thias

hankg, 8 days ago to retrocomputing

It's astounding how modern computer idioms we take for granted could be done with NeXTSTEP in 1991. The live video and on-the-fly editing are even more impressive, albeit requiring the $15K model computer. That was impressive performance for that price at the time too though.
#ComputerHistory #RetroComputing #SteveJobs #NeXTComputer
Steve Jobs NeXT Cube with Dimension Board Demo 1991 rerecorded Rob Blessin Black Hole Inc 2024 #1

Alon, 22 days ago to random

Germany wyd?

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1791412202219446614?t=9ERbVKt-ZacPKT2Ct6QnwA&s=19

Alon, 30 days ago to random

At #Amaze2024, at a talk about solarpunk and Games for Future. Speaker talks about positive change needed for decarbonization and gives the historic examples of women's suffrage in 1918 (1971 in Switzerland), indoor public place smoking bans starting 2017... and the closure of the nuclear plants last year. In a talk about the future and climate change.

thias, 1 month ago to retrocomputing

HP used to make good printers

#hewlettpackard #printer #decline #localtalk #retrocomputing

https://wiesmann.codiferes.net/wordpress/archives/37567

dav1d, 1 month ago to random

you’re a programmer? name every programming language

thias, 1 month ago to retrocomputing

Writing a QuickDraw decoder gave me some ideas on how to generate compact Pict images. This could be useful when small programs are desirable, like when they are stored in a ROM chip. #retrocomputing #classicmac #classicmacos #quickdraw #quicktime #imageprocessing https://wiesmann.codiferes.net/wordpress/archives/37513

shnhrrsn, 1 month ago to swift

Javascript would be proud… Unexpected from #swift though.

1> 5 / 0
error: repl.swift:1:3: error: division by zero
5 / 0
^

1> 5.0 / 0.0
$R0: Double = +Inf
2>

@swift

Alon, 1 month ago to random

In theory, Germany has no #Tempolimit on the Autobahn, which is generating a lot of bullshit political fights between the Greens and FDP. In practice, there's so much traffic congestion that the effective speed isn't higher than in France or Italy; car guys apparently go to Italy with its high-toll, low-congestion autostrade to test-drive their cars at 200 km/h.

thias, 2 months ago to VintageOSes

This evening, I added support for the SGI image format embedded inside QuickTime containers to my QuickDraw viewer. Turns out SGI images have a 512 byte headers which QuickTime strips, as the data is redundant with what is stored by QuickTime. So before rendering, the full SGI file needs to be reconstructed.

https://github.com/wiesmann/QuickDrawViewer

#quickdraw #quicktime #classicmac #imageprocessing #sgi

Alon, 2 months ago to random

How would things look like if a modern democracy were otherwise identical but had annual national elections instead of one every four to five years?

thias, 2 months ago to random

Translation is hard…

Alon, 2 months ago to random

Baltimore highway bridge collapses after a ship hits it. Death toll is still unknown but it is said that there may be 20 people in the river.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/16-mile-bridge-baltimore-collapses-after-ship-collision-fox-baltimore-reports-2024-03-26/

Alon, 2 months ago to random

People in Berlin stay near the doors of the train and meanwhile the interior of the train not only has plenty of standing space but also a free seat that I am sitting in. There's still an empty seat across from me.

thias, 2 months ago to random

So now, ASCII-art is an attack vector against LLMs…

#asciiart

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/03/researchers-use-ascii-art-to-elicit-harmful-responses-from-5-major-ai-chatbots/

wossman, 2 months ago to retrocomputing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gqXSvGh6PI

FireWire was such an amazing bus technology. I often wonder what could have been, if it had won out over the vastly inferior at the time USB standard.

I guess today we have Thunderbolt as its spiritual successor, enabling a lot of what it offered, and then some. But I still miss #firewire

#retrocomputing #sancube #apple #macintosh #thisdoesnotcompute

thias, 2 months ago to retrocomputing

The Mac SE/30 had a 256 Kb ROM, that was expandable to 2MB. And Now is wonder if someone, somewhere is trying to create a 2MB ROM, with a boot file-system system like the Mac Classic had… #retrocomputing #macse30 #classicmac

augieray, 3 months ago to random

Look, the CDC is producing a book to explain its new #COVID19 policies to kids. 😆😟

Alon, 3 months ago to random

I'm glad to see @cityobs cover the issue of high-density mid-rise housing: https://cityobservatory.org/missing_massive/

For far too long, US urbanists have been obsessed with missing middle housing - that is, townhouses and similar housing typologies, with density in the vicinity of a floor area ratio of around 1. This doesn't work as transit-oriented development and is not what places with housing shortages need; in contrast, the typical European mid-rise typology has a floor area ratio of about 3.

paulrickards, 3 months ago to vintagemac

Rhapsody in VirtualBox. It's so cool to see these early versions of MacOS and to see what's changed (and what hasn't).

#Rhapsody #VintageApple #VintageMac

Alon, 3 months ago to random

There are people who've built their entire identities around convincing themselves and others that the world is getting worse, when the problem is just that they're getting older and less relevant. Cory Doctorow is doing it to the Internet and Jane Jacobs did it to cities.

mcc, 4 months ago to random

This seems like one of the better places on the Internet to ask for help with retrocomputing algorithms.

Imagine I have a series of "damage" rectangles representing parts of a screen canvas that need redrawing. I want to take a "union" of these rectangles, such I get a minimal rectangle set where any rectangle "inside" of other rectangles disappear (or even better, so if I clear all rectangles no pixel clears twice).

I am told Bill Atkinson had a really brilliant "region" algorithm… (1/2)

drahardja, 4 months ago to tesla

I know I like to rag on #Tesla, but this behavior is becoming commonplace in the new world of over-the-air updated #cars. You buy a car with a set of features, but it doesn’t ship with it. But worry not! It’s coming soon in a software update! One of these mornings you’ll wake up, and your car would have this brand new feature! It’s the FUTURE!

Except you’re not selling me a feature then; you’re selling me the hope of getting a feature that may come in a month, a year, or—in the case of Tesla FSD—probably never. But you are taking my money up front.

I feel this is something the FTC should be regulating. At the very least, require manufacturers to print up front a FIRM DATE on which they will either have delivered the promised feature, or refund the customer some agreed-upon amount of money. Otherwise, I feel like this is just permission for manufacturers to sell a stream of #vaporware for real dollars.

“Tesla Cybertruck Owner Gets ‘Coming Soon’ Message When Trying to Lock Diff”

https://www.thedrive.com/news/tesla-cybertruck-owner-gets-coming-soon-message-when-trying-to-lock-diff

eschaton, 4 months ago to retrocomputing

So I had a realization: The QuickTime movie format would make a good format for archival and preservation of streaming tape data. https://eschatologist.net/blog/?p=409 #retrocomputing #simh