@cliffordheath@mastodon.social

cliffordheath @cliffordheath@mastodon.social · May 09, 2026

Replying to @speckmantel@social.anoxinon.de

@speckmantel@social.anoxinon.de @MostlyHarmless@thecanadian.social the clue doesn't ask for best

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cliffordheath @cliffordheath@mastodon.social · May 04, 2026

Replying to @whitequark@social.treehouse.systems

@whitequark@social.treehouse.systems @aburka@hachyderm.io @regehr@mastodon.social @penguin42@mastodon.org.uk non-volatile storage is also good for radiation hardening and can reduce power consumption, both good for space applications. Actel/Microchip PolarFire is used a lot there, for both reasons

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cliffordheath @cliffordheath@mastodon.social · Apr 24, 2026

Replying to @benschwarz@front-end.social

@benschwarz It's a guilty secret, but who among us hasn't implemented Redfearn's equations for the geoid after all? I know I have...

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cliffordheath @cliffordheath@mastodon.social · Apr 18, 2026

Replying to @vikunja@social.linux.pizza

@vikunja@social.linux.pizza If AI makes it so easy to find bugs, perhaps they should do that, and then actually fix the bugs?

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cliffordheath @cliffordheath@mastodon.social · Apr 17, 2026

Replying to @cliffordheath@mastodon.social

@divbyzero@mathstodon.xyz agghhhh phooey. It doesn't produce minimal forms, and without additional substitutions (not yet all known) cannot be automatically minimised. So two common subexpressions might not match. The bitstring representation is still valuable however.

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cliffordheath @cliffordheath@mastodon.social · Apr 16, 2026

Replying to @DavidPenington@aus.social

@DavidPenington@aus.social 2 1/2 hours late in the end. 500 tired pax with disrupted travel plans, some in difficulty because the extra duration meant their phones were dead and they couldn't notify folk meeting them (not even one charge point on the entire train!). This would have been an advanced service sixty years ago, but doesn't cut it in 2026

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cliffordheath @cliffordheath@mastodon.social · Apr 16, 2026

The Sydney to Melbourne "Express Passenger Train" spanning Australia's most in-demand long distance route has been stationary for an hour only 2 hours into the journey. A level crossing ahead won't close, so we can't traverse it. Like, anywhere else a guard would close the crossing by waving a flag.

The same train two days ago was over an hour late with similarly dumb excuses.

We aren't going to beat climate change this way, folk!

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cliffordheath @cliffordheath@mastodon.social · Apr 16, 2026

@mike_k@mstdn.social hey, if it helps stop the orange menace from hurting us, I guess it's ok?

mstdn.social

Mike (VK1OMG) 🏴‍☠️ (@mike_k@mstdn.social) - Mastodon 🐘

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cliffordheath @cliffordheath@mastodon.social · Apr 16, 2026

Replying to @cliffordheath@mastodon.social

@divbyzero@mathstodon.xyz Does this re-establish or even extend the formalism that Russell and Whitehead sought?

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cliffordheath @cliffordheath@mastodon.social · Apr 15, 2026

Replying to @cliffordheath@mastodon.social

@divbyzero@mathstodon.xyz And if you use breadth-first traversal it's also possible to recognise common subexpressions, I think

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cliffordheath @cliffordheath@mastodon.social · Apr 15, 2026

Replying to @divbyzero@mathstodon.xyz

@divbyzero@mathstodon.xyz What I find most exciting about this math discovery is that any calculation converted into this form will have a single simplest (canonical) representation which will be findable with lexical subsitutions. So it can simplify any expression to its simplest form. Every expression is canonically identified by an even-numbered sequence of binary digits. 1=1, 0=E(). This gives every possible calculation exactly one number which identifies it.

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cliffordheath @cliffordheath@mastodon.social · Apr 15, 2026

"Arduino Certification". Imagine being proud to be a certified dilettante

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cliffordheath @cliffordheath@mastodon.social · Apr 12, 2026

Replying to @marick@mstdn.social

@marick as I used to say about building software, whenever something goes wrong, there's always someone who knew it would. Some programmer who omitted some error handling, ir whatever...

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cliffordheath @cliffordheath@mastodon.social · Apr 05, 2026

Replying to @iskandarv@mastodon.star-one.org.uk

@iskandarv @weirdestate there's nowhere for the smoke to escape when you burn the small stepladder on that hearth

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cliffordheath @cliffordheath@mastodon.social · Apr 04, 2026

Replying to @dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz

@dougmerritt @adaddinsane @colinstu the DEC peripherals were very simple to program. Our PDP11/34 loaded from RK05 drive which required entering over a dozen opcodes. I decompiled it once. It was basically "read block 0 into address 0, wait for completion, then jump there". At least it had a hex keypad, not just the row of switches of some others. Operators did learn to set those switches incredibly fast however

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cliffordheath @cliffordheath@mastodon.social · Apr 04, 2026

Replying to @dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz

@dougmerritt @colinstu the 11/70 was very different from the 11/34 :). Anyhow it was a research machine, there were no other users

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cliffordheath @cliffordheath@mastodon.social · Apr 03, 2026

Replying to @cliffordheath@mastodon.social

@colinstu I was able to compile C code, play Pacman (fullscreen TUI), or run database code while other users used a sonic digitiser to trace radiographs on an interactive vector graphics screen (Tektronix storage tube), and a plotter made colour drawings or uploaded data files to the supercomputer. Real-time applications...

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cliffordheath @cliffordheath@mastodon.social · Apr 03, 2026

Replying to @colinstu@birdbutt.com

@colinstu Running Unix on a PDP/11 in 1981, we had to upgrade the memory from 96kB to 256kB to support three users. That's kilobytes, not gigabytes. Queensland University had a 16 port terminal device with students on the same hardware

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