Technica Cornucopia

[mac_1103]

I am a fan of the Oxford comma...

And when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.

 

[passedpawn]

Boggling numbers!

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-com...l-machine-falls-to-third-place-on-top500-list

exaflop lol. That's a quintillion floating point operations. well, I didn't know what that was either, so of course I looked it up.
My first PC ran at 4.77MHz. 4770000 clocks per second. Not sure if it had a fpu, but I doubt it. See image below. Apparently this predated surface mount components. Gasp! DIPS lol.

My next machine ran at a screaming speed of 16MHz. That one did play some games very well. I'm pretty sure it did not perform single-clock floating point operations. I think there was a '387 coprocessor that you could plug in and get that (from memory, and there was bugs).

Not going through all the machines, but that brings us to today. I have a pretty badass pc that I built myself for more money than I'd like to admit here.

I'll just list the clock speed and not the FLOPS as I have no idea which of these could perform a floating point operation in one processor clock cycle:

PCjr =                   4,770,000
386 =                   16,000,000
Today =              3,000,000,000
El Cap = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

My first job out of college over 20 years ago, I worked for a well-known FPGA vendor. We had a soft core embedded processor IP block for the FPGAs, and the team I was in had a competition to develop the best thing to build around it to showcase the processor. Well, the capability existed to create "custom instructions" in the command set as you could use the rest of the FPGA to be whatever you needed... So we built a floating point arithmetic unit that interfaced via the custom instructions, as the processor didn't have its own built-in floating point unit.

I think the typical timing we'd find using software emulation to perform floating point operations was somewhere in the realm of 1700 CPU cycles. With our unit, we got that down to about 15 IIRC... And of those 15, I think it was only 3 or 4 to actually perform the calculation, the rest was the overhead of passing the command and variables to and from the instruction.

I ended up writing the test program for it. Which was all well and good until we kept getting wrong answers... And I realized that the C compiler wasn't passing variables correctly to the custom instruction. So I had to hand-code that little bit in assembly

 

[PCABrewing]

View attachment 862744

Ouch, that brings back painful memories of rows of little bleeding dots on my thumbs from memory DIPs flipping over while putting pressure on them to load up system boards and expansion cards.
The DIPs came with the pins slightly spread so you had to get one side set in the socket then push a little sideways to align the opposite side before pushing straight down to seat them.
I worked at a computer store and we had a bunch of corporate research centers as customers. They always wanted the full memory load.

I bought my first PC as an employee so I got a nice discount but still paid what even today is an obscene amount for my IBM Model 80 @20MHz and 115 MB hard disk.
But no DOS for me, I bought OS/2 to go with it. Version 1.0 Man I was really cooking with gas then.

After living the joyous life of each OS/2 upgrade up thru Warp 3.0 I made the decision to cut my losses (I don't give up easy).

When I tried to install Warp 3, the system happily began partitioning and copying from the CD to the hard drive, asked me all the config questions, and finally prepared to reboot and finish configuration. This happened in a lightning-fast 90 minutes or so.
The machine ejected the CD, did a reset, and failed to boot because it couldn't find the CD-ROM drive that it just finished loading from. Repeated attempts got the same result. At least they were consistent!
I was an IBM System Support Rep. so I had some inside connections but even they could not figure it out.

The bloom was off the rose.

 

[passedpawn]

My first job out of college over 20 years ago, I worked for a well-known FPGA vendor. We had a soft core embedded processor IP block for the FPGAs, and the team I was in had a competition to develop the best thing to build around it to showcase the processor. Well, the capability existed to create "custom instructions" in the command set as you could use the rest of the FPGA to be whatever you needed... So we built a floating point arithmetic unit that interfaced via the custom instructions, as the processor didn't have its own built-in floating point unit.

I think the typical timing we'd find using software emulation to perform floating point operations was somewhere in the realm of 1700 CPU cycles. With our unit, we got that down to about 15 IIRC... And of those 15, I think it was only 3 or 4 to actually perform the calculation, the rest was the overhead of passing the command and variables to and from the instruction.

I ended up writing the test program for it. Which was all well and good until we kept getting wrong answers... And I realized that the C compiler wasn't passing variables correctly to the custom instruction. So I had to hand-code that little bit in assembly

I have a similar story of hand-coding a 64-bit multiply routine in assembly on some arm processor. It was some embedded video application I was working on (as a consultant) in the 90's. I don't recall exactly why I did it, but either the compiler wouldn't do it at all, or did it wrong, or did it slow.

I'm pretty sure I was smarter back then...

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

But no DOS for me, I bought OS/2 to go with it. Version 1.0 Man I was really cooking with gas then.

After living the joyous life of each OS/2 upgrade up thru Warp 3.0 I made the decision to cut my losses (I don't give up easy).

LOL. I cut my teeth on DOS. At one point I set up a complete batch file menu system for my dad so that all he had to do is type a number and hit enter for whatever program he needed to run.

But then most of my teenage years I spent pissing him off, because each time he learned how to use an OS, I'd change. Oh, Dad, you know how to use Windows 3.11? Let's see if you can figure out OS/2 2.1! Got that down! Let's try Windows 95! Oh, you've figured it out? Time for OS/2 Warp.

I think he was glad I left for college

I have a similar story of hand-coding a 64-bit multiply routine in assembly on some arm processor. It was some embedded video application I was working on (as a consultant) in the 90's. I don't recall exactly why I did it, but either the compiler wouldn't do it at all, or did it wrong, or did it slow.

I'm pretty sure I was smarter back then...

Yeah, it's one of those things in life. Is it helpful to learn assembly in case you need it? Yes. Do you EVER want to actually use it? No.

 

[day_trippr]

This...is very bad.

For the first time ever researchers crack RSA and AES data encryption​

​

"A team of Chinese researchers, led by Wang Chao from Shanghai University, has demonstrated that D-Wave’s quantum annealing computers can crack encryption methods that safeguard sensitive global data."

 

[PCABrewing]

LOL. I cut my teeth on DOS. At one point I set up a complete batch file menu system for my dad so that all he had to do is type a number and hit enter for whatever program he needed to run.

But then most of my teenage years I spent pissing him off, because each time he learned how to use an OS, I'd change. Oh, Dad, you know how to use Windows 3.11? Let's see if you can figure out OS/2 2.1! Got that down! Let's try Windows 95! Oh, you've figured it out? Time for OS/2 Warp.

I think he was glad I left for college



Yeah, it's one of those things in life. Is it helpful to learn assembly in case you need it? Yes. Do you EVER want to actually use it? No.

I thought i was a hot-shoe with DOS intrinsic commands and edlin. I could do about anything I needed from a command line. But 20 years later I worked with a guy that I swear could write user apps with REXX.

I actually liked assembler.
In college did one half of my "Systems Project" in System 370 DOS/VSE assembler. I wrote the inventory management, maintenance and economic order quantity routines in assembler. The other half was COBOL for the operations side with ordering, pick and ship and invoicing.

My partner wrote in COBOL and RPG II for reports and other maintenance tasks.

I lost a few points for my choice to use "Shure-Kill Cat Traps" as a sample inventory item. Professor was a cat lover (I knew that). We still aced the project.

 

[PCABrewing]

This...is very bad.

For the first time ever researchers crack RSA and AES data encryption​

​

"A team of Chinese researchers, led by Wang Chao from Shanghai University, has demonstrated that D-Wave’s quantum annealing computers can crack encryption methods that safeguard sensitive global data."

Really makes me want to put my data in the cloud, or anywhere else connected to the outside world.
I already get several "Settlement Notifications" every year, and they seem to be increasing.
Each one offers a different monitoring service that requires you to put all your critical data into their database!
No Thanks !

 

[PCABrewing]

Does anyone else have a copy of the MS DOS bible Encyclopedia? 1988 Microsoft Press.
I'm talking about the one with the historical account of the birth of MS DOS in the secret room.

 

[Agent]

In my early teens, I was ripping up Starcraft on Windows 98 - offline of course. Rural dial-up was more miss than hit.

Now 25 years later, I'm at work updating our equipment maintenance...on Windows 98. At least our key infrastructure communication software runs on XP.

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

This...is very bad.

For the first time ever researchers crack RSA and AES data encryption​

"A team of Chinese researchers, led by Wang Chao from Shanghai University, has demonstrated that D-Wave’s quantum annealing computers can crack encryption methods that safeguard sensitive global data."

I sent that over to my colleague who is paid [very handsomely] to work on this sort of stuff, and he said it's not significant at all. Academic at this point.

Even as an outsider, nothing in there says that they've been able to break AES-256. It seems to suggest that techniques are getting closer to being able to do so, but not that they're there. More that the "many decades from now" assumption may be shorter than originally thought.

So while I wouldn't say that there's anything good about this, I hesitate to accept that this is "very bad", at least for now. If by "very bad" it means that our current encryption capabilities are woefully inadequate and have already been breached.

Edit: I just looked up said colleague on LinkedIn, and he has a PhD in Electrical & Computer Engineering. So this is a guy with some credibility lol. And dammit, does that mean now I have to start calling him Dr.?

 

[passedpawn]

This...is very bad.

For the first time ever researchers crack RSA and AES data encryption​

​

"A team of Chinese researchers, led by Wang Chao from Shanghai University, has demonstrated that D-Wave’s quantum annealing computers can crack encryption methods that safeguard sensitive global data."

what a coincidence. I'm designing something right now for a client. We literally had a convo about it an hour ago. He insists on AES-128, and I told him a lesser authentication was fine and AES wouldn't stand forever.

 

[passedpawn]

I sent that over to my colleague who is paid [very handsomely] to work on this sort of stuff, and he said it's not significant at all. Academic at this point.

Even as an outsider, nothing in there says that they've been able to break AES-256. It seems to suggest that techniques are getting closer to being able to do so, but not that they're there. More that the "many decades from now" assumption may be shorter than originally thought.

So while I wouldn't say that there's anything good about this, I hesitate to accept that this is "very bad", at least for now. If by "very bad" it means that our current encryption capabilities are woefully inadequate and have already been breached.

Edit: I just looked up said colleague on LinkedIn, and he has a PhD in Electrical & Computer Engineering. So this is a guy with some credibility lol. And dammit, does that mean now I have to start calling him Dr.?

Read the wiki article on MiFare classic, which is used on tons of fare cards and other apps in europe. Hack devices now can clone one in 40ms, remotely lol. I'm no expert on this, don't want to be, but it's one of my jobs right now to bone up on it.

 

[PCABrewing]

I sent that over to my colleague who is paid [very handsomely] to work on this sort of stuff, and he said it's not significant at all. Academic at this point.

Even as an outsider, nothing in there says that they've been able to break AES-256. It seems to suggest that techniques are getting closer to being able to do so, but not that they're there. More that the "many decades from now" assumption may be shorter than originally thought.

So while I wouldn't say that there's anything good about this, I hesitate to accept that this is "very bad", at least for now. If by "very bad" it means that our current encryption capabilities are woefully inadequate and have already been breached.

Edit: I just looked up said colleague on LinkedIn, and he has a PhD in Electrical & Computer Engineering. So this is a guy with some credibility lol. And dammit, does that mean now I have to start calling him Dr.?

It is inevitable....

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

Read the wiki article on MiFare classic, which is used on tons of fare cards and other apps in europe. Hack devices now can clone one in 40ms, remotely lol. I'm no expert on this, don't want to be, but it's one of my jobs right now to bone up on it.

Yeah, my job is to try to be smart enough to understand what the PhD says JUST enough to know how to translate it into what the customer will understand

 

[passedpawn]

Surround audio from my PC: OMG, you'd think I asked for something special.

My mobo has an optical output. Realtek audio hardware. I have a Logitech Z906 5.1 speaker system plugged into the optical output. That system has DTS and Dolby Digital decoders. After a couple of weeks, I gave up. It's gonna have to be simulated surround here. OMG.

So, the "standard" for optical output on a pc's optical output is 2-channel. For reasons i don't know, there needs to be some compression to get more channels than that. Dolby Labs stepped up to the plate and offered... a bazillion different audio standards - dolby pro logic, dolby digital, truehd, atmost, dolby digital +, probably more. I guess hardware/software vendors have to pay licensing fees to decode these.

I believe the Z906 hardware should be able to decode. It has all the dolby trademarks splattered on it's enclosure.

 

[Jonakr]

LOL. I cut my teeth on DOS. At one point I set up a complete batch file menu system for my dad so that all he had to do is type a number and hit enter for whatever program he needed to run.

But then most of my teenage years I spent pissing him off, because each time he learned how to use an OS, I'd change. Oh, Dad, you know how to use Windows 3.11? Let's see if you can figure out OS/2 2.1! Got that down! Let's try Windows 95! Oh, you've figured it out? Time for OS/2 Warp.

I think he was glad I left for college



Yeah, it's one of those things in life. Is it helpful to learn assembly in case you need it? Yes. Do you EVER want to actually use it? No.

We started with CP/M. I was worried about the crap Microsoft was doing at the time, so I was excited about Warp, which they killed with FUD. At some point I supported an OS/2 system for dialup access, but by then Warp was but a memory.

I had co-workers wait in line for '95. I didn't care at that point, but had to use and support it.

 

[day_trippr]

Surround audio from my PC: OMG, you'd think I asked for something special.

I run an older Logitech 5.1 system via "direct connection" to my Z790 motherboard with a Realtek chip and get all six channels with DTS and Dolby support provided by Logitech at 96000hz. I haven't tried using the optical connection instead - but are you saying you can't get more than just right/left out of your optical link?

Cheers!

 

[day_trippr]

Ok, I learned something today: my Realtek audio doesn't do more than 2 channels over its optical link either! Hah!

I built this system last November and simply moved all of the audio cables - optical, digital, etc - from the old beast to the new one without giving it a lot of thought when it just worked. But I drilled a dry hole this evening just trying to get the host to even try to send 5.1 to the Logitech head unit over the optical link, so I'm guessing there's some DRM thing going on, which wouldn't surprise me.

NBD, I get 5.1 over the 6-channel copper connections, which is fine with me.
But I wonder if it's just a matter of installing enabling software (payware, of course)...

Asked Google about all this. SMH, been through this a long time ago, and my payware DVD software does work over optical.
https://www.tenforums.com/sound-aud...out-realtek-optical-card-other-than-test.html

Cheers!

 

[passedpawn]

Ok, I learned something today: my Realtek audio doesn't do more than 2 channels over its optical link either! Hah!

I built this system last November and simply moved all of the audio cables - optical, digital, etc - from the old beast to the new one without giving it a lot of thought when it just worked. But I drilled a dry hole this evening just trying to get the host to even try to send 5.1 to the Logitech head unit over the optical link, so I'm guessing there's some DRM thing going on, which wouldn't surprise me.

NBD, I get 5.1 over the 6-channel copper connections, which is fine with me.
But I wonder if it's just a matter of installing enabling software (payware, of course)...

Asked Google about all this. SMH, been through this a long time ago, and my payware DVD software does work over optical.
https://www.tenforums.com/sound-aud...out-realtek-optical-card-other-than-test.html

Cheers!

So...

• the realtek optical hardware only spits out a bitrate capable of two channels.
• DD compresses 6 channels into the same bitrate as 2.
• Something has to decode DD, and that requires a license.
• Look at the following picture from my desk. Wouldn't you just assume this gadget does that? Note the trademarks there. Also, there is a "decode" led that lights up when it's decoding DD. I've never seen that come on.

 

[day_trippr]

Given I get 5.1 when using my PowerDVD $oftware over the optical link I think it's a host side software issue...

 

[Agent]

Did you guys know that accidentally inputting a negative time delay value in an Allen Bradley SLC 5/04 PLC will stop that puppy dead in its tracks?

I do.

Now.

Would it look bad yelling at some retiree about something he programmed 30 years ago?

 

[passedpawn]

Did you guys know that accidentally inputting a negative time delay value in an Allen Bradley SLC 5/04 PLC will stop that puppy dead in its tracks?

I do.

Now.

Would it look bad yelling at some retiree about something he programmed 30 years ago?

Not surprised. If you write a word doc for publication, there is somebody to proofread you. But for code, not so much.

There should be a subclass of programmers that do nothing more than check other people's code for this sort of thing. Because, I'm SURE oversights like this are rampant. Take it from someone who knows lol.

 

[PCABrewing]

Not surprised. If you write a word doc for publication, there is somebody to proofread you. But for code, not so much.

There should be a subclass of programmers that do nothing more than check other people's code for this sort of thing. Because, I'm SURE oversights like this are rampant. Take it from someone who knows lol.

Nobody wants to take the time for a code review anymore, they prefer the trial and error method.
And Agile has done nothing to help that issue. Kinda sucks for environments where you can't tolerate frequent rebuilding or where errors are a potential safety issue.

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

Did you guys know that accidentally inputting a negative time delay value in an Allen Bradley SLC 5/04 PLC will stop that puppy dead in its tracks?

I do.

Now.

Would it look bad yelling at some retiree about something he programmed 30 years ago?

Well if it's an ABB device a software screwup can't affecting anything important, right?

I mean, it was probably just controlling nuclear reactor operations, or oil and gas refinery operations, or something trivial like that?

 

[TheDudeLebowski]

It is inevitable....

I worked on the PlayStation II encryption. Wanna know the best machine to break that encryption at that time? PSI. You just gotta stay ahead of the bad guys. Wish I could find the video of the teens that "cracked" the encryption doing a presentation at a conference. I think maybe one of them probably was able to shave. Oddly enough the hack was easy. The random number to encrypt was always 7. 7. I wonder how they "hacked" that.

Their reason to hack was the stoppage of being open source. Once Sony abandoned open source they hacked it in a month. Their presentation was good.

There was other interesting techniques used to hack a chip. Popping the top. Listening. Attack of service. Those kids got lucky.

I've got friends in Quantum electronics. That'll blow your mind.

 

[Agent]

Well if it's an ABB device a software screwup can't affecting anything important, right?

I mean, it was probably just controlling nuclear reactor operations, or oil and gas refinery operations, or something trivial like that?

Just running half our wastewater treatment facility, so no big deal really.

 

[day_trippr]

 

[shoengine]

Does anyone else find it strange that magnetic media is coming back? I first started hearing about cassette tapes resurging and now movies are being released in limited quantities on VHS? I am a child of the 80s, and moving to optical media was a boon. It saved us from "be kind and rewind", flipping sides, finding the start of the next song, sound quality and of course the dreaded pencil eraser assisted re-spooling.

https://www.space.com/entertainment/alien-romulus-scores-a-super-sweet-vhs-tape-release-this-week

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/tech...om-the-resurgence-of-the-cassette/ar-AA1um1J8

I really hope this is just a temporary blip.

 

[day_trippr]

There are always daft ideas floating around "out there" looking for another smooth brain to infect...

 

[mac_1103]

Does anyone else find it strange that magnetic media is coming back?
...
I really hope this is just a temporary blip.

I never throw anything out, so I am totally ready for this. Might even dust off the old high-speed dubbing deck and start up a little bootlegging business.

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

Does anyone else find it strange that magnetic media is coming back? I first started hearing about cassette tapes resurging and now movies are being released in limited quantities on VHS? I am a child of the 80s, and moving to optical media was a boon. It saved us from "be kind and rewind", flipping sides, finding the start of the next song, sound quality and of course the dreaded pencil eraser assisted re-spooling.

https://www.space.com/entertainment/alien-romulus-scores-a-super-sweet-vhs-tape-release-this-week

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/tech...om-the-resurgence-of-the-cassette/ar-AA1um1J8

I really hope this is just a temporary blip.

Uhh, this is just silly nostalgia crap. And I say that as someone whose paychecks are funded by magnetic media, albeit not exactly the same as VHS and cassette tapes lol...

That said, we could absolutely turn magnetic media for movies/audio back into a thing. You just make it digital instead of analog. I mean, LTO tape has plenty of storage density and throughput capability that would support lossless audio and 4K/8K video formats.

But... I struggle to understand the why...

 

[TheDudeLebowski]

How do I pair and download it to my neurologic device?

 

[passedpawn]

Uhh, this is just silly nostalgia crap. And I say that as someone whose paychecks are funded by magnetic media, albeit not exactly the same as VHS and cassette tapes lol...

That said, we could absolutely turn magnetic media for movies/audio back into a thing. You just make it digital instead of analog. I mean, LTO tape has plenty of storage density and throughput capability that would support lossless audio and 4K/8K video formats.

But... I struggle to understand the why...

You don't struggle. cmon.

 

[day_trippr]

3rd try the charm?

An Alabama woman is doing well after the latest experimental pig kidney transplant​

​

 

[day_trippr]

Ok, maybe one of you smarter-than-me-in-this-area can solve this problem for the other brainiacs

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/w...irm-universes-expansion-rate-puzzle-persists/

 

[shoengine]

At a lunch room somewhere:

Scientist A: "It looks like our measurements are inaccurate. The universe is getting too big too quickly."
Scientist B: "What if it isn't a measurement error?"
Scientist A: "If it isn't a measurement error, what the heck could it be? We already accounted for known particles and energies!"
Scientist B: "What if it is a mysterious, but invisible, energy? One that doesn't interact obviously with visible matter?"
Scientist A: "We already have something like that: dark matter."
Scientist B: "Yeah but dark matter does the opposite, it holds everything together!"
Scientist B: "No, that's gluons, I think. Or the Force or something. Dark matter just adds mass to galaxies and such keeping them from being pushed apart even faster!"
Scientist C: "What if someone forgot to carry the one again?"
Scientist A and B: "Shut up."
Scientist A quietly: "I never liked that guy."
Scientist B, also quietly: "No one does. Plus he's capricorn."
Scientist A looks shocked: "Oh. Really?"
Scientist B disgusted: "Yeah."
A few moments of awkward silence later.
Scientist A: "Huh. So, what do you want to call it?"
Scientist B: "Well, if it pushes rather than pulls..."
Scientist A interjects: "And we can't see it..."
Scientist A and B in unison: "Dark energy!"
Scientist A with a childlike enthusiasm: "I'll start filling out the grant forms!"

 

[passedpawn]

At a lunch room somewhere:

Scientist A: "It looks like our measurements are inaccurate. The universe is getting too big too quickly."
Scientist B: "What if it isn't a measurement error?"
Scientist A: "If it isn't a measurement error, what the heck could it be? We already accounted for known particles and energies!"
Scientist B: "What if it is a mysterious, but invisible, energy? One that doesn't interact obviously with visible matter?"
Scientist A: "We already have something like that: dark matter."
Scientist B: "Yeah but dark matter does the opposite, it holds everything together!"
Scientist B: "No, that's gluons, I think. Or the Force or something. Dark matter just adds mass to galaxies and such keeping them from being pushed apart even faster!"
Scientist C: "What if someone forgot to carry the one again?"
Scientist A and B: "Shut up."
Scientist A quietly: "I never liked that guy."
Scientist B, also quietly: "No one does. Plus he's capricorn."
Scientist A looks shocked: "Oh. Really?"
Scientist B disgusted: "Yeah."
A few moments of awkward silence later.
Scientist A: "Huh. So, what do you want to call it?"
Scientist B: "Well, if it pushes rather than pulls..."
Scientist A interjects: "And we can't see it..."
Scientist A and B in unison: "Dark energy!"
Scientist A with a childlike enthusiasm: "I'll start filling out the grant forms!"

lol. but in reality, dark matter was a fudge factor to make the math work. i wonder how many of those sort of jumps have been done to make the math work.

 

[passedpawn]

If you're a complete knurd and have been regretting never getting a telescope... this is the thing for you. I don't have one (yet, believe me, it's on its way). Just buy. It's $450 on amazon. I do have a big phat telescope now, but this thing can easily do 95% better what I can do with mine.