On Wed, 23 Oct 2024, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> On 2024-10-23, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 22 Oct 2024, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>
>>> On 2024-10-22, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Tue, 22 Oct 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>
>>> <snip>
>>>
>>>>> In that sense the companies themselves have gone 'socialist' in that, like
>>>>> Marx, they regard economics as a zero sum game.
>>>>
>>>> Incorrect. By design they do what they do, and whether the economy is
>>>> zero sum (it is not) or not, does not really apply. That is why todays
>>>> crypto-socialist government is so extremely dangerous. It subverts and
>>>> distorts the markets, just by existing.
>>>
>>> As opposed to large corporations subverting and distorting the markets,
>>> as God intended.
>>
>> They do it with the help of the governments. By themselves, per
>> definition, they are not able to over time.
>>
>>>>> That is, it isn't about creating more wealth, it's about who gets to own
>>>>> what there is left.
>>>>
>>>> True.
>>>
>>> I.e., a zero-sum game.
>>
>> No, it is not, and that is proven by economics. The proof is that we are
>> 8.2 billion people on the planet and we've never had it better. If economy
>> was zero sum, we'd be dead by now.
>
> Give it time...

Exactly. No proof, so far.

On 23 Oct 2024 13:29:21 GMT, Allodoxaphobia wrote:

> On 23 Oct 2024 01:09:59 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>> On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 11:14:31 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:
>>
>>> I used to argue against abortion, but with all the fuss I have come to
>>> realize that my libertarian instincts have risen to the top. Just have
>>> the government stay the h*ll out of it.
>>
>> Looking at the demographics I may favor abortion with a tubal ligation
>> thrown in for free.
>
>> I also wonder if those seeking abortions should have a sign around
>> their necks saying 'I am too stupid to practice birth control.'
>
> But you wouldn't require it of _him_ ? Interesting.

Actually I would if it was possible to figure out who 'him' was.

On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 15:32:35 -0000 (UTC), Alfred Falk wrote:

> rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote in
> news:lnr0n6Ffh95U6@mid.individual.net:
>
>> On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 11:14:31 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:
>>
>>> I used to argue against abortion, but with all the fuss I have come to
>>> realize that my libertarian instincts have risen to the top. Just have
>>> the government stay the h*ll out of it.
>>
>> Looking at the demographics I may favor abortion with a tubal ligation
>> thrown in for free. I also wonder if those seeking abortions should
>> have a sign around their necks saying 'I am too stupid to practice
>> birth control.'
>
> What demographics are you looking at?
> Short of tubal ligation and bilateral bolectomy, birth controls methods
> are not failure-proof.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7436774/

On 23/10/2024 16:40, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2024-10-23, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 22 Oct 2024, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>
>>> On 2024-10-22, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Tue, 22 Oct 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>

>>> I.e., a zero-sum game.
>>
>> No, it is not, and that is proven by economics. The proof is that we are
>> 8.2 billion people on the planet and we've never had it better. If economy
>> was zero sum, we'd be dead by now.
>
> Give it time...
>
My statement wasn't meant to reflect reality, only how socialists
*think* about wealth.

--
Climate Change: Socialism wearing a lab coat.

On 23/10/2024 19:28, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> vallor <vallor@cultnix.org> writes:
>> On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 11:34:13 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
>> <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote in <vfajf5$1vqc5$7@dont-email.me>:
>>
>>> I cant answer for the States but almost to a man the Left in this country
>>> are 100% ex public sector workers, or in areas of activity that are
>>> largely parasitic. E.g. lawyers.
>>
>> Sounds like a stereotype.
>
> Moreover, "this country" that NP refers to appears to be the UK, not the USA.

That is correct.

--
Climate Change: Socialism wearing a lab coat.

vallor wrote this copyrighted missive and expects royalties:

> On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 11:34:13 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
> <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote in <vfajf5$1vqc5$7@dont-email.me>:
>
>> I cant answer for the States but almost to a man the Left in this country
>> are 100% ex public sector workers, or in areas of activity that are
>> largely parasitic. E.g. lawyers.
>
> Sounds like a stereotype.
>
> I'm in the States. I'm a veteran, then I worked at the local
> community college, then used that knowledge (along with a biz partner)
> to start an ISP. I've now lost track of how many employees we have,
> but it's over 1K.
>
> My politics are middle-of-the-road by any other measure, but
> many red-state denizens would consider me -- not "left", not even
> "left-wing", but "leftist" and "a dad-blurned lib'rul!"

People throw around words like "lib", "leftist", "Communist", "Marxist",
"right wing", "alt-right", "fascist", "elite"....

Not really helpful for civil discourse.

But "insane" and "sane" are a bit easier to circumscribe.

I believe in some lefty stuff like helping the disadvantaged, protecting women
from misogyny and medical malpractice, boosting science and the art of reason
and data....

Otherwise I'm probably "centrist".

Oh, also an aficionado of dark humor. Plenty of for decades.

> Meanwhile, we use Linux _a lot_ in our business. I daresay Linux is
> a more useful server and workstation OS than anything else.
>
> When Microsoft added Linux to their OS, I figured Linus had
> achieved his goal of Linux on the desktop. Others may disagree,
> but wide-scale adoption of Linux by Microsoft can't be denied: heck,
> they even have their own distribution now.
>
> BTW, this workstation is a turnkey offering by System76, for
> which I have had only one problem -- and when brought to their
> attention, I received great (and timely) support over email.
> Kudos to them, and that's why I have them in my .sig.

<thumbs up!>

--
Do you know about being with somebody? Wanting to be? If I had the
whole universe, I'd give it to you, Janice. When I see you, I feel
like I'm hungry all over. Do you know how that feels?
-- Charlie Evans, "Charlie X", stardate 1535.8

On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 08:04:37 -0700, John Ames wrote:

> ... but the one has 512 KB Flash/144 KB RAM, and the other
> only 32 KB/16 KB.

512kiB seems to be the recommendation for MicroPython. For the 32kiB one,
I would want to use a cross-compiler for some more resource-efficient
language, like C.

On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 14:33:11 +0300, magardner2010 wrote:

> And if I might interject, I am a 24-year old who has not that long ago
> started learning the UXN (https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/uxn.html) system.
> While it isn't a bare-metal FORTH, targetting a virtual machine, in
> terms of learning about FORTHs, I think it qualifies.

Cool. And I see it’s originally written in C. Are you learning C as well?

On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 11:34:13 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> The problem is that we can in theory produce marvellous low entropy
> products like computers, but only at the expense of increasing entropy
> elsewhere.

There is an absolutely massive source of energy literally pouring down on
us, that we can use for this entropy reduction. It’s so massive, it’s
inconceivable (at this stage in our civilization) that we could ever
exhaust it. It supplies this energy at the rate of about a kilowatt of
power per square metre of Earth’s daylit surface.

It’s called our Sun.

On 23 Oct 2024 18:00:55 GMT, vallor wrote:

> My politics are middle-of-the-road by any other measure, but many
> red-state denizens would consider me -- not "left", not even
> "left-wing", but "leftist" and "a dad-blurned lib'rul!"

Welcome to the normal world. Which many (most?) people in the US seem to
consider “radical left”. Here in NZ, we call it just another godless
atheist socialist liberal secular democracy.

> Meanwhile, we use Linux _a lot_ in our business. I daresay Linux is a
> more useful server and workstation OS than anything else.

It seems to have pretty much put an end to Microsoft’s Windows Server
business--at least the on-premises part. As well as killing off Windows
Home Server, Windows Media Center, Windows Server HPC Edition ...

> When Microsoft added Linux to their OS, I figured Linus had achieved his
> goal of Linux on the desktop.

I would distinguish between “desktop” and “workstation”. To me, the
difference is that “workstation” includes both “desktop” and “server”
features in a single installation. You’ll note this is something Windows
carefully avoids doing--Microsoft wants you to play a lot of extra bucks
for that “server” functionality. Linux does it all as a matter of course.

> Others may disagree,
> but wide-scale adoption of Linux by Microsoft can't be denied: heck,
> they even have their own distribution now.

Microsoft is desperately trying to make Windows seem cool again, by adding
Linux-like features to it (PowerShell, the new Windows Terminal, the
revamped Notepad). I think a lot of people would prefer it if they
concentrated on just making it less buggy.

> BTW, this workstation is a turnkey offering by System76 ...

My laptop is from them, too (second laptop I’ve bought from them). This
workstation I am using now is a 12-core AMD white-box build from a local
PC shop, on which I installed Debian Unstable because I am a bit of a
daredevil.

On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 15:40:18 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> "That asteroid contains trillions of dollars' worth of raw materials!"
> -- Don't Look Up

Thinking of all that nuclear waste from fission reactors that people are
worried about keeping safe for tens of thousands of years: that’s a
potential untapped energy source. Currently we don’t have the technology
to make use of it (at least, not economically), but who’s to say that
won’t change in just a century or two? After all, it shouldn’t require any
radical changes to the laws of physics.

On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 07:43:46 -0700, John Ames wrote:

> diced and julienned plagiarism ...

You say “plagiarism”, I say “code reuse”. Something which is explicitly
allowed by Free Software licences.

On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 20:57:51 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> 512kiB seems to be the recommendation for MicroPython. For the 32kiB
> one, I would want to use a cross-compiler for some more
> resource-efficient language, like C.

Which you certainly could do! Or, alternatively, you could embed a more
resource-efficient but interactive threaded interpreter, like Forth ;)

On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 21:23:28 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> > diced and julienned plagiarism ...
>
> You say “plagiarism”, I say “code reuse”. Something which is
> explicitly allowed by Free Software licences.

Potayto, potahto, either way the *point* is that what "AI" produces is
a blind probabilistic hash made from code written by human beings, with
zero understanding of the problem it's being applied to at any stage.

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
>On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 11:34:13 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> The problem is that we can in theory produce marvellous low entropy
>> products like computers, but only at the expense of increasing entropy
>> elsewhere.
>
>There is an absolutely massive source of energy literally pouring down on
>us, that we can use for this entropy reduction. It’s so massive, it’s
>inconceivable (at this stage in our civilization) that we could ever
>exhaust it. It supplies this energy at the rate of about a kilowatt of
>power per square metre of Earth’s daylit surface.

Any given square meter will only be receiving maximal
insolation for a fairly short time with seasonal variations
in most locations. Better to measure average KWh/m2
(about 6 ignoring clouds). Assuming 20% solar panel
efficiency, that drops it about 1.2KWh/m2 on a sunny
day. Typical homes in the states use 30KWh/day, about
25m2 of panels. A data center can use 100 to 200KWh
an hour or more. Some data centers use far more.

And unless you cover the ocean with floating solar panels,
you're missing out on 75% of the total daily insolation.

https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m#section.13.1

In alt.folklore.computers Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Oct 2024 07:55:43 -0700, John Ames wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 21 Oct 2024 08:41:38 -0000 (UTC)
>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> Why would anyone want to use it, though?
>>
>> For starters, it's about the simplest way to get a minimal interactive
>> system going on a homebrew/hobbyist computer project which still offers
>> full access to the bare metal ...
>
> But for an RP2040, you can already cross-compile C code from a Linux-based
> host, like a Raspberry Pi. That will give you “full access to the bare
> metal”, without the overheads of threaded code.

You missed 2 points:

1) Mecrisp is a native compiler. I do not think it optimizes as
well as gcc, but slowdown is smaller than threaded code and
size is comparable.
2) Key words above were "interactive system" and in particular
interactive debugging. Unfortunately some embedded systems
have only expensive closed source debuggers. For RP2040 in
principle one should be able to get open source debugger,
but RP2040 have/had trouble with compatibilty: you needed
matched patched versions of tools and a second RP2040 to
work as debugging interface.

Makers of RP2040 intend it as Micro-Python board, but AFAIK
Micro-Python is much slower and larger than Forth.

--
Waldek Hebisch

On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 14:36:25 -0700, John Ames wrote:

> On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 20:57:51 -0000 (UTC)
> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>
>> 512kiB seems to be the recommendation for MicroPython. For the 32kiB
>> one, I would want to use a cross-compiler for some more
>> resource-efficient language, like C.
>
> Which you certainly could do! Or, alternatively, you could embed a more
> resource-efficient but interactive threaded interpreter, like Forth ;)

So far working with C++ and the Pico W has been interesting. Putting the
board in the BOOTSEL mode and copying the .uf2 works but I haven't been
able to get the 3 pin SWD interface with a Raspberry Pi 5 working. Not
insurmountable but the documentation isn't great. Getting to the BOOTSLE
mode requires holding down a button while unplugging/plugging the microUSB
which is cumbersome. It's even more complicated for a generic computer
without the Pi's GPIO pins.

Loading MicroPython the first time is similar but then the device comes up
on /dev/ttyACM0 and is faster to develop since it doesn't require
recompiling every time.

I've got another Pico W that I may try with one of the Forth variants.

Working with C++ and the Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense was much easier but it
has the mbed RTOS as a loader. Unfortunately mbed is going away.

Digging into the Forth internals is instructive. When compared to CPython
it is either elegant or a kludgy mess depending on how much you hate
Forth.

On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 21:18:20 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> On 23 Oct 2024 18:00:55 GMT, vallor wrote:
>
>> My politics are middle-of-the-road by any other measure, but many
>> red-state denizens would consider me -- not "left", not even
>> "left-wing", but "leftist" and "a dad-blurned lib'rul!"
>
> Welcome to the normal world. Which many (most?) people in the US seem to
> consider “radical left”. Here in NZ, we call it just another godless
> atheist socialist liberal secular democracy.
>
>> Meanwhile, we use Linux _a lot_ in our business. I daresay Linux is a
>> more useful server and workstation OS than anything else.
>
> It seems to have pretty much put an end to Microsoft’s Windows Server
> business--at least the on-premises part. As well as killing off Windows
> Home Server, Windows Media Center, Windows Server HPC Edition ...

Don't get your hopes up. We had two sites that ran Linux on the servers.
That made a great deal of sense since the core programs were developed on
AIX. The Linux servers lasted as long as the administrator was a Linux
fan. The new boss went back to Windows Server.

The workstations were Windows. Linux was fine back in the server room, out
of sight, out of mind. That's similar to the cloud. A Linux instance, even
RHEL, is less expensive than a Windows Server instance. If the product is
such that the end users have no idea about the backend all is goopd.

On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 22:03:50 GMT, Scott Lurndal wrote:

> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
>>On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 11:34:13 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>
>>> The problem is that we can in theory produce marvellous low entropy
>>> products like computers, but only at the expense of increasing entropy
>>> elsewhere.
>>
>>There is an absolutely massive source of energy literally pouring down
>>on us, that we can use for this entropy reduction. It’s so massive, it’s
>>inconceivable (at this stage in our civilization) that we could ever
>>exhaust it. It supplies this energy at the rate of about a kilowatt of
>>power per square metre of Earth’s daylit surface.
>
> Any given square meter will only be receiving maximal insolation for a
> fairly short time with seasonal variations in most locations. Better to
> measure average KWh/m2 (about 6 ignoring clouds). Assuming 20% solar
> panel efficiency, that drops it about 1.2KWh/m2 on a sunny day. Typical
> homes in the states use 30KWh/day, about 25m2 of panels. A data center
> can use 100 to 200KWh an hour or more. Some data centers use far more.
> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m#section.13.1

There is a reason for the attempt to reactivate Three Mile Island rather
than putting up solar panels around Harrisburg.

I've used a small solar setup that was adequate for my needs -- in
southern Arizona about 25 miles from the border. Even there during an
atypical rainy winter I had to make decisions about usage. The solar
cooker crowd go used to very rare roasts.

In Montana it's much more sketchy. My indicator is the mobile speed
indicators. They're radar units on a trailer with a display to show your
speed. It flashes if you're above the limit but so far they are only a
gentle reminder and don't issue a ticket. They are powered by solar
panels. They work great during sunny August weather, not so great this
time of year.

Now you could blanket the entire state of Arizona with solar panels. Then
you need to deal with distribution and all the law suits by parties that
don't want transmission lines in their backyard. Wind and hydro both have
the same problem.

In alt.folklore.computers Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 16:07:33 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:
>
>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 09:59:31 -0700, John Ames wrote:
>>>
>>>> Which, sure, beefy microcontrollers with comparatively spacious memory
>>>> loadouts are cheaper than ever, but less luxurious ones are cheaper
>>>> still - and a byte saved is, as always, a byte earned ;)
>>>
>>> How much of your time did it take to save that byte?
>>>
>>> Think of how many bytes you would need to save per hour of your time,
>>> to make it worthwhile to whoever is paying for that time.
>>>
>> If it’s the difference between using what you have and buying a more
>> expensive board, times however-many units you’re shipping, it might not
>> be too many.
>
> Presumably there is some threshold below which it simply isn’t worth
> trying to save a bit of RAM. What is it nowadays: as much as 1MiB? Higher?
> Lower?

It seems that you do not know what you are talking about. Most
embedded systems are small single chip ones. Smallest chips
on the market are something like 64 bytes of RAM and 1 kB flash.
IMO those make sense if you have simple problem which fits
without making special effort (or maybe you have huge volume).
If you are using Micro-Python your program, however simple
will not fit into such chip. Forth _may_ fit but you need
to make effort to get small version of Forth. Next interesting
point are chips with 2-4 kB RAM and 16kB flash. Those are
popular chips availale for 10-30 cents in quantity and few
times more in small volume. For hobbists interesting point
is STM32F103C8T6. It has 20 kB RAM and 64 kB flash. Boards
with this chip (or chinese clones of it) are available at
aroud $2 from chinese sellers. This is cheap enough to put
such board as part of a design and handling such board is
much easier than building own circuit with the chip. There
are bigger chips, but tendency is for much higher price
when you need more RAM. In classic MCU-s 1MB of RAM means
_very_ big and expensive chip. This is mainly because
MCU normally need logic parts (like processor core), analog
circuits (ADC-s and/or comparators), static RAM and flash.
Apparently it is tricky to get all of those into a single
process and bigger static RAM tends to take a lot of chip
area. There are now new "chips" which use multi-die
technology. For example RP2040 has flash on separate die
allowing much larger RAM compared to single die version.

Once you want more than 1MB RAM it makes sense to use exteral
RAM. And for larger amount one probably would prefer DRAM.
If you use DRAM, then smallest sensible amount is probably
16 MB. There is a chip on the market containing 1GHz core
and 64MB DRAM (this probably is two-die chip). One can
get boards with this chip at about twice of cost of
RP2040 board. Note that RP2040 has its own flash, while
the board with bigger chip needs extra flash or SD-card.
SD-card adds cost and at least cheap SD-cards tends to
be unreliable, so you may be pushed to more expensive
technology like eMMC.

Beside cost of the MCU chip there is also board cost. Small
chips can be put on simple cheap boards. More advanced chips
tends to require more advanced boards which may be more expensive,
especially in small quantities.

Concerning two-die chips, they are attractive for low-cost
gadgets, but may be problematic in real-time context.
Namely, flash access in such chips is _much_ slower than
in single-die chips. This may be partially compensated
using caches, on average such chips perform quite well.
But worst case time may be many times longer than best
case and it gets much harder to provide any warranty on
execution time.

For embedded chips cost is not the only factor. Namely, many
embedded devices use battery power. More processor cycles
and more data read from RAM and flash means more power
drain. To have reasonable battery life one needs efficient
program and a small chip.

--
Waldek Hebisch

On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 00:10:20 -0000 (UTC), Waldek Hebisch wrote:

> In alt.folklore.computers Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>>
>> Presumably there is some threshold below which it simply isn’t worth
>> trying to save a bit of RAM. What is it nowadays: as much as 1MiB?
>> Higher? Lower?
>
> It seems that you do not know what you are talking about.
> ...
> If you are using Micro-Python your program, however simple
> will not fit into such chip.

Nevertheless, MicroPython is very popular for precisely such applications.

On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 22:25:37 -0000 (UTC), Waldek Hebisch wrote:

> Makers of RP2040 intend it as Micro-Python board, but AFAIK Micro-Python
> is much slower and larger than Forth.

Still, it seems able to do the job rather well.

On 23 Oct 2024 23:26:39 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> The new boss went back to Windows Server.

I’m just looking at actual market trends from now, not 20 years ago. Look
at Microsoft’s roadmap for Windows Server: the on-prem version is now very
much an afterthought, with the cloud version getting most of the
(remaining) development resources.

And as you well know, the cloud is already dominated by Linux. So think of
this as a rearguard action by Windows Server, a retreat into an area where
Microsoft can still play licensing games to make it seem more attractive
than Linux. Licensing games that other cloud providers are not allowed to
play with Windows.

> The workstations were Windows.

No, they were desktops, not workstations. Windows NT “Workstation” was
just a desktop OS with multitasking.

On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 00:10:20 -0000 (UTC), Waldek Hebisch wrote:

> It seems that you do not know what you are talking about. Most embedded
> systems are small single chip ones. Smallest chips on the market are
> something like 64 bytes of RAM and 1 kB flash.
> IMO those make sense if you have simple problem which fits without
> making special effort (or maybe you have huge volume).

One product I worked on used the 8749, 128 bytes of RAM and a 2K EPROM.
There were actually two handheld products, pH and ion concentration. The
custom display was different but they both used Ross electrodes for
measurements. There wasn't enough room to do the math for both
applications.

I pretty much knew every byte by name and it was all assembler.

The Forth projects used the Z-80 or TMS9900 and you had all the room in
the world. Forth was great for creating a project specific interface. With
care in creating the words something approaching a natural language
interface was possible.

As you say in the real world there are many engineering decisions to be
made and the suitable programming language is one of them.

On 10/23/24 5:23 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 07:43:46 -0700, John Ames wrote:
>
>> diced and julienned plagiarism ...
>
> You say “plagiarism”, I say “code reuse”. Something which is explicitly
> allowed by Free Software licences.

Hey, don't we owe huge royalties to the Sumerians
who invented the brick ? :-)