eggy

Congrats! Looks great coming from someone who had a Commodore PET 2001 in 1977. I have been toying with KolibriOS and MenuetOSx64, but I would sure like to try rolling my own OS. You did it! Keep truckin'!

Wow, I was looking for my emails. I remember going to HOPE in 1994 at the Hotel Pennsylvania in NYC. Among all the talks I remember Eric Hughes' talk on cryptography. Talks of working with banking and others to bring cryptography and anonymous transactions to fruition almost 2 decades before the Satoshi paper and blockchain. I attended several 2600 meetings at the food court in the Citicorp building before then. Amazing times! There was also a talk at HOPE on controlling the world with your parallel port. This launched me into doing controls for animatronic and window display circuits - the Christmas windows at Saks and Lord & Taylor later in the 90s. Red boxing with tape recorders at payphones and then Radio Shack came out with an affordable speed dialer. Simply replace a crystal on the circuit and program 1,2,3, or 4 quarter tones on it, and voila, free calls from payphones. I wrote a simple OTP in C back then. I'll have to wade through this. I don't think I posted on this group, but I was teaching myself cryptography at the time. I bought a hardcover of Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier around 1995/96...I grew up at the poverty line in the late 60s in Brooklyn, and hacking and the potential of computers and programming enthused me and instilled a sense in me that I could not only be a part of the larger world outside of my parochial surroundings, but possibly be a creator of change in it for the good of the world at large.

I'll have a better look later at the methods and sources used, but given the US crack down on border policies from the previous minimal effort achieved by the Biden administration in securing our borders, this is to be expected. It's been less than three months from Trump taking office. Like the stock market this will swing back over the year. The US voted for change with borders being a top issue. It is going to take a while to come back to center from the actions to effect the change. Axios is not exactly a great objective source as rated by third-party media watchers as being left leaning, Soros funded. It would be great to see comparable stats from the UK and Canada and Germany where I'd expect the graph to be like the US Biden-era policies. Seeing how the UK and the others have been flooded with immigration this past decade, I'd expect to see similar "falling off a cliff" stats once they tighten their borders and policies. I see this as a necessary counter swing of the pendulum when you go from almost no scrutiny to normal scrutiny at the borders. It will stabilize to a norm, so I am not concerned. I had very bad border experiences in the late 80s in England and France, so I have some emotional experience to temper my opinion here. It sucks to be singled out unfairly or due to operator error in filling out forms, but how just how many Canadians have had this bad experience in the past 3 months compared to the 17 years of data previous? Was the reporting and SOPs of the border equivalent for statistical purposes?

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson was a good book that goes into what happens when things change between the Earth and Moon.

Amazing work, and certainly for such a tentacled project good enough is good enough. I only brought up Gleam vs. Elixir because I am going to pick one to learn this year. I've played with LFE too, and as I wrote earlier, I played with Erlang for a bit.

I've been involved in many sectors, but the current application is for show control software to operate stage lifts, performer flying rigs, scenic winches, car catapults, and on and on. Overhead hoisting and effects with people requires very high safety standards, and at the moment, most of this type of software is audited to decent safety standards, but not formally verified the way applications are in Ada/SPARK for the aerospace, railway, and military sectors. The tooling for SPARK has been tried and tested. I have been designing, building, installing, and maintaining specialized equipment for almost 30 years in the water, on land, in the air, and even in space.

A great first step in getting Rust in the high-integrity arena with the likes of Ada/SPARK. First, a specification, and then tooling to allow for formal verification ala SPARK. My current project chose SPARK due to its tooling and legacy applications in the high-integrity, high-assurance demands of the mission-critical sector. Hopefully, there will be a stable version to avoid having to update the Rust spec. too often. SPARK 2014 is the latest version, and it is based on Ada 2012. Stability leads to wider adoption for these types of applications. I also like the cross-pollination going on between Rust/Ada/SPARK.

It depends on what “sooner” means to you. Gleam catches more before the code runs; Elixir catches them when they happen but recovers gracefully. If you’re paranoid about bugs reaching users, I would think Gleam’s your pick, no? If you trust your tests and love dynamic freedom, Elixir should be fine. I don't have much experience with either language. I did more in Erlang 8 years ago, but not much. I am on the edge of choosing Gleam over Elixir. It's mainly subjective: I prefer the syntax in Gleam, although I liked the original ML-like syntax when it first came out.

Would Gleam be practical for a similar application aside from the OTP/BEAM runtime? I am guessing you'd have to leverage Elixir libraries that are not present for Gleam yet, and you might have slower compile times due to static typing, but you'd catch runtime errors sooner. Would it be more of a debugging vs. fast dynamic iteration trade-off? I am looking to settle on either Gleam or Elixir. I liked Gleam's original ML syntax before, but I like static typing. Thoughts? I am replacing C with Zig, and I am brushing up on my assembly by adding ARM to my x64 skill set.

In the summer in the inner city of Brooklyn, you would be sweeping all day, everyday. NYC was a cesspool in the 70s. Newpapers blowing around, overfilled trash receptacles, insufficient street cleaning, and the public's general lack of respect for their fellow denizens. Homicides were at 1890 in 1989 in NYC compared to <400 nowadays and the population was a lot smaller then.

"won" was past tense. Norway had so many Tesla's when my son visited there due to subsidies and green consciousness. The Tesla Y model was leading the EV sales in the EU as of recently, but I don't have the latest data.

People typically do not compare the opposing tariffs, only the US. Europe charges 10% on top of the 10% imposed on all cars imported to the EU. The US charges only 2% on EU car imports, higher for light trucks. I believe in a free market, but also leveling the playing field, so hopefully we will raise the tariffs equally on EU car imports.

And your 100% import on EV figure is only for China if I recall correctly, not from the EU. It is to counter Chinese unfair trade practices. I am curious about the BYD EVs from China though, and I would like to test drive one, especially after being in and driving my son's Tesla to compare them. I'd still get a Tesla, since more than 50% of the parts are sourced in NA and assembly (Fremont, CA, and Austin, TX) for the main models for sale here in the US (batteries from Nevada's Gigafactory).

Yuck. We used to put the sprinkler cap on the johnny pump (Brooklyn for fire hydrant back then) and run on the curb and into the street with bare feet. In the early 70s there was a lot of dog crap and broken glass, since beverages were in glass or heavy cans vs. plastic. I sliced my feet on glass a half dozen times over the years. Lucky I didn't get hepatitis or other nasty stuff. I do have a very robust immunity system though ;)

I would guess the +31% in Europe is also due to the stricter emissions standards, Euro 6d, and government subsidies are driving that figure in my opinion along with climate change fears. Elon already made, played, and won the EV market, and he has a lot more going on, so the devaluation of Tesla stock, the world's number one car predominantly an American-made car (more so than Ford) bumped back up recently, only hurts US pension funds, other investors, and owners. I wonder how Europe's energy production is fairing with the war in Ukraine, and what the total cost of ownership of an EV, Tesla or otherwise, is going to be to own an EV there. After all, they lost 40% of their gas supply. France and Germany have nuclear, but Germany has cut back due to Green party and green initiatives. France is bringing reactors online that were in maintenance and service periods, and they are building new ones by 2035. US gas prices and domestic energy production will ensure that will not be an issue here in the US.

I lived in Java, Indonesia for a year and ran barefoot, and only wore sandals to the mosque. You wash your feet 5x per day for the 5 daily obligatory prayers, so it works out well. An earlier post here about a person barefoot in all seasons and on the subway train, well, that's another story. I grew up in Brooklyn in the 60s through the 80s, and I can't see that at all. But then again, NYC is a lot cleaner now than it was then. My foot spread out and feels so much more usable to grab at the trail and less stiff without pain. I started running barefoot in 2007, but not as frequent or as long as a competitive runner would; it was more of a 30-minute run 3 to 4x per week at a mild pace . I'm 60 now and have no back, knee, foot or other joint pain or soft tissue issues. I did run on the front of my feet, and with a bicycle pedalling type of motion of my feet. Now, I wear Xeros and a cheap rip-off of the Vibram minimal sole shoes for my daily town/city walking and running.

I am just starting out with the ironclad kernel and the gloire OS built on top of it [1,2]. From the web page:

  "Ironclad is a formally verified, real-time capable, UNIX-like operating system kernel for general-purpose and embedded uses. It is written in SPARK and Ada, and is comprised of 100% free software."

I recall AdaCore working with Ferrous Systems a while back. Did anything come of it for rust? I believe one of the non-starters is rust does not have a formal standards specification like C, Common Lisp, or other PLs. It's hard to develop formal verification systems for a moving target.

SPARK has formal verification tools and a legacy of high-integrity applications. The Ironclad kernel is progressing towards a substantially, formally verified kernel written in SPARK. Gloire is an OS implemented on top of Ironclad for PoC.

I have sort of given up on rust, because I just don't find it enjoyable. I am working with Zig. This would be a good direction for Zig to take. Glad to see the effort here. I'll have to check it out a bit more.

[1] https://ironclad.nongnu.org/

[2] https://github.com/Ironclad-Project/Gloire?tab=readme-ov-fil...

I also bought a Vic-20 and later an Amiga 1000. Typing in programs from computer magazines. That's another thing I did working through your book rather than downloading the code. You suggest it in the introduction, and I second that! The only way to embed it into your muscles and brain. I am currently teaching my youngest chess (I'm no great player), and reviewing your code has also been enlightening. Keep it up!

I started programming in 1977/78 in CBM/PET Basic on a Commodore PET 2001 with cassette tape drive and 32k upgrade. I loved those days. My parents didn't understand what the deal was with the costly computer I saved up for at age 13, and why I thought it was so important. It also required many late hours on my part on school nights. I moved on to assembler and C and many other languages over the years. I had a renaissance for the low-level and small thanks to you. Oscar, I worked through your, "Programming Boot Sector Games" with much joy. Your books and writing have brought back some of that nostalgia and fun for me, so thank you for that, and keep it going! It's also resharpened some dead areas and gaps I have sustained from the multiple abstraction layers of today's modern software world.

Nice restoration and article, thanks!

I bought my Amiga 1000 in 1986. I loved it. I was learning animation using Hash Inc's Animation:Master. People get impatient with web page loads today, but boy, waiting for a low-res animation to render could teach you patience!

I had started in 1977 with a Commodore PET 2001, and was a Commodore person until I bought an Apple PowerPC and loaded MkLinux with the Mach microkernel on it. Later Minix was my choice. I always rooted for Minix over Linux years later, and I still think a microkernel is better than a monolithic one.

Sadly, my Amiga 1000 was stolen from my NYC apartment in 1988, while I was at work.They left the HP laser printer which was more valuable at the time. I learned animation, kept up with programming from my PET days, and got into music trackers. I never bought an A2000 or A3000 or had a VideoToaster, although I really wanted one. Apple one the print/graphics market and Commodore lost its multimedia market with it.

The Amiga will always be my favorite Commodore. I had a Vic-20 and a C-128 at one point too.

Cool. I certainly will if I head up there. Probably when the weather warms up ;) Crappiest torpedos? I'd like to know why!

Several countries have implemented large-scale planting efforts: China, Ethiopia, India, Brazil, Australia, Pakistan, and Turkey to name a few. In 2019, Ethiopia claimed to have planted over 350 million trees in a single day as part of a broader initiative to plant 4 billion trees within a year to fight climate change.

Now with the push for memory safe, high-integrity applications, I am looking for a separation kernel or formally verified OS to base my automation software upon. Rust was a contender a few years ago, but with no formal specification standard yet like C++/C, and having a steep learning curve, I decided on SPARK2014/Ada due to the simpler language and formal verification tooling as well as decades of high-integrity software in production. Has anyone worked with either Muen or Ironclad/Gloire? I'd prefer a microkernel vs. monolithic kernel, and I have started looking at Minix3 as a base due to that and its compatibility with a ton of NetBSD packages and great documentation in the form of a textbook. I think choosing Rust for such projects is high-risk given it is not even close to SPARK2014/Ada in this arena.

  https://muen.codelabs.ch/

  https://github.com/Ironclad-Project/Gloire

If it has been underestimated then that means climate models have been using the bad, underestimated data, so they need to be updated and run to see where we are at, corrrect?

I should post my take on this substituting Rust for AI ;)

After my PET 2001 I had purchased in 1977/78, I bought a Commodore Vic-20. Using the book, "Practical Astronomy with Your Calculator", I wrote a program in Vic BASIC which was the same as the PET's to identify the four most prominent moons of Jupiter based on their elliptical plane being on edge when viewed from Earth. I wanted a way of going on my roof in Brooklyn with my small refractor to identify them, so I bought a thermal printer and printed out the primitive graphics on a line for a given time for the next few hours or so of stargazing. I can't remember the printer brand, but it wasn't one of the Apple, Atari, or ZX offerings. Good fun. I have to say, I would use my phone nowadays or my e-ink tablet instead. Not from being 'sucked in' but merely because it would be quick and more accurate and have other uses for the same task like Stellarium!

Funny, I only recently started visiting Connecticut to visit some friends who moved there! Rhode Island, the first to declare independence from England, and the last to ratify the Constitution. Not bad.

The one thing age and experience has taught me is that everyone has a story. I am originally from Brooklyn, but have lived in the Hudson Valley of NY these past 8 years after bouncing around the US and overseas. Where are you?

I am a much better listener nowadays to reap the benefits of others perspectives and experiences. I lost my ego with the birth of my first child decades ago; this was a nice surprise. It helped me to look outside myself more. However, most jobs becomes routine after a while, which causes complacency and accidents. Beginning technical divers follow a Weibull distribution of early incidents due to inexperience. The curve stays low and flat. Even the best experienced divers get complacent and incidents occur at the end of this curve, hopefully not stopping there, which could mean they died, or were scared or injured enough to change their job.

The less glamorous sides of an eclectic CV are that you may be really good at a few things, maybe you've mastered one or two, but you have gaps for sure. You need to leverage the macro view of business and problem solving you have earned and learned from your multiple experiences. I can honestly say I sometimes just jumped due to boredom, but for the most part it was to learn something new that crossed my horizon. The trick is to push horizon.

Currently reading Richard Hamming's, "The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learing to Learn", and it is proving to supports some of my held beliefs, yet it has also exposed some flaws in the mix. Good read.

Happy New Year!

Yes, of course. Most of the jobs I have taken were by word of mouth due to my history in the business, so I had not updated my CV for years. Even then, it was an HR formality. It is only when I reach out to new sectors that I go through the typical job hunting process.

Great advice! I will try trimming my CV/resume. The only rub is people ask, "What did you do those 6 years in between listed jobs?" I realize this can go both good and bad. Thanks!

I'm 60, and my career path has been anything but straight. I've held positions ranging from 3 to 6 years, which count among the longest I've ever had. My resume reads like an adventure story or disaster map, depending on who looks at it: I've been an au pair, worked in bookstores, been a welder, machinist, assistant DBA and front-end programmer, technical diver, industrial rope access technician, and worked at an engineering firm in the entertainment industry. I've also been a project manager, field installer, director of civil works, stage machinery builder, and controls and operations manager, both in the US and internationally.

Back in the 80s and 90s, I was already designing circuits with relays, then moving to microcontrollers like Basic Stamp and PIC chips, long before Arduino became popular. I bought my first computer, a Commodore PET 2001, back in 1977 and taught myself programming from BASIC to assembly, then onto C, Pascal, Lisp, and more. My curiosity led me to self-study artificial life, artificial neural networks, genetic programming, and genetic algorithms during a time when these fields were nascent.

I foresaw the trajectory of technology and its financial promise, but I chose not to settle into a "cube farm", where I felt my intellectual curiosity would be stifled or would not be fair to my employer. Instead, I've run my own companies and worked for others, always learning and adapting. Now, at 60, I find it's tougher to market my broad skill set in an era where tech has become highly specialized. Age can indeed color first impressions too, but remember, your diverse background makes you a macro thinker, which is still highly valued. And you have 15+ years on me.

I keep myself fit, unlike many of my peers, allowing me to take on demanding roles like those long hours on a construction site in Saudi Arabia. You might train anyone to dive or work at height, but the real challenge is what they do once they reach the problem - fixing motors or hydraulic lines under pressure. In 2003/4, I built my own CNC table, an 8x4' router, and developed software to turn black and white photos into bas-relief carvings, inspired by an old NASA algorithm for interpreting single-perspective images of celestial bodies. I wrote it in Blender's Python API. I was one of the first contributors of funds to make Blender opensource.

I don't regret my eclectic choices, but I recognize the need to perhaps find a more stable focus for the next chapter to support my family. Success, for me, has always been about showing up - waking up early, getting ready, and being present. That's 90% of it. The other 10%? It's the unique contribution you make to any team or company. My work history shows few sick days; I once went three years without one, now averaging about two a year. My father, similarly, didn't take a sick day for over 15 years. I think this is easier when you are passionate about your job. At least that's how it works for me.

So, if you're feeling discouraged by an unconventional career path, remember, your journey isn't just about the jobs you've held; it's about the insights, resilience, and adaptability you've gained along the way. Keep moving forward, and let your rich tapestry of experiences guide you. Good luck, and please update us on your progress!

Interesting. How does bird strike on one engine shut down all systems? Aren't there a left/right engine system and an auxillary? The same video was updated today, and he conjectured it may have been they shut the wrong engine down like in a previous Taiwan air incident. They only had 5 min. to do anything according to the timeline.