convolvatron

99 ms·

1. 1711.▲
   by convolvatron 5y ago

   I personally feel quite comfortable working on something and pinging a peer if I've having an issue figuring out a good way to do something or I want to vet the approach. then they don't need to spend all afternoon watching me get
2. 1712.▲
   by convolvatron 5y ago

   I played this extremely addictive Mud on MECC (a CDC machine) throughout the 70s. does anyone remember what it was called?
3. 1713.▲
   by convolvatron 5y ago

   and its actually 19" racks underneath the faring :) there is a little additional enclosure in the middle that contains the sequencers. the lights are just card edge. the cm-5 though was all custom machined, including a lovely card inse
4. 1714.▲
   by convolvatron 5y ago

   Actually there was this really novel language CM-lisp < https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.10... > that one never got off the ground - I always assumed because of the difficulty of compiling
5. 1715.▲
   by convolvatron 5y ago

   it was almost certainly less. while the cm2 had floating point chips from weitek lashed to the side, the cm1 ran one single bit instruction every .. ours was running a little over 4mhz, so 250ns. floating point was done in software.
6. 1716.▲
   by convolvatron 5y ago

   I used to program on the connection machine. I tried to do some work recently with the intel vector instructions and was quite frustrated by the lack of scans. we used them for _everything_
7. 1717.▲
   by convolvatron 5y ago

   What about old style Babbitt bearings
8. 1718.▲
   by convolvatron 5y ago

   i know Intel and AMD like to hide hardware features - but given the design cost and the non-negligible overhead..one would suppose that they would at least surface a counter in the documentation..and probably even...you know, market it as a
9. 1719.▲
   by convolvatron 5y ago

   I find continuations alot easier to reason about as a programmer. I think async/await was chosen here because in simple cases it pisses off the borrower less
10. 1720.▲
    by convolvatron 5y ago

    why would anyone pay for that?
11. 1721.▲
    by convolvatron 5y ago

    open standards. there must be one of those game-theory economic analyses. but frankly i don't see how its _ever_ a good idea to structure yourself around closed worlds unless the seller really has something that novel and indispensable
12. 1722.▲
    by convolvatron 5y ago

    reverse the terrible ITAR legacy fund foundational security and mandate its use by government agencies and suppliers
13. 1723.▲
    by convolvatron 5y ago

    I guess I have a different theory of burnout. to me it happens when I can't connect the dots anymore. its not because I worked too hard. company found a vertical and how I spend all my time trying to fix 'bugs' that are reall
14. 1724.▲
    by convolvatron 5y ago

    you still get get to retire in comfort, but you don't get invited to the really swank parties seriously - maybe narcissism isn't the best character trait to structure your society around?
15. 1725.▲
    by convolvatron 5y ago

    I disagree about the sidenote. go for it. get as far as you can.
16. 1726.▲
    by convolvatron 5y ago

    eh. even if it takes you a few seconds to wonder why its not spinning up they usually dont burn out right away. and if they do there is a little puff of smoke, nary even a pop.
17. 1727.▲
    by convolvatron 5y ago

    i grew up a long time before stack overflow. actually used man pages and read books. there is just _no way_ to program in Rust or Go without access to a search engine and the package libraries.
18. 1728.▲
    by convolvatron 5y ago

    i my case I shorted it and have been using the vacuum for another 10 years. there was dust in the fan bearings, but i sluiced it out with mineral oil.
19. 1729.▲
    by convolvatron 5y ago

    the shop vac pro i bought had a one-time current fuse soldered down (not replacable with a holder). over time all of these machines get a little friction in the fan assembly and blow this fuse. yes, you could argue that making this fuse rep
20. 1730.▲
    by convolvatron 5y ago

    eh. the 5 quart hobart is the same capacity as the 5 qt plastic gear break the first time you knead machine. and it really is a joy to use and break down. it does stand a bit taller and weight about twice as much.
21. 1731.▲
    by convolvatron 5y ago

    it has to be nonzero. we've bought into this notion that capitalism serves us because we choose what to buy. if thats not really true - what game are we playing here?
22. 1732.▲
    by convolvatron 5y ago

    I think there isn't a compelling reason - For the sake of argument lets just say there is a difference in overall system performance - lets say 20% for a workload you care about. you get to change your tooling. I think the unikernel to
23. 1733.▲
    by convolvatron 5y ago

    I agree completely, and Linux runtimes generally meaningfully address the difference. Nanos in particular though is written against Linux
24. 1734.▲
    by convolvatron 5y ago

    good question. not someone too large to want to pay the per-node margins. not someone too small to want to pay .. not someone who is satisfied with using VMs on a cloud provider. not someone who is selling these as part of a turnkey solutio
25. 1735.▲
    by convolvatron 5y ago

    the point to me here is that the really valuable ideas aren't just some thing that someone has in the absence of context. given the situation on the ground - this approach will nicely balance all the constraints. this idea explicitly r
26. 1736.▲
    by convolvatron 6y ago

    no one else knows how much useless time wasting boilerplate crap goes into programming. or how fragile these systems really are. I'd be happy to lose my economic position as a possessor of arcane skills if we can stop trying to constru
27. 1737.▲
    by convolvatron 6y ago

    all that may be true. but capturing reality and providing sales terms that reflect it is the responsibility of the seller. one that they have clearly abrogated in the interest of extracting more money from the market.
28. 1738.▲
    by convolvatron 6y ago

    I got alot of value out of Distributed Databases: Principles and Systems Stefano Ceri, Giuseppe Pelagatti McGraw-Hill, 1985 it adopts a very specific approach, and is obviously missing some newer techniques, but it certainly leav
29. 1739.▲
    by convolvatron 6y ago

    beatings will continue until I see that creative spark light up again
30. 1740.▲
    by convolvatron 6y ago

    even tiny little light industrial shops have an ongoing conversation and yearly inspection with the fire department about doors, locks, stairs, extinguishers, chemicals, flammables, aisles, accessibility, sprinkler coverage, signage, bottle