Another one, not quite as handy but still awesome: ctrl s / ctrl-q. This freezes/unfreezes the terminal output so you can read it, without interrupting your program. Useful for very fast walls of text.
Oh so that is what this is for. I thought ctrl-q / ctrl-s are there as a nasty way to screw with users, who every now and then accidentally press one of these, and find their terminal frozen and no longer visibly reacting to input, for no apparent reason.
there was an old riddle I saw on usenet, "there is a key I use for one of its intended purposes several times a day, but when it stopped working I never missed it. what key was that?". the answer was the caps lock key, one of whose intended purposes was reverting back to normal after accidentally pressing it to go into caps mode.
I remember when the Pause key did that! It's long enough ago that I don't remember which systems did so, and most laptops don't even have a Pause key any more, but it was often very handy for reading fast-moving console output.
It can’t always not interrupt your program. Think about it: after you press Control S to trigger XOFF, the fast output has to be buffered in memory. That memory is certainly not unlimited. There’s no way for the program to keep outputting text. Indeed some programs (including Claude Code, at least a while ago) really don’t like it when you press Control S and let the terminal be frozen for a very long time.
A careless move with a skill saw can take your finger off too. I don't think acid deserves such a scary reputation. I guess because it doesn't make an obnoxious sound does make it easier to forget. But in both cases you must follow best practices (fume hood, goggles, bicarb wash nearby) , and suffer consequences if you don't.
I say it's only because LLMs came out after the PS5 was developed. Presumably, future generations of hw (if there are any) will use the same methods to harden the attack surface. Good ole cat and mouse.
I did something similar with a U2W 160 mbps SCSI card and 10k rpm Seagate Cheetah drive circa 2000. I saved up and found an amazing deal on eBay, shipped to the US from Australia. Waited a week, plugged it in, and found out it had no boot ROM. So it worked, but I still had to boot from an IDE disk which ruined my whole vision for the build. I was so disappointed.
There is no need for "temporary talent" from foreign countries. US is graduating plenty of CS grads from our schools. There is a need for wage suppression and exploitation (for anyone not aware, if you get fired from your H1B job you have 2 weeks to leave the county). That's why they have a reputation for being "better", another word for it is indentured servitude.
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