asciilifeform: it is classic app store - 'don't like it? go sell on the street, keep 100% of the pennies you get'

asciilifeform: (where in fact author is lucky to see 3-5%)

asciilifeform: or any dead tree publisher

asciilifeform: ^ apple app store !11

asciilifeform: ('let the n bits add at once' etc)

asciilifeform: the use of registers was the original parallelization, if you will.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: bit-serial arithmetic is slow. and bit-serial storage is slow.

asciilifeform: i dug out the 1-bit cpu because i have a weakness for exotic archs that might be amenable to optical or otherwise 'this handful of switching elements' incarnation.

asciilifeform: but otherwise registers are a necessary evil, a teaspoon-sized bucket is possible but generally not wanted

asciilifeform: (personally i favour the... trit)

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: you gotta pick some quantum of info for the logic to operate on.

asciilifeform: (you can trivially bit-serial add/subtract, but not mult/div unless by powers of the base)

asciilifeform: registers as long as you like, on a whim.

asciilifeform: it existed.

asciilifeform: a month or 2 ago

asciilifeform: i turned one up !

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: do you recall the 1-bit cpu thread ?

asciilifeform: 6-bit chars.

asciilifeform: 48-bit integers...

asciilifeform: and these are emulated, pretty elegantly.

asciilifeform: because the kdf9 had ~weird~ (by modern standards) data types, e.g., 96-bit mantissa, etc.

asciilifeform: incidentally, very pertinent to earlier thread,

asciilifeform: (example of large ada application)

asciilifeform: mod6 et al ^

asciilifeform: http://www.findlayw.plus.com/KDF9/emulation/emulator.html << irrelevant but very interesting imho.

asciilifeform: 'who is selling 800k of coin? not usg!111 you hatefact-peddling nazi. it's this bloke in his attic'

asciilifeform: phf: it is also handy waterfall legend

asciilifeform: or, even more so, 'ghadafi is not a real sovereign because he doesn't come to davos'

asciilifeform: precisely that way.

asciilifeform: 1ofthesethingz doesn't belong!1

asciilifeform: 1ofthesethings is not like theotherz!11 (tm) (r)

asciilifeform: with motherfucking sane orthogonal persistence!1

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: what did templos ever do to you!111

asciilifeform: mod6 et al ^

asciilifeform: in other 'news', http://users.cis.fiu.edu/~weiss/ada.html << useful data structures stuff

asciilifeform: no paulgraham catamites or phoundation scum involved - ergo no mention.

asciilifeform: mega-unsurprise.

asciilifeform: hm looks like.

asciilifeform: pete_dushenski: mine was signed..

asciilifeform: pete_dushenski: http://www.contravex.com/2016/04/07/that-time-i-let-outright-ownership-of-bitbet-slip-through-my-fingers/#comment-43089

asciilifeform: quite familiar species to regular readers of 'stack overflow' and similar.

asciilifeform: classic homework idler

asciilifeform: spiffy resource.

asciilifeform: ^ and anyone else

asciilifeform: ;;later tell mod6 http://zhu-qy.blogspot.com/2012/08/adatutor.html

asciilifeform: this'd be more of a 'why is ear shaped like-so'

asciilifeform: well that's more euclidean geometric (surface/volume)

asciilifeform: the concept pervades physics.

asciilifeform: as in 'why using 19 bit integer is 25x slower than 16'

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: re thread, see also earlier threadz re 'impedance matching'

asciilifeform: ah he lost

asciilifeform: l0lwut

asciilifeform: if you could kill the shitstack, incl gpu, yes - even browser.

asciilifeform: program that behaves sanely for all time so long as the iron holds up, is a reality. i write'em.

asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-04-07#1448178 << poppycock. ☝︎

asciilifeform: aha.

asciilifeform: to caesar - caesar's (tm) etc.

asciilifeform: to the mentat - the mentat's

asciilifeform: phf: it is my intention to bring this back, full bore.

asciilifeform: captain did not turn knobs on the steam machine himself!

asciilifeform: think of a ship's telegraph.

asciilifeform: it is, i think, how mircea_popescu uses bitcoin, for instance.

asciilifeform: anywhere.

asciilifeform: phf: this remains the only practical thing.

asciilifeform: yes, idiots want this for phreee, without having to UNDERSTAND what they did.

asciilifeform: what ~isn't~ possible, per godel, is to arrive at this using brute idiocy

asciilifeform: it remains possible to write proggy that behaves - demonstrably - correctly for ALL electrically-possible inputs.

asciilifeform: but it is the perfect and in fact traditional excuse for inaction.

asciilifeform: this is directly 'why wash hands, sanitation doesn't exist.'

asciilifeform: the very first thing you learn of a computer, 'this thing has N states, yes, it is a large N, but N is an INTEGER'

asciilifeform: not only finite, but discrete.

asciilifeform: *sad fact

asciilifeform: the one and only sane fact is that we are stuck with CPU designed when ram was $50/kB.

asciilifeform: when you run out of brain, all bets are off.

asciilifeform: but it IS possible to make abstraction that does not leak until you run out of memory.

asciilifeform: machine is not magical, no.

asciilifeform: why is this a painful concept ?

asciilifeform: you define the field, and work in it

asciilifeform: the possible values of a byte ~are~ contiguous.

asciilifeform: nope.

asciilifeform: never did.

asciilifeform: they don't EXIST in engineering.

asciilifeform: satan help you if you are actually in need of 'reals'

asciilifeform: represent the ones you can actually produce.

asciilifeform: why ALL the numbers ?

asciilifeform: this is called 'rational arithmetic'

asciilifeform: so you represent it as a quotient.

asciilifeform: from where comes this imaginary problem, i dun see it

asciilifeform: so then ?

asciilifeform: SOLVED

asciilifeform: use sufficient bits for the representation of the WHOLE range.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: easy, just don't use the idiot ieee float ☟︎

asciilifeform: as illustrated in yesterday's link

asciilifeform: where i can specify EXACTLY how the bits lay down

asciilifeform: the precise handling of bits is, afaik, unique to ada and commonlisp

asciilifeform: not because it had any general concept of number.

asciilifeform: redefining 4 worked as a strings parser trick

asciilifeform: (btw anyone who pines for fortran, need not search long, it is on your box right now, in gcc)

asciilifeform: but with braindamaged syntax.

asciilifeform: fortran is quintessentially a c