Ethan Black @golemwire@librem.one

Mastodon word count for this post: 499. (1 off, man 😁)

For #programmers:
You are familiar with 64-bit floating point and 32-bit floating point, and may have heard about 16-bit floating point (present in some GPUs), but there is actually work on 8-BIT floating-point!

https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.05433
https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-arm-and-intel-publish-fp8-specification-for-standardization-as-an-interchange-format-for-ai/

There is the "E5M2" variant, a "truncated IEEE FP16 format" (nice if lacking FP8). Although, at the miniscule 8-bit level, you don't necessarily need multiple NaNs or need infinities, so there is the "E4M3" variant as well.

#IEEE754 #AI

Finished going through [almost all of] my #Minecraft worlds with my younger brother (also an adult). It was a nice and interesting trip down memory lane.

@mike @kev Classy! (If I have a right to make that judgement call at my age ;D)

@thedubster @briankrebs Not a place you wanted to make a typo 😅

@N.Morgan Note, this is Gandalf from the movies, not "actual" Gandalf from the books (Tolkien).
Profound quote though.

@RickiTarr Cow pattie fights and jumping out of things up high sounds like stuff my parents would have done :)

OK -- I don't know exactly what went wrong; but either way if it *was* a traditional manual ignition, the driver would have been able to turn the car off (they *were* getting instructions from the officer to stop the car, but it wasn't working).

Another 500-char-exactly post *fist-pump*

https://youtu.be/AdkMwlnf2ps
Runaway SUV video.

"When you hit the neutral button, nothing happens [...] push-button start?"
This sort of problem is exactly why dangerous machinery like cars must NEVER rely solely on buttons that ask the onboard computer to cut power to the machine.
In an actually well-designed car, you could just turn the key to shut off the engine... done.

It was always wrong to switch away from a physical ignition switch like in the old cars.

#Honda #vehicle #engineering #safety

@CM30 Like old Internet culture vs new Internet culture?

@pid_eins It also means that since the terminal emulator knows the progress status of a long-running operation, terminals might be able to get a feature where, during one of these long-running operations, you can tell the terminal emulator to shut down the system (or run a command) when it is done.
I think this would be really neat, since sometimes I will start an operation, realize it will take much longer than I thought, then want my computer to e.g. go to sleep when it is done

@vitSkalicky Same idea here.

@lymenzies What I have in mind: tinkering and programming, and hopefully a more permanent sort of use where I substitute the old computer for some basic offline task I sometimes do on my other more modern machines, such as journaling or storing fun ideas.

Indeed, I am in the US. I'll check out those computers you listed! I'd heard of the TRS-80 but heard that there were reliability issues... but these are old anyway.

I do have a PS/2 keyboard, and a VGA 4:3 monitor (LCD).