IRC channel logs

2020-05-10.log

back to list of logs

***janneke_ is now known as janneke
<Hagfish> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23131801 "Cloning a 6502 Apple-1 in just 930 logic gates"
<OriansJ>128KB EPROM really undermines the "just 930 gates"
<OriansJ>although the link to the https://c74project.com/ looks interesting
<OriansJ>and https://www.homebrewcpuring.org/ringhome.html appears to have quite a few more as well
<xentrac>930 logic gates and a million-bit microcode store
<xentrac>it happens that the microcode store is also largely made of logic gates, but memory doesn't have to be. the HP 9100 microcode store was made out of a multilayer printed circuit board with no components on it (except for amplifiers at the edge)
<xentrac>but for a computer that can run a reasonable programming environment like BASIC-80 you historically need at least 4 KiB of memory, 32768 bits, which dwarfs the necessary CPU
<xentrac>random-access memory, some of which could be read-only
<xentrac>maybe you could get that down to 2K by sacrificing an amount of performance that was unreasonable in the days of 1MHz CPUs
<OriansJ>xentrac: even magnetic core/rope memory still required logic. Which would have to be counted if one were honest.
<xentrac>you mean to decode addresses?
<rain1>hello
<xentrac>hi rain1! long time no see! how's it going?
<rain1>good to see you
<xentrac>yeah! I'm glad I'm not dead yet!
<rain1>i have been escaping into mathematisc
<rain1>how are things going?
<xentrac>that sounds cool! metamathematics or the ordinary kind?
<rain1>finite group theory atm
<xentrac>do you have a favorite group?
<rain1>yeah
<rain1>PSL(2,7)
<xentrac>we have nearly a nationwide quarantine here in Argentina, with 300 covid deaths
<xentrac>Michigan has 4526 deaths out of a quarter as many people so I think we're doing pretty okay
<xentrac>ooh, I don't know anything about projective linear groups!
<rain1>yeah just waiting this virus out
<OriansJ>xentrac: we also have huge crowds protesting the shutdown without wearing masks
<rain1>the way the world is right now, it's something I never thought i'd see
<OriansJ>many of them armed and some of them literally taking shots at the capital building
<rain1>every time i go outside there is just ambulances and more ambulances
<xentrac>OriansJ: yeah, we have a few of those too, but they're not armed
<xentrac>rain1: where are you?
<rain1>scotland
<xentrac>shit
<rain1>the symmetries of the fano plane are really cool
<xentrac>well, the thing is, about every hundred years, there happen events that are so unlikely that they only have a 1% chance of happening in any given year ...
<rain1>and i think it's connective with the sporadic automorphism of S6
<xentrac>OriansJ: here people are mostly protesting by beating pots and pans on their balconies at a predetermined hour
<rain1>that's so true and simple but living through and event like still feels so strange and unexpected
<xentrac>is the fano plane the reason you like PSL(2,7)?
<rain1>yeah
<xentrac>I'd seen it before but I had forgotten its name
<xentrac>if I ever knew it
<xentrac>heh, Robert Fano's father
<xentrac>my girlfriend just made me an egg and tomato sandwich on the whole-wheat bread she baked on Friday
<rain1>that's so nice! i've yet to bake bread this year but i think that will be a good thing to do soon
<xentrac>we haven't been outside since Wednesday except that on Friday she received a delivery of an immersion blender, which turned out to be fraudulent
<xentrac>bread is a freaking miracle! make sure you save a starter once you have yeast
<xentrac>making yeast without yeast is even harder than making a C compiler without a C compiler
<rain1>:D
<rain1>i heard you can just leave a cup of water and flour out and collect spores?
<xentrac>and there have been yeast shortages (!!) in many covid-affected places
<xentrac>yeah, but you may not like the results ;)
<rain1>haha
<xentrac>one of my starters went sour, so I'm going to try making some sourdough bread today
<xentrac>I hate sourdough but maybe Mina will like it
<xentrac>In Derctuo I want to include executable versions of a bunch of foundational mathematics stuff
<xentrac>with axioms and proofs if I can figure out how to write a proof assistant, but at least calculations
<rain1>that sounds super cool
<rain1>there's so much proof assistant stuff, we did get j-bob running on top of my scheme interp on gio's asmc
<nikita`>yeast.. yeah. my friend got a package of yeast send halfway through germany because it was easier to get for a friend in their small state
<nikita`>idk if it changed, but it's wild how many people just jumped on yeast
<xentrac>yeah, yeast and flour are suddenly much more popular
<xentrac>I made six loaves of bread out of a single gram of yeast before I let my starter die :(
<nikita`>flour is okay for a while now, since stores made it more regulated
<xentrac>more regulated how? and where?
<nikita`>Northrhine Westfalia, at least in the region I'm in (Ruhrarea). some (most?) supermarkets only allow small numbers per person buying them (like 3x flour, etc)
<nikita`>4 weeks in or so: https://www.instagram.com/p/B9oucFqhobD/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet (flour and sugar: only 2 bags per shopper)
<lfam>There are flour and yeast shortages in the US too
<xentrac>nikita`: you might want to start stocking up; rationing and price controls often presage shortages
<xentrac>one cubic meter of flour is almost 700 kg, which is two person-years worth of calories
<xentrac>and in most countries is fortified with most of the essential vitamins so you won't get pellagra or beriberi if you don't have anything better to eat
<xentrac>there are some notes in Dercuano on this; empty plastic coke bottles and drinking-water bottles are hermetically sealed and proof against ants and weevils and, over short periods of time, moisture
<rain1>I love that dercuano talks about this stuff
<xentrac>I'm glad :)