Scali's OpenBlog
scalibq.wordpress.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2012
Scali is a developer who writes about retro PC hardware, demoscene work like 8088 MPH, CPU architecture and graphics APIs.
What HN saysHN commenters link it for its pieces on AMD's CMT design versus SMT, and for the story behind the 8088 MPH demo.
23HN people shared it
10linked it in comments
27stories submitted
708story points
1 year agolast shared
2012people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 18088 MPH: The final version2 people · 100 points · first shared 2015 · 11 comments on HN
- 2The Story of Microsleep (2012)2 people · 4 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 3The story of microsleep2 people · 2 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 4The myth of cmt cluster based multithreading2 people · first shared 2017
- 5Sony%E2%80%99s playstation 3%E2%80%99s main graphics api is not opengl2 people · first shared 2014
- 6Area 5150: 8088 MPH gets a successor1 people · 209 points · first shared 2022 · 117 comments on HN
- 7Video codecs and 4k1 people · 87 points · first shared 2022 · 60 comments on HN
- 8Area 5150, a Reflection1 people · 79 points · first shared 2022 · 15 comments on HN
- 9Video playback on low-end MS-DOS machines1 people · 78 points · first shared 2024 · 33 comments on HN
- 10Multi-core and multi-threading performance1 people · 67 points · first shared 2012 · 52 comments on HN
- 11GPU-accelerated video decoding1 people · 36 points · first shared 2022 · 17 comments on HN
- 12The Covox Years (2017)1 people · 14 points · first shared 2021 · 2 comments on HN
- 13Who is a software architect? What is software architecture?1 people · 8 points · first shared 2019 · 2 comments on HN
- 14Batch, batch, batch: Respect the classics1 people · 3 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 15The “Visual Basic Effect”1 people · 3 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
Scali · 2023-06-02
Yes, I posted a followup which investigates the issue somewhat further.
It appears to be some bug with the message queue handling, specifically when the UI is in Aero mode. In classic mode, the problem is not there. In Windows XP, the problem is also not there.
https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/the-story-of-microsleep-follo…
jcbeard · 2016-08-24
See article (http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/)from previous HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3559990
Also, GNU's bulletin on Apple Boycott: https://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull18.html#SEC13
And also this article which explains why apple is BSD mostly: https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/apples-os-x-is-not-linux/
CodeArtisan · 2019-05-21
And the expiration of a few patents, like the ones about simultaneous multithreading. Zen is the first AMD's architecture to implement SMT, Bulldozer had CMT (https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/zen.jpg).
https://patents.google.com/patent/US3728692
https://patents.google.com/patent/US3771138
https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/the-myth-of-cmt-cluster-based…
PyComfy · 2017-08-11
He sure seems to be very talented but Ryzen also gained from a few important patents being finally expired (the one about SMT, for example)
https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/the-myth-of-cmt-cluster-based…
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11170/the-amd-zen-and-ryzen-7-review-a-d…
eriknstr · 2016-12-05
Link to blog instead of Google: https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2015/04/12/8088-mph-how-it-came-about/
sp332 · 2016-02-19
Looks like the demo leans on a lot of idiosyncrasies of specific CGA cards: https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2015/08/02/8088-mph-the-final-version/
bhouston · 2014-03-11
> PS3 never used OpenGL
It sort of does. PS3 uses OpenGL ES 1.0 with extensions and then there is a separate graphics library, LibGCM, that is lower level.
Details here (although this use says it doesn't use OpenGL and then says that its API is based on OpenGL + extensions, so it is a bit confusing):
http://scalibq.wordpress.com/2010/05/15/sony%E2%80%99s-playstation-3%E…
EDIT: HEre is a PS3 developer saying that PS3 is OpenGL ES:
http://www.khronos.org/assets/uploads/developers/library/siggraph2006/…
throwaway2048 · 2014-03-11
PS3/PS4 commercial games do not use OpenGL and never have. This myth needs to die.
http://scalibq.wordpress.com/2010/05/15/sony%E2%80%99s-playstation-3%E…
cmdr2 · 2025-08-02
I'm trying to understand this topic more, so I'm curious what you mean by the word tracking. I searched around, and wanted to check if my understanding is roughly correct:
Is tracking when the frequency data of the instrument, and the frequency+tempo changes in the music track are stored? And does midi just say "guitar" or "piano" and leave it up to the software to decide what those instruments sound like? So tracking would always reproduce the same sound, while midi can vary, even if it's making the same tones?
For e.g. an acoustic guitar and an electric guitar might both be producing a note at a particular base frequency (e.g. C2) but the overtones and amplitudes of those overtones would be completely different, giving each instrument their particular sound. So does tracking record that overtone distribution for each instrument, to ensure an acoustic guitar sounds like an acoustic guitar (that the music composer wanted)?
This is the source that I was reading - https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2017/03/29/trackers-vs-midi/
If not, I'd really appreciate any other reading material to understand what you mean by tracking, thanks!
Aldo_MX · 2016-10-27
Have you ever heard of "Windows Defender"? They got more than 96.2% of detection rate according to AV Comparatives in September 2016[1].
Have you ever heard of "Windows 10"? They got less CVE vulnerabilities reported in 2016 than Android, Debian, Ubuntu, Flash Player, Adobe Reader, Mac OS X, The Linux Kernel, iOS, even Chrome and Firefox[2].
If these are not examples of "adequate or even reasonable protection", then you got really unrealistic expectations or you're simply hating Microsoft for the sake of hating them.
As I said, it is not possible to deliver bug-free code, and you learn to live with it or you die hating every software vendor in the world.
Just remember, falling in the "I don't need AV, I don't use Windows" fallacy will bite you, and will bite you hard[3].
[1] https://chart.av-comparatives.org/chart1.php
[2] https://www.cvedetails.com/top-50-products.php?year=2016
[3] https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/the-kernel-org-hack/