bonzini

5 ms·

1.
by bonzini 4d ago
It only has 2048 opcodes available. A one-operand register or memory operand operation takes 32, while two register operands would take twice as many. Loads and stores have to specify the memory format (three floating point formats, BCD, wo
2.
by bonzini 4d ago
You need to unwrap but the compiler removes the call. If instead you know that the callee is infallible you can also do let Ok(x) = call_that_cant_fail();
3.
by bonzini 4d ago
That's a really vertical microcode. It looks more like a specialized assembly than microcode. I guess it makes sense, since the algorithms are so complex and executing one microinstruction per cycle (is that correct?) already provides
4.
by bonzini 4d ago
Transposing is an important skill for all instruments. It's true that trombonists get some cases for free if they learn the tenor and alto clefs, but it's possible to learn it without knowing the C clefs. And even trombonists have
5.
by bonzini 6d ago
FWIW, there's no real need for imagination here. The comment says "mostly", and added a parenthetical comment that was simply meant to name the viola as a prominent remaining use. In particular, trombones have almost entirely
6.
by bonzini 6d ago
Yes, I did write "mostly". Sometimes the bassoon uses the C clef as well. Still, overall it can be safely ignored in most cases.
7.
by bonzini 6d ago
The point is that to a player the mapping is more important than the core 12-note structure, because highly chromatic (12-note) passages happen but they are the exception. At least in western music you pick the seven basic notes on the scal
8.
by bonzini 6d ago
More like, only if you're playing Schoenberg it's about modulo 12. Almost all sheet music that you play uses 5 or 7 unequal subdivisions of the octave, and occasionally the rest. Sure, sometimes you'll have one or two of the
9.
by bonzini 6d ago
https://youtu.be/Eq3bUFgEcb4 explains why music notation is the way it is. There are very good reasons for it. The parts that are really weird (like the C clef) have mostly been obsoleted, unless you play the viola I guess.
10.
by bonzini 6d ago
You have to allocate memory and free it. Interestingly, when reading Raymond Chen's article I thought "reservoir sampling would compare the random number (between 1 and n) to 1, not to n, because that extends more easily to pickin
11.
by bonzini 9d ago
It's not a scientific theory, but musical theory concepts are certainly used by players when playing. Would you rather it be called music ontology or something like that?
12.
by bonzini 10d ago
Or maybe not... surely if you are shown figured bass you will be pissed, but on the other hand understanding triads and sevenths provides some intuition about inversions, voice leading, rootless voicings, upper structures, diatonic movement
13.
by bonzini 10d ago
Are Peano's axioms number theory? No one really uses them directly (other than induction) when working on practical number theory problems, but they are considered part of it. Scales and chords build the fundamental basic blocks for We
14.
by bonzini 10d ago
I think what he means as music theory is the next step after what this (blatantly AI-written, but passable) article talks about. This is the part that you take for granted, but it certainly is music theory in the same way that Peano'
15.
by bonzini 14d ago
That's the point.
16.
by bonzini 14d ago
It's still not "fairly clear".
17.
by bonzini 16d ago
They are minor but enough to complicate things. For example Intel rejects the SYSCALL instruction outside 64-bit mode.
18.
by bonzini 16d ago
Ig Nobel prize incoming?
19.
by bonzini 17d ago
Nope, there are subtle differences between Intel and AMD that make it a Bad Idea to fake the vendor.
20.
by bonzini 18d ago
Free threaded Python - optional but supported https://docs.python.org/3/howto/free-threading-python.html
21.
by bonzini 21d ago
And an old one. It's only needed for Windows XP/2003 and honestly it should be retired.
22.
by bonzini 21d ago
Virtualization instructions are the easy part. x86 does have a need for yuckier instruction emulation than other architectures, but the really complex part where you find vulnerabilities is page table management which is only optimized to t
23.
by bonzini 21d ago
Mostly because big endian is the past.
24.
by bonzini 21d ago
Millicode used custom extensions to the ISA but is otherwise regular s390 code. For example there is a separate register file and the "original" registers are available with either (I don't remember exactly) special instructi
25.
by bonzini 21d ago
Note that the author didn't use any QEMU guest-to-host vulnerability here. The agent found a logic bug that facilitated going straight for the hypervisor from inside the guest, but it isn't caused by the use a memory-unsafe langua
26.
by bonzini 21d ago
QEMU has a secure subset, and the kitchen sink around it. For a properly configured VM, even better if wrapped in SELinux, it is not easy to escape even QEMU. In this case, of the four bugs it found: * Two were in libslirp, which is not par
27.
by bonzini 22d ago
Got to the sixth attempt, 2 words remaining, of course I picked the right one.
28.
by bonzini 24d ago
alice.it is indeed an email provider's domain; based on the code snippet it seems like they are active in other countries. alice.app however isn't registered anywhere.
29.
by bonzini 27d ago
Windows/386, and later 3.x and 9x, was a virtual machine monitor that could run 16-bit operating systems with 32-bit drivers. The desktop environment you saw was nothing but the main virtual machine, and inside that was the green thr
30.
by bonzini 27d ago
Even if AI does the coding, I cannot understand the architecture of a change unless you split it in individual tasks that are "as small as possible but no smaller". And even if AI does the code review, the architecture review fall

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