WoodenChair (u/WoodenChair)

WoodenChair commented on Intel CEO Letter to Employees morethanmoore.substack.co... · Posted by u/fancy_pantser

donmcronald · a month ago

That would suck.

I bought INTC to hold for 10-20 years based on the promise of long term investment in domestic manufacturing. I didn't care if they took a decade to battle back. Seeing them sell of the foundry business would be enough for me to cut my losses before the titanic hits the ocean floor. They'd be a walking corpse at that point IMO.

WoodenChair · a month ago

If they spin off the foundry it's very possible stockholders will end up having stock in both companies. If they sell it for cash that's another story.

WoodenChair commented on MacPaint Art from the Mid-80s Still Looks Great Today blog.decryption.net.au/po... · Posted by u/decryption

WoodenChair · 2 months ago

If you want to make MacPaint drawings that incorporate your modern photos then I make a program for that. Retro Dither on the Mac App Store dithers and exports photos to MacPaint (wrapped in MacBinary for transport):

https://oaksnow.com/retrodither/

There’s also a chapter in my new book explaining how to write the same program in Python including Atkinson dithering, the MacPaint file format and MacBinary. You can get the code for free and do the conversions yourself without Retro Dither here:

https://github.com/davecom/ComputerScienceFromScratch

The book is here:

https://nostarch.com/computer-science-from-scratch

WoodenChair commented on Infinite Mac OS X blog.persistent.info/2025... · Posted by u/kristianp

WoodenChair · 2 months ago

One of the most intriguing items in the article is a link to a PPC CPU emulator in less than 700 lines of code:

https://github.com/kwhr0/macemu/blob/master/SheepShaver/src/...

You see that kind of succinctness in 6502 emulators, not usually relatively modern architectures.

WoodenChair commented on I Wrote a Compiler blog.singleton.io/posts/2... · Posted by u/ingve

WoodenChair · 2 months ago

This is very similar to the project I have in Chapter 2 of my new book Computer Science from Scratch [0]. It's also Tiny BASIC without INPUT. I called it NanoBASIC. But it's an interpreter not a compiler. This tutorial is a nice starting point. The chapter is much more comprehensive, so if you want to get into the weeds, I can recommend my own chapter (of course). But it's in Python, not Go. The code is on GitHub[1]. But this tutorial is great too.

0: https://nostarch.com/computer-science-from-scratch

1: https://github.com/davecom/ComputerScienceFromScratch

WoodenChair commented on Letter to Arc Members 2025 browsercompany.substack.c... · Posted by u/Philpax

WoodenChair · 3 months ago

"With Dia, we started fresh from an architecture perspective and prioritized performance from the start. Specifically, sunsetting our use of TCA and SwiftUI to make Dia lightweight, snappy, and responsive."

What is TCA?

WoodenChair commented on Why the Apple II Didn't Support Lowercase Letters (2020) vintagecomputing.com/inde... · Posted by u/colinbartlett

kristianp · 4 months ago

What's a good book to read about the early days of Apple? I enjoy these stories but this is necessarily skipping a lot of the story of the apple I and II. A search brings up "The Little Kingdom" by Moritz, but it was published in 1984 so it may include the Mac also released in '84 [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K

WoodenChair · 4 months ago

Yes, "The Little Kingdom" is a great book (the very slightly updated edition is called "Return to the Little Kingdom" but really just adds a short epilogue), and in my opinion (having read most of them), the best book on early Apple. It gives you more insight into some of the other characters at the early company (Mike Markkula and Mike Scott for example) than some of the other books. Interestingly, the author, Mike Moritz (a lot of Mikes), went on to be a highly successful venture capitalist. So he must've had some keen insights about the tech industry.

I was a guest on a podcast called "CFO Bookshelf" to discuss that book if you want to hear a discussion of it before making the commitment to dive in:

https://cfobookshelf.com/return-to-the-little-kingdom/

WoodenChair commented on Business books are entertainment, not strategic tools theorthagonist.substack.c... · Posted by u/ZeroTalent

lazyasciiart · 4 months ago

I enjoy “business fables” like The Goal or The Phoenix Project. Since you must know a fair chunk of the business books - any other good ones in this genre?

WoodenChair · 4 months ago

I think you're referring to novels that have strong business themes? Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding. That's an interesting sub-genre that we have not yet explored on the show but have discussed doing in the future. In the six years of the show, we have done exclusively non-fiction and I read myself mostly non-fiction. Sorry, therefore no recommendations yet! I'll checkout the ones you mentioned.

WoodenChair commented on Business books are entertainment, not strategic tools theorthagonist.substack.c... · Posted by u/ZeroTalent

michaelt · 4 months ago

Content like this has to choose the point they're targeting on a rigorous-education-to-entertaining spectrum.

Chess teaching content that's only for people at ~2300 ELO on how to get from there to 2400 ELO? Potential audience of perhaps 10,000 people worldwide.

Chess-themed entertainment content, with educational content mixed with lots of jokes and memes, accessible to players at all levels? Potential audience of 10,000,000 people.

Likewise, you don't become a bestselling business author if your book on how to be a Fortune 500 CEO only has an audience of 500 people. If your book succeeds, 99.95% of your sales will come from people who don't ever plan or expect to become a Fortune 500 CEO.

WoodenChair · 4 months ago

It's interesting you use that analogy because my dad was an author of chess books. Yes, many were a niche within a niche and only sold a few thousands copies.

My observations about business books match your intuition—the more popular business books tend to be popular for reasons beyond their educational content. They usually include great storytelling, are meticulously crafted and edited, and are about societally interesting subject matter beyond the pure educational aspects.

But that really makes a difference in your experience as a reader. I'm not saying popular means good. I am saying that on average with all things considered the popular business books tend to be better experiences to read than the unpopular ones. Of course there are exceptions.

WoodenChair commented on Business books are entertainment, not strategic tools theorthagonist.substack.c... · Posted by u/ZeroTalent

mettamage · 4 months ago

So WoodenChair (fun username!), from your perspective, what books would you recommend that actually has some value in business?

WoodenChair · 4 months ago

"Business" is so broad it's hard to give you recommendations without knowing what you're looking for. That's kind of the point of my post. But as one example, as I mentioned in my post, I loved Doom Guy. If you're building a business in the video game industry you should definitely check it out.

I would also recommend all of the other books in my post that I mentioned by different sub-genres (Shoe Dog, Radical Candor, etc.).

WoodenChair commented on Business books are entertainment, not strategic tools theorthagonist.substack.c... · Posted by u/ZeroTalent

ikt · 4 months ago

just quickly your website doesn't have https so it says that the site I'm going is insecure:

> Secure Site Not Available

> You’ve enabled HTTPS-Only Mode for enhanced security, and a HTTPS version of businessbooksandco.com is not available.

I was legit taken back for a second wondering what I just clicked on

But cheers, I just realised how far we've come if yours was the first site in years? that I've seen this on

WoodenChair · 4 months ago

You're right. I know! It's our podcast host, Pinecast. They don't provide HTTPS to customers for the website. Luckily very few people find us through the website. The vast majority are followers on Spotify. Thanks for the feedback.