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npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Profile Code
nprofile1qqswgdyd2rwcne9ll0je7xnl73mdvmddpqsdnjuysk2nu4gfqxctdxspz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsnkfkfp
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2026-09-26T15:28:09Z Event JSON
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"content": "{\"name\":\"Nina Kalinina\",\"about\":\"This profile is not managed by Terraform.\\n\\nOr, as my \\\"professional\\\" email signature says, \\\"IT expert and mixed media artificer\\\". Proud to be an LLM hater.\\n\\nA late millennial, yet I grew up with a ZX Spectrum and used an i486 as my main PC well into 00s. I have a degree in electrical engineering, but somehow ended up building massively distributed computer systems. I learned a lot during my long-ish career, and this knowledge makes me sad and keeps me up at night sometimes.\\n\\nI never post here in a \\\"working adult\\\" capacity, and wouldn't dare to speak for my current or past employers. Instead, I engage in playful shitpost and creative exploration of technologies that have no commercial applications.\",\"picture\":\"https://media.tech.lgbt/accounts/avatars/109/093/165/028/047/640/original/7463f84b80dc117a.jpg\",\"banner\":\"https://media.tech.lgbt/accounts/headers/109/093/165/028/047/640/original/53279c4aebdc3116.png\",\"nip05\":\"[email protected] \",\"fields\":[[\"Homepage\",\"https://ninakalinina.com\"],[\"Location\",\"UK (South Wales)\"],[\"Pronouns\",\"she/her\"],[\"Labels\",\"pan+demi=pandemic\"],[\"Bae\",\"There is one \u003c3\"],[\"Tired?\",\"lejfiofejwrjifw orz\"],[\"Label\",\"Content\"]]}" ,
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Last Notes npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Local recycling centre sells 10 blurays/dvds/CDs for £1. Got myself a bunch. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Oh hey, my union (UTAW, in the UK) says AI is basically if not evil then very bad, and it shouldn't be enforced: https://techworkersinquiry.org/ai/ npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina @nprofile…sm6r @nprofile…mx8a I'm still in a process of figuring it out a bit. OpenBSD is a bit easier, NetBSD is a bit more difficult, but both can work. My thread on NetBSD install: https://tech.lgbt/@nina_kali_nina/117098851181894640 npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina NetBSD adventures intermediate report (short): I installed NetBSD 11 on a desktop with a supported CPU/GPU pair, and it works pretty well there. That gave me an opportunity to try a few more things that I didn't try before, and, so far, it's been a bit of a defeat: npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina @nprofile…6g5f oh no :( npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina @nprofile…sm6r I mean, I can imagine at least three ways to make it possible npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina @nprofile…kwt0 well, let's say, if there was a model with open training dataset, it'd be kind of like an open source car or open source missile to me, I guess? Please don't take it too seriously though, I have too many thoughts on the topic, but I find LLMs similar to cars and car infrastructure: we know they're not great for the planet, we know they are kind of bad for people, we know there are better solutions for most problems they try to solve, but great many people are either forced to use them or choose to use them for personal gain as their usage is normalised. The car-centric society, though, disproportionately benefit rich and harms disenfranchised people, and an open source car would do little to change this balance. An LLM built in an ethical way would be better, but would still be similarly problematic. That's a pretty weak analogy. But it's not like I've seen a useful LLM trained in an ethical way in the last few years, anyways npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina I'm apparently breaking a friendship contract by not praising friends for doing stuff I find unethical 🤔 but friends don't let friends vibe code npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Check out the retrograde Mars, you'd definitely think it's a lost star: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:An_animation_to_explain_the_(apparent)_retrograde_motion_of_Mars,_using_actual_2020_planet_positions.webm npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina I think I have a plan on how to fix the CPU scaling on my NetBSD. If I'm right, I'll just need to write a simple kernel driver for it. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina It took me less than 24 hours to kill my NetBSD install. I'm leaving the message from it, but I really think I'll have to redo it (and make sure my backups are in a good order). I've been playing around with linux_compat, installed a bunch of stuff over pkgin, started VA-11 Hall-A, and... the system froze after the splash screen. I rebooted, and it corrupted the file system. fsck has restored it to the point where I can have most things running, but /var/db/pkgin database has became corrupted. Worse still, removing pkgin and its database and starting from scratch still results in segfaults in pkgin. This is not great :D npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina People worry about migrating from Linux/Windows because stuff they have is definitely not going to work out of the box on smaller systems. I appreciate that this indeed the case for many people. At the same time, BSDs and Haiku today are far, far more advanced than Windows and Linux ever were in the 1990s, heck, early 00s. And many of us still remember that computing back then wasn't all that bad. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina @nprofile…wuv3 well, manga is almost never created in colour. The effect here seems to be intentional npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina @nprofile…wuv3 🤔 what do you mean by "in colours"? Manga is monochrome npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Have you ever wondered why hatching in manga looks the way it does? I'm sure many of manga aficionados knew about the "tone" that is applied to manga, but I never could figure out how it creates such beautiful, kaleidoscope-like effects... npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina I've started a new job ~3 weeks ago, and it's very fun and very intense. I have to balance the intensity of the job with my 🎶 surprising new health things🎵 so there's far less time for hobbies and even less time to post about them. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina A Japanese vending machine with drinks next door probably can fix me (not that there's one, but at least the convenience store nearby is pretty good) npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina My favourite init is.... /bin/sh npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Stupid LLMs sap some of the joy from finding unexpected things about the world. "Is it real or is it a shrimp jebuz level of fake made for clicks?" npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina I wrote down one of my favourite recipes ever - asazuke, Japanese-style shallow pickles. Very easy to make, will take 10 minutes to prepare and ~1h to cook. I never tried to make it without konbu leaves; I wonder if it's possible to replace those with powdered dashi or MSG. I'm forever grateful to my Japanese friend who shared the recipe with me originally. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina When I first watched War Games (1983) I thought "wow, so weird, not only they had terrible password management, but their test 'AI' system was directly linked to the prod". npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina I've made vegan okroshka for lunch and wrote down the recipe (with the photos). Here it is: https://git.sr.ht/~nkali/cookbook/tree/main/cold/okroshka.md npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina > They have enriched literature, legend, and history, and they provide mankind with food, amusement, and a reliable means of communication. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina I started writing an online cookbook. All the recipes are vegan, but some make use of substitutes. I mostly try to write about general ideas behind the dishes, so it should be possible to cook them with whatever is available to you. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina I'm sick (again!), and so I'm reading old magazines as a comfy way to spend time. I have procured scans of 1961's magazines (that's 65 years ago!), and will share some interesting findings in this thread. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Linux on arm Mac is 'fun'. The default Fedora is working okay now, but it's pro-AI. What do I do then? 🤔 Chimera and Elementary failed to boot and one of them might have even corrupted my existing Linux install somehow. I know Gentoo should be supported, but I've heard mixed opinions about it. OpenBSD should work, but apparently it won't be able to play videos smoothly due to the lack of hardware video acceleration, which is kind of sad... npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina I've been informed that my favourite English-language manga and light novel publisher was acquired by a company doing AI translations. I guess in this weird world my decision to learn Japanese proves to be important, huh. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina @nprofile…3q9y @nprofile…lyy3 you might be able to borrow my nas, but the latency would be bad npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina TIL "24 hour operator chair" are far cheaper than expensive brand chairs and supposedly are very comfy for work npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina I think it would be nice to have a way to filter out packages available for installation on my OS by their use of generative AI. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Byte 1988-11 magazine offers new vocabulary for Discord-like services npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina TFW you explain Gas Town to your therapist npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Oh, Persona (used by Discord and OpenAI to verify age) has watch lists and shares data with fed governments, it seems. I haven't finished reading yet: https://vmfunc.re/blog/persona/ npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina We have reached a new era of civil engineering; now we can build bridges by simply dumping truckloads of shit into the river until the shit mountains are tall enough that some people and maybe cars can cross the river. Truly, it is a revolutionary technology that democraticizes access to bridges; now everyone can dump a truckload of shit over small rivers here and there and cross the rivers instead of asking an engineer to build the bridge for them. This approach completely removes all the bottlenecks in engineering, too: no need to navigate difficult legal frameworks or ethical concerns. The biggest players on the market are staring to replace their bridges with shit mountains, you'd better be catching up and learning how to use this new groundbreaking technology. Some of you have ethical concerns, but this is beyond of the scope of my post. I also recognise that some might notice fish in the rivers dying, or simply slip on the shit; just you wait, I bet it'll be fixed in ~6 months npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina I feel like I've discovered a (not-so-)well guarded secret about Ubuntu, and I'm eager to share with y'all, shortly, after I recover from my shock and take lots of photos. :D npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina I'm yet again reminded that accessibility technologies are priced unfairly. Did you know that a pair of hearing aids starts at roughly £500 but an average model can easily cost over £1500? And it's not like it's rocket science. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina This week was a bit too much. There's lots of despair in the air. So, if you have anything nice to share, now is the time. I'll start with sharing a photo of a very tired cat who definitely spent all night protecting our sleep. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina @nprofile…wdzu no, thank you! ;) npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina @nprofile…2eew :blobcat_thisisfine: let's persevere npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Don't you love it when a thing behaves under the debugger but doesn't when it is run normally npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina @nprofile…ggeh judging by the source code, it is "vga blender" demo, isn't it npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Is this art npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina But you know what? Photoshop doesn't care about the fact that this Windows isn't really a full Windows installation (or, rather, not an installation at all). It just runs. And it is much better than Paint, except for the start-up times. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Okay, if our Windows doesn't have Paintbrush, we might as well try and install Photoshop, right? npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Okay, at least we now can continue our quest to make "Windows with as little Windows as possible" from Windows itself. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina There are multiple DLLs that our mini.cab system is missing for Calmira: COMMDLG.DLL, SHELL.DLL, TOOLHELP.DLL and MMSYSTEM.DLL npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Okay, mini.cab obviously doesn't have any shell (be it progman or anything else). But we can edit SYSTEM.INI to point it to Calmira, right? npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina "Mini Windows" based on Windows 3.10 shipped with Windows 95 npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina It is a long-standing tradition for Microsoft to use a runtime copy of Windows as a part of Windows Setup. But the copy is so stripped-down, it cannot run anything but the setup program (winsetup.bin). npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina I love it when I ask a question about a thing and get a reply "you should ask this one person who knows the most about the thing, her name is Nina and ... oh" npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina After I posted my article about porting (sort of) Windows 2 on the Apricot PC, lots of people have asked me about Windows 3. I refused to work on it with "nah, not going to happen, too hard", but I learned a bit more about unhinged stuff today, and so I present you, Franken Windows 3.0 on the Apricot. It's not fully usable yet, and I don't know when I can make it usable. But some basic stuff works. It's Real Mode Windows 3.0 with the 1.0 driver. I think I miiiight be able to patch the driver to make it work on 3.0 without glitching, but I need lots of time for that. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina One extra reason on getting a first aid training, by the way: I called the emergency services at 2:30pm; they confirmed that the patient is breathing, and said it might take from 1 to 5 hours to dispatch an ambulance in this case. That's in a capital city of Wales, Cardiff. The emergency services called me back at 3:40pm to confirm whether an ambulance is still needed. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Bystander effect scary! A guy collapsed on a crowded street, and for some reason it formed an area around him where no one was. We checked on him and called an ambulance, and only after that someone called a local first aider (aka staff of the train station nearby, with a first aid kit and an extra special training). npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina I bought my first Apricot PC about three years ago, when I realised I wanted an 8086-based computer. At the time, I knew nothing about it and simply bought it because it looked rad and the price was low. I had no idea that it was not IBM PC-compatible, and that there were very few programs available for it. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Windows 2 on the real Apricot: testing complete. All the basic system functions, including beeping at user, work. The serial communications and printing were not tested and probably won't work without extra work. I successfully ran Word and Excel, and I don't doubt I could run Illustrator or CorelDraw if I had space on the hard drive (it's 10 megabyte ROdime with DOS3, GW Basic, Turbo Pascal, Windows 1, Windows 2, Word and Excel installed; about 2.5 megs free). npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina I'm looking for recommendations: open source tools for grammar checking. I know about LanguageTool, but it seems a bit too difficult to use out of the box 🤔 npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina I'm completely brain-dead today, but through sheer resilience and cleverness I got a prototype of the fully* working Windows 2 display driver for Apricot. It is not ready to be published, and it is one big hack, but it works. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina I discovered a wonderful hack that likely would allow me to run Windows 2 on my vintage Apricot PC Xi before the New Year. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina ~~ Porting Windows 2 to the British Apricot PC Xi computer: day 2 ~~ npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Imagine being a Corporate Security Head of Mastodon :florshed: npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Wonderful people from Barcelona: a friend of mine got mugged of her smartphone, and buying a new one is difficult for her - who just received an asylum. If you have an old smartphone that still works OK that you don't need, please get in touch with me... npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina My cold got better in the evening, so I finished editing the article about reverse-engineering a rare but historically important operating system VisiCorp VisiOn. A ~10,000-word-long write-up is accompanied by the first-ever third-party application for Visi On, developed by my fiancée, Atsuko. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Received an email from Itch where one of the developers I follow published a game called "Candy Al...", had a minor heart attack until I realised that it was "Candy Alchemy" but truncated npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina https://media.tech.lgbt/media_attachments/files/115/657/270/669/743/032/original/20ec86dcd94a5b63.png npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina I just helped a neighbour to remove scareware notifications from her phone, and now I think authors of the Browser Notifications API should have a tribunal over countless scams they enabled. A poor old lady was worried all day she's going to lose a lot of money (and she would have, if she'd trusted the very convincingly looking scam from the browser notifications). npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Is it #doscember yet? Atsuko has a beta of the Pyramid Game for VisiOn npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina My dress has pockets. How? Step one: buy a hoodie that is WAY too large. Step two: convince yourself it always meant to be a dress. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina @nprofile…wzht Interesting, I can replicate in Dosbox-X but not in Dosbox. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina @nprofile…f4xf similar conclusion here 🥲 Gentoo or a DIY distro npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Fun stuff: VisiOn kernel has a memory-leak. Clicking the menu ~200 times in any app results in running out of memory, and eventually the system crashes. The easiest way to replicate the bug is to press "Esc" down (it will send the Escape key event over and over); it won't even do anything, just redraw the menu. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina If you feel very low and need support, and don't know if there's anyone in this world who can help you, feel free to reach out to me. It is likely I won't be able to solve your problems or dispel your worries, but I can listen, and I can offer advice sometimes. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina A month of reverse-engineering of a 42-year-old operating system just to display anime girls in it. Trust me, it was all worth it. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina An update on reverse-engineering VisiOn, an early GUI operating system for PC: Atsuko and I are still figuring out how to go about displaying graphics. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina @nprofile…wzht @nprofile…q7ws the only problem it's in an obscure Lisp dialect npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina This was a triumph. I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina So, suppose one replaces a firmware in a hard drive made by Quantum, and makes it run, idk, Doom or whatever... My question: Is it "Quantum computing"? npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina @nprofile…syqt I have not, and I'm going to check it out right now, awesome stuff! npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina @nprofile…syqt been there :) microelectronics lectures in our uni weren't computerized, we were looking at silicone with microscopes and drawing the layouts on a grid paper npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina "Have you tried to make a program for a 40-year-old operating system with no documentation whatsoever" part 26, or VisiCorp Visi On Homebrew/SDK progress report: as you know, we have a working app, but we don't yet know how to draw anything in the window area. This thing is over-engineered^W convoluted. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina All I see now is blonde, brunette, redhead. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina With a bit of tears shed and hairs greyed, we have the main loop working in the first-ever VisiOn homebrew application. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina VisiCorp Visi On homebrew project report: Atsuko is putting in lots of work now, and together we're building an app from scratch using the knowledge I got from reverse-engineering. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina @nprofile…wzht QEMU won't be happy about it; I think it only supports 360K npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Have you ever booted a zip archive? I was doing my regular computing shenanigans, and then it dawned on me that a floppy image can be a valid ZIP archive. That's because the boot sector and the FAT table are at the beginning of the file, and the ZIP file header is at the end of it. The trick was used in the past for something called "rarjpeg" (a JPEG image that is a valid RAR file). npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina TIL about Japanese windowing system called GMW (Give Me Windows) - npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina @nprofile…4q78 better tagging/CW needed. I assumed it is an example of an AI-generated slop, but it is not obvious to everyone, I think npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina VisiCorp Visi On operating system homebrew progress report: I finally figured out the main loop for the application. I still need to find out how the syscalls "create application" and "define window" work. I still have no idea how to draw in the window, how to get mouse coordinates (only click or menu events), how to create on-screen buttons, or access file systems. I can beep for you, though. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina VisiOn operating system homebrew report: starting to get the feel what the syscalls can be, and how they're called. It's difficult to understand because it is x86 assembly generated by a vintage cross-compiler that produces questionable code that cannot be reliably disassembled and/or decompiled by modern tools. A few notes on why it was difficult to find: npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina A parallel universe where the concept of a "key board", be it a piano or a typewriter keyboard, never got popular. Most people are using fretted lute / guitar input with their computers; people who mastered chords can type faster than those who cannot. Some countries prefer violin/shamisen style of input, and thus in the 40 years of computerisation their spoken languages have changed to incorporate legatos and pitch changes. The biggest coder flame war of all times is not vim vs emacs but plectrum vs bow. A few historians uncover a long-forgotten prototype of a computer controlled by percussion. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Imagine a parallel universe where Unix was made in a Japanese-speaking country, so all the command line interfaces don't expect spaces or "flags" and instead use particles: npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina I promised to share a bit more about VisiOn operating system, didn't I? npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Nah, I'm kidding, no need to buy a CD with my music, you can just download the MP3, I'll be only happy: https://www.ninakalinina.com/music/aiwo/ npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina In 5 years since I've published my stuff on Spotify and Apple Music and such I've made $29 from streaming. My most popular song made $7.31 (released three years ago). I see I'm getting some $0.00008220 per stream (that's Spotify payment), so the song probably has ~88900 plays across the platforms. I should've made 20 physical CDs instead... npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina One curious thing I've found yesterday was court records of a case against Microsoft that claimed that Microsoft's vaporware approach has killed VusiCorp's VisiOn operating system. I understand that this is a widely shared view. After all, Microsoft announced Windows around the time VisiOn went on sale, promised to deliver it within months, and didn't. So I'm not surprised that Microsoft's vaporware politics contributed to the VisiOn's demise. But after using it for a couple of weeks, I think there's a big problem with VisiOn that people tend to ignore: it was expensive and it didn't make sense to have. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Did you know that early 3.5" floppies were cute, small and only had a single side, almost like those Möbius things but not quite? npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina VisiCorp Visi On encrypts all the program disks, and some files on them are encrypted twice 🫣 With the same hyper-secure XOR algorithm that can be cracked with an abacus (or without) npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Cool things I discovered today: npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina Remember I shared screenshots of B-TRON OS? Turns out there was also J-TRON OS, with JavaVM running on top of the TRON kernel. It is, of course, related to ITRON that powered most if not all i-mode keitai cell phones in Japan. npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina For all your "I need to use Copilot to get a good performance review this time? Well, no idea why you would want me to, but sure" needs: npub1us6g65xa38jtl7l9nud8lark6ek66zpqm89cfpv48e2sjqdsk6dqe0rm2v Nina Kalinina TIL there was Reflection X for Windows 3.1. This means there were at least 3 X servers for Windows 3.x - XAppeal, Reflection and Xonnet. This isn't NT, because there wasn't Windows NT in Japanese in 1993.
