The Commodore 64 is a fascinating machine. It is the single best selling computer model in human history. The fact that the C64 still holds that title in 2021 — close to three decades after being discontinued — is nothing short of amazing.

Because it makes me smile, let’s take a quick stroll through some of the magazine advertisements for the Commodore 64 that helped the system achieve that world record. See Commodore 64 ads from the 1980s still make me want a C64 in 2021

 

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Ritengo abbastanza sterile la notizia del rolex di uno dei candidati di Calenda, che ha scatenato l’odio in rete, poché criticava il reddito di cittadinanza. Però l’evento aiuta a spiegare spesso le dinamiche italiane. Ci sono parecchi dati che certificano che il reddito di cittadinanza non ha creato più lavoro, e quindi ha fallito. Mi ricordo che molti evidenziavano questo rischio proprio poco prima che fosse approvato.

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Sometimes you could have the need to print our humble articles.

We have fixed the HTML CSS to support nice printing browser capability: give a try and let us know.

Lets face it handheld calculators are over priced: a Black and White Casio fx-9860-GIII is priced around 85€ but has only 64kb of working RAM.

Texas Instruments one costs even more.

Numworks offered a color display, 256Kb of RAM and a good GUI at 80€, the same price for a B/W slow Casio entry level. It was the best "Bang for the buck" also for the ability to enable CAS's extensions, via flashing a open source kernel; it was until today....

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After creating Misterio, I found this alternative called HarborMaster:

Harbormaster is a small utility that lets you easily deploy multiple Docker-Compose applications on a single host.

It does this by taking a list of git repository URLs that contain Docker Compose files and running the Compose apps they contain. It will also handle updating/restarting the apps when the repositories change.

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E’ con rammarico che scrivo queste note, e ripoto qui solo le mie opinioni a “caldo” 

Iniziamo dai lati postivi: Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time è disegnato benissimo, un film degno del 2021. Anche lo stile è molto avanzato: vengono inseriti sia disegni a mano, che sequenze 3D oltre a sequenze “miste” in bianco e nero e alcune citazioni dalla prima puntata. La scelta della colonna sonora è buona, e denota una certa cura. I combattimenti sono veloci, e fulminanti nello stile di Evangelion.

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«L’appello a non vaccinarsi è un appello a morire»
Mario Draghi rispondendo ad una domanda diretta di un giornalista, il 22 luglio

 

Premessa: benché disprezzi le fake news e le idee deirlanti, posso comprendere chi non voglia vaccinarsi (per ragioni sue, intendiamoci, non per paura di essere "radiopilotati" da Bill Gates).
E' una scelta che però va presa soppesando anche le conseguenze che comporta per la propria vita civile.

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Turbo Rascal is a development environment for the Commodore computers but also for others like NES and so on.

It is a bit different from other IDE because it is based on a Pascal-like language. It is not easy to compile high level programming language on 6502, but Pascal seems to pay its bill well.

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SQLite is slowing becoming a new standard. It is fast, and has a growing number of features.

Useful settings

1. PRAGMA journal_mode = wal;
2. PRAGMA foreign_keys = true; Query, set, or clear the enforcement of foreign key constraints.
3. PRAGMA busy_timeout=....; In milliseconds, the busy_timeout is associated with each connection to the database and as such you need to set the timeout for each connection.
4. pragma synchronous = OFF; I call this "scissor mode" referring to running with a scissor in hands. This directive disables the call to fsync and it is very dangerous if a power outrange happens on the host. It delegates to filesystem the "fsync". Some database reach full speed disabling fsync call, but your data are not guaranteed to be stored in safe place until operating system flush data (which will eventually occur...).
5. NUMERIC type is special.... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28069694 From the documentation: "A column with NUMERIC affinity may contain values using all five storage classes. When text data is inserted into a NUMERIC column, the storage class of the text is converted to INTEGER or REAL (in order of preference) if the text is a well-formed integer or real literal . . . If the TEXT value is not a well-formed integer or real literal, then the value is stored as TEXT." So NUMERIC is kind of like TEXT except when the text is a pure number.
6. SQLite ".expert" can help you to find out missed indexes:

   For most non-trivial SQL databases, the key to performance is creating the right SQL indexes. In this context "the right SQL indexes" means those that cause the queries that an application needs to optimize run fast. The ".expert" command can assist with this by proposing indexes that might assist with specific queries, were they present in the database.

Relevant reading

• Hosting SQLite databases on static github pages
• Distinctive Features Of SQLite
• SQLite Autoincrement
• SQLite FAQ
• Why SQLite succeeded as a database (Hacker News)
• SQLite small blob storage: 35% Faster Than the Filesystem (Hacker News)
• SQLite: Small, Fast, Reliable – Choose any three (Hacker News)
• Replicated SQLITE (give a try)