vanderZwan (u/vanderZwan)

vanderZwan commented on An off-grid, flat-packable washing machine positive.news/society/fla... · Posted by u/ohjeez

Had the feeling someone must have made a similar design in Japan. And yes:

https://youtu.be/iMOkxrdP6kY?si=HWf_Sb-zwk5Vi8ES

(sold for about 10,000 yens https://item.rakuten.co.jp/thanko/000000003846/)

The metal design in the article is still more flexible and durable. I also assumed the Japanese version would be targeted at disaster situations and/or remote mountain areas and be more repairable, but the cost saving part seems to be a major selling point.

vanderZwan · 15 hours ago

That video is three years old, although the item in question might be older of course. I remember reading about the Washing Machine Project a decade ago or so.

vanderZwan commented on Size of Life neal.fun/size-of-life/... · Posted by u/eatonphil

chrismorgan · 5 days ago

The dynamic soundscape is delightful, as it subtly adds instruments and musical texture as you progress. And going back down the scale regresses it to simple again. Smoothly done.

It reminded me of Operation Neptune (1991): each level starts with just one channel, probably percussion, and as you progress through the rooms it adds and removes more channels or sometimes switches to a different section of music. It is unfortunately all sharp cuts, no attempts at smoothing or timing instrument entry and exit. A couple of samples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0LNaatyoQk is an hour of gameplay revelling in “the dynamic and sometimes beautiful music of Operation Neptune” using a Roland MT-32 MIDI synthesiser; and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPxEdQ4wx9s&list=PL3FC048B13... is the PCM files used on some platforms (if you want to compare that track with the MT-32, it starts at 28 minutes).

vanderZwan · 4 days ago

So I guess Operation Neptune was the inspiration for UFO 50s Porgy?

https://ufo50.miraheze.org/wiki/Porgy

vanderZwan commented on PeerTube is recognized as a digital public good by Digital Public Goods Alliance digitalpublicgoods.net/r/... · Posted by u/fsflover

RobotToaster · 5 days ago

Content discovery on it is still difficult, mostly because of the bizarre decision to make federation whitelist based.

I'm also sceptical that activitypub is a good fit for video, IPFS could be a better solution.

It's a shame the US government killed LBRY.

vanderZwan · 5 days ago

> the bizarre decision to make federation whitelist based.

Given the multiple articles I've seen on how federation can easily accidentally DDOS mastodon servers, which isn't even a form of federation that primarily uses something as heavy in data usage as video, I do not find that so strange tbh. And that's before factoring in malicious actors or even just careless ones like all the AI scrapers.

vanderZwan commented on Why xor eax, eax? xania.org/202512/01-xor-e... · Posted by u/hasheddan

sfink · 14 days ago

What is this "LD A, 0" syntax? Is it a z80 thing?

One of the random things burned into my memory for 6502 assembly is that LDA is $A9. I never separated the instruction from the register; it's not like they were general purpose. But that might be because I learned programming from the 2 books that came with my C64, a BASIC manual and a machine code reference manual, and that's how they did it.

I learned assembly programming by reading through the list of supported instructions. That, and typing in games from Compute's Gazette and manually disassembling the DATA instructions to understand how they worked. Oh, and the zero-page reference.

Good times.

vanderZwan · 13 days ago

> What is this "LD A, 0" syntax? Is it a z80 thing?

Well, I never wrote any 6502 so I can't compare, but yes, you could load immediate values into any register except the flag register on the Z80. Was that not a thing on the 6502?

vanderZwan commented on Why xor eax, eax? xania.org/202512/01-xor-e... · Posted by u/hasheddan

kwertyoowiyop · 14 days ago

In this thread, we have found all the programmers born before 1975!

vanderZwan · 14 days ago

Hey, some of us are younger and happened to get into programming via making games on their TI-83 graphing calculator in Z80!

vanderZwan commented on Why xor eax, eax? xania.org/202512/01-xor-e... · Posted by u/hasheddan

Anarch157a · 14 days ago

I don't know enough of the 8086 so I don't know if this works the same, but on the Z80 (which means it was probably true for the 8080 too), XOR A would also clear pretty much all bits on the flag register, meaning the flags would be in a known state before doing something that could affect them.

vanderZwan · 14 days ago

Which I guess is the same reason why modern Intel CPU pipelines can rely on it for pipelining.

vanderZwan commented on Why xor eax, eax? xania.org/202512/01-xor-e... · Posted by u/hasheddan

jgrahamc · 14 days ago

In my 6502 hacking days, the presence of an exclusive OR was a sure-fire indicator you’d either found the encryption part of the code, or some kind of sprite routine.

Yeah, sadly the 6502 didn't allow you to do EOR A; while the Z80 did allow XOR A. If I remember correctly XOR A was AF and LD A, 0 was 3E 01[1]. So saved a whole byte! And I think the XOR was 3 clock cycles fast than the LD. So less space taken up by the instruction and faster.

I have a very distinct memory in my first job (writing x86 assembly) of the CEO walking up behind my desk and pointing out that I'd done MOV AX, 0 when I could have done XOR AX, AX.

[1] 3E 00

vanderZwan · 14 days ago

Hah, we commented on the exact same paragraph within a minute of each other! My memory agrees with your memory, although I think that should be 3E 00. Let me look that up:

https://jnz.dk/z80/ld_r_n.html

https://jnz.dk/z80/xor_r.html

Yep, if I'm reading this right that's 3E 00, since the second byte is the immediate value.

One difference between XOR and LD is that LD A, 0 does not affect flags, which sometimes mattered.

vanderZwan commented on Why xor eax, eax? xania.org/202512/01-xor-e... · Posted by u/hasheddan

deadcore · 14 days ago

Matt Godbolt also uploads to his self titled Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLjZ48gqbyg

vanderZwan · 14 days ago

Not sure why you got downvoted for pointing that out - it might be linked at the end of the article but people can still miss that.

vanderZwan commented on Why xor eax, eax? xania.org/202512/01-xor-e... · Posted by u/hasheddan

vanderZwan · 14 days ago

> In my 6502 hacking days, the presence of an exclusive OR was a sure-fire indicator you’d either found the encryption part of the code, or some kind of sprite routine.

Meanwhile, people like me who got started with a Z80 instead immediately knew why, since XOR A is the smallest and fastest way to clear the accumulator and flag register. Funny how that also shows how specific this is to a particular CPU lineage or its offshoots.

vanderZwan commented on The original ABC language, Python's predecessor (1991) github.com/gvanrossum/abc... · Posted by u/tony

shawn_w · 16 days ago

C uses ^ for bitwise xor and a function for exponentiation, though.

vanderZwan · 16 days ago

He's explaining that C was not the reason for picking * over ^