Some commentary from the author here: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1nguv1a/i_built_an_ll...

I wonder who the handwritten notes on page 98 are by?

Starts with "confirm plane reservation on Tue. Sept 2 or Wed. Sept 3" which is correct for 1975

“Democracy drowns in dollars” seems sadly more accurate

A style I picked up from a relative, who is a lawyer, is to make bullet points with minimal other fluff:

  Addressee,
   - Do this
   - Then that
   - Be sure to be aware of this

I found it impersonal at first, but it's very effective in calling out the things that need attention

Numbers or letters are better than plain bullets so its obvious to the responder when they quote reply that they skipped from 1 to 4.

Bullets are so underrated as a tool. Perhaps because writing them clearly and concisely can be a lot of effort, but that's the point. You have to reduce the reader's cognitive load to get a response.

The format you described is what I use for emails and messages.

Bullet trees are what I use for everything else. I can spend like an hour on a good bullet tree, but I am rarely misunderstood or ignored.

:You’re thinking of A86:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A86_(software)

I can confirm. The author was an Intel engineer who was dissatisfied with how his senior engineers did the DOS EXE format in the intro of the docs of his assembler.

A86/D86 where fantastic, with extra bonus points for the docs.

Decades ago, I remember figuring out quite a bit of that, and here are my original notes from that, including tables that show the pattern clearly:

    MOV rA, rB:
         B: AL AH BL BH CL CH DL DH
    A:      1  1  0  0  1  1  0  0
    AL  1   ** ** 8A 8A ** ** 8A 8A
    AH  1   ** ** 8A 8A ** ** 8A 8A
    BL  0   8A 8A ** ** 8A 8A ** **
    BH  0   8A 8A ** ** 8A 8A ** **
    CL  1   ** ** 8A 8A ** ** 8A 8A
    CH  1   ** ** 8A 8A ** ** 8A 8A
    DL  0   8A 8A ** ** 8A 8A ** **
    DH  0   8A 8A ** ** 8A 8A ** **

    * = "reversed" opcode (88)

    MOV rA, rB ( word regs ):
         B: AX BX CX DX SP BP SI DI
    A:      1  0  1  0  1  1  0  0
    AX 1    ** 8B ** 8B ** ** 8B 8B
    BX 0    8B ** 8B ** 8B 8B ** **
    CX 1    ** 8B ** 8B ** ** 8B 8B
    DX 0    8B ** 8B ** 8B 8B ** **
    SP 1    ** 8B ** 8B ** ** 8B 8B
    BP 1    ** 8B ** 8B ** ** 8B 8B
    SI 0    8B ** 8B ** 8B 8B ** **
    DI 0    8B ** 8B ** 8B 8B ** **

    * = "reversed" opcode (89)

    The above tables apply for the following two-operand instructions:

        ADD             OR
        ADC             SBB
        AND             SUB
        XOR             CMP

    For TEST and XCHG, which are commutative, A86 always puts the first
    operand in the r/m field if possible, while MASM puts it in the reg
    field if the first operand is a register.

Wow! Back then, I was not quite sure if they had really implemented it or if they just claimed they had to encourage people to pay.

I would never have imagined that I'd get an answer to that question a quarter of a century later. Thanks for the comment!

It's been so long that I read that remark in the manual and I'm glad I wasn't just imagining it;-)

I wrote a perl script a while back to create random passphrases based on a random mnemonic word

It seems like a good idea to me but I’m not knowledgeable enough about cryptography to know if that’s really true and would be very interested to hear from anyone who does know

https://github.com/jlmcgraw/mnemonic_passphrase

Since devices that automatically set their own time are so common now I’ve sometimes wondered why we don’t try moving the time forward/back by some smaller increment each day instead of a full hour twice a year.

I did something very similar but had the thought that making the passphrase be based on an existing word would make a good balance between security and ease of remembering without a password manager.

Of course it isn’t as strong as a purely random passphrase but hopefully it would be strong enough and still better than choosing your own password

https://github.com/jlmcgraw/mnemonic_passphrase