A couple of other commenters have given excellent answers already.

But on the topic in general I think that the more you learn about the history of computing hardware and programming, the more you realise that each successive layer added between the relays/tubes/transistors and the programmer was mostly just to reduce boilerplate coding overhead. The microcode in integrated CPUs took care of routing your inputs and outputs to where they need to be, and triggering the various arithmetic operations as desired. Assemblers calculated addresses and relative jumps for you so you could use human-readable labels and worry less that a random edit to your code would break something because it was moved.

More complex low-level languages took care of the little dances that needed to be performed in order to do more involved operations with the limited number of CPU registers available, such as advanced conditional branching and maintaining the illusion of variables. Higher-level languages freed the programmer from having to keep such careful tabs on their own memory usage, and helped to improve maintainability by managing abstract data and code structures.

But ignoring the massive improvements in storage capacity and execution speed, today’s programming environments don’t really do anything that couldn’t have been implemented with those ancient systems, given enough effort and patience. It’s all still just moving numbers around and basic arithmetic and logic. But a whole lot of it, really, really fast.

The power of modern programming environments lies in how they allow us to properly implement and maintain a staggering amount of complex minutiae with relative ease. Such ease, in fact, that sometimes we even forget that the minutiae are there at all.

The woman in the article’s main picture is Japanese pop singer Hikaru Utada, although it’s probably just a little joke. I couldn’t find a connection between her and the naming of the Hikaru arcade board.

However, Sega’s Chihiro board was apparently named after the Studio Ghibli character, and I suspect that another Sega arcade system, the Lindbergh, was more likely named after the popular Japanese rock band rather than directly after the American aviator. Hikaru Utada had just started to become successful around the time the Hikaru board was released, so it’s possible, although Hikaru isn’t a particularly uncommon name in Japan.

I don’t buy AAA games, so YMMV, but I buy my games almost exclusively from GOG and Itch these days. I have loads of games on Steam, but now the DRM-free aspect is most important to me. If something is only on Steam, I may still buy it if I can confirm that it’s “DRM-free” (e.g. bypassable Steam check) there, or if it’s so cheap that I won’t mind losing it. As honest as GabeN and the Steam team seem to be, I’ve been shafted enough times already.

The one drawback I see for buying on GOG vs buying on Steam (which can also be kind of an advantage depending on your perspective) is updates. Steam seems to let publishers push updates out whenever they want. While a few publishers do actually seem to forget about GOG, I have read comments from a few different developers (in response to complaints from customers) that they had sent their updates to GOG but were stuck in an approval process. It appears that the GOG team manually tests every update before putting it up for customers, and there’s a large backlog for a small team, so it can be several months before a patch gets through.

“rd” and “rmdir” only work on empty directories in MS-DOS (and I assume, by extension, in Windows shell). “deltree” is for nuking a complete tree including files, as the name suggests.

JS has saved me many hours of mind-numbing, error-prone manual keyboard work by giving me a way to hack together a simple bit of automation as a web page.

Even when a computer has been ham-fistedly locked-down by an overzealous IT department, I can almost always still access a text editor and a browser that will load local HTML files.

Also over on itch for pay-what-you-want, with extras.

Many 8-bit home computer emulators have an option to recreate the sounds of their tape drives and disk drives as they load software. But are there any Dreamcast emulators that recreate that unholy screeching that made you wonder if your console was somehow already on its last legs even though it was still nearly new?

I wouldn’t want to hear it the whole time, but for the first major load of a game it might be pleasantly nostalgic.

When you use any piece of Internet-enabled software, any and all data that passes through it can theoretically be copied and siphoned off back to the authors of the software.

Should they do it? No. Can they do it? Yes.

Does Mozilla do it? They say they don’t, and I’m inclined to trust them. Do other major browsers do it? Absolutely.

As regards your physical location, geoIP databases can get pretty close these days.

There are all sorts of licensing shenanigans when dealing with HDMI, so I wonder if it’s compatible with their open source policy. But personally I’d have put a VGA output on it as a compromise between period correctness and modern usage. Easy to output as analog from the console, and easy to convert cleanly for modern displays with inexpensive adapters.

Sure. Almost 40 years ago I started learning to program as a kid, and the only reason I knew the word “syntax” at all was because the default error message in my computer’s BASIC interpreter was “SYNTAX ERROR”. I didn’t learn what it actually meant until many years later, in English class.

I taught myself with the excellent Usborne books, which are now all downloadable for free from their website. You won’t be able to use them as-is (unless you get your kids to use an emulator for an old 8-bit home computer), but I’m sure you can still get some useful ideas, and maybe even copy small sections here and there.

As others have mentioned, my school also taught us a little LOGO, which was a bit of fun for me but rather simple. I remember that most of my classmates enjoyed it, though.

Yeah, but Third Strike has the best version of her character design IMO.

Nah, you’re cool. I know my system’s old, but as you say there’s still plenty of life in it, so I’ll keep it for now. Especially since I stick entirely to indie games these days.

But actually, I’m keeping an eye on auctions for something just a few years newer. Games that require AVX2 extensions are finally starting to come out, and my CPU doesn’t support them. Even with indie games, most of them use third-party engines, so it might not be too much longer before it’s an issue even for me.

Heh, TFW someone describes “resurrecting” a “low-spec” machine, and others talk about how old and out of date it is, and it’s roughly equivalent to your main gaming PC.

How many techie types have had someone come to them and say something like “Hey, you know tech thing XYZ? You know how it sucks? Well I’ve got a great idea: make a BETTER one! So what do you say? You whip it up in an afternoon, I’ll handle marketing, and we’ll be rich!”

Like they really thought that the issue is just that no-one can see the flaws. They thought that the fix is super easy and they’re just the first person clever enough to see it.

I’m guessing it’s because “SyncThing” is a proper noun.

Not to take away from your very good point, but I think the word you might be looking for is “eqivalence”.

Die Hard (for the NES)

Warning: You MUST read the manual!

At first glance it might look like a simple top-down scrolling shooter like Commando or The Chaos Engine, but it’s so much more. It’s very free and open, with seven floors to explore, and once the in-game timer ends you must go to the 30th floor for the final showdown. The thing is that there are a few ways both to pick off the terrorists singly or in pairs, and to extend the time limit. If you just hide in some corner of the building and wait for the timer to run out, you’re going to get mown down by 30 armed terrorists in a fairly small space. But if you’re good you can use that time to wipe out almost all of the terrorists, leaving only the leader Hans himself to face you, which is much more manageable.

Die Hard wasn’t high on my list at all when I first played it in the 1990s, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s still one of my all-time favourites. But ever since AVGN did a video on it, it’s become popular to dump on it.

Most “complaints” that I see about this game either show that the person hasn’t actually played it for themselves at all, or are solved by reading the manual. Funnily enough, in that AVGN video he even says something like “Maybe this would make sense if I read the manual, but f*** that, who reads manuals?”

The only negative thing I have to say is that IMO the “foot power” meter, which affects movement speed, runs out a bit too quickly even when you walk everywhere instead of running. That being said, I’ve only noticed it on later replays, and I don’t recall it being a problem the first time I played it all those years ago.

I bought these… holy macaroni, 16 years ago. I played the first one for a little while but then stopped. I don’t remember why, so most likely it was just that something else caught my attention.

It might be time to have another look.

Some people can hold their length, but only in private.

There was a recent discussion about controllers that may help you, here: https://lemmy.world/post/35100527

To add to my recommendation in that thread of the Logitech F310, for your question specifically:

• The wires on both it and the F510 are built-in, not socketed. In my experience usually only wireless controllers have socketed cables.
• I’ve never had the buttons on it get swapped around on any OS.
• I’ve never had any of them develop drift, and they’re all 8-12 years old at this point.
• They don’t support the WiiU.