2025-07-25 20:33:41 UTC

so how long do we reckon it'll be until we see a story about a VPN company having quietly thrown a bunch of money into lobbying for the online safety act, knowing full well that it'll net them thousands of customers?

2025-03-13 04:01:14 UTC

rate my buck converter
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/114/153/101/520/184/433/original/19b7e2f4b678a016.png
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/114/153/115/682/984/542/original/e2566d462cc78de7.png

2025-03-04 11:47:56 UTC

- reply

yeah I feel like people get the wrong idea a lot of the time when I say "I want a tool not a toy" but it is in exactly this sense
so many things are toys these days

2025-01-15 17:25:02 UTC

it took just 15 days for one of my silly 2025 infosec predictions to come true:
http://soatok.blog/2025/01/14/dont-use-session-signal-fork/

2024-12-22 10:11:04 UTC

I think the world needs more ridiculous RF things. AM radio on Ku band. OOK doorbell on a mmWave carrier.

2024-09-05 04:17:13 UTC

looking at people's schematics on EE SE is just pain, why are so many of them completely unreadable spaghetti. have some pride in your work!