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  • xkcd

    From BCFD 36@3:633/10 to All on Mon Jul 27 11:18:05 2026
    https://xkcd.com/3277/

    I didn't get it until seeing the alt text.

    --
    ----------------

    Dave Scruggs
    Senior Software Engineer - Lockheed Martin, et. al (mostly Retired)
    Captain - Boulder Creek Fire (Retired)
    Board of Directors - Boulder Creek Fire Protection District (What was I thinking?)


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Cryptoengineer@3:633/10 to All on Mon Jul 27 17:44:21 2026
    On 7/27/2026 2:18 PM, BCFD 36 wrote:
    https://xkcd.com/3277/

    I didn't get it until seeing the alt text.


    I got it, but I'd was doing a little Forth
    programming back in the 80s.

    Postscript is very similar. Early PS
    printers had full fledged computer
    capabilities, and you could write
    programs for them in PS. I did this.

    Very soon, the security issues of
    having a networked computer that anyone
    could send executable code to led to
    the PS interpreters being locked down,
    with all the fun stuff removed.

    pt

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Garrett Wollman@3:633/10 to All on Mon Jul 27 22:51:11 2026
    In article <1148jfl$3idt1$1@dont-email.me>,
    Cryptoengineer <petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:

    Postscript is very similar. Early PS
    printers had full fledged computer
    capabilities, and you could write
    programs for them in PS. I did this.

    There was an International Obfuscated PostScript Code Contest in 1993.

    I still have a copy of `Tiny_RayTracing.ps`, one of the entries, which
    took about half an hour to render on a LaserJet 4Si MX (much longer on
    an original LaserWriter); it's only 762 bytes (not including the
    initial comment). You can see the whole results at <https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/contrib/postscript/obfuscated-1993/>.
    The overall winner was labyrinth.ps by David Bau, who (after a couple
    of decades in industry) got a Ph.D. in machine learning in the 2010s
    and now tries to explain how large models actually work.

    I don't think there was another contest after 1993.

    -GAWollman

    --
    Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can, wollman@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."
    my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)