univacky

10 ms·

1.
by univacky 7mo ago
American here. I have to agree with this sentiment (without getting into the math of our deeply flawed election system). The administration could not do any of this without the support of Congress, which has not wavered. That support is unw
2.
by univacky 1y ago
An aircraft on a flight may not maintain the same identifier/callsign for the entirety of that one flight. Famously, President Richard Nixon departed Washington DC on Air Force One bound for California. In flight over Missouri, his res
3.
by univacky 1y ago
When Jordan Mechner wrote Karateka for the Apple ][, he used an array of pointers to rows. A team member realized that by inverting the order of the array, all graphics would appear upside down. Broderbund agreed to ship that "upside d
4.
by univacky 2y ago
Firstly: I'm a fan of Harbour Air's work and their electrification. Have flown that airline. Retrofitting electrical flight to a 1950s airframe will be, in the long run, not a great use of the technology. Those planes were designe
5.
by univacky 2y ago
I was there as well. I punched the cards and read the core dumps and programmed in machine language using the front panel switches and lights. I programmed the Burroughs machine in Algol, and the IBM in assembly language (BALR, USING); the
6.
by univacky 2y ago
Additionally, von Neumann did not "architect" that design; it was named for him because he wrote a paper describing it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture#Devel... https://en.wi
7.
by univacky 3y ago
<Ada has entered the chat>
8.
by univacky 3y ago
That's not true for many, many planes, and there are very many private planes that are not jets and the owners are not rich. Thousands and thousands are homebuilts. Go to https://www.faa.gov , and on the front page there&#x2
9.
by univacky 4y ago
I was thinking The Terminal Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminal_Man_(film)
10.
by univacky 4y ago
Filenames? We used to DREAM of having filenames! Writing COBOL on the UNIVAC 490 series (30 bit word, FIELDATA character set), our files were on tapes. A tape request was submitted to the tape library, they would pull the tape(s) containing
11.
by univacky 5y ago
There's a lot of interesting Greaseweazle-y floppy development being done at Adafruit right now. Some days they're posting multiple videos a day showing progress updates. https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_F
12.
by univacky 5y ago
I can't be the only one who was waiting for this reference: https://xkcd.com/149/
13.
by univacky 6y ago
Don't be too sure it's going to open again. https://livingcomputers.org/Closure.aspx
14.
by univacky 6y ago
I have been running nothing but Linux since 1994. My last Windows was 3.1. I just installed Windows 10 for the sole purpose of running this flight simulator.
15.
by univacky 7y ago
I learned awk for the purpose of playing Tradewars, running on DOS. Playing Tradewars on the local BBS in the mid-80s, I developed a system where I would spend the first night in a new game just running around and logging the session. Wrot
16.
Ask HN: Where are the unit-typed languages?
1 points by univacky 7y ago|2 comments
17.
by univacky 7y ago
It also was intended to have its name pronounced like "JIF", but you know what happens to intentions.
18.
by univacky 7y ago
Compilers like MS and Turbo C used a clever technique - a program could be compiled with a software floating point library and shipped, and the existence of the FP coprocessor would be detected at runtime and the program would self-modify a
19.
by univacky 7y ago
Seems almost hard to find that copy instead of this one: https://cpsc.yale.edu/epigrams-programming
20.
by univacky 7y ago
Ice cream was popular in the 18th century, particularly known to be favorites of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Their homes at Mount Vernon and Monticello, respectively, both have ice houses. They would harvest ice from the Potom
21.
by univacky 8y ago
There has been one in Leesburg, VA for a few years undergoing testing and evaluation. It is the first in North America. It is currently in daily production use. https://www.leesburgva.gov/government/departments/a
22.
by univacky 9y ago
I think that computer was built in 1971; the video mentions that the software used is Richard Wilson's player, which was written in 1975 (the DECUS entry is dated 2/11/1976).
23.
by univacky 9y ago
You can watch and listen to it on an Altair 8800b and get the octal object code for toggling into your own Altar here: => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgYhVnmeWrk PDP-8 music here => https://www.youtube.
24.
by univacky 9y ago
Oh, man, we're just looking at the tip of the metaphorical iceberg. There is a ton of new hardware for Apple 2s - replacement power supplies, sound cards, coprocessor cards, solid state floppy emulators, VGA drivers, and even FPGA car
25.
by univacky 9y ago
If you had a system with only one floppy, you still had an A: and a B: drive. Any access to (virtual) B: would prompt you to insert the other floppy, and I/O would continue until the disk in A: was needed, and you'd be prompted t
26.
by univacky 9y ago
Very early IBM PCs had BASIC in ROM, which got executed if a disk couldn't be booted, or if you executed an int 18h. Or so they say - I've never used one of those.
27.
by univacky 9y ago
Timely post - Tom Perera was a keynote speaker at the Vintage Computer Festival - East the day this was posted (and Bjarne Stroustrup the next day), and spoke on Enigmas but also discussed the M-209 and SIGABA. He had an M-209 with him, an
28.
by univacky 10y ago
Do we know that every possible finite sequence exists in pi?
29.
by univacky 10y ago
I was a bit surprised to find no mention of SF author Jerry Pournelle using the Electric Pencil word processor for many years: https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/early-days-of-word... I do have WordPerfect runni
30.
NOT(Planespotting) – discovering the ground from the air(vintageflying.com)
2 points by univacky 10y ago|0 comments

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