PIClist is closing - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: MikeK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2022, 02:28:52 am
content: http://www.piclist.com/techref/siteclosing.htm

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2022, 02:44:58 am
content: Wow. The site still has webring on it. It leads nowhere, of course, but wow.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2022, 04:44:01 am
content: Hope he makes an exception to the "no copying" rule for the purpose of making a public archive available.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2022, 05:41:23 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on October 29, 2022, 04:44:01 amThere's two months left. How many pages there, and what are the bandwidth limits...?

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2022, 06:39:01 am
content: The attitude of the owner is disgusting ...He could easily disconnect the server from the internet, disable his "clever" anti ripping protections and use a tool like Offline Explorer or HTTrack or something to create an offline copy of the website through the local network.Then make a read-only version of his website on a shared hosting that costs 5-10$ a month and make the offline copy available somewhere - could be on internet archive or somewhere, hosted for free.

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2022, 06:49:05 am
content: Is there even a value in cloning this? Sites like this were useful a long time ago when information was scarce, but today it might have some minor historical value, no more. I clicked around and most of the links to outside sites are long gone, so even as a collection of manually curated links it is useless.

author: westfw
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2022, 08:17:49 am
content: QuoteCome back and say that after you've maintained an archive (or any web site, for that matter) for 20+ years.the PICList Archive predated and outlasted Google code (and numerous other projects) by many years. (looks like ~2000 - 2022 for the piclist archive. 2006-2016 for Google Code.)Do you have content there? Have you used it?I believe a "mirror" is being prepared. Currently athttps://pic.hallikainen.org/But yeah, 4G of content is smaller than many online games these days. There ought to be a good way to archive it until a readily accessible form and stick it ... anywhere. Aside from the thorny intellectual property issues. :-(I'm a bit shocked that Microchip doesn't seem to have any interest (not that the archived conversations have always been glowingly favorable WRT the company.)

author: jpanhalt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2022, 10:05:50 am
content: The site was extremely valuable. As PIC's moved on, the posted code was no longer plug and play but was still very useful and easily adapted. I particularly liked the binary to BCD polynomial approach, which I use to this day.User golovchenko's site appears to still be up:http://www.piclist.com/techref/member/NG--944/pic_collection.htmHe posted some of the quite clever math routines.EDIT: The delay code generator, for those still using Assembly and nested loops, is still active at:https://www.golovchenko.org/home/delay_loops

author: 2N2222A
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2022, 03:41:46 pm
content: I suspect the part of the cause of the huge decrease in site popularity is do to changes in the way that Google and now Bing rank pages.I've heard that they reduce the ranking or don't promote the ranking of static pages. Instead they promote pages that use content management systems (like Wordpress) or produce dynamic content, or content that constantly changes, like a blog or news website page. They also may down rank sites like discussion forums that handle user content themselves, instead of using an off site system like Discuss. Google also now promotes official sources, so someone searching for PIC would now see results from Microchip at the top of search results.They may also promote pages which use certain advertising systems. It's in Google's interest to have users viewing pages which use Google advertising.

author: MikeK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2022, 04:53:41 pm
content: I thought it was because newbies aren't programming in assembly anymore. It used to be, if you started out with PIC you had to program in assembly. Also, newbies are doing the 'duino thing.

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2022, 05:15:11 pm
content: Quote from: 2N2222A on October 29, 2022, 03:41:46 pmThey also lower you in the search results if you don't use SSL (https) and to a lesser degree if they detect old page designs (use of frames , excessive use of tables to list contents , pages with parameters that look like paths ex postbot.asp?by=time&id=piclist\2001\02\20\005713a and pages with lots of errors or deprecated elements ... see for examplehttps://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.piclist.com%2Ftechref%2Fmicrochip%2Froutines.htm), pages where a big percentage is the same (which happens with the mailing list)Anyay, I think the 4 GB of content of actual worthy content is far too much ... looking now at a "member"s folder, where he has over 500 jpg pictures uploaded with his trip/holiday to Maui or mp3 files with random music... that's 250 MB+ of non microcontroller / tech related crap.

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2022, 05:21:37 pm
content: There are just a lot more places to get information from. And while I appreciate 90s web aesthetic, it can be a bit much to navigate efficiently. There are faster ways to obtain that information now.

author: hans
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2022, 08:52:17 pm
content: Quote from: MikeK on October 29, 2022, 04:53:41 pmI think this as well. If you need to do arithmetic with numbers, one will write it mostly in C. The compiler has the arithmetic built in. It may not be "optimal", given the criteria you want to measure that with, but it works.For other stuff one may grab a small library or routine of the internet, but it can be fairly general purpose C and not tied to PICs.Then there is that since 2009, we've seen a major overhaul of microcontroller land. The first hobby MCU boards I made used 16-bit PICs. The first boards I made at work used 32-bit PIC/ARM. I think ever since PICs have settled towards a level where you implement a few simple functions on them, but not as the main processor in your product..From browsing that site, I indeed get the early 2000s vibes when the 16F84, 16F628A and 16F877 stunned the hobbyist landscape with it's peripheral set. Indeed they were still used in embedded programming courses back in 2008 during my studies, but even then we already switched to C, and AVR/Arduino started to pop up a lot because it had a GCC compiler and overall was the cooler chip to use.Finally.. google can traverse a site far more quickly. If I need a piece of information; google. If I know specifically where it should be located, then I could narrow it down, or out of laziness use google to access that piece of information (say a datasheet). Sites that collect and list information like databooks I guess aren't that much used anymore.I do find it odd to read about such high hosting prices. You can pay 5$ per month for a small VPS with tens of GB SSD storage, 100Mbit ethernet and 1TB to unlimited traffic caps. For a static site serving pages in the order of kB's, that should be more than enough.

author: mikerj
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2022, 07:08:27 pm
content: That's a shame, I was quite active on the Piclist in it's heyday and there were some very smart people on there, including one infamously grumpy smart person. Whilst few people are coding for PICs in assembly these days, there are plenty of clever tricks on that site that would be applicable to other micros, even if coding in C.

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2022, 06:23:53 am
content: Quote from: ataradov on October 29, 2022, 05:21:37 pmI'm not sure where to get THAT kind of information, all the optimized math libraries, all the snippets that gave you that "ooh" moment that unlock something in your brain. Search engine would probably point at some random blog that copies the same crap from another blog and so on

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2022, 06:31:59 am
content: Quote from: JPortici on October 31, 2022, 06:23:53 amWhen was the last time you personally used that site?Everyone remembers stuff fondly and stuff, but viewership reflects the actual demand.All this hardcore optimization is completely irrelevant, Just get a much faster and cheaper ARM chip and stop wasting your time.

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2022, 09:01:15 am
content: I have not commented against closing the site, I understand the owner's reasons perfectly well.In fact, last time i looked at piclist was probably three or four years ago, i was looking for something clever in the math section. Not that i used it, because I'm all for just getting a newer (and) cheaper (and) faster (and) more memory part. Last time i actually used those libraries was 8 if not 10 years ago, before the XC compilers came through.What i wanted to point out is that even if there are faster or more efficient ways to get information, the quality of such information is low, very very low. There is a huge circlejerk of blogs or pages copying each other's useless tutorials, quality information is buried under these pages optimized for search and views and ad revenue. It would be wonderful if the useful part of the site would be archived in a more accessible place

author: jpanhalt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2022, 11:20:38 am
content: @JPorticiI agree. I started using it very on in my coding hobby -- perhaps near its inception when traffic was active. I used it during my last coding season (November, 2021 through March, 2022). My use was to check a math routine to see whether there was something clever I had missed. My only contribution to the repository was in 2018 (17-bit binary to BCD conversion).@atatadovRe: There is a point to what you say, within limits. From a personal standpoint, do you want to go to a physician who just gives you a prescription for the newest, most powerful antibiotic (sometimes without even seeing you) or one who actually takes the time to do a history and physical, diagnoses your sore throat & runny nose as most likely a viral upper respiratory infection, and doesn't push pills at you? Of course, the latter physician may give you a prescription for an inexpensive antibiotic, take a culture or do a rapid test for bacterial infectious agents, and let you know later whether to get the prescription filled based on the lab results.From what little I know of you from your posts here, I suspect you take pride in your work and don't just push out bloated code to get a job done. When I worked, I also traded off perfection for getting something done timely -- never sloppily though.As a hobbyist, I write code for fun and enjoy clipping a little time and/or instructions. For the above referenced contribution, I had nothing to do one Sunday morning. Made a spreadsheet for the algorithm, wrote code, and had it working and tested by early afternoon. Then, I refined it a little and submitted. That was done over the course of a couple of cold days in February, 2018. For many/most people it is probably useless code, but it was fun to do.

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2022, 03:33:23 pm
content: Quote from: jpanhalt on October 31, 2022, 11:20:38 amI don't like bloated code, that is true. But one thing I don't like and never liked is platform-specific optimization just because of limitations of that platform.I have not read specifically what kind of things are proposed on this site, but having to work in the past with PICs, a lot fo the "tricks" were like "there is a register in the timer that is not used in this mode, you can use it for regular storage, gaining one more byte". This is nonsense.There has to be a common sense compromise here, and more and more PICs are logically phased out of it. Sure, there are applications for PICs, plenty of them. But at this point if you have to work really hard to make your application fit, then you should be moving away from PICs, not figuring out how to optimize your code.

author: 2N2222A
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 01, 2023, 11:02:18 pm
content: So the site is supposed to be closing around now.Did anyone make a copy of the site?The author seems quite intent on not having people copy the site, and making a big deal about how much the site is not to make money, but to provide information for free. But the stated reason for shutting it down is due to decreased ad revenue due to decreased popularity. He even sells CDs of its contents, but that information is over 10 years old.A lot of the content on the site is submitted by others. These users probably did not know that the site owner would go to great length to copyright the site and prevent its contents from being shared with others. It's not fair of the owner to deceive the content creators in this way. The copyright date on the site has already been changed to 2023.

author: jpanhalt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 01, 2023, 11:43:10 pm
content: The site is mirrored here:https://pic.hallikainen.org/techref/piclist/index.htmThat is done with James Newton's (PICLIst owner) permission.

author: MikeK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 01, 2023, 11:47:41 pm
content: Quote from: 2N2222A on January 01, 2023, 11:02:18 pmPost #6 shows an archive site. I checked the wayback machine and couldn't find a valid archive, looking only in 2021 and 2022.

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 02, 2023, 06:41:15 am
content: I've also made a copy of it, including the mailing list posts and threads.I'm just lazy, have to strip out my IP address the site embeds into each downloaded page and I should probably strip out some of the pointless javascript that runs on each page which won't be useful for anything now that the original site is dead.Not sure how long it would take me, but I'll eventually post in this thread with links to the content (including download for whole thing so you could run on your own computer)

author: peter-h
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 03, 2023, 08:44:44 pm
content: If you are trying to make money, then you need google promotion...Otherwise, I have a site from year 2000 which still gets a vast volume of hits and a good ranking.That said, I did move it to HTTPS by moving it behind Cloudflare, which is free for noncommercial sites. It gives you DOS protection but the HTTPS is the most useful aspect, because certificates are a total PITA.I moved it to HTTPS because browsers emit increasingly dire warnings on HTTP about lack of security blah blah blah and all that BS.Old data should be preserved. It can be very useful; I have used vast amounts of ancient code, both in assembler days and later in C.

author: 2N2222A
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2023, 01:12:35 am
content: Quote from: peter-h on January 03, 2023, 08:44:44 pmWhich blocks Tor and other proxy users or forces Javascript and clicking on pictures of bicycles and such. It seems to take nearly twice as long for the initial page to load over HTTPS too compared to HTTP. All this is being done because Google probably has a deal with the companies which sell SSL certificates, and also they probably don't want people to be able to run local HTTP caching servers or be able to do anything locally.

author: peter-h
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2023, 05:40:57 am
content: On Cloudflare, a captcha is a website option set by the Cloudflare customer, not by Cloudflare. I would not do it; it is extremely annoying and dumb, but some website owners think it is smart. You can block bots effectively using the hidden google recaptcha.Blocking Tor, I don't know without checking, but it must be again a Cloudflare customer option. To be honest, very few normal honest people use Tor. Biggest users are for child p0rn... I run one site with ~100k hits a day and can reliably say that 100% of Tor users have been trying to do something dodgy. Same with 99% of people using disposable email addresses; I check signups against a list of ~2000 such domains.Yes HTTPS is slower but that's the price paid by the endless drift towards "privacy" forced by google and others who try to look "whiter than white", while selling (mostly anonymised) site visitor data to anybody who pays. Now try implementing HTTPS on an embedded system, when a customer who is clueless about "security" demands itOn the topic, I programmed PICs only in assembler, so any functions would be handy. But anybody trying to run such a site for money will be constantly struggling.

author: 2N2222A
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2023, 10:07:12 pm
content: Quote from: peter-h on January 05, 2023, 05:40:57 amWhat makes it so that users coming through Tor or proxies get the captcha, but they don't get it when connecting without using a proxy?QuoteThat's a good way to put it!The biggest issue of all which I did not mention is security. Using Cloudflare requires the operator of an HTTPS site to share their certificate with Cloudflare, or to use Cloudflare's certificate. I have reason to believe that Cloudflare has been involved not only in gathering data from secured connections, but they have actually been modifying the content delivered to clients in some cases, such as to deliver state sponsored malware to certain clients.

author: peter-h
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2023, 06:56:19 am
content: QuoteA config option, somewhere deep down. A good idea, since IME practically all these visitors are suspicious/malicious people, or botsI just don't buy this "civil liberties" stuff. As a forum admin (not this one : ) I can tell you that malicious people are very obvious, TOR or not - because almost nobody uses TOR.QuoteNormally you use CF's certificate - this is ahugeadvantage of using CF because it avoids all the crap with cron jobs to renew them (today's another absolutely stupid fashion is to use short-lived certs, and yes I know the supposed reasons, but they are BS for a web server cert) which tend to break after a year or two and then you need to pay somebody 1k/day to fix it, because the original coder has moved on... A small company is always held to ransom by this stuff.QuoteI don't believe that for a moment.Anyway, they would only see the stuff the client is browsing anywayBTW, if moving to CF you should firewall your server to accept 80 and 443 connections only from CF IPs. There is a website out there which maintains an archive of all IPs which had a DNS published and if you ran your website for even hours without CF, that IP will be stored for ever and if somebody wants to hit your server directly, they can do.