Yeah, 8051 wins, it was and still is in everything (sdcards, sim cards, cables, ports...). I may have some trauma from spending too much time with Keil's 8051 C compiler that made me forget it.
But I still think 68k was king of that era for discrete CPU's that could go anywhere, and run a high level OS/complex software, before the MCU and then SoC era came and stole m68k's crown.
Sure, PPC took the m68k's role of discrete CPU in automotive, aerospace, networking and consoles for a while, but I don't think it is the king.
Back to TFA, I think the m68k got a bit more than just "commercial traction"! Which is why it will hopefully stay in the kernel for a long time.
> Overall, it got lots of traction commercially; it ....
Before ARM the m68k was possibly the most deployed processor architecture in history. In the late 1990s it was in printers, cars, personal digital assistants, erc, as well as all the home computers, arcades and unix workstations it found it's way into in the 1980s and early 1990s.
It's sucessor, the Coldfire, could have taken ARMs place...
Probably this is the reason it's still in the Linux source tree!
TBH - I weigh it higher as it's from a University in Saitama, a place I have a strong connection to and don't see here often. An irrational reason to ignore the AI smell, but why not.
I would challenge the asserion that there was no effort in writing it. Basic information theory sugests the bits in content needs to come from somewhere. The more the bits diverge from what is in the training corpus, the more effort the human author needs to apply. Unless people also think there is a special LLM bit that differs from human bits of information. It also suggests a lack of appreciation for the effort in delegating any creative work, to humans or agents, and still getting what you asked for.
Regardless of agentic provenance, i liked the chance to read something from Saitama university here. Saitama's a nice place.
Firstly, it clearly states it was written collaboratively. The usual division of labour splits the task into ideas and words, human the former, agent the latter. Is this a problem? I was interested in understanding the author’s ideas; consuming the words is an unfortunate chore.
Secondly, this was published in three languages. Perhaps you missed the 日本語 and 中文, or dismissed them as agent noise? To reinforce the human/agent demarcation: without agentic AI, it would probably be quite the chore to post all three languages. The English is not written the way a non-native speaker would write it. I assume the author conversed with the agent in their native language to describe the content and conveniently got three sets of generated words expressing their ideas.
I really struggle to understand the conflation of communication-channel coding (words) and authorship.
If we taught systems thinking in any educational setting, and it took hold for a significant portion of the population, we would have already transcended into immortal thinking energy beings and age verification debates would be irrelevant....
The convention for what a volt and ohm is has reached a steady state consensus, so the political debate there is minimal, and multimeters of the world can stand united.
OTOH, your laser distance meter may need you to set it in metric or imperial.
I used voltage as an analogy as it represents potential energy, which is relative. Political stance is a potential energy; action (political or otherwise) is, of course, an actual flow of energy. Resistance (via my analogy) is a potential difference across a load, and can be measured as how much energy is needed versus the action you get (R = V/I); via your analogy, it may be how strong a political action you get for a given delta in political stance.
So far there is no moral dimension to any of this. I think that is correct - the morality of a political stance depends on the member of the polity and the outcome that stance will have for them (which breaks down into perceived and actual outcomes). A functioning political system (the thing that governs political stance and political action) will ensure the balance of actual outcomes benefits the whole of the polity.
The delta between Resistance and Domestic Terror is then a question of whether the actors are party to the political system. (Back to the circuit analogy: domestic terror is the massive bulk capacitor charging off the energy in the circuit but with no defined discharge path in the system - until it hits a charge limit, short-circuits, and discharges.)
This thing told me Gemini is closest to Anthony Albanese, the current Australian Prime Minister. Is this a geolocation thing? I could not imagine Albanese, or any modern Australian politician, having any substantial political standing - these are vapid, superficial, opportunistic creatures who simply occupy whatever political ground will get them their next payday. Perhaps the political apparatus they represent has a documented political standing, in terms of policy and actions, that could be characterized and plotted. But using an Australian politician like Albanese as a reference point discredits this tool, IMO.
The return volley is worse! My attempt at explaining the concept of a Bible in terms relative to a "hacker world view" is making me bleed many downvotes ;-)
The Bible as a RAG is very interesting for me even as a non religious person - A document that has survived and guided millennia of civilization should be accessible as possible. But also seeing how concepts of the modern world and different ancient worlds map to the Bible via a RAG is fascinating.
yes, this is quite fun - very distant in time and geography, but converging in semantic space.
天照大 (Amaterasu)
> He brought me into the inner court of the LORD’s house; and I saw at the door of the LORD’s temple, between the porch and the altar, there were about twenty-five men with their backs toward the LORD’s temple and their faces toward the east. They were worshiping the sun toward the east.
神武天皇 (Emperor Jimmu)
> As he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons struck him with the sword; and they escaped into the land of Ararat. Esar Haddon his son reigned in his place.
> It's rational for people push back against projects that create problems for them, with no compensating upside.
This in itself is a shallow argument. While it is rational in isolation for a given static mindset, it's not rational for anyone who looks at society, and the economy as a larger dynamic system that they have. multiple points of access to. I assume that is basis for the argument John is making. I've read his biography and ofcourse seen his work, so I'm pretty sure this is not a guy who has ever had a static relationship with the world!
Indeed, and with the inguinuity and enterprise of the Swedes they may be able to separate the concerns of an assumed problem space and an assumed solution space.
For now they seem to be dealing with observed problems, and applying actionable solutions. If they keep that up they may be able to resolve all manner of economic issues.
That the methodology is established and is correct for the project and business is what a manager should be doing - at best an industry established process should make that easier, but it can't remove all the work.
Ensuring the methodology survives contact with the "meatspace" is what a leader should be doing - and even if the process is perfect for the project and business this can still be a lot of work.
Yes, this is the thing - an agent is not a counter party. But it role plays one really well.
You would need the agent to be a processing step owned by someone responsible. But the intelligent part of an agent is what makes it viable as something more than a processing step. What to do with an intelligence that can't take responsibility? Not answering this question leads to cognitive debt.
Smaller teams have more agency to move and usually team members with broader responsibility and understanding of the systems. Also possibly closer to stakeholders, so are already involved in specification creation and know where automation can add value. Add an AI agent and they can pick and choose where they can be most effective at a system level.
Bigger teams have clear boundaries that stop agency - blockers due to cross team dependencies, potentially no idea what stakeholders want, just piecemeal incremental change of a bigger system specified by someone else. If all they can do is automate that limited scope it's really just like faster typing.
Unfortunately I think Cognitive Debt is the cry of the software craftsperson who thought they were an Engineer. Upon working with the agent subcontractor, the agent factory, the agent part vendor, they approached it as a craft; they found themselves wanting to walk through the offices of the subcontractor reviewing screens, inspect pieces at the factory, and get the internal design for the parts they ordered. It's natural to get overwhelmed: this is why Engineers have contracts, specifications, design drawings, datasheets, and characterization data, handed over at clearly defined boundaries of abstraction, accepting the other side may be a black box.
Of course, we have had compilers and tooling, but those are the pencil and drafting board of the draftsperson. An ecosystem of packages, dependencies and APIs has evolved, but those are often just spells the software magician invokes after reading the spellbook^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H stackoverflow^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H API documentation.
We are going to need to build a new set of boundaries and abstractions with new handover protocols to manage this mess.
But I still think 68k was king of that era for discrete CPU's that could go anywhere, and run a high level OS/complex software, before the MCU and then SoC era came and stole m68k's crown.
Sure, PPC took the m68k's role of discrete CPU in automotive, aerospace, networking and consoles for a while, but I don't think it is the king.
Back to TFA, I think the m68k got a bit more than just "commercial traction"! Which is why it will hopefully stay in the kernel for a long time.