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John Erickson

@johnterickson.bsky.social

23 Posts89 Follower136 Folgt
Ken Shirriff@righto.com · 2mo ago

In 1980, Intel introduced the 8087 floating-point coprocessor chip. Plugging this chip into your IBM PC made math 100 times faster, good for CAD and spreadsheets. I opened up the chip to reverse-engineer exactly how it does complicated calculations. Let's take a look inside...

The integrated circuit is a black ceramic rectangle with 40 metal pins sticking out, in two rows. (This is known as a DIP, a Dual Inline Package.) It has three rows of text: "D8087-1", a cryptic version label, and then the copyright line with a big lower-case I, INTEL m c 1980 1984. The m and c are in circles for the mask-work symbol and the copyright symbol. The chip has a small semicircular notch on the left side, indicating its orientation. The package consists of two thin ceramic layers, bonded together with a gray substance; the metal pins stick out from this gray substance. The ceramic package is important to me because tapping the gray layer with a chisel will cause the two layers to separate, revealing the silicon die inside. In contrast, most chips are in epoxy packages, which are very difficult to open, usually requiring strong acids.
Jamie Magee@jamiemagee.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Turns out "let me just npm install real quick" was a security incident the whole time v12 is making dependency install scripts opt-in. I helped build it. You're welcome/I'm sorry. github.blog/changelog/20...

Upcoming breaking changes for npm v12 - GitHub Changelog

Our next npm major version, v12, introduces security-related default changes to npm install. All these changes are available behind warnings in npm today on 11.16.0 or newer, so you can…

github.blog

Rep. Mike Levin@levin.house.gov · 6mo ago

Political violence is never the answer. Last night’s attack at the White House Correspondents dinner could have been catastrophic. We can never accept a world where this kind of violence is normalized.

Jacob Bogage@jacobbogage.bsky.social · last yr.

Can confirm this email is authentic — and about nothing in it is true. Social Security income is still taxed. This bill does nothing to change that. It’s willful disinformation on the part of SSA. It’s a lie.

@shepow.bsky.social · last yr.

Hi, I think a lot of us received e-mails from SSA saying that social security will no longer be taxed - and that somehow there is "enhanced deductions" (how much enhancement can you make to 0?) for those over 65. What part, if any, of this is true? Thank you!

Jonathan McDowell@planet4589.bsky.social · last yr.

The Minor Planet Center has designated 3I/ATLAS = C/2025 N1 (ATLAS), or informally "Comet ATLAS", a new interstellar comet that is currently about 4.5 AU from the Sun and screaming through the solar system at 58 km/s (130000 mph)

Kirill Osenkov@kirillosenkov.com · last yr.

New in MSBuild Structured Log Viewer: Project Reference Graph New tab that shows the project graph layered by project "height". Each project only references projects above it. Clicking a project highlights all directly referenced projects above, and all projects below it that reference this one.

many rows of multiple rectangles per row, each rectangle is the project name, some rectangles are bigger and bluer (they are referenced more). One rectangle is selected and green, it has outgoing arrows above it that point to other rectangles, with purple border. Those are the referenced projects. Arrows also go down, to rectangles with green borders. Those are projects that reference the selected one.
John Erickson@johnterickson.bsky.social · last yr.

What did field/science totally name poorly but is now stuck? e.g. electric current direction was defined before we knew how it worked as so it goes *opposite* the direction electrons are actually moving

Chris Hayes@chrislhayes.bsky.social · last yr.

This is serious, rigorous analysis and it should change the way the media has been covering these protests. These were, in the aggregate, *massive.*

G Elliott Morris@gelliottmorris.com · last yr.

Based on crowd-sourced records of No Kings Day event turnout, and extrapolating for the cities where we don't have data yet, it looks like roughly 4-6 million people protested Trump across the U.S. yesterday. That's nearly 2% of the U.S. pop! Mobilized anti-Trump resistance is exceeding 2017 levels

Sedat Kapanoğlu@ssg.dev · 2y ago

it turns out the font used in the piracy ad "you wouldn't steal a car" was pirated 🤡

Rib :ms_red_panda: (@Rib)

Today Melissa Lewis over on BlueSky pointed out that the font used in the infamous "You wouldn't steal a car" anti-piracy campaign was actually designed by Just van Rossum, whose brother, Guido, creat...

fedi.rib.gay

Melissa Lewis@melissa.news · 2y ago

TIL: The 2000s piracy PSA used a font designed by the fantastic Just van Rossum, whose brother Guido created the Python programming language.