THIS IS DIGITAL POLITICS. But it's not Monday. I'm Mark Scott, and I apologize for the one-day delay in this week's newsletter. I've come down with what I really hope isn't Covid-19, so please forgive any typos in the dispatch below. Normal Monday transmission resumes next week.

— New polling suggests European citizens may not be as keen about the bloc's digital revamp as policymakers and industry.

— The United States' departure from more than 60 international organizations is another death knell in the open, interoperable internet.

– Despite global efforts, the US still dominates the market for data centers.

Let's get started:

digitalpolitics.co/newsletter0…

The cache hierarchy of the 2008 Intel Nehalem x86 architecture. (Source: Intel)
Writing good, performant code depends strongly on an understanding of the underlying hardware. This is especially the case in scenarios like those involving embarrassingly parallel processing, which at first glance ought to be a cakewalk. With multiple threads doing their own thing without having to nag the other threads about anything it seems highly doubtful that even a novice could screw this up. Yet as [Keifer] details in a recent video on so-called false sharing, this is actually very easy, for a variety of reasons.

With a multi-core and/or multi-processor system each core has its own local cache that contains a reflection of the current values in system RAM. If any core modifies its cached data, this automatically invalidates the other cache lines, resulting a cache miss for those cores and forcing a refresh from system RAM. This is the case even if the accessed data isn’t one that another core was going to use, with an obvious impact on performance.

The worst case scenario as detailed and demonstrated using the Google Benchmark sample projects, involves a shared global data structure, with a recorded hundred times reduction in performance. Also noticeable is the impact on scaling performance, with the cache misses becoming more severe with more threads running.

A less obvious cause of performance loss here is due to memory alignment and how data fits in the cache lines. Making sure that your data is aligned in e.g. data structures can prevent more unwanted cache invalidation events. With most applications being multi-threaded these days, it’s a good thing to not only know how to diagnose false sharing issues, but also how to prevent them.

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hackaday.com/2026/01/14/making…

The balance bikes toddlers are rocking these days look like great fun, but not so great in the snow. Rather than see his kid’s favourite toy relegated to shed until spring, [John Boss] added electric power, and an extra wheel to make one fun-looking snow trike. Like a boss, you might say.

Physically, the trike is a delta configuration: two rear wheels and one front, though as you can see the front wheel has been turned into a ski. That’s not the most stable configuration, but by shifting the foot pegs to the front wheel and keeping the electronics down low, [John] is able to maintain a safe center of gravity. He’s also limiting the throttle so kiddo can’t go dangerously fast– indeed, the throttle control is in the rear electronics component. The kid just has a big green “go” button.

Bit-banging the throttle, combined with the weight of the kiddo up front, creates a strong tendency towards wheel-spin, but [John] fixes that with a some cleverly printed TPU paddles zip-tied to the harbor-freight wheels and tires he’s hacked into use. Those wheels are fixed to a solid axle that’s mounted to flat plate [John] had made up to attach to the bike frame. It’s all surprisingly solid, given that [John] is able to demonstrate the safety factor by going for a spin of his own. We would have done the same.

We particularly like the use of a tool battery for hot-swappable power. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a kid’s toy get the tool battery treatment, but you aren’t limited to mobile uses. We’ve seen the ubiquitous 18V power packs in everything from fume extractors to a portable powerpack that can even charge a Tesla.

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hackaday.com/2026/01/14/dad-ma…

An audio amplifier was once a fairly simple analogue device, but in recent decades a typical home entertainment amplifier will have expanded to include many digital functions. When these break they are often proprietary and not easy to repair, as was the case with a broken Pioneer surround-sound device given to [Boz]. It sat on the shelf for a few years until he had the idea of a jukebox for his ripped CDs, and his returning it to life with a new main board is something to behold.

Internally it’s a surprisingly modular design, meaning that the front panel with its VFD display and driver were intact and working, as were the class AB amplifier and its power supply. He had the service manual so reverse engineering was straightforward, thus out came the main board in favor of a replacement. He took the original connectors and a few other components, then designed a PCB to take them and a Raspberry Pi Pico and DAC. With appropriate MMBASIC firmware it looks as though it was originally made this way, a sense heightened by a look at the motherboard inside (ignoring a couple of bodges).

We like seeing projects like this one which revive broken devices, and this one is particularly special quality wise. We’re more used to seeing it with gaming hardware though.

hackaday.com/2026/01/14/a-new-…

This week Jonathan and Randal chat with Jose Valim about Elixir! What led Jose to create this unique programming language? What do we mean that it’s a functional language with immutability?

• elixir-lang.org/
• github.com/elixir-plug/plug

youtube.com/embed/H4lC4JNUxOs?…

Did you know you can watch the live recording of the show right on our YouTube Channel? Have someone you’d like us to interview? Let us know, or have the guest contact us! Take a look at the schedule here.

play.libsyn.com/embed/episode/…

Direct Download in DRM-free MP3.

If you’d rather read along, here’s the transcript for this week’s episode.

Places to follow the FLOSS Weekly Podcast:

• Spotify
• RSS

Theme music: “Newer Wave” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

hackaday.com/2026/01/14/floss-…

For those born with certain types of congenital deafness, the cochlear implant has been a positive and enabling technology. It uses electronics to step in as a replacement for the biological ear that doesn’t quite function properly, and provides a useful, if imperfect, sense of hearing to its users.

New research has promised another potential solution for some sufferers of congenital deafness. Instead of a supportive device, a gene therapy is used to enable the biological ear to function more as it should. The result is that patients get their sense of hearing, not from a prosthetic, but from their own ears themselves.

New Therapy

Cochlear implants are a popular treatment for many types of congenital deafness. Credit: Hear hear, CC BY SA 4.0
There are a number of causes of congenital deafness, each of which presents in its own way. In the case of OTOF-related hearing loss, it comes down to a genetic change in a single critical protein. The otoferlin gene is responsible for making the protein of the same name, and this protein is critical for normal, functional hearing in humans. It’s responsible for enabling the communication of signals between the inner hair cells in the ear, and the auditory nerve which conducts these signals to the brain. However, in patients with a condition called autosomal recessive deafness 9, a non-functional variant of the otoferlin gene prevents the normal production of this protein. Without the proper protein available, the auditory nerve fails to receive the proper signals from the hair cells in the ear, and the result is profound deafness.

The typical treatment for this type of congenital hearing loss is the use of a cochlear implant. This is an electronic device that uses a microphone to pick up sound, and then translates it into electrical signals which are sent to electrodes embedded in the cochlear. These simulate the signals that would normally come from the ear itself, and provide a very useful sense of hearing to the user. However, quality and fidelity is strictly limited compared to a fully-functional human ear, and they do come with other drawbacks as is common with many prosthetic devices.

The better understanding that we now have of OTOF-related hearing loss presented an opportunity. If it were possible to get the right protein where it needed to be, it might be possible to enable hearing in what are otherwise properly-formed ears.
DB-OTO was initially trialled in mice, where it was able to improve hearing response by creating the protein necessary for nerve conduction between inner ear hair cells and the auditory nerve. Credit: research paper
The treatment to do that job is called DB-OTO. It’s a virus-based gene therapy which is able to deliver a working version of the OTOF gene. It uses a non-pathogenic virus to carry the proper genetic code that produces the otoferlin protein. However, it’s no good if this gene is expressed in just any context. Thus, it’s paired with a special DNA sequence called a Myo15 promoter which ensures the gene is only expressed in cochlear hair cells that would normally express the otoferlin protein. Treatment involves delivering the viral gene therapy to one or both ears through a surgical procedure using a similar approach to implanting cochlear devices.
Researchers pursued a number of promoter sequences to ensure the gene was only expressed with the correct cells. Credit: research paper
An early trial provided DB-OTO treatment to twelve patients, ranging in age from ten months to sixteen years. eleven out of twelve patients developed improved hearing within weeks of treatment with DB-OTO. Nine patients were able to achieve improvements to the point of no longer requiring cochlear implants and having viable natural hearing.

Six trial participants could perceive soft speech, and three could hear whispers, indicating a normal level of hearing sensitivity. Notably, hearing improvements were persistent and there were some signs of speech development in three patients in the study. The company behind the work, Regeneron, is also eager to take the learnings from its development and potentially apply it to other kinds of hearing loss from genetic causes.

DB-OTO remains an experimental treatment for now, but regulatory approvals are being pursued for its further use. It could yet prove to be a viable and effective treatment for a wide range of patients affected by this genetic issue. It’s just one of a number of emerging treatments that use viruses to deliver helpful genetic material when a patient’s own genes don’t quite function as desired.

hackaday.com/2026/01/14/geneti…

The ESP32-P4 is the new hotness on the microcontroller market. With RISC-V architecture and two cores running 400 MHz, to ears of a certain vintage it sounds more like the heart of a Unix workstation than a traditional MCU. Time’s a funny thing like that. [DynaMight] was looking for an excuse to play with this powerful new system on a chip, so put together what he calls the GB300-P4: a commercial handheld game console with an Expressif brain transplant.

Older ESP32 chips weren’t quite up to 16-bit emulation, but that hadn’t stopped people trying; the RetroGo project by [ducalex] already has an SNES and Genesis/Mega Drive emulation mode, along with all the 8-bit you could ask for. But the higher-tech consoles can run a bit slow in emulation on other ESP32 chips. [DynaMight] wanted to see if the P4 performed better, and to no ones surprise, it did.

If the build quality on this handheld looks suspiciously professional, that’s because it is: [DynaMight] started with a GB300, a commercial emulator platform. Since the ESP32-P4 is replacing a MIPS chip clocked at 914 MHz in the original — which sounds even more like the heart of a Unix workstation, come to think of it — the machine probably doesn’t have better performance than it did from factory unless its code was terribly un-optimized. In this case, performance was not the point. The point was to have a handheld running RetroGo on this specific chip, which the project has evidently accomplished with flying colours. If you’ve got a GB300 you’d rather put an “Expressif Inside” sticker on, the project is on github. Otherwise you can check out the demo video below. (DOOM starts at 1:29, because of course it runs DOOM.)

The last P4 project we featured was a Quadra emulator; we expect to see a lot of projects with this chip in the new year, and they’re not all going to be retrocomputer-related, we’re sure. If you’re cooking up something using the new ESP32, or know someone who is, you know what to do.

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hackaday.com/2026/01/14/esp32-…

Meticolosamente curati da Jean Rière, autore inoltre delle acute pagine introduttive, e ben tradotti da Cristina Spinoglio, che ha saputo rendere la lucida vivacità degli scritti originali, questi articoli del rivoluzionario e pubblicista Victor Serge (Viktor L’vovič Kibal’čič, Bruxelles 1890 – Città del Messico 1947) consentono ora anche al lettore italiano di osservare come lo studioso avesse analizzato e compreso il fenomeno dell’odio antiebraico già tra la metà degli anni Venti e i primi anni Quaranta del secolo scorso. Fu allora che, dopo un’esistenza drammaticamente avventurosa trascorsa tra la Russia Sovietica, la Siberia dei gulag e la Francia del Fronte Popolare, egli riuscì a riparare in Messico, dove sarebbe rimasto fino alla morte.

Gli articoli raccolti in questa silloge sono stati in gran parte pubblicati su La Wallonie, il quotidiano socialista di Liegi: colpiscono per la limpidezza tanto dell’argomentazione quanto della scrittura. Occorre aggiungere, al riguardo, come la prosa di Serge si caratterizzi anche per la scorrevolezza e l’incisività, il tono colloquiale, i periodi brevi, il ritmo rapido, la ricchezza del lessico.

A proposito poi dell’antisemitismo, si deve mettere anzitutto in rilievo come, a parere dell’A., tale forma di ostilità non debba essere considerata una pura e semplice «opinione» priva di conseguenze, dal momento che si tratta al contrario di un’autentica ideologia di morte. Egli, quindi, non avrebbe mai cercato un dialogo né un confronto con gli antisemiti, ritenendoli «avversari» e addirittura «nemici» contro i quali si sarebbe dovuta condurre una lotta senza quartiere. Gli organi di stampa repubblicani, socialisti e rivoluzionari non avrebbero dovuto dunque accordare loro alcuno spazio: qualora lo avessero fatto, avrebbero commesso un gravissimo errore politico, filosofico e morale.

La posizione di Serge sull’argomento appare pertanto assolutamente ferma: fu in nome di questa intransigente convinzione che egli non esitò a polemizzare nei confronti di qualche sindacalista e dirigente di partito che sembrava incline a valutare positivamente alcune scelte della dittatura nazionalsocialista relative al presunto «livellamento delle differenze e al miglioramento della familiarità sociale». Scrisse al riguardo, in tono sferzante, lo studioso: «E quali “solidarietà sociali” si possono immaginare tra il grasso maresciallo Goering nelle sue cinquanta uniformi e i poveri disgraziati nei campi di lavoro? Per non parlare dei socialisti, dei comunisti e degli ebrei nei campi di concentramento? Che cosa ha ottenuto l’educazione se non l’invenzione del razzismo, per non parlare della proscrizione della musica classica, della relatività ebraica di Einstein e della psicologia ebraica di Freud?» (p. 81).

Emerge dunque con chiarezza, da questi scritti, come l’A. abbia pienamente compreso la portata del «crimine collettivo», nonché alcune delle peculiarità che ne hanno fatto, nell’ambito della storia moderna, un fenomeno inedito ed eccezionale. E anche come egli fosse consapevole che, successivamente a un’eventuale vittoria sul regime hitleriano, le conseguenze della cosiddetta «peste bruna» – costituita dall’antisemitismo e dal razzismo – sarebbero rimaste a lungo nella mente di tanti cittadini tedeschi ed europei: da ciò la pressante necessità di combattere incessantemente l’uno e l’altro, perché si potesse giungere all’affermazione di un nuovo umanesimo, all’avvento di una civiltà fondata sul rispetto e sulla tolleranza, irriducibile nemica dell’odio e della sopraffazione.

The post Lo sterminio degli ebrei di Varsavia e altri testi sull’antisemitismo first appeared on La Civiltà Cattolica.

Dopo la pubblicazione dei versi di Daria Menicanti, Valore Italiano Editore prosegue nel progetto Poesie Trilingue con una manciata di composizioni della milanese Antonia Pozzi (1912-1938), versi di rara purezza e misurato dolore. Due voci femminili, potenti e meste, relativamente poco conosciute, sono state individuate per allargare la conoscenza della «italianità» nei Paesi del Sudamerica. I testi poetici, offerti inizialmente in lingua italiana, sono stati appositamente volti in spagnolo e in portoghese, così da essere gustati, quasi ritmati, dall’intero continente sudamericano.

Gli autori al lavoro in questo progetto polilinguistico sono Silvia Cattoni (Universidad Nacional de Cordóba), Sergio Colella (Realtà Educative in America Latina), Fabio Minazzi (Università dell’Insubria), Patricia Peterle (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina,a Florianópolis) e Lucia Wataghin (Universidade de São Paulo). A Minazzi si deve la presentazione della poetessa nel cenacolo banfiano, la «Scuola di Milano», innervata dall’intelligente criticismo del filosofo Antonio Banfi. In queste pagine si schizza la maturazione di Pozzi e il suo fresco abbeverarsi alle giovani e varie personalità che costituivano questo cenacolo che, bisogna riconoscerlo, si ergeva autonomo e fiero davanti all’imperante ideologia fascista.

Da ricordare, tuttavia, che Pozzi percepisce la sottovalutazione dei suoi versi in questo ambiente banfiano, come si evince in «Un destino», del 13 febbraio 1935. La giovane poetessa veniva da una famiglia agiata (a p. 23 si legga «Ida» e non «Isa», la zia di Antonia; per Emma viene da pensare che sia la zia, la sorella del padre; e a p. 150 si legga l’anno «1938» e non «1937»), amante dell’arte, della letteratura, dei viaggi, della fotografia e soprattutto delle montagne, a tal punto da immortalare queste «madri», le montagne, come «immense donne / la sera» (p. 136).

Si sa che Pozzi morì suicida – come suo nonno e la zia Emma –, perché immensa e insostenibile diventava col tempo la conciliazione fra la sua naturale pulsione poetica e il mondo che le era attorno: Oh, tu bene mi pesi / l’anima, poesia: / tu sai se io manco e mi perdo, / tu che allora ti neghi/ e taci.

Il libro raccoglie 22 composizioni, di cui le prime 10 costituiscono un bouquet di versi offerti al suo amato, Antonio Maria Cervi. Si tratta di poesie scritte da Pozzi fra l’agosto e l’ottobre 1934, racchiuse in un canzoniere intitolato La vita sognata, ove si rinviene l’incompiuto desiderio di quanto sognato, il baratro fra la trasparente luce della natura e la pesante durezza della terra. In queste composizioni si riversa lo sfaccettarsi della rottura, non voluta, del suo amore per Cervi, esaltando l’immediatezza del trasporto e l’abissale amarezza della rinuncia. La «pulizia della parola», la ponderata misura data all’evocazione invocata, traluce nella scrittura, facendo scaturire rivoli di bellezza, delicata e pittorica: una valle di erboso silenzio ospita il tinnire del canneto (Lieve offerta).

Scorrendo queste pagine, il lettore si accorge della pacata accettazione della finitezza, cantata con l’esuberanza di un’onirica danza nel tutto: Zattere sciolte – navighiamo / a incontrarci. Pozzi divorava la vita, sentendo in sé, già giovane, la presenza della fine.

Pregevole è la sottolineatura, da parte degli AA., dell’opzione delicata e profonda della poetessa verso gli «ultimi», verso la Milano povera e marginale, dove si rinviene la fame non appagata, / gli urli dei bambini non placati, / il petto delle mamme tisiche… (Via dei Cinquecento; e ancora la sublime Periferia). Siamo alla fine della vita di questa donna che, dando uno strappo alle sue origini alto-borghesi, distaccandosi dai desiderata paterni, s’avvia a partecipare della pesantezza della triste terra.

The post Antonia Pozzi first appeared on La Civiltà Cattolica.

If you search the Internet for “Clone Wars,” you’ll get a lot of Star Wars-related pages. But the original Clone Wars took place a long time ago in a galaxy much nearer to ours, and it has a lot to do with the computer you are probably using right now to read this. (Well, unless it is a Mac, something ARM-based, or an old retro-rig. I did say probably!)

IBM is a name that, for many years, was synonymous with computers, especially big mainframe computers. However, it didn’t start out that way. IBM originally made mechanical calculators and tabulating machines. That changed in 1952 with the IBM 701, IBM’s first computer that you’d recognize as a computer.

If you weren’t there, it is hard to understand how IBM dominated the computer market in the 1960s and 1970s. Sure, there were others like Univac, Honeywell, and Burroughs. But especially in the United States, IBM was the biggest fish in the pond. At one point, the computer market’s estimated worth was a bit more than $11 billion, and IBM’s five biggest competitors accounted for about $2 billion, with almost all of the rest going to IBM.

So it was somewhat surprising that IBM didn’t roll out the personal computer first, or at least very early. Even companies that made “small” computers for the day, like Digital Equipment Corporation or Data General, weren’t really expecting the truly personal computer. That push came from companies no one had heard of at the time, like MITS, SWTP, IMSAI, and Commodore.

The IBM PC

The story — and this is another story — goes that IBM spun up a team to make the IBM PC, expecting it to sell very little and use up some old keyboards previously earmarked for a failed word processor project. Instead, when the IBM PC showed up in 1981, it was a surprise hit. By 1983, there was the “XT” which was a PC with some extras, including a hard drive. In 1984, the “AT” showed up with a (gasp!) 16-bit 80286.

The personal computer market had been healthy but small. Now the PC was selling huge volumes, perhaps thanks to commercials like the one below, and decimating other companies in the market. Naturally, others wanted a piece of the pie.

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Send in the Clones

Anyone could make a PC-like computer, because IBM had used off-the-shelf parts for nearly everything. There were two things that really set the PC/XT/AT family apart. First, there was a bus for plugging in cards with video outputs, serial ports, memory, and other peripherals. You could start a fine business just making add-on cards, and IBM gave you all the details. This wasn’t unlike the S-100 bus created by the Altair, but the volume of PC-class machines far outstripped the S-100 market very quickly.

In reality, there were really two buses. The PC/XT had an 8-bit bus, later named the ISA bus. The AT added an extra connector for the extra bits. You could plug an 8-bit card into part of a 16-bit slot. You probably couldn’t plug a 16-bit card into an 8-bit slot, though, unless it was made to work that way.

The other thing you needed to create a working PC was the BIOS — a ROM chip that handled starting the system with all the I/O devices set up and loading an operating system: MS-DOS, CP/M-86, or, later, OS/2.

Protection

An ad for a Columbia PC clone.
IBM didn’t think the PC would amount to much so they didn’t do anything to hide or protect the bus, in contrast to Apple, which had patents on key parts of its computer. They did, however, have a copyright on the BIOS. In theory, creating a clone IBM PC would require the design of an Intel-CPU motherboard with memory and I/O devices at the right addresses, a compatible bus, and a compatible BIOS chip.

But IBM gave the world enough documentation to write software for the machine and to make plug-in cards. So, figuring out the other side of it wasn’t particularly difficult. Probably the first clone maker was Columbia Data Products in 1982, although they were perceived to have compatibility and quality issues. (They are still around as a software company.)

Eagle Computer was another early player that originally made CP/M computers. Their computers were not exact clones, but they were the first to use a true 16-bit CPU and the first to have hard drives. There were some compatibility issues with Eagle versus a “true” PC. You can hear their unusual story in the video below.

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The PC Reference manual had schematics and helpfully commented BIOS source code
One of the first companies to find real success cloning the PC was Compaq Computers, formed by some former Texas Instruments employees who were, at first, going to open Mexican restaurants, but decided computers would be better. Unlike some future clone makers, Compaq was dedicated to building better computers, not cheaper.

Compaq’s first entry into the market was a “luggable” (think of a laptop with a real CRT in a suitcase that only ran when plugged into the wall; see the video below). They reportedly spent $1,000,000 to duplicate the IBM BIOS without peeking inside (which would have caused legal problems). However, it is possible that some clone makers simply copied the IBM BIOS directly or indirectly. This was particularly easy because IBM included the BIOS source code in an appendix of the PC’s technical reference manual.

Between 1982 and 1983, Compaq, Columbia Data Products, Eagle Computers, Leading Edge, and Kaypro all threw their hats into the ring. Part of what made this sustainable over the long term was Phoenix Technologies.

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Rise of the Phoenix

Phoenix was a software producer that realized the value of having a non-IBM BIOS. They put together a team to study the BIOS using only public documentation. They produced a specification and handed it to another programmer. That programmer then produced a “clean room” piece of code that did the same things as the BIOS.
An Eagle ad from 1983
This was important because, inevitably, IBM sued Phoenix but lost, as they were able to provide credible documentation that they didn’t copy IBM’s code. They were ready to license their BIOS in 1984, and companies like Hewlett-Packard, Tandy, and AT&T were happy to pay the $290,000 license fee. That fee also included insurance from The Hartford to indemnify against any copyright-infringement lawsuits.

Clones were attractive because they were often far cheaper than a “real” PC. They would also often feature innovations. For example, almost all clones had a “turbo” mode to increase the clock speed a little. Many had ports or other features as standard that a PC had to pay extra for (and consume card slots). Compaq, Columbia, and Kaypro made luggable PCs. In addition, supply didn’t always match demand. Dealers often could sell more PCs than they could get in stock, and the clones offered them a way to close more business.

Issues

Not all clone makers got everything right. It wasn’t odd for a strange machine to have different interrupt handling than an IBM machine or different timers. Another favorite place to err involved AT/PC compatibility.

In a base-model IBM PC, the address bus only went from A0 to A19. So if you hit address (hex) FFFFF+1, it would wrap around to 00000. Memory being at a premium, apparently, some programs depended on that behavior.

With the AT, there were more address lines. Rather than breaking backward compatibility, those machines have an “A20 gate.” By default, the A20 line is disabled; you must enable it to use it. However, there were several variations in how that worked.

Intel, for example, had the InBoard/386 that let you plug a 386 into a PC or AT to upgrade it. However, the InBoard A20 gating differed from that of a real AT. Most people never noticed. Software that used the BIOS still worked because the InBoard’s BIOS knew the correct procedure. Most software didn’t care either way. But there was always that one program that would need a fix.

The original PC used some extra logic in the keyboard controller to handle the gate. When CPUs started using cache, the A20 gating was moved into the CPU for many generations. However, around 2013, most CPUs finally gave up on gating A20.

The point is that there were many subtle features on a real IBM computer, and the clone makers didn’t always get it right. If you read ads from those days, they often tout how compatible they are.

Total War!

IBM started a series of legal battles against… well… everybody. Compaq, Corona Data Systems, Handwell, Phoenix, AMD, and anyone who managed to put anything on the market that competed with “big blue” (one of IBM’s nicknames).

IBM didn’t win anything significant, although most companies settled out of court. Then they just used the Phoenix BIOS, which was provably “clean.” So IBM decided to take a different approach.

In 1987, IBM decided they should have paid more attention to the PC design, so they redid it as the PS/2. IBM spent a lot of money telling people how much better the PS/2 was. They had really thought about it this time. So scrap those awful PCs and buy a PS/2 instead.

Of course, the PS/2 wasn’t compatible with anything. It was made to run OS/2. It used the MCA bus, which was incompatible with the ISA bus, and didn’t have many cards available. All of it, of course, was expensive. This time, clone makers had to pay a license fee to IBM to use the new bus, so no more cheap cards, either.

You probably don’t need a business degree to predict how that turned out. The market yawned and continued buying PC “clones” which were now the only game in town if you wanted a PC/XT/AT-style machine, especially since Compaq beat IBM to market with an 80386 PC by about a year.

Not all software was compatible with all clones. But most software would run on anything and, as clones got more prevalent, software got smarter about what to expect. At about the same time, people were thinking more about buying applications and less about the computer they ran on, a trend that had started even earlier, but was continuing to grow. Ordinary people didn’t care what was in the computer as long as it ran their spreadsheet, or accounting program, or whatever it was they were using.

Dozens of companies made something that resembled a PC, including big names like Olivetti, Zenith, Hewlett-Packard, Texas Instruments, Digital Equipment Corporation, and Tandy. Then there were the companies you might remember for other reasons, like Sanyo or TeleVideo. There were also many that simply came and went with little name recognition. Michael Dell started PC Limited in 1984 in his college dorm room, and by 1985, he was selling an $800 turbo PC. A few years later, the name changed to Dell, and now it is a giant in the industry.

Looking Back

It is interesting to play “what if” with this time in history. If IBM had not opened their architecture, they might have made more money. Or, they might have sold 1,000 PCs and lost interest. Then we’d all be using something different. Microsoft retaining the right to sell MS-DOS to other people was also a key enabler.

IBM stayed in the laptop business (ThinkPad) until they sold to Lenovo in 2005. They would also sell them their server business in 2014.

Things have changed, of course. There hasn’t been an ISA card slot on a motherboard in ages. Boot processes are more complex, and there are many BIOS options. Don’t even get us started on EMS and XMS. But at the core, your PC-compatible computer still wakes up and follows the same steps as an old school PC to get started. Like the Ship of Theseus, is it still an “IBM-compatible PC?” If it matters, we think the answer is yes.

If you want to relive those days, we recently saw some new machines sporting 8088s and 80386s. Or, there’s always emulation.

hackaday.com/2026/01/14/clone-…

Una legge, specie una discutibile come il Piracy Shield, si può discutere e modificare, ma intanto la si rispetta. E il CEO di CloudFlare può attaccarsi.

spreaker.com/episode/dk-10x17-…

Una delle ultime Lettere apostoliche di papa Francesco è stata dedicata al valore formativo della letteratura nel percorso dei candidati al sacerdozio ministeriale e degli operatori ecclesiali. In ambito europeo, uno degli autori che esprime meglio la sensibilità contemporanea è la scrittrice spagnola Clara Sánchez, che nel 2010 con Il profumo delle foglie di limone ha vinto il Premio letterario spagnolo Nadal de Novela,e negli anni successivi ha venduto più di due milioni e mezzo di copie dei suoi libri. La sua ultima opera, La casa che attende la notte, è un romanzo delicato, attento alle persone, ma anche complesso e articolato, con aspetti filosofici che occorre ascoltare con interesse e rispetto, ma anche con corretto senso critico.

Il romanzo Il profumo delle foglie di limone è stato pubblicato nel 2010 con il titolo Lo que esconde tu nombre, che esprime bene la dinamica che sostiene la narrazione. È la storia di una giovane donna spagnola, Sandra, incinta di cinque mesi e non ancora sposata, che in un momento di riposo sulla costa mediterranea della Spagna, nel clima caldo e mite di fine estate, si trova inconsapevolmente coinvolta in una serie di relazioni con persone anziane, che la pongono a contatto con gli eventi più tragici della storia europea del Novecento. I due coniugi anziani che si sono presi cura di lei, Fredrik e Karin, si rivelano essere due ex criminali nazisti, ritiratisi nella loro bella villa al mare. Del loro progressivo svelamento è autore un altro anziano conosciuto da Sandra negli stessi giorni, Julián, ex repubblicano spagnolo internato a Mauthausen, che ha dedicato la vita alla ricerca dei criminali nazisti.

La narrazione sviluppa varie vicende e porta a una progressiva conoscenza della vera identità dei personaggi. In tutto il racconto non c’è però alcun cenno alla dimensione religiosa: la narrazione autobiografica, condotta da Sandra e Julián, realizza un intreccio tra grandi questioni storiche e piccole realtà personali. L’anelito profondo del racconto è la ricerca della verità, di ciò che le persone sono veramente al di là della parvenza offerta dal loro stato sociale: una ricerca che conduce alla giustizia e alla pace.

Il nuovo romanzo ha come titolo in italiano La casa che attende la notte, e in spagnolo Una vida para Hugo, titolo che ne esprime meglio il dinamismo narrativo. Anche qui il protagonista del romanzo è una giovane donna spagnola, Alicia, che, nell’attesa di un concorso, accetta il lavoro di baby-sitter nella famiglia di Rafael, un bambino di nove mesi. Anche in questo romanzo le vicende della vita quotidiana – in questo caso, di una bambinaia e del suo bambino – si intrecciano con quelle più grandi della crisi dei genitori, della morte di un adolescente di nome Hugo e della cospicua eredità ricevuta dalla sua famiglia.

Il racconto fa riferimento a tre famiglie problematiche: quella di Alicia, che vive a Madrid con la sorella; quella di Rafael, i cui genitori si separano; e quella di Hugo, con i nonni, il papà, la mamma e la sorella avuta dalla mamma in una relazione precedente. Il racconto è ancora autobiografico, di Alicia e Hugo, e ricostruisce immaginativamente il rapporto dell’adolescente defunto Hugo con il perspicace Rafael, che guida Alicia alla scoperta della causa della morte violenta del giovane. La narrazione scorre veloce e affascina il lettore con improvvisi dettagli evocativi e considerazioni filosofiche.

Anche in questo racconto è assente un’esplicita dimensione religiosa: la Chiesa appare solo nel momento in cui Alicia cerca la spiegazione di ciò che accade. Proprio una breve, anche se infelice, confessione le permette di aprirsi alla fede e di continuare la ricerca della verità. Il sincretismo religioso del racconto include però un accenno alla reincarnazione delle anime e all’influsso dei defunti sui viventi. Questo aspetto va compreso come un artificio letterario, necessario per condurre avanti la narrazione: artificio a cui l’A. però non si sente di aderire.

Entrambi i racconti esprimono quindi la ricerca della verità all’interno della vita quotidiana: una ricerca che caratterizza la cultura europea e che fa di questi romanzi un mezzo per raggiungerla e comprenderla.

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