[AnotherGoodName]

Pretty much all USB chips have a fully programmable CPU when you go into the data sheets. It feels silly for simple hid or charging devices but basic microcontrollers are cheap and actually save costs compared to asics.

[hinkley]

I still want to see postgres or sqlite running straight on a storage controller some day. They probably don’t have enough memory to do it well though.

[lmm]

Booting Linux on a hard drive was what, 15 years ago now?

[hinkley]

Have you ever tried to google that?

[lmm]

Yes - up until a few years ago it was easy to find by googling, but now google has degraded to the point where I can't manage it.

[winrid]

Do you mean this? https://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack&page=1

Searched "run linux on hard drive without cpu or ram" on Google - third result.

[hinkley]

Not everyone gets the same results.

The closest I could find - with your search query - was #6, and it’s a Reddit conversation that contains this link. I don’t usually click on Reddit links.

If you use DDG it’s nowhere to be found.

[lmm]

That looks like it, yeah. Nowhere on my first few pages of Google for that query, shrug.

[Dah00n]

Yeah sure, people on HN says this all the time, but in reality it isn't true like a lot of comments getting repeated on here. I found it on the first try.

[hinkley]

I’ve tried many times to find it. Don’t be an ass. As I told your more helpful compatriot, not everyone gets the same results.

[petermcneeley]

I would also argue that this is another example of software eating the world. The role of the electrical engineer is diminished day by day.

[etrautmann]

Nah - there are lots of places where you need EEs still. Anything that interfaces with the world. Having programmability does not move most challenges out of the domain of EE. Much of it is less visible than the output of a software role perhaps.

[FredPret]

There will always be problems that can only be solved by an EE, chem eng, mech eng, etc.

But the juiciest engineering challenges involve figuring out business logic / mission decisions. This is done increasingly in software while the other disciplines increasingly make only the interfaces.

[Almondsetat]

the role of the electrical engineer who doesn't know a thing about programming is diminished day by day*

[FredPret]

The role of the non-software engineer, bit just electrical

[Shawnj2]

Where I work they were considering using an FPGA over an MCU for a certain task but decided against it because the FPGA couldn’t reach the same low power level as the MCU

[dclowd9901]

Yeesh. Beware the random wall wart I guess.

[masklinn]

Wall warts are not even the biggest worry: https://shop.hak5.org/products/omg-cable