Daily Archives: 2021-10-06

Article note: TI's z80 and 68k calculators really are a weird and wonderful little ecosystem, and is definitely a lot of clever people's entry point into thinking like a programmer. I hadn't paid it much mind in the last decade or so, but it still seems to be a thing.

Article note: This is a pretty nifty paper, and some of the HN discussion is interesting too (...and a lot of it is people who seem to think the underlying hardware of computers is free magic). Watching theory folks, hardware folks, and application programmers collide in C is always a good show, because each of them look at behaviors and say "of course it should do x"... and the x is different for all of them. Rust is the first language I've seen that can _compellingly_ do the kind of low-level stuff that C is the default for without requiring an enormous amount of outside-the-language support (...written in C or assembly) to actually interface the hardware AND still be at least as optimizable as C, but theirs is very hard-won in terms of platform code compared to C's "the language definition is to do what the host hardware does" approach.

Article note: Well, it's _mostly_ a platforming argument, but there is still a noticeable bit of "Disassembled abusive (but productive) monopoly reassembling itself like a Terminator, in the image of the modern even-more abusive and parasitic monopoly, funding an anti-government propaganda network."

Enlarge (credit: One America News Network)

A Reuters report published today with the title "How AT&T helped build far-right One America News" alleges that the telecom giant played a significant role "in creating and funding OAN, a network that continues to spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and the COVID-19 pandemic."

While there's no evidence or allegation that AT&T played a direct role in creating OAN, Reuters points to a court case in which OAN's founder said he created the network after AT&T "told us they wanted a conservative network." OAN also apparently gets the vast majority of its revenue from a carriage deal with the AT&T-owned DirecTV, which is by far the largest cable or satellite TV provider that carries the channel. OAN is carried by providers including DirecTV, AT&T U-verse, Verizon FiOS, and CenturyLink, but not by large cable operators such as Comcast, Charter, and Cox.

OAN owner Herring Networks claimed in a 2016 lawsuit that AT&T promised to carry OAN on DirecTV in exchange for OAN's public support of AT&T's attempt to purchase the satellite provider, which required government approval. OAN's lawsuit claimed that AT&T reneged on the deal once its purchase of DirecTV was finalized in 2015. OAN finally got on DirecTV in 2017, weeks after agreeing to drop its lawsuit against AT&T. Herring also claimed in court that AT&T in 2013 proposed acquiring a 5 percent ownership stake in Herring, but that purchase was never made.

Article note: Huh. It'll be interesting to see what happens with the fallout of the payout information, and whether anyone does some (possibly firewalled through a document/implement clean room process) interop work for the platform.