#flagrant geekery

[lineara]

“People think it’s gimmicky having Legos around the house. I actually do this shit bruh. It’s fun for me, I do this shit all the time.”

- Myles Turner

[inknose]

WATCHED HUNGER GAMES AND KORRA IN ONE NIGHT

DECADENCE

[lineara]

The good news is that in 1995 we will have a good operating system and programming language; the bad news is that they will be Unix and C++.

Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

Richard P. Gabriel, Lucid, Inc

[lineara]

[lineara]

the project is meant as a case study of how code can create diverse and infinite art through basic techniques of procedural generation. 

(via Little Planet Procedural)

[lineara]

I was once working with a customer who was producing on-board software for a missile. In my analysis of the code, I pointed out that they had a number of problems with storage leaks. Imagine my surprise when the customers chief software engineer said "Of course it leaks". He went on to point out that they had calculated the amount of memory the application would leak in the total possible flight time for the missile and then doubled that number. They added this much additional memory to the hardware to “support” the leaks. Since the missile will explode when it hits it’s target or at the end of it’s flight, the ultimate in garbage collection is performed without programmer intervention. – Kent Mitchell | One possible reason that things aren’t Technical Consultant | going according to plan is ….. Rational Software Corporation | that there never *was* a plan!

[lineara]

This is "DOODLE.EXE", a simple CGA drawing program.

(via Microsoft Mouse - 1983)

[lineara]

Intel's groundbreaking 8008 microprocessor was first produced 45 years ago. This chip, Intel's first 8-bit microprocessor, is the ancestor of the x86 processor family that you may be using right now. I couldn't find good die photos of the 8008, so I opened one up and took some detailed photographs.

(via Die photos and analysis of the revolutionary 8008 microprocessor, 45 years old)

[lineara]

“WE NEVER TOLD IT DURING TRAINING, ‘This is a cat.’ IT BASICALLY INVENTED THE CONCEPT OF A CAT."

[lineara]

Code to Joy: The School for Poetic Computation Opens - NYTimes.com

This time the parents are pleased, but the students end up equally depressed. The secret society forms around learning "classical" C programming on some big iron running UNIX in the school basement. In the final scene we find them making a naive gesture of teenage bravery, standing up for a foolish action the consequences of which they cannot fully appreciate.

[lineara]

I think Jonny actually learned how to program in C language along with my brother when he was, like, 12. I remember walking from my brother's room in the morning and he was reading a book on how to program machine code. It was insane. That's the kind of school we went to. I remember that the kids in school were freaking out when they could make the computer print the word "pee" or something.

Thom Yorke - Interview Magazine

Previously.

[lineara]

(Previously)

[lineara]

Telling:

The MS Office spellchecker knows the word pixilated ("somewhat unbalanced mentally,") but not pixelated ("displayed in such a manner that individual pixels are discernible.")

[lineara]

For the real boots-on-the-ground culture of the Valley seems like it’s all about youth and only youth and accelerating obsolescence. Live fast, die young. ... It’s a fluffy religion meant to snooker young professionals into giving their employers everything they have and working their brains down to the myelin until they become too old to be relevant anymore. No, it’s worse than that. They don’t get too old to be relevant. They get too old to be cheap. Programming is a skill. Like any other skill it gets better with practice. Older programmers... if they’ve stayed in the game this long it’s because they enjoy it, and that’s when people get really great at things. To really get awesome at something, you’ve got to love it. It’s the only way. But they also usually have families. They might have a house they want to pay off. They’ve got a kid or two and they’re saving for their college fund. They’re also past the age when it’s cool to live in a shoebox. Maybe they want a yard or a nice condo in the city with more than one room. They’ve also been around the block enough to be business-savvy. All that boils down to higher salaries and negotiating ability. Look at the costs for any computer or Internet company and it becomes quickly apparent that HR is the big one. So if you want to cut costs, that’s where you want to cut. This, not “edge,” seems the most plausible reason Silicon Valley doesn’t like older talent.

Age-ism, Transhumanism, and Silicon Valley’s Cognitive Dissonance — Better Humans — Medium

When I observe Silicon Valley by its cultural and technical output, what I see is a tweaked-up greedy optimization algorithm converging hard and fast on a local maximum that involves using web sites and mobile devices to sell ads. I see a place where $3000/month will get you a “crack den” apartment and where people who want to start families leave. I see a disproportionate number of yetanothr.io mobile startups and webby things, but not a lot of work tackling the brutal soul-crushingly hard problems that stand between us and any kind of post-human anything.

[lineara]

'Has anybody heard of Angry Birds?' he asked. Murmurs followed. Not one hand went up.

After an hour and a half, Mr. Finkenthal took questions. Do all smartphones have Internet connections? Is there a way to turn the Internet off? Did he use a headset and was he concerned about radiation? Could you watch an Audrey Hepburn movie on your phone?

[lineara]

'People think we’re weird,' she quipped. 'But have you seen the fans of "Twilight?"'

I Can Has Cheezburger Blog Leads to a Web Empire