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  #AssemblyLanguage • Set Theory is the assembly of mathematics. • 𝜆-Calculus is the assembly of Computable Functions Theory. • JavaScript is the assembly of the Web. • PDP-11 instruction set is the assembly of the hearts and minds of a particular ilk of geeks.

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  At social gatherings, I have heard someone or another describe himself as an “amateur mathematician”. Whenever I hear that appellation, my mind instantly say, “Um, that sounds dangerous, like being an amateur neurosurgeon”.

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  Will people soon trade their firstborn for a few #LLM tokens? #LunchtimeLament

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  @dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz @vnikolov@ieji.de @rk@mastodon.well.com @ed1conf@bsd.network @mike805@noc.social @thalia@discuss.systems Well into the 1980s, my engineering college in Burma was still using the leftover DECwriter units to supplement a few new VT100 units that we did have. I suppose it was for the better: we learned to “hand write” our design, analysis, proof, and code on paper—on the backside of discarded 132-column printer paper—a good habit that has been lost to time.

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  #MaliciousProsecution by Putin’s queen https://apnews.com/article/reflecting-pool-damage-olympian-hearn-trump-21d997b5b55e6adf01862d7c5292476d

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  #F1 is boring. #RedBull is slumping. What should #Max do: stay at RB and pretend like all is well, switch to a team with better car, take a year sabbatical, or quit F1? The most sensible, and arguably the most impactful, action that Max could take is to take a year off from F1 to wait it out for RB's improvement or for better teams' seats to free up. In the meantime, Max could hoist #GT racing to prominence, with at least three orders of magnitude more exciting than the present...

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  Books on automated #ProofAssistants, like Coq, Lean, Agda, Idris, etc., fall into two groups: a vast majority aimed at working mathematicians and a handful aimed at programmers. The following is a short list of #programming-focused #books (not short tutorials) on the use of proof assistants in crafting #verified software, categorised by type theory and listed in an approximate, ascending order of sophistication: \(\textit{Coquand Calculus of Inductive Constructions}\) • Introduction to Formal...

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  I recent saw a contractor "wrote" more than 500pp proposal in response to a federal agency's RFP. The document exhibits clear signs of having been generated by AI. Guess how the agency contracting officers "read" that monstrosity: yup, AI. It appears that in modern #IT, the only remaining entity who is still "thinking" and "learning" is the #AI.🤦‍♂️

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  #CS grad students scouring for their PhD dissertation ideas may find inspirations in Tony Hoare's 2005 "Grand Challenges" paper. Grand Challenges for Computing Research, Hoare (2005) #safe #secure #verified #software https://www.cs.ryerson.ca/~aferworn/courses/CP8101/CLASSES/GrandChallengesinCS.pdf

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  Do even #MAGAt idiots listen to this imbecile anymore? https://apnews.com/article/trump-pirro-reflecting-pool-3703eaedddf580f32ff9aca33bc11851

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  The software practice was once a mathematical activity, à la Hoare, Dijkstra, Bird, et al. But it has not been so, for several decades. If the present #software practice is to mature into a bona fide #engineering practice in the future, #mathematics-based #formal methods, notations, languages, and tools—Z, B, VDM, ACL2, TLA+, Coq, Lean, Agda, Idris, ...—must be adopted. There obviously is no shortage of such tools and techniques. Clearly, many practice areas within IT, including glossy brochur...

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  Tolkien‘s linguistic inventions are startlingly creative. In ordinary story telling, invented languages rarely appear, and if they do, they are just superficial props. But each of Tolkien‘s languages is complete—dare I say, “Turing complete”—equipped with its own origin story, evolutionary history, regional dialects, cultural functions, fully formed script, pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, idioms. #Tolkien’s originality, ingenuity, thoroughness, industry, and process could serve as inspirati...

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  An #engineer’s worth can be measured in many ways: years of licensure, number of graduate degrees, number of junior staff managed, number of successful product designs, number of units manufactured per annum, number of faults per a thousand operating hours, amount of revenue generated per annum, amount of savings attained per unit, etc. But there is one very important engineering performance metric that is rarely discussed: number of successful #legal disputes (either on the plaintiff side or o...

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  Apparently, #tRUMP and his #Republicans want to make “#Canada Rake Again”. #Wildfires are a consequence of local weather conditions which, in turn, are a direct consequence of global #ClimateChange. Fight climate change, not Canada. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyq93j34lgo

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  A #fork of an existing #repo is usually a consequence of a disagreements over vision, approach, taste, or personality. That is, a “fork” is a four-letter F-word. At least amongst the famous #openSource projects does a fork ever arise out of a genuine technical need. #programming #politics

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  The best way to learn to #write well is to read voraciously, and the best way to lean to #read well is to write incessantly. The most reliable way humanity preserves and expands its knowledge is through reading and writing. Today, college kids are using #LLM to read and write for them. Their professors are using LLM to generate and grade assignments. The kids respond in kind by using LLM to do the assignments. #AI is the only party in this “efficient” exchange who is improving its reading and w...

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  #UNIX is not just an OS; it is the ultimate #IDE for #programmers. Arguably the best written introductory book on UNIX programming is "The UNIX Programming Environment", Kernighan (1983). This book covers UNIX V7, but I used it with 4.2BSD. There is another jewel of a book of a similar kind, a free one to boot, by Prof. Ballesteros (King Juan Carlos University): "Introduction to Operating Systems Abstractions Using Plan 9 from Bell Labs" (2007). Prof. Ballesteros wrote this...

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  Lewis wins #F1 #BarcelonaGP https://youtu.be/Ey8j_BlLvFM?si=t0RxDtITDndolVVH

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  Fruity #Computers: Acorn Apple Apricot Banana (Pi) BlackBerry (RIM) Cherry GRAPE (Gravity Pipe) Olivetti Orange Raspberry (Pi) Tangerine …

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  #Bernie v #Claude https://youtu.be/h3AtWdeu_G0?si=_A5iXmM0RVBaFWhS

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  In general, I favour strongly, statically typed functional #programming languages, especially ML and its descendants: OCaml, F#, Clean, Miranda, Haskell, Agda, and Idris. But the following are a few of the strongly, dynamically typed languages (both OO and FP) that I like: • OO—Smalltalk, Ruby, Python • FP—Lisp, Scheme, Pure PS—Those who are in both the Lisp camp and the ML camp of FP would enjoy Pure, a strongly, dynamically typed modern FP language.

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  https://apnews.com/article/stock-markets-trump-oil-iran-war-1901470c64a6055c80656fad64f863e5 As #oil stocks rise, #AI stocks sink. All of Modernity is still soaked in oil, an ancient kind of #energy. All of Universe is but conserved energy in various guises. All of Life is mere squabble over means of energy conversion.

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  #College students are now seeking AI-proof fields. I bet they are asking ChatGPT to generate for them a list of careers unencumbered by #AI.🤔 https://apnews.com/article/ai-anxiety-college-major-4af9a0a8caae1d302acb5aadcf0c68ba

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  #Political power is like sewage—it invariably seeks to fill the lowest depression. When Congress (The People) grew impotent, those with dictatorial impulses step forward to fill that bottommost hole.

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  AP poll shows that 30% of #Americans are #idiots. https://apnews.com/article/trump-approval-iran-economy-cost-of-living-poll-fff492898cc8ff34e11df90ec4837a79

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  #AI can give the #IT practitioner the results automatically, without requiring him to analyse the problem, the constraints, the design, the data, the code—the lot. But AI can never give the IT practitioner that elusive "insight". That, he must do, all his own.

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  Doug @dougmerritt, we were discussing the status of the #Kohonen #SOM research, last week. Here are a few recent (21st Century) publications on the topic that I like, either for their undergrad accessible styles or for their advanced research ideas. Given that this is my favourite list, it skews heavily toward DSP and DIP. But then, Kohonen did design the SOM expressly for perceptual processing of auditory and visual signals. The idea of implementing quantised SOMs on FPGAs intrigues me, at pr...

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  It is not the case that the Drafters of our #Constitution had poor vision, but that the ill conduct of our modern #politicians far exceeds all social and logical norms.

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  #Catholics who worship #tRUMP are false idolaters—heretics most vile. Indeed, this statement applies equally well to all faiths. https://apnews.com/article/trump-pope-leo-xiv-02f6b4554ea4b83af02af15987ae1f2d

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  That #Jesus-wannabe in the #WhiteHouse (Weesuck) is really getting out of hand.