Philip Winston

Every atom of every item for sale at your local Costco came from stars, and will be disgorged back into space after the sun engulfs the Earth. Like smashing apart a giant Lego build.

The Oral History of 'Guitar Hero' How to accidentally change the world.

I'm assuming they used this very long 2021 article by Blake Hester as a primary source: www.vice.com/en/article/t...

YouTube video by The Verge Does anyone play Guitar Hero anymore? | Version History

The Verge just did a comprehensive podcast on the origin, rise, and fall of Guitar Hero for their Version History series. I was the lead programmer on that original game! www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TGE...

What's the Software Engineer equivalent of "Dress for the job you want, not the job you have"?

PCs, the internet, smartphones, cloud computing, satellites, NONE of it budged the growth rate, so neither will AI. But it will keep the same exponential growth going, which is actually amazing.

Everyone points to exponential curves as "proof" we're entering a crazy new era. But we're deeply in that era already; we've been experiencing exponential growth for hundreds of years.

Exponentially improving technology is REQUIRED to sustain exponential growth, but the magnificence of new technology does not increase the growth rate; it merely maintains it.

To see this: we had roughly the same rate of growth when the 30-ton ENIAC was the best computer in the world, as now, when a 6-oz iPhone is millions of times faster and 160,000x lighter. Same growth rate!

For this reason, AI isn't going to usher in an era of increased growth; it's simply going to allow the current rate of exponential growth to continue. Which, in fact, is a tremendous feat, requiring a never-ending parade of fantastic new technologies.

No specific invention -- electricity, aviation, automobiles, satellites, cloud computing -- gives us our 2-3% growth rate. Instead, it's the innovation treadmill itself: the constant discovery of new technologies. That's what enables the growth.

People are chasing "feed pop" by misusing HDR to make their entire video super bright. I've noticed this recently; it's very jarring. Also, it makes all the other videos look dingy.

You've never met 99.999% of the people on Earth, much less gotten to know them. You've never visited 99.9% of places, much less lived there. So while it's tempting to conclude "the world is falling apart," you really aren't in a position to judge that.

Consciousness Detectors What’s on your mind today? Let’s talk about three brain-like characteristics of artificial neural networks. First, there’s the fact that it’s a network of connections with extreme fan-out; in the brai...

"How could we tell if an artificial neural network is genuinely 'shocked' or just pretending to be shocked?" metastable.org/chats/consci...

It’s cool when something that was previously not possible flips to possible. But that flip quickly recedes as everyone sets their sights on the next impossible thing.

It's funny when you get a GitHub notification from an issue you filed three jobs ago, in a project you haven't used since then. Career residue you're leaving around the internet.

The most pressing issue for ASI to help us solve is how to govern large groups of people. If we have the cure for cancer and fusion energy, but increasing violence, oppression, injustice, and strife, that's no future.

Will they use AI for dementia patients? A smart speaker next to your bed. Call out a configurable name and it speaks back to you, anytime of day or night, with infinite patience. As long as the wfifi is working.

YouTube video by Boston Dynamics What's in a humanoid hand? | Boston Dynamics

BD's new video explains why they are using a three-fingered gripper-like hand instead of a humanoid one. Are they being smart, or just way behind? youtu.be/gS4rOqNDTBk

Genuinely sorry? Mr. Robot.

My 59th treadmill movie, One Battle After Another, I actually watched in the theater, but adding it here anyway. Fantastic flick. I'm currently working my way through Kubrick.

Has the amount of time spent flipping USB-A plugs to find the right orientation exceeded the time it would have taken to make the connector reversible when it came out in 1996?

To feel a certain way arrange the world so that you, unchanged, feel that way, or arrange you so you feel that way regardless.

WeatherStar 4000+ Web based WeatherStar 4000 simulator that reports current and forecast weather conditions plus a few extras!

You local weather in vintage weather channel style. weatherstar.netbymatt.com

It’s both hilarious and sad to watch people argue about programming. It’s like a heart surgeon, a podiatrist, and a plastic surgeon arguing about surgical techniques without realizing they’re talking about different types of surgery.

I saw something claiming old sports pictures looked epic because indoor smoking was allowed, creating cool, looking haze.

They said engineers had trouble writing the Math-heavy TLA+ but I wonder if AI assistance changes that?

Survey of Amazon’s approach to writing software that Has To Work. They moved from TLA+ to the “P” language (a Domain-Specific Language for Modeling and Verifying Asynchronous Event-Driven Systems). cacm.acm.org/practice/sys...

If we survive the Trump presidency, it’s not impossible that the country will grow back stronger than before, like nature after a forest fire. But boy, it’s hard to watch him burn it down.

Every time I spent like $90 on new cartridges, my blood pressure went up. And I felt REALLY bad for lower-income families having to pay that same amount to print a few photos or a school project. If you worked for Big Printer and kept that system alive: boo!

The first tank printer was introduced 15 years ago, but HP and others did everything they could to keep it out of the US market. They sold them only in countries that were "sensitive to the price of supplies". Bastards! Only in 2024 did tank printers finally take over.