Viewing profile — vmilner

Takes me back to the ZX Spectrum 1980s when 128KB RAM was an unaffordable luxury. (Bit like today...) https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/2000237/Book/Mastering... http://www.pri…

> FreeBSD despite its title never had something to do with Free Software The FSF disagree: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#FreeBSD

Yes Minister on point as usual https://youtu.be/x-HBsT6GmMs?t=69

Does anyone have recommendations for cheapish mechanical watches that don't cost a fortune to service? (UK based) Secondhand or new.

"In the morning Fatty was mildly unnerved to see the other hobbits painting a large sign outside the little house with 'Frodo lives here' and 'Sauron sucks!' on it."

Fatty Bolger?

I remember when Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks (Mix of 'Choose your own adventure' and solo D+D adventure) were big in the UK in the 80s, and teachers were sniffy about them not being …

It's a superficial point but this relatively newer style (La)TeX layout makes me much more keen to read documents for some reason.

I seem to remember some medical related multiple choice tests in the UK use a mechanism of +1 for correct , 0 for unanswered , -1 for incorrect.

I enjoyed reading Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets by Peter van der Linden after reading that in the early 90s. Also the C standard from the time and the attached 'Rationale' d…

Are there no posted birthday cards in Denmark any more?

"Pricematch" is also common in the UK for traditional stores like Sainsburys Tesco competing with Lidl and Aldi 'discounters'.

Isn't it common for state sales taxes to be added at the till? (I don't live in the US but that seemed to be what happened on my visits there)

It's not as good as ed: https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html

The estimable (inestimable?) Daniel Estevez wrote excellent blogs on the Voyager comms protocols. https://destevez.net/2021/09/decoding-voyager-1/

Edwin Berlekamp significantly reduced (by half I think) the number of transistors required for the Reed-Solomon error correcting code by telling them to use a non-standard 'primiti…

The weirdest thing to me is that the quantisation matrix isn’t symmetrical in the top left to bottom right diagonal.

“Secret Army” (the “straight” inspiration of the comedy “Allo Allo”) - a dramatised version of the Belgian Comete line that returned allied airmen to Britain still stands up as a s…

> For example, RHEL 10 has a planned support phase out until 2035, with extended support available until 2038. I wonder if that's 19 Jan 2038. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_20…

I thought this was going to be an article by Rob Pike on control flow in golang...

"And so the Y10K problem was born"

"The title is the same as that of a very well-known book by Professor L. E. Dickson (with which ours has little in common). We proposed at one time to change it to 'An introduction…

Looks like they're here: https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/info/exercises.html https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/flphandouts.html

Unlike the commercial audio CDs of the lectures the recordings here have the chat before and after the lecture which is fun. My favourite lecture is the standalone "The Principle o…