Notices by Weasel (weaselx86@mastodon.social)

@arstechnica

Hardware hacker Dmitry Grinberg recently achieved what might sound impossible: booting Linux on the Intel 4004, the world's first commercial microprocessor. With just 2,300 transistors and an original clock speed of 740 kHz, the 1971 CPU is incredibly primitive by modern standards. And it's slow—it takes about 4.76 days for the Linux kernel to boot.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/hacker-boots-linux-on-intels-first-ever-cpu/

@nixCraft

In 1974, when I was a junior in high-school, I wrote a program for the school registrar to calculate student GPAs. That was the first program I ever wrote for someone else to use.

The registrar used the same program the following year, when I was a senior.

To be clear, I wrote the program that calculated the GPA that appears on my own high-school transcript.

@nixCraft

I wonder if we can get Google's AI to dredge that up as a current piece of information...

@nixCraft

Now do "online/offline" broken down by what decade the relationship began.

@nixCraft

In the void is virtue, and no evil. Wisdom has existence, principle has existence, the Way has existence, spirit is nothingness.
-- Miyamoto Musashi, 1645

@nixCraft

@nixCraft

CEO: How long will this take?
ME: 18 months, here's a detailed schedule.
CEO: That's too long, it needs to be done in 12 months.
[...a week later...]
ME: I can do it in 12 months if you assign a particular developer EJW to my team; here's a detailed schedule assuming that.
CEO: OK [does not assign EJW to my team]
[...18 months later...]
ME: It's done.
CEO: This was supposed to be done in 12 months. You were 50% late.

True story.

@nixCraft
Depends on whether I'm writing in C or Go.

@nixCraft
Video drivers.

@nixCraft
I was anticipating this one when I chose my number plate, but then they decided to call it "Pentium" instead.

@nixCraft
What they haven't yet realized is that an AI can take over the work of an executive much more competently than it can take over the work of a developer.

@nixCraft
I write it the way the inventors of the language wrote it.

@nixCraft

I've got an original Macintosh I bought for my mother in 1984, in its original box, which I unboxed and booted in June 2023. It seems to work, though it has trouble ejecting the disc.

@nixCraft

.so tmac.X
.ds T A Proposal for 80386 VM86 Performance Enhancements
.ds To ''\*T'Page %'
.ds Te 'Page %'\*T''
.ds Be ''Locus Computing Corporation''
.ds Bo ''Locus Computing Corporation''
.nr sf 0.0i
.ps +2
.vs +2
.de bi
.in +.4i
.ll -.4i
..
.de ei
.ll +.4i
.in -.4i
..
.en
.sp 1.0i
.PS +4
.ft B
.ce
\*T
.PS -4
.ft I
.ce
David A. Butterfield
.PS +2
.ft B
.ls 1
.ce
Locus Computing Corporation
.PS -2
.ft R
.ce 2
3330 Ocean Park Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90405
.sp
.ce
\fBABSTRACT\fP
...

@nixCraft

PDP-11 assembly language generating vector graphics for an A-7 flight simulator.

@nixCraft
Idiot managers at one particular company.

@nixCraft

A photo I took of a neural network being trained on prior art.

@nixCraft

@nixCraft
v6 on a PDP-11/23.

@nixCraft

<At customs in Los Angeles>
Agent: Where are you arriving from?
Me: Amsterdam.
Agent: How long have you been gone?
Me: Three months.
Agent: You were three months in Amsterdam??
Me: No, I was three months in Europe; I was in Amsterdam for three days.
<Agent passes me through>

True story from 1990.