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Tiles were comparably slow to draw. Windows 3.1 and maybe more recent Windows had a background option called "patterns". These are 8x8 patterns of black-over-something. Second color is customizable. It could be white, but also something else. EGA/VGA hardware specific is that 8 pixel wide repeating stuff can be drawn relatively quickly. Patterns were not inside files. They are probably inside registry? Or ini files?

Whatever. The end result is that patterns are forgotten and omitted from retro background collections.

When I could run Windows 3.1, I had no multimedia thing. I have found PC Speaker driver somewhere, and it could play event sounds like start-up, but could not play in ordinary player. Same WAV in player won't play because it is not "event sound". And no MIDI of course. Windows 3.1 was somewhere around, but it was nothing to do there. Graphics on EGA was slow. Windows 3.1 was telling us: if you want your programs to work fast, write them for bare metal, and we were using bare metal programs in DOS and writing bare metal programs for DOS.

First time I heard MIDI was Windows 98 already. Graphics of Windows was still slow compared to DOS, but Windows 98 offered more experience. Other developers were raising questions why do they write slow programs for Windows when they could write fast programs for DOS. From times of sound card arrival I recall that there was a bridge between CD-ROM and soundcard, and DOS Navigator could control playback of CD tracks, and that was they way we had music for ordinary activity.

Most memories about MIDI are related to custom Duke Nukem 3D maps. Custom maps sometimes included custom graphics in ART files and custom music in MIDI format. Duke Nukem 3D is the most recognized MIDI player. In Windows I could download Macromedia Flash file, observe the slide show, think "guys, when will you learn to program?" Exit Windows, run Duke Nukem 3D, wonder why can some programmers deliver real time 3D graphics, and other programmers cannot even draw 2D. Oh, and MIDI plays in the background because Duke Nukem 3D music is MIDI.

unable to keep its own top tech talent supportive of their own government

Government did much to turn them away. And with regards to Makh messanger. Patriotic tech talents are supposed to be interested in Elbrus 2000 PC and Aurora mobile OS. Does Makh messenger work on something Russian? No, Makh does not work on anything Russian. So what makes Makh Russian? We don't get it. It's some another Russia that we don't belong to. Our Russia is Elbrus 2000 PC and Aurora mobile OS. And software from Astra group. People behind Elbrus 2000 support orthodoxal christianity, and people behind Astra group are for great Soviet past. They call one of Astra Linux releases "Leningrad". The proper name of what is currently known as "Saint-Petersburg."

Makh is from some commercial group that does not care about our values. Virtually openly violates traditional values. They are from VK group, and VK hosts VKFest, an open air for youth with rotten words, furnication songs, all that stuff.

Our Russia and their Russia don't mix like water and oil.

For military there is another communication network called Свод (Svod, Arch). It was 4 years late to the party, but at least goes in now.

There is a real world alternative to Markdown. Ada programming language standard is defined in a text format that is converted to TXT, HTML and PDF. Tools can compare different Ada standard versions, sometimes several versions, producing multi colored documents.

Sources of standard: http://www.ada-auth.org/arm-files/2022-SRC.zip

Format tool can be found here: http://www.ada-auth.org/arm.html#Format_Tool

Sample output with edits: http://www.ada-auth.org/standards/22aarm/html/AA-5-2.html

Red color is for Ada 2012 -> Ada 2012 TC1 diff, green color is for Ada 2012 TC1 -> Ada 2022 diff.

LibreOffice can export into PDF with embedded source document. This PDF can be opened for editing in LibreOffice. I think, they should make more use of this feature. Signature can be applied to PDF half which is definite enough

Locked bootloader was making sense when PC was a huge investment, and the whole household was sharing it. Windows XP introduced fast account switching. And Windows still has it, but do you remember when was the last time you left your session active locked out and allowed someone else to log in to the same PC? Is there any other user at all on your current home PC? PC was standing for personal computer long before it was, but then it became. We don't share PC anymore in average.

Not only we don't share PC anymore, but PCs started to share us. We possess several PCs per single person, and we needed Dropbox to manage files on multiple PCs. Dropbox can be perceived as second turning point in time, and it was more than decade ago. Now it's one goal = one device era. We buy device and we sincerely don't intend to install anything else on it. We don't risk our data using NTFS shrinking tools to make spare room for another filesystem. We don't dual boot losing access to programs in another partition. There are ways to mount NTFS in other OS and vice versa, so documents may stay accessible, but programs are not runnable. This is now ridiculous. We just buy two, three, whatever devices and have all programs runnable simultaneously.

If we need something from another OS, we'll precisely buy compatible hardware without locked bootloaders or any other possible obstacle which are numerous. To name a few.

For DOS retrogaming we need DOS ISA DMA sound, and we pick PC with ISA slot and making sure motherboard chipset has DMA on ISA, which is not true on latest chipsets. For another DOS retrogaming option we consider VDMSound, but last OS to support it was Windows XP, and we choose hardware that is Windows XP compatible. Most likely UEFI-only boot will be a problem for Windows XP. For Mavericks Forever we are not going to look for random incompatible Mac. That is going to be either real compatible Mac selected from known list, or else compatible Hackintosh. On Hackintosh there was a big problem with software upgrade, but there will be no upgrades for Mavericks Forever. Tim Cook drives company away in direction we don't appreciate, and Mavericks Forever stays forever the same version.

Nowadays people are not using OS anyway. Nowadays people are using browser. I wish I could drag and drop documents in Mavericks Forever like I did in 2007. But document is now likely to be draw io, rectangular embedding for browser that cannot support drag and drop outside its rectange. And so messenger is also rectangular embedding for browser, not respecting Mac OS X multi-window paradigm, not supporting previously established gestures. In 2007 I thought that Qt programs on Mac were ugly. Those happy days I have not seen Electron yet.

People I know often report that they got rid from "dust collector", the PC. They are now all-Android. As time goes by, it is harder and harder to find someone with PC. So whatever Microsoft preinstalls or bootlocks on PCs, it goes to people less and less.

It does not behave identically.

I have MultiWAN on OPNsense. My PC IP is always 192.168.0.12. My router decides which upstream it should go. If I go full IPv6, router should derive double IPv6 from both WANs and if main upstream goes down, stop advertising IPv6 from main upstream. Or stop advertising gateway. I don't know what is the right IPv6 way of doing MultiWAN.

Not only PC may change IP, but also servers. Legacy IPv4 DNS can be extended to IPv6, but that mechanical action is not flexible enough. With IPv6 we need to be able to mass replace IPv6 /64 prefix leaving all suffixes intact. We probably need /64 prefix alias system. Software is not prepared for this. In IPv4 SNAT and DNAT were being these "aliases". If NAT is not an option anymore, then DNS must step in.

For many server software it just not possible to listen on multiple IPv6 address. Last time I tried MySQL, it just could not listen on multiple addresses. I could not make it listen on IPv4 and IPv6, specifying two addresses. MySQL server wanted just one address. This address could be [::], which means all interfaces and all protocols. And Linux implements some stupid hack to accept IPv4 connections to IPv6 socket. And Windows Vista also adopted this brainrot. But this is all wrong. Servers have to learn to listen to multiple IPs. This is normal. And for good IPv6 servers should learn to not only listen on multiple IPs, most wanted multiple IPv6, but also rebind listeners on the fly. If I got disconnected from ISP, reconnected by DHCPv6, and ISP assigned another IPv6 prefix, then DynDNS should update all my zones to new /64 prefix, and all servers in my network should rebind listeners.

Or else we may abandon all that TRUE IPv6 philosophy and do SNAT in DNAT in IPv6 just like in IPv4, but with wider address space. But then again, software (another software) is not quite ready for this. Software is expecting public IPv6 address to be just reachable. And private IPv6 address to be just unreachable.

Yeah. Advanced Direct Connect p2p is using TIGER Tree Hash. Gnutella2 p2p is using TIGER Tree Hash. There is BitTorrent format extension to include per-file TTH, implemented by EAD TorrentBuild. For best performance we should also get rid of pointless per-block hashes in torrent files.

TTH is universal for p2p, and yet developers choose another hashes, making their tools not ready for p2p.

My lovely Mercurial is unfortunately also not ready for p2p

I have updated and tried to run something. There are apparently three-chunk ids and two-chunk ids. two-chunk ids work. Three-chunk ids don't.

atdr.meo.ws/archiveteam/reddit-grab

I cannot install this one to Proxmox VE, for instance

UPD. Query tag fails, but fetch is successful if I write "latest" tag

I have noticed author uses values 0-255 for shades of grey. When 0-255 range is used, this is usually nonlinear scale with average gamma 2.2. And de facto there is a standard function that maps 0-31 to linear function and the rest to power 2.4. Average power 2.2. Checkmate black 0 and white 255 is equavalent to uniform grey shade 185 or 186 as opposed to 127 or 128. Proper calculations should be done in linear space, and 16 bits per channel is desired at least.