I wonder if that's more than coincidence?

I've been programming assembly since the 1980s... I got so bored waiting for work lately, so I solo wrote an entire operating system in the past few years, as well as writing three assemblers and building an emulator.

The problem isn't that there aren't any assembly programmers anymore. The problem is that the market either doesn't pay them enough, or expects a high concentration in one location, which just isn't practical - and wasn't practical even in the 1980s.

In fact, the market spent so long trying to learn how to work without assembly programmers that all of us who did it professionally ( a very small group - we knew each other ) all went off and took other jobs elsewhere.

I haven't programmed assembly for an employer since last century, and although I still do it contract, to be honest the customer couldn't care less what language I use as long as they get the outcome.

Being an assembly programmer doesn't lead to work. Being an assembly programmer who lives close to an employer who wants assembly language programming is what leads to work, and locally all they want is late generation programmers, who take weeks to write in a modern high level language what I write in a day in BASIC. And the BASIC version outperforms the modern version ( ie, I write the POC in basic, it works perfectly and interfaces with the APIs without a hitch, then they write the new version in a different languange and now it's running poorly - so badly the job got cancelled ).

So I just do different work now, waiting for my retirement and I only program assembly in my spare time for a single customer who does work I personally support, who probably has no idea at all I'm working in assembly.

But I'm not in the US... In Australia.

There's still lots of ASM programmers. Try the Vintage Computer Federation if you want US citizens. Lots of retired programmers there who might help you.

Plato had all of the hallmarks of an early World Wide Web. Except that it was too proprietary and that's what killed it.

It the early 80s, it mixed text and graphics, and had a resolution of 512x512 so that you could send vector graphics as small codes down serial modem lines at 1200 baud and it was still viewable. The Star Trek graphic logo you see on some examples is just a glimpse - it was amazing for graphics even at it's time, and people who weren't around at the time would fail to notice that it occurred at a time when almost all computers were only capable of text display without any detailed graphics like that - even the frame buffer was absolutely unthinkable for it's era, and high end business PCs sometimes struggled with things like 160x75 resolution graphics.

And it was FAST - Way faster than early web services which didn't come out for well over another decade.

Not only was it multi-user, but through it's programming language, called TUTOR, you could have multiuser chats going on, or monitor an entire classroom of remote students, see what they were seeing, break in and help them, and assist with their lesson directly, then hand them back to whatever they were doing at the time, no matter who wrote the lesson.

I wrote somelike like IRC (relay chat) for it - using the capability to cause a predetermined error in a users input that would flush their input buffer to common memory, allowing my program with minimal permissions to capture their buffer, and display it on everyone's screen before repeating - Up to six people could share in real-time chat. It wasn't just popular - it spawned an entire group of users who just wanted to talk to each other via the screen, especially as the built-in chat had been disabled to prevent use as a conversational capability for users.

Unfortunately, my program went absolutely viral and usage eclipsed every other application. I'm told use of the chat program I wrote consumed over 99% of system resources, because, strangely enough, people just wanted to talk to each other ( this was localized to institutions in a single state - not other PLATO networks ) which led them to shut down the system as they felt it wasn't being used for educational purposes, which tells you something about the mindset of the people who operated the pilot PLATO network in my state. They should have embraced the viral popularity of the free chat program I wrote and used it to fuel interest in the other capabilities the system had to offer. But, well, the virus that affects academia of late was already well set in place even back in the early 80s. The system admins loved my work, but the powers that be had an agenda, and apparently I interfered with it.

What happened? Who knows exactly, but Plato was shut down and I was kicked out of the university for failing to get any marks in my courses ( A big ZERO ). I already had enough points to pass my bachelor's degree units at the time, and somehow they all disappeared. The first time it happened, I had a copy and went into the university admin office and the administrative staff fixed it. The second time it happened was before they sent me a copy of my current course marks, and I was kicked out. Coincidence perhaps? Not very likely. It had all the hallmarks of malicious activity although I had upset other educators at the time by correcting them in class so it's not impossible for it to be related to other matters. I guess I never learnt to keep my head down and universities don't like students who stick out.

But the idea of embedding vector graphics and text along with touch screens and an advanced multiuser learning environment was amazing at the time. This was well before most computers could show photographic images on-screen. PLATO was incredible. A harbinger of where the Internet was going to go in the near future and what it would become.

I find updates intrusive, problematic and cause lots of issues.

The idea that windows critical functionality gets turned off to force you to update is just wrong... Notice your computer won't launch some programs, or some functionality is missing? Sound gone? Devices don't show up? Then magically everything works after the update, but it also worked before the update was pending so it's not the update that fixed the issue.

Heck, I'd even make that $50 just to turn off updates and make them completely manual.

Microsoft knows this market exists, but strangely has never offered this service.... I wonder why.

This explains why game physics look so bad then, and computer CG physics look even worse.

Not only should they make CS students study MORE physics, they should probably make them study how to write fiction as well !

Yep, I was thinking the same thing... Unfortunately, Hollywood gives this crazy idea that space is very cold. The only way to cool stuff in space is to radiate vast amounts of heat in the infrared, which is going to require heat pumps into black body radiators so as to lose energy through infrared photonic emissions - another technology we haven't developed yet.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fannas-archive.org%2F

Long since replaced the Internet Archive for old books. And you can download the entire library or distribute just a piece of it.

The big problem is with really old technical books, which do not exist any longer and can't be located in any library or even bookshops. The objective of the big publishers isn't to prevent losses, because any archival of old texts that no longer exist, for topics that are purely historical now, is by it's very nature transformative - they have no use any longer commercially and transformative archival likely extinguishes copyright.

For hobbiests, historians and the like, old technical tomes are incredibly useful resources and it's not like you can buy them from publishers. Copies do not effect the real book market as the real books remain collectors items, and there is zero chance of publishers reprinting them.

So Anna's Library has replaced the Archive as the home for old technical resources.

What happens if they cross the streams ???

Are the police going to take responsibility for that ???

The cars that ate Paris?

A cassette with the speed and performance of a disk drive... In a cartridge the same size as a modern USB drive.

It could load software at 200 kbps, had two tracks which it read simultaneously and wasn't nearly as unreliable as was claimed, or much worse than other media of the day. Nor was it particularly fragile - it survived many children using it.

That particular technology lasted in some forms until the end of the decade. The only real downside was that as floppy drives spread rapidly through the world, 3.5 and 5.25 disks became quite cheap, while microdrive cartridges didn't gain either capacity or better pricing through economies of scale.

The QL had two drives built in, and made good use of both. Disk interfaces came later, but as has been learned, software is only ever distributed to the lowest common denominator until the value of improved systems increases.

The QL was a good machine... And was also the downfall of Sinclair. He didn't back the wrong horse. It was the right horse at the time, but market forces were far stronger than anyone could have predicted. Of course, had it come out, the Sinclair Loki might have extended the 8 bit era and then extended into the 16 bit era with the z280 and other processors, but history had other plans.

Assembly? People still program in Assembly?

I mean, I still regularly (weekly) program in assembly but I was using that fact to justify being post-human.

It would be interesting if they broke it down by CPU - eg, z80, 8080/85, x86, ARM, etc.

GrpA

People who design data centers rarely understand what they are doing. Once you hit 32kW per rack, which is well and truly achievable in a modern data center with enclosed cold aisle and hot aisle plenums, which usually use water cooling.

Problem is, once the pump goes out and the water stops, a data center like that has less than a minute before the temperature inside reaches the point that you can no longer escape. The research that identified the problem originally came from the US military, with respect to how long soldiers could remain inside a tank that was on fire, before escape was no longer possible. ( Somewhere around 72 degrees ).

And you thought non-breathable gas extinguishers were bad...

GrpA

You're making the mistake of assuming a college education is necessary to become a contributor to society.

In fact, it probably does the opposite. It destroys creativity and teaches you to believe things that are incorrect in some cases.

People who make great contributions will make them with or without a college education. The entire educational system is badly in need of reform and if it collapses, that will actually be a good start. From there, destroying educational paywalls and eliminating useless multi-year courses for things that have little relevance in life would be the next step.

There are some careers that do require a lot of training before you can start - and for those, universities will still exist - but there is little value in many other fields.

GrpA

I wonder if they regard Prince of Persia as favorable for it's good impression, or negatively since it shows overthrowing of the government?

This is a major issue for anyone with older security appliances.

Many used Silverlight and these cameras are still in operation today, many of them still being sold.

Microsoft would be better just leaving it alone and dropping it. actively destroying people's ability to use their computers is unfortunate and somewhat despicable.

It takes more effort to destroy it than it does to just let it go. There is clearly a commercial benefit to harming their consumer or they wouldn't be doing it.