James Pearson @ SDF @jamesp@mastodon.sdf.org

This is interesting: Using fish scales for a more sustainable LED in the future. 🖥️ 🐟

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-create-more-sustainable-led-from-fish-scales-180980551/

tomasino is now streaming on tilderadio! tune in here now: https://tilderadio.org/listen

A public service announcement for you and the loved ones in your life:

STAY THE FUCK OFF FACEBOOK

End of PSA.

Image is a screencap of this article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2022/08/08/facebook-abortion-teen-dms/?sh=1087c5a1579c

@kelbot @darkstar @linm @tk @claudiom @publius @robert588 @pizzapal @jirka @stug @normandc @cosullivan @bicycle @BicycleBen @ParadeGrotesque @jamesp @northernlights @CptBichez Just upgraded my Panasonic bar end caps with bar end blinkers! Just press the button to blink, set to continuous beam, or turn off. Did a test ride this evening to NCI Shady Grove.

please please please watch this

Unless you were there, you really cannot appreciate how much damage Intel did to the PC ecosystem with the 286.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80286

The 286 was the successor to the 8086 and 8088 CPUs that powered the original IBM PCs. It offered a huge step forward from them.

Those older chips always ran in "real mode," where memory locations had fixed addresses, and any running program could modify the contents of any address. This meant that you couldn't have two programs running at once, because one might try to use a bit of memory the other was already using, and blammo!

The 286 introduced "protected mode," which prevented programs from being able to mess with memory allocated to other programs. Instead of addresses corresponding directly to blocks of memory, in protected mode they were treated as "virtual" addresses, and mapped to memory allocated just for that program.

Protected mode meant the days when one program could reach into another one and mess with its memory would be over. And that opened up all sorts of possibilities. You could have real multitasking! A whole range of crash bugs would be instantly eliminated! Suddenly the PC began to look like a machine that you could put against a UNIX workstation with a straight face.

But there was a problem. To maintain backwards compatibility with the old chips, the 286 had to boot into real mode. It could then shift into protected mode on demand. But -- and this is a big BUT -- once it was shifted into protected mode, IT COULD NOT SHIFT BACK. The only way to get back into real mode was to reboot the PC.

Which was a problem, because every PC user owned a huge library of DOS software, much of which could only run in real mode. So the 286 gave you multitasking -- but if you ever needed to run a real-mode program, you had to reboot your PC (and lose all the other running programs) to run it.

This was, as you may imagine, not ideal.

@randynose

@SDF has got stickers and badges!

(Of course, Mastodon is ONE service offered by SDF, they have a lot of other cool things to offer)

https://sdf.org/store/

#welcome 🚲️

Who remembers?

#beos #linux #office

History of Computing, abbreviated:
1958: LISP!
1980: We can program anything in BASIC, and it runs with minor changes on every computer!
1985: We rewrite everything in ASM or C for every computer, so now IBM wins because we're so fucking tired after shipping once.
1995: We could write once, run anywhere in JAVA!
Microsoft: OH FUCK NO.
2010: We can write once, run anywhere in Javascript!
2020: Global warming reaches unsurvivable levels, NOT coincidentally.
2030: Post-apoc savages discover BASIC.

#Listening to DJ @guofu's #CopaceticMusicHour where he's highlighting #SodaStereo, one of the many iconic rock bands from #Argentina. 🤘 🇦🇷 #TildeRadio

= https://tilderadio.org/listen