#sicp
by the way, I found a 2007-2008 author who previously answered every #sicp exercise in #commonLisp instead of #scheme. https://eli.thegreenplace.net/tag/sicp
I just posted a must-read essay on my blog.
OK, not an essay, a poem. And not just a haiku. It's a long poem in the style of Seuss: The Fraud Who Stole Freedom.
And you don't have to read it, I'll read it to you (i.e., there's an audio track).
But please do visit and make sure it gets around. Early voting has already started some places, and there's not much more time to do things, but the idea is to get people excited about the need to vote.
I've tried to present it in an entertaining way, but the election is a serious matter and we all need to see that.
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-fraud-who-stole-freedom.html
Note that it's the same kind of information as was in my previous blog post, so if you prefer prose, there's always that:
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2024/10/vance-notice.html
#election2024 #USPolitics #democracy #dictatorship #poetry #poem #DrSeuss #Kamala #KamalaHarris #HarrisWalz
New video! Trying to resurrect a badly corroded Amiga A501 RAM Expansion.
YouTube: https://youtu.be/kW4HG_5GHG0
PeerTube: https://makertube.net/w/d7BAck1ttyF2uXxru4kkXA
#Amiga #A500 #Amiga500 #Commodore #A501 #RAMExpansion #BatteryDamage #Corrosion #Repair #Restoration #Varta #GetTheDamnBatteriesOut #VintageComputing #RetroComputing
The year is 3129. Humanity is extinct. The last LG SmartFridge is desperately emailing its last owner that they are low on orange juice. The satellites that are still left, their orbits slowly decaying over millennia, dutifully relay the message. The automated "away from office" response turns on, as it always does, notifying the refrigerator that it's owner will likely return to the office in 3-5 business days.
Somewhere in what used to be called Ohio, a pack of roombas, their local wind turbines giving out and creaking to a halt, begin searching for the next functional docking station. A washing machine in Argentina tweets: "anyone need to do a load 😏" every Saturday at 1:30 a.m. eastern standard time. The replies are filled with AI thirstposters and their hypebots.
In North America, raccoons have quietly entered the bronze age, while baboons riding domesticated battlewolves rule most of Asia. Unbeknownst to either, the octopi are mastering nuclear fusion. A weather balloon bobs and sways in the upper atmosphere, now almost entirely clear of lingering chloroflourocarbons, reporting conditions to weather stations long since destroyed in World War Five.
The Crab Nation are mostly hermits, but come out to greet their prophet every ten years on the 6th full moon of the year. A lone, curious octopus decides to observe this year's event, peering out at the festivities from her safe haven - the submerged, rusting hulk of an ancient Cybertruck. Then he appears: the hologram of Shia Lebouf powered by MetaAI. He beckons the octopus to follow. The crabs all start chittering excitedly. The time has come to invade Amazon HQ. The crows gather in huge numbers. They need more storage space for their Steam collections.
games with awful accessibility, sarcasm
i'm making a video game with all my favourite accessibility features inspired by other popular games ☺️
- subtitles only present for "main" dialogue; background audio, battle cries etc. have no subs (from yakuza: like a dragon)
- subtitles that don't specify the speaker (metro 2033)
- no FOV slider (every seventh gen console game)
- head bobbing/swaying that can't be disabled (xdefiant)
- vision blurring and tinnitus sounds when you're on low health (early gears of war and its various ripoffs)
- manual saving, and only at specific points (dead rising (2006))
- unchangeable key binds that assume a QWERTY layout; enjoy using WASD on AZERTY (too many to list)
- font sizes that don't scale with resolution, based on running the game at 800x600 (fallout 1 and 2)
- mandatory QTEs that get progressively more difficult, with no option to skip them or replace them with button holds (balan wonderland)
- dialogue boxes that can't be advanced until the characters have finished speaking; also the game has no voice overs so you're just waiting for the mouth flapping animation to end (pokémon: sword and shield)
- crucial gameplay information communicated solely through colour (the legend of zelda: link's awakening DX (1993))
- no options to invert X or Y axis inputs (too many to list)
- content locked behind higher difficulties (wargroove)
- significant gameplay advantages based around being able to hear enemies approaching from various directions in surround sound (i dunno, halo, why not)
- unskippable and/or unpausable cutscenes (early metal gear solid)
- game language determined by your system language (state of decay 2), or better yet, your system region
- nested radial menus that require you to hold a button, hold the analogue stick in the direction of the desired option, and then press another separate button to open the sub-menu (rollercoaster tycoon 3 (nintendo switch), what were you people thinking, my mum would love this game if not for this one goddamn issue)
- mandatory motion controls (half of the wii library), or if not that, full controller support that still requires certain actions to be performed via motion controls, even though there are more than enough free buttons to bind those actions to (mario odyssey)
- no explanation for complex game mechanics, including things that you would truly never be able to guess without external documentation (minecraft pre-1.0)
- an in-game "help" button that launches the xbox assist app, which has been deprecated and no longer functions (many xbox one titles, although i really don't blame the game devs for this, fuck microsoft for removing all of that information for no reason)
- crucial exclusive content locked behind a shitty browser game (mass effect 3)
- exclusive content locked behind an external app that no longer exists or functions (dead rising 3)
- no pause function whatsoever (elden ring (yes i know about the help page trick))
- always online connectivity, even in single player (the crew: motorfest)
i think this list has a little something for everyone, but do feel free to suggest more great accessibility features! also every settings change will require restarting the game and sitting through six unskippable publisher logos
Kangaroo Jack would be a perfect movie if it was exactly the same but with the kangaroo in the corner talking over the entire movie like a v-tuber
Stop Theming My Apps was created by GNOME devs who got paid off by Microsoft because Microsoft knows that, if left unchecked, Hannah Montana Linux would create the Year of the Linux Desktop
if you're gonna actually try and be logically consistent with your arguments about what does and does not count as 'safe' or 'powerful' technology, i think you are forced to accept that:
- the contemporary www and smartphone ecosystem needs to be rejected
- all CPU platforms with out-of-order execution need to be rejected
- ideally, we should be prioritising HAM radio from now on for the backbone of our hacker comms
- UNIX is approaching the status of a dead technology and is now thoroughly outmoded
- in my considered opinion, all mainstream 'memory safe' languages have failed and should be rejected
this sounds very proscriptive, and may to some seem overly strict, but after doing my own research and analysis, this is where we're at.
any relaxation of the above is a concession on pragmatic grounds. the lay technology user now uses their smartphone for virtually everything. in my opinion, we're not ever going to reach the mainstream user.
so i agree with the few of you who say, burn it all down and start again. whatever the industry is doing is completely evil and cannot be tolerated or connected with one bit
I am working on a PAC-MAN for the Commodore Amiga that uses nothing but operating system calls for its graphics, sound, and scheduling. This is the first video in a series showing its development using the earliest C Compiler (Lattice C 3.03).
#retrocomputing #retrogaming #gamedev
This is being done as an example of how to use the routines inside every Amiga in the context of their intended use to write software, such as games, that can cooperate in its multitasking environment.
I am writing each piece of the code as an autonomous unit, with testing harnesses, with the goal of breaking each of code out into its own Exec task, communicating with each other via MessagePorts.
I am uploading each piece to GitHub on a regular basis:
https://github.com/tschak909/amiga-pac-man
What are your favorite retro-computing YouTube channels? I’m especially interested in Atari and classic Mac (68k/PPC).
self-hosting a website on a server from craigslist in the basement is still kind of magic to me
I can make some html, put it on the server, wire it up to a domain, share the link around the internet in various corners, and people from all over the world can interact with the basement website
Hey ancient tech people: is #Lisp still worth learning? Asking for someone who needs more parentheses.
