Taniwha

40 ms·

631.
by Taniwha 4y ago
MIPS showed up in '85 but by then there were dozens of 68k based unix boxes in the field (I worked for UniSoft, we did over 100 68k unix ports, including the lisa and the mac 2. Back in the mid-80s CISC was still a real thing, intel ha
632.
by Taniwha 4y ago
I think it takes 2-3 generations, and almost as long to undo it - Tito in Yugoslavia almost broke the cycle, another generation and they probably would have made it. Northern Ireland is a bit of a miracle, I grieve for what Israel is doing
633.
by Taniwha 4y ago
For those wondering how to pronounce "kākāpō" in Te Reo the macrons over the vowels make them longer
634.
by Taniwha 4y ago
Remember that Taiwan and the USGS report on different scales
635.
by Taniwha 4y ago
The big problem with analog is power - we have 40 years of building gates that are on or off and use virtually no power in those states because no current flows - the problem with analog is ohm's law you need to have current flowing to
636.
by Taniwha 4y ago
Rats! I thought the preprocessor was finally going to get some love ....
637.
by Taniwha 4y ago
If all you're doing is making a core with a little ROM, a USB interface and a flash interface chances are your design is pad limited - it probably doesn't matter which CPU you use provided it's tinyish (oh and 8051 are a pain
638.
by Taniwha 4y ago
There's lots of open source RISC-V cores - but can't be any fully OS ARM ones (even if someone's made a n OS ARM core you still have to pay ARM a royalty) The big advantage to rolling your own private ISA is that there's
639.
by Taniwha 4y ago
10 billion RISC-V cores were shipped last year - mostly you wont see them because they're heavily embedded - in disk drives/etc - used to be every flash drive had an ARM core in it and paid a few pennies to ARM, that's likely
640.
by Taniwha 4y ago
NaN-boxing has other uses - RISC-V systems that support FP have 32 FP registers that are used for 32-bit floats, 64-bit doubles (and possibly 128-bit doubles). According to the spec in a system with 64-bit FP registers 32-bit floats are sto
641.
by Taniwha 4y ago
pfft - we used to do this in paper encyclopedias in middle school
642.
by Taniwha 4y ago
The above numbers are from her response in the comments in the original article, it's worth reading that to understand how those numbers are made up, she explains in depth
643.
by Taniwha 4y ago
90% of bitcoin has already been mined, I'm sure it will function just as well as it will when it's 100% mined if that last 10% is left "in the ground" and we might save a glacier or two
644.
by Taniwha 4y ago
Oh yeah at these speeds everything is a microwave stripline
645.
by Taniwha 4y ago
serdes .... it's serdes all the way down .... There's a growing trend in SoCs of just having serdes blocks - because these days PCIe, high speed ether, USB/thunderthing, sata etc etc are all just variants on the same high-sp
646.
by Taniwha 4y ago
Part of this is tying property taxes to real property values (yes I know SF's hands are bound by CA law and prop 13 in particular). These days I live in NZ here rates (the local name for our property tax equivalent) are determined by r
647.
by Taniwha 4y ago
Leaf's switch in and out of the B regen by shifting into drive a 2nd time - however they also have an "eco mode" switch on the steering wheel - if you normally drive with it on then pressing it does feel a lot like a shift up
648.
by Taniwha 4y ago
I've clocked 51 years of programming, started at 13, I'll retire next year, but wont stop programming. I think the important thing to do is to keep reinventing yourself, change and do different stuff every decade or so
649.
by Taniwha 4y ago
And of course there was the IBM Stretch possibly the only computer ever fixed by giving it an oil change http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/acl/literature/reports/p...
650.
by Taniwha 4y ago
Many years ago I was a systems programmer for a Burroughs B6700 mainframe in New Zealand - this was the only mainframe at the University, everyone depended on it for almost everything. One day it started doing random IOs to random devices -
651.
by Taniwha 4y ago
That's why you have unique invoice numbers - it converts the (paper) protocol into an idempotent one
652.
by Taniwha 4y ago
I would continue to avoid your racist country
653.
by Taniwha 4y ago
I'm sorry you don't believe in democracy - I will avoid your country
654.
by Taniwha 4y ago
Surely that is for my country to decide for itself - we're a democracy - you don't get a say here any more than I get a say in what the US does
655.
by Taniwha 4y ago
Which government? surely each country gets to choose for itself - the US 1st amendment is only a US law, it doesn't apply world-wide - the internet however is a world-wide entity and once a company like CF, or Google etc gets big enoug
656.
by Taniwha 4y ago
Originally they existed because nothing was computerised. You went to your bank (and it was just that one physical bank) because that's where the definitive paper record of how much of the money in the bank was yours was kept. You also
657.
by Taniwha 4y ago
Well USB in general is missing, and the workarounds don't always work (or in my case just plain don't work)
658.
by Taniwha 4y ago
sigh - dropped me into a pleasant sunny pre-war Kviv
659.
by Taniwha 4y ago
We belled or cat, she got used to it, completely stopped her catching birds
660.
by Taniwha 4y ago
I'm guessing that watching PAL/SECAM requires slightly slower phosphors that NTSC and you'd see flicker on a modern computer monitor designed for 60-75 HZ ....

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