My wife and I went to the ballet in San Francisco last night. During our short walk to dinner and back to the venue, I noticed more people smoking than I’ve seen in the past six months. Not vaping—smoking.
Could it just be an anomaly, or is smoking making a comeback among city-dwellers?
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I took the #hamradio Technician exam on Saturday but haven't received my license yet. I figured, what the heck, and I took my General exam today.
Once again I took the test remotely with the WM7X crew, and it went swimmingly. Just like before, they were very thorough in the way they ensured I wouldn't be cheating, but never made me feel like a cheater. Nice group of people, very welcoming, and very encouraging.
Now I just need my call sign. Come on FCC, let's go! 😉
https://wm7x.net
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I took my #hamradio Technician exam this morning and should hopefully have a callsign issued midweek.
Now the real fun begins, sorting through hundreds of articles and videos with titles like:
“The Top 5 Best Radios for Beginners”
“Buy Once, Cry Once?”
“The Best Antenna of 2024”
"Best Antenna that Won't Antagonize Your Neighbors”
I plan to upgrade to General soon so I'll need to keep that in mind. All free advice gladly accepted (but potentially ignored 😉).
See you on the airwaves.
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I learned about the very impressive Medley project last year. I think you’ll find that it is an important part of computing history, even if, like me, you’re not a Lisp person. [The last time I used any variant of Lisp was in the ‘80s to customize EMacs.]
https://fosstodon.org/@interlisp/113843352451375344
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I'm planning to get my amateur radio license soon. Who should I be following on Mastodon? I don't expect to ever have an antenna mast in my back yard, but I would like to be proficient, and, let's face it, it opens a whole new world of electronics devices that I will “need”.
[#]hamradio @geerlingguy
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There’s a joke about Data Scientists:
“Data Scientists spend 80% of their time cleaning data and the other 20% complaining about it.”
Seems like there should be one for JavaScript programmers:
“JavaScript programmers spend 80% of their time picking frameworks and the other 80% replacing them.”
I’m grouchy because I’m writing frontend code, which I do rarely, and every time I do, there’s a new “hotness” to learn.
[#]datascience #javascript
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Pessimist: The glass is half empty
Optimist: The glass is half full
Engineer: The glass is twice as big as it needs to be
Julius Caesar: I came, I saw, I drank half the water.
Jane Austen: It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single glass, in possession of water, must be half full.
Thanos: The glass is perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
Doctor Who: The glass is bigger on the inside.
IRS: The glass is half mine.
Add your own and pass along.
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I spent the afternoon crouching over this sump pit replacing the pump at my Uncle's house. It's under a deck so everything takes place leaning over the opening. Amazingly I didn't drop anything into the pit including my glasses.
The whole time, this line from Lethal Weapon was running through my head.
https://youtu.be/7EQDCFcegk0?feature=shared&t=1
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Merry Christmas to those who celebrate!
Enjoy this wonderful video from #acapellascience with 7 wonderful “#science carols”:
https://youtu.be/b0cU-CmjKNY?feature=shared
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OMG, An #Apollo #DSKY Watch!
According to the site, a future project will have some sort of simulation of the original Apollo AGC Luminary code.
The curiousmarc team should each have one. @kenshirriff@oldbytes @tubetime
https://apollo-instruments.com/#section-roadmap
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This piece by François Chollet on the o3 announcement is quite good.
The arc-agi benchmark is an important (and developing) tool in the campaign to understand true progress in the field.
Refining the benchmark over time will also help us understand what makes human reasoning so powerful.
I’ve also included a link to an episode of the MindScape podcast in which François was interviewed.
[#]llm #o3
https://arcprize.org/blog/oai-o3-pub-breakthrough
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/06/24/280-francois-chollet-on-deep-learning-and-the-meaning-of-intelligence/
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To get how cool this really is, you need to cast yourself back to the 1981 frame of mind where the state of the art in personal computing was the IBM 5150 PC running PC-DOS 1.0, which was really limited even compared to later versions of DOS (e.g. there was only one directory per disk and no HD support).
https://fosstodon.org/@interlisp/113650957735095671
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If you have a warm spot in your heart for old #DEC gear, then you probably already know about Oscar Vermeulen's PiDP series including the PiDP-8, PiDP-10, and my personal favorite, the PiDP-11.
He has a year-end newsletter on his site that you'll want to check out: https://obsolescence.dev/obsolescence-newsletter-dec-2024.html
My PiDP-11 is pictured below, next to a couple of other replicas. Also pictured is my small-scale VT100 replica which runs @larsbrinkhoff’s very exact VT100 emulator.
https://github.com/jpasqua/FauxVT
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Old fogey alert: I just had 40TB of storage delivered in a small cardboard box. All-in cost: $539.98.
When I ordered it I thought: Will this be enough? Should I wait for a better deal?
It's forty frickin terabytes! At less than $14/TB (1.5 cents per gigabyte)! This still blows my mind.
For context, when I started my career in 1981 storage was about $526,000,000/TB. That's 37 million times the price!
Some times I say stuff like this to students and I can see the “Ok boomer" in their eyes.
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This is incredible work to recreate a device that never existed. He was faithful to the design, creative in how he made it work, and meticulous in the construction.
https://youtu.be/Grd_a4oi7qU
[#]retrocomputing
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A while back I “accidentally” bought an Apple IIc in an auction. I forgot how cute they are. For some reason I decided to open the box today even though I still have a lot of other projects to complete. Of course it didn’t just work. It's got power, the drive seeks, but no beep or video.
I've never worked on one of these. I've got the schematics and guide from SAMS Computer Facts. Any hints on what I should be reading / watching to get in the groove? TIA
[#]retrocomputing #appleiic
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When I got to the Internet Archive site to check this out, I was greeted with a wikipedia-like “please donate” banner. That's the first time I've seen that and I'm glad it was there. Check it out if you want to support the Internet Archive.
[#]internetarchive #mit #OpenAccess https://mastodon.archive.org/@textfiles/113578124911492988
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I really want this #HP 2100A which is in the last day of auction on eBay. Unfortunately I have no room for it and it is just the shell and power supply - no cards.
This is the first computer I ever programmed (1975). It was in the basement of the college which was associated with my high school. We had a single ASR-33 teletype to access it. I attached a (bad) picture I took through a window into the computer room.
I might have to make a replica…
[#]retrocomputing
https://www.ebay.com/itm/196802035696
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The "final” FauxStar tower & display. For anyone who's seen seen my project to create a 30% scale replica of the #Xerox Dandelion (aka 8010, aka Star, aka 1108), you may be thinking that I already posted this weeks ago. Well, I did, but I needed to make minor tweaks to the chassis and the display base. I also swapped out the USB-C external connector for one which is easier to mount securely.
Next stop is logos, then keyboard & mouse.
Booting in Tajo:
https://youtu.be/FJ-2g1LUqd8
[#]retrocomputing
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I keep seeing articles/posts about a mass exodus from Twitter. I just saw one titled: ”Twitter is getting absolutely destroyed as users flee to rivals”.
I can't tell if this is wishful thinking or fact-based. I haven’t seen any numbers cited with sources (which I understand would be difficult to come by).
I see numbers for an uptick on BlueSky, but it seems far from Twitter being “destroyed.” Don’t get me wrong, I'd like it to be true, I just can't tell if it is.
Anyone got data?
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