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Ha. My first job in '89 was working for an FFRDC reviewing IBM's Jovial code that was going to "revolutionize ATC" by modernizing everything.

I'm gonna guess that code never went into production. The problem seems easy until you start looking under the hood.


A lot of the restricted stuff is cargo-cult fear of symbols that could be used in SQL-injection or XSS attacks.

A properly-coded system wouldn't care, but the people who write the rules have read old OWASP documents and in there they saw these symbols were somehow involved in big scary hacks that they didn't understand. So it's easier to ban them.


contagi-yawn


It was earlier than the 90s, and came with popular 8-bit CPUs in the 80s. The Z-80 microprocessor could address 64kb (which was 65,536 bytes) on its 16-bit address bus.

Similarly, the 4104 chip was a "4kb x 1 bit" RAM chip and stored 4096 bits. You'd see this in the whole 41xx series, and beyond.


> The Z-80 microprocessor could address 64kb (which was 65,536 bytes) on its 16-bit address bus.

I was going to say that what it could address and what they called what it could address is an important distinction, but found this fun ad from 1976[1].

"16K Bytes of RAM Memory, expandable to 60K Bytes", "4K Bytes of ROM/RAM Monitor software", seems pretty unambiguous that you're correct.

Interestingly wikipedia at least implies the IBM System 360 popularized the base-2 prefixes[2], citing their 1964 documentation, but I can't find any use of it in there for the main core storage docs they cite[3]. Amusingly the only use of "kb" I can find in the pdf is for data rate off magnetic tape, which is explicitly defined as "kb = thousands of bytes per second", and the only reference to "kilo-" is for "kilobaud", which would have again been base-10. If we give them the benefit of the doubt on this, presumably it was from later System 360 publications where they would have had enough storage to need prefixes to describe it.

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zilog_Z-80_Microproc...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#Units_based_on_powers_of_...

[3] http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/360/systemSummary/A22-6810-...


Even then it was not universal. For example, that Apple I ad that got posted a few days ago mentioned that "the system is expandable to 65K". https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Apple_1_...


Someone here the other day said that it could accept 64KB of RAM plus 1KB of ROM, for 65KB total memory.

I don't know if that's correct, but at least it'd explain the mismatch.


Seems like a typo given that the ad contains many mentions of K (8K, 32K) and they're all of the 1024 variety.


If you're using base 10, you can get "8K" and "32K" by dividing by 10 and rounding down. The 1024/1000 distinction only becomes significant at 65536.


Still the advertisement is filled with details like the number of chips, the number of pins, etc. If you're dealing with chips and pins, it's always going to base-2.


Ignoring all this drama.

But I've always found Paul to be a good guy, who was helpful and honest and provided a great product. Teensy is a great platform, and it's too bad these other players will have a negative impact on it.


How hard would it be to extend this to support bulk export of Apple Notes?


That's a great idea! Could you open an issue-or better so, PR—for this? I've had some additional backlog ideas.


Those who know how to fix the messes made by AI today will replace those who don't tomorrow.


Agreed. Prince also has a lot of good features for headers, footers, page numbering, etc, that make it very powerful.


It's not like Imgur didn't finance with ads. They did that for a long time. Dunno if it paid the bills. The latest kerfuffle is because they were bought and the new owners fired all the moderators in favor of "AI moderation."


If you're not part of a group that will suffer under a white-supremecist theocracy they look very similar.

If you're part of a group that will, there is a visible difference.

Picking the lesser evil is actually a good thing if you can reduce harm. It doesn't solve the problem of it being a lesser evil, but it may make space to change that.


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