Paolo Amoroso

Astronomy, space, Linux, retrocomputing, Lisp, coding.

No stock photos, SEO, marketing, clickbait, ads, or calls to action. I Just enjoy sharing my geeky interests.

#Lisp #Interlisp #CommonLisp

🌐 Blog: https://journal.paoloamoroso.com
:github: GitHub: https://github.com/pamoroso
⁂ Blog: Paolo Amoroso's Journal (npub1lw7…nlsk)
🌐 Personal site: https://paoloamoroso.com

Public Key

npub1sy08l0jqgsysgmx82k2zdaf9lfwqm8vjg78zjf3da5rs63hq9m5swm8vde

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsgz8nlheqygzgydnr4t9px75jl5hqdnkfy0r3fyck76pcdgmsza6gpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dss8xzp6

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1sy08l0jqgsysgmx82k2zdaf9lfwqm8vjg78zjf3da5rs63hq9m5swm8vde

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Last Notes

2025-04-26 14:50:07 UTC

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SDF is great, especially for retrocomputing. But I've heard of a few service issues such as frequent downtime, slow software updates, and unresponsive team.

2025-04-26 11:23:11 UTC

I'm considering migrating from Fosstodon and I'd appreciate recommendations of alternate Mastodon instances with these features:
- medium/large
- main theme among my tech interests but allow general discussions
- ElasticSearch (full-text search)
- at least 2 admins/mods
- regularly updated stock Mastodon, no forks
#mastodon

2025-04-25 18:04:19 UTC

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Fosstodon is a major instance and this is being widely discussed. It would help to have an official statement.
@npub1t7s…vkcg @npub1h4l…g8cc

2025-04-25 17:04:51 UTC

I've just learned my instance Fosstodon is going to be defederated. Details in this post and the links shared from there:
https://scholar.social/@socrates/114398529586604508
While I consider what to do I'll suspend posting until I take a decision. Migrating is easy but wouldn't transfer my 6.3K online posts, an invaluable resource for me. Whatever happens, I have a federated blog: @npub1lw7…nlsk
I love Mastodon and the community, my deepest thanks to every one of you for the amazing conversations and support. I'm devastated.

2025-04-25 12:42:16 UTC

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You're welcome, glad you like it.

2025-04-25 10:48:42 UTC

I added to my reading queue this four-part aricle series on the history of the personal computer "to trace where the personal computer came from and where it went". The title of one of the parts seems intriguing: "Interactive Computing: A Counterculture".
https://technicshistory.com/a-bicycle-for-the-mind
#PersonalComputer #retrocomputing

2025-04-23 10:49:24 UTC

I have been using arXiv since it was xxx.lanl.gov but didn't know much about its origins. This profile of arXiv creator Paul Ginsparg fills the gap and tells the story of the platform.
https://www.wired.com/story/inside-arxiv-most-transformative-code-science
#arxiv #retrocomputing

2025-04-22 06:49:00 UTC

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It's the kind of garbage we call authenticity, which we value much more than the staged, polished "content" corporate platforms force us to perform and flood with.

2025-04-19 09:02:49 UTC

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This gives a whole new meaning to Easter passion.

2025-04-16 20:23:46 UTC

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21th century archaeologists will salivate at this.

2025-04-14 12:51:04 UTC

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Ctrl-PgUp and Ctrl-PgDown are similar. On Firefox Alt-1 switches to the first tab, Alt-9 to the last, and the others in between (Ctrl-1 and Ctrl-9 on Chromium).

2025-03-27 16:20:24 UTC

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How do you really know you're old? When the cashier at the grocery store grants you the senior discount on sight, without even asking for your ID.

2025-03-27 11:53:19 UTC

When I bought the XEphem ephemeris and planetarium program in the 1990s it was the first astronomy software I used on Linux.
Now available as open source, it is still as advanced as back in the day with features few similar programs have. With its Motif user interface frozen in time and now turned retro, here is XEphem on my Linux Mint box where it still builds and runs fine. Almost permacomputing.
https://xephem.github.io/XEphem/Site/xephem.html
#astronomy #planetarium #linux
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/114/234/254/069/903/702/original/80d14ea8cc6aa1eb.png

2025-03-17 11:48:14 UTC

Using the mouse-driven graphical user interface of a personal computer to write a document with a WYSIWYG word processor, check new messages with an email client, and create an organization chart with a drawing program. Just an ordinary day at Xerox PARC in 1978. When email spam was apparently already a thing.
The demo features the Alto workstation and the Bravo word processor. You can hear the noise of the hard disk.
https://archive.org/details/Xerox_Palo_Alto_Demo_August_1978
#retrocomputing #Xerox #XeroxAlto

2025-03-14 12:01:11 UTC

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I haven't tried but it seems overkill and a bit complicated for casual usage.

2025-03-14 11:56:53 UTC

Recording the screen is a sore point of Raspberry Pi OS as only a handful of hard to find tools work under Wayland and most are command line only. Botspot's Screen Recorder is a new tool that glues a GUI to the others and adds useful functionality such as recording a webcam feed and the screen at the same time.
https://github.com/Botspot/botspot-screen-recorder
The only alternative is Vokoscreen-NG which is more limited:
https://linuxecke.volkoh.de/vokoscreen/vokoscreen.html
#ScreenRecording #RaspberryPiOS #wayland

2025-03-11 12:10:55 UTC

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I'm using Firefox with both uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger. Maybe it's a regonal network issue.
[@rl_dane](https://polymaths.social/@rl_dane )

2025-03-11 12:07:00 UTC

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It works for me.

2025-03-11 11:49:25 UTC

I already knew that the PrtScr key captures a screenshot of the full screen on Linux but only today I learned that Alt+PrtScr captures the current window. I discovered it while reading about the origin of the SysRq key.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_request
#linux #tips #til

2025-03-04 17:55:32 UTC

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I'm definitely keeping an eye to LibreWolf but it currectly has some limitations as a daily driver. There's no Android version and hosted sync relies on Mozilla's infrastructure.
@npub1vpu…608s

2025-03-01 07:14:24 UTC

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In case you need a good 8080 disassembler I recommend Dasm8080:
https://github.com/CineEncoder/dasm8080

2025-02-26 21:26:50 UTC

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An interesting blast from the past. Was the BDS C compiler available for MS-DOS too? If so I seem to remember I bought a copy in the early 1990s.

2025-02-25 19:56:50 UTC

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Speaking of which, when I scroll the article down to the pricing section I get the error "Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information)" with Firefox and Chrome on Linux. I suspect this is trying to tell me something.
@npub1lum…qrxk

2025-02-21 11:59:39 UTC

CP/M-86 for Newbies is a starter kit for CP/M-86 with everything ready to unpack and run. It bundles the PCe PC emulator (Windows only), preconfigured PCe environments for running different CP/M-86 versions including Concurrent CP/M-86 and Concurrent DOS, and other software such as the Pirx Commander file manager.
https://github.com/MarekStarobrat/Pirx.Commander/tree/main/Releases/CPM-86
#cpm #retrocomputing

2025-02-20 11:58:52 UTC

The Mastodon accounts of some projects that preserve, modernize, and reimagine classic operating systems and system software environments:
9Front (Plan 9)
@npub1u2y…f6ez (unofficial)
@npub1enx…u60v (unofficial)
FreeDOS (MS-DOS)
@npub1zv3…yrmd
Haiku (BeOS)
@npub1ql8…raf8
Medley Interlisp (Interlisp-D)
@npub146a…pqwc
#retrocomputing #os

2025-02-14 12:24:20 UTC

Why blog if nobody reads what you write? My blog benefits me because it's a sort of lab journal of my projects and interests I frequently reference. Andy also thinks the primary audience of your blog is you.
https://andysblog.uk/why-blog-if-nobody-reads-it/
#blogging

2025-02-11 12:01:24 UTC

A comprehensive guide to Z80 Assembly that covers not only the instruction set but also programming techniques such as working with data, representing data structure and lookup tables, and more.
https://tutorials.eeems.ca/Z80ASM/index.htm
#z80 #assembly #retrocomputing

2025-02-08 12:05:47 UTC

The website emulator101.com provided practical information and code for developing an Intel 8080 emulator to run Space Invaders, but the domain likely expired as it now redirects to a travel site. The Wayback Machine luckily archived this valuable resource on designing and implementing emulators:
https://web.archive.org/web/20241010195903/http://www.emulator101.com
#intel8080 #emulation #emulator #assembly

2025-01-30 11:36:36 UTC

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👆 Congrats @npub1tgg…qwzh on achieving 400 million downloads of the LibreOffice desktop productivity suite.

2025-01-30 10:31:16 UTC

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After what happened I guess you're pretty tire-d.

2025-01-29 13:35:23 UTC

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Wasn't scraping and using without permission supposed to be fair game these days?

2025-01-28 16:09:27 UTC

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A Google products is back from the dead? What next, Reader or Google+?

2025-01-28 12:37:57 UTC

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Coherent would have given you a C compiler, among other things. 😀

2025-01-28 12:04:12 UTC

Bill Dyer's memories of the Coherent Unix clone.
At $99.95, in the early 1990s it was the first Unix I could afford and run on my laptop. It taught me a lot. It was a product from an era in which you could pay a one-time fee to buy and own good, packaged software that delivered real value and came with excellent printed documentation.
https://itsfoss.com/coherent-operating-system
#unix #retrocomputing

2025-01-20 12:11:44 UTC

A reminder that if we love RSS it's not enough to use feed readers ourselves. We also need to reach out to our favorite blogs and sources to advocate for access to feeds.
Many websites and blogs don't provide RSS feeds, even those by organizations and projects that do want to disseminate information and do outreach.
https://reedybear.bearblog.dev/ive-been-advocating-for-rss-support-and-you-should-too
#rss

2025-01-17 18:26:39 UTC

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The general press just doesn't touch with a pole anything even remotely community built or non mainstream.

2025-01-16 16:16:22 UTC

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Even if I like a new release, what holds me back is the friction of upgrading. That's why I need a critical mass of feature to overcome inertia.

2025-01-16 16:06:52 UTC

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I'm passing as I came to value stability over features more and more. While the new 22.1 is nice, its features don't build a critical mass for me to upgrade.

2025-01-14 09:30:57 UTC

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People pay fortunes to buy flagship phones with Helluvapixel resolution, only to share gloriously detailed photos on Instagram as stamp-sized thumbnails. Go figure.

2025-01-12 21:12:05 UTC

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By Jove!

2025-01-10 12:26:31 UTC

A book about writing a toy operating system for RISC-V in 1000 lines of C.
https://operating-system-in-1000-lines.vercel.app/en
#os #c #riscv

2025-01-06 16:19:50 UTC

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In Milan, Italy, a public transport ticket is 2.20 €.

2025-01-05 14:18:07 UTC

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No biggie, imagine an astronaut logging into email back at the office after a 6-8 months space mission.

2025-01-05 08:00:52 UTC

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Then you better get off Mastodon and drive them to school to complete the exercise.

2025-01-05 07:41:24 UTC

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Are you running a back to school training exercise?

2025-01-04 11:28:37 UTC

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Based on my experience I recommend that you leave the dark version no matter how bad it is:
https://journal.paoloamoroso.com/the-faded-world-my-experience-with-cataract

2025-01-03 11:58:43 UTC

LMNO is a new Markdown-based, lightweight, affordable blogging platform with no tracking or ads. I'm happy with my current platform Write.as and I'm not looking for alternatives, but it's nice to see activity in the blog hosting space.
https://lmno.lol
#blogging #blogs

2025-01-02 11:50:09 UTC

SQLite is a remarkable piece of software and I've always been curious about the system and the project. Here are several little known facts about SQLite.
https://avi.im/blag/2024/sqlite-facts
#SQLite #database

2024-12-27 11:49:03 UTC

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I actually don't know.
@npub17gp…7p4g

2024-12-26 11:59:01 UTC

This very old post has the best advice on code comments I've ever seen. It analyzes a sample of Redis source files, classifies the comments, explains why they are effective, and draws advice on how to comment.
https://antirez.com/news/124
#programming

2024-12-25 12:01:45 UTC

I'm reading The Early History of Smalltalk by Alan Kay. It's a fascinating account of how independent and not necessarily aligned paths of ideas and research crossed and converged to enable the Smalltalk system.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/234286.1057828
#smalltalk #retrocomputing

2024-12-24 13:02:57 UTC

Sepia Search is a @npub17gp…7p4g search engine which searches across almost a thousand PeerTube instances. I checked it out only briefly but it seems pretty good.
https://sepiasearch.org
#PeerTube #fediverse

2024-12-18 12:48:14 UTC

This is a great project: the history of microcomputers told with 300 print advertisements, each scanned and commented.
https://nosher.net/archives/computers
#retrocomputing #microcomputer #ads

2024-12-17 16:37:20 UTC

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👆 Please welcome to the fediverse the official Mastodon account of the @npub1e9u…mlzx European Southern Observatory (ESO).
#astronomy #mastodon #space

2024-12-14 10:59:39 UTC

The Masterscope program analysis tool of Medley Interlisp can show graphical output too, such as the call tree of the TEDIT function. Via the popup menu of a node I opened windows with the code of the TEXTSTREAM function and its bytecode disassembly.
#interlisp #retrocomputing #lisp
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/650/824/504/705/510/original/923988ed5df83b3b.png

2024-12-13 07:48:10 UTC

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I love my cheap Lenovo Tab M10 Plus 3rd Gen, you may be interested in similar recent Lenovo models. My experience with the device:
https://journal.paoloamoroso.com/lenovo-tab-m10-plus-3rd-gen-first-impressions

2024-12-12 10:47:51 UTC

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Did they say 207511?

2024-11-28 16:10:58 UTC

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Fair enough.

2024-11-24 13:29:19 UTC

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I was in the WordStar camp but I highly regarded WordPerfect.

2024-11-22 11:16:48 UTC

I had completely forgotten that in the early aughts Sun actively encouraged employees to blog. I was reminded by Bryan Cantrill's reflections on his two decades of technical blogging started at Sun.
https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2024/11/16/blogging-through-the-decades/
#blogging #SunMicrosystems #writing

2024-11-19 16:54:03 UTC

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Welcome from a happy [@write_as](https://writing.exchange/@write_as ) blogger.
As a reader I long stopped clicking Medium links no matter how interesting. The platform has by far the most obnoxious account gate of the whole web. Also, when on Hacker News or other aggregators I see a clickbait headline I check the URL and it's invariably a Medium post.

2024-11-19 07:46:47 UTC

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I've been using mobile phones and smartphones with no cases since 2001 and I never dropped or scratched one. All my devices were nearly pristine at the end of life.

2024-11-16 12:01:55 UTC

Pekka Väänänen shared tips for processing screenshots of retro systems in a way that preserves the original aspect ratio.
https://30fps.net/pages/msdos-aspect-ratio
#screenshots #retrocomputing #retrogaming

2024-11-15 12:07:19 UTC

The history of Xanadu is fascinating even if what little of the utopian hypertext system was eventually implemented didn't accomplish much. In this old post Jason Crawford shared some thoughts on the project itself and the management and design lessons we can learn from it.
https://jasoncrawford.org/the-lessons-of-xanadu
#xanadu #HyperText #retrocomputing

2024-11-12 09:45:35 UTC

A short remembrance and bio of Grace Hopper, on the occasion of the upcoming Computer Science Education Week which commemorates her birthday.
https://cacm.acm.org/blogcacm/remembering-grace-hopper/
#GraceHopper #retrocomputing

2024-11-08 11:21:51 UTC

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By now large publishers and social platforms have figured users have essentially infinite tolerance to abuse, so they can get away with anything.

2024-11-06 11:55:43 UTC

Now that it's no longer possible to rank in web searches, unless you're a content farm or a major publisher, it's a good time to ditch SEO, drop keywords, use descriptive headlines instead of catchy or clickbait ones, and write for humans. SEO won't help anyway, so let's help the readers who care.
#seo #WebSearch #blogging

2024-11-02 13:48:08 UTC

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True, but self-hosting has major skill and labor costs for most ordinary users.
When moving to another instance I'd be happy with discarding all the replies and reactions, I'd just like to preserve past toots and their media.
@npub19yg…w8um

2024-11-02 13:32:25 UTC

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Moving to another Mastodon instance still has a major switching cost: past posts aren't carried over.

2024-11-01 13:04:23 UTC

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A great collection and a great concept. What 1970s typesetting software did you use?
@npub16w7…vwej @npub1wv5…zxm4

2024-10-31 12:12:58 UTC

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But sadly unsurprising.

2024-10-31 12:05:44 UTC

Zsolt Ero on a generation of cloud users who never experienced certain computing technologies:
"That's when I realized that many users today simply aren't used to saving files manually."
https://blog.hyperknot.com/p/is-there-now-a-generation-of-users

2024-10-29 12:06:09 UTC

An old series of blog posts with an intriguing premise and a focus on Forth:
"What if all software suddenly disappeared? What's the minimum you'd need to bootstrap a practical system? I decided to start with a one sector (512-byte) seed and find out how far I can get."
https://compilercrim.es/bootstrap
#compilers #forth #permacomputing

2024-10-28 12:07:02 UTC

Mission accomplished.
https://journal.paoloamoroso.com/wrapping-up-my-retrochallenge-2024-project
#RetroChallenge #RC2024 #interlisp #NoteCards

2024-10-18 19:08:32 UTC

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After enjoying ChromeOS for almost a decade I recently felt the need to move back to Linux as I was using more offline applications. I still use a browser, of course (Firefox and no longer Chrome though). But running more local software and having more control over it were the major motivations driving the move.

2024-10-17 17:07:40 UTC

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The DWIM (Do What I Mean) facility of the Interlisp environment already did something like that in the early 1970s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DWIM

2024-10-15 19:34:56 UTC

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I must go back and read my old posts. 😀
My blog is a sort of lab journal where I post the details of my tech interest and projects. When I resume an old project, I need to review the relevant posts as I most likely forgot some key aspects.

2024-10-14 19:12:20 UTC

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Maybe in your area there's someone who can assemble the device for you, possibly for a fee.

2024-10-11 17:29:48 UTC

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I have only one blog because I can't spread myself too thin. If I had more I'd end up focusing on one blog and the rest would starve.
My only blog revolves around myself without focusing on a single or a few topics. This accounts for new or shifting interests and projects.
By the way, WordPress is not the only blogging platform that supports RSS feeds for arbitrary tags. Write.as does too, for example.

2024-10-11 11:17:49 UTC

Andrej Karpathy posted on why he loves calculators "as a product of technology and a symbol of a kind of philosophy".
https://karpathy.ai/blog/calculator.html
#calculator #PocketCalculator

2024-10-11 10:57:52 UTC

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Agreed. But I'm not sure I understand the point of making filtered toots more prominent in feeds as the user presumably wants them to be subtle.
@npub163h…mv0n

2024-10-05 13:28:52 UTC

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Perhaps Mozilla might get better advice on financing a no profit foundation by meeting with Jimmy Wales instead of Meta or Google executives.

2024-10-05 13:23:42 UTC

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Wikimedia Foundation has no poblem financing itself via donations with revenue of the same order of magnitude as Mozilla. With no adtech, AI, or sleeping in bed with questionable tech giants.

2024-10-01 07:09:51 UTC

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Thanks for such an amazing and unique resource.
The saddest thing is the move, even by tech-savvy users, to socials and other closed platforms, at a time when open platforms are increasingly important.
For the record the https://ForumAstronautico.it community of Italian space enthusiasts has been going on since 2005 and is doing well. Our founder migrated it from phpBB to SMF and then Discourse. One of our users turned from space enthusiast to astronaut: Samantha Cristoforetti.

2024-09-28 13:02:52 UTC

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She's now a fan of the open web.

2024-09-23 11:04:23 UTC

These days coding for retro computer system is a recreational and learning activity. But sometimes it's essential for maintaining mission critical legacy software, like in this case of writing a new x86 C compiler for Windows CE.
https://building.enlyze.com/posts/a-new-windows-ce-x86-compiler-in-2024
#WindowsCE #windows #retrocomputing

2024-09-21 14:43:09 UTC

Question from someone unfamiliar with the semiconductor industry and market: with everyone all over the world shouting from the rooftops how increasingly strategic and valuable chipmaking is, why is Intel failing?
#intel #semiconductors

2024-09-18 11:00:53 UTC

This old but powerful and sobering story by @npub1x59…gect highlights the importance of lightweight web design.
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-simple-html/
#WebDesign #web

2024-09-17 10:56:50 UTC

The experience of Abhishek Prakash with a Raspberry Pi 5 matches mine with a Pi 400. Recent Pi devices make for affordable and practical Linux desktop machines for most everyday tasks.
https://itsfoss.com/raspberry-pi-5-review
https://journal.paoloamoroso.com/raspberry-pi-400-first-impressions
#RasPi5 #RaspberryPi #linux

2024-09-13 11:38:43 UTC

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Who needs IoT devices when you have such sensitive natural sensors?

2024-09-13 11:31:23 UTC

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You have a point.
@npub130c…qh5n

2024-09-13 09:58:22 UTC

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The problem is not so much kids who lie, but grownups who do and get away with it every single time.

2024-09-09 10:59:00 UTC

Obfuscated code contests celebrate ingenuity but offer little to learn as the code is impenetrable to most.
We also need clear code contests. They should reward code that is so well designed, obvious, self documenting, and properly formatted it needs little or no documentation or comments other than the author details.
#programming

2024-09-03 15:39:14 UTC

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Thanks for the insight, much appreciated.
[@lulu_powerful](https://fosstodon.org/@lulu_powerful ) @npub1j7t…kn6q

2024-09-03 12:24:55 UTC

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Another instance hosted at Masto.host didn't experience the issue.
@npub1j7t…kn6q

2024-09-03 12:09:15 UTC

Any insight into why @npub1j7t…kn6q went down for a couple of hours yesterday? It's still a bit slow today.
#fosstodon #mastodon

2024-09-03 11:20:45 UTC

Valerio Viperino on why he uses Common Lisp:
"My main reason for sticking with 'vintage' tech is that for *exploratory programming*, Common Lisp and emacs + Sly are incredibly effective, and I've found few things that come as close in terms of interactivity."
https://valerioviperino.me/common-lisp-2023
#CommonLisp #lisp

2024-09-02 11:42:42 UTC

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Indeed, a fresh angle.

2024-09-02 10:58:35 UTC

A journalist and writer tells why he learned programming in his 50s, how he did it, and his moving encounter with the Python community.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/aug/31/learning-computer-programming-language-coding-devil-stack-andrew-smith
#programming #python

2024-09-01 14:56:40 UTC

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Well, I subscribe to over 300 RSS feeds too 😀
@npub1s6d…sdlc