*banned 4 MarkDown love* @design_RG@qoto.org

@_lunawinters Can relate to that. It's about zero Celsius outside, a bit grey, but nice here at the sofa with my laptop, Firefox with a zillion tabs, coffee on tap.

Yes, please.

@Warhorse Thanks for posting it. Great, if very sad, story.

Similarly to what happened to Alan Turing, lead to suicide by harassment over his sexual orientation. A huge loss.

@freemo @raining_night
A relevant quote from an awesome The Guardian article:

"Aside from the energy required to manufacture and maintain those devices, the data they produce will live in the carbon-intensive cloud. Data centers currently consume 200 terawatt hours per year – roughly the same amount as South Africa. Anders Andrae, a widely cited researcher at Huawei, tells me that number is likely to grow 4-5 times by 2030. This would put the cloud on par with Japan, the fourth-biggest energy consumer on the planet."

Full article, long read warning (it's worth it!) here:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/17/tech-climate-change-luddites-data

@freemo @raining_night Fediverse doesn't have the massive datacenters the big nets have, spread out all over the world.

So we need to be patient, a little.

My idea of Heaven.

@Full_marx An awesome article on The Guardian (my favourite newspaper,) which is VERY relevant.

"To decarbonize we must decomputerize: why we need a Luddite revolution:"by Ben Tarnoff

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/17/tech-climate-change-luddites-data

@Full_marx I did read an awesome article on The Guardian (my favourite newspaper, the first one I open anyday) which is VERY relevant.

Will need to post it later as single post to try and get people's attention to read it - I think it's important!

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/17/tech-climate-change-luddites-data

@Full_marx @freemo Great post, thanks for the mention, boss.

@Full_marx We might end up on a dystopic future where energy is at a premium, and you might have to pedal your bike as a generator to power up some device. No internet, or only limited local mesh networks.

Efficiency would be a priority once again.

I find it very inspiring to learn how people worked with what they had and built the roots of what we have today.

There are some great docus and even feature films talking about the Bletchley park code breaking groups, where Alan Turing worked and created some specially designer devices to help agilize code breaking. The "Bombes".

The very first electronic computer was the Colossus, British and from that era. Never spoken or mentioned much since ALL Bletchley work was classified until the mid 70s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bletchley_Park

@_lunawinters
You are very welcome.

Maybe look for "A Discovery of Witches" to watch too, once you have time?

I love that series. Edit: here!

https://ww6.123-movies.com/episode/a-discovery-of-witches-1x1/watching.html

@Karthikdeva

@Full_marx I am suspect so say, since I am very fond of History, including Tech and Computing History.

If you ever visit the San Francisco Bay area, try to visit the Computer Museum in Mountainview, California. Yeah, that city, now Googles flagship address. (the GooglePlex is nearby and also worth a visit to gawk)

https://computerhistory.org/

Plan to spend a day on it!

@Full_marx Found a good definition for Register :

http://foldoc.org/register

^--- This site is a treasure.

@Full_marx My understanding is that a register is just a storage location very close to the processor core. You can hold numbers, like the value of a variable, and call it in when needed.

Heading there now, placing a link here for reference.

http://foldoc.org/The%20story%20of%20Mel,%20a%20Real%20Programmer

But I will need to go and re-read the story to refresh my mind.

@Full_marx "A 32 x 32 core memory plane storing 1024 bits (or 128 bytes) of data."

I missed adding the photo caption.

That whole module won't hold one average Tweet post, even the short old 140 chars max ones. This is 128 Bytes total.

No bloated software in those days. 😈

@_lunawinters @Karthikdeva Yes, not supposed to, but it is.

Some other sites are sketchy, but this one seems clean and doesn't force you to buy access or do any other things. The programme aired on commercial networks in USA, and I am not sure if it is on netflix atm or not. Great show.

"Magnetic-core memory was the predominant form of random-access computer memory for 20 years between about 1955 and 1975. Such memory is often just called core memory, or, informally, core.

Core memory uses toroids (rings) of a hard magnetic material (usually a semi-hard ferrite) as transformer cores, where each wire threaded through the core serves as a transformer winding. Three or four wires pass through each core.

Each core stores one bit of information. A core can be magnetized in either the clockwise or counter-clockwise direction. The value of the bit stored in a core is zero or one according to the direction of that core's magnetization."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic-core_memory

#IT #Tech #vintage @Full_marx

@_lunawinters @Karthikdeva Great quotes. Something that begs to be on a book for careful thinking about it.

Aaditi, pick your episodes here:

https://www.the123movies.gdn/series/mr-robot/

@lertsenem Thank you, good points. I am new here and learning by the day.

Hashtags definitely beg for a filter. The sheer ugliness on the text is awful. Thinking of the hashing and wasted computing effort for something that will never be searched for, dismaying.