Hello neurodivergent comrades and allied neurotypical comrades! This month's mega-thread is all about electronics. This includes everything from the macro scale with computers and circuitry, all the way down to the atomic level with things like p-type and n-type semiconductors, as well as the math side of things with topics like Boolean logic and sequential logic.
As always, feel free to completely ignore the theme and post what you want! We’re just happy to have you!
If you want to talk about something related to this month's theme but can’t think of anything to say, then here’s some questions to try and answer to get you started:
- How has your neurodivergence effected the way you use computers and other electronic systems?
- What sort of electronic system do you commonly use in your day to day life?
- Have you ever had to solve binary logic problems, and if so, what are your thoughts on it?
- Have you even tried to build an electronic system (computer, circuit board, etc.), and if so, how did it go?
- If you're a gamer, what are your computer's specs?
Previous Thread: Megathread #9: Architecture
Drop any suggestions for future Megathreads here
Historical Info About the Device in the Picture Above:
The picture for this month's thread is of the very first transistor. Created in 1947 by John Bardeen and Walter Brattain while working under William Shockley at Bell Labs, it's invention marked the very beginning of modern digital computing, allowing computer engineers to move away from massive vacuum tube computational components in favor of much faster and much more miniaturizable semiconductors. For this achievement, Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley would go on to collectively receive the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.
In 1959, two more Bell Labs scientists, Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng, would further refine transistors with the creation of the metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET), which has gone on to become the most widely used type of transistor.
Important Community Stuff:
1.) First and Most Important
We want everyone here to feel safe and comfortable to post and participate in this community. We know there’s a bit of fear that even just one simple misunderstanding or ‘off’ social interaction will get you banned and slandered.
We just wanted to make it crystal clear that we will not let that be the case in this community. We understand very well how it feels for a social engagement to be going great and then suddenly its gone sour and it’s your fault and you don’t even know why everyone’s upset, and then without being given a chance to even learn what the problem was or grow, are cast out.
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2.) Interest Spotlights
We’ve been getting suggestions that we should find ways to help users be able to spotlight their interests, as we’ve done here with this megathread, one other idea we had is to explicitly state that if you make a post about your interest and you want it spotlit, just @ one of the mods in a comment in the thread and we’ll pin it! Just ask!
3.) Tagging
Please let us know if you all would think of a more robust tagging system of posts, such as how [effort post] is commonly used, but maybe for stuff like [support] when you need to vent and want support, [venting] for when you need to vent but don’t want anyone to engage with it, stuff like that. It will normalize being able to directly ask for what you need, and it’s easy for us to imagine someone making a post to vent or complain about something but doesn’t want to or isn’t comfortable with people giving advice or pitching solutions. You don’t have to tag every post, but we want to encourage this as an option for people who would like it.
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We think it’s okay for someone to explicitly ask to be upvoted, or for support, or to feel comfortable saying “I stayed up all night making this” because you stayed up all night making something that is something that you are proud of!
5.) Please contact mods about problems
Please read this post if you haven't already
TL:DR: Don't subtweet about issues you have with c/ND mods or about issues with the treatment of ND users on the site as a whole. Contact us directly about either of those issues and we'll try our best to resolve it. Good mods to contact are listed in the linked post.
Alt tl:dr: "To indulge in irresponsible criticism in private instead of actively putting forward one's suggestions to the organization. To say nothing to people to their faces but to gossip behind their backs, or to say nothing at a meeting but to gossip afterwards. To show no regard at all for the principles of collective life but to follow one's own inclination. This is a second type [of liberalism]." - Mao Zedong
I rarely have anything worthwhile to post in these threads but I really appreciate that they're around.
o7.
Tbf though, I choose this month's topic knowing full well that there's probably only 4 other people on this site who know enough about this sort of stuff to talk about it lol. That said, you are allowed to post about whatever you want really. For example, in past threads I've shared my DJ mixes, speedrun attempts, or even just talked about my day/hyperfixations/etc.