kens

17 ms·

271.
by kens 1y ago
It's probably a combination of different suppliers being chosen, and everyone wanted a piece of the pie. But it's annoying when I figure out how something works in the Lunar Module and then discover that the Command Module is comp
272.
by kens 1y ago
There are many different Shuttle simulators. The simulator photo in my post is one of the Shuttle Mission Simulators (SMS), now at Stafford Museum in Oklahoma. The Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL) is a different simulator for
273.
by kens 1y ago
Thanks. You are correct about the F-5 autopilot, so I fixed that. It turns out that it was used in planes such as the C-47, C-60, C-45, and B-26, but is unrelated to the F-5.
274.
by kens 1y ago
Unfortunately, I don't have the FDAI handy to check this.
275.
by kens 1y ago
Yes, in the movie, Lovell says "What's the frappin' attitude?" as the 8-ball rolls out of control. The actual Apollo 13 transcript has nothing like that, interestingly enough. Links: https://archive.org/d
276.
by kens 1y ago
Author here for your Apollo questions :-)
277.
by kens 1y ago
Thank you for your nice comment. Also, thank you to Y Combinator for donating the Alto.
278.
by kens 1y ago
As far as performance, the Alto team described the performance of Smalltalk as between "majestic" and "glacial". From my experience with the Alto, Smalltalk seemed unusably slow, and I'm amazed that they could actua
279.
by kens 1y ago
Well, the CRT on our Alto is pretty old, so the text is a lot worse in person. (That's why I used screenshots instead of photos.) But I think that even with a good monitor, the Smalltalk font would be quirky at best.
280.
by kens 1y ago
I was curious about Google's current Best Place to Work rating. Forbes puts Alphabet at #2, but there are competing lists and Google is #6 on some others. https://www.forbes.com/lists/worlds-best-employers/
281.
by kens 1y ago
Cysteine is not an essential amino acid. Humans can synthesize it from methionine.
282.
by kens 1y ago
And if you're in high school, join a First Robotics team. (In First Robotics, teams build a moderately large robot that can zip around a field, grabbing things and shooting balls for instance. It's like a competitive sport but wit
283.
by kens 1y ago
On the topic of computer-generated Mondrians, in 1966 a researcher at Bell Labs used a computer to produce a semi-random version of Mondrian's "Composition With Lines" (1917). Interestingly, he found that only 28% of people c
284.
by kens 1y ago
Yes, some comments make me wonder about other people; I have three hypotheses: a) Some people experience consciousness very differently, similar to how some people have no mental imagery (aphantasia). b) The confusion is due to ill-defined
285.
by kens 1y ago
Just 128 bits? I expect punch cards to hold 80 columns of 12 bits :-)
286.
by kens 1y ago
The link to the HN discussion, by the way, is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43891128
287.
by kens 1y ago
I remember the big 1977-1979 scam with DataSync, World Power Systems, and "Colonel David Winthrop" advertising S-100 boards and other computer stuff but not shipping it to purchasers while also ripping off his suppliers. The artic
288.
by kens 1y ago
The article says that resisivity in normal metals follows a quadratic curve, but the article also says that it follows an exponential curve. Does anyone know which it right?
289.
by kens 1y ago
I took the date out of my blog posts because I find the HN tic of putting the date in the title a little too precious. Obviously the date is important for some articles: the relevance of "Scientists make breakthrough in X" depends
290.
by kens 1y ago
> Aren't JSON parsers technically not following the standard if they don't reliably store a number that is not representable by a IEEE754 double precision float? That sentence has four negations and I honestly can't figure
291.
by kens 1y ago
The article mentions that the Moses-Saunders International Power Dam is nearby. A bit of a tangent, but this was built by Robert Moses, who isn't as well known as he should be. Moses built a huge number of projects that reshaped New Yo
292.
by kens 1y ago
> Binary multiplication has not changed in millennia. Ancient Egyptians were using the same binary integer multiplication logic 5 millennia ago as ALUs do today. It turns out that multiplication in modern ALUs is very different. The Pent
293.
DeepMind unveils general-purpose science AI(nature.com)
48 points by kens 1y ago|3 comments
294.
by kens 1y ago
For the most part, the account posts comments on HN that previously appeared on reddit discussions of the same article (you can check this with Google). My guess is that it's an experiment in karma farming.
295.
by kens 1y ago
This appears to be a bot reposting comments from an older article on my blog.
296.
by kens 1y ago
Well, the Manchester carry chain dates back to 1959. Even the 6502 uses carry skip too increment the PC. As word sizes became larger and transistors became cheaper, implementations became more complex and optimized. And mainframes have been
297.
by kens 1y ago
So many chips, so little time :-)
298.
by kens 1y ago
Those would be interesting chips to examine, if I ever get through my current projects :-)
299.
by kens 1y ago
Because I saw a Navajo weaving of a Pentium and wanted to compare the weaving to the real chip: https://www.righto.com/2024/08/pentium-navajo-fairchild-ship...
300.
by kens 1y ago
I'm not as interested in the 486; I went stright to the Pentium: https://www.righto.com/2025/03/pentium-multiplier-adder-reve...

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