|
|
|
TI-83 rabbit hole
Tuesday, November 28 2017
[REDACTED]
I've been a bit bummed-out by the news of late, particularly the increasing likelihood that the Republican tax bill is probably going to pass in some form. Donald Trump rode into the White House on claims that he would cut the taxes on the middle class and raise taxes on himself, and here he is advocating a tax bill that seems to have improving his personal fortunes as its main goal. Everything he says is the opposite of objective reality, and he lies even when it does him no good to do so. It's odd to be living in a time where the head of the country is doing his best to actively gaslight everyone. Meanwhile, a good third of the country is fine with it so long as it's sticking it to the minorities and those with educations.
Throughout the day, I've been allowing myself to be sucked down a rabbit hole with regard to the TI-83+ graphing calculator I bought yesterday at the Tibetan Center thrift store. That might've been the best dollar I've ever spent. It turns out there is a rich community of calculator enthusiasts who have created whole UNIX-like open source operating systems for it. Initially the calculator had been locked down by RSA encryption, but that encryption had used 512 bit keys, which, while reasonably secure back in 1999, can now be attacked by brute-force methods (essentially testing all the possibilities) on ordinary consumer hardware. Reading about these things reminded me of the excitement I used to have as a kid just thinking about the possibilities of programmable hardware (when, due to budgetary constraints, a programmable calculator was the closest thing to a computer I could hope to acquire).
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?171128 feedback
previous | next |
