[EN] Thou Shalt Get Scientists, Though Thou Be None

Thesis: Shakespeare begat several sciences and a psychological condition.

If "though this be madness, yet there is method in't" is the beginning of chaos theory (thus spoke a professor of sociology),

then "the winter of our discontent turned into glorious summer" is the beginning of climatology,

"till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane" is the beginning of ecology,

and "wherefore art thou Romeo" is the beginning of semiotics.

Finally, "rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of" is the beginning of softwareupgradophobia...

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The title of this post is perhaps a little obscure.

After the Witches tell Macbeth he would be king, one of them tells Banquo (his companion): "Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none." (get is short for beget here).

[EN] The 'Net on a Page

Picture from Facebook group At the Controls.

There was a time when a map of the whole 'Net could fit on a page.

The ARPANET in 1977; PDP-10 hosts in yellow.

[bg;EN] Старо злато *** Old Gold

Снимка: Регионален исторически музей Варна.

Picture: Varna Museum of History.

Украсена със злато керамична паница, Пето хилядолетие пр.Хр., Варненски енеолитен некропол, гроб 4.

Праисторическа култура Варна.

Най-старите златни предмети в света.

Иван Иванов, откривател и ръководител на археологическите разкопки (1970-те години).

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(енеолит = халколит = каменно-медна епоха)

***

Gold-decorated ceramic dish, Fifth Millennium B.C., Varna Eneolithic Necropolis, burial 4.

Varna prehistoric culture, Balkan Peninsula, South-East Europe.

Oldest gold artefacts in the world.

Ivan Ivanov, discoverer and lead archaeologist of the excavations (1970s).

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(Eneolithic = Chalcolithic = Copper Age)

[EN] Bill Gosper in His Habitat

Picture and text from Facebook group At the Controls.

This 1970 photo shows Bill Gosper using the MIT AI Lab's PDP-6 and DEC 340 vector display during the night to hack John Horton Conway's Game of Life. The diagonal dots streaking across the screen are gliders created by several "Gosper's Glider Guns".

[EN] HAKMEM 174 and LLM

HAKMEM ITEM 174 (Gosper, Nelson)

(1 of 4) The question:

Try posing it to your favorite LLM, perhaps like this:

This is a question about computer programming and internal computer representation of numbers: how to find a positive number whose 64-bit IEEE 754 floating-point representation has the same bits as its representation as a 64-bit machine integer?

(2 of 4) The number:

Quite easy to find it with a computer program (as opposed to proving uniqueness, which doesn't seem quite trivial, though it doesn't seem hard, either).

On little-endian x86_64, the 64-bit integer value is 4886674138783273204 (for 32 bits, 1318926965).

(With the relevant facets of the PDP-10 36-bit floating-point format mimicked by a simple throwaway program, the HAKMEM result is of course easily reproduced as well.)

NB: for the purpose of demonstrating uniqueness, 64 bits are out of the reach of brute force. I haven't calculated whether brute force would have worked on the PDP-10.

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This item is included in the HAKMEM sample in the Jargon File: <http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/HAKMEM.html>.

See also a HAKMEM facsimile e.g. at <https://w3.pppl.gov/~hammett/work/2009/AIM-239-ocr.pdf>.

(3 of 4) An LLM's answer:

Google's product, for example, apparently "understood" the problem, because its response included:

The Goal:

We want to find a positive number that, when represented in both formats, results in the same bit pattern. This means the exponent and mantissa in the floating-point representation must be such that they effectively "mirror" the integer representation.

But I couldn't make heads or tails of the approach presented after that, which did not seem to provide an adequate answer; I reproduce here just the last line:

...

Number = (2^52 - 1) * 2^63

Needless to clarify: this is the 115-bit number 41538374868278611804871933778984960 (hexadecimal 7FFFFFFFFFFFF8000000000000000) and when it is represented as a 64-bit floating-point number, its bits are 5125096375947624446, i.e. this number is most definitely not the solution.

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(I guess a full solution or analysis has not been published on the Internet; I found, for example, an incorrect claim that such a number does not exist in 32 bits.)

(4 of 4) General remark:

I am inclined to believe the claims that today's LLMs have reached the limits of their capabilities (but not the limits of their usefulness, of course).

Naturally, the billion-dollar questions are what the next breakthrough will be, when, and whether there will be another AI winter before that.

[EN] Supercomputer Hardware Support Toolbox

Picture and text verbatim from Facebook group At the Controls.

(Just think about the equivalent in software support.)

The Lawrence Livermore National lab resident supercomputer field engineer (Mr Contento) had this toolbox for when the [CDC] 7600 broke down, which was about once a day, sometimes more! Items included:

* bag of 6 metal open rectangles with alligator clip on each end.

* yellow plastic ruler

* bag of small tools: screwdriver, picks, probes, brush, file

* 2 boxes of small blue tubes with a piece of metal in the middle

* hand drill

* a bag with a lock and two metal objects

* Wire wrap wires - some blue and some white.

* a bag containing a connector with twisted pairs of wire wrap wires connected and more white and blue wire wrap wires

* two cooling pipe connectors

* a bag of metal rods, some with plastic tube attached at one end, and flat metal rectangles. A label on one rode says "Do not use" The label on another says "153-7600 PIN STRAIGHTNER"

* a bag with

smaller bag with 10 wire crimp connectors

a round box labeled 01530400

a small tube labeled "Bendix Besley H. S. Steel Drills"and various numbers

a small plastic box labeled ""Razor Blades 6" containing 4 razor blades

a small plastic box labeled "5-1-78. solder sleves, large, 15"

a small plastic box labeled "100 Pins, 113-8100"

a small plastic box labeled "9-3-81, 7, DRILL CONECTOR REPAIR, 200-6700

* a bag containing

two drill bit chucks

third drill bit chuck in a plastic bag labeled 0152-7100"

the upper part of a drill bit chuck

two boxes of drill bits. One has a label "Cle-Forge High Speed, Straight Shank Drills, Set No. 420-88, 2301-8111, Size 61 thru 80"

* a bag containing

a bag of 6 connectors labeled "201-2100, 6"

6 loose connectors

a small bag of brass shims labeled "SHIMS, 25 X 375"

a bag of brass shims labeled "152-2800, 24"

a bag labeled "Buzzer Tipis"

a bag of 4 connectors labeled "152-1700, 3"

* a bag of three test probes. One is labeled "0219-9200, CONTINUITY"

[bg;EN] Кому ръкопляскаме? *** Whom Do We Applaud?

Picture credit: Giovanni Boldini via Wikipedia

Когато дойде време за ръкопляскания на края на концерт, би трябвало да изнасят най-отпред портрет на композитора (освен ако не дирижира).

Едно 150-годишно произведение:

„Покой вечен дай им, Господи.“

<https://youtu.be/eaebqmzm0RA>

Николай Гяуров, 1967:

<https://youtu.be/4xD6H7mYNp4>

***

When the time for applause comes at the end of a concert, they should bring out to the front a portrait of the composer (if not conducting).

A 150-year-old work:

"Rest eternal give them, O Lord."

<https://youtu.be/eaebqmzm0RA>

Nikolai Ghiaurov, 1967:

<https://youtu.be/4xD6H7mYNp4>