RetroTechie

7 ms·

61.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
Pretty obscure piece of kit, nice find! That said: 2KB RAM is tiiight even with application code in a ROM cartridge. No regular keyboard, nor a joystick port.. sound? Not a great target to code anything for imho. Plenty of Z80+TMS9918A base
62.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
> Maybe we just can't detect this Probably this. How would we know what such 'proto-life' (perhaps even just some self-replicating soup of chemicals, no cell wall) would look like? Where to find it? How rare its occurence?
63.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
> Growth out of decay takes work, but it takes considerably less work than accelerated decay and then trying to start again when there is nothing fertile left to build on. Indeed. This is why conservation of habitats (however small, or d
64.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
> people became paranoid and jump to conclusion without any substance Before AI, the only question was who made a particular artwork. Human-created practically a certainty. When AI-generated art was new, it was all exiting & the proc
65.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
Batteries are not power sources, but storage. The energy still has to come from somewhere, and power generation won't magically become 10x cheaper overnight. No matter how cheap battery storage becomes. But it IS crucial for removing b
66.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
What part of "software needed to control a peripheral" could POSSIBLY be defined as: "software that shows you ads, and/or uploads private data to vendor without even asking for consent"?
67.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
It's archaic, powerful, expressive, compact. I'd describe it as an interactive macro-assembler on steroids. What's not to like? But it's different. Certainly not for everyone (imho that makes it even more interesting).
68.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
Mostly missed a proper discussion of grouping batteries (parallel & series). Battery University has this page on the basics: https://www.batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-302-series-and-... Also, physical safety cou
69.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
> The best option is the RTC. Buy a DS3231, hook it up to your microcontroller and a button battery, and forget about it for a few years. RTC ICs are for use in bigger systems where main CPUs have other things to do. If you design a cloc
70.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
Nobody yet mentioned young-learnt habits: school cafeterias & snack machines. When I was young, in lunch breaks you'd head over to the school's cafeteria. And what they had there? "Gevulde koek", stroopwafel, snack-s
71.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
Dave "EEVblog" Jones did a review of a (then) $0.03 microcontroller (Padauk) a while back (sorry, I don't know the exact episode). Iirc an important caveat was that it was a one-time programmable (OTP) part. So you buy a bunc
72.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Wait_calcu... Certainly applies more general imho. Constrained by some resource -> invest resources elsewhere, and/or invest in reducing the constraint(s) encou
73.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
"Interpreters were conceived of only one year later, in 1958, but the mainstream was catching up in 1995." Minor nitpick: BASIC in early homecomputers (~1980) was usually interpreted. I'd certainly call those machines mains
74.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
Going by those figures, would mean that AI datacenters built so far, consume enough energy to undo almost a year of solar power buildout. AND growing like crazy. That's running costs. Not energy going into a building's constructio
75.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
> I, for one, would expect a strong correlation between skepticism against AI data centers, vegetarianism and the preference for alternative travel methods to flying. And then you'd be equally wrong as the commenter you replied to.
76.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
Sounds like a good reason to use alternatives like GrapheneOS. It doesn't take a big % of users to let the "using it is suspicious by itself" nonsense wear off.
77.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
I dislike current-gen AI for much the same reasons you mentioned: the externalities its development & use are causing. The tech itself is neutral in this respect. It's those externalities that need to be addressed. Don't wan
78.
by RetroTechie 2mo ago
Sure, consumers looking for a bargain creates a market for cheap stuff. But didn't you read the article? It used to be that brand names had meaning, providing a reliable indicator for the quality to expect. That doesn't hold anymo
79.
by RetroTechie 3mo ago
Because some idiot leader s threw diplomacy & international law out the window? So.. back to how things were done in the old days.
80.
by RetroTechie 3mo ago
Seeing grey bars instead of text on the linked article. Gift link: same. Paywall bypass: unavailable or "Welcome to Nginx!" Am I the only one? I'd prefer people stop posting links to such crappy sites.
81.
by RetroTechie 3mo ago
"The 1971 data (i.e., nominal prices of 75 finished goods) came from the 1971 Sears catalog." Is that online somewhere?
82.
by RetroTechie 3mo ago
To add a small datapoint in support of the above: I happen to spend many nights in rural areas. Some with towns & nearest neighbours far enough away that nights are truly dark. Those nights are the safest in my experience. Simply becaus
83.
by RetroTechie 3mo ago
Your Park May Vary (YPMV).
84.
by RetroTechie 3mo ago
> people were so amazed by the night sky that half decided to sleep outside the tents just to experience falling asleep while looking at the stars. Where I live, it usually impossible due to nights being too cold (okay, you can use sleep
85.
Bortle Scale(en.wikipedia.org)
1 points by RetroTechie 3mo ago|0 comments
86.
by RetroTechie 3mo ago
> how is development "not transparent and open" in an open source project? Please have a look at how Android is developed, and how each new version is released. It's far from the only example of "open source but close
87.
by RetroTechie 3mo ago
They need to focus on archaic government processes which rely on document formats that require proprietary software to view properly, while good open source software for the same task exists. And where lacking, focus on improving open sourc
88.
by RetroTechie 3mo ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
89.
by RetroTechie 3mo ago
"Pavel Gilman, vice president of sales and marketing at Nivalis, breaks down where those savings come from: roughly 30 to 35 percent from the electric axle during braking and deceleration, 11 to 15 percent from the rooftop solar panel
90.
by RetroTechie 3mo ago
> Have you read terms of service of Android devices? Don't remember agreeing to any ToS before (or after) factory reset, put SIM card in a phone, and start using it. Granted, it's been a while since I last bought one. And no, &

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