I started going down the path of building a ripple carry adder already (which seems to work fine). Then I was going to try for a full on ALU, then some sort of ISA that sits on top of it all.
I have no idea what the end result will look like if it all comes together. Hopefully I'll find some weird primitives along the way. :D
It's very hand-wavy, but I'm kinda hoping I can somehow have a machine manually constructed out of neurons that can naturally interact with one built with looser hebbian learning rules.
"In the dormitories of the Jinjiang Group, the company hired by BYD to carry out the work, there were no mattresses on the beds, and the few toilets served hundreds of workers in extremely unhygienic conditions. The workers also had food stored without refrigeration.
The Brazilian Labor Prosecutor's Office (MTP) also accused the companies of withholding the workers' passports and keeping 60% of their wages; the remaining 40% would be paid in Chinese currency."
Speaking from past experience with the DoE (I'm happy I don't need to deal with security like this anymore), there were constant and randomized checks to make sure fiber cables (they were all fiber to make it harder to tamper with and to avoid accidental RF) were fully visible (e.g. not hidden under a desk or something) and not tampered with. Also, lots of locks and doors, both electrical and mechanical. The guy at the front desk with a big gun probably helped too.
They have multiple networks. One of them is definitely airgapped (red for RD). The medium security one is protected by annoyingly strict network ACLs (yellow for ITAR). Then there's a low security one for stuff like sharepoint (green).
By the way, I wouldn't contribute to government repos myself because from my observations no one takes other people's pull request or the repo just die.
Many of these government repos are having problems because they're stuck in an old bureaucratic process. Their official process involves a static website with a list of software that has passed a review and release process. A developer will submit a bit of software for release and some other department will publish it on the website (after approval by everyone and their brother). The developer will need to perform this process for each release.
This doesn't translate well to Github. The developer will submit their software for review and another department will post it to Github. They're using Github like the static website that they used before -- there's nothing in the process that keeps the developer tied into the project once it's released. The developer may not actually have permission to their software repos because some process forces them to only release it through another department (they're definitely complaining about this, trust me). This completely breaks pull requests and may be the reason for the lack of response.
It would help the developer if they could point to Github and say: "Look at all of those pull requests we've been ignoring! Our process is broken! We must fix it!".
If external developers feel that the project is dead, or they're being ignored, pull requests will not be made. However, if there are no pull requests, it's tough for the developer to make an argument to change policy. The circle here needs to be broken.
If you've ever worked in government, you'll understand how difficult it would be to get this process updated. It will be updated eventually, but probably not in the near future -- especially for agencies that don't have a larger group of developers.
Having said that, not all government repos ignore pull requests. I manage a few "government repos" and try my best to respond/merge within 24 hours (most of my responses are under an hour -- even on weekends). It helps that we have a ton of developers who constantly push to keep things open. Even then, it was only in the past few weeks that we finally took down our static list-of-software website.
TL;DR, please don't give up on submitting pull requests. It might even help out the developer if you complain a bit to the folks responsible for "review and release" (which will probably consist of multiple departments).
The last paper I published (IEEE for SC12) was written almost exclusively through a private Github repo. We didn't even think about using anything else -- it just worked. It helps that all of the authors were comfortable with TeX however.
Many of these organizations may be testing the response they get from creating a Github account. This project is a way they can receive feedback instead of dying in obscurity. It's a chicken and egg problem.
https://hpc-tutorials.llnl.gov/flux/