| Before childhood amateur radio projects, before college freshman radio work, before sound engineering in San Francisco, at the Vulcan Gas Company, and the Armadillo World Headquarters, my mother taught me to repair lamp wiring when I was very young. I began building electronics projects with a crystal radio kit when I was 6 years old. |  |
A Mastodon thread initiated by Erik Uden today unleashed discussion of two seemingly separate controversies: the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian crisis and the massive proliferation of Large Language Models (LLM) aka Machine Learning aka Artificial Intelligence.
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It seems I am easily distracted. One thing leads to another. Inquiries spur new thoughts. Anomalies suggest investigation. Surprises remind of well-worn adages, e.g., newer isn’t always better, particularly regarding software. But, I keep on keeping on.
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I seem to be adding projects to my todo list faster then I’m finishing them. I can blame two of the recent additions on Anthony Bonkoski‘s writings:
The former made me start (re-)learning x86 assembly language enough to understand the compiler’s 512 bytes. The latter bemoans the lack of mathematics content in current computer science curricula and spurred me to think back to my own formal studies.
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May you stay, Forever Young – Bob Dylan (1973)
Friday morning, an Austin impresario, typically loquacious, needed few words, mostly inflection and tone, to rouse me to realize I was ignorant of the importance of Stan Alexander. In particular, I had recorded Stan July 10, 1970 and neglected to make that recording available, but I have now.
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