Moving past the "no true scott's man" fallacy of the title; i feel that this article confuses the act of being a hacker with the tools that people use to hack with. Which is a common thing to do when a concept is new. For me, being a hacker means being able to work at a certain level of abstraction and, not being afraid to "open up the box" and start working at that level of abstraction. For example, being able to work with a raspberry pi loaded with linux and, then being able to start hacking at the linux kernel or libraries when needed is what makes someone a hacker.
> However, unlike most 9-year-olds, he has already worked out what he wants to do with his life: develop artificial organs.
It always worries me to see news like this. I really don't see the benefit of this type of lifestyle for a kid. Even assuming the best case scenario for him it just seems like he's being forced into adulthood too early.
This is an excellent article and I rarely see people giving this advise. At the end of the day there is no bottom in general. And it's not clear why that's the case unless you have a reasonable amount of experience in electrical engineering / manufacturering and computer design. An interpreter or a compiler is a computer. Anything lower than that is just implementation details.
This is a pretty good idea but, it's monetization strategy probably isn't inclusive enough. I find that a lot people on social media aren't trying to make friends. They're mainly just there for themselves or content. But, putting the focus on developing proper kinship seems like a step in the right direction.
I feel that the biggest problem with social media isn't a matter of liberty but one of control. Individual consumers don't have enough control over what they see. For example, if I'd like not to see anything political whatsoever on my Facebook that right is often not respected. And it should be respected. It is my account. If someone says something I don't like or don't want to be affiliated with I should take steps to remove myself from that. If they come to me after doing this it's Facebook's fault.
The theory of computation doesn't really have anything to do with math. It's based on logic, machines, automata, etc. You can use it for math but, in principal it has nothing to do with math. For example, the automata may not be calculating anything. It may be describing a process of doing something more abstract.
Solving DE in computation is an interesting point to make tho. I've seen analysis style arguments, like real analysis or calculus, in symbolic languages like lisp.
Actually, there's a really interesting set of papers very much related to this topic. Link below.
Reading through the article I got the impression that these questions were posed because they lead to more interesting questions. In fact, the last paragraph fittingly sums it up. "I pose these questions to stimulate deep thinking and further discussion."
Here's an example from the text of what she means: "In order to answer what is computable, we must consider the underlying machine (abstract or physical) that is the computer. Consider the Internet as a computer. What is a universal machine model for the Internet? Consider a molecular computer, a DNA computer, a nano-scale computer, or even a quantum computer. What problems can and cannot be solved through them?"
Sort of. Tilera got acquired EZchip Semiconductor who merged with Mellanox Technologies. However, support for the TILE architecture isn't what it used to be.
Indeed, analog circuits are well researched topic. However, I think it's important to understand that the transistor CPU is a fairly new topic. In fact, the whole of computer science is a relatively new topic.
As for research there's plenty. I linked slides from an undergraduate course because you wrote that your background leaned more towards computer science. Finding research in this topic is as easy as doing a search through IEEE.
Determining the timing on an asynchronous CPU is nearly impossible. Especially as you start to scale the cores on the die. There's a very good reason why Profs. try to steer students away from them.
From a commercial perspective, I'd imagine finding customers who want the CPU, as-is, off the shelf would be rare. But, making adjustments to the inherently fragile design is going to be expensive and time consuming. Even if the customer has deep pockets they probably won't be willing to wait 1 year for a tape out.