irdc

11 ms·

121.
by irdc 3y ago
I’m speculating here, but isn’t the fact that you can just run the exact same binary everywhere an advantage? Makes testing a lot easier. And these devices are (currently) too low-power for emulated code to thrive.
122.
by irdc 3y ago
> I would like to try out something where the register width and operation semantics (wrap, extend, saturate) have to be always explicit. Try VHDL. It’s Ada heritage gives it that explicit feel.
123.
by irdc 3y ago
I don’t understand how this improves upon VHDL, even after reading their own explanation[0]. Just why they think object orientation makes hardware design easier isn’t really explained. After a quick look at it I much prefer VHDL’s entities
124.
by irdc 3y ago
You seem to be functioning well and may no longer meet the criteria for ADHD. This is actually not uncommon, nor unexpected: the frontal lobe of your brain, responsible for executive functioning, isn’t done developing until you’re 25.
125.
by irdc 3y ago
Noel’s Retro Lab did a video on it a couple of years ago if you’re into that sort of thing: https://youtu.be/_ErfWfjN9iU
126.
by irdc 3y ago
The extra 8kB was done to make a Spanish tax on home computers with 64kB of memory not apply to the 472. There was otherwise no difference with the 464.
127.
by irdc 3y ago
With the projected economics of renewables you’re fighting a losing battle: there will be shining seas of panels from coast to coast. With the way PV panel pricing is going, at some point doing anything else will basically amount to theft
128.
by irdc 3y ago
Why bother building expensive centralised power generation using nuclear fission when you can just put down some more cheap solar panels that don’t have even nearly the same regulatory burden? I’m asking this not to get into the usual discu
129.
by irdc 3y ago
Not sure it counts, as it’s a single 60-pin DIP module holding the two pieces of silicon. Indeed, one could see the J-11 as an early chiplet design.
130.
by irdc 3y ago
This sounds like the way the 8087 and 8089 (look that one up!) co-processors worked: they snooped the instructions the 8086/8088 CPU read from memory and then handled their own subset of the instruction set. That did require that they
131.
by irdc 3y ago
This is likely going to be buried, but: now Bleeper has standing to argue that Apple, as owner of the largest mobile messaging platform in the US, is a monopolist.
132.
by irdc 3y ago
What politics and why do you think this move is related to it? It could very well be due to cost related to the third party client ban.
133.
by irdc 3y ago
Time zones are arbitrary and the result of a historical accident. If the standardisation of timekeeping were to have happened in Amsterdam (not unlikely seeing the history of telescope development[0]) the issue would have been moot as UTC w
134.
by irdc 3y ago
> We (NL) should stay on permanent summer time. I think the easiest way to permanently switch to UTC+1:00 will be to first try UTC+2:00 for a year; few people are going to accept only seeing the first rays of the sun at around 9:50 in wi
135.
by irdc 3y ago
The EU is big enough and the CPU in your watch is fast enough that it won’t matter.
136.
by irdc 3y ago
It’s not a troll post, I’m very serious: UTC+0:30 corresponds to the solar time at the geographical midpoint of the continental EU. The advantages are legion.
137.
by irdc 3y ago
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: switching to UTC+0:30 will put a large number of countries in a common time zone without them deviating from their solar time too much.
138.
by irdc 3y ago
I still think it’s funny how what used to be the location of user home directories, namely /usr, has been retconned to be where the majority of binaries are stored.
139.
by irdc 3y ago
Incidentally, the DEC J-11 PDP-11-on-a-chip is still available[0] and can easily[1] be hooked up to other required hardware (I mean, the thing has a monitor/debugger built in, what’s not to like?). 0. https://www.ebay.com&#x
140.
by irdc 3y ago
Apparently the rocket is now very sooty. Think about it: SpaceX is the only company launching rockets covered in soot from previous launches. Because they can . Remarkable.
141.
At a disadvantage (2011) – Which was faster, an IBM PC or a Commodore 64?(trixter.oldskool.org)
11 points by irdc 3y ago|5 comments
142.
by irdc 3y ago
Acckkghtually, if you go back far enough you end up at the Datapoint 2200. If you want to understand where some of the crazier parts of the 8086 originate from, Ken Shirriff has a nice read: http://www.righto.com/2023/0
143.
by irdc 3y ago
Yes, but execute disable is not the same as execute only . AFAIK there's no way to prevent executable pages from being readable using only the i386/amd64 page table.
144.
by irdc 3y ago
Yes, that’s true. That’s where infoleaks come in. Plus a lot of crashes are likely not even noticed, or blamed on the software just being buggy. Repeatedly crashing a fork()‘ing server might just give you enough information to reconstruct i
145.
by irdc 3y ago
I don’t want to since I don’t think it should be a thing. If you want a catch-all error code, use 500 and accept the shame that comes with it.
146.
by irdc 3y ago
A successful ROP attack requires the exact addresses of the various gadgets used (refer to a definition of ROP if this is unclear, as I’m currently on mobile). ASLR thwarts this, as does the libc layout randomisation that OpenBSD does on ev
147.
by irdc 3y ago
> Give the PaX project some credit, since they had it before OpenBSD did. I didn’t know that and cannot find anything that confirms this. You have a source?
148.
by irdc 3y ago
Only through segmentation hacks right? In page table entries, execute doesn’t have a separate flag but shares it with read.
149.
by irdc 3y ago
Yeah, it makes constructing ROP chains slightly more difficult when combined with ASLR and the like as you cannot defeat the randomisation by inspecting the running binary.
150.
by irdc 3y ago
Tricks like these are going to become less common with execute-only mapping of .text slowly proliferating through the industry (iOS, OpenBSD). Though i386 is unlikely to ever become execute-only.

More ›