RetroTechie

5 ms·

31.
by RetroTechie 1mo ago
Wow... so many blinkenlights! Love it. "IBM's Fred Brooks Jr. (..)" Yes, that guy from "The Mythical Man-Month" fame.
32.
by RetroTechie 1mo ago
Not sure why the negativity in previous comments. There's 2 types of results that may come from research like this: 1) Developing cures for human diseases / health conditions. And 2) Understanding the mechanisms behind those disea
33.
by RetroTechie 1mo ago
Fun excercise: look up some prices for various popular types of plastic (pellets, $/tonne), and compare with common metals like steel, stainless, alu, copper etc. Next, wonder why no scrapper bothers to collect plastic waste. It's
34.
by RetroTechie 1mo ago
I have difficulty grasping how one would call a software project theirs, without understanding the meat of how it's put together & how it works. Or having done a good chunk of the grunt work. Without such understanding, how is it &
35.
by RetroTechie 1mo ago
> By not using LLVM, you're missing all the optimizations it does And yet, a good portion of software that runs today's world is written in scripting languages & executed using interpreters. Which is okay! Imho: multiply [#
36.
by RetroTechie 1mo ago
DIP and PGA packages for the win!
37.
by RetroTechie 1mo ago
If anyone from NASA (or Katalyst) reads this: I propose that you put up a webpage (or site) explaining in excrutiating detail what's the problem(s) you're facing right now. And do so quickly. Say, in a week or so. Then, invite t
38.
Ask HN: What silly or weird web search did you do recently?
4 points by RetroTechie 1mo ago|2 comments
39.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
> Ijsselmeer is a different kind of lake; not created by digging out peat, but a (violent) sea inlet that was closed off. Hmm yes, 'everybody' in the NL is aware of that. > In the latter case, they sometimes left those strip
40.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
Note that 2 of the features added: a) support for subdirectories, and b) replacing File Control Blocks (FCB) with file handles, are the same as for MSX-DOS: MSX-DOS (1) uses FCBs and a single root directory MSX-DOS (2) also uses file
41.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
Some areas used to be strips of water / land, but too much peat was dug out, storms washed the remaining land strips into the water beside it, creating a regular lake. For example some lakes in Giethoorn area were formed like this. Lik
42.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
So no-one was arrested at landing? If so: how would a case be built after the fact? Perpetrator loses/wipes whatever device used to interfere with the Wi-Fi. Starting with passenger list, it could have been anyone, right? I'm not
43.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
> Is "registers" still a real thing or its just an illusion at this point? I am pretty sure there are "virtual" registers or micro instructions (something like that, I forgot the terminology) https://en.wik
44.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
You're on the right track. But imho it's about hitting a sweet spot in whatever the market wants @ a certain time. There's a lot of luck involved. x86 hit that sweet spot: 8088/8086 performance nicely between much-weaker
45.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
> RISC-V needs both economies of scale AND chips that are manufactured at the bleeding edge fabs (smallest dies, etc) which is a lot more expensive. It's a chicken and egg problem as there's not (yet?) demand Whatever leading-e
46.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
> if the author wanted to reduce latency, he wasn't forced to save all registers Yup.. If author's working with a RISC-V softcore, there are several options to reduce interrupt latency: # If softcore saves many registers as
47.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
> RISC-V doesn’t even support running 32-bit code on 64-bit processors without a recompile. In a sense, 32-bit RISC-V is a vaguely similar but incompatible ISA to 64-bit RISC-V RV32 and RV64 are considered distinct ISAs. But designed to
48.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
gloom.sh/docs - 404: This page could not be found.
49.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
Wondering why this topic seems to be discussed so little? Discussions tend to fall into 'AI fans' highlighting pros: AI-assisted coding at superhuman speed, breakthroughs in long-standing math puzzles, AI-enabled advances in scien
50.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
> This changed around the 80s from memory? More like early 90's. In the late 80's it was still common & easy to order schematics, data sheets/books & the like from manufacturers. Usually @ cost, sometimes as a free
51.
Nigeria: Lifting the Lid: Internal docs expose Shell's negligent oil operations(amnesty.org)
3 points by RetroTechie 2mo ago|1 comments
52.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
Accompanying news report here: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/07/shell-nigeria... "Nigeria: Shell documents expose ‘basket’ pipeline, ‘missing’ wells and US$10.9bn decommissioning
53.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
Very nice indeed. Model weights in RAM blocks distributed all over a big FPGA: should be super helpful at minimizing RAM bandwidth bottlenecks. To say nothing of latency. But model(s) implemented are clearly too small to be useful as a &#
54.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
"The new game is REDLINE: Longest Burn, an arena roguelite for Android. It is free, it works offline, and as of this writing almost nobody has played it. Discovery is my problem to solve this time." As it will be for most softwa
55.
Resurrecting the SuperH Architecture (2015)(lwn.net)
8 points by RetroTechie 2mo ago|1 comments
56.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
Absolutely not. Silicon Valley powers its own unique type of reality distortion field.
57.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
(A crash course in how chips get made) That paragraph + illustration is one of the simplest, concise, easy-to-grasp descriptions of IC design process I've come across. Nice! Now the reverse: what I'd really love is a free (libre
58.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
Detailed write-up please, or it didn't happen. At least not as described. Really simple ICs with a few counters etc in there might be possible to RE this way. Complex ICs with lots of internal state, memory blocks etc like a modern
59.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
CD audio track != mp3. Either CD player would play audio itself (passed over analog audio connector), with the game occasionally changing track #. Zero CPU time. Or a DMA controller would read digital audio from the CD, and CPU pass that on
60.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
> By definition a liquid cannot be below its freezing point until it has completed its phase change. Supercooled water is a thing: (and I've seen it a few times myself) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercooling

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