John Walker, the founder of computer-aided design software company Autodesk and co-author of AutoCAD, passed away on February 2nd. He was 74. Consultant and programmer Owen Wengerd shared the news on behalf of John's family (via Scanalyst, a website created by John): It is with great sadness that we announce John's death on Friday, February 2, 2024. He was born in Maryland, USA to William and Bertha Walker, who preceded him in death. John is survived by his wife Roxie Walker and a brother, Bill Walker of West Virginia. Declining to follow in his family tradition of becoming a medical doctor, John attended Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) to pursue a future in astronomy. However, after he discovered the brave new world of computers, he never looked back. John worked at the university's Project Chi (X) computing center where he studied computer science and earned a degree in electrical engineering. John met Roxie on Thanksgiving Day in 1972, and they married the following year. Roxie and John drove cross-country a few months later for John's new job in California. Eventually he left that first job and worked at various others in the bay area. In late 1976, John designed his own circuit board based on the then-new Texas Instruments TMS9900 microprocessor. This venture became Marinchip Systems, and eventually led to Autodesk. The beginnings of Autodesk are well documented by John himself in The Autodesk File 2.0k and from there John's story is best told by John himself in his prodigious work, which is all methodically organized and available to the public at his website Fourmilab 1.4k.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: The Apple Music, Apple TV, and Apple Devices apps that Apple has been testing for Windows machines have officially launched, ending a long preview period and bringing an end to the iTunes app on some computers. The Apple Music, Apple TV, and Apple Devices app are part of Apple's effort to split iTunes on PC into multiple platforms to mirror how these apps work on Macs. On Windows 10 and later, PC customers can download the three separate apps to manage devices and access Apple Music and Apple TV content. Microsoft first announced plans for Apple Music and Apple TV apps for the Microsoft Store back in October 2022, so the split from iTunes has been in the works for more than a year. The Apple Music app gives Windows users a way to listen to and manage music from their iTunes library, including iTunes Store purchases, while the Apple TV app allows users to watch and manage movies and TV shows from iTunes. Both of the apps also give access to Apple's streaming services, Apple Music and Apple TV+. The Apple Devices app is designed to allow PC owners to update, back up, and restore and manage their iPhones and iPads, and sync content from their PCs. Using the standalone apps requires Windows 10 or later, and all three apps must be installed to transition away from iTunes. After the apps have been added to a PC, iTunes is used only to access podcasts and audiobooks. The iTunes library should not be deleted, because it is used by the Apple Music and Apple TV apps.

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In a first for Uber since becoming a public company, the ride-hailing service posted its first full-year profit and its stock hit an all-time high Wednesday. "Like its final year as a private company, the last time Uber turned a profit, it got a huge tailwind from investments that helped fuel profits, $1 billion in 2023," reports the Associated Press. "The difference is that Uber has started making money from operations." From the report: Uber and other ride-share companies struggled through the COVID-19 pandemic. The company, whose stock recently joined the S&P 500 index, saw its ride-hailing business stymied as government lockdowns kept millions at home. But Uber has focused on cutting costs and, during the pandemic, building up a then-nascent food-delivery division, which has since become a major revenue driver. Uber's ride-hailing service, meanwhile, has gradually bounced back and the numbers from the fourth quarter suggest both are trending in the right direction. Delivery revenue grew 6%, and revenue for the ride-share part of the business climbed 34%. Industry analysts also noted growth in the company's membership platform. "Uber One now has roughly 19 million members across 25 countries, wrote William Blair's Ralph Schackart. "Uber One members generate roughly 30% of mobility and delivery gross bookings, up roughly 700 basis points year-over-year." Revenue totaled $9.94 billion, beating Wall Street projections for $9.75 billion. Gross bookings surged 22% from the prior-year period to $37.6 billion. For the year, Uber posted a profit of $1.89 billion, or 87 cents per share, on revenue of $37.28 billion.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Pakistan has temporarily suspended mobile phone network and internet services across the country to combat any "possible threats," a top ministry said, as the South Asian nation commences its national election. In a statement, Pakistan's interior ministry said the move was prompted by recent incidents of terrorism in the country. The internet was accessible through wired broadband connections, local journalists posted on X earlier Thursday. But NetBlocks, an independent service that tracks outages, said later that Pakistan had started to block internet services as well. The polls have opened in the nation and will close at 5 p.m. The interior ministry didn't say when it will switch back on the mobile services.

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A radio station in Alabama has been forced to temporarily shut down after thieves stole a 200ft radio tower. The Guardian reports: WJLX, a station in Jasper, Alabama, was ordered to go off air by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) after thieves took the station's AM tower last week, the Guardian first learned. "In all my years of being in the business, around the business, everything like that, I have never seen anything like this," WJLX's general manager, Brett Elmore, told the Guardian. "You don't hear of a 200ft tower being stolen," he added. Elmore said the theft was first discovered last week by a landscaping crew that regularly manages the area nearby the tower, WBRC reported. "They called me and said the tower was gone. And I said, 'What do you mean, the tower is gone?'" Elmore said. The radio tower was previously located in a wooded area, behind a local poultry plant. Elmore said that thieves had cut the tower's wires and somehow removed it. Thieves also stole the station's AM transmitter from a nearby building. For the small radio station, the theft has had a significant impact. Elmore said the station's property was not insured. Replacing the tower could cost the station anywhere between $100,000 to $150,000, which is "more money than we have," Elmore said. The FCC also notified WJLX on Thursday morning that the station would have to go off the air because of the theft. While WJLX still has its FM transmitter and tower, it is not allowed to operate its FM transmitter while the AM station is off the air. "I had a guy from Virginia call yesterday and say, 'You know, I think a helicopter grabbed [the tower],'" Elmore said. He's hoping that surveillance video from the nearby poultry plant or witnesses nearby can help figure out who stole the station's tower.

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On Tuesday, The Independent, Tom's Hardware, and many other tech outlets reported on a story about how three million smart toothbrushes were used in a DDoS attack. The only problem? It "didn't actually happen," writes Jason Koebler via 404 Media. "There are no additional details about this apparent attack, and most of the article cites general research by a publicly traded cybersecurity company called Fortinet which has detected malicious, hijacked internet of things devices over the years. A search on Fortinet's website shows no recent published research about hacked smart toothbrushes." From the report: The original article, called "The toothbrushes are attacking," starts with the following passage: "She's at home in the bathroom, but she's part of a large-scale cyber attack. The electric toothbrush is programmed with Java, and criminals have unnoticed installed malware on it - like on 3 million other toothbrushes. One command is enough and the remote-controlled toothbrushes simultaneously access the website of a Swiss company. The site collapses and is paralyzed for four hours. Millions of dollars in damage is caused. This example, which seems like a Hollywood scenario, actually happened. It shows how versatile digital attacks have become." [...] The "3 million hacked smart toothbrushes" story has now been viral for more than 24 hours and literally no new information about it has emerged despite widespread skepticism from people in the security industry and its virality. The two Fortinet executives cited in the original report did not respond to an email and LinkedIn message seeking clarification, and neither did Fortinet's PR team. The author of the Aargauer Zeitung story also did not respond to a request for more information. I called Fortinet's headquarters, asked to speak to the PR contact listed on the press release about its earnings, which was published after the toothbrush news began to go viral, and was promptly disconnected. The company has continued to tweet about other, unrelated things. They have not responded to BleepingComputer either, nor the many security researchers who are asking for further proof that this actually happened. While we don't know how this happened, Fortinet has been talking specifically about the dangers of internet-connected toothbrushes for years, and has been using it as an example in researcher talks. In a statement to 404 Media, Fortinet said "To clarify, the topic of toothbrushes being used for DDoS attacks was presented during an interview as an illustration of a given type of attack, and it is not based on research from Fortinet or FortiGuard Labs. It appears that due to translations the narrative on this topic has been stretched to the point where hypothetical and actual scenarios are blurred."

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LastPass is warning that a fake copy of its app is being distributed on the Apple App Store, likely used as a phishing app to steal users' credentials. From a report: The fake app uses a similar name to the genuine app, a similar icon, and a red-themed interface made to appear close to the brand's authentic design. However, the fake app's name is 'LassPass,' instead of 'LastPass,' and it has a publisher of 'Parvati Patel.' In addition, there's only a single rating (the real app has over 52 thousand), with only four reviews that warn about it being fake.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple has argued for years that developers who don't want to abide by its rules for native iOS apps can always write web apps. It has done so in its platform guidelines, in congressional testimony, and in court. Web developers, for their part, maintain that Safari and its underlying WebKit engine still lack the technical capabilities to allow web apps to compete with native apps on iOS hardware. To this day, it's argued, the fruit cart's laggardly implementation of Push Notifications remains subpar. The enforcement of Europe's Digital Markets Act was expected to change that -- to promote competition held back by gatekeepers. But Apple, in a policy change critics have called "malicious compliance," appears to be putting web apps at an even greater disadvantage under the guise of compliance with European law. In the second beta release of iOS 17.4, which incorporates code to accommodate Europe's Digital Markets Act, Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) have been demoted from standalone apps that use the whole screen to shortcuts that open within the default browser. This appears to solely affect users in the European Union, though your mileage may vary. Concerns about this demotion of PWAs surfaced earlier this month, with the release of the initial iOS 17.4 beta. As noted by Open Web Advocacy -- a group that has lobbied to make the web platform more capable -- "sites installed to the home screen failed to launch in their own top-level activities, opening in Safari instead."

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Funimation is shutting down on April 2nd, 2024. The anime streaming service will start migrating existing subscribers to Crunchyroll -- a move that will not only affect subscription prices, but will also wipe digital libraries. From a report: A support page on Funimation's website says the service will automatically transfer existing subscribers to Crunchyroll, noting that the transfer "may vary depending on your specific payment platform, subscription type and region." But the page -- unhelpfully -- doesn't say how much subscribers will have to pay following the transition, only that legacy subscribers will see a price increase. You'll have to check your email to see how much you'll have to pay.

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The Federal Communications Commission said Thursday it is immediately outlawing scam robocalls featuring fake, AI-created voices, cracking down on so-called "deepfake" technology that experts say could undermine election security or supercharge fraud. From a report: The unanimous FCC vote extends anti-robocall rules to cover AI deepfake calls by recognizing those voices as "artificial" under a federal law governing telemarketing and robocalling. The FCC's move gives state attorneys general more legal tools to pursue illegal robocallers that use AI-generated voices to impersonate celebrities, politicians and close family members, the FCC said.

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IDC, in a press release: A new forecast from IDC shows shipments of artificial intelligence (AI) PCs -- personal computers with specific system-on-a-chip (SoC) capabilities designed to run generative AI tasks locally -- growing from nearly 50 million units in 2024 to more than 167 million in 2027. By the end of the forecast, IDC expects AI PCs will represent nearly 60% of all PC shipments worldwide. [...] Until recently, running an AI task locally on a PC was done on the central processing unit (CPU), the graphics processing unit (GPU), or a combination of the two. However, this can have a negative impact on the PC's performance and battery life because these chips are not optimized to run AI efficiently. PC silicon vendors have now introduced AI-specific silicon to their SoCs called neural processing units (NPUs) that run these tasks more efficiently. To date, IDC has identified three types of NPU-enabled AI PCs: 1. Hardware-enabled AI PCs include an NPU that offers less than 40 tera operations per second (TOPS) performance and typically enables specific AI features within apps to run locally. Qualcomm, Apple, AMD, and Intel are all shipping chips in this category today. 2. Next-generation AI PCs include an NPU with 40 to 60 TOPS performance and an AI-first operating system (OS) that enables persistent and pervasive AI capabilities in the OS and apps. Qualcomm, AMD, and Intel have all announced future chips for this category, with delivery expected to begin in 2024. Microsoft is expected to roll out major updates (and updated system specifications) to Windows 11 to take advantage of these high-TOPS NPUs. 3. Advanced AI PCs are PCs that offer more than 60 TOPS of NPU performance. While no silicon vendors have announced such products, IDC expects them to appear in the coming years. This IDC forecast does not include advanced AI PCs, but they will be incorporated into future updates. Michael Dell, commenting on X: This is correct and might be underestimating it. AI PCs are coming fast and Dell is ready.

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The Federal Trade Commission isn't happy with the outcome of Microsoft's $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, telling a court on Wednesday that Microsoft's recent layoffs contradict promises it made to get the merger approved. From a report: In a letter to the clerk of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the FTC criticized Microsoft for the layoff of 1,900 workers in January, which represented about 8% of its gaming division. The layoffs largely affected employees at Activision Blizzard. The antitrust regulator explained that the layoffs were "inconsistent with Microsoft's suggestion to this Court that the two companies will operate independently post-merger." "As we move forward in 2024, the leadership of Microsoft Gaming and Activision Blizzard is committed to aligning on a strategy and an execution plan with a sustainable cost structure that will support the whole of our growing business," Microsoft Gaming chief Phil Spencer said in a memo announcing the layoffs in January. "Together, we've set priorities, identified areas of overlap, and ensured that we're all aligned on the best opportunities for growth." The letter comes two weeks after Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, urged the FTC to maintain its firm stance against the merger.

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Mozilla, which manages the open-source Firefox browser, announced today that Mitchell Baker is stepping down as CEO to focus on AI and internet safety as chair of the nonprofit foundation. Laura Chambers, a Mozilla board member and entrepreneur with experience at Airbnb, PayPal, and eBay, will step in as interim CEO to run operations until a permanent replacement is found. Fortune: Baker, a Silicon Valley pioneer who co-founded the Mozilla Project, says it was her decision to step down as CEO, adding that the move is motivated by a sense of urgency over the current state of the internet and public trust. "We want to offer an alternative for people to have better products," says Baker, who wants to draw more attention to policies, products and processes to challenge business models built on fueling outrage. "What are the connections between this global malaise and how humans are engaging with each other and technology?" Chambers says she plans to focus on building out new products that address growing privacy concerns while actively looking for a full-time CEO. Prior to being recruited to the Mozilla board three years ago, Chambers says she was feeling "pretty disillusioned" about society because of the influence of money in politics and the growing power of the tech giants. "I was confused about what to do and this felt like a genuine way to make an impact." Chambers says she won't be seeking a permanent CEO role because she plans to move back to Australia later this year for family reasons. "I think this is an example of Mozilla doing the right role modelling in how to manage a succession," says Chambers.

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The Biden administration on Thursday said leading AI companies are among more than 200 entities joining a new U.S. consortium to support the safe development and deployment of generative AI. From a report: Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo announced the U.S. AI Safety Institute Consortium (AISIC), which includes OpenAI, Alphabet's Google, Anthropic and Microsoft along with Facebook-parent Meta Platforms, Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, Palantir, Intel, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. "The U.S. government has a significant role to play in setting the standards and developing the tools we need to mitigate the risks and harness the immense potential of artificial intelligence," Raimondo said in a statement.

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Google has renamed its AI assistant to "Gemini" and unveiled a paid subscription tier offering. The $19.99/month "Gemini Advanced" includes a more powerful AI model and cloud storage integration, targeting users seeking advanced content creation and complex query resolution. Google is also leveraging its Android user base by making Gemini the default digital assistant, aiming to replicate the success of its billion-user products.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Microsoft-backed OpenAI is working on a type of agent software to automate complex tasks by taking over a users' device, The Information reported on Wednesday, citing a person with knowledge on the matter. The agent software will handle web-based tasks such as gathering public data about a set of companies, creating itineraries or booking flight tickets, according to the report, opens new tab. The new assistants -- often called "agents" -- promise to perform more complex personal and work tasks when commanded to by a human, without needing close supervision.

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James Felton reports via IFL Science: One of the deepest metal mines in Europe -- the Pyhasalmi Mine in central Finland -- is to be turned into an enormous gravity battery capable of storing 2 megawatts of energy. [...] Despite the cool name, the idea behind gravity batteries is really simple. During times when energy sources are producing more energy than the demand, the excess energy is used to move weights (in the form of water or sometimes sand) upwards, turning it into potential energy. When the power supply is low, these objects can then be released, powering turbines as our good friend (and deadly enemy) gravity sends them towards the Earth. Though generally gravity batteries take the form of reservoirs, abandoned mines moving sand or other weights up when excess power is being produced have also been suggested. Scottish company Gravitricity created a system of winches and hoists that can be installed in such disused mineshafts. The company will install the system in the 1,400-meter-deep (4,600 feet) zinc and copper mine in Pyhajarvi, Finland. "A study last year by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) estimated that gravity batteries in abandoned underground mines could store up to 70TWh of energy -- enough to meet global electricity demands," reports The Independent. "The repurposed mines could also provide economic benefits to the communities that previously relied on the mine for their livelihoods."

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today unveiled new, stricter limits for PM2.5 (particulate smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter), commonly referred to as soot. As NPR notes, these particles are are "one of the deadliest types of air pollution." From the report: The agency lowered the allowable limit for annual PM2.5 levels from 12 micrograms per cubic meter to 9. That's a "significant reduction," says Regan Patterson, an air pollution expert at the University of California, Los Angeles. "The science is clear," says EPA Administrator Michal Regan. "Soot pollution is one of the most dangerous forms of air pollution and is linked to a range of serious and potentially deadly illnesses, including asthma and heart attacks." The new standard represents the first tightening of the rules since 2012, but states will have several years to reach the new limits. The EPA left the daily limits on PM2.5 pollution unchanged, at 35 micrograms per cubic meter, saying the same efforts that will reduce pollution under the revised annual standard will drive down short-term pollution exposures as well. Decades of research have demonstrated that tiny particles are dangerous to people's health at nearly any concentration. The sources vary: fossil fuel combustion, agriculture, and industrial processes all add to the load, as does wildfire smoke and dust. In aggregate, the tiny particles drive millions of premature deaths worldwide each year. The EPA estimates that the new, tighter standards will prevent about 4,500 premature deaths a year by 2032 in the U.S. and prevent about 800,000 asthma-related emergency visits. It estimates the lower pollution exposures could reduce healthcare costs by about $46 billion by that time.

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Today's anonymously submitted story is a case where the WTF isn't the code itself, per se. This arguably could be a CodeSOD, and we'll get to the code, but there's so much more to the story.

Our submitter, let's call them Janice, used to work for a financial institution with a slew of legacy systems. One such system was an HP3000 minicomputer. "Mini", of course, meant "refrigerator sized".

The HP3000 itself is an interesting, if peripheral story, because it's one of the tales of a product launch going incredibly wrong. Let's talk a little history.

We start with the HP2100 in 1966, which Hewlett Packard did nothing to design, and instead purchased the company that designed it. The core innovation of the HP2100 was that it was architecturally similar to a PDP-8, but supported full 16-bit memory, instead of PDP's 12-bit.

HP didn't really know what they had bought- they marketed it as a "test and instrumentation" system, and were surprised when businesses purchased it for back office operations. They ended up with one of the most popular minicomputers for office use, despite it not being designed for that purpose.

Thus began the projects "Alpha" and "Omega". Alpha was a hardware refresh of the 2100, with a better memory model. Omega was a ground-up redesign for 32-bit memory, which would allow it to support a whopping 4MB of RAM. There was just one problem with the Omega design: they didn't have funding to actually finish it. The project was killed in 1970, which threw some of the staff into "wear black armbands to work" levels of mourning.

Unfortunately, while work was done on Omega, the scope of Alpha crept, which resulted in another project management wasn't sure could be delivered. But the market was there for a time-sharing minicomputer, so they pressed on despite the concerns.

The HP2000-line, had time sharing system that used multiple processors. There was a front-end processor which handled user interactions. Then there was the actual CPU, which ran programs. This meant that time-sharing was simplified- the CPU just ran programs in a round-robin fashion, and didn't have to worry about pesky things like user inputs. Essentially, it was really just a batch processing system with a multi-user front-end.

The designers of Alpha wanted to support full multiprogramming, instead of this hybrid-ish model. But they also needed to support traditional batch processing, as well as real-time execution. So the team split up to build the components of the "Multi-Programming Executive" module, which would allow all of these features.

The Alpha, which was still 16-bit, didn't have the luxurious 4MB of RAM- it had 128kB. The MPE used much more memory than 128kB. This lead to a massive crunch as the programmers worked to shrink MPE into something usable, while marketing looked at the deadlines and said, "We were supposed to be selling this thing months ago!"

The result was a massive war between engineering and marketing, where marketing gave customers promises about what the performance would be, engineering told marketing what the actual performance would be (significantly worse than what marketing was promising), and then management would demand engineering "prove" that marketing's over-promises could be met.

The initial ship-date was November, 1972, and by god, they shipped on time. Nothing actually worked, but they shipped. The first computer out the door was returned almost immediately. It could only handle two simultaneous users before slowing to a crawl, and crashed every ten minutes. By December, HP had gotten that to "crashes every two hours". They kept shipping machines even as they had to cut features and reliability promises.

Those frequent crashes also concealed another bug: after running for 24 days, the HP3000's clock would overflow (2^31 milliseconds) and the clock would magically reverse by 25 days. As one sysop of a purchased HP3000 put it: "The original designers of MPE [apparently] never thought the OS would stay up for 25+ days in a row".

After a bunch of management shuffling, the titular Packard of Hewlett Packard sent a memo: production was stopping and all sold computers were being recalled. Customers were offered HP2000s in its place, or they could wait until fall 1973 for a revised version- that would only support 4-6 users, far fewer than marketing's initial promises of 64. This pleased no one, and it's reported that some customers cried over the disappointment.

With sales paused, the entire computer underwent a design overhaul. The resulting machine was faster and cheaper and could actually handle 8 simultaneous users. One year after the botched launch, the HP3000 went back on the market, and ended up being a full success.

It was so successful, HP continued supporting the HP3000 until 2010, which is where Janice enters our story. Circa 2006, she needed to update some Pascal code. That code used a lot of bit-masks to handle flags, which is normally a pretty easy function in Pascal- the language has a standard set of bitwise operations. So Janice was surprised to see:

FUNCTION BITON(A , B : INTEGER): BOOLEAN; VAR C : INTEGER; BEGIN CASE A OF 15 : C:=1; 14 : C:=2; 13 : C:=4; 12 : C:=8; 11 : C:=16; 10 : C:=32; 9 : C:=64; 8 : C:=128; 7 : C:=256; 6 : C:=512; 5 : C:=1024; 4 : C:=2048; 3 : C:=4096; 2 : C:=8192; 1 : C:=16384; 0 : C:=32768; OTHERWISE BITON:=FALSE; END; IF ((B DIV C) MOD 2) = 1 THEN BITON:=TRUE ELSE BITON:=FALSE; END; FUNCTION SETBITON(A, B : INTEGER) : INTEGER; VAR C : INTEGER; BEGIN CASE A OF 15 : C:=1; 14 : C:=2; 13 : C:=4; 12 : C:=8; 11 : C:=16; 10 : C:=32; 9 : C:=64; 8 : C:=128; 7 : C:=256; 6 : C:=512; 5 : C:=1024; 4 : C:=2048; 3 : C:=4096; 2 : C:=8192; 1 : C:=16384; 0 : C:=32768; OTHERWISE C:=0; END; IF NOT BITON(A,B) THEN SETBITON:=B + C ELSE SETBITON:=B; END; FUNCTION SETBITOFF(A, B : INTEGER) : INTEGER; VAR C : INTEGER; BEGIN CASE A OF 15 : C:=1; 14 : C:=2; 13 : C:=4; 12 : C:=8; 11 : C:=16; 10 : C:=32; 9 : C:=64; 8 : C:=128; 7 : C:=256; 6 : C:=512; 5 : C:=1024; 4 : C:=2048; 3 : C:=4096; 2 : C:=8192; 1 : C:=16384; 0 : C:=32768; OTHERWISE C:=0; END; IF BITON(A,B) THEN SETBITOFF:=B - C ELSE SETBITOFF:=B; END; FUNCTION LAND(A,B : INTEGER) : INTEGER; VAR I : INTEGER; BEGIN I:=0; REPEAT IF BITON(I,A) THEN IF BITON(I,B) THEN A:=SETBITON(I,A) ELSE A:=SETBITOFF(I,A) ELSE A:=SETBITOFF(I,A); I:=I + 1; UNTIL I > 15; LAND:=A; END;

This is a set of hand-reinvented bitwise operations, culminating in an LAND, which does a bitwise and (not a logical and, which makes it annoyingly misnamed). I wouldn't call the code a horrible approach to doing this, even if it's definitely an inefficient approach (and when you're running a 33 year old computer, efficiency matters), but absent built-in bitwise operations, I can't see a lot of other options. The biggest problem is that LAND will set bits on that are already on, which is unnecessary- an AND should really only ever turn bits off.

Which, as it turns out, is the root WTF. The developer responsible wasn't ignorant about bitwise operations. The version of Pascal that shipped on the HP3000 simply didn't have any. No and, or, not, or xor. Not even a shift-left or shift-right operation.

In any case, this is what happens when I start doing research on a story and end up getting sucked down a rabbit hole. As always, while Wikipedia's true value is as a bibliography. A lot of those links have much more detail, but I hope this quick overview was an interesting story.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Boston Globe: William Straus, like many others, saw the videos in recent days of people behind the wheel of a Tesla in Autopilot mode, sporting their new Apple Vision Pro headsets and typing on an invisible keyboard. "They're all over the Internet, these idiots driving Teslas with their hands up in the air," the state representative said. Some claimed their video was staged. No matter: Straus wants to make it illegal. The Legislature's transportation committee on Wednesday approved language that would ban the use of the new virtual reality headset, or other similar technologies, while behind the wheel in Massachusetts. Straus, the committee's House chair, said he crafted language with his staff over Monday night and Tuesday morning, and added it to an existing proposal that would, among other things, bar drivers from recording or broadcasting themselves while behind the wheel. That it advanced out of committee less than 48 hours later qualifies as light speed by Beacon Hill standards. (The bill must still pass the full House and Senate.) [...] "This is absolutely the correct time to wall this off," said Straus, a Mattapoisett Democrat. "People who operate motor vehicles already have too many distractions." Straus' proposal would explicitly not allow drivers to wear, hold, or "otherwise utilize or interact with a spatial computer," or an augmented reality or mixed reality device. It also would ban drivers from viewing any video, images or text unrelated to operating or navigating the car, be it displayed on a screen or "otherwise worn as a headset or elsewhere on the operator's body." Motorists would face the same fines they do now for using their phone to text while driving: $100 for a first violation, $250 for a second violation and $500 for every violation after that. The driver in the viral video posted on YouTube and linked above said that it was a "skit" that he had made with friends and that he wasn't arrested. "[I] was in the right place at the right time," he told Gizmodo. "That's why we filmed the police."

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