Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers

forrestheller.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 210 posts

Re: Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers

#181

Post by numpad0 »

nolok wrote: post #166
xp84 wrote: post #114

I'd like to also see an article examining these computing power attributes on the piece of garbage embedded computer on the front of the gas pumps where the lag between registering every keypress is like 800ms, and every screen redraw takes about 2000ms. It takes me an extra 60 seconds to get gas now thanks to how slow these things are, and it is nearly universal despite whether they appear to be 20 year old or new d…

Weren't a lot of those windows ce back in the day? So regular c/cpp/... Apps under the hood, just terrible ones and on asthmatic hardware

Windows Phone 7 was ecstatically phenomenal though, despite being CE based.

Re: Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers

#182

Post by numpad0 »

hnuser123456 wrote: post #170
ghaff wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the first question, probably somewhere in the mid-2000s. Maybe early Core microarchitecture.

I'll give you a mid-2000s Celeron, before core, except 4 of them because it's a quad core, and with a few times more RAM since you can get pis with up to 4GB now. I had a 1.8Ghz single-core celeron with 512MB of RAM in 2005, upgraded to 3.0GHz with 768MB by 2006, then leaped to a Q6600/4GB in 2007. Not sure how my Radeon 9200 and later X1600 would've compared to the Pi GPU though. This guy puts the rpi 4's GPU at 8 G…

You could do dual socket on Socket370, don’t know about quads though

Re: Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers

#183

Post by imglorp »

kemotep wrote: post #177
folli wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non-US citizen: What's the deal with entering ZIP codes in some gas stations in the US? Tax reasons?

From what I understand it is for fraud protection. If you steal a credit card you likely do not know what the billing zip code is. According to this blog[0] they also collect the data for "marketing purposes". [0]: https://blogs.creditcards.com/2014/05/zip-codes-gas-station-...

On that note, I just used a pump with EMV for the first time, (US, in Delaware) which didn't ask for zip. I guess they're just starting to get deployed.

Re: Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers

#184

Post by numpad0 »

miohtama wrote: post #91
crmrc114 wrote: post #3

This is awesome! The media loves to say your pocketwatch is more powerful than X form $date. This is a fun technical rundown. I think at some point we have to start talking about how far from optimized we are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MenuetOS comes to mind when talking about what can be done in fasm. Are we ever going to get compilers to the point where we can squash things down to that size and efficiency? Is t…

What kind of hardware do pocket (/wrist) watches run? (Not smart watches) How much RAM/ROM/CPU? E.g. those famous Casios with LCD.

Quarts watches use 32.768kHz(1/2 * 65536 Hz) crystal, means its output through binary counters easily produce clocks at base 10 fractions of seconds. That could be then fed to decoders to LCD, so no need for uC.

Re: Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers

#185

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

masklinn wrote: post #176
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is overkill, and in the end they manage to deliver an acceptable results. You see, the problem of app developers, especially in big companies, is that they are given a top-notch smartphones, so they naturally target such hardware as a benchmark for performance, which moves every year. That's why a 2016 Moto Z play smartphone ran smoothly in 2016, but works really slow in 2020 - because all the regular apps (Gmai…

Have you considered maybe giving them test phones with the configurations they're supposed to support instead of "scolding" them like misbehaving children because they're apparently working with the phones they have but supposed to magically support phones they don't?

Yes, I had. They all have easy unrestricted access to a variety of 'old' (of the oldest supported OS versions) phones lying on a special shelf in our office.

Re: Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers

#186

Post by Tuna-Fish »

int_19h wrote: post #125
pvg wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BASIC, arguably. People often say C is 'high level assembly' but in some ways BASIC is closer with the absence of block structure, scopes, etc. Control flow in a BASIC (basic BASIC, not fancy newer BASIC) program ends up looking a lot like that in an assembly one.

Given that all that high-level control flow is rewritten into gotos anyway, why would that make a difference in general, or specifically for 6502?

All high-level control flow is very definitely not rewritten into gotos. Almost all cpus have some form of function call instruction, and c functions are implemented by using it. Without such an instruction, or even a fast way to model it, C becomes much less efficient to implement.

Re: Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers

#187

Post by Sanzig »

kemotep wrote: post #177
folli wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non-US citizen: What's the deal with entering ZIP codes in some gas stations in the US? Tax reasons?

From what I understand it is for fraud protection. If you steal a credit card you likely do not know what the billing zip code is. According to this blog[0] they also collect the data for "marketing purposes". [0]: https://blogs.creditcards.com/2014/05/zip-codes-gas-station-...

It's also extremely annoying when driving in the states as a Canadian, since our postal codes don't follow the same format. Canadian postal codes are six character alphanumeric strings with alternating letters and numbers, so you can't enter them on the keypad.

The trick, which isn't obvious, is that you're supposed to drop the letters from your postal code, leaving three digits, and then append two zeros to the end. For example: K9Z 2P7 -> 92700.

In Canada we don't have to deal with this, since pretty much all our pumps have supported EMV chip cards for years.

Re: Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers

#188

Post by lunias »

seszett wrote: post #163
lunias wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot: Would you like a receipt? (wait) It makes no sense at all. As soon as you input payment it should output gas. There's really no need for buttons or a screen at all (well, maybe except for entering a zip). If they really have to show all that stuff, it can come after I have my gas. Note: languages aren't slow, it's the programs that are slow.

I'm a bit surprised to see the comments here on automated gas station pumps. I've used quite a few different ones in a few different countries of Europe (where I go outside Europe, usually the stations are not automated so I can't compare) and I have never had this kind of slow experience. Here in Belgium I don't even get asked if I want a receipt, I can just ask it afterwards if I like (just like for the rewards car…

I'm surprised to see that you (and obviously lots of other people) were able to affect a reduction in advertising by boycotting ad-playing stations.

I wonder if it would work here... I live in Minnesota and I'm pretty limited on where I can fill up with 98 RON (called 93 Pump here in the US for some reason...). A lot of stations play video ads with sounds while you stand there.

Re: Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers

#189

Post by dTal »

xp84 wrote: post #114

I'd like to also see an article examining these computing power attributes on the piece of garbage embedded computer on the front of the gas pumps where the lag between registering every keypress is like 800ms, and every screen redraw takes about 2000ms. It takes me an extra 60 seconds to get gas now thanks to how slow these things are, and it is nearly universal despite whether they appear to be 20 year old or new d…

Java is quite fast.

In general, for 99% of tasks, if it takes more than a few milliseconds there's a network involved.

Re: Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers

#190

Post by lunias »

clarry wrote: post #172
seszett wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a bit surprised to see the comments here on automated gas station pumps. I've used quite a few different ones in a few different countries of Europe (where I go outside Europe, usually the stations are not automated so I can't compare) and I have never had this kind of slow experience. Here in Belgium I don't even get asked if I want a receipt, I can just ask it afterwards if I like (just like for the rewards car…

> But the interface itself always asks for the least possible things. Diesel/gasoline 95/gasoline 98 then the card PIN, and you can fill up. In Finland, they don't even ask what you're going to pump. You just grab the right nozzle and go.

In the US there are separate buttons to select the grade of gasoline (I always push them to see if I can just bypass all the nonsense, but alas it doesn't work that way). The screens are an add-on gatekeeper that disables the grade selection until all its questions have been answered (NO, NO, NO, NO).
Post reply on HN