Commodore C64: The Most Popular Home Computer Ever Turns 40

April 21, 2022 Audrey

This year marks the anniversary of the most popular selling home computer ever, the Commodore 64, which made its debut in 1982. Note that I am saying “home computer” and not personal computer (PC) because back then the term PC was not yet in use for home computer users.

Some of you have probably not heard of Commodore, which is kind of sad, though there is a simple reason why — Commodore is no longer around to maintain its legacy. If one were to watch a documentary about the 1980s they may see a picture of an Apple computer or its founders but most likely would not see a picture of a Commodore computer in spite of selling tens of millions of units.

To understand the success of the C64 I would first back up and talk about the fabled era of home computers which starts with understanding the microprocessor of the day, the venerable 6502. Check out the video and follow along below.

The 6502

The 6502 was the brainchild of Chuck Peddle and a team of engineers, Bill Mensch, Wil Mathes and others, who were all working at Motorola — we called them the Motorla Five even though there were seven of them. Chuck’s team successfully shrunk down a full sized PCB known as the main processor board onto a single chip, known now as a microprocessor, the 6800 to be exact. While this evolutionary step seems whole and natural to someone like you or I, the existence of the microprocessor was deemed a threat to those at Motorola who made their money selling the main processor board for tens of thousands dollars vs the $250 that the 6800 was slated to sell for. Mr. Peddle basically received a “cease and desist” letter from Motorola to stop work on the 6800 which Chuck took to mean that they were abandoning the project and the intellectual property it represented. Chuck and company then joined MOS Technology in Norristown PA and subsequently released the 6502 microprocessor which sold initially for $25 and ultimately less than a dollar. The fact that the lawyers disagreed with Chuck is a different story.

KIM-1

The 6502 is at the heart of many of the home computers of the era starting with Atari, Apple, BBC Micro, and of course Commodore. One of the earliest examples of the 6502 was a system known as KIM-1. Contrary to popular belief, the KIM-1 was not designed by Chuck Peddle but rather someone from the Calculator Group at MOS lead by John May. When asked about his contribution to computers in general, Mr. Peddle’s response was that he was proud of the Input/Output (I/O) chips of the day as a computer with no I/O is just a processor but add I/O and you have terminals, cash registers, printers, etc.

I cut my teeth on the 6502 as a young bench technician at a company named Pennsylvania Scale Company in the late 70’s, doing processor controlled instrumentation which was

Wordle April 21 (306) remedy guideline

April 21, 2022 Audrey

Are you hoping to uncover the reply to the April 21 (306) Wordle? Then you’ve appear to the correct position. Fixing puzzles and pulling obscure answers out of slender air in the course of your no cost time can be a great deal of enjoyable, but if you question me occasionally the sheer satisfaction of breezily sailing by way of something that could have been challenging beats the pleasure of a hard-fought Wordle win.

Possibly your visit has nothing at all to do with today’s check, and you just wanted to glance at our Wordle archive instead? No matter why you’re below, I can aid. I can position you in the appropriate route with a clue, give you the remedy, or even train you how to participate in if you have in no way attempted Wordle in advance of.

Wordle April 21: A practical hint

Nobody other than chemists and science instructors see this term move their lips on a frequent foundation, so regardless of what you try out these days, make absolutely sure it is really anything out of the standard. You’ve got only got two consonants currently, so check out to remain relaxed and breathe all of that clean oxygen deep into your lungs even though you believe of the respond to.

Modern Wordle 306 remedy

Today’s was surely a little bit unconventional, so really don’t feel negative if you’ve only received a person guess remaining and nevertheless experience like you’ve acquired nowhere. The remedy to the April 21 Wordle response is OXIDE.

How Wordle operates

In Wordle you happen to be presented with five vacant packing containers to get the job done with, and you want to suss out a key 5-letter word which suits in those people boxes. You have only bought 6 guesses to nail it.

Get started with a phrase like “Elevate”—that’s superior simply because it incorporates a few prevalent vowels and no repeat letters. Strike Enter and the boxes will demonstrate you which letters you have acquired appropriate or improper.

If a box turns ⬛️, that letter just isn’t in the top secret phrase at all. ? suggests the letter is in the phrase, but not in that place. ? usually means you’ve got nailed the letter, it’s in the phrase and in the right place.

In the following row, repeat the procedure for your next guess applying what you discovered from your past guess. You have 6 tries and can only use genuine text (so no filling the containers with EEEEE to see if there’s an E).

Initially, Wordle was dreamed up by application engineer Josh Wardle, as a shock for his husband or wife who loves word game titles. From there it distribute to his relatives, and lastly acquired unveiled to the public. The word puzzle sport has considering the fact that encouraged tons of online games like Wordle, refocusing the day-to-day gimmick close to music or math or geography. It wasn’t long ahead of Wordle became so well-known

As a coding language, C++ appeals to the moi, not the intellect

April 21, 2022 Audrey

I see that this internet site has a tendency to extol the virtues of C++ as a programming language. As another person who has labored with C++ and who has adopted the debate all-around its use for a lengthy time, I assume it can be time to established the report straight.

The fact is that C++ is 1 of the worst languages at any time foisted on the industry. Much from staying applied in modern day investing devices, C++ must now only be utilised for legacy jobs. It is based all over machine imagining, which is not programming considering.

Generations of programmers have been misled by C and C++. Many have fallen into the black gap of its cult with trite platitudes like ‘under the hood programming’, which suggests no additional than driving together with the hood open up, attempting to correct the motor, but unable to see the road. Cult followers urge conclusion-end users to “rely on the programmer”, which is silly and naive, but appeals to the programmer’s ego. And programmers are meant to have “flexibility,” even though no just one ever claims flexibility from what.- It can be unquestionably not independence from the flaws and traps of C++.

Programming is about programming and not about components devices (programs run on theoretical equipment). That would seem challenging to fully grasp and counter to people’s instinct. C++ just supports the intuitive and populist thinking as an alternative of hoping to fix it.

So not only is C++ technically poor, but it is culturally poor considering that it appeals to the ego, rather than the intellect.

I’m not the only just one to dislike C++. Ken Thompson, the Bell Labs researcher who carried out the original Unix running procedure, explained it as a “negative language” which is “way way too big, way far too complicated” and “definitely constructed by a committee.” Damningly, Thompson also said that C++ does, “a good deal of issues fifty percent perfectly” but is “just a garbage heap of ideas that are mutually special.”

The problem is that C++ is dependent on C and C by itself is not a good language. It is comprehensive of flaws and compromises. It compromised on compiler technologies, eternally forcing programmers to acquire care of depth that must easily be accomplished by a compiler. In convert, C was primarily based on B, which was based on Martin Richards’ BCPL, which by itself was a cut down on Christopher Strachey’s CPL, which was as well ambitions to be implemented at the time. It is Strachey who is the authentic genius listed here in my view, not persons like Bjarne Stroustrup, who now performs for Morgan Stanley and who hacked OO into C to create C++, even even though C wasn’t a great foundation.

Either way, if you happen to be making an attempt to discover C++ and you are struggling to learn it, it really is not you that’s the problem. The language is flawed. Designing

Farming At Your Fingertips: How Technology is Modifying Agriculture Work

April 20, 2022 Audrey

About five yrs back, David Wallace expended the summer months on his family’s potato farm in the Skagit Valley place of Washington State. Wallace experienced grown up on the farm, but he remaining to go after chemistry, sooner or later doing the job as a facts scientist. But he often felt a pull back again to his roots.

During his pay a visit to, Wallace listened as his father complained about the farm’s irrigation techniques. They ended up prone to mistakes, losing enormous amounts of drinking water and time. Every single time there was an situation with the movement amount or the center line, the crew would have to generate around the subject to obtain the correct stage of difficulties and then determine out how to repair it. The most important issue, the elder Wallace explained to his son, was that there was no way to see what was going on with the irrigation system remotely. Following a swift research, Wallace identified that there was not a enough checking and manage program obtainable on the market. So, he designed a single. And just like that, FarmHQ was born.

The smaller unit attaches to a central level on the irrigation system and makes use of cloud-based software program to keep track of irrigation reels and pumps. Wallace spent months tinkering with his code before testing it out across his farm and with a several buddies. Rapidly, phrase distribute, and other farms desired in on the time-conserving product. Now, FarmHQ is in its 3rd calendar year of development and utilized on about 30 farms across the Pacific Northwest, with ideas to develop tenfold this 12 months. Wallace in no way returned to his previous knowledge scientist task.

Technological know-how this sort of as FarmHQ aims to enable farmers turn out to be a lot more economical, conserving time and funds. Wallace statements implementing his process can web up to a 1,500-percent return on financial investment about a time. “These devices pump wherever from 250 to 400 gallons of drinking water for each minute over a incredibly smaller location of land,” he claims. “We can work out specifically how much pumping time and how a lot h2o is saved as a end result of having our technique on board. We also know incredibly accurately how significantly driving time we’re conserving farmers, due to the fact we know the place of every 1 of their parts of machines, and we know wherever their home base is. So each and every time they open up up that app to check out on that piece of tools, we’ve basically saved them a vacation to the area.”

[RELATED: At This Farm, Data Is the Most Important Crop]

Some of the technology embraced by farmers has a bodily component, like FarmHQ. Other people are only software and apps that aid acquire the multitude of data that arrives from farming, and it makes the procedure more collaborative. One particular these types of merchandise is Agworld, basically a

Teenage Gorilla “Addicted” To Smartphones, But Are All Electronics For Animals Negative?

April 20, 2022 Audrey

Youngsters currently being distracted by telephones is a prevalent prevalence at present, nonetheless, not so substantially when the teenager in concern is a 16-yr-aged 188-kilogram (415-pound) gorilla called Amare. Amare is a existing resident at Chicago’s Lincoln Park zoo, Illinois. His documented dependancy seems to be caused by a great number of people approaching the glass enclosure to clearly show him pictures and films on their smartphones.

Amare at present life with a few other “bachelor” teenage gorillas, and was once so absorbed by a zoo-goer’s display that he was taken by shock when a further gorilla charged him, according to zookeepers. While this intense conversation is standard and did not result in any damage, this kind of distracted behavior could result in Amare’s social standing in the group to decline and could finally lead to “severe developmental consequences”.

“We are rising significantly anxious that way too a great deal of his time is taken looking by people’s shots, we really choose that he spend a great deal additional time with his troop mates studying to be a gorilla,” Stephen Ross, the director of the zoo’s Lester E. Fisher Center for the Analyze and Conservation of Apes, told the Chicago Sunlight-Periods.

Now the personnel customers at the zoo have set up a rope line to retain people and their screens farther absent from the teenage gorilla. The zoo officials hope that this physical buffer zone will lower down on Amare’s monitor time.

Though it appears to be that technological know-how, in this circumstance, is a negative detail, zoos have employed technological innovation and monitor time for a large assortment of enrichment systems. These systems can offer you stimulating and partaking functions that aid preserve animals joyful and healthful, specifically in situations when animals may endure from isolation — this sort of as throughout the pandemic lockdowns when zoos and parks have been closed.

During the peak of the pandemic in 2021, a closed to the general public Czech zoo (Safari Park Dvůr Králové) connected its chimpanzees with other captive individuals by using a online video connect with. There ended up some blended critiques from the chimps (some gave the display a extensive berth), other folks interacted positively with the footage. In a different chimp enrichment application, in both equally Dvůr Králové and Brno Zoo, two large screens have been installed in the chimp enclosure so that the animals could dangle out in a digital residing place collectively.

A extra interactive illustration was when white-confronted saki monkeys of Korkeasaari Zoo, Helsinki were being provided their individual on-need video clip participant. This gadget permitted the monkeys to choose what they wanted to observe and when, and positively seemed to lessen tension-similar behaviors, these kinds of as scratching.

For our extra domestic close friends, research have learned by way of intelligent tracking equipment for dogs, that canines like to check out videos of other pet dogs (really do not we all). Even much more lovely, is a particular jacket that

BIRDLAND Announces Programming Through May 1st

April 20, 2022 Audrey

Below, you’ll find details on all jazz programming at Birdland Jazz Club and Birdland Theater running April 18 – May 1. Artists appearing at Birdland Jazz Club include Cyrille Aimée, Ashley Pezzotti with the Birdland Big Band, Jane Monheit and Meg Okura Pan Asian Jazz Ensemble.

Downstairs at Birdland Theater, you’ll find Denis Reis Quartet, Donald Vega Trio, Wycliffe Gordon and His International All-Stars, Louis Rosen and his “Almost Large Band”, Daniel Glass Trio and Steven Bernstein‘s Millennial Territory Orchestra. Regular events include David Ostwald’s Louis Armstrong Eternity Band, Frank Vignola’s Guitar Night, Birdland Big Band and Arturo O’Farrill & The Latin Jazz Ensemble.

April 18 (Monday) 8:30 PM – Birdland Theater
Denis Reis Quartet
A proponent of Brazilian music the world over, Denise Reis possesses a beautiful spirit and a warm, soothing voice that make her original songs, as well as her renditions of both MPB (musica popular brasileira) and blues classics, a healing experience. Honored to have been invited to compose and present a song live and in person to His Holiness Dalai Lama, Reis seeks to tap into the “universal language” of music, and resists defining her sound with labels; in light of this expansive openness that characterizes her songs, she has brought her soulful voice to stages across the world, including Portugal, Ukraine, Senegal, Venezuela, Israel, Canada, Slovenia, France, Germany, and the United States. In New York City, she has performed at Birdland, City Winery, Joe’s Pub, and other distinguished venues. Her albums-Chá de Hortelã com Caviar and Alfândega-showcase her touching sound, which includes a unique and stirring use of the “mouth trumpet”: Reis can seem just with her lips to be playing a brass horn. Sure to be a special night at Birdland Theater.
$30 tables / $20 bar + $20 food/drink minimum

April 19-23 (Tuesday-Saturday) 7:00 & 9:30 PM (4/19-21); 8:30 & 10:30 PM (4/22-23) – Birdland Jazz Club
Cyrille Aimée
International singing sensation Cyrille Aimée possesses a spritely, joyous presence and an astounding vocal technique. Her daring, witty performances have taken her from street corners in Europe to the Apollo Theater to 1st place at both the Montreux and Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competitions. After co-starring with Bernadette Peters in a Sondheim tribute at New York’s City Center, Aimée took a deeper dive into Sondheim’s work, which led to 2019’s Move On: A Sondheim Adventure (Mack Avenue) and a GRAMMY nomination for her rendition of his “Marry Me A Little.” Cyrille has certainly become a “rising star in the galaxy of jazz singers,” as The New York Times put it; and at Birdland, where she has performed regularly for many years, she is sure to bring audiences into faraway lands and back again.
$40 tables / $30 bar + $20 food/drink minimum

April 20 (Wednesday) 5:30 PM – Birdland Theater
David Ostwald’s Louis Armstrong Eternity Band
Inspired by the noble jazz pioneers Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton and their colleagues, David Ostwald’s Louis