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Wednesday, January 24, 2024
Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Cray Super Computers and Smartphones.
Cray-1 (1978) versus iPhone13 (2022
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In 1978 I was a teenager with a strong interest in technology and enamored with the elegance of the Cray supercomputers. Cray Research, under the founder Seymour Cray, became something of a national champion in a race between the US, the Soviet Union and the Japanese as to who could produce the fastest supercomputer.
The Soviet Union participation in this race was always shrouded in mystery and could only be speculated. Through the seventies, as the computers became ever more powerful, the refinement of exactly what were the best measures of the performance of a supercomputer became more and more nuanced.
And they were also simply beautiful machines, evincing an aesthetic not seen till later with Jobs' Apple.
By the eighties, Cray began to slip from the race, not so much failing as being overtaken by a broader array of computers assessed across a wider array of performance. Of course the minicomputer (i.e. personal computers) muddied the waters still further.
This video is a brilliant reminder of a former star overtaken by the inexorable power of Moore's Law.
In 1973, the science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke formulated his third law.
Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
Dave Darling illustrates Clarke's Third Law by observing that a 2024 smartphone, transported back to 1978 and compared to a Cray Super Computer back then would have seemed magic.
The present is always a bubbling incipient phase change into the future. In 1978, fiction writers could imagine the capabilities of an imaginary device like a 2024 smartphone but there was no way to envisage an engineering path to that future. It would emerge in its own fashion in fits and starts. There is a simmering magic of our slow but astonishing creation of a new emergent order.
History
"Between 1908 and 1925, many of the immigrants to America decided they didn't like America so much- 57% of Italians, 40% of Poles, 64% of Hungarians, 67% of Romanians, and 55% of Russians went back to their homelands. Among the Jews, the figure was just 5%.
— Diana S. Fleischman (@sentientist) December 19, 2023
Jews stuck it out in… https://t.co/chECpPJEks
An Insight
NOAA sinks climate alarmism:
— Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) December 12, 2023
1. @NOAAClimate admits the Earth has been warmer than it is now.
2. Note the circled 'warming' at the bottom right. They want us to go communist for that.
3. Please explain how current warming is supposedly the greatest in 120,000 years. pic.twitter.com/eOmJOUr2GT
I see wonderful things
America was supposed to be Art Deco - a thread of 10 iconic Art Deco designs 🧵
— Culture Critic (@Culture_Crit) August 26, 2023
1. "Mercury" - a streamliner passenger train which operated between 1936 and 1959 pic.twitter.com/teuTY82yuB
Data Talks
"Bidenomics" - supported by Jeffries and Democrats in Congress - is pricing millions of people out of being able to afford the American Dream.
— Tommy Pigott (@TommyPigott) December 17, 2023
The average monthly new home payment has skyrocketed under Biden. https://t.co/5dkW8082Er pic.twitter.com/kbofahq0Yc
Rocky coast in the moonlight, 1830 by Johann Nepomuk Schödlberger (1779-1853)
Rocky coast in the moonlight, 1830 by Johann Nepomuk Schödlberger (1779-1853)
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Monday, January 22, 2024
History
Galileo sketched the Moon as seen through his Telescope in 1609 AD; from Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger), published in March in 1610 AD :
— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) December 18, 2023
Astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564-1642 AD) is famous for advocating the heliocentric model of the universe. Over the course of nineteen… pic.twitter.com/HBeMSGs4Ct
There was a young lady from Chichester
From Limericks: Too Gross by Isaac Asimov and John Ciardi.
There was a young lady from ChichesterWhose beauty made saints in their niches stir.One morning at matinsHer breast in rose satinsMade the bishop of Chichester’s britches stir.
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