Hacker News: fredoralive

New comment by fredoralive in "Leaving the Physical World"

fredoralive — Thu, 14 May 2026 12:49:35 +0000

It would presumably be the August 1991 coup if it were the Soviet Union, as it was one of the factors leading to the USSR dissolving at the end of the year. The Autumn 1993 coup was in the Russian Federation (and the geriatric plotters in the Kremlin kinda won that one). So 1992?

New comment by fredoralive in "Windows 11 PCs Compared to MacBook Neo"

fredoralive — Thu, 14 May 2026 07:17:44 +0000

A study commissioned by Microsoft says that Microsoft's offering is better than Apple's? How unexpected.

Also, if they're counting a Microsoft college promo offering on their side, shouldn't they be pricing the Neo at $499 not $599?

New comment by fredoralive in "VGA Memory Access Is Complicated"

fredoralive — Tue, 12 May 2026 06:22:47 +0000

MCGA was basically a cut down VGA on the motherboard of the low end 8086 / ISA PS/2s, and both chipsets were introduced at the same time. Next-to-no-one would want a not-quite-VGA that lacks high res colour or EGA modes, so nearly nobody bothered cloning it, only the higher end option. The only known clone is in a couple of Epson models, and like the PS/2s it’s a motherboard integrated chip, not an expansion board.

New comment by fredoralive in "PC Engine CPU"

fredoralive — Fri, 08 May 2026 16:09:01 +0000

The article notes that the cartridge had some extra bank switching inside it though, as it went over the address space limit for HuCards.

New comment by fredoralive in "Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI"

fredoralive — Thu, 07 May 2026 19:29:16 +0000

ASrock have created a "HUDIMM", which is basically a half bandwidth DDR5 DIMM. Basically half the number of chips per DIMM. So kinda a modern day 386SX with its 16 bit bus. Presumably hoping you'll be able get fewer, higher capacity DRAM dice for a competitive price versus a normal DIMM.

On modern systems (all 64 bit AMD, and Intel Core "i" onwards, so quite old now) the memory controller is integrated into the CPU, so what the CPU supports is what you get, and the latest CPUs are DDR5 only. Intel did have a transitional phase of CPUs that can do both DDR4 or 5 depending on motherboard, but AMD it's AM4 = DDR4, AM5 = DDR5.

New comment by fredoralive in "The first photo published in a newspaper, in 1848 (2023)"

fredoralive — Tue, 05 May 2026 20:26:17 +0000

I think we agree on which building it is. However the street view link I made should show that building there in 2015, then if you look at newer images it spends a few years as an empty space then it’s now a modern building.

Edit: I have no idea how well these deep links to old street views actually work but here are a few of them:

2015: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.8707604,2.3734989,3a,75y,271...

2016: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.8707572,2.3734939,3a,75y,269...

2024: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.8707802,2.3735089,3a,75y,271...

New comment by fredoralive in "Comparing the Z80 and 6502 to Their Relatives"

fredoralive — Tue, 05 May 2026 18:46:37 +0000

There's also the weird more than an 8080 but not quite a Z80 CPU in the Gameboy (which Sharp seem to call an SM83 when they used it in their microcontrollers).

New comment by fredoralive in "The first photo published in a newspaper"

fredoralive — Tue, 05 May 2026 18:42:24 +0000

Although that link doesn't actually have the picture of it today, looking at street view's history mode, what seems to have been the "Fabrique Chocolat" building (it's chimney stack is kinda distinctive, even if it was modified at some point, presumably when an extra story was added) was demolished circa 2015/2016.

Hopefully this line noise goes to the right place: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.8707602,2.3734964,3a,75y,261...

New comment by fredoralive in "I tracked 7,700 UK petrol stations every 10 minutes for 3 months"

fredoralive — Mon, 04 May 2026 15:29:46 +0000

For the "supermarket saving", did you include Asda in the supermarket pool, or as a general pool? They seem to be rather less price competitive than other supermarkets, I'd presumably because of the recentish private equity takeover involving petrol station operator Euro Garages meaning they've kinda opted out of the petrol price war (they're hardly likely to want to undercut their existing forecourts).

Although the other recent private equity takeover of Morrisons led to some sort of deal with Motor Fuels Group to operate their petrol stations (but no ownership stuff in this case?), but they're seemingly still being competitive with Sainsbury's and Tesco's.

New comment by fredoralive in "Oil tanker hijacked off Yemen, steers toward Somalia"

fredoralive — Sat, 02 May 2026 15:03:07 +0000

Oil tankers only have like 20-30 crew on board, you’re not going to need that many men with AK47s to take over. Navies do patrol piracy hotspots like Somalia, freedom of navigation is kinda important to world trade, but they can’t exactly be everywhere at once.

New comment by fredoralive in "Why are there both TMP and TEMP environment variables? (2015)"

fredoralive — Sat, 02 May 2026 10:44:37 +0000

Part of the philosophy of the slightly odd suckless people is their projects are mostly configured by changing the source code and recompiling. This is I suppose a similar approach in a modern open source vein. Although their general asceticism makes their projects a bit of an acquired taste I suspect.

New comment by fredoralive in "Apple Says Mac Studio and Mac Mini Will Be in Short Supply for Months"

fredoralive — Fri, 01 May 2026 10:10:16 +0000

It’s a separate die, even in chips like the phone ones where it’s in the same package as the SoC.

New comment by fredoralive in "The Hearts of the Super Nintendo (2024)"

fredoralive — Fri, 01 May 2026 08:37:56 +0000

Perhaps a legacy of the sound stuff being designed by Sony instead of Nintendo? Designed to be self contained and not reliant on other parts of the system? On early SNES models the sound circuitry is even its own sub PCB in a metal box (although seemingly not the crystal for some reason). Plus the fact it has its own processor to run sound, instead of using the main 65816 (though sound sub-CPUs aren’t unknown in consoles, see the Mega Drives Z80).

Or someone just really cared about sound quality (see also: the metal box).

New comment by fredoralive in "Developers, Beware of Intel Core Ultra Series 3 (a.k.a. Panther Lake) Processors"

fredoralive — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 15:13:01 +0000

Not really news, not having AVX 512 is normal for Intel low end / consumer CPUs, it’s not a new thing. I guess they still haven’t figured out how to bodge it onto their efficiency cores?

New comment by fredoralive in "Only one side will be the true successor to MS-DOS – Windows 2.x"

fredoralive — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 15:11:22 +0000

That was the slogan of OS/2 2.0. But by then where Windows 3.x was already out and in 386 Enhanced Mode, more than good enough. It also had the extra "escape hatch" of being able to quit to real DOS if a DOS box didn't work.

OS/2 1.x's DOS box was bad, with lots of limitations, which isn't good when most existing PC apps are DOS apps. As for GUI, well, lets call the Presentation Manager 1.x v Windows 2.x a no-score draw.

New comment by fredoralive in "South Korea police arrest man for posting AI photo of runaway wolf"

fredoralive — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 11:52:53 +0000

The article says:

“Authorities are investigating him for disrupting government work by deception, an offence that carries up to five years in prison or a maximum fine of 10 million Korean won ($6,700; £5,000)”

Somewhat harsher than the UK at least, where “wasting police time” would only get you six months or around a £2500 fine.

New comment by fredoralive in "XOR'ing a register with itself is the idiom for zeroing it out. Why not sub?"

fredoralive — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:32:14 +0000

By the time you get to a CPU complex enough to be to have SMT it is likely to detect these “clear register” patterns and special case them.

XOR would also be handled by the ALU, the L is for logic.

New comment by fredoralive in "Amiga Graphics Archive"

fredoralive — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 12:36:32 +0000

Only using the party trick HAM mode though. 32 (plus 32 for the half-bright bit plane) is the mode that most software uses.

Of course in 1987 a Macintosh II with a fully expanded "Toby" framebuffer could not only do 256 colours, it could do it in 640x480 mode where as a PS/2's VGA could only do 16 colours at that resolution. And an Amiga could only do flickervision at that res.

Of course with technology improving all the time, not having a updated chipset circa 1987 that at least had a progressive scan 640x480(ish) is one of those things that really killed the chances of Amiga as a serious computer. They only got that circa 1990, and "Super VGA" was already just about becoming a thing in the PC world (and Microsoft had kinda got round to making a version of Windows that didn't suck by then). I'm not sure if the mythical Ranger had a progressive mode, but it's it does show how Commodore inability to keep the custom chips updated in a timely mannner slowly sunk the system...

New comment by fredoralive in "Amiga Graphics Archive"

fredoralive — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 10:59:18 +0000

I don't think the Amiga has either parallel / per plane chip memory, or any need for backwards compatibility with CGA.

New comment by fredoralive in "The Death of Character in Game Console Interfaces"

fredoralive — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 12:52:47 +0000

Games having a title screen where you “Press Start Button” is a slightly odd convention going back to the arcades, even on games where there’s only one set of controls.