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larsbrinkhoffon Xorshift Generators

LLMs adopted phrases from humans. But now humans adopt phrases from LLMs.

larsbrinkhoffon Xorshift Generators

Xorshift-36 for the PDP-10, with help from Sebastiano Vigna.

https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/xoroshiro-36

larsbrinkhoffon Starring the Computer

This says PDP-7. https://www.reddit.com/r/westworld/comments/56tkt8/what_prog...

larsbrinkhoffon A brief tour of the PDP-11, the most influential minicomputer of all time (2022)

Then maybe also give a nod to the LINC, showing DEC a small 12-bit computer could be made.

larsbrinkhoffon A brief tour of the PDP-11, the most influential minicomputer of all time (2022)

BASIC was developed on GE mainframes.

larsbrinkhoffon Chaosnet (1981)

Chaosnet was inspired by the experimental 3 Mbits/s Ethernet in use at Xerox PARC at the time. Experimental Ethernet has a 8-bit node address; Chaosnet has 16 bits, of which 8 is network and another 8 is the node. The Chaosnet data rate is 4 Mbits/s.

On top of the hardware protocol, Chaosnet also defined the higher-level transport and session layer protocol. Applications are addressed by a name string rather than a port number; e.g. "TELNET" instead of 23. This protocol was retained when the NIC hardware was replaced with stock Ethernet.

larsbrinkhoffon Chaosnet (1981)

Chaosnet in active use, mostly on emulators: https://chaosnet.net/

Lispm, PDP-10, PDP-11, VAX.

larsbrinkhoffon Chaosnet (1981)

Yes, and in Ethernet frames as EtherType 0x0804.

larsbrinkhoffon Talking to strangers at the gym

"Her barbell is a special women's barbell."

FYI, it was probably just a regular women's weightlifting barbell. They are somewhat lighter, and have a thinner grip. Maybe she's serious about her weightlifting training.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_weightlifting#Barbell

larsbrinkhoffon Hand Drawn QR Codes (2025)

By the way, I also coded a QR symbol generator in PDP-10 assembly language.

https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/src/lars/qrcode.8

larsbrinkhoffon Hand Drawn QR Codes (2025)

I hand drew this on a whiteboard. It was a lot more work than I anticipated.

http://lars.nocrew.org/tmp/qr.png

larsbrinkhoffon 5x5 Pixel font for tiny screens

The LINC minicomputer operating system LAP6 came with a 4x5 font, but it didn't have lower case.

larsbrinkhoffon Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

It's built into the Unix terminal driver. Control-U is the default, but it can be changed with e.g. "stty kill". Libraries like readline also support it.

larsbrinkhoffon Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

Just type Control-U once.

larsbrinkhoffon SBCL: A Sanely-Bootstrappable Common Lisp (2008) [pdf]

https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/2028903268265672728

larsbrinkhoffon SBCL: A Sanely-Bootstrappable Common Lisp (2008) [pdf]

Jonathan Blow: "It’s about a compiler written in Python FFS."

larsbrinkhoffon Steel Bank Common Lisp

https://www.sbcl.org/history.html

https://cmucl.org/doc/cmucl-history.html

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

larsbrinkhoffon Steel Bank Common Lisp

SBCL has been in the works since 1980.

larsbrinkhoffon Show HN: R3forth, a ColorForth-inspired language with a tiny VM

Source: "The Invention of Forth", by Chuck Moore. https://colorforth.github.io/HOPL.html

larsbrinkhoffon Show HN: Micropolis/SimCity Clone in Emacs Lisp

Emacs is needed because it provides Emacs Lisp.

larsbrinkhoffon Show HN: R3forth, a ColorForth-inspired language with a tiny VM

Forth was invented before Moore worked at NRAO. Granted, it was gradually expanded from a very small interpreter, so it's hard to say exactly when it became "Forth" as we mean it today.

larsbrinkhoffon Show HN: Micropolis/SimCity Clone in Emacs Lisp

Sorry, I don't know anything about Emacs graphics. Some people confuse me with larsi, but I'm not that guy.

larsbrinkhoffon Show HN: Micropolis/SimCity Clone in Emacs Lisp

Lisp dialects have diverged quite a bit, and it would be a lot of work to bridge the differences to a degree approaching 100%. 90% is easy, but only works for small trivial programs.

I say this, having written a "95%" Common Lisp for Emacs (still a toy), and successfully ran an old Maclisp compiler and assembler in Common Lisp.

https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/emacs-cl

https://github.com/PDP-6/ITS-138/blob/master/tools/maclisp.l...

larsbrinkhoffon Show HN: Micropolis/SimCity Clone in Emacs Lisp

Having read that, I'm even less convinced it's not more than a toy.

larsbrinkhoffon Show HN: Micropolis/SimCity Clone in Emacs Lisp

I don't see how unexec would help with "decoupling the core from Emacs" since the core is written in Emacs Lisp.

larsbrinkhoffon Show HN: Micropolis/SimCity Clone in Emacs Lisp

I think misinterpreting the "el" as Spanish is fun. In that vein, your game could be called ElCiudad.

larsbrinkhoffon Show HN: Micropolis/SimCity Clone in Emacs Lisp

Portability across Lisp dialects is usually not a thing. Even Emacs Lisp and Common Lisp which are arguably pretty close rarely if ever share code.

You could make a frontend for dialect A to run code from dialect B. Those things have been toyed with, but never really took off. E.g. cl in Emacs can not accept real Common Lisp code.

I'm not arguing against the idea, I'm just curious how it would work because I see no realistic way to do it.

larsbrinkhoffon Show HN: Micropolis/SimCity Clone in Emacs Lisp

How would it be run without Emacs?

You might point out that there are things like elisp.lisp that purports to run Emacs Lisp in Common Lisp, but I'm not sure that's viable for anything but trivial programs. There's also something for Guile, but I remain unconvinced.