Also curious what MCUs you're working with to give you this impression?

RP2040 is 264k, RP2350 is 520k.

I use NXP's rt1060 and rt1170 for work, and they have 1M and 2M respectively, still quite far away from 16M and those are quite beefy running at 500MHz - 1GHz.

While I generally agree with you, the RT106x line does support external SDRAM as well. I've got an MIMXRT1060-EVKB sitting here on my desk that has 32MB of SDRAM alongside the on-die 1MB of SRAM.

Those specs are $50 for compute module - a very non-trivial cost.

> NXP's rt1060 and rt1170 for work

These both have FlexSPI controllers capable of interfacing with $3-5 in PSRAM at 8M or 16M.

Maybe this fits the bill? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARwBwHZESOY

My approach for number 3 is to look at previous months and escrow money for it every month, and then pay it off once the bill comes due. From the accounting side you only see the monthly cost of the bill, even though it looks big on the bank statement.

"I use a single 12k mAh Anker battery bank".

Is it really? Or is it a 12G nAh battery bank?

I'm from one of those European countries and still also read it as it taking over a year to boot...

I use a command that'll play a good/bad sound effect based on previous shell command exit code.

Something like:

  function boop() {
      local last="$?"
      if [[ "$last" == '0' ]]; then
          sfx good
      else
          sfx bad
      fi
      $(exit "$last")
  }

I'd then do:

  $ make -j; boop

or

  $ nmap <...>; boop

That way I can focus my attention elsewhere while waiting for stuff that'll take anywhere from 20s-2min without losing track of time.

Lately I've been experimenting with throwing in notify-send in there too, but find it a bit much to both get sound and visual feedback.

Having implemented a custom matrix in qmk, I can say the timescale involved is not something you'd notice a difference between diodes vs diodeless. On ARM boards there's a setup delay to let the gpio propagate before reading the columns, which by default is set to 0.25us, which means reading 4 rows would take about 1us.

I built a macropad that has some regular keys and a SNES controller on the "same matrix", total scan time is 335us, which is dead slow as far as scanning goes, but nothing you'd be able to notice.

Other points are fair though, fewer parts in the BOM. Though routing is a bit trickier with diodeless, especially if you also want to adressable RGB.

I started my ergo-keyboard journey with a corne. I ended up having issues with the thumb cluster positioning and built my own prototype on new years eve this/last year. That board features four thumb keys, six columns, with four rows for index and middle finger and five for ring finger and pinky (essentially a 6x5 board with four of the bottom keys moved into a thumb cluster. A lot of keys ended up unused on that design (the lowest pinkey and ring finger keys were completely useless).

A couple of months back I built another prototype, this time with a 6x4 + 4 layout. I'm still not loving the layout, four keys is too much for the thumb cluster and I'm looking at dropping down to three. Ironically I've already setup my layout so it almost only uses 6x3 + 3 (I use the top row for non-typing keys like F1-F12), and in effect reinvented the Corne that I started out with...

I definitely don't have an inner voice. I certainly can "enable it", for things such as composing this reply. But in general I'd describe it as a stream of thought, not bound to any language. Then when I need to actually communicate I "pipe" it through whatever language I need (I grew up in a home with multiple languages, don't know if that influences it).

One way I notice this is how thoughts are generally unpacked and stored without a language association, meaning I can't remember how people phrased something, only how I interpreted it. I feel like this is a decent memory optimization, but it drives my wife nuts and can be very unhelpful during arguments...

>> I'd describe it as a stream of thought, not bound to any language.

as it's your head i accept that at face value. However i couldn't possibly understand how that could possibly work. How do you think not in a language not in words? What are the "atoms" of stream of thought for you, is it picture based, or???

My head talks to me all day long, unprovoked, uncontrolled by myself and in english. i can certainly interrupt and quiet it if i like, but i just am doing something ordinary and notice that i'm mentally talking to myself.

As a corrolary... when you read a book, what is that experience like? do you have a reader reading the book to you? Do you 'hear' words as they are read. I don't mean audibly, but is a story told to you as you read? To me this journaller is very similar to what i sense when i read a book, altho obviously it's not surprising in the book reading sense.

I'm the same but I tend to remember very precisely what people say. My partner is the opposite and yeah it's frustrating as hell especially when I'm being misquoted from mere minutes ago.

As others have suggested, be kind to yourself. Inspiration comes and goes, and the key is to ride it when it comes.

I used to feel a strong need to work on side project early in my career, that I had to keep up with trends and test out new languages (software developer by trade). Since having a kid I realized how precious little time I have and discovered the need to feel in control of what I spend it on. If I want to zone out one evening watching Youtube videos, that's ok, as long as I decide to do so.

Last year I had long periods of time where the only thing I'd do in my "me time" was reading. I plowed through most of Ryk Brown's Frontiers Saga (read 40 something books before summer), then completely stopped reading for the rest of the year and dove deep into teaching myself PCB design (made a SNES Macropad and put it on Tindie). Right now I've slipped into 3d printing and mechanical CAD, but the goal is to get back into electronics and tackle another keyboard design.

The key I think is to find projects that really interest you. Doing something in your spare time because you feel you "should" do them is a recipe for failure and misery. For me it was abandoning the idea that I'd learn to play the guitar and get fluent in Spanish, if I ever get a true passion for either there will always be time in the future.

One last thing to keep in mind is that what ends up on Hacker News is perhaps not your Average Joe. The internet is great for bringing people together, but it's easy to get sucked into a bubble thinking you have to be like John Carmack or you might as well give up.