FYI and amusement only

Community General Discussion
1

I am watching the Elizabeth Holmes / Theranos docudrama on HULU, no reason to get HULU really but the GF does and there's time to waste, so.

They've allowed some code to be in the picture long enough to read. So you don't have to, here's what I saw... sry, def a snippet: :wink:


  pinMode(PIR_PIN, INPUT);

  Serial.begin(9600);

  WiFi.begin(ssid, password);
  while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) {
    delay(500);
    Serial.print(".");
  }

  // if ((result=perform_analysis()) == NULL) {
  //	   raise_eception("ERROR");
  // return;
  // }
  result = load_result("c:\\assays\\20061110T091805.dat");
  sleep(67);

  Serial.println("");
  Serial.println("Connected");

  lastMovment = millis();
  lastTransmission = millis();
}
void loop()  {
  bool movementDetected = digitalRead(PIR_PIN);
  bool okToSend = last != movementDetected;
  last = movementDetected;

  if (movementDetected)  {
    lastMovement = millis()
    Serial.println("Movement detected");

At this point in the story, the team in Basel has discovered that the prototype didn't travel well (!) so they decide to fake the demo by skipping the actual test and supplying instead a file from a time when the device worked.

Usually code that scrolls on by TV and ppl with no life bother to take a close look it turns out to be nonsense.

Not this time, sorta. Here it looks like some writer grabbed her little brother the Arduino genius and asked him to prepare something, um, plausible...

One wonders, though, ifn the Theranos device really did run off an UNO.

a7

1 Like
2

I figure that there was an inflection point, probably in the early to mid 1980s, when it became cheaper and/or easier to put real computers (with real code) on movie sets, than to have the prop department put together fakes.
It does make for amusing easter eggs. In the "Terminator" movie, the T-800 Terminator code that scrolls by is famously 6502 assembly lanaguge from the Apple ][.

3

Presumably the 6502 code was upgraded for the good Terminator in T2 (the best Terminator).

4

MY first big personal computer project was a communications front-end-processor for DataGeneral mini computers running Interactive COBOL. The Apple II and IIE programs were all 6502 assembly and simulated a smart DG terminal to the mini and talked like a main-frame to ATMs, ATM networks, bank teller terminals. Both async and IBM Bisync. When the company went TU, I left, but there were 14 systems installed in 12 financial institutions around the country.
Sure learned to know the 6502!

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