MARIA, the graphics chip in the Atari 7800, had 24k transistors. Atari sold about 3.8M units of that console, which adds up to 91.2B transistors.

Coincidentally, GB202-300, the graphics chip in the NVIDIA 5090, has 92.2B transistors.

Just sayin'

#RetroComputing #Bloat #MooresLaw

-Fork a major Open Source project for a narrow purpose
-Upstream doesn't accept your contributions because they want to support the broad case, not just your narrow one.
-Don't keep your fork updated with upstream.
-The project you forked depends on python
-Python breaks compatibility with the version you forked.
-Now your fork doesn't build.

Reading about board games, I find out that the rules for Candy Land were changed around 2004 to remove situations where a player is sent backward. Or that Pay Day has been changed such that there's an almost immediate surplus of money with few harmful events, removing the need for hard choices.

Have we become soft? Do we hate Monopoly because hating it is fashionable, or because it's an extremely brutal game?

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#BoardGames

I'm seeing some rumblings about 6G cell systems, and what those systems promise.

I was involved in the launch of 2G (the packet variety), 3G, 4G and 5G systems.

Here's the deal: every single one of those delivered what the previous one had promised.

So, no matter what 6G promises, it'll actually deliver what 5G promised.

I live in Greece, but I don't speak much Greek yet. I rely on Chrome's in-browser translation a lot.

Recently, I got a weird one: "Renault Twingo" got translated as "Renault Clio". Oops. I understand that Clio is the most popular Renault model, so it's a reasonable LLM auto-complete in a vacuum... but that's a catastrophic translation. The next day, it translated "Opel Ampera" into "Open Corsa".

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I'm not quite a believer in planned obsolescence. However, I'm a believer in predictable obsolescence, where components predictably go bad at different speeds.

Software in cars or TVs/monitors? Predictable obsolescence.

Closed-source operating systems for computers or smartphones? Predictable obsolescence.

Floppy disks to update software on trains or planes? Predictable obsolescence.

Ethernet throughout a house? Predictable obsolescence.

Non-replaceable batteries? Predictable obsolescence.

Their claim: "you have to use maps that are maintained by big companies, only they have the resources to keep the maps accurately updated"

Google Maps: *shows a road over a bridge, with photos, when the bridge was actually destroyed years ago* (and, amusingly, you can see the remnants of the old bridge on the photo taken from the neighboring new bridge)

OpenStreetMap (and therefore OpenTopoMap and OpenSnowMap): *are accurate, doh*