dietrichepp

7 ms·

31.
by dietrichepp 2y ago
It’s hard to compare memory bandwidth of these systems because of the various differences (e.g. different RAM types). I know that the theoretical RAM bandwidth for the N64 is way higher than what you can practically achieve under typical co
32.
by dietrichepp 2y ago
It’s a common misconception that dragons are reptiles. The are actually mammals. For some reason, historical depictions of dragons depict them with scales—this is inaccurate, real dragons have fur, give live birth, and even produce milk. I
33.
by dietrichepp 2y ago
I’ve used the Google Closure Compiler for some JS13K projects, since it is so effective at producing small JavaScript code. At the time (a few years ago), there were some rough edges trying to use the Closure Compiler without the Closure Li
34.
by dietrichepp 2y ago
I’m not sure the N64 would be easier. The graphics hardware in the N64 is complicated. In some ways the console is really modern (perspective-correct texture interpolation, z-buffering, subpixel positioning). On paper, it seems a lot like a
35.
by dietrichepp 2y ago
That’s a difficult project. Congratulations for even getting a 3D environment you can fly around! My own experience is that it’s so difficult to make homebrew games not just because of the technical challenges you have to solve making the g
36.
by dietrichepp 2y ago
They have the same heritage. https://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html https://www.bfxr.net/
37.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
> Instead of checking `state == advance(state, 2 32-1)`, which takes 32 multiplies, it's cheaper to do `advance(state, 1) == advance(state, 2 32), which only takes 2 multiplies (they both still take 32 squares unless you cache those
38.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
> when comparing that advancing by a given number is a period, it's much more efficient to advance both sides to minimize the number of 1 bits I’m missing something here… what do you mean by “advance both sides?” > an informative
39.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
Personally, I’d rather have the generators off when the earthquake hits!
40.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
I can think of some ideas: parking the heads on hard drives is one. Magnetic hard drives are sensitive to vibration. You can shout at hard drives and measure the effects (video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4
41.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
I have a more mathematical / software oriented article about LFSRs here: https://www.moria.us/articles/demystifying-the-lfsr/
42.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
I had one of these! The 130-in-1, maybe? It has that “wow” factor, but as I kid I think I moved on to breadboards pretty quickly. That, and we had a bunch of Engineer’s Mini-Notebook by Forrest Mims III. These kits are very cool but I remem
43.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
During the same era, science museums picked up some of the slack and now have hands-on chemistry labs. Depending on where you live. I have a lot of fond memories of, like, going to OMSI and doing the experiments in the chemlab.
44.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
A different option is to grab a standard ELF toolchain for i386, like GCC + Binutils, and then convert your ELF binary into a format that can run on DOS. Which is what I did: https://github.com/depp/elf2dos.git This is
45.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
The main difference between X and Y is in the indirect addressing modes. You can use X as an index when you are looping through an array of pointers. You can use Y as an index when you are looping through an array, where you have a pointer
46.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
I think of it as having a nice set of 256 “registers”, in the zero page at addresses 0-255. I think of the A register as kind of an intermediate location for data that is going from memory to the ALU or the ALU to memory. The article says a
47.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
Why are the code snippets animated? That’s such a frustrating way to read.
48.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
Choosing false = 0 and true = 1 is putting the cart before the horse. It is equally true that 1*0=0 is the same as false|true=true, and 0+1=1 is the same as true&false=false. But it is also not true that 1+1=1, so it is probably wrong t
49.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
My problem here is that I distinguish between multiplication and addition by seeing which one distributes over the other. a * (x + y) = (a * x) + (a * y) However, the reverse doesn’t work… a + (x * y) =? (a + x) * (a + y) Why
50.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
> This is an excellent comment and one should also note that the claim is wrong. I’ll pretend that this isn’t pedantry. I can understand why you’d say this, but I think you just haven’t explored the way that git diff works, including the
51.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
I was a Mac user back in the 1990s… bought some games like Taskmaker, Spacestation Pheta, Avernum (a 2000s remake of Exile from the 1990s). Later on, Carbon Copy Cloner. I think I may have used a pirated Escape Velocity key.
52.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
The ideal solution is that each of the front desk / office staff use their work credentials to access booking.com. One customer accounts, many user accounts. Use OIDC so you’re not entering your work password on booking.com. I know it’
53.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
The way I describe mmap these days is to say it allocates address space. This can sometimes be a clearer way of describing it, since the physical memory will only get allocated once you use the memory (maybe never).
54.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
Global offset table. When you go to the theater to see it, you’ll find a piece of paper on your seat with the address of the real theater written on it. This means you can still buy tickets to your local theater, but Nintendo can show the m
55.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
> what if you use the closed-form answer, but without any floating-point or other approximations You can use a field extension here, ℚ(√5), to represent your numbers. The numbers would be represented as pairs, (a,b), which represents the
56.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
My own personal experience is that, in linear algebra, there are a lot of different ways to prove the same thing. When you search for a proof of something, you may find a proof that is overly basic and verbose, or a proof that is overly adv
57.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
I think the proof for the closed-form version is accessible to people with a background in linear algebra. The matrix is diagonalizable (not all matrixes are diagonalizable, but this one is): M = P Δ P^-1 Here, P is some invertible
58.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
I had a 2013 MBP and only upgraded this year, earlier in 2023.
59.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
Yeah, maybe it’s not inconsistent any more. But meanwhile, systemd has gotten really nice, even a good version of rc.d seems awful by comparison. I had the same feeling when Apple came out with launchd in 2005. It felt like such a massive i
60.
by dietrichepp 3y ago
Yeah, I agree. Systemd is incredibly controversial among a niche group of people who have strong opinions about how init & core system functionality should work, and then there’s an outer ring of people who focus on one or two problems

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