Notices by dram🎀 (dramforever@mastodon.social)

@david_chisnall @whitequark i think to me this is the key part. a (digital) hdl provides a model that you can think about bits and gates in. a better hdl provides you with the better model.

llms on the other hand promise to let you avoid all the thinking. if i may philosophizd a bit - llms promise to let you avoid expressing yourself in terms of mental labor. maybe some like this, but i know i don't. [cont'd]

@david_chisnall @whitequark "[...] the purpose of abstracting is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise." - Edsger W. Dijkstra, 1972, "The Humble Programmer" https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD340.html

@david_chisnall @whitequark one analogy i think is that it would be preposterous to think that learning and using modern algebra and category theory is deskilling to a mathematician.

maybe it's not a perfect match, but i don't think writing in a higher level language is a "deskilled" way to draw gates or write instruction bits. it produces a different *kind* of product, that is itself amenable to various different processes, some manual and some automatic. it's not just "bits with extra steps".

@whitequark o7

@whitequark so this work kinda weirdly, because you can put a git repo in the worktree of another git repo, which creates a special "gitlink" file that is used to implement submodules.

which is ... weird, if you don't have submodules.

you can .git/info/exclude it, or, here's a cursed thought, just put it in .git/

@whitequark it's like bender's uh, "reflective metal aft-plate" but a different body part

there's a reason everyone abbreviates ExitBootServices into "Exit BS", you know

you can find it on gBS->ConfigurationTable. get it from GetFirstGuidHob. it's literally in GetFirmwareContextPointer.

@whitequark honestly, this is kind of helpful information if you know which function 0x80000fb8 is

@whitequark you know like how we as a society has like moved on from "hold down the reset button while turning the console off because the nes didn't ship with a brown out reset and we don't want random corruption on your battery sram"

or maybe i'm delirious

remember when computers in general had a reset button and most of us just kinda collectively forgot about it

@whitequark @mokomull in case you're wondering, you can tell by the lui a0, 0x10000

mips lui has only 16 bits of immediate, so this can't be mips. riscv has 20 bits so yay

@whitequark where did they find this -O-1 code

i genuinely want my work to be replaced by ai. like there's so much more we could have computers do if we didn't have to spend all our energy trying to figure out moon phase bitmasks and whether the pcie controller is in retrograde.

but i don't think there's enough demand for that. these things make revenue too slowly, if at all. and replacing workers isn't about productivity; it's about saving money on salary.

and why would i get your "ai agent" that does the right thing instead of what i ask

@whitequark i think it's trying to say to pad last block (0 to 127 incl. bits) of plaintext with 1 then a bunch of 0, and then chomp off the corresponding bits in the ciphertext because you don't need it, but god knows why it's trying to split the cipher state instead.

it's like pumping drinking water from a river by diverting a part of the river to your front yard and then sending the unused portion back into the main flow

@whitequark like https://namespace.so/ for forgejo?

Intel really gave us an instruction called "setzune"

https://cdrdv2-public.intel.com/817241/817241-apx-asm-syntax.pdf

@whitequark @poppyhaze i was never quite sure what SSRIs were supposed to do to me. i never got any of the stereotypical effects *or* side effects aside from sleepiness

@whitequark @poppyhaze nice. carry on with your psych drug references then...

@whitequark @poppyhaze honestly probably most importantly

you're not taking ssris *now* are you