For those of you with a #Mac#Laptop, do you ever turn yours off, or do you leave it plugged in and running over night? Why?
Do you find that leaving it on and plugged in causes any deterioration with the battery? #MacOS#Computer#Computing#Tech
When I was a young Commodore-era game developer, C (without the ++ or # back then) was for wimps, and hardcore coders used Assembly, ditching the OS to have maximum available hardware resources. 👴
More Ron Swanson than Elon Musk, Altair inventor Ed Roberts created the PC industry. Then, at the height of his wealth and influence, decided to walk away.
59 years ago today, the first computer program written in #BASIC was run.
The easy-to-learn and -use #programming language revolutionized #computing. A decade later, #BillGates would co-found #Microsoft to develop and sell the BASIC interpreter for the #Altair 8800, the first commercially successful desktop microcomputer.
After having watched a Computer Chronicles special on Gary Kildall, I find it hard to believe that there is not a single book out there to dive deeper into the history of this fascinating guy and all the things he brought to life. The only thing so far is a fragment of a memoir he wrote before his death. So noone ever considered this a topic worth writing about, even in the 80s and 90s? Consider me flabbergasted. #retrocomputing#computerhistory#computerhistoriker#computing
In 1986, #YKK Global (famous Japanese zipper+ maker) created their own PC system: FACE16. I've been trying to find more info on this system online, but to no avail.
I've found photos from one Japanese blog, with no replies from the blog owner. I've also gotten information back from YKK Global, but it was relatively generic ("standard parts... office use")...
Floppy disks shrunk over time, from the original 8-inch disk, to the 5-1/4 inch format, and eventually down to the 3-1/2 inch disk that wasn’t nearly as floppy as the original. When introduced by IBM in 1971, the floppy disk made it possible to easily load software and updates onto mainframe computers. As the technology evolved and personal computers became popular, the floppy disk enabled people to share data and programs more easily. The rest is the history. #history#computing
A must read longform on the pioneer of AI chatbot who became AI's main and earliest detractors, Joseph Weizenbaum (of ELIZA fame here at MIT) by Ben Tarnoff!
Weizenbaum's was a lone voice in the 1970s, and many of his views are as apt now as they were then. Almost the entire article is chock full of quotes, and so here is a thread with quotes and a few of my thoughts interspersed.
"There is so much in Weizenbaum’s thinking that is urgently relevant now. Perhaps his most fundamental heresy was the belief that the computer revolution, which Weizenbaum not only lived through but centrally participated in, was actually a counter-revolution."
I too had my early training in computer science, and have come to see it increasingly as counter-revolutionary not even delivering on its promises of economic productivity (topic for another day). With my expertise in neural networks, I should be riding atop the current wave of AI to the bank, instead, I mostly see it as a land of false promises mediated by dangerous levels of silicon valley mythmaking.
I so much wish the goals for software were performance first, then features.
It's so hard to understand that apps are over ~100.000.000 bytes heavy when my first hard drive was ~20.000.000 bytes (where I had a hundred programs, including drawing and animation apps) and my first computer had 3.583 bytes of RAM free.
Slack is 289 million bytes. Mostly to share a sentence of text. I just can't
DELIGHTED to say that my latest tech history column is live on Every and they've made this one free-to-read.
Because it covers one of the most overlooked founders of the golden age of computing: Lore Harp McGovern, founder of Vector Graphic who pioneered small/medium business computing.
Craziness. On our trip to Memphis last week, we wandered into this quaint little boutique in midtown called The Wren's Nest. My wife and daughter set about trying on French dresses and such, while I wandered about idly, trying to entertain myself.
As I poked about the shelves, I came upon a display of four extreme-level custom keyboards and I've never found such an out of place treasure, completely out of the blue!
I re-enact my surprise encounter in this short video. Enjoy. 🙂
Running #plan9front in my #thinkpad x280 for this entire year is going to be distractionless and super productive workstation. I dinnae miss the browser at all. Also I'm learning tons of new #computing things. There is no way back. Thank you to every single person and to the developers for this amazing experience. #plan9
This technology has been around for awhile, but pretty interesting that you scientists have figured out how to reconstruct a room based on the reflections in the image of someone's eyes (assuming high enough resolution). Serious sci-fi movie stuff. (so, take a photo of someone and you can -- if it has enough resolution -- zoom into their eye and see everything they can see, even things behind the camera). Imagine a video/photo of a hostage, or the spokesperson for a terrorist group... or even just a scene from a movie. (neural radiance field (NeRF) technology) #computing#nerfhttps://petapixel.com/2023/06/29/scientists-can-now-reconstruct-rooms-from-eye-reflections-in-photos/
I have seen there is a new Raspberry Pi released. Any folks out there get their hands on it? How powerful is it? What kind of performance does it have?
I have installed some new lights, and they each come with an identical-looking but apparently differently encoded remote controls. The remotes control only one lamp each.
Not infra-red as I had assumed until just now it seems. Signal hasno trouble passing through walls. Surprising.
Anyone know if there's a way to capture the signals from those remotes and install some USB device on my computer that can repeat them?
I figured there would be when I assumed they were infra-red remotes, coz surely a infra-red flasher/recorder is easy, but now I suspect it's probably some encoded encrypted wifi-band signal or something that there's no hope of intercepting.