Show Idle (>14 d.) Chans
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vex: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-05-13#1102393 probably the coolest thing I ever saw was a meteorite that propagated ball lightning. very unusual
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-05-13 15:21:45 asciilifeform: watched folx drop jaw when realized in jr physics that electrons hardly 'move' at all in the sense given in primary school
vex: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-05-13#1102420 from memory, he may have been on a boat with that guy from wayne's world when some starlet fell off.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-05-13 19:07:06 phf: mats: he's an american actor, popular in the 80s and 90s, who started his career as a broadway dancer, here's him performing a routine in one of his earliest movies, pennies from heaven https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fElXbJjNJQI
vex: in which vex goes on a quest to meet his et princess
verisimilitude: So instead of ``E.T. phone home'' it's ``E.T. bone vex?
vex: the fairytales of tommorrow
asciilifeform: $ticker btc usd
busybot: Current BTC price in USD: $29548.54
asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-05-16#1102587 << asciilifeform had not previously encountered the linked piece; somewhat astonished that alan kay defined the vm not only w/out e.g. mouse, but even storage not mentioned (or is it orthogonally persistent a la 'm' ?)
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-05-16 00:37:04 scoopbot: New article on A Syndication of Verisimilitudes: A Review of ``The Cuneiform Tablets of 2015'' by Long Tien Nguyen and Alan Kay
asciilifeform: verisimilitude: did he ever post a runnable src? or only the vapour ? ( tried, not found any )
asciilifeform not even touching the lul where lifelong smalltalk advocate decided to 'bequeath to archaeologists'... the 'c machine', complete with buf overflows etc
asciilifeform: funny how the 'long now'(tm)(r) folx, fixated on e.g. 'how to bury radwaste so future sad stone age types won't dig it up' instead of burying cmachine with it, obsessed with preserving
verisimilitude: The goal, asciilifeform, is to host a Smalltalk image, and so orthogonal persistence may be the idea there.
asciilifeform: radwaste will decay after mere 1e5y; cmachine will continue enstupidating and killing
asciilifeform: verisimilitude: is left a mystery for the reader, no src afaik anywhere, not of the vm, not of the smalltalk etc
verisimilitude: I like that we agree on the taken approach being nonsensical.
verisimilitude: The idea is neat, but I trivially improved it with but a little thought.
asciilifeform: apropos incidentally, re the faux-'simplicity' of the offered machine.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-05-14 11:13:17 asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-05-14#1102450 << indeed interesting. author's 'anti-minimalist' arguments are reminiscent of naggum's imho
asciilifeform: ( or recall the very similar lulz of the 'urbit' people )
verisimilitude: I considered mentioning Urbit, yes.
asciilifeform: the 'simplicity', where does it go once someone actually tries to write programs for $machine.
asciilifeform: somehow one 'isn't supposed to ask'
verisimilitude: I may add a small paragraph mentioning Urbit later still.
verisimilitude: This is his solution to ``How may I write high-level programs?'' and I'll reflect on how it is odd for a man who usually has such good ideas about computing to believe such a shallow low-level be required.
asciilifeform: 'simplicity' where one has merely pushed the complexity to the user, is reminiscent of the 20th c approach to factory effluent, where 'dump it in the river, let someone else deal with it'
asciilifeform: is how e.g. unix 'simplicity' went
verisimilitude: No, UNIX is when they thought ``This effluent tastes great; let's share it!'' and were sad they couldn't sell it.
asciilifeform: 'the turing tarpit, where everything is possible, but nothing of interest is easy'(tm)(r)
verisimilitude: They choke to death while eating the tar long before it would entrap them.
verisimilitude: I like my approach to this idea: Storing large amounts of passive data which could be viewed easily, and telling some archaeologist in clear language how to bring them to life with just a little code.
asciilifeform: 'help archaeologists' types imho massively missing the point. what little was of any worth in computing already lost in ocean of liquishit, and only mere ~30y after the fact.
verisimilitude: I can't imagine the Smalltalk bytecode be particularly complex; he could've used that directly here.
verisimilitude: Say, asciilifeform, I think I'll later augment my review. I just noticed something else: He didn't use Brainfuck as the language; it's even easier to describe; I wonder why.
asciilifeform: verisimilitude: cmachine victims invariably fail to grasp why brainfuck funny (i.e. takes their disease to its logical conclusion)
asciilifeform: alan kay in old age apparently brainrotted into the entirely typical condition of such
verisimilitude: Brainfuck does have practical mathematical uses, but it's generally useless, yes.
verisimilitude: I'll mention, asciilifeform, I have a problem with ``short-circuiting'' when I look at such things.
asciilifeform: verisimilitude: 'use' is obv. for folx to show off 'cleverness'. 'puzzle language'. what not errybody understands is that c/unix in fact optimized for similar 'use'.
asciilifeform: verisimilitude: hm?
verisimilitude: I looked at Chifir and noticed it was ``von Neumann'' and incredibly wasteful, and mostly stopped thinking about it after hitting those two.
verisimilitude: I tend to ``short-circuit'' like this when looking at something incredibly flawed.
asciilifeform: how is this 'problem' ?
verisimilitude: Thus, I can be awfully surprised in a discussion such as this when someone mentions yet other issues. It's a strange feeling.
verisimilitude: Still, this is some of the value in having discussions with fellow humans.
asciilifeform had alan kay filed under 'surrendered, like sussman'. apparently not mistakenly.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-05-10 21:23:36 asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-05-10#1101065 << not since abolition of 'sicp' at any rate
asciilifeform recently discovered that sussman has been reduced to teaching at asciilifeform's local shithole, 15min walk from desk. contemplated knocking on his door, asking 'hey how's it to be a quisling', but can't be arsed..
verisimilitude: Do it and write about it.
asciilifeform in pile of over9000 'to do' lol
verisimilitude: Fine. Go visit him and mention the really cool guy who owns the verisimilitudes.net domain.
asciilifeform: ^ subj in fact answrd in comments, unusually
asciilifeform: incidentally, 'chifir' rather accidentally appropriate title. 50/50 tea leaf / water, traditional drink in ru prison; invigorating for hr or 2, but aficionados eventually suffer from tooth rot and heart troubles...
verisimilitude: How nice it is to now know that.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-05-16 13:50:34 asciilifeform: recently discovered that sussman has been reduced to teaching at asciilifeform's local shithole, 15min walk from desk. contemplated knocking on his door, asking 'hey how's it to be a quisling', but can't be arsed..
asciilifeform: so strike that.
asciilifeform: 'correct' sussman is g.j., this one alan.
asciilifeform wonders whether related
asciilifeform looks at the bio -- uninteresting
phf: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-05-16#1102602 << where'd you get that from? the paper, though sourceless, says that the "chifir" runtime was implemented in smalltalk, and used to run a smalltalk (though they also did a c and javascript, presumably as a poc, "in afternoon")
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-05-16 12:33:22 asciilifeform: not even touching the lul where lifelong smalltalk advocate decided to 'bequeath to archaeologists'... the 'c machine', complete with buf overflows etc
asciilifeform: phf: from the instr set given there
asciilifeform anticipated 'but it aint a cmachine, after all he says he ran a smalltalk'
asciilifeform: let's paste:
asciilifeform: Opcode Semantics
asciilifeform: 1 PC ← M[A]
asciilifeform: 2 If M[B] = 0, then PC ← M[A]
asciilifeform: 3 M[A] ← PC
asciilifeform: 4 M[A] ← M[B]
asciilifeform: 5 M[A] ← M[M[B]]
asciilifeform: 6 M[M[B]] ← M[A]
asciilifeform: 7 M[A] ← M[B] + M[C]
asciilifeform: 8 M[A] ← M[B] - M[C]
asciilifeform: 9 M[A] ← M[B] × M[C]
asciilifeform: 10 M[A] ← M[B] ÷ M[C]
asciilifeform: 11 M[A] ← M[B] modulo M[C]
asciilifeform: 12 If M[B] <M[C], then M[A] ← 1, else M[A] ← 0
asciilifeform: 13 M[A] ← NOT(M[B] AND M[C])
asciilifeform: 14 Refresh the screen
asciilifeform: 15 Get one character from the keyboard and store it in M[A]
asciilifeform: it's a plain old 'cmachine'. (vs e.g.)
asciilifeform: but yes, naturally can run a smalltalk (or anyffin else) on it, is effectively the usual 'school mips'. but -- cmachine.
asciilifeform: ( imho even from 'mechanical simplicity of cpu uber alles' pov, questionable -- why not 'oisc' ? )
asciilifeform: ( from ^ pov inclusion of #9' and #11 extravagant -- '80s iron made do with 'egyptians' virtually without exception )
asciilifeform: * #9, #10, #11
asciilifeform: ( again from 'simple to build from chewing gum' pov , oughta be shl, shr, binary or. )
verisimilitude: Something else I forgot to mention is how it closely resembles my Meta-CHIP-8 monstrosity. In any case, it's fairly uninteresting. He could've defined a system for describing objects and messages at the lowest level, instead.
asciilifeform: verisimilitude: asciilifeform's understanding is that he was trying to define 'simplest useful cpu' on which could run a thing like his. imho a not-useless thing to do. evidently was going from 'simplest to implement on commonplace pc' pov.
asciilifeform: hence assumed iron multiplier, divider, etc
asciilifeform: sorta like if you took mips and jettisoned the non-orthogonal crapolade.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-02-01 21:35:09 asciilifeform: fond of mips , w/ exception of the liquishit instrs w/ unaligned byte and 'halfword' access; fuck unaligned loads.
asciilifeform: demanding iron ÷ / × make the thing ~impossible to fit in e.g. ice40 tho. (not even speaking of 'make from 74xxx in junkyard').
asciilifeform: ( not even speaking here of 'why not a lisp cpu' etc )
asciilifeform: tho fwiw e.g. 'scheme83' asciilifeform suspects would readily fit in ice40 or similar tight space.
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