Mr. C64

From 1980-2000 half of software engineering was managing resource (clock time, disk, and ram) usage. For the first ten years every Microsoft eng got a stop watch. Extras were in the supply room. Tough to express just how much effort went into this. All of us have stories.

#Canzonissima Chi meglio di Pier che possa commentare “La leva calcistica della classe ‘68”? #top

#Canzonissima Commento del grande Pier sulla meravigliosa canzone di Ruggeri da sottoscrivere al 100%!

Meravigliosa #Canzonissima stasera! Oltre che bellissime canzoni, bellissimi *valori* come l’amore di un figlio per la mamma (@Leogassofficial), di un papà per la figlia, l’amicizia, etc.

Software horror: litellm PyPI supply chain attack. Simple `pip install litellm` was enough to exfiltrate SSH keys, AWS/GCP/Azure creds, Kubernetes configs, git credentials, env vars (all your API keys), shell history, crypto wallets, SSL private keys, CI/CD secrets, database passwords. LiteLLM itself has 97 million downloads per month which is already terrible, but much worse, the contagion spreads to any project that depends on litellm. For example, if you did `pip install dspy` (which depended on litellm>=1.64.0), you'd also be pwnd. Same for any other large project that depended on litellm. Afaict the poisoned version was up for only less than ~1 hour. The attack had a bug which led to its discovery - Callum McMahon was using an MCP plugin inside Cursor that pulled in litellm as a transitive dependency. When litellm 1.82.8 installed, their machine ran out of RAM and crashed. So if the attacker didn't vibe code this attack it could have been undetected for many days or weeks. Supply chain attacks like this are basically the scariest thing imaginable in modern software. Every time you install any depedency you could be pulling in a poisoned package anywhere deep inside its entire depedency tree. This is especially risky with large projects that might have lots and lots of dependencies. The credentials that do get stolen in each attack can then be used to take over more accounts and compromise more packages. Classical software engineering would have you believe that dependencies are good (we're building pyramids from bricks), but imo this has to be re-evaluated, and it's why I've been so growingly averse to them, preferring to use LLMs to "yoink" functionality when it's simple enough and possible.

You would find the same level of performance on the same "typical" hardware (the 486dx was the latest and 16MB was 8x the system requirements) on each release of Office through 2007 (95, 97, 2000, XP/2002, 2003, 2007). There was a major rearchitecture to share code in Office 97 which changed the multi-app scenarios for the better. In 2002 we tuned for the NT kernel (even though by 2000 all self-hosting was NT, customers had not moved yet so we still supported W95). Somewhat confusingly we still supported 9x on Office XP as well which genuinely annoyed people internally. O2003 was NT only. O2003 ran on W2000+. As a rule of thumb, Word, Excel, PowerPoint remained roughly 2-6MB working set that entire time, including min footprint when app was minimized. Even the move to 32 bits did not double system requirements. Outlook definitely changed the equation as did running multiple products at once. For a while system requirements were "per app". Then in 97 Outlook was called out separately as requiring more. Since it was running all the time it did change the memory profile of the suite. With a browser running all the time and consuming a lot of memory (Win95+ along with the networking stack) we started to see competition for memory on low end (4-8MB) systems. The move to NT reduced this but increased total system footprint. AMA...I can't tell you how carefully this was measured all the time and debated constantly. Win95 in particular was a huge "battle" between Windows and Office over what the system requirements should be and what constituted typical use in order to support those. Consider this essay on the box :-) For more of this epic experience see -> …rdcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/035-windows-…

@DAZN_IT È bello constatare come il mitico super-energic Pier (che mi è mancato durante Juve-Sassuolo!) non sfiguri affatto (tutt’altro!) in una trasmissione come #Canzonissima, con la stessa energia ed entusiasmo a commentare pezzi come Rock’n’Roll Robot! #DalMultiformeIngegno

Great #NVIDIA GPU! The first one being fully Direct3D 7 compliant with hardware T&L. #RetroComputing #NVIDIA #GPU #DirectX #OpenGL

Lodevole la reazione della #Juve: sotto di due goal, e poi ci crede e conclude la partita con un ottimo pareggio.

@DAZN_IT Partita tra due grandi squadre commentata con l’energia e l’entusiasmo del super Pier! Grazie! Bello anche il messaggio iniziale di rispetto!

Non c’è paragone tra i capolavori musicali di @RamazzottiEros e le canzoni di #Sanremo2026 .

2. La vogliamo smettere con questo “anglicismo” di dire “venti ventisei”??! “Quando sei nato? Nel diciannove novantuno.” ??! Nella lingua italiana gli anni si sono sempre pronunciati per intero: “duemilaventisei”, “millenovecentonovantuno”.

Bella la cerimonia di chiusura delle Olimpiadi invernali, ma il cattivo uso/ignoranza della lingua italiana da parte di alcuni commentatori Rai continua: 1. Non ci sono in Italia “governatori” delle regioni: si chiamano PRESIDENTI di regione.

@DAZN_IT Il grande Pier ha proprio ragione: “Oggi la Juve è sembrata svuotata.” - speriamo in miglioramenti.

Did you know the Commodore Amiga 2000 won product of the year? Back in April 1989, at the NAB show, the Commodore Amiga 2000 was named Product of the Year by readers of AV Video and Video Manager magazines. It was a huge win for the Amiga line, voted on by the pros who used video and graphics gear every day. The Amiga 2000 was built for exactly this kind of work: big Zorro expansion slots, genlock support to sync with broadcast video, and rock-solid handling of both PAL and NTSC signals. It also had killer graphics and multitasking, and you had a machine that let broadcasters, video producers, and creatives do things that were out of reach—or way too expensive—on other systems at the time. It also set the stage for tools like the NewTek Video Toaster, which would go on to change affordable video effects and editing. The Amiga 2000 wasn’t just a computer—it was a serious tool that earned its spot in professional environments. Only Amiga Makes it Possible!

@lauriewired Should we stick to 16nm to be safe from this?

Perhaps more terrifying is that cores can *become* mercurial over time. Chips are pushed so hard that electromigration aging can make compute “more wrong”. No one knows for sure what process node started the phenomenon...but it's statically likely to be 14nm or 7nm.

CPUs are getting worse. We’ve pushed the silicon so hard that silent data corruptions (SDCs) are no longer a theoretical problem. Mercurial Cores are terrifying because they don’t hard-fail; they produce rare, but *incorrect* computations!

For that matter, Microsoft Word 2002 used about 25MB of RAM. Now Word uses 10x that much memory to display the same 584kb document. What the heck is it doing to that text now that it wasn't doing before?

@DAZN_IT Oltre a commentare le partite con tanta energia ed entusiasmo, si scopre stasera con le domande a Malen che Pier parla anche un *ottimo* inglese!

@DAZN_IT Ottima spiegazione dell’ottimo Luca Marelli sulla dinamica dell’errore arbitrale/simulazione! Speriamo che si cambi il regolamento facendo intervenire il VAR in questi casi, come auspicato!

Partita Inter-Juve sporcata da un GRAVE errore arbitrale! La Juve ha *ingiustamente* giocato in inferiorità numerica.