ijk64✅ @ijk64@m.futex.au

Evening Light.

When you get a new IT job break the biggest computer you see then all the other computers will leave you alone

Asimov's first Foundation novel has a wonderful scene that I think prefigures the LLM arms race we're going through at the moment. A bunch of characters are using formal mathematical tools to analyse the meaning of verbose and seemingly eloquent political statements:

"That," replied Hardin, "is the interesting thing. The analysis was the most difficult of the three by all odds. When Hoik, after two days of steady work, succeeded in eliminating meaningless statements, vague gibberish, useless qualifications - in short, all the goo and dribble - he found he had nothing left. Everything canceled out."

Make way!

Welcome to #curl up 2024 in Stockholm, May 4-5: https://github.com/curl/curl-up/wiki/2024

contributors, maintainers, fans

LIVE! Select #IETF119 sessions are being streamed live—including sessions with discussions and proposals accessible to a broad range of Internet technologists, starting with a deep dive on BGP at 05:00-06:00 UTC on 17 March. Learn more and watch live: https://www.ietf.org/live/

The 12-month running mean global temperature anomaly continues to tick upward...

Graphic from https://zacklabe.com/climate-change-indicators/

This is your periodic reminder of the single greatest US #licenseplate plate ever.

Shel Silverstein doesn’t get nearly enough credit for predicting ChatGPT.

Every turtle should be provided with a skateboard.

Happy Pi Day to all of you that use 14.3 to calculate your circles.

Timelapse of the sun's chromosphere featuring solar spicules—narrow jets stretching up to 6,000 km high and reaching speeds over 100 km/s.

Credit: Luc Rouppe van der Voort, University of Oslo / Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope

Light Pillars Over Inner Mongolia

Image Credit & Copyright: N. D. Liao

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240304.html #APOD

Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale

Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus

SUPER-SIZED RUBIK'S CUBE!

The Rubik's Cube, invented in 1974 by the Hungarian sculptor and architecture teacher Ernő Rubik, never ceases to amaze.
#AureFreePress

Once I was at a small hostel in Spain, and came down with a nasty cold. I asked at the desk, and they said they had a doctor on staff. He came up to my room, wrote me a prescription, fixed me right up. Later I told the guy at the desk, I was surprised such a small hostel had a doctor on staff. He just smiled and said, "Yes, nobody expects the Spanish inn physician".

(not my joke)

Project manager: "What's technical debt? Explain it to me like I'm 6 years old"

Devs:

(source: "Richard Scarry's Storybook Dictionary" : https://archive.org/details/1scarryRichardStorybookDictionary/page/n56/mode/1up )

I think it's finally actually done: #c64 #Pongwars

It's _so_ slow: the calculations take more than one frame per frame, so it runs at 30fps; this run is mostly taken at Warp speed emulation (10x). Much of that is because I kept BASIC running, to reuse its number output routines.

Somehow this ended up being 800 lines of assembly: https://gist.github.com/Two9A/8b2f1d6e750e4ae762b2b9e2d7512473

I'll find a few spare moments to write up articles on some of the subtleties, expect those in the coming ...months.

#retrocomputing