@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

RupertReynolds

@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io

Born at less than 320ppm CO₂.

Programmer and bus driver. It's a long story :-)

Based northern UK & Scotland

Europhile, especially since I worked 1½ years in north Holland.

Currently: C#, C, the language that shall not be named

#Assembly (for fun) on Intel PC and IBM #mainframe (emulated, these days. Download and unzip "TK4-" and you can play, as well).

#rexx #PL1 #SAS too.

Also other things, including a compiler for a new language. That should be ready in a decade. Or 2.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

georgetakei, to random

Happy Wednesday, folks! Tomorrow, we're exploring a curious phenomenon in politics — the memory lapse that has some Republicans convinced Joe Biden was president in 2020. Yeah, I know. Keeping up with all these theories is hurting my head, too. That, and more, at . https://thinkbigpicture.substack.com/p/week-big-picture-september-6

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@georgetakei Even though I live in UK and try to avoid US politics, I know that Biden took office in 2021!

Memory is weird, sometimes.

malwaretech, to random

Something I've always wondered is, assuming a hypothetical perfect communist system, what would the standard of living look like? I've seen people try to make arguments based on taking the GDP/GNP then dividing it by the population, which works out at about $70k per person. But then they're picturing that within a current system of artificially constrained housing supply, for profit healthcare/education, and 10x price markups. Assuming a perfectly efficient system in which the only costs are resources + time, and 90% of society's labor isn't going to sustaining completely useless overhead, what does the average lifestyle look like?

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@malwaretech Could never happen, but:
Short working week, maybe 10 hours?

Everyone has a hobby, and kudos is important, so people take up creative hobbies.

Nobody goes hungry or homeless, less disease, not much ambition, either. After 2 generations, we forget how to strive for better science, art or sport.

Might be boring?

briankrebs, (edited ) to random

Are you a top or bottom person? Okay, get your mind out of the gutter. This is about how you typically read your feed here. Thanks for playing!

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@briankrebs "No, we are all in the gutter. But some of us are looking at the stars."

feditips, to retrocomputing
@feditips@mstdn.social avatar

In case you missed it, there are now several Mastodon apps available:

:apple_inc: Apple II
https://www.colino.net/wordpress/en/binary-release-of-mastodon-for-the-apple-c/

:apple_inc: Apple Macintosh OS (pre-OSX)
https://github.com/smallsco/macstodon

:amiga: Commodore Amiga
https://github.com/BlitterStudio/amidon

⌨️ IBM MVS
https://github.com/mainframed/BREXXTODON

:win3_msdos: MS-DOS
https://github.com/SuperIlu/DOStodon

:windows: Windows 95
https://github.com/meyskens/mastodon-for-workgroups

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@feditips
Wow, quite a collection!

MVS was a gem in its time, and released open source (long before closed source wss invented). Nice to see it represented.

And from memory TK5 (a turnkey MVS/Hercules emulator system) has BREXX included (or it's easy to add. I forget)

gvwilson, to random
@gvwilson@mastodon.social avatar

OpenRefine (https://openrefine.org/) remains one of my favorite tools, and hints at just how much better life could be for millions and millions of people if computer scientists hadn't taken it into their heads to sneer at spreadsheets.

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@gvwilson I mustn't claim to speak for computer scientists, but my disdain for the use of spreadsheets is due to the weird things people use them for--such as using them as a database when the sheer size, or free form text data make a spreadsheet a recipe for lost data and/or corruption.

I use spreadsheets for accounts, and analysing other tables of numeric data--they are excellent for that :-)

But "When the only tool in the box is a hammer, everything looks like a thumb" :-)

revk, to random
@revk@toot.me.uk avatar

The clue is in the email address. Why do people do this?!

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@revk I used to set up a mailbox for every membership, with names like fb-sold-me@mydomain

I honestly thought that FB would leak or sell my address, but they never did--not even after I gave up using the service.

Strandjunker, to random
@Strandjunker@mstdn.social avatar

Here’s the deal: We name mass shootings the way we do hurricanes but after Republicans who accept payments from the NRA.

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@Strandjunker Surely it should be ANY public figure with influence who accepts NRA money.

OK maybe it won't change the numbers much, but it'll change the message!

luckytran, to random
@luckytran@med-mastodon.com avatar

City of Hope in Duarte, California, has maintained masking requirements, and this has prevented hospital-acquired there entirely, according to Vijay Trisal, MD, chief medical officer at City of Hope.

“Our policies enabled us to achieve zero nosocomial infections, zero outbreaks.”

https://www.cancertherapyadvisor.com/home/cancer-topics/general-oncology/mask-mandates-have-kept-one-cancer-center-free-from-covid-19-others-have-lifted-masking-requirements-despite-patient-concerns/

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@luckytran What's that you say? Covid-19 is spread mostly on droplets, so a mask that stops most of those droplets greatly reduces the risk of spreading infection? It's that simple?

Why wasn't I told this before!?

(sorry for the bad attitude)

Political players should be banned from hospital boards, or at least outnumbered 3:1 by doctors carrying baseball bats (for emphasis, you understand)

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@donaldball @luckytran I was using the term 'droplets' loosely, although my understanding is that, statistically, droplets and aerosols are both in the frame.

Meanwhile, my point is that it's not like measles, which is airborne and can spread across a large room rapidly.

Countless credible studies show that masks reduce transmission. That's why I wear one indoors/at work. I don't want to be ill, or be a part of the problem.

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@samhainnight @donaldball @luckytran Look at the actual data we do have and you'll see that masks make a considerable difference.

That wouldn't happen if there was large scale airborne spread, like measles.

n.b. I'm not saying it never happens. But this is not a binary choice, this is a numbers game, and simple acts like washing my hands and wearing a mask make a considerable difference. That much has been known since 2020 at least.

revk, (edited ) to Amazon
@revk@toot.me.uk avatar

Oh my god, where do they get these people?!?!?

Is this the Farage check?

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@revk @kentindell Although I appreciate the effort, your ASCII breaks a nicety of code to convert between upper and lower case. Like EBCDIC, traditional ASCII works with AND and OR with a blank character (0x20 in ASCII, 0x40 in EBCDIC).

Hoardes of bit-twiddlers might revolt over things like this :-)

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@revk @kentindell It was especially quick and convenient on S/360 hardware (and presumably still is on modern hardware, in EBCDIC)

OC MY_FIELD,BLANKS Upper case

converted to upper case, NC for lower. The length of data processed was implicit in the assembly symbol MY_FIELD, as it should be :-)

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@revk @kentindell
BTW does anyone here have a good name for the S/360 kind of assembly/instruction relationship where every instruction is always encoded in the same number of bytes, in a fixed format implicit in the op code? And every different op code relates to a different assembly mnemonic?

No monkeying about with a variable number of modifiers, x86-style, in other words.

e.g. OC (or characters) for a length of 0x50
might be encoded
D6 50 A123 B789
Op.Len addr1, addr2

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@mansr @revk @kentindell
That would explain a lot! :-)

Frankly, I have a love/hate relationship with x86 to x64.

I came from IBM mainframes, where there was a fundamental architecture that could be summed-up on one page, and things worked the way the docs said, in detail (if not they'd either fix the thing or the doc. Every time.)

The love part is just that, by some miracle, x86 actually works, and I can afford it :-)

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@mansr @kentindell @revk Thinking about it, how about calling it a "parallel" instruction set, as opposed to "orthogonal" :-)

bloor, to random
@bloor@bloor.tw avatar

Anyone know what kind of bird this is?

I have obviously googled it but it doesn't seem to match any of the pictures I can find. I am wondering if it may be a female sparrow hawk? But it doesn't look right.

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@ahnlak @bloor or Lesser Kestrel?

dancinyogi, (edited ) to random
@dancinyogi@mastodon.sdf.org avatar

Who learned to type on a real typewriter?

#poll

Please boost for a wider demographic.

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@dancinyogi Does a Westrex teletype count?

kenshirriff, to random

The ancestor of the 8086 processor is the Datapoint 2200, a desktop minicomputer used as an intelligent terminal. Made before the microprocessor, the Datapoint built a processor from a board of chips. The Intel 8008 cloned the Datapoint, first step to the x86 architecture. 🧵

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@kenshirriff That's the first time an explanation of why x86 is LE has made sense to me!

Free_Press, to news
@Free_Press@mstdn.social avatar

COVID CASES UP 80%!

Please, please take precautions if you need to: covid is still here!

The number of new Covid-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, the World Health Organization said on Friday, days after designating a new "variant of interest".

https://news.yahoo.com/global-covid-cases-80-subvariant-105737403.html

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@Free_Press
> Please, please take precautions if you
> need to: covid is still here!
IMHO everyone needs to, anytime they are near other people.

There are fit, young teachers who cant think properly after covid-19 and fit, young athletes who can't run after covid-19. I lost 15 to 20 IQ points and some memories after Covid, but I'm lucky--it's coming back, slowly year-by-year.

revk, to random
@revk@toot.me.uk avatar

What the hell is wrong with

I sent U2 as rotation 90.0 degrees.

This has always been with antenna on the left. Another order on the same day with the same part at 90.0 degrees shows antenna left.

Yet this order they consider 90.0 degrees to be facing up, and "corrected" it to be facing down.

Arrrg!

(Yes I had silk screen to show the orientation, and they edited it out FFS).

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@revk They're testing ML on your PCBs? Either that, or they're just having a bad day!

b0rk, to random
@b0rk@jvns.ca avatar

what helps people get comfortable on the command line? https://jvns.ca/blog/2023/08/08/what-helps-people-get-comfortable-on-the-command-line-/

Would love more stories of things that helped you in the last ~5 years!

(as usual, no need to reply if you don’t remember, or if you’ve been using the command line comfortably for 15 years — this question isn’t for you :) )

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@b0rk When I used Windows more, I started to realise that file search took several minutes to fail to find a file I know is there!

So I went back to my old DOS habit of
dir /s /b *.* | find /i "myfile" | more
and it was reliable.

On Linux I never really stopped using the CLI.

revk, to random
@revk@toot.me.uk avatar

Grr , again, accepting DD instructions when I have told them not to, so getting a fraudulent payment refunded.

But they are victim blaming, saying that in order to set up a DD someone has to know the sort code and account, and that I should be careful giving it out!!!

  1. They don't - they can make up an account - the check digit is simple.

  2. We have to give details for people to pay us - D'uh!!!

Why are all banks a pain?!

At least I am am entitled to an immediate refund so no loss.

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@revk This is Monzo? I'm saddened, because they've always seemed to have a clue in the past.

Might be worth escalating, until you get to someone who understands that the DD Guarantee is not optional. It is a contractual REQUIREMENT to be allowed to take DDs.

qlp, to TeslaMotors
@qlp@linh.social avatar

State of Charge: Has Tesla Been Lying All Along?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsKtclEN6xA

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@qlp They're not exactly angels, but if you'd seen the poor quality of some of the complaints*, you'd understand why Tesla was keen to put certain people off.

So I expect some of the complaints had some merit, but not all.

*left it in sentry mode for days, drove a lot faster than predictions expect, that sort of thing.

nixCraft, to random
@nixCraft@mastodon.social avatar

Printer as a service 😠 Fuck HP 🤡

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@nixCraft A frind of mine once said "Give it to your worst enemy, and buy a 2nd hand monochrome LASER"

Maybe a bit extreme, but he wasn't a fan of inkjets, especially HP ones!

I've had common sense results from a Canon TS5000 (home grade all-in-one) for about 4 years? The only thing is to remember to print some colour every few weeks, even if it's just stripes of CMYK totalling less than the size of a playing card.

Oh, and turn it off the official way, to make sure it parks the print heads.

sbarolo, to random

These are all the nominated typefaces for the upcoming poll competition for charity. What’s missing? We can have 64 in the tournament.

Note: fonts that are too obscure or unusable will not get votes and won’t make for an interesting bracket competition. Go for fonts that people will recognize and/or get emotional about

RupertReynolds,
@RupertReynolds@hachyderm.io avatar

@qlp @sbarolo Fira Code gets my vote :-)

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • megavids
  • everett
  • ethstaker
  • thenastyranch
  • magazineikmin
  • modclub
  • rosin
  • khanakhh
  • osvaldo12
  • Youngstown
  • slotface
  • Durango
  • kavyap
  • DreamBathrooms
  • JUstTest
  • ngwrru68w68
  • tacticalgear
  • InstantRegret
  • Leos
  • cubers
  • mdbf
  • normalnudes
  • tester
  • GTA5RPClips
  • provamag3
  • cisconetworking
  • anitta
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •