In the first post of this series, we introduced RISC-V, explained why it’s important, set up the full GNU RISC-V toolchain, and built and ran a simple program on an emulated version of a RISC-V processor with the help of SiFive’s freedom-e-sdk. This gives us a file called , which has lots of interesting information about such as the number of available CPU cores, the memory location of various peripherals such as the UART, and the memory location of the onboard memory (RAM). This snippet summarizes it well:

Knowing this, let’s copy the default linker script uses into a new file:

There’s a lot of interesting information in this file, much more than we can review in this post.

Four years ago, Chicago imposed a 9% tax on streaming entertainment services, leading to a flurry of lawsuits. Now, the city has collected $2 million in sales tax from Sony and two online ticketing services, making it the first major city to collect such a tax successfully, Bloomberg reported. Chicago’s expanded digital entertainment and services tax could raise up to $12 million per year, according to estimates issued at the time it passed in 2015.

Brown asserted that there were many such dependencies from the standard library to PyPI:
typing works best with
mypy, the
ssl module requires a monkeypatch to connect to non-ASCII domain names,
datetime needs
pytz, and
six is non-optional for writing code for Python 2 and 3. Brown also noted that some standard library modules were optimized in C for Python 3, but had to be reimplemented in pure Python for PyPy to support them. Standard Library Modules Crowd Out Innovation

Brown’s most controversial opinion, in her own estimation, is that adding modules to the standard library stifles innovation, by discouraging programmers from using or contributing to competing PyPI packages.

The young geeks got the idea for Zork from the first text-based video game, Adventure (also called Colossal Cave Adventure or ADVENT, because the computer it ran on could only use so many letters in the command line). The success of Zork compelled Infocom to forget their original plan of creating business software and focus on text video games throughout much of the 1980s, releasing over 40 games across a variety of fictional genres. You are likely to be eaten by a grue” — can be found referenced all over the internet, in old and new video games, and in nerdcore rapper MC Frontalot’s homage to Zork, “It is Pitch Dark” (the music video even has a cameo from Steve Meretzky, one of the lead game designers at Infocom).

Homemade cat ladders, as Schuster has found, can take many forms. In addition to photos of cat ladders, Schuster’s book includes diagrams as well as an essay exploring “sociological, architectural and aesthetic perspectives” of the structures. Swiss Cat Ladders is now available for pre-order through Schuster’s website.

By comparing RNA analyses of brain cells from healthy people not diagnosed with any brain disease with those done in patients with autism, researchers like myself can figure out which processes are different and in which cells. By analyzing single cellular nuclei from this postmortem brain of people with and without autism, we profiled the RNA within 100,000 single brain cells of many such individuals. From these results, I and my colleagues understand that the same parts of the synaptic machinery which are critical for sending signals and transmitting information in the upper-layer neurons might be broken in many autism patients, leading to abnormal brain function.

The government will switch the operating system of its computers from Windows to Linux, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety said Thursday. The Interior Ministry said the ministry will be test-running Linux on its PCs, and if no security issues arise, Linux systems will be introduced more widely within the government. Before the government-wide adoption, the ministry said it would test if the system could be run on private networked devices without security risks and if compatibility could be achieved with existing websites and software which have been built to run on Windows.

Brown asserted that there were many such dependencies from the standard library to PyPI:
typing works best with
mypy, the
ssl module requires a monkeypatch to connect to non-ASCII domain names,
datetime needs
pytz, and
six is non-optional for writing code for Python 2 and 3. Brown also noted that some standard library modules were optimized in C for Python 3, but had to be reimplemented in pure Python for PyPy to support them. Standard Library Modules Crowd Out Innovation

Brown’s most controversial opinion, in her own estimation, is that adding modules to the standard library stifles innovation, by discouraging programmers from using or contributing to competing PyPI packages.

Without the rolling resistance of train wheels, hovertrains promised greater efficiency and much higher speeds. By feeding high pressure air through lifting pads, hovertrains float on a cushion of air much like a hovercraft. British research led to the development of the RTV-31 Tracked Hovercraft, and the American’s developed several prototypes, culminating in the development of the Urban Tracked Air Cushion Vehicle (UTACV).

And many of the newly hit countries are even less prepared to deal with ASF than China, they say, which has so far failed to end its outbreaks. Studies of 68 outbreaks in China concluded that 34% were caused by swill feeding, 46% by contaminated vehicles and workers, and 19% by the transport of live pigs and products. To stem outbreaks, China also culls all pigs in a 3-kilometer zone around an infected herd, sets up inspection and disinfection stations to control farm traffic within a 10-kilometer buffer zone, and closes live pig markets in the affected region.