Notices by The Penguin of Evil (etchedpixels@mastodon.social)

@MaddieM4 @wbrawner @dalias @ell1e @Kroc @xgranade C compilers are easy to write. Good C compilers are a different story.

For Fuzix I wrote my own (in part because nobody else fitted an ANSIish C compiler in to a 64K address space machine).

It's C89 without bitfields basically, because bitfields are evil and everything added to C post C89 except "..." is wrong 8)

You could add C99isms to it but either way C compilers are not tricky, codegen is.

https://codeberg.org/EtchedPixels/Fuzix-Compiler-Kit

We are so lucky enshittification took hold as late as it did. Imagine having to debug a 1990s PC with beep codes for 'the signing certificate on your graphics card ROM is expired' or having a PXE BIOS preboot network environmental to check your OS licence has not expired

Thought for the day

The US will be very shortly paying the same per year in debt intetest as China spent building the largest high speed rail network in the world.

So when you wonder why you don't have nice trains remember it's because the US sold rich people bonds instead of taxing them.

PS: if you are wondering why US petrol and diesel prices are so high it's because it's apparently more important to export fuel at peak prices than add export restrictions and keep in country prices down.

@Infoseepage @afewbugs The toilet operator has no power to obtain evidence of gender. The whole guidance is completely unworkable.

@gamingonlinux no more Americans in your feed 😂

@gamingonlinux judging by the latest round of layoffs elder scrolls isn't exactly a priority in any way I understand it

@EF @rzeta0 @kibcol1049 to me a double negative is usually emphatic. It's complicated because double negatives in English work differently in different bits of the UK, hence the guidance not to use them when you need clarity. There are lots of cases though like 'no he did not break wind' that are universal-ish

English is what happens when you steal good ideas randomly from everyone else but have nobody doing the architecture for it 🤣

@Cyberoutsider Same word as in most other languages I think 8)

@gamingonlinux "supported" is a magic word though. It means one thing to a lot of software folks "it works" and another to corporate types and many other bits of a business "we'll care if it doesn't work"

If you say you support Linux and it breaks on someone's obscure setup then to most eyes you are at fault. If you say it supports steamdeck and it happens to work on their box then great everyone is happy.,

@GreenSkyOverMe Japan has 'Doctor Yellow' for their maintenance train.

Flying Banana was used as a nickname for all the high speed train units in their original livery long before the NMT, and that was a reference to 1930s use for GWR railcars

@GossiTheDog nope it says they lost 285 million in sales. Not the same thing

@clacke check the edits on the original

I know the muppet Swedish Chef is meant to be well Swedish but I'm wading through a pile of Dutch computer magazine stuff and I find it impossible not to read it in any voice but the Swedish Chef.

"De adresdekoder voor de RAM IC5 is N60 en de dekokder voor de EPROM IC6 is N61." (bork)

#muppets #retrocomputing

@tbortels @lauren I converted the original Bourne shell to ANSI C for Fuzix. It's scary, I don't think anyone actually knows how it behaves in all cases

@tobiaspatton @lauren

That's more a cultural thing from the free software/source access side that we don't have things like

tar -xJ foo.tar.xz
tar: xz is a premium plan feature, please upgrade your subscription to a GNU Pro subscription to use this feature.

And if you think you can't enshittify standard Unix tools I suggest you try installing an HP/UX box or some others where all sorts of tools are in other add on packs.

@cstross I seem to remember an Asimov (?) story about something similar with ultra dangerous for power generation but even Asimov picked the back side of the moon not deep space.

It would be kind of poetic justice though if a space based Musk data centre got taken out by a stray starlink.

@Gargron In addition a lot of anglophone people speak only one language, so they've never been able to compare the translation of a book between two languages they speak.

@dalias @neil It is possible to construct an open source DRM system where you control the keys, the rights management and the licensing.

It's actually a useful application for internal security and management when you want random crap not to even be inadvertently executable or deployable onto your self controlled systems.

It's a fringe case but it exists.

RE: https://flipboard.social/@newsguyusa/116145194552591221

US government finally acts to pop AI bubble 🤣

@bruces "I am telling you the notion they polluted their environment that fast and died out is not plausible, only the asteroid theory really explains the extinction event"