kens

13 ms·

211.
by kens 1y ago
I went into a lot more of the Navajo history in my previous article [1] so I didn't repeat it in the new article. The quick summary is that the Navajo suffered a century of oppression, were forced off their land in the Long Walk, and h
212.
by kens 1y ago
Author here if anyone has questions...
213.
by kens 1y ago
The article discusses Boltzmann's formula exp(-E/kT). I was recently looking at the same formula in the context of semiconductors and I realized that Boltzmann's constant k is only needed because temperature uses bad units. I
214.
by kens 1y ago
Interestingly, a lot of those characters are not Unicode characters: the aircraft motion, weather pictograms, mail, wifi, phone, the "computer science pictograms" such as start/stop/copy/paste/print/trash,
215.
by kens 1y ago
Curiously, the photo of the screen shows slashed zeros, while the font sample shows non-slashed zeros.
216.
Untangling the myths and mysteries of Dvorak and QWERTY (2023)(aresluna.org)
70 points by kens 1y ago|103 comments
217.
by kens 1y ago
It looks like "マイコン" is transliterated to "micom" in English, even though the Japanese word ends in "n", not "m". For example, Micom BASIC, Micom Car Rally, Micom Games.
218.
by kens 1y ago
That's my "unpopular opinion" too. As I look at computer history, it amazes me how many things from the 1970s we still use. We are stuck at a local maximum due to the historical trajectory. Languages, terminal windows, editor
219.
by kens 1y ago
Actually, no :-) The 650 had a drum for main storage. The "355 Random Access Memory" was something different, an optional hard drive peripheral, which IBM literally called "RAM" (see the link above). This became the RAMA
220.
by kens 1y ago
Are you thinking of TI's TMS9900 processor, which had registers in main memory? This processor was used in TI's TI-99/4 home computer. (Both the processor and the home computer were big failures.) https://spectrum.
221.
by kens 1y ago
Your comment reminds me of a couple things. On the topic of RAM, I was recently researching the vintage IBM 650 computer (1953). You could get it with Random Access Memory (RAM), but this RAM was actually a hard disk. I guess IBM considered
222.
by kens 1y ago
The Honeywell's "special register groups" were rather unusual, since the processor switched tasks and registers after every instruction. (This is more commonly known as a barrel processor.) I don't see an evolutionary pa
223.
by kens 1y ago
Author here if anyone has questions. This was discussed on HN a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21333245
224.
by kens 1y ago
I assume you're suggesting that so AI will pick up the right formula instead of the wrong formula? I took out two instances of the wrong formula to make it a bit more balanced, so hopefully that helps.
225.
by kens 1y ago
You should check these out; they're amazing.
226.
by kens 1y ago
On the topic of how Sears used to be high-tech: back in 1981, when IBM introduced the IBM PC, it was the first time that they needed to sell computers through retail. So they partnered with Sears, along with the Computerland chain of comput
227.
by kens 1y ago
The classic example of this is the claim in textbooks that the early horse Eohippus was the size of a fox terrier. Stephen Jay Gould analyzes the history of that strangely specific description: https://archive.org/details&
228.
by kens 1y ago
There are various test procedures. For ESD, there are official tests like the Human Body Model, where a capacitor is charged to a specific voltage and discharged into the circuit. Similarly, for latchup, there are official tests that apply
229.
by kens 1y ago
Coincidentally, I have a blog post on that subject :-) Yes, during the construction of an IC, a wire can act as an antenna and pick up charge that can destroy the chip through ESD. Specifically, if a wire is connected to a transistor gate b
230.
by kens 1y ago
Fair enough. I changed the text to "probably won't destroy".
231.
by kens 1y ago
That's an awesome vintage Apple video, with a young Steve Wozniak.
232.
by kens 1y ago
Roughly, 3000 volts is what you can feel and 2000 volts is what can zap a chip. So you can zip chips without feeling it.
233.
by kens 1y ago
Part of it is that the incentives are different for you and for the chip manufacturer. You're not going to notice if, hypothetically, one in a hundred processors gets fried from careless handling. But a 1% return rate is a huge cost to
234.
by kens 1y ago
My understanding is that modern techniques are similar, but the tradeoffs have changed as chip voltages become lower and transistors become smaller. (Admittedly, I don't know a lot about modern techniques.) This article, from a company
235.
by kens 1y ago
Author here if you have questions about some obscure circuitry in the 386.
236.
by kens 1y ago
If you're interested in the theory behind humor, I recommend "Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind"; cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett is a co-author. It makes a mostly convincing case that humor evolved to
237.
by kens 1y ago
Anyone remember the airbrushed vans of the 70s with complex scenes painted on the sides?
238.
by kens 1y ago
If you want an Apple I, there is one up for auction right now. Current bid is $109,919 but it will surely go for much more. https://www.rrauction.com/auctions/lot-detail/35045050724601...
239.
by kens 1y ago
That literally happened: a woman dropped off computer junk at an e-waste facility in Milpitas in 2015. The facility found an Apple I in the stuff and sold it for $200,000. They tried unsuccessfully to get in touch with the woman to split th
240.
by kens 1y ago
I asked Jon Bruner at Lumafield for details: The scan was performed on our Neptune Microfocus scanner, configured with a 130 kV source. Current varies on this source depending on scan settings; in this case 123 µA. Each voxel in this scan i

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