IMO, while I really don't come to HN to find dial-a-joke, or joke-of-the-day, I think some humor is essential in modern life.
Since we're talking about Matt Keeter, you will find he has a great sense of humor if you read his website or interact with him. Some of his jokes are ROTFL funny, but subtle.
Thanks! I noticed "PAiA" electronics sold kits of these--I remember that name from back then. Did they sell parts or other kits? Looks like they are still in business.
Also noticed "Scungy Video" :) (Do NOT search for this term in your favorite search engine.)
I worked at Boeing Wichita (which is no more), and an engineer told me that the B-52 was getting heavier over time because the old wires weren't removed for avionics upgrades. Of course, they were always trying to put one over on me as a newbie (I worked on avionics S/W in Ada for the tankers).
He also said a big problem was the expense of doing a modern engine upgrade. Anyone know if they ever re-engined it? Was he joking again?
Having one of these fly over my apartment on Rock Rd. was a dish rattler--I used to see B-2s every once in a while too (fairly loud too, IIRC).
Taken further, you might argue that there might be condemnation eventually of the whole concept of pets and work animals too. I'm not sure I "condemn" these ideas, but I don't have a pet because I think animals should be wild. I make my own ethical comprimises, though, don't get me wrong.
Harry Harrison wrote a book I read many years ago called West of Eden, where the dinosaur extinction event didn't occur. An advanced species of lizard used modified lifeforms for their tech. I have it on my list to read again.
It does make you think people might be more symbiotic towards the world rather than what we have now.
I've never heard of Rick and Morty, but take my advice, don't try to shop your screenplay to VCs. They took a dim view of my "Adult Stewie" concept last year (think "Young Sheldon" backwards). Try Hollywood.
Anyway, I think a fun cartoon would be the Flintstones with ceph, for example their screen could be a smaller ceph whose chromataphores are pixels.
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Old drawing, back of a napkin (apologies to MIT AI Memo 554):
By the way, back to the original topic, a bare-bones machine like the KIM-1 also required a lot of hand assembly.
I guess everybody is gone from this post too, but I wonder if there is a fixed point corollary to Godwin's law--if you post enough off topic comments, you reach the original topic again. :)
Thanks again. Like you said it is fun to dream (ask the "Scheme Machine" guys sometime about how they would go about it now), but practically with technology like Julia's Zygote:
the efficiency of autodiff might be similar to that of an opcode anyway.
So, how did DEC do on the Alpha processor? I always heard good things about it--IIRC (I didn't) it was ~~based~~ to replace the VAX, but 64 bit. I learned PDP-11 assembler at RPI, during their college program for high school students in about 1984. We hand assembled code and really got to know the architecture.
I'm afraid my DEC assembly language study ended at the PDP-11, but it is edifying to know the VAX had such an instruction.
In some domains like numerical programming, ML, and graphics using SDF having a Calc 102 operation like a gradient op might be considered useful enough to include in a RISC instruction set, and the RISC entry on Wikipedia says this about the RISC-V architecture:
> The ISA is designed to be extensible from a barebones core sufficient for a small embedded processor to supercomputer and cloud computing use with standard and chip designer defined extensions and coprocessors.
Maybe a derivative op belongs in a math coprocessor?
I wanted a KIM-1 or a COSMAC Elf in the '70s, but I couldn't afford one as a kid. I eventually built a ZX81 kit from the proceeds of a summer job as my first computer.
The KIM-1 had a 6502, the Elf had an 1802, and the ZX81 had a Z80 processor, all 8 bit processors which were approachable for beginners.
I did have a nice half round of golf today with my wife. What a beautiful day to spend with such a wonderful person!
I'm out.