kruador

8 ms·

1.
by kruador 5mo ago
I remember using Tasword Two for the ZX Spectrum. Even with a 3x7 font (4x8 grid) it only achieves 64 characters per line. Apparently in Tasword III the authors implemented 128 characters per line - by scrolling. Competitors could apparentl
2.
by kruador 8mo ago
To be clear, it is currently really easy to find because major earthworks are being done, and that requires space to move in the equipment to do it, along with new roads to get to points that were previously inaccessible, being the middle
3.
by kruador 8mo ago
The international platforms are not deleted! They were brought back into use from 2018-2019 to serve the Windsor Lines, which includes the service to Reading - platforms 20-24. That somewhat reduces the congestion at Waterloo; the station t
4.
by kruador 8mo ago
I would add a further advantage of plain HTTP (REST) compared to gRPC. Splitting the response into blocks and having the client request the next block, as in the gRPC solution, causes round-trip delays. The server can't send the second
5.
by kruador 10mo ago
The 8086 was a stop-gap solution until iAPX432 was ready. The 80286 was a stop-gap solution until iAPX432 was ready. The 80386 started as a stop-gap solution until iAPX432 was ready, until someone higher up finally decided to kill that one.
6.
by kruador 10mo ago
ARM64 also has fixed length 32-bit instructions. Yes, immediates are normally small and it's not particularly orthogonal as to how many bits are available. The largest MOV available is 16 bits, but those 16 bits can be shifted by 0, 16
7.
by kruador 10mo ago
ARM64 assembly has a MOV instruction, but for most of the ways it's used, it's an alias in the assembler to something else. For example, MOV between two registers actually generates ORR rd, rZR, rm, i.e. rd := (zero-register) OR r
8.
by kruador 1y ago
Toyota's hybrids, at least, have valves in the hydraulic system. If everything is working, the driver's pedal is isolated from the physical pistons. Pressing the pedal instead moves a 'stroke simulator' (a cylinder wit
9.
by kruador 1y ago
It's a pain in the backside to run on Windows, for two reasons. Firstly, Windows doesn't have (by default) a lot of the tools that are preinstalled in most nix environments. Git for Windows ships half a Cygwin distribution (MSYS2
10.
by kruador 1y ago
The text that the footnote is attached to is: "Large Language Models can gall on an aesthetic level because they are IMPish slurries of thought itself, every word ever written dried into weights and vectors and lubricated with the marg
11.
by kruador 1y ago
Strictly, UK teaspoons are 5 ml and tablespoons 15 ml. The metric tablespoons already used in Europe were probably close enough to half an Imperial fluid ounce for it not to matter for most purposes. My kids' baby bottles were labelled
12.
by kruador 1y ago
Blame the European regulators who decided that it was no longer necessary to have standard pack sizes. Pack sizes were regulated in 1975 for volume measures (wine, beer, spirits, vinegar, oils, milk, water, and fruit juice) and in 1980 for
13.
by kruador 1y ago
It wasn't possible on the 386. Ken Shirriff discusses how the Intel 80386's register file was built at https://www.righto.com/2025/05/intel-386-register-circuitry.... . Only four of the registers are buil
14.
by kruador 1y ago
No, SDRAM means Synchronous DRAM, where the data is clocked out of the DRAM chips instead of just appearing on the bus some time after the Column Address Strobe is asserted. Clocking it means that the data doesn't appear before the CPU
15.
by kruador 1y ago
The Sinclair ZX80 and ZX81 have static RAM internally, which you wouldn't expect for a) a computer that's designed to be as cheap as possible and b) uses a Zilog Z80 which has built-in refresh circuitry . The reason is that the d
16.
by kruador 1y ago
Most 8-bit CPUs didn't even have a hardware multiply instruction. To multiply on a 6502, for example, or a Z80, you have to add repeatedly. You can multiply by a power of 2 by shifting left, so you can get a bigger result by switchin
17.
by kruador 1y ago
This is, in some ways, reintroducing something that other source control systems forced on you (and you can see it in one of the videos that Scott linked, about using BitKeeper - Ep.4 Bits and Booze, https://www.youtube.com/
18.
by kruador 1y ago
I've seen a suggestion that they're using ccTLDs. Which might explain why the British Indian Ocean Territory - population, one US military base - has such a high tariff. The BIOT, aka Diego Garcia, has the ccTLD .io.
19.
by kruador 2y ago
I can't replicate the initial problem, at least pushing to Bitbucket. I'm using Windows, so I didn't use `touch` - instead I used 'echo' to create a new file in a shallow clone of my repo. That repo is 126 MB on Bit
20.
by kruador 2y ago
See my top-level response, but basically nothing is mangled. Instead Git internally treats it as a 'graft' and knows not to look for parents of the prior commit. I started that comment as a reply to you but I realised that a) it m
21.
by kruador 2y ago
It isn't mangled. The commit is there as-is. Instead the repository has a file, ".git/shallow", which tells it not to look for the parents of any commit listed there. If you do a '--depth 1' clone, the file wil
22.
by kruador 2y ago
It was designed to support a specific Air Force requirement: the ability to launch, release or capture a spy satellite, then return to (approximately) the same launch site, all on a single orbit. (I say 'approximately' because a W
23.
by kruador 2y ago
Actually $9 more to go from 2GB to 4GB, just for the RAM chip itself. See my reply above. 32GB is impossible at present. No-one makes a 256 gigabit (32x8) chip to fit in the same footprint, so then you have to do a new board design to suppo
24.
by kruador 2y ago
The problem is that to fit on the existing board, you need a single RAM package with the same number and function of pads. Looking at a sample photo of a board, I can see it has a Micron package labelled D8CJN. Looking that up on Micron&#x2
25.
by kruador 2y ago
SQLite is in-process. It never spins up another process or thread. It's just a library. Its blocking I/O means that the thread that called into SQLite can't do anything else until it completes. Though note that SQLite's
26.
by kruador 2y ago
If you look at the map, Shipfusion is 4350 North 5th Street, North Las Vegas. The Circle K is literally next door, on the intersection of North 5th Street and East Craig Road. See https://maps.app.goo.gl/Wz6iNaViGf3ToM1U6 .
27.
by kruador 2y ago
Indeed - the 'dynamic' comes from 'dynamic logic'. Wikipedia: "It is distinguished from the so-called static logic by exploiting temporary storage of information in stray and gate capacitances." What Dennard re
28.
by kruador 2y ago
The reason was because it makes subroutine return and stack frame cleanup simpler. You know this, but background for anyone else: ARM's subroutine calling convention places the return address in a register, LR (which is itself a genera
29.
by kruador 2y ago
No, they aren't. GS1 - the organisation that administers retail barcodes - has rules about when to change the Global Trade Item Number for a product. The GTIN is what you probably mean by 'UPC' but GS1 now distinguishes betwe
30.
by kruador 2y ago
The UK switched from selling petrol in gallons to litres in the 1980s. I think I just about recall petrol prices suddenly changing dramatically when I was fairly young - I used to help my Dad keep records of how much fuel we'd bought a

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