andrehacker

Sorry man, there never was a second “Matrix” nor a third.

Compare this with Google trends for grokKED (to compare with the hacker news trend):

Google trend for grokKED: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=g...

>> Or Google Maps after having used MapQuest for a few years. Google invested their resources correctly in building a product that was head and shoulders above the competition.

Except that they didn't: they bought a company that had been building a product that was head and shoulders above the competition (Where 2 Technologies), then they also bought Keyhole which became Google Earth.

Incidentally they also bought, not built, Youtube .. and Android.

So, yes, they had a good nose for "experiences that will make a customer say "Wow, I need to have that.""

They arguably did do a good job investing their resources but it was mostly in buying, not building.

.. and they are good at marketing :)

Related, from 1959, many years before CARDIAC:

PAPAC-00 A 2-register, 1 bit, Fixed Instruction Binary Digital Computer

https://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2010/11/a...

FYI, the link to the Al Williams article on DrDobb's website from the Instructables page seems dead but.. Wayback machine to the rescue:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180306072013/https://www.drdob...

That article has a link to an Excel implementation which allows you to "perform the operations" yourself without having to cut and assemble the computer.

Internet in 1997. That is when the web was small enough that you did not need Google, you just used a 1200 page "internet yellow pages" book [1]

Around that time the book form became untennable so they started switching to CDROM versions [2]

[1] https://archive.org/details/luckmansworldwid0000unse_1997ed/... [2] https://archive.org/details/new-riders-www-yellow-pages-1997

"The languages are in much flux" you meant python and not c/c++ because these aren't in flux

No I meant C++.

2011 14882:2011[44] C++11

2014 14882:2014[45] C++14

2017 14882:2017[46] C++17

2020 14882:2020[47] C++20

2024 14882:2024[17] C++23

That is 4 major language changes in 10 years.

As a S/W manager in an enterprise context having to coordinate upgrades of multi-million LOC codebases for mandated security compliance, C++ is not the silver bullet in handling the version problem that exists in every eco system.

As said, the compilers/linkers allow you to run in compatibility mode so as long as you don't care about the new features (and the company you work for doesn't) then, yes, C/C++ is easier for managing legacy code.

Myeah, C and C++ have the advantage that the compilers support compile for old versions of the language. The languages are in much flux partly because of security problems, partly because features are added from other languages. That means that linking to external libraries using the older language version will fail unless you keep the old version around simply because the maintainer of the external library DID upgrade.

Python is not popular in ML because it is a great language but because of the ecosystem: numpy, pandas, pytorch and everything built on those allows you to do the higher level ML coding without having to reinvent efficient matrix operations for a given hardware infrastructure.

It is regarded to be "the best" book on the topic by many. I found just like what Giles Thomas wrote that the book focuses on the details and how to write the lower level code without providing the big picture.

I am personally not very interested in that as these details are likely to change rather quickly while the principles of LLMs and transformers will probably remain relevant for many years.

I have been looking for, but failed, to find a good resource that approaches it the way 3blue1brown [1] explains it but then go deeper from there.

The blog series from Giles seem to take the book and add the background to the details.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wjZofJX0v4M

This looks very interesting. The easiest way to navigate to the start of this series of articles seems to be https://www.gilesthomas.com/til-deep-dives/page/2

Now if I only could find some time...

Yes, I ended up exactly there... 20 years later.

Well, the credentials defintely help to GET the first job. As a cog in the machine though you are most often valued for skills more than for credentials, at least in the U.S.

When I was young and easily swayed, I took life advice from a well-known Dutch comedian (Youp van 't Hek) who loved to mock tourists taking those cringe “holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa” photos. The message was clear: tourist photos were tacky, and besides, you could always find a better photo in the gift shop anyway.

So for years, I smugly avoided taking photos—too cool for clichés. It only hit me much later that I wasn’t missing out on better shots of monuments… I was missing pictures of the people I was with. Family and friends looking younger, sometimes happier, and—how shall I put it—sometimes still alive.

Not sure why this was downvoted, the example actually works.

A lot of my interactions with LLMs are like that and it is impressive how it doesn't care about typos, missed words and context. For regular expressions, language specific idioms, Unix command line gymnastics ("was it -R or -r for this command") merely grunting at the LLM provides not only the exact answer but also context most of the time.

Googling for 4 or 5 different versions of your question and eventually having to wade through 3,000 lines of a web version of a man page is just not my definition of a good time anymore.

He definitely left a great legacy.

I still think the Fly pentop and Fly Fusion computers were amazing toys. The later Livescribe models (after the tech leader behind those products started his own company) were must-haves for me.

Both the toys and the Livescribes lost purpose when the snart phones became ubiquitous as not a lot of handwriting was being practiced by kids and professionals.

I still fire up the Fly Fusion occasionally. Too bad they only work if you were able to connect them to the (now long gone) website so, yes, you can still find “new” ones on ebay but unless they were set up before they are only good for writing, no need to charge.

Maybe change the headline now ? As-is the headline is click-baity. (spoiler alert: the contract has been extended)

Well, yes and no. For many people in our profession, anything related to computers is thought to have started in the late 70s when computers became things that worked outside of elaborate data centers. It is somewhat amusing that the collective memory now is that the mouse and GUI were invented by Xerox, virtualization is thought to be a thing from the late 90s, and touch screens are from the 2000s, even though all that technology was around since the 60s. We must have driven the old-timers nuts with all the widespread mainstream bragging about our “inventions”.

I've always been fascinated by the history and technology of microcomputers. It's similar to how enthusiasts feel about classic muscle cars. With microcomputers, you can understand every aspect of the technology, from the transistors and gates on the silicon to the components on the board, and all the way up to computer languages and the user interface. It feels like I could work on any part of it with just a bit of time. My daily driver is an M4, and I find any new trend in computing worth exploring. However, my retro computers always keep me company.

Really enjoyed this writeup. I'd come across Don Tarbell’s name before, but didn’t realize how influential he was in the pre-Altair era—and even in setting the stage for the Apple I. Fascinating stuff.

I also wasn’t aware of this site—some really well-researched essays on early computing. Great work, and thanks for putting this together!

Fascinating read as always Ken. It seems that the concept of a “Chorded Keyboard” from Douglas then spawned several relatively successful successors later on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorded_keyboard

Growing up in the Netherlands in the 80s it was hard to not be aware of the “Velotype”: it had more keys and supposedly made it easier to learn the “chords”.

Your reference to the book Nerds 2.0.1 is great, the book is a companion to the excelent PBS 3-part series from 1998

https://archive.org/details/movies?tab=collection&query=Nerd...

>> Calculators do not accept ambiguous instructions and they work 100% of the time.

That is stated with a lot of confidence :)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43066953 https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/resources/example... https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/questions/27702/what...

Sophie Wilson (the designer of the original ARM instruction set) said this when asked which CPU architecture she admired:

Sophie Wilson, chief architect of ARM and more recently of the Broadcom FirePath October, 2001

Primarily the 6502. I learned about pipelines from it (by comparison with the 6800) and its designers were clear believers in the KISS principle. Plus the syntax of its assembler and general accessibility of it from the machine code perspective. I can still write in hex for it - things like A9 (LDA #) are tattoed on the inside of my skull. The assembly language syntax (but obviously not the mnemonics or the way you write code) and general feel of things are inspirations for ARM's assembly language and also for FirePath's. I'd hesitate to say that the actual design of the 6502 inspired anything in particular - both ARM and FirePath come from that mysterious ideas pool which we can't really define (its hard to believe that ARM was designed just from using the 6502, 16032 and reading the original Berkeley RISC I paper - ARM seems to have not much in common with any of them!). And clearly the 6502's follow-up, the 65816, wasn't "clean" any more, so whichever of Mensch and Moore contributed what to the 6502, Mensch by himself was a bit at sea.

Biggest object lesson was, however, National Semiconductor's 32016 (aka 16032): this showed how to completely make a mess of things. The 32016 first exposed the value of memory bandwidth to Steve Furber and I, showed how making things over-complex led to exceedingly long implementation times with loads of bugs in the implementation, and showed that however hard you tried to approach what compiler writers claimed they wanted, you couldn't satisfy them (no, I never did use a VAX). And an 8MHz 32016 was completely trounced in performance terms by a 4MHz 6502...

https://people.computing.clemson.edu/~mark/admired_designs.h...

details of the thinking process of evolving from 6502 to ARM in this interview.

https://youtu.be/QqxThgLTLyk

And, yes, striking similarity is not the best way to say it.

O man, good times. I remember soldering RAM chips "piggyback" style, then upgrading to 64K of RAM, and adding 8 special-purpose ROMs (from utilities to a spreadsheet program). I even installed a color video board— all of this inside the Acorn Atom itself (which was a keyboard-style computer, similar to the C64).

The Atom also brought together a community of hardware and software enthusiasts through Atom Computer Clubs. These clubs were doing amazing things, including the development of Z80 co-processors and even running CP/M. While Acorn moved on from the Atom to the BBC Microcomputer, the clubs kept the Atom alive well beyond its prime.

It’s fascinating to look back and realize that the same team behind the Atom went on to create the ARM processor, which, interestingly, shares a striking similarity in its instruction set with the 6502.

Hm, bad news for Oregon. From this article: https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2024/12/intel-sput...

Oregon exports more than $30 billion worth of electronics annually, most of which are semiconductors manufactured in Intel’s Hillsboro factories.

----------

The company employs more people than any other business in the state. ----------

The state’s chip industry pays an average yearly wage of more than $150,000, according to government data, well over double the state average. Hefty pay from Intel is an especially big deal in Oregon, which relies on personal income taxes for the bulk of state revenue.

---------- ...Intel might consider selling its business off in pieces.

That could be calamitous in Oregon, turning Intel’s huge local campuses into satellite operations of other companies that don’t need the full range of corporate and technological functions that have been the foundation of Intel’s Hillsboro sites for decades.

“The people who work at Intel have to be really panicked,” Hutcheson said.

Intel’s research factories in Hillsboro support high-volume production sites in Arizona, Ireland, Israel and -- soon -- in Ohio. If that manufacturing network were someday to break up, it’s not clear what role would be left for the company’s top engineers and scientists in Oregon.

Oops, yup, thanks, sorry title updated. I can't even use the ESL defense after 25 years.

Title refers to "Droste Effect" see wikipedia.

>> The great arc distance from LA to Sydney is just over 12km.

12,000km ?

Intel is one of the largest employers in the state of Oregon. In a state where most tax revenue is based on individual income tax, the layoffs hit directly but any plans of splitting or selling off parts of the company may impact the large "feeder" network of companies.

Nice! No Sankey though ?

To celebrate archive.org’s reopening here a great piece of computer history: “Triumph of the Nerds” from 1996.

The series is 3 episodes with interviews with the great ones of the personal computer revolution: amongst others the maker of the Altair, Steve and Steve from Apple where Steve Jobs claims he invented everything (he doesn’t, let it go) and a great, detailed, coverage of how Microsoft won the IBM contract and Gary Kildall didn’t.

Also, it shows Bill Gates claiming he invented the GUI (he did…. say that) and then the Parc Alto story is told followed by the story of the ultimate demise of Apple Computer after Microsoft introduced Windows.

For those who don’t want to dedicate 3 hours of their life to this but are curious: here a transcript: https://www.pbs.org/nerds/transcript.html

Practical note, “download all” didn’t work for me but the individual parts played in the browser.