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fuster

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Atari 800XL Remake 3 years ago

My first computer! Lots of fond memories. Loading programs from a cassette in particular sticks in my head.

This one absolutely kills me. Why do my kids need Microsoft accounts for this? Their official instructions ask for DOB and require checking some box about allowing my kids to sign into "third-party applications". Not to mention all the legal crap I'll have to agree to, settings to scrutinize and opt-out of to ensure privacy, etc. I am this close to just telling them that they're going to have to abandon their favorite game for something else.

I think there is the question of what people would do with the money they save by buying only the entry-level car. Would everyone really just save the money? I expect people would just spend it on something else (that maybe has more effective advertising, even if via word-of-mouth or something else). So spending would remain roughly the same. I don't have any hard research I can personally point to though.

ECC matters 6 years ago

Pretty sure most memory test tools like memtest86 write the memory and then read it back shortly thereafter in relatively small blocks. This makes the window for errors to be introduced dramatically smaller. Most memory in a computer is not being continually rewritten under normal use.

I did FPGA development for a few years a little over a decade ago. I recently came back to it for a project after doing software and just wow--the tooling is still absolutely awful. Possibly worse than before. Vivado in particular seems almost designed to foil version control systems. Which files actually contain user input and are necessary to rebuild a project? Why would you want to keep source and configuration files separate from derived objects? Entire swaths of documentation and examples become immediately obsolete with each new tool version. Not to mention infuriating bugs at every turn.

Still using my 48G today. I used to have a 48GX as well but some (not old!) batteries leaked and ruined it.

In high school I wrote some RPL for it that would use a small 9V-powered 2400bps modem to dial into a local BBS and download my mail.

I think it's a little of column A and a little of column B. Just a few weeks ago I had two back-to-back $400+ fraudulent online charges on my card, but due to alerts I discovered it within 20 minutes of them happening. I immediately called my bank and notified them that they were fraudulent. Apparently they didn't bother to do anything for weeks because 1) the charges still went from pending to posted several days later 2) the vendors were apparently not notified through some other method because they shipped the products and 3) the charges showed up on my bill (although later I received credits when they completed their "investigation."). So as far as I can tell the vendors got left holding the bag even though the bank knew the charges were bad. I know that the vendors shipped the equipment because at least one of them contested the fraud by submitting proof of delivery from the shipper (to the wrong address)...