Posibyte

The author takes this into consideration:

  * yes, I know ‘low-level’ is a subjective term 

I used to work in the embedded world, and there C has historically been considered a "high-level" language for many platforms. However, we have started to see languages like C# and Python make their way into the world of tiny micros thanks to more power coming to the platforms themselves and the clever work being done by MicroPython and Microsoft.

Thank you!

This seems like a ham-fisted solution does it not? Channels like ChadTronic play on the nostalgia of being a kid back in the '80s and '90s, yet AFAIK has been unable to enable comments on any of his videos. The weird, funny comments are a big part of the experience in those kinds of videos. Some tropes of the show itself have been built around the comment section.

Would it make more sense to instead target the patterns used by predatory commentators rather than shutting down the system completely? This is Google, the company of bringing meaning out of arbitrary data, is it not possible to build social graphs of what people like, scour, and activate these time codes? Couldn't you restrict the features that enforce those patterns?

Lastly, does forcing these comments off negatively impact the rankings of these creators? Comments have traditionally played into the engagement of any said video and had an (understood) impact on how a video ranks on release. Are these channels now just permanently stunted in their future growth?

The capstone project and little pacman game look pretty interesting. Think you can spare a short portion of the book to show what the writing is like? I find them to be some of the best litmus tests of what I'm about to get myself into on a technical book purchase.

Another one that's been around for decades at this point is the Inform[1] platform. There's still an active group of people who produce all sorts of interactive fiction books in the vein of CYOA books that are of surprisingly great quality.

[1]: http://inform7.com/

Choose your own adventure books, notably the RL Stein "Give Yourself Goosebumps" variety were the books that swept my imagination away and really lit the spark for reading as a young kid.

There's an art to driving curiosity that I think CYOA books really plays well with. It's accessible by anyone to anyone without the need for technical skills, given all you really need is a basic understanding of free text editors and maybe some mind mapping software to keep structure. We've seen countless CYOA book-style games out within recent years, including "the uncle who works for nintendo"[1], "Buried"[2], and I don't know who could forget "Stories Untold"[3] which to me shows that the art is expandable from the text form up to a more immersive experience. It lends itself to be improved upon, from base story to games, movies, and more.

I would be absolutely thrilled to see a CYOA revival, and if somebody did a kickstarter or indiegogo where they gathered some notable authors to do something a la "Bandersnatch", I'd happily toss some money at it. It's a facet of my childhood I feel wasn't properly respected and I'm glad to see it getting some recognition at last.

[1]: https://ztul.itch.io/the-uncle-who-works-for-nintendo

[2]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/434370

[3]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/558420

This happened to me. I started on a journey of transitioning to a woman and gathered a group of friends at work composed of women. They supported me for a few years helping me through the process.

Then recently (as of this year), a woman came forward claiming I was harassing, intimidating, and sexually abusing her. This woman was one of the people who had supported me previously. She had been gunning for my position (she was just below me) and we had joked about her taking my position after I moved up. I'm still guessing to this day that was why she made those claims.

We go to HR, her sister presides over the case. I filed a complaint due to conflict of interest. The woman filing the claim threatened to open up to the media about this if the company went forward with replacing the woman in charge of the case.

It's probably no surprise, but they ruled against me and terminated my employment. I had no violations beforehand, no concerns, no performance issues, nothing. I was told to confess, just say it, was hinted at many times to just confess, just confess, we have evidence, anything else you say is a lie, don't drag it out, but I didn't.

I felt as if my career was over. I was a trans freak who assaulted women as far as I knew it. Who would want to hire one of me?

Thankfully, I got some good advice to fight it in court, and I did, and I won, thankfully. And that's when I learned, it's not about the truth, it's about image.

The company didn't care what the actual ruling was, in fact the company came from having a very bad image in the past just now forming a new one. And even though I won the court case, that didn't matter. I still had to explain it to future employers and that was all it took to shut the door on me.

I'm a die-hard liberal too. But that really shook my faith in the goodness of people. I had several suicidal episodes after that, only to be barely pulled out of it by my wonderful husband. It's so easy for someone to point a finger and that's essentially the only word to say in the matter.

And I guess what I'm saying is, I hope this never happens to anyone. I'm sure women aren't anything special when it comes to being evil or twisted. That's a silly thought to me. I fully believe most of the women coming out on the #MeToo movement are being honest and truthful. But when you can mold the situation in a way that you know no-one will question you, it only takes one to flip the world upside down. That's a lot of power to just give someone.

I recommend the 6502[1] if you're just starting. What you learn applies almost everywhere, and it's very much a what-you-write-is-what-happens sort of processor. No branch prediction, no caches, no fancy features. Its op-set is very small and highly expressive. They still make them, in fact.

That said, whether you choose to start with it or RISC-V, from personal experience SiFive's implementations are phenomenal. I used one of their free-implementations, and I was blown away by how easy it was to use their automated tools to build a core exactly the way I wanted. Not as easy as generating a NIOS core, but much more capable. With an Artix-7, I had a very capable low-range processor in about an hour.

[1]: https://skilldrick.github.io/easy6502/

I always recommend the DE0-Nano. It's getting a little old, but it's basically all right there, open for use. I'm a fan of the Arrow DECA which has a complete assortment of neat odds and ends. Lastly Digilent's Arty and CMOD series are awesome depending on what you need.

I know this makes a few assumptions on what you mean by "Cheap", but I find sub $200 for FPGA boards to be pretty affordable when compared to the gamut.

I get the idea, and I agree in general. However, I've always struggled with DE's like i3 because they were so barren with visual information up front. I respect the power they present, but I appreciate a nice balance. Animations, more than anything, just need to be paced appropriately. They help a lot in easing a user into a flow within an app. Slack for me does this perfectly. It doesn't feel kludgy, slow, nor does it feel like everything pops up in your face loud and obnoxiously. The interface and animations helped me feel like I was getting down a flow, and when I learned the hot keys and patterns, it felt like playing an instrument well.

For me, it's pure nostalgia. It's getting to relive the past that I loved with all new hardware, getting to do things that nobody from the time period could have imagined given the limitations and pushing the limits of the software of the system. Sure the OS hasn't been updated in years, but there's a giant library of software and hardware for the system that's still a draw, and using modern technology to make it more palatable and useful is a huge bonus in addition to enabling people to experience it all again.

I think there's a glimmer of truth to this. And it's not that people are lazy because they're bad people. It's because the situation you're in is soul sucking. It's horrible. Imagine every day of your life living knowing that you may not be able to make the electric bill, pay your medical bills, worry about missing work or any of a million tiny little things that make life harder when you're poor.

Then convince someone that they need to spend an hour cooking healthier foods that requires more effort for most likely no benefit. Being in that position, I thought that a lot. It was easier to get McDonalds and then sit down in front of the TV/Computer and distract myself from the problems.

I think the problem isn't that people are lazy, that's a symptom of the real causes: anxiety, depression, and their ilk; from being in a situation that makes it all too easy to nest inside of and accept.

Ah, ok I get it now. My eyes somehow completely skipped that paragraph.

I will proudly confess I am not well versed on the history of EE :)

Is there a reason a Silicon transistor/diode wouldn't work here? I'm assuming it either has something to do with voltage sensitivity or frequency, but older computers like this tended to use fairly high (TTL) logic for signaling.

In my small town, we have a long street that's just a strip of restaurants. Google and Bing get it right, Apple Maps lists the entire mile-long strip as KFC's. If you select one, it's the same KFC. Been that way since launch. And not a huge deal, we're a tiny town, but it's just humorous and weird when others don't have that issue.

Did a search just to make sure this book is mentioned. It's a treasure of just-enough-of-everything to help you understand basic electronics and protocols, as well as little gotchas and things to look out for. I highly recommend it.

I have this laptop. If you find that the spacebar does not respond well if struck in the center, I've found that a small pressing of hot glue and a quick dab of your thumb on it on the middle ring on the underside of the key does wonders to keep it responsive.

This computer, to me, has been a blast to tinker with. It's so crappy, yet hides nothing. When my monitor didn't work well, I just took it apart, rewrapped the video cable with some copper-snail tape and attached that to the ground plane on the board, and the signal is so much better now.

There's also this weird dynamic of not having number on paper. I once took off three weeks for vacation, first in a very long time, several years. When I got back, there was definitely this air of "so and so is finally back, working like the rest of us." Even with my direct management, it felt a lot like I had spent trust for time off.

Since then, I've worked in a large corporate job for a while now as well, and it's different. Here, management and I can look at my PTO sheet and see I've accrued X hours so I can take off Y weeks, and that's earned. It feels more like a contractual obligation at that point, and not just an off-the-cuff spree.

It's fairly dense nowadays by comparison. If you have the time, playing with DOSBOX or PCem with an emulation of the original IBM PC or XT is a less complex and more inviting introduction to ASM within the confines of the PC architecture.

(If you're following Paul Carter's book above, use something that supports protected mode, like a 386.)

My thoughts on why they failed, I feel, are a lot more simplistic. Maybe oversimplistic and based on my own anecdotal experiences, but I don't see myself as an outlier here, so I feel a connection to others that went this way.

Simply, Toys 'R' Us did it the best, but their competitors, Walmart, Target, etc. did it at all. Sure, I couldn't go play a Nintendo Gamecube at Walmart like I could at Toys 'R' Us, or see all the neat Lego models and peer at them... it was still competitively priced and super convenient.

They were doing as a specialty what Walmart made a department. Home Depot and Lowes seem different to me. There's an air of skill needed in a lot of what they sell, so the added friendliness and help is a great value-add. But Toys 'R' Us, I believe, lacked that. What kind of value can you add to a toy that another big box retailer can't very easily? Other than the odd collectable that popped up here and there, TRU never really gave me a good reason to add them as a stop to my trip.

Only reason they failed? I highly doubt it, but I feel it was a big reason. I think they would have worked pretty well if they leveraged their experience and connections and joined with one of the big retailers like Target or K-Mart.

EDIT: And I know they sorta joined with Amazon, but I mean more in terms of a place where they could set up displays and let kids really go to town with feeling the atmosphere of the store. That, to me, was their game and they did it well.

In this case, it was cheating to beat Amazon by duping customers and investors. Hurting people innocent to the situation is not okay, even if it is in a try to topple a behemoth.

As kens said, and to expand, Xilinx's Vivado doesn't support the Spartan 6, however they _do_ still fully support the Spartan 6 and continue to produce new chips. To support this, they've released a Virtualbox compatible image which runs Oracle Linux with ISE configured specifically to program Spartan 6 FPGAs.[1]

[1]: https://www.xilinx.com/support/download/index.html/content/x...

Sircmpwn is a user on this site. There are so many times I've opened a link to a piece of software, an article, or a tutorial and thought "Wow, this is cool" or "Hey, this is fun to read." And Sircmpwn has repeatedly been an author I've seen that sort of content from and felt like I got something nice out of it every time.

Sircompwn, if you're reading this, thanks for the neat content. I don't mind stumbling upon them during my lunch breaks :)

Right now judging from Cloudflare's benchmarks, the win will be in TDP. [1] Heat is a very nasty issue to handle in large datacenters, and can end up costing quite a bit in cooling. Intel's been making some great strides in this area, but ARM chips like Qualcomm's Cintriq are pretty tempting in this space.

[1]: https://blog.cloudflare.com/arm-takes-wing/

I use it for programming microcontrollers, FPGAs, and doing additional signal testing on those devices. I also use it to control some processes that keep some hobby IoT devices in sync. It's just a really handy way to do parallel jobs like that.

Are there any examples happening of this happening in recent years? (80's-now)

I would like to see the impact mobile phones and had on health and safety against the two items you've put forward.

Again, while I agree that it would eschew security for the sake of immersion, not wearing a seatbelt or not getting antibiotics could be a certain death sentence in many everyday life circumstances. Not having a mobile phone would not constitute such a dire situation in my eyes.

While I wholeheartedly agree, the devil's advocate within me likes to remind that we had been mobile phone-less for years with no major concern.

Corruption doesn't necessarily have to be illegal.