"population count" is often associated with hamming distance with uses in information theory, coding theory, and cryptography. There is another use, which I think is what it was really used for - cosine similarity.

The usual definition for two vectors A and B is A.B = |A||B|cos ø. If A and B are binary it becomes, A and B = popcnt(A)popcnt(B)cos ø. The similarity measure is how close cos ø is to 1.

Using modern vocabulary, with a message and a set of search criteria using a word embedding on the message, calculate the similarity to each search using, cos ø = (A and B)/(popcnt A * popcnt B). This is only be vectorizable when there is an intrinsic popcnt instruction. Results that have > 0 values for cos ø mean there is some similarity.

So, to capture, (re)scan and flag all messages that contain certain keywords, design a system to generate a KEYSCORE. When eXtended to reduce false positives, build a follow on system called XKEYSCORE.

The last paragraph is pure speculation, but I think it has merit. Worth a try on your own data?

I did not say "mouse" anywhere, I think you might be mistaking your own comments as my own.

And, no. This is 100% Apple hardware and software. I am using Apple's trackpad, built into one of the most recent Apple laptops, using the latest Apple desktop OS.

It's pretty unusual for even gaming mice to do this, but it's possible

If the PDF doesn't contain form completion elements you have to use the "painting / diagramming mode" to add annotations. However, I often find the "form enabled" PDFs to have horribly mis-aligned boxes with odd choices for fonts and inconsistent behavior (check marks or choices for example).

I do agree that the annotation feature isn't like Omnigraffle or draw.io diagramming apps that are based around a mouse; the interface does seem more suitable for a touch (pad, screen). You choose an object to add, then get to move it into place rather than selecting an object to add and then use the mouse to place and size it. The annotation feature also works in a very similar way on an iPad / iPhone.

If you tap (click) and /hold/ anywhere in the hit zone of an object the cursor will move to a hand and you can move it anywhere. For a text box, the hit zone it is almost anywhere on the text - yup, it is more awkward if you delete all the text! The resize / reshape hit zones for objects are centered around the "dots" when the object is active. A single tap (click) will edit text.

I am not sure what is happening when things disappear and cmd-Z doesn't undo, I've not experienced that.

This markup feature is also available when annotating image attachments in email.

It would be nice to be able to group more than a single set of objects and keep them grouped.

I've used the annotation feature quite a lot to highlight errors in web pages and give sequence instructions on how to do something on a poorly designed site.

Didn't have the same feel about the piece. But based on the parent comment, decided to also test it, using Pangram free "credits". For me it reported that only sections of it (30%) have been "touched" by an LLM. There is 60% of human written text.

Pangram does not report this as 100% LLM generated. Why do I use the word "touched" - because there are some specific details that must have come from some existing text and are not elsewhere.

How did I do the check? Please do check my results! I copied just the authored prose from the page, carefully removing any comments and site text that got mixed in. I did not have it analyze the "URL".

In looking at the details, a large part of the story is flagged as all human generated.

I've personally used LLMs when I've been very upset. I used it to rewrite / edit my rant into something with a more balanced tone. The modified text got what I wanted, my original rant would almost certainly not have.

So I do think this was a thought out piece that was largely written by a human who used an LLM as an "editor" to polish the writing. Someone took time to think about this and write it.

Bloom Energy makes fuel cells that can run on natural gas. This site would need a very large number of them to replace gas generators. Each "bloom box" can create 325kW and are about 1m x 1m x 2m in size.

They make sort of whine/squeal noise when operating. Not sure of the dB level.

San Jose Ice Rink has had a bunch of these installed out back for about 10 years I think.

It makes me happy to see these in use I always wondered if they would have commercial uptake and reliability

Another comment mentions a KryoFlux. A cheaper alternative is a GreaseWeasel (£30, $30). The 4.1 version even has USB-C as a connector. You will need an external power brick with a 4pin Molex connector for 5.25 drives. You can buy these standalone or they might come with a SATA/PATA/IDE Hard Drive to USB converter. Can also use an old PC power supply if you fake the power on signal.

I've had quite a lot of success, almost 100%, over quite a long time - both 5.25 and 3.5. I did use older drives intended for "desktop" machines. The drives from Japanese companies seem to be the most reliable; NEC, TEAC. The 3.5 USB Portable diskette drives are based around laptop floppy designs. You won't be able to find a direct 5.25 to USB adapter (or modify one to work) as the speeds / data rates are all wrong, so you will need something like a GreaseWeasel or old PC for those.

I've used different reading mechanisms over the years; an old PC running Linux with a real floppy chipset + custom raw reading code, custom hardware with an F82077 + Atmel + SDCard, and most recently a GreaseWeasel.

The floppies I've recovered were stored relatively well, but were mostly my and family members data - not commercial floppies. If there is any copy protection on the floppies you are trying to read you may need to capture the flux transitions. For these, I'd check archive.org to see if someone has already generated a copy.

For 5.25 floppies fingerprints and surface blemishes can be softened / removed with ISO Propyl and a Q-tip. Floppies designed for cleaning the heads of drives seem to now be very expensive / non-existent. Manually cleaning the heads of a 3.5 drive is way more difficult. I've got ideas about using Face mask / filter material to create a cleaning tool, but it is on the experiments to try list.

Even back when floppies were a thing, I found that 3.5 drives were more un-reliable between machines than 5.25 drives. I think there was more variation in head alignment and track positioning. When I've had issues, I've always been lucky in that switching the drive vendor / model made reading the floppy possible even if it took multiple attempts or was very slow.

Good luck.

The floppy interface for 5.25 is largely the same as 3.5. The data rates are the same. The only functional difference is fewer sectors per track because of the faster motor speed. That's all accounted for with a FDC interface controlled by a BIOS that knows what each drive is. A USB FDC bridge is stuck on its firmware and has no way to adapt to alternate track layouts it isn't designed to handle.

kinda crazy that just switching drives can make an unreadable disk readable makes me wonder how many old floppies got written off as dead when it was really just an alignment mismatch

In the early 80s this was a fairly common thing that was known to happen with floppy disks where some manufacturers drives could not read disks written by other manufacturers even though in theory they were compatible and used the same standard. Usually floppy drive manufacturers test their drives against diswritten by whoever made the computer. So if you had an Atari, then anything written with an Atari drive could be read by any other drive you could connect to your Atari computer but if you had off-band drive, even if it was otherwise a good drive, there was no guarantee that a different drive could read that. This problem really came to head when manufacturers started going into different density drives. The early double density drives often didn't work with anyone else's drive, so when higher density became common, you really saw a lot of problems because people were trying to share this written by different drives. (and then there was Atari's oddball enhanced density drives that nothing could deal with for a few years.) you saw the same thing with Apple, Commodore, and probably with the PCs too, but I didn't know anyone who had those.

Tape drives were even worse for a long time. In many cases in the 80s and even into the 90s, sometimes a different drive from the same manufacturer couldn't read your tape.

thats wild, didnt know it was that common kinda funny to call it a standard if ppl still couldnt reliably read each others disks lol

Your site does not currently seem to be reachable / responsive when I try to reach it from a US Comcast IPv4 address - you are not advertising IPv6.

Edit / Update: It was Apple's Private browsing mode that causes it not to respond. I can now see it when this is disabled.

I've noticed they strip away a header [1] in private browsing mode but I don't know why they do it since it does not disclose anything about the person. I think that may be the same thing that causes some people grief on Cloudflare as well.

[1] - https://caniuse.com/?search=sec-fetch

I wonder if "Piano Mover" is a reference to the Goon Show episode called "Napoleon’s Piano" [1]

If you like absurdly silly comedy; Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan, you should track these down. These were made in the 1950's for BBC Radio.

[1] https://goonshow.org/goonshow/s6p4/

There are a lot of articles written about early machines available from the (British) Computer Conservation Society. The CCS journal is available online at [1]. One article (with a link to a GitHub) discusses making an FPGA version of Colossus.

There are many articles written by people who were involved in early computing in the UK.

[1] <https://www.computerconservationsociety.org/resurrection.htm>