apricot

A USB 2.0 port? 47 Wh battery? 4.4 lb? What is this, 2010?

Just tried to go to the site, got the "You broke reddit!" page. They don't know how right they are.

> The keyboard was the deciding factor in my last laptop purchase

I'm looking for a laptop, and keyboard quality is also one of my top priorities. One of my criteria is FULL-SIZE ARROW KEYS. I don't know how people use their computers nowadays, but arrow keys are something I use a lot, and I cannot understand why laptop makers decided to make the up and down arrows the smallest keys on the keyboard. That makes no sense whatsoever.

Sadly, the only laptops with full size arrow keys I found are gaming laptops (disqualified because they're heavy, expensive and have bad battery life), some large laptops with a number pad (which I dislike because it makes for an off-center keybaord) and some Thinkpads -- which have something like 3/4-size arrow keys, better than most but not what I would prefer.

If this laptop comes with an optional keyboard with full-size arrow keys, I will probably buy one.

(I also had similar problems when I wanted to buy a regular mouse with three buttons (index, middle, ring finger) plus a wheel. Went through several gaming and ergonomic monstrosities before finding my holy grail -- 3DConnexion CADMouse Wireless. Not affiliated, just a satisfied customer).

If someone reading this knows of a modern ultrabook-format laptop with decent battery life, at least 1920x1200 screen, good Linux compatibility and a keyboard with full size arrow keys, I will be eternally grateful.

I remember seeing Sun Remarketing ads in the late 1980s and wondering how they got all those Lisa computers to sell. It's great getting to see and hear the man behind the company.

What's to stop someone who carries a phone from turning it off before entering the cafe? You can read those texts later.

You can switch between the point and comma decimal separators by turning the calculator off, holding down the "." key, turning it back on, then releasing the "." key.

As a math professor, I had an epiphany about the word "easily" several years ago. In my course notes, I used that word to mean "I guarantee you don't need any additional ideas here, just do the obvious thing." Nothing more was meant.

But I realized that many students either didn't think the obvious thing was really that obvious, or maybe realized it but were reticent to follow that path because it invoved some tedious work and the prof said it was easy, so that couldn't be it.

Many students were also intimidated by that word, as if I were saying to them "if you don't find this easy, you shouldn't be here".

So I went on a deleting spree, removing most instances of "easy", "simple", and "just a matter of", and replacing them with a clearer explanation of what to do. My notes got better as a result. Less filler, less intimidation, more useful details.

Hello there. I'm writing this on a Thinkpad x220 from 2011.

The world runs on old Thinkpads.

I paid extra to get a 16:10 monitor instead of a 16:9 monitor at similar specs back in 2009 or so. Those extra pixels of vertical space really come in handy! I'm still using the same monitor today (a Dell U2410).

I'm slightly disappointed all that clicking doesn't bring you to a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard."

I don't buy it. The FBI found his code sheet that he made, and tracked him down, and asked people about him. This is an investigation, and it's about him. The fact that they thought he was a Japanese spy simply means that they made the wrong assumption about the person they were investigating.

I am reminded of the (probably apocryphal) story about a logician asking for a visa to enter the US for a conference. When he got to the question "Do you plan to overthrow the United States Government by force or violence?" he hesitated and then answered "violence".

As someone who tried to use HyperCard and, after much lost time, went back to more traditional programming tools, I agree with your assessment. The idea behind HyperCard was neat, but HyperCard itself made it easy to write simple programs with lots of cute window dressing, and impossible to write complex ones.

Without needing to commit many facts to memory, one nevertheless needs to know which facts are known, and how to get to them if need be. Otherwise all the time will be spent reinventing the wheel.

Maybe eventually: https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/casio-smartwatch-22-07-2022/

Gonna need some creative solutions for graphics rendering, though.

Most of the time, I use dmenu_run (bound to super-R) for launching usual applications, and the menu for seldom-used ones.

Thanks. Do you think the Nibbler would be compatible with Ben Eater's 555-based clock? I think it would be instructive to run it at slow speeds and use LEDs to see how the signals propagate.

What would you say was the hardest part of building the computer? How many breadboards did you end up using?

I was thinking of doing the same thing with my son (breadboarding the Nibbler). He has built a virtual computer with nandgame.com but asked me if he could build a real one. The nand game computer is 16-bit and would be a nightmare to build from TTL, but the Nibbler looks doable. This would be my largest breadboarding project by far, though, and I would appreciate any hints you could give me, especially regarding how to test the circuit while building it.

Just saying slanted is not problematic. 眼 would be.

Society often prevents people from pursuing their happiness, when such pursuit would be harmful to others. This doesn't mean the pursuit of happiness isn't important, only that it isn't an absolute.

Fully agree that reading K&R is a must, because it puts C in context, it gives you the background that explains why C is like it is. Also, as a non-trivial bonus, it teaches you, by example, how to write great technical documentation.

Not even a proper keyboard like they did for the 25th anniversary. Boo.

Same here. My blood pressure rises every time I have to type on a laptop that isn't my x220. Please give us laptops with real keyboards.

Hot dog. I dreamed of writing something like this, and this guy actually goes and does it. Mad props.

I was this >< close to doing the same, but chickened out at the last minute. Shouldn't have. Oh well, I'll be there for sure at Knuth90.

But you get to brag that you use TAOCP on a regular basis.

My son just finished 9th grade and wanted to know about machine language and assembly language. I got him a Digirule 2U from bradsprojects and it clicked immediately. He wrote his first programs by hand and bit-banged them from the front panel, just like I once did on a Cosmac ELF. He found bugs and patched his programs. By playing with it, he learned about addressing modes, self-modifying code, the usefulness of a stack for implementing function calls... all of this he taught himself, in the space of a few afternoons. And just as he understood that programming like this was becoming very tedious, I showed him a symbolic assembler.

> You wear a name tag to the pub, or supermarket?

Yes, but I don't realize it.

I agree with the author that recursive data structures are a good starting point from which to teach recursion. My favorite example is writing a program that computes the disk space used in a directory, including all of its subdirectories. It's very practical and immediately interesting to students, and they are motivated to understand why it works.

It also helps if students have been exposed to the idea of recursion in math, for example by sequences where a_n is defined in terms of a_{n-1}, and/or proofs by induction.