theodorethomas

4 ms·

1.
by theodorethomas 9d ago
I object to this mis-use of the word "ocean". If I can't sail there then it's not an ocean. Luckily, Titan still has an ocean. But all the others have iceans.
2.
by theodorethomas 14d ago
Yes, this is how I used the "handbrake" function to "park" on a steep uphill.
3.
by theodorethomas 28d ago
The Fortran 2023 Standard introduces new intrinsics: "The intrinsic functions ACOSPI, ASINPI, ATANPI, ATAN2PI, COSPI, SINPI, and TANPI are trigonometric functions in which angles are specified in halfrevolutions (that is, as multiples
4.
by theodorethomas 2mo ago
I wondered if a city-wide synchronised Pulse-Width-Modulation of LED lights could allow astrophotography (or even naked-eye astronomy) to be possible again, with a filter synchronised to the off-cycle.
5.
by theodorethomas 5mo ago
Reading the Steelman document is like reading a shopping list of everything that's gone into modern Fortran.
6.
by theodorethomas 5mo ago
I wonder how this combines with Richardson's Theorem.
7.
by theodorethomas 5mo ago
Except the 486 had hardware floating point, essential for technical work.
8.
by theodorethomas 5mo ago
The 486 and https://www.delorie.com/djgpp/history.html changed everything. Suddenly, it was possible to imagine running advanced software on a PC, and not have to spend 25,000 USD on a workstation.
9.
by theodorethomas 5mo ago
One consequence of that is that the Earth, as seen from the nearside of the Moon's surface, just hangs there, never moving, apart from a small wobble.
10.
by theodorethomas 6mo ago
Apollo Command Module interior colour is similar, and gorgeous.
11.
by theodorethomas 6mo ago
I remember a 120MHz Pentium Linux box arriving at a cottage in Crete, where, with the aid of a 56k USRobotics modem, we (my wife and I) worked remotely in 1995-6. She had a Mac SE/30 for her tourist guidebook work. She later upgraded t
12.
by theodorethomas 7mo ago
There are two ways of constructing software: one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more diffi
13.
by theodorethomas 8mo ago
The sheer amount of dedication is awe-inspiring. In the 80s, at Imperial College, London, Theoretical Physics Group, we came across some correspondence intended for one of the professors, I think. This person had evidently "translated&
14.
by theodorethomas 10mo ago
"The language assumes contiguous memory, column-major order, and no hidden aliasing between arrays." One out of three ain't bad. "Column-major order", that's the one. That just says that there is an implied ord
15.
by theodorethomas 11mo ago
Do as much as you can in a spreadsheet, then start a new spreadsheet.
16.
by theodorethomas 1y ago
Part I managed to miss the Antikythera Mechanism.
17.
by theodorethomas 1y ago
It is not suited to cases where the machine state is experienced by the user at all times (games, hardware-control, real-time transactions). It is very suited to cases where the machine is expected to act like a SSBN, disappearing from view
18.
by theodorethomas 1y ago
Can someone explain to me why although we've known that classical physics is not a correct description of the hardware of the universe for at least 100 years now, we are still hooked on 90-year-old Turing Machines which cannot physical
19.
by theodorethomas 1y ago
Before smartphones we had https://www.cambridge.org/turnleft
20.
by theodorethomas 2y ago
FORTRAN (IBM, 1956) introduced the "Computed GOTO". SSA (IBM, 1988) introduced the "Computed COMEFROM".
21.
by theodorethomas 2y ago
At my age, I assume that everything that "everybody knows" has a large dollop of fiction pasted around it. "Byzantine generals", anyone?
22.
by theodorethomas 2y ago
Ken, I love your work on the Apollo hardware. But here, you don't present any argument that your recommended course of action will have a desirable outcome, or any outcome at all. Which, ironically, fits like a glove. Fine, I get it, t
23.
by theodorethomas 2y ago
> why some of the very best theoretical physicists, who were entirely free to work on whatever they wanted, continued working on string theory Historically, it is not unusual for intellectual wrong turns to persist for decades or centuri
24.
by theodorethomas 3y ago
https://wg5-fortran.org/N2201-N2250/N2212.pdf is John Reid's complete document.
25.
by theodorethomas 3y ago
Mid 1980s, trying to connect from one London University computer (at Imperial, a CDC Cyber?) to another (at Queen Mary?), to try some symbolic algebra package that was only available on a Unix minicomputer: spent a good 2 hours just finding
26.
by theodorethomas 3y ago
I suspect not. Children are exposed to far less text than LLMs. LLMs are parlour tricks that teach us nothing about how humans do it.
27.
by theodorethomas 3y ago
The point is, it shouldn't. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30022022 How ISO C became unusable for operating systems development
28.
by theodorethomas 3y ago
I don't see how C can match Fortran's abstraction level and still reliably control hardware that uses memory-mapped I/O. C, as an operating system implementation language, is trying to do something fundamentally different tha
29.
by theodorethomas 3y ago
People mention the no-aliasing, the compilers, the intrinsics, the libraries, and the expressivity but one aspect of the difference is ignored and it is this: C is a language for specifying behaviour of hardware (time sequence of detailed s
30.
by theodorethomas 3y ago
The only reason you would want bit-reproducibility is because you haven't done the numerical analysis and have no clue how many digits of your "answer" to trust. As far as I know, two sectors claim they need it: finance and c

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