Ambient Irony

Saturday, September 19

Daily News Stuff 18 September 2020

7-4+2=1 Edition

Tech News

So, that Python expression parser from yesterday has a tiny little bug.
SiFive is preparing a RISC-V desktop PC. (Tom's Hardware)

With Nvidia buying Arm, investment money is likely to flow like wine as the entire industry hedges its bets. I don't think RISC-V is anywhere close to mainstream desktop performance yet, but I'm busy building a computer that maxes out at 3 MIPS so what do I know?
Speaking of imaginary computers, this is really nicely done. (Itch.io)

I don't think it's an emulator in the same sense that I'm doing; rather it's a very nice pixel-art game creator done in pixel-art style. But you have to buy it to read the documentation.

Update: Not an emulator, rather a set of libraries and tools programmable in Lua. That's a nice way to do it though.
Apple is complaining in court that Epic Games is interfering with its abuse of its monopoly powers. (Ars Technica)

It's a bold strategy.
This is also nicely done. (Itch.io)

It's a really great tileset, but only has five character sprites to go with it. And one duck. But you can get it for just $3, so go find your own sprites.
The RTX 3080 will be available in a 20GB configuration, and the RTX 3070 in 16GB unless they won't, of course, but this leak is about as leaky as they come. (WCCFTech)

If you put the memory capacity in the product code, and then list all the upcoming product codes, that will have that effect.
The PS5 can run PS4 games, but it can't run PS3, PS2, or PS1 games, even though the PS4 can - at least PS1 and PS2 - and the PS5 is compatible with the PS4. (Ars Technica)

Because shut up, Sony explained.

Atari 800XL Gameplay Video of the Day

Some of these games are really impressive for 8-bit hardware dating to 1979. But there is a reason I'm targeting the Imagine at a notch above most of the real 8-bit systems, a little above even the MSX2 or the FM77.

There are a ton of MSX gameplay videos on YouTube, by the way. The original MSX was rubbish, but the MSX2 wasn't bad. People have even got it to run a multi-tasking GUI with TCP/IP.

A lot of the MSX2 games are still pretty bad, but some look quite good, like Dragon Spirit. Here's the MSX2 version:

This seems to be the original arcade version, emulated via MAME. It's certainly better looking than the MSX2 could manage.

Disclaimer: Not that I plan to spend the entire weekend watching them. Not the entire weekend.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:30 AM | Comments (32) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 445 words, total size 4 kb.

1 The only stuffs worth playing on a Play Station were the PS2 and maybe some PS1 games. And used PS4s are still north of $300, so I guess I'll be getting a PS3 before I bother with a PS5.

Posted by: normal at Saturday, September 19 2020 12:49 AM (LADmw)

2 The PS2 was a beast of a system for its time. I still have mine.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, September 19 2020 01:22 AM (PiXy!)

3 Agreed. I still have a large library of games for the PS2, and since the Xenosaga trilogy only had a US release on PS2 (The dreams of a HD remaster of the Xenosaga Trilogy is, unfortunately, dead due to lack of confidence in sales.), I still keep mine.

Posted by: cxt217 at Saturday, September 19 2020 08:50 AM (4i7w0)

4 The duck, of course, is worth the cost on its own.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Saturday, September 19 2020 11:40 AM (vNkOW)

5 Weird bug has cropped up. Clicking the comments link at the bottom of an entry just takes me back to the top of the blog page.

Also, Wonderduck and Brickmuppet have both picked up some spam.

Posted by: Mauser at Saturday, September 19 2020 05:26 PM (Ix1l6)

6 Hi Mauser. Which browser is that with the comments link? Seems to be working on Chrome.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, September 19 2020 05:59 PM (PiXy!)

7 I get Mauser's effect on firefox . . . uh 78.2.0esr, 64bit, musl, alpine linux.

Posted by: normal at Sunday, September 20 2020 02:28 AM (obo9H)

8 Regarding the expression parser, have you considered the shunting-yard algorithm? It's stack-based, which may be easier to deal with in BASIC than an AST with pointers.

Posted by: benzeen at Sunday, September 20 2020 10:09 AM (JpDcM)

9 Currently using Dissenter (A Brave fork without the spyware and *coin stuff built in). NoScript is disabled.

Posted by: Mauser at Sunday, September 20 2020 01:23 PM (Ix1l6)

10 And I just got the "Nothing above my comment" effect mentioned in the next post.

Posted by: Mauser at Sunday, September 20 2020 01:24 PM (Ix1l6)

11 Twice. (this will probably make it thrice.) I see that the link to what I'm seeing is (Sorry for the raw) https://ai.mee.nu/daily_news_stuff_18_september_2020#c10

And when clicking on the comments link fails, it would jump to https://ai.mee.nu/#

Posted by: Mauser at Sunday, September 20 2020 01:26 PM (Ix1l6)

12 Experimenting editing the URL, I can see the page cutting off at the top at whatever comment number I change it to. (I changed it to #5, it's cut off at that comment). I wonder if something is trying to be "efficient".

Posted by: Mauser at Sunday, September 20 2020 01:28 PM (Ix1l6)

13 Mauser - that's weird. Works fine in regular Brave. I'll check out Dissenter since Brave-without-the-crap sounds good to me.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, September 20 2020 03:41 PM (PiXy!)

14 Benzeen - the shunting yard suggestion is a good one, but since you bring up pointers, I should probably implement pointers in my Basic. They're pretty darn useful.

I'll poke around and see if I can find an existing Basic with pointers and copy their approach.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, September 20 2020 03:49 PM (PiXy!)

15 Did anyone ever have a basic that supported pointers? (I tried doing a search, but "pointer basics in c"-type articles polluted the results)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, September 21 2020 01:55 AM (eqaFC)

16 Yeah, same problem here.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, September 21 2020 03:21 AM (PiXy!)

17 Looks like there are pointers in QB64 and FreeBasic, at the least. And of course Visual Basic has object references.

Posted by: benzeen at Monday, September 21 2020 03:52 AM (JpDcM)

18 Ah. Yes, QB64 has a bunch of functions starting with _MEM that deal with pointers and memory allocation.

FreeBasic is interesting. Too much stuff there for me to implement myself, particularly with a 128k limit, but I can steal ideas.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, September 21 2020 04:16 AM (PiXy!)

19 Both of those Basics are post-2000, though. I remember using 8-bit Apple and Atari basic in the 80s and they didn't really have pointers--you had to use C or something (the Ataris had a language called Action! that had pointers and that was a lot faster than BASIC (wikipedia says some benchmark BYTE magazine used took 10 seconds in assembly, 18 in Action!, and 38 minutes in Atari Basic.)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, September 21 2020 01:26 PM (eqaFC)

20 Wow, they ported ALGOL to the Atari? Neat.

I'm using HP Basic as the core of my version of Basic - that's been around in some form since the 1970s. Anything that existed in other programming languages of the time can be added, so long as the whole thing still fits in 128k and doesn't drive me to drink.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, September 21 2020 02:46 PM (PiXy!)

21 Well, a limited subset. Integer only, for example. (Growing up on Atari basic I always thought integer basics were overly limited.)
I saw a program in Action! in one of the magazines and wanted the cartridge, but it wasn't available in stores anywhere at the time, where I lived.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, September 22 2020 01:10 AM (eqaFC)

22 BTW, I just now got the "can't scroll up past the comment I just posted" bug. I can see the scrollbar is at the top of the window. FF 80.0.1, Win 10 Enterprise 2004. Can't use arrow keys to scroll up, either.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, September 22 2020 01:12 AM (eqaFC)

23 The URL was https://ai.mee.nu/daily_news_stuff_18_september_2020#22. Hand-editing it will move the viewport to that comment, and you can't scroll up beyond that point, even after refreshing the page.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, September 22 2020 01:13 AM (eqaFC)

24 The interesting thing about this is when I post my comment, the page refreshes to the top of the page, then jumps to my comment, and the scrollbar updates itself.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, September 22 2020 01:23 AM (eqaFC)

25 Sorry, no, I just watched it happen again--the page refreshes, the scrollbar thumb is at the top of page, and THEN the viewport moves to my comment and the scrollbar does NOT refresh, and I'm stuck unable to scroll up. The corollary to this is that the whole page hasn't rendered when the scrollbar sets itself, so I can't scroll down to the bottom, either! On this page I can only make it down to the T's in the blogroll.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, September 22 2020 01:25 AM (eqaFC)

26 Testing repro in (classic) Edge...

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, September 22 2020 01:25 AM (eqaFC)

27 No, different behavior in Edge--the page refreshes and puts me back down at my previous comment so fast I can't tell if it started at the page top or not. In fact, I get the inverse of the original bug--the scrollbar thumb is at the bottom of its travel and I can't scroll past the "xxkb generated in CPU etc" footer--last line of the blogroll is "January 2005" posts. I can scroll to page top, though.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, September 22 2020 01:28 AM (eqaFC)

28 Chrome--starting from ai.mee.nu, scrolling down to my comment link on the sidebar and clicking it puts me at that comment (no fragment on the URL), but I can't scroll below June 2004, so I can't see the blogroll at all. View Source, which I hadn't tried previously, shows the rest of the page is there, blogroll and all. Let's see what happens when I post this....

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, September 22 2020 01:31 AM (eqaFC)

29 Chrome Version 85.0.4183.102 functions almost like Firefox--I can't scroll up past the last comment, but I can scroll down almost, but not quite, to the page bottom--there's another probably dozen lines of blogroll, RSS links, etc., I can't get to.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, September 22 2020 01:33 AM (eqaFC)

30 Thanks for the details. I think it's a recent browser update, because I can suddenly see it now.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, September 22 2020 01:43 AM (PiXy!)

31 Yes, definitely a recent browser update. The previous version of Chrome would not properly scroll the page to your comment. This latest version does, but then cuts off everything above. Earlier versions actually worked.

Ugh.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, September 22 2020 01:45 AM (PiXy!)

32 Yay, browsers, right? In my day job I produce PDFs that have forms filled in by JS, viewable by web site, and every frickin' year a different subset of the major browsers stop working or start working again. Or do pathological stuff *cough*Chrome*cough* like "won't display the form fields unless you scroll down and then scroll back up." It's bad enough I'm looking at making a minimal PDF generator in Classic ASP (shudder) to avoid the JS.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, September 22 2020 04:35 AM (eqaFC)

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