- World Report 2024: Pakistan (hrw.org)
Pakistan’s political and economic crises deepened in 2023. Following a similar playbook as its predecessors, the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif clamped down on the media, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and political opposition. The authorities used draconian counterterrorism and sedition laws to intimidate peaceful critics. The government’s term ended in August, and an interim government headed by Caretaker Prime Minister Anwar Kakar took over. Elections previously scheduled for November were delayed due to an incomplete census and constituency delimitation process.
- Reverse-engineering the Intel 8086 processor’s HALT circuits (righto.com)
The 8086 processor was introduced in 1978 and has greatly influenced modern computing through the x86 architecture. One unusual instruction in this processor is HLT, which stops the processor and puts it in a halt state. In this blog post, I explain in detail how the halt circuitry is implemented and how it interacts with the 8086’s architecture.
- Pakistan (Wikipedia)
Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the second-largest Muslim population as of 2023. Islamabad is the nation’s capital, while Karachi is its largest city and financial centre. Pakistan is the 33rd-largest country by area and the ninth-largest in Asia. Bounded by the Arabian Sea on the south, the Gulf of Oman on the southwest, and the Sir Creek on the southeast, it shares land borders with India to the east; Afghanistan to the west; Iran to the southwest; and China to the northeast. It shares a maritime border with Oman in the Gulf of Oman, and is separated from Tajikistan in the northwest by Afghanistan’s narrow Wakhan Corridor.
