Babbage

I have a vivid memory of a new Gatso camera in a very sleepy Surrey village getting attacked twice in the space of about a fortnight in 2004 or so. Second time it looked as though someone had lauched a missile at it!

Tooze is very insightful but can’t understand his remaining on X. He made some excuse a week ago based on a thread about lost cathedrals that he wouldn’t have seen elsewhere. Seems like a failure of judgment.

By his daughter ...

www.amazon.co.uk/Charles-Whee...

TPU Mania Is GPU vs TPU the CISC vs RISC contest of the modern era?

Everyone is talking about TPUs!

BTW I used to think that the default Serif looked more 'dense' than Sans but it with some testing it seems that the reverse is true.

'Branding' from the main 'Creator Screen' then 'Typography' which leads to a drop-down to choose the font option.

Intel then Nvidia as your main competitor.

You have to admire AMD’s fighting spirit.

How Big was IBM? Big Blue was big but how does it compare to today's tech giants?

How Big was IBM? Pretty big actually!

YouTube video by Invest Like The Best Inside the Trillion-Dollar AI Buildout | Dylan Patel Interview

Inside the Trillion-Dollar AI Buildout

This is an amazing interview with Dylan Patel. Only 2 hours long but 6 hours of info by normal podcast standards.

Arm's Chief Architect on the History of the Arm Architecture Richard Grisenthwaite talks decades of Arm history

Arm's Chief Architect on the History of the Arm Architecture

YouTube video by CultRepo (formerly Honeypot) Python: The Documentary | An origin story

Python: The Documentary | An Origin Story

As a quick follow-up how did Chris Columbus make it without GPS? And how did he even tell his followers on Instagram without Starlink?

As a quick follow-up how did Chris Columbus make it without GPS? And how did he even tell his followers on Instagram without Starlink?

Posting my favourite die shot of all time!

AMD Radeon Fiji GPU, from Fritzchens Fritz

www.flickr.com/photos/13056...

On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

Charles Babbage

This:

'She cited the case of U.S. tech firm Palantir’s £330 million, seven-year contract with the NHS, which some hospital bosses say is no better than their current systems.'

Should tell them all they need to know about certain firms selling AI snake oil.

Apple In China Patrick McGee's important new book

How important has Apple's role been in China's recent development?

Patrick McGee's new book reveals that Apple's investment in China over just the last five years has been - according to the company - more than $270 billion.

Notes about how to write notes about how to write notes ...

Substack will eat itself eventually.

That's if SLOP doesn't eat it first.

Still very good. I've been getting >10k views on Notes.

Only 3 free signups though. 😂

Tell me about it!

Did you really get 11k likes though? That's amazing.

The birth, rise and eclipse of the personal computer A look back at the 'personal computer' at fifty.

Where did the Personal Computer come from? We look at the origins, rise and (not quite) downfall in my latest post.

Owned by Stellantis now though.

I'd have thought likely to lead to dreadful PR for US firms that try to pull this stunt. Maybe even campaigns to boycott.

It'll be obvious what's going on and can see some firms (eg Apple) wanting to avoid such bad publicity.

Agreed that there does seem to be quite a bit of luck involved.

Most of my posts that get traction seem to get an artificial boost onto the front page by one of the moderators and then they take off from there.

If you think you need internet speeds more than about 1Gbps, you really don't.

Netflix → 15 Mbps for 4K
8K video w/ H.265 encoding → 50 Mbps
MS Flight Sim live maps → 180 Mbps

The Soul of an Old Machine How to win a Pulitzer Prize writing about computers

Perhaps the best book written on making computers. Why is it so good?

A still from Miyazaki's "Spirited Away", with a girl sat quietly in a train carriage with the supernatural creature "No-Face" and with night falling outside.

Whatever happens with the AI faux-Ghibli art generator thing, whether they get the pants sued off them, whether it remains legal or not, aside from the ethical problems - it'll still look staggeringly, face-palmingly tacky & lame to so many folk if you're seen using it.

Why would anyone want that?

YouTube video by Salvatore Sanfilippo I grandi LLM "state of the art" sono tutt'altra cosa: una dimostrazione pratica

I just dropped a new YouTube video that shows in a very practical way why SOTA models are still far the reach of even the best small local LLMs. Enable the English subtitles if you can't (very likely) understand Italian. (see the TLDR later):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3ai...

Love the combination of the latest tech with some classic retro assembly language!