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IBM’s Selectric typewriter (introduced in 1961) fundamentally reshaped office culture by combining a radical mechanical redesign with strong industrial design, higher productivity, and a bridge toward modern word processing and computer keyboards. Core technical shift that changed daily work Traditional typewriters used a basket of individual type bars that... swung up to strike the ribbon and paper. Fast typing frequently caused bars to collide and jam. The Selectric replaced that entire system with a single interchangeable spherical “golf-ball” typing element that rotated and tilted to the correct character, then struck the page. Because the element moved instead of the carriage, there was no heavy carriage return, less vibration, fewer jams, more consistent impression quality, and noticeably higher sustainable speed. Typists could work longer with less physical strain. Documents looked cleaner and more professional. The machine also allowed rapid font changes simply by swapping the type element (different typefaces, italics, scientific symbols, foreign-language characters). This flexibility was previously cumbersome or impossible on standard machines. Aesthetic and status transformation of the office Eliot Noyes’s industrial design gave the Selectric a smooth, modern, almost sculptural form that broke from the black/gray utilitarian look of earlier office machines. It came in multiple colors (companies could even order custom finishes), and its shape was meant to be viewed from all sides—suited to the emerging open-plan office rather than machines tucked against walls or built into desks. The Selectric became a visible status object. Having one on a desk signaled modernity and organizational seriousness. Its presence in popular culture (notably Mad Men) reinforced the image of the polished mid-century office. Office equipment was no longer purely functional hardware; it could carry design prestige similar to furniture or automobiles. Impact on people and workflow Typing pools (predominantly staffed by women) became more productive and less mechanically frustrating. The machine reduced the physical and mental friction of producing clean correspondence, reports, and forms. Electric power already lowered the force needed per keystroke; the Selectric’s consistency and reliability amplified that advantage. Over time this contributed to a cultural shift: typing moved from a specialized trade toward a more general office skill. Later Selectric variants (especially the Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter / MT/ST of 1964 and subsequent correcting models) introduced early forms of stored text, automatic playback, and error correction without full retyping. These were direct precursors to dedicated word processors and, ultimately, the computer keyboard as the primary human-computer interface. Market dominance and lasting cultural footprint IBM sold more than 13 million Selectrics. For roughly a quarter-century it was the dominant electric typewriter in American (and many international) offices—so ubiquitous that for many people “typewriter” simply meant Selectric. Its mechanical principles and keyboard layout also influenced later IBM terminal and PC keyboards. By the mid-1980s personal computers and daisy-wheel/laser printers displaced it, but the Selectric had already altered expectations: offices expected clean, fast, flexible document production; equipment could be designed rather than merely engineered; and the path from mechanical typing to electronic text manipulation had been opened. The Selectric did not invent the office or the typewriter, but it removed major friction points, elevated the visual and status environment of clerical work, boosted throughput in typing-intensive departments, and served as a practical stepping-stone toward word processing and keyboard-driven computing. That combination permanently changed how offices looked, felt, and operated.show more

Brian Roemmele

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IN A 1997 KEYNOTE A DEVELOPER TOLD A ROOM FULL OF PROGRAMMERS THAT THE COMPUTER REVOLUTION HAD NOT ACTUALLY HAPPENED YET. THEN HE PLAYED A CLIP OF WINDOWS, ICONS AND LIVE EDITING RUNNING ON A MACHINE FROM 1973 AND THE ROOM WENT QUIET. 62 minutes from Alan Kay -- the man who invented the word "object-oriented" and helped build the first modern personal computer at Xerox PARC. -> The idea that lands: almost everything you call "computing" is just paper, digitized. Documents, mail, folders. We took the most powerful medium ever made and used it to imitate the office. The real machine -- the one that thinks with you, that you shape live instead of typing at -- was sketched in the 60s and 70s, then quietly abandoned. He calls modern software an Egyptian pyramid: millions of bricks stacked by brute force, no structure underneath. And now AI is quietly hauling us back toward what he wanted -- you describe intent, the machine builds the how. Not a revolution from nowhere. A return to a dream we walked away from. You thought this was the future. This is the talk that shows you it is a detour we have been on for 40 years. Save this. It reframes the whole industry ↓

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In the 1930s, Dresden was considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world. For more than two hundred years the capital of Saxony had been called the Florence on the Elbe. Its kings had imported artists from across Europe and filled the city with Baroque palaces, churches, opera houses, and wide riverfront promenades. The skyline was a crowd of domes and spires above the river. Painters had travelled there in the 18th century just to capture it, and the canvases they left behind show a city that looked less built than composed, like a single enormous work of art. By the early 1940s, Dresden had been spared the bombing that had flattened other German cities. Many of its residents believed it would stay that way. Some told themselves the city was simply too beautiful to destroy and that no one could look at it and give the order. On the night of 13 February 1945, the order came. Wave after wave of Allied bombers dropped thousands of tons of explosives and incendiaries onto the old centre. The fires merged into a firestorm, a column of heat so violent it generated its own wind and pulled people and buildings into its core. By morning, the Florence on the Elbe was gone and tens of thousands of people were dead. Eight square miles of the historic centre had been reduced to rubble and ash. What had taken three centuries to build had taken roughly fourteen hours to undo... Beauty is not permanent. It is built slowly, by many hands, across generations, and it can be taken in a single night. And yet human beings keep building it, keep rebuilding it, keep believing it is worth the risk. After the war, the people of Dresden gathered the blackened stones of their ruined cathedral and, decades later, raised it again from its own ashes. Because beauty does not stop wars, but it refuses to concede that the worst of what humans do is the whole of what humans are. Dostoevsky said beauty would save the world. He did not mean it would happen quickly. He meant it could not, ultimately, be stopped. If you'd like to sit with this a little longer, today's article is a deeper meditation on how time changes everything: And if you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription is what makes it possible:

In the 1930s, Dresden was considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world. For more than two hundred years the capital of Saxony had been called the Florence on the Elbe. Its kings had imported artists from across Europe and filled the city with Baroque palaces, churches, opera houses, and wide riverfront promenades. The skyline was a crowd of domes and spires above the river. Painters had travelled there in the 18th century just to capture it, and the canvases they left behind show a city that looked less built than composed, like a single enormous work of art. By the early 1940s, Dresden had been spared the bombing that had flattened other German cities. Many of its residents believed it would stay that way. Some told themselves the city was simply too beautiful to destroy and that no one could look at it and give the order. On the night of 13 February 1945, the order came. Wave after wave of Allied bombers dropped thousands of tons of explosives and incendiaries onto the old centre. The fires merged into a firestorm, a column of heat so violent it generated its own wind and pulled people and buildings into its core. By morning, the Florence on the Elbe was gone and tens of thousands of people were dead. Eight square miles of the historic centre had been reduced to rubble and ash. What had taken three centuries to build had taken roughly fourteen hours to undo... Beauty is not permanent. It is built slowly, by many hands, across generations, and it can be taken in a single night. And yet human beings keep building it, keep rebuilding it, keep believing it is worth the risk. After the war, the people of Dresden gathered the blackened stones of their ruined cathedral and, decades later, raised it again from its own ashes. Because beauty does not stop wars, but it refuses to concede that the worst of what humans do is the whole of what humans are. Dostoevsky said beauty would save the world. He did not mean it would happen quickly. He meant it could not, ultimately, be stopped. If you'd like to sit with this a little longer, today's article is a deeper meditation on how time changes everything: And if you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription is what makes it possible:

James Lucas

34,335 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten

On this day, 43 years ago, David Cronenberg's 'Videodrome' (1983) was released in the USA & Canada. Here is David Cronenberg explaining how he got the inspiration to make 'Videodrome' (1983): "'Videodrome' came out of two things, I suppose. The first was remembering, as a kid, watching TV late at night, and of course it was black and white television, and when all the regular stations would go off the air you could get these distant, strange stations that were probably all American. The airwaves would be quiet, so you could pick up and we had a rotating antennae, you know, so we could rotate the antennae on our house and get this stuff. But they were always very bad images, and they would fade in and out, and where they came from and what they were was very mysterious. That was many years before I was making movies, I was probably fourteen or fifteen or sixteen. Anyway, these create strange late-night channels, plus bits of Marshall McLuhan, plus I have no idea what, combined to the initial premise that someone been rented, but it had sand-blasted brick in the Toronto style and beams. And there was nothing in the room but a table, a chair and an IBM Selectric, that was it. It was quite a big room, and I was just in the middle of it and I would go there every day and write. And that’s where I wrote 'Videodrome', I can remember that, but I don’t remember any more of the details other than just the normal way that things accumulate around a central concept. receives images on his television set that are fascinating to him, and seem to have an element of danger which makes them more fascinating. I don’t even think I knew, at the time that I started writing, that I would be examining the influence of television or that I would create a character based on Marshall McLuhan [O’Blivion], none of that was really in my mind to begin with. And I can’t really remember how I proposed this to the guys at Film Plan. It was the same thing, you know, the tax money was coming in, they wanted to do another movie, Pierre David and Victor Solnicki. I remember renting a room right across the hall from where Ron Sanders was editing, it was downtown near the waterfront. It was in an old building that had been rented, but it had sand-blasted brick in the Toronto style and beams. And there was nothing in the room but a table, a chair and an IBM Selectric, that was it. It was quite a big room, and I was just in the middle of it and I would go there every day and write. And that’s where I wrote Videodrome, I can remember that, but I don’t remember any more of the details other than just the normal way that things accumulate around a central concept." ('David Cronenberg: Interviews with Serge Grünberg', 2000)

On this day, 43 years ago, David Cronenberg's 'Videodrome' (1983) was released in the USA & Canada. Here is David Cronenberg explaining how he got the inspiration to make 'Videodrome' (1983): "'Videodrome' came out of two things, I suppose. The first was remembering, as a kid, watching TV late at night, and of course it was black and white television, and when all the regular stations would go off the air you could get these distant, strange stations that were probably all American. The airwaves would be quiet, so you could pick up and we had a rotating antennae, you know, so we could rotate the antennae on our house and get this stuff. But they were always very bad images, and they would fade in and out, and where they came from and what they were was very mysterious. That was many years before I was making movies, I was probably fourteen or fifteen or sixteen. Anyway, these create strange late-night channels, plus bits of Marshall McLuhan, plus I have no idea what, combined to the initial premise that someone been rented, but it had sand-blasted brick in the Toronto style and beams. And there was nothing in the room but a table, a chair and an IBM Selectric, that was it. It was quite a big room, and I was just in the middle of it and I would go there every day and write. And that’s where I wrote 'Videodrome', I can remember that, but I don’t remember any more of the details other than just the normal way that things accumulate around a central concept. receives images on his television set that are fascinating to him, and seem to have an element of danger which makes them more fascinating. I don’t even think I knew, at the time that I started writing, that I would be examining the influence of television or that I would create a character based on Marshall McLuhan [O’Blivion], none of that was really in my mind to begin with. And I can’t really remember how I proposed this to the guys at Film Plan. It was the same thing, you know, the tax money was coming in, they wanted to do another movie, Pierre David and Victor Solnicki. I remember renting a room right across the hall from where Ron Sanders was editing, it was downtown near the waterfront. It was in an old building that had been rented, but it had sand-blasted brick in the Toronto style and beams. And there was nothing in the room but a table, a chair and an IBM Selectric, that was it. It was quite a big room, and I was just in the middle of it and I would go there every day and write. And that’s where I wrote Videodrome, I can remember that, but I don’t remember any more of the details other than just the normal way that things accumulate around a central concept." ('David Cronenberg: Interviews with Serge Grünberg', 2000)

DepressedBergman

44,258 Aufrufe • vor 6 Monaten

There’s a new claim that “essentially, all that happened was Trump got tired, took control and forced it on Netanyahu, and this is basically the same deal that could have been reached a year earlier,” with the disturbing implication, that’s horrible to say, that IDF soldiers died in vain for a cause that had already been achieved. So, let’s revisit the plans that were laid out by both the current and former American administrations to see if they match up. For example, the Biden plan from June 1, 2024, which was met with considerable enthusiasm, and was even later acknowledged as Netanyahu’s plan. I want to highlight the difference. In the first phase, the IDF should have already pulled back to roughly its current position, and then it was just about releasing humanitarian hostages. As if not all of them are “humanitarian.” Then it transitioned to discussing the release of living hostages. In this phase, the IDF would withdraw from all of Gaza, until the last centimetre, while all the dead hostages remain in Gaza. It’s as different as day and night. Here, everyone is returning, including the dead, and the IDF is still in half of Gaza. This isn’t just about some desire to maintain an occupation or garrison force, but rather to ensure that Hamas disarms — something that didn’t happen in the Biden proposal. So now let’s move on to the Witkoff plan, much closer to us, much better for Israel, but still different. There was talk of releasing half of the dead hostages, but then a temporary ceasefire for two months of negotiations to end the war, and then the IDF would withdraw from more places than it is now, and there would be a guarantee that the war would not be renewed. Once again, we see that there was no connection between the IDF remaining on the ground and the promise that Hamas would disarm, especially while some of the hostages are still there. The greatness of this outline is this issue. I also want to say something general about the matter of responsibility. As ridiculous as it was on October 7 and afterwards to hear from Netanyahu’s supporters that the one who is to blame is the IDF chief of staff, the Shin Bet chief, the attorney general and the Military Advocate General, and that Netanyahu has no part in it — it’s as ridiculous as it is that now they’re saying, “Thank you Trump and thank you Nitzan Alon, and thank you to all of them and to the Qatari prime minister, and Netanyahu and Ron Dermer have nothing to do with it at all.” Indeed, Netanyahu had a very large part in the failure of October 7, and he also has a very large part together with Dermer in this deal. By the way, how does that connect to what Kushner said tonight in Egypt? He said that both the prime minister and Dermer made very big compromises and took risks to see the end of the war. I would like to make a suggestion. Once upon a time, when there was only one channel and people didn’t like the commentators, they said, “Watch the game without the commentary.” I say, let’s watch Trump and Netanyahu’s move without the commentary, because there are a lot of conversations, and this and that, and slander, and sometimes even quotes, but in practice there has never been a president and a prime minister who acted like this, and the results are evident from Iran, through the Golan Heights, through the embassy and now Gaza.

There’s a new claim that “essentially, all that happened was Trump got tired, took control and forced it on Netanyahu, and this is basically the same deal that could have been reached a year earlier,” with the disturbing implication, that’s horrible to say, that IDF soldiers died in vain for a cause that had already been achieved. So, let’s revisit the plans that were laid out by both the current and former American administrations to see if they match up. For example, the Biden plan from June 1, 2024, which was met with considerable enthusiasm, and was even later acknowledged as Netanyahu’s plan. I want to highlight the difference. In the first phase, the IDF should have already pulled back to roughly its current position, and then it was just about releasing humanitarian hostages. As if not all of them are “humanitarian.” Then it transitioned to discussing the release of living hostages. In this phase, the IDF would withdraw from all of Gaza, until the last centimetre, while all the dead hostages remain in Gaza. It’s as different as day and night. Here, everyone is returning, including the dead, and the IDF is still in half of Gaza. This isn’t just about some desire to maintain an occupation or garrison force, but rather to ensure that Hamas disarms — something that didn’t happen in the Biden proposal. So now let’s move on to the Witkoff plan, much closer to us, much better for Israel, but still different. There was talk of releasing half of the dead hostages, but then a temporary ceasefire for two months of negotiations to end the war, and then the IDF would withdraw from more places than it is now, and there would be a guarantee that the war would not be renewed. Once again, we see that there was no connection between the IDF remaining on the ground and the promise that Hamas would disarm, especially while some of the hostages are still there. The greatness of this outline is this issue. I also want to say something general about the matter of responsibility. As ridiculous as it was on October 7 and afterwards to hear from Netanyahu’s supporters that the one who is to blame is the IDF chief of staff, the Shin Bet chief, the attorney general and the Military Advocate General, and that Netanyahu has no part in it — it’s as ridiculous as it is that now they’re saying, “Thank you Trump and thank you Nitzan Alon, and thank you to all of them and to the Qatari prime minister, and Netanyahu and Ron Dermer have nothing to do with it at all.” Indeed, Netanyahu had a very large part in the failure of October 7, and he also has a very large part together with Dermer in this deal. By the way, how does that connect to what Kushner said tonight in Egypt? He said that both the prime minister and Dermer made very big compromises and took risks to see the end of the war. I would like to make a suggestion. Once upon a time, when there was only one channel and people didn’t like the commentators, they said, “Watch the game without the commentary.” I say, let’s watch Trump and Netanyahu’s move without the commentary, because there are a lot of conversations, and this and that, and slander, and sometimes even quotes, but in practice there has never been a president and a prime minister who acted like this, and the results are evident from Iran, through the Golan Heights, through the embassy and now Gaza.

Amit Segal

298,292 Aufrufe • vor 10 Monaten

The invention of the printing press didn't just make information transfer more efficient. It made the whole culture put more weight on the words in front of them. Before the printing press, you might only have had access to a single copy of Aristotle or whoever. This scarcity made ideas slippery. Even if you had evidence that disproved Aristotle, it was easy for someone to argue that Aristotle didn't really mean that - maybe the scribe made a mistake copying the book. But once you had a uniform printed text, with many identical copies, the written word became more load-bearing. When actual evidence conflicted with authority, it wasn't so easy to ignore. Arguably this was a major contributor to the Scientific Revolution. Ideas became more rigid, easier to pin down - and so easier to test and disprove. The broader point is that the shift from oral culture to written culture didn't just happen once. Writing has become more and more load-bearing over time, as technology has changed, and it's hugely changed culture with it. And if writing remains the key component of how AI gets up-to-speed with tasks, then this process could get accelerated.

The invention of the printing press didn't just make information transfer more efficient. It made the whole culture put more weight on the words in front of them. Before the printing press, you might only have had access to a single copy of Aristotle or whoever. This scarcity made ideas slippery. Even if you had evidence that disproved Aristotle, it was easy for someone to argue that Aristotle didn't really mean that - maybe the scribe made a mistake copying the book. But once you had a uniform printed text, with many identical copies, the written word became more load-bearing. When actual evidence conflicted with authority, it wasn't so easy to ignore. Arguably this was a major contributor to the Scientific Revolution. Ideas became more rigid, easier to pin down - and so easier to test and disprove. The broader point is that the shift from oral culture to written culture didn't just happen once. Writing has become more and more load-bearing over time, as technology has changed, and it's hugely changed culture with it. And if writing remains the key component of how AI gets up-to-speed with tasks, then this process could get accelerated.

Dwarkesh Patel

26,203 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat

In 1901, divers pulled a lump of corroded bronze out of a two thousand year old shipwreck. It took the next century to understand what it was, and the answer broke the timeline of human history. It's called the Antikythera Mechanism, and it is the oldest known computer on earth. It was built by the ancient Greeks, around 100 BC, and it should not exist. Nothing else of its sophistication would appear anywhere in the world for more than a thousand years after it... It was found by sponge divers off the Greek island of Antikythera, in the wreck of a trading ship that had sunk in the first century BC, surrounded by bronze statues and pottery. The corroded fragments looked like nothing at first, and sat largely ignored in a museum in Athens. Only over the following decades, and especially with modern X-ray and CT scanning in our own century, did researchers finally see inside it. What they found was a machine. Behind its bronze face was a system of at least thirty interlocking precision gears, cut and arranged with a sophistication that would not be matched until the geared astronomical clocks of medieval Europe, well over a thousand years later. It was, in the words of the team that studied it, a mechanical computer that worked by turning astronomical theory into bronze... And it did extraordinary things. You turned a hand crank on the side, and the mechanism calculated the positions of the sun, the moon, and the five planets the Greeks knew. It tracked the phases of the moon. It predicted solar and lunar eclipses years in advance. It even displayed the four-year cycle of the ancient Olympic Games. A person standing in the ancient world could set this device to a date and watch the heavens be calculated in front of them, by gears, by hand. Roughly a third of the original survives, in 82 corroded fragments. We still do not know who designed it, or how a civilization without anything resembling industrial machinery achieved this level of precision engineering. What is certain is that it was not a one-off accident. A device this refined implies a tradition behind it, generations of knowledge and earlier attempts that have been lost completely. The Antikythera Mechanism is proof of how much the ancient world knew, and how much of what human beings have achieved has simply vanished without a trace, leaving us to stumble on a single piece of it at the bottom of the sea...

In 1901, divers pulled a lump of corroded bronze out of a two thousand year old shipwreck. It took the next century to understand what it was, and the answer broke the timeline of human history. It's called the Antikythera Mechanism, and it is the oldest known computer on earth. It was built by the ancient Greeks, around 100 BC, and it should not exist. Nothing else of its sophistication would appear anywhere in the world for more than a thousand years after it... It was found by sponge divers off the Greek island of Antikythera, in the wreck of a trading ship that had sunk in the first century BC, surrounded by bronze statues and pottery. The corroded fragments looked like nothing at first, and sat largely ignored in a museum in Athens. Only over the following decades, and especially with modern X-ray and CT scanning in our own century, did researchers finally see inside it. What they found was a machine. Behind its bronze face was a system of at least thirty interlocking precision gears, cut and arranged with a sophistication that would not be matched until the geared astronomical clocks of medieval Europe, well over a thousand years later. It was, in the words of the team that studied it, a mechanical computer that worked by turning astronomical theory into bronze... And it did extraordinary things. You turned a hand crank on the side, and the mechanism calculated the positions of the sun, the moon, and the five planets the Greeks knew. It tracked the phases of the moon. It predicted solar and lunar eclipses years in advance. It even displayed the four-year cycle of the ancient Olympic Games. A person standing in the ancient world could set this device to a date and watch the heavens be calculated in front of them, by gears, by hand. Roughly a third of the original survives, in 82 corroded fragments. We still do not know who designed it, or how a civilization without anything resembling industrial machinery achieved this level of precision engineering. What is certain is that it was not a one-off accident. A device this refined implies a tradition behind it, generations of knowledge and earlier attempts that have been lost completely. The Antikythera Mechanism is proof of how much the ancient world knew, and how much of what human beings have achieved has simply vanished without a trace, leaving us to stumble on a single piece of it at the bottom of the sea...

James Lucas

246,486 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat

I USE THIS DEVICE FROM 26 YEARS AGO DAILY. In fact I wrote this on it. There is a quiet magic in the AlphaSmart 3000 that no modern laptop or glowing rectangle can touch. I carry one into the forest the way some people carry a trusted notebook. Three AA batteries keep it alive for months. Literally months. The screen shows only four lines of text at a time. There is no Wi-Fi. No notifications. No browser tab whispering that I should check something else. Just a full-size keyboard, a soft click under the fingers, and the words as they arrive. The story behind it is pure garage-to-classroom ingenuity. In the early 1990s two Apple engineers, Joe Barrus and Ketan Kothari, kept hearing the same complaint from teachers: kids were spending more time fighting the computer than writing. So they left Apple, brought in Ketan’s brother Manish, and built a device that did one thing with absolute focus. The first one was released in 1993 and the style is very Macintosh Platform language. I would not recommend that unit as it is very limited. The AlphaSmart 3000 arrived in 2000 wearing that iconic translucent bondi-blue shell that matched the first iMac and little too much like the eMate. It was never meant to be a computer. It was meant to be a writing instrument. Thousands were sold to schools around the world. Twenty-six years later it still is an amazing writing device. I bought a stack of six on eBay for about sixteen dollars each. They live in my bag the way a good pen used to. When I sit under the trees or at a picnic table with no signal, I open a file and the words come cleaner. I write some of my X Aricles and some of the ReadMultiplex articles on these machines. Later I connect the AlphaSmart to my computer or iPhone, dump the text, and the modern world takes over only when I am ready for it. The process is so freaking simple. Plug it in and it looks like a keyboard to the computer, than press (SEND) and it literally types out the text like you are typing it. It will likely be compatible decades into the future. I also use the AlphaSmart Neo2 as it is more powerful, ha, you can get more fonts on the screen. It is the rare piece of technology that feels more honest with every year that passes. No planned obsolescence. No forced updates. Just three batteries, a keyboard, and the freedom to think without interruption. Absolutely worth it. If you find one on eBay let me know. The best part is to see some kid’s homework still stuck in the machine from 2000.

I USE THIS DEVICE FROM 26 YEARS AGO DAILY. In fact I wrote this on it. There is a quiet magic in the AlphaSmart 3000 that no modern laptop or glowing rectangle can touch. I carry one into the forest the way some people carry a trusted notebook. Three AA batteries keep it alive for months. Literally months. The screen shows only four lines of text at a time. There is no Wi-Fi. No notifications. No browser tab whispering that I should check something else. Just a full-size keyboard, a soft click under the fingers, and the words as they arrive. The story behind it is pure garage-to-classroom ingenuity. In the early 1990s two Apple engineers, Joe Barrus and Ketan Kothari, kept hearing the same complaint from teachers: kids were spending more time fighting the computer than writing. So they left Apple, brought in Ketan’s brother Manish, and built a device that did one thing with absolute focus. The first one was released in 1993 and the style is very Macintosh Platform language. I would not recommend that unit as it is very limited. The AlphaSmart 3000 arrived in 2000 wearing that iconic translucent bondi-blue shell that matched the first iMac and little too much like the eMate. It was never meant to be a computer. It was meant to be a writing instrument. Thousands were sold to schools around the world. Twenty-six years later it still is an amazing writing device. I bought a stack of six on eBay for about sixteen dollars each. They live in my bag the way a good pen used to. When I sit under the trees or at a picnic table with no signal, I open a file and the words come cleaner. I write some of my X Aricles and some of the ReadMultiplex articles on these machines. Later I connect the AlphaSmart to my computer or iPhone, dump the text, and the modern world takes over only when I am ready for it. The process is so freaking simple. Plug it in and it looks like a keyboard to the computer, than press (SEND) and it literally types out the text like you are typing it. It will likely be compatible decades into the future. I also use the AlphaSmart Neo2 as it is more powerful, ha, you can get more fonts on the screen. It is the rare piece of technology that feels more honest with every year that passes. No planned obsolescence. No forced updates. Just three batteries, a keyboard, and the freedom to think without interruption. Absolutely worth it. If you find one on eBay let me know. The best part is to see some kid’s homework still stuck in the machine from 2000.

Brian Roemmele

33,382 Aufrufe • vor 15 Tagen

King Leopold's 1883 Letter to Belgian Christian Missionaries, Still Relevant Centuries Later The period of European imperial presence in Africa is known by African historians as the Maafa – a Kiswahili word which means “Great Disaster”. It is so called because of the terror and destruction that defined this period. Africa’s indigenous development was interrupted, its monuments vandalized, its treasures looted, its knowledge systems suppressed and its history distorted by predators who had no interest in “civilizing” anyone. Predators like King Leopold II of Belgium, who sent Christian missionaries to strip the Congo of its cultural identity, while perpetrating a reign of terror that led to the deaths of at least 10 million Africans. The European missionaries gave a face, complexion and political agenda to the source of the universe to justify the parasitism of their culture. But African cultures long knew this Source as infinite, boundless and indistinguishable from reality. They believed the Creator was not man, but the essence behind everything. And they had no single image because by definition, the Infinite could not be bound by one image. The Infinite was Ama, and it was Amadioha, and it was Ngai, Unkulunkulu, Chi Ukwu, Temearau and Nzambi Mpungu. That deep, indigenous wisdom – the same wisdom that gave enslaved Africans in 18th-century Haiti the power to lead a revolt against their oppressors and establish the first independent black republic in 1804 – threatened the colonial enterprise more than anything. It still does.

King Leopold's 1883 Letter to Belgian Christian Missionaries, Still Relevant Centuries Later The period of European imperial presence in Africa is known by African historians as the Maafa – a Kiswahili word which means “Great Disaster”. It is so called because of the terror and destruction that defined this period. Africa’s indigenous development was interrupted, its monuments vandalized, its treasures looted, its knowledge systems suppressed and its history distorted by predators who had no interest in “civilizing” anyone. Predators like King Leopold II of Belgium, who sent Christian missionaries to strip the Congo of its cultural identity, while perpetrating a reign of terror that led to the deaths of at least 10 million Africans. The European missionaries gave a face, complexion and political agenda to the source of the universe to justify the parasitism of their culture. But African cultures long knew this Source as infinite, boundless and indistinguishable from reality. They believed the Creator was not man, but the essence behind everything. And they had no single image because by definition, the Infinite could not be bound by one image. The Infinite was Ama, and it was Amadioha, and it was Ngai, Unkulunkulu, Chi Ukwu, Temearau and Nzambi Mpungu. That deep, indigenous wisdom – the same wisdom that gave enslaved Africans in 18th-century Haiti the power to lead a revolt against their oppressors and establish the first independent black republic in 1804 – threatened the colonial enterprise more than anything. It still does.

The Spearhead

84,908 Aufrufe • vor 6 Monaten

.DHH credits Marc Andreessen Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with helping him the most during the darkest time of his professional life: "It was during that rough going where Andreessen came in. We were a small company of 60 people and 20 took the offer and left. That's almost a third of the company that decided to leave and we got to a point where we were thinking that not many more have to leave before we need to worry about whether we can keep the lights on. And it was actually Tobi who then put me in contact with Marc Andreessen because Marc had been exposed to this phenomenon at some of his portfolio companies. And Marc gave us reassurance and a bunch of contacts. Marc said, "Do you need someone to come in to help do programming or help with operations or whatever?" And I was floored by the generosity because Marc and I haven't always seen eye to eye on things. Especially in terms of venture capital. He's been one of the main faces of venture capital for decades and I've been kind of critical at times. And it was just a realization that all those grievances we might have thought to be so big once upon a time were actually minuscule. We were fighting the white walkers on the other side of the wall and all our internal squabbles were going to be for nothing if those f*ckers got inside the wall and destroyed everything. And that felt like a real threat at the time. That could've happened. They could very well have just ripped the whole thing apart. And Marc clearly saw that that this was a collective, almost existential threat to the entire industry. If these activists were able to take over these institutions in the same way that they have taken over academia we would be f*cked and not just for a little while but potentially for decades. That couldn't stand. And Marc was incredibly helpful not just in terms of these contacts and introductions and so on but it was very powerful. When you have literally 40,000 people on Twitter calling you all the worst things in the world even the strongest individual might go for a second like "Holy sh*t. The mob is coming for me and there's no one else there." And there are other people there. Tobi was there. Marc was there. And it was incredibly helpful to give us the fortitude to go like "No do you know what? We're going to stick with it. We're not going to grovel. We're not going to apologize. We're not going to revert." And then what Marc also did was he gave me a syllabus for understanding the history of wokeness going all the way back to the '60s and beyond. That this didn't just come as lightning from a blue sky. This had an institutional grounding that was set in motion particularly in the '60s and the long march through the institutions, Herbert Marcuse and a lot of The Frankfurt School and all of these groups that had designs on how to reshape society and create the revolution they so dearly wanted, but with a timeline and a roadmap that was demarcated in decades. That it wasn't just like "Well we're going to put something together and then in two years something's going to happen." No they were sitting in the fucking '60s fantasizing about how to overthrow everything in the 2000s. It's actually incredible in a Dr. Evil sense of it but when you're on the receiving end of it it seemed a little less incredible and it was just difficult not knowing where's this coming from? Why is this happening all of a sudden? Well it wasn't happening all of a sudden. There was this long history of it and when you understood that history it made a lot more sense. We weren't just making a rejection for our little corner of the world. We were chipping in in the great civilizational battle of where this country was going to go, whether the white walkers beyond the wall were going to win. And we were like "No they're not going to f*cking win. Get them out of that f*cking wall. Take your goddamn spear and fire it with maximum velocity."

.DHH credits Marc Andreessen Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with helping him the most during the darkest time of his professional life: "It was during that rough going where Andreessen came in. We were a small company of 60 people and 20 took the offer and left. That's almost a third of the company that decided to leave and we got to a point where we were thinking that not many more have to leave before we need to worry about whether we can keep the lights on. And it was actually Tobi who then put me in contact with Marc Andreessen because Marc had been exposed to this phenomenon at some of his portfolio companies. And Marc gave us reassurance and a bunch of contacts. Marc said, "Do you need someone to come in to help do programming or help with operations or whatever?" And I was floored by the generosity because Marc and I haven't always seen eye to eye on things. Especially in terms of venture capital. He's been one of the main faces of venture capital for decades and I've been kind of critical at times. And it was just a realization that all those grievances we might have thought to be so big once upon a time were actually minuscule. We were fighting the white walkers on the other side of the wall and all our internal squabbles were going to be for nothing if those fckers got inside the wall and destroyed everything. And that felt like a real threat at the time. That could've happened. They could very well have just ripped the whole thing apart. And Marc clearly saw that that this was a collective, almost existential threat to the entire industry. If these activists were able to take over these institutions in the same way that they have taken over academia we would be fcked and not just for a little while but potentially for decades. That couldn't stand. And Marc was incredibly helpful not just in terms of these contacts and introductions and so on but it was very powerful. When you have literally 40,000 people on Twitter calling you all the worst things in the world even the strongest individual might go for a second like "Holy sht. The mob is coming for me and there's no one else there." And there are other people there. Tobi was there. Marc was there. And it was incredibly helpful to give us the fortitude to go like "No do you know what? We're going to stick with it. We're not going to grovel. We're not going to apologize. We're not going to revert." And then what Marc also did was he gave me a syllabus for understanding the history of wokeness going all the way back to the '60s and beyond. That this didn't just come as lightning from a blue sky. This had an institutional grounding that was set in motion particularly in the '60s and the long march through the institutions, Herbert Marcuse and a lot of The Frankfurt School and all of these groups that had designs on how to reshape society and create the revolution they so dearly wanted, but with a timeline and a roadmap that was demarcated in decades. That it wasn't just like "Well we're going to put something together and then in two years something's going to happen." No they were sitting in the fucking '60s fantasizing about how to overthrow everything in the 2000s. It's actually incredible in a Dr. Evil sense of it but when you're on the receiving end of it it seemed a little less incredible and it was just difficult not knowing where's this coming from? Why is this happening all of a sudden? Well it wasn't happening all of a sudden. There was this long history of it and when you understood that history it made a lot more sense. We weren't just making a rejection for our little corner of the world. We were chipping in in the great civilizational battle of where this country was going to go, whether the white walkers beyond the wall were going to win. And we were like "No they're not going to fcking win. Get them out of that f*cking wall. Take your goddamn spear and fire it with maximum velocity."

David Senra

521,855 Aufrufe • vor 13 Tagen

In Al-Kurmuk, the UAE-Backed Rapid Support Militia Continues Its Pattern of Destruction: Looting the Health Insurance Center, Leaving Civilians to Rebuild, as the Army and the People Confront the Impact of Destruction Sponsored by One of the World’s Richest Countries At the Health Insurance Center in the city of Al-Kurmuk, another familiar face of the crimes committed by the Rapid Support Forces militia appeared in the towns and villages it entered. Looted rooms, scattered papers, an empty pharmacy, and a medical laboratory stripped of its contents. The scene sums up what has happened in many parts of Sudan, where the militia enters public service institutions, leaves them in ruins, and forces civilians to confront the aftermath of destruction once the fighting stops. The man’s voice in the video carries clear pain as he walks through the center. He speaks with the bitterness of someone seeing a public effort lost before his eyes, and a health facility that once served people turned into a place of loss and looting. He speaks as someone who knows the center, its people, and its value, as if every destroyed room reminds him of those who worked there and those who once waited there for treatment and medicine. The Health Insurance Center in Al-Kurmuk was one of the city’s important health facilities. The Health Insurance administration had made major efforts to establish and equip it, providing medical equipment and devices, along with a fully equipped dental clinic, so it could offer healthcare and treatment services to the people of Al-Kurmuk and the surrounding areas. The center had also received praise from the senior administration of the fund because of the standard of services it provided and the quality of care it offered to patients. Then the militia came, extended its hand toward that effort, looted what it could, and destroyed what it left behind. Years of work and construction were lost in moments of recklessness, and the citizen was left to pay the price. A looted pharmacy means a patient searching for medicine and finding nothing. An empty laboratory means a medical service has stopped. A destroyed center means that a city and its surrounding areas have lost a facility that supported people in times of illness and need. This behavior is familiar from the Rapid Support Forces militia. In every city and village it entered, the same scene was repeated in different forms: homes looted, facilities vandalized, institutions destroyed, and the daily lives of civilians targeted. Schools, health centers, markets, and service facilities became targets of looting and destruction, as if the aim was to break society and strip it of the foundations of life. In Al-Kurmuk, the video reveals part of the cost that awaits Sudanese people after the militia leaves any area. Liberation opens the road for life to return, while also exposing the scale of destruction that requires difficult work. Civilians need more than security. They need medicine to return, laboratories to function again, pharmacies to be restored, facilities to be repaired, and trust in public service institutions to be rebuilt. At this stage, the responsibility of the army and the people moves along the same path. The Sudanese army, after fighting the battle of liberation and paying with the blood of its soldiers to recover towns and villages from the militia’s grip, opens the way for civilians to return and protects what remains of state institutions. Along that same path, the Sudanese people stand with patience and determination, each contributing what they can to rebuild what has been destroyed, clean public facilities, revive essential services, and repair the damage the war has left behind in healthcare, education, markets, and daily life. As Sudanese people try to rise from beneath the rubble, with limited resources and an unbreakable will, the world stands witness to the catastrophic impact of the support provided by the UAE to this militia. One of the richest countries in the world is, through that support, contributing to the destruction of a country exhausted by war and poverty. Yet this destruction has failed to break the will of the Sudanese people or take away their ability to endure, rebuild, and rise again. #Sudan #RSFIsATerroristOrganization #UAEKillsSudanese #UAESponsorsTerrorism

In Al-Kurmuk, the UAE-Backed Rapid Support Militia Continues Its Pattern of Destruction: Looting the Health Insurance Center, Leaving Civilians to Rebuild, as the Army and the People Confront the Impact of Destruction Sponsored by One of the World’s Richest Countries At the Health Insurance Center in the city of Al-Kurmuk, another familiar face of the crimes committed by the Rapid Support Forces militia appeared in the towns and villages it entered. Looted rooms, scattered papers, an empty pharmacy, and a medical laboratory stripped of its contents. The scene sums up what has happened in many parts of Sudan, where the militia enters public service institutions, leaves them in ruins, and forces civilians to confront the aftermath of destruction once the fighting stops. The man’s voice in the video carries clear pain as he walks through the center. He speaks with the bitterness of someone seeing a public effort lost before his eyes, and a health facility that once served people turned into a place of loss and looting. He speaks as someone who knows the center, its people, and its value, as if every destroyed room reminds him of those who worked there and those who once waited there for treatment and medicine. The Health Insurance Center in Al-Kurmuk was one of the city’s important health facilities. The Health Insurance administration had made major efforts to establish and equip it, providing medical equipment and devices, along with a fully equipped dental clinic, so it could offer healthcare and treatment services to the people of Al-Kurmuk and the surrounding areas. The center had also received praise from the senior administration of the fund because of the standard of services it provided and the quality of care it offered to patients. Then the militia came, extended its hand toward that effort, looted what it could, and destroyed what it left behind. Years of work and construction were lost in moments of recklessness, and the citizen was left to pay the price. A looted pharmacy means a patient searching for medicine and finding nothing. An empty laboratory means a medical service has stopped. A destroyed center means that a city and its surrounding areas have lost a facility that supported people in times of illness and need. This behavior is familiar from the Rapid Support Forces militia. In every city and village it entered, the same scene was repeated in different forms: homes looted, facilities vandalized, institutions destroyed, and the daily lives of civilians targeted. Schools, health centers, markets, and service facilities became targets of looting and destruction, as if the aim was to break society and strip it of the foundations of life. In Al-Kurmuk, the video reveals part of the cost that awaits Sudanese people after the militia leaves any area. Liberation opens the road for life to return, while also exposing the scale of destruction that requires difficult work. Civilians need more than security. They need medicine to return, laboratories to function again, pharmacies to be restored, facilities to be repaired, and trust in public service institutions to be rebuilt. At this stage, the responsibility of the army and the people moves along the same path. The Sudanese army, after fighting the battle of liberation and paying with the blood of its soldiers to recover towns and villages from the militia’s grip, opens the way for civilians to return and protects what remains of state institutions. Along that same path, the Sudanese people stand with patience and determination, each contributing what they can to rebuild what has been destroyed, clean public facilities, revive essential services, and repair the damage the war has left behind in healthcare, education, markets, and daily life. As Sudanese people try to rise from beneath the rubble, with limited resources and an unbreakable will, the world stands witness to the catastrophic impact of the support provided by the UAE to this militia. One of the richest countries in the world is, through that support, contributing to the destruction of a country exhausted by war and poverty. Yet this destruction has failed to break the will of the Sudanese people or take away their ability to endure, rebuild, and rise again. #Sudan #RSFIsATerroristOrganization #UAEKillsSudanese #UAESponsorsTerrorism

Sudanese Echo

36,781 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat

.President Donald J. Trump at Mount Rushmore: On this anniversary, we must remember that American liberty has not endured for 250 years merely because of words on paper; liberty has prevailed here because of the culture and character of the people who declared it, defended it, and preserved it. The identity of a nation is the destiny of a nation — and America has a destiny like no other because we are a people like no other. Here, the Old World sent its bravest, boldest, and most resilient — its fiercest, most faithful, and freedom-loving. These men and women brought values, traditions, and customs transmitted over centuries in Britain, and stretching back even further to Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome. The United States of America is where the greatest civilization in human history became greater than ever before. On the granite hills and rugged plains of this wide-open continent, they forged a uniquely American character, and a new breed of citizen. Americans did not bow before a King or Government, but kneeled only before Almighty God. These were the people who founded our Republic. These were the patriots that fought for independence. This was the spirit that demanded freedom. And this was the culture that built America, and carved its heroes into Mount Rushmore. For generations, it was understood that the core patriotic duty of every American was to pass this culture on to our children — and preserve the nation for centuries to come. But in recent years, there has been an undeniable attempt to change this exceptional Character, to beat the American Spirit out of us, alienate us from our history, and make it impossible to even answer the question, 'what does it mean to be an American?” As we march into our 250th year, we must never forget, there is no American Freedom without American culture — and there is no American founding without the American people. Many nations have paper constitutions and legal systems, but the citizens live in fear and squalor. A constitution is only as strong as the people and the culture responsible for upholding it. But as long as we remember who we are, the United States of America will forever be the land of free men and women — and we will never, ever fail. 🇺🇸

.President Donald J. Trump at Mount Rushmore: On this anniversary, we must remember that American liberty has not endured for 250 years merely because of words on paper; liberty has prevailed here because of the culture and character of the people who declared it, defended it, and preserved it. The identity of a nation is the destiny of a nation — and America has a destiny like no other because we are a people like no other. Here, the Old World sent its bravest, boldest, and most resilient — its fiercest, most faithful, and freedom-loving. These men and women brought values, traditions, and customs transmitted over centuries in Britain, and stretching back even further to Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome. The United States of America is where the greatest civilization in human history became greater than ever before. On the granite hills and rugged plains of this wide-open continent, they forged a uniquely American character, and a new breed of citizen. Americans did not bow before a King or Government, but kneeled only before Almighty God. These were the people who founded our Republic. These were the patriots that fought for independence. This was the spirit that demanded freedom. And this was the culture that built America, and carved its heroes into Mount Rushmore. For generations, it was understood that the core patriotic duty of every American was to pass this culture on to our children — and preserve the nation for centuries to come. But in recent years, there has been an undeniable attempt to change this exceptional Character, to beat the American Spirit out of us, alienate us from our history, and make it impossible to even answer the question, 'what does it mean to be an American?” As we march into our 250th year, we must never forget, there is no American Freedom without American culture — and there is no American founding without the American people. Many nations have paper constitutions and legal systems, but the citizens live in fear and squalor. A constitution is only as strong as the people and the culture responsible for upholding it. But as long as we remember who we are, the United States of America will forever be the land of free men and women — and we will never, ever fail. 🇺🇸

Rapid Response 47

366,839 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat

Jensen Huang just told the world something nobody wants to hear. AI is not coming for your job. It is coming for the part of your job you mistakenly believe IS your job. Huang: “The purpose of your job and the tasks that you do in your job are related but not the same.” That one sentence is the fault line between the people who thrive in the next decade and the people who vanish from it. Huang used himself as proof. Reduce the CEO of Nvidia to his raw outputs and his entire career is typing and talking. Both have been automated to superhuman levels. Huang: “Typing and talking have both been automated to a superhuman level by AI. And yet, I’m busier than ever.” The man building the infrastructure that automates human labor has never worked harder. That should stop you cold. We look at a profession and see the tasks. The motions. The mechanical friction. We never see the intent underneath. And when AI arrives, we panic. Because we confuse the task with the job. The task was never the job. It was always the bottleneck between a human and their actual purpose. Now the bottleneck is dissolving. Years ago, the experts declared radiology dead. The algorithm could read a scan better than any human. A generation of medical students listened. They walked away from the field. The result was catastrophic. Huang: “We need more radiologists than ever, and we don’t have enough.” The algorithm did not replace the doctor. It armed the doctor. Suddenly the department could see more patients. Catch more anomalies. Generate more revenue. The hospital did not fire the radiologists. It tried to hire more. And could not find them. Because we terrified an entire generation out of a career with a prediction that landed exactly backwards. Now the same hysteria is consuming software engineering. The timeline is screaming that coding is dead. Meanwhile, inside the very company building the hardware that automates code. Huang: “The software engineers that know how to use AI, know how to work with agentic systems, are the most popular and the most successful.” The tool did not replace the architect. It replaced the shovel. This is the pattern nobody wants to confront. AI does not eliminate the human. It eliminates the friction that made the human slow. And when the friction disappears, demand for the human explodes. But only if the human shows up. The ones who defined themselves by the mechanical act of writing code are fading. The ones who defined themselves by what the code was meant to build are now the most valuable people on the planet. That is not a nuance. That is the entire dividing line. The machine will write the script. Read the scan. Draft the brief. It will never possess the reason any of it needed to exist. The task was never the job. And nobody who figures that out last gets the privilege of figuring it out twice.

Jensen Huang just told the world something nobody wants to hear. AI is not coming for your job. It is coming for the part of your job you mistakenly believe IS your job. Huang: “The purpose of your job and the tasks that you do in your job are related but not the same.” That one sentence is the fault line between the people who thrive in the next decade and the people who vanish from it. Huang used himself as proof. Reduce the CEO of Nvidia to his raw outputs and his entire career is typing and talking. Both have been automated to superhuman levels. Huang: “Typing and talking have both been automated to a superhuman level by AI. And yet, I’m busier than ever.” The man building the infrastructure that automates human labor has never worked harder. That should stop you cold. We look at a profession and see the tasks. The motions. The mechanical friction. We never see the intent underneath. And when AI arrives, we panic. Because we confuse the task with the job. The task was never the job. It was always the bottleneck between a human and their actual purpose. Now the bottleneck is dissolving. Years ago, the experts declared radiology dead. The algorithm could read a scan better than any human. A generation of medical students listened. They walked away from the field. The result was catastrophic. Huang: “We need more radiologists than ever, and we don’t have enough.” The algorithm did not replace the doctor. It armed the doctor. Suddenly the department could see more patients. Catch more anomalies. Generate more revenue. The hospital did not fire the radiologists. It tried to hire more. And could not find them. Because we terrified an entire generation out of a career with a prediction that landed exactly backwards. Now the same hysteria is consuming software engineering. The timeline is screaming that coding is dead. Meanwhile, inside the very company building the hardware that automates code. Huang: “The software engineers that know how to use AI, know how to work with agentic systems, are the most popular and the most successful.” The tool did not replace the architect. It replaced the shovel. This is the pattern nobody wants to confront. AI does not eliminate the human. It eliminates the friction that made the human slow. And when the friction disappears, demand for the human explodes. But only if the human shows up. The ones who defined themselves by the mechanical act of writing code are fading. The ones who defined themselves by what the code was meant to build are now the most valuable people on the planet. That is not a nuance. That is the entire dividing line. The machine will write the script. Read the scan. Draft the brief. It will never possess the reason any of it needed to exist. The task was never the job. And nobody who figures that out last gets the privilege of figuring it out twice.

Dustin

52,882 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten

In 1997 the greatest chess player who ever lived sat down against a machine, lost, and immediately accused it of cheating. IBM's answer was to switch the machine off, take it apart, and refuse to ever play him again. The match was carried on live television. IBM's market value jumped by billions in a single week. The man who lost spent years asking one question the company would never answer. His name is Garry Kasparov. The machine was Deep Blue. The footage is on YouTube. Kasparov was not just a champion. He had been the world's number one for more than fifteen years and is still argued to be the strongest player in history. In 1996 he had beaten IBM's Deep Blue with ease. IBM took it away, rebuilt it, and challenged him again in 1997 in New York, with the whole world watching. Then, in game two, the machine did something that broke him. In a position where every computer of that era would have greedily grabbed a pawn, Deep Blue quietly declined and played a slow, patient, deeply human move instead. Kasparov could not accept that a machine had chosen it. He became convinced a human grandmaster was hidden somewhere, feeding it moves. Rattled, he resigned a game that analysts later proved he could have drawn. He never recovered in the match. Deep Blue won, three and a half to two and a half. It was the first time a reigning world champion had ever lost a match to a computer. The papers called it the day the machines arrived. Kasparov demanded to see the machine's logs, the record of why it played what it played. IBM refused to release them, turned down the rematch he begged for, and quietly dismantled Deep Blue. Years later one of its own engineers admitted that an early move which had unnerved Kasparov may have come from nothing more than a bug, a meaningless fallback the champion had mistaken for genius. Nobody could ever fully settle it. The logs stayed private. This is not really a story about chess. It is about the exact moment human intuition stopped being the ceiling. For centuries the best move in any hard game was whatever the finest human mind could see. In one match a machine found a move a human could not even believe was real, and the greatest mind in the game turned his own genius into paranoia against it. Kasparov spent years bitter about it. Then he said the line that outlived the grudge: "I could feel, I could smell, a new kind of intelligence across the table." He stopped fighting the machine and started studying how humans and machines win together. That, not the loss, was the real lesson. The edge moved that day and it never moved back. It used to be intuition. It became computation. The people who win from here are not the ones with the best gut. They are the ones who stopped trusting their gut the moment the machine could out-see it. The film is free. The logs never came out. Most people will only remember that the human lost.

In 1997 the greatest chess player who ever lived sat down against a machine, lost, and immediately accused it of cheating. IBM's answer was to switch the machine off, take it apart, and refuse to ever play him again. The match was carried on live television. IBM's market value jumped by billions in a single week. The man who lost spent years asking one question the company would never answer. His name is Garry Kasparov. The machine was Deep Blue. The footage is on YouTube. Kasparov was not just a champion. He had been the world's number one for more than fifteen years and is still argued to be the strongest player in history. In 1996 he had beaten IBM's Deep Blue with ease. IBM took it away, rebuilt it, and challenged him again in 1997 in New York, with the whole world watching. Then, in game two, the machine did something that broke him. In a position where every computer of that era would have greedily grabbed a pawn, Deep Blue quietly declined and played a slow, patient, deeply human move instead. Kasparov could not accept that a machine had chosen it. He became convinced a human grandmaster was hidden somewhere, feeding it moves. Rattled, he resigned a game that analysts later proved he could have drawn. He never recovered in the match. Deep Blue won, three and a half to two and a half. It was the first time a reigning world champion had ever lost a match to a computer. The papers called it the day the machines arrived. Kasparov demanded to see the machine's logs, the record of why it played what it played. IBM refused to release them, turned down the rematch he begged for, and quietly dismantled Deep Blue. Years later one of its own engineers admitted that an early move which had unnerved Kasparov may have come from nothing more than a bug, a meaningless fallback the champion had mistaken for genius. Nobody could ever fully settle it. The logs stayed private. This is not really a story about chess. It is about the exact moment human intuition stopped being the ceiling. For centuries the best move in any hard game was whatever the finest human mind could see. In one match a machine found a move a human could not even believe was real, and the greatest mind in the game turned his own genius into paranoia against it. Kasparov spent years bitter about it. Then he said the line that outlived the grudge: "I could feel, I could smell, a new kind of intelligence across the table." He stopped fighting the machine and started studying how humans and machines win together. That, not the loss, was the real lesson. The edge moved that day and it never moved back. It used to be intuition. It became computation. The people who win from here are not the ones with the best gut. They are the ones who stopped trusting their gut the moment the machine could out-see it. The film is free. The logs never came out. Most people will only remember that the human lost.

Voltex

411,961 Aufrufe • vor 21 Tagen

MEET THE BARRISTER THE POST OFFICE FEARS Here's a name that deserves to trend more than half the people who actually do. Sam Stein KC. While the Post Office was busy ruining ordinary people's lives over money that was never actually missing, Stein was in a courtroom taking it apart piece by piece. He represents most of the subpostmasters at the Post Office Horizon Inquiry Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, instructed by Howe and Co Howe + Co Solicitors, on behalf of the people the Post Office tried to bury. In 2021 he stood in the Court of Appeal representing a group of subpostmasters, instructed by Howe and Co Howe + Co Solicitors, in the same case that finally cleared Jo Hamilton Jo Hamilton and dozens of others after years of wrongful convictions. He told the judges the Post Office's refusal to investigate its own broken Horizon system, built by Fujitsu Fujitsu UK, was the longest running affront to British justice in living memory. The judges agreed and quashed the convictions. Then the public inquiry started and Stein really got going. He told the inquiry the Post Office had turned itself into "the nation's most untrustworthy brand." A blunt summary, backed by 2.2 million pages of evidence. He described former Post Office lawyer Mandy Talbot as "the Post Office's very own evil robot" after she was asked repeatedly who had directed a legal strategy built to silence a subpostmaster and kept saying she couldn't remember. Convenient amnesia. Goes around a lot in this organisation. He summed up a whole phase of hearings by calling the parade of witnesses "a rogues' gallery." Executives who forgot everything except how to protect themselves. Questioning executive Angela van den Bogerd about the Post Office's own helpline, he told her she had been "intimidating and bullying" toward subpostmistress Jennifer O'Dell, who kept calling to say she hadn't stolen a penny. She was telling the truth. Nobody listened for years. In his closing submission for phase 2, he told the inquiry to work out whether the entire scandal was a "cock-up or cook-up." By phase 3 he had his answer. Cook-up, no doubt about it. He said the Post Office spent that entire phase dodging its own failures and instead "turned its tank turret gun on Fujitsu." Subpostmasters called the organisation that prosecuted them "the abuser." Questioning former minister Pat McFadden about it, Stein got that word onto the official record, permanently. In his final closing statement, Stein made the point that mattered most. This was never really a problem with a computer. It was a problem with people, and people paid the price. He said what actually drove the scandal was "cruelty, callousness and connivance," and that people are still living with the consequences. He also named former CEO Paula Vennells, executive Angela van den Bogerd and in-house lawyer Jarnail Singh as part of a rogues' gallery remembered for lies and incompetence, and pointed out £37 million received by the Post Office is still unaccounted for. Nobody's chasing it. Urgency always disappears when it's the institution's own money at stake. He also said the external law firm Cartwright King failed subpostmasters, because by the time its lawyers were brought in, they had become company men. Stein also pushed the inquiry to recommend actual restorative justice. Counselling for postmasters and their families. Bursaries for children whose education was wrecked. A permanent memorial. Reputations rebuilt in the small communities where they were destroyed. Volume 1 of the final report landed in July 2025. The rest keeps slipping. Current estimate is September 2026, and even that looks optimistic. A criminal investigation into the Post Office is on hold waiting for it. People keep dying while they wait to be believed. The Post Office spent two decades hoping this would quietly disappear. Sam Stein KC made sure it never got the chance. SOURCES ComputerWeekly Law Society Gazette BBC News (UK) and many others.

Artur Nadolny

40,812 Aufrufe • vor 8 Tagen

"The Sound of Silence" is an iconic folk-rock song by the American duo Simon & Garfunkel. It was written by Paul Simon and released as a single in 1965. The song's haunting melody and evocative lyrics made it a timeless classic that continues to resonate with audiences across generations. The genesis of "The Sound of Silence" can be traced back to Paul Simon's early days as a songwriter in the early 1960s. He wrote the original version of the song when he was just 21 years old and it was initially titled "The Sounds of Silence." The song was included in their debut album, "Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M," released in 1964. However, the album had limited success, and Simon & Garfunkel's future as a duo was uncertain. Despite the lackluster performance of their debut album, the song's potential caught the attention of Tom Wilson, a producer at Columbia Records. Without Simon or Garfunkel's knowledge, he decided to remix "The Sound of Silence," adding electric instruments and drums to the acoustic version. This new version gave the song a more contemporary and dynamic sound, capitalizing on the folk-rock movement that was gaining popularity at the time. In January 1966, the remixed version of "The Sound of Silence" was released as a single, and it quickly began to climb the charts. The song struck a chord with listeners, as its lyrics tapped into feelings of isolation, alienation, and the struggle to communicate in an increasingly disconnected world. The opening lines, "Hello darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk with you again," instantly captured the imaginations of listeners and set the tone for the rest of the song. As "The Sound of Silence" gained traction, Simon & Garfunkel's popularity surged, and they went on to release more successful albums, becoming one of the most influential and celebrated musical acts of the 1960s. The song's success also played a significant role in propelling the folk-rock genre into the mainstream. Over the years, "The Sound of Silence" has been covered by numerous artists, further cementing its status as a timeless classic. Its enduring appeal lies in its ability to evoke deep emotions and contemplation, making it relevant in different historical and cultural contexts. The song's legacy has been immortalized in popular culture, appearing in films, television shows, and advertisements, further solidifying its status as a song that transcends time and resonates with people from all walks of life. Its powerful message about the importance of meaningful communication in a world filled with noise and distraction continues to be relevant and poignant to this day.

"The Sound of Silence" is an iconic folk-rock song by the American duo Simon & Garfunkel. It was written by Paul Simon and released as a single in 1965. The song's haunting melody and evocative lyrics made it a timeless classic that continues to resonate with audiences across generations. The genesis of "The Sound of Silence" can be traced back to Paul Simon's early days as a songwriter in the early 1960s. He wrote the original version of the song when he was just 21 years old and it was initially titled "The Sounds of Silence." The song was included in their debut album, "Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M," released in 1964. However, the album had limited success, and Simon & Garfunkel's future as a duo was uncertain. Despite the lackluster performance of their debut album, the song's potential caught the attention of Tom Wilson, a producer at Columbia Records. Without Simon or Garfunkel's knowledge, he decided to remix "The Sound of Silence," adding electric instruments and drums to the acoustic version. This new version gave the song a more contemporary and dynamic sound, capitalizing on the folk-rock movement that was gaining popularity at the time. In January 1966, the remixed version of "The Sound of Silence" was released as a single, and it quickly began to climb the charts. The song struck a chord with listeners, as its lyrics tapped into feelings of isolation, alienation, and the struggle to communicate in an increasingly disconnected world. The opening lines, "Hello darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk with you again," instantly captured the imaginations of listeners and set the tone for the rest of the song. As "The Sound of Silence" gained traction, Simon & Garfunkel's popularity surged, and they went on to release more successful albums, becoming one of the most influential and celebrated musical acts of the 1960s. The song's success also played a significant role in propelling the folk-rock genre into the mainstream. Over the years, "The Sound of Silence" has been covered by numerous artists, further cementing its status as a timeless classic. Its enduring appeal lies in its ability to evoke deep emotions and contemplation, making it relevant in different historical and cultural contexts. The song's legacy has been immortalized in popular culture, appearing in films, television shows, and advertisements, further solidifying its status as a song that transcends time and resonates with people from all walks of life. Its powerful message about the importance of meaningful communication in a world filled with noise and distraction continues to be relevant and poignant to this day.

Historic Vids

3,178,047 Aufrufe • vor 3 Jahren

$Two air forces started the Pacific war. One trained its pilots, then kept them fighting until they died. The other trained its pilots, then often pulled many of its experienced combat pilots out to teach everyone else. This is one of the reasons America won the Pacific air war, let's dive in.. Japan's Elite Aviators At the start of the war, Japan had some of the finest fighter pilots in the world. The aviators who attacked Pearl Harbor were elite. Many had hundreds of hours in the cockpit and real combat experience from the fighting in China. Flying the nimble A6M Zero, they cut through Allied opposition in the early months of the war and earned a fearsome reputation. But Japan made a fateful choice about these men. It kept them in combat, more or less indefinitely. Japanese pilots flew mission after mission with no real system to rotate them home. They fought until they were shot down, crippled, or killed. It seemed ruthless and efficient. In reality, it was a slow-motion disaster. The Difference in Philosophy Because every time Japan lost one of those veterans, everything he knew died with him. America did the opposite. It regularly rotated many of its experienced combat pilots back home once they had done their share of fighting. There, they became instructors, pouring everything they had learned in real air combat directly into the next generation of pilots. So the two systems pulled in opposite directions. Japan's pool of skill drained away with every ace it buried. America's pool of skill grew, as each returning veteran multiplied his knowledge across hundreds of students. One nation was teaching. The other was simply dying. The Training Gap The gap became a chasm, and it was made worse by sheer scale. By 1944, the United States was training around 8,000 new aviators every month, each of them getting well over a year of instruction and hundreds of hours in the air before they ever saw combat. Japan could not come close. As its veterans vanished, its training program collapsed, and it was crippled by something else, too. Fuel. Japan was running so short of it that many trainees could barely fly enough hours to learn their trade. By the later part of the war, Japanese pilots were being rushed into battle with barely 100 hours of flying time, and sometimes far less. They were teenagers with almost no training, being sent up against American veterans who had been taught by the best combat pilots in the fleet. The outcome was no longer a contest. It was a slaughter. The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot Nowhere was that clearer than in the skies over the Mariana Islands in June 1944. When the Japanese launched hundreds of aircraft against the American fleet, they flew into a wall of Hellcat fighters, guided by radar and expert fighter direction that positioned the Americans at the perfect height and moment to strike. The green Japanese pilots in their now outdated Zeros never had a chance. In and around that battle, Japan lost nearly 480 aircraft, while the Americans lost only a few dozen. It was so one-sided that the American aviators nicknamed it the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot. Japan's naval air power, once the terror of the Pacific, was broken in a matter of days. Better Aircraft, Better Technology It was not only the pilots. It was the machines too. America kept producing better and better aircraft, like the tough, heavily armed F6F Hellcat, designed after studying a captured Zero and built to beat it. It could take punishment, out-dive and out-gun its opponent, and it was forgiving enough that even a less experienced pilot could survive his first fights and become a veteran. Over the war, Hellcat pilots claimed more than 5,000 enemy aircraft for a tiny fraction of that in losses. Japan, meanwhile, kept sending men up in the aging Zero, a plane that had been revolutionary in 1941 but was now underpowered, fragile, and outclassed. It was fast and agile, but a single burst of American fire could tear it apart, because it had traded armor and protection for maneuverability. Better pilots, in better planes, backed by better technology. The advantages stacked on top of one another. The Spiral Ends By the end, Japan had reached the final, desperate stage of the spiral. With almost no trained pilots left, and no way to make more in time, it turned to the kamikaze. A pilot did not need 500 hours of training to crash his aircraft into a ship. He only needed to take off, aim, and die. It was the last resort of an air force that had run out of the one thing it could never mass produce. Experienced men. America won the Pacific air war for many reasons. Its factories out-built the enemy. Its radar and intelligence gave it eyes the Japanese lacked. Its aircraft grew deadlier every year. But underneath all of it was something simpler. America treated its best pilots as a resource to be protected and passed on. Japan treated them as fuel to be burned. One of those choices built an air force that kept getting stronger. The other burned brightly, and then burned out. This was why America won the Pacific air war. I post a story like this every single day. Most people never see them. Follow so you don't miss the next one.$

Two air forces started the Pacific war. One trained its pilots, then kept them fighting until they died. The other trained its pilots, then often pulled many of its experienced combat pilots out to teach everyone else. This is one of the reasons America won the Pacific air war, let's dive in.. Japan's Elite Aviators At the start of the war, Japan had some of the finest fighter pilots in the world. The aviators who attacked Pearl Harbor were elite. Many had hundreds of hours in the cockpit and real combat experience from the fighting in China. Flying the nimble A6M Zero, they cut through Allied opposition in the early months of the war and earned a fearsome reputation. But Japan made a fateful choice about these men. It kept them in combat, more or less indefinitely. Japanese pilots flew mission after mission with no real system to rotate them home. They fought until they were shot down, crippled, or killed. It seemed ruthless and efficient. In reality, it was a slow-motion disaster. The Difference in Philosophy Because every time Japan lost one of those veterans, everything he knew died with him. America did the opposite. It regularly rotated many of its experienced combat pilots back home once they had done their share of fighting. There, they became instructors, pouring everything they had learned in real air combat directly into the next generation of pilots. So the two systems pulled in opposite directions. Japan's pool of skill drained away with every ace it buried. America's pool of skill grew, as each returning veteran multiplied his knowledge across hundreds of students. One nation was teaching. The other was simply dying. The Training Gap The gap became a chasm, and it was made worse by sheer scale. By 1944, the United States was training around 8,000 new aviators every month, each of them getting well over a year of instruction and hundreds of hours in the air before they ever saw combat. Japan could not come close. As its veterans vanished, its training program collapsed, and it was crippled by something else, too. Fuel. Japan was running so short of it that many trainees could barely fly enough hours to learn their trade. By the later part of the war, Japanese pilots were being rushed into battle with barely 100 hours of flying time, and sometimes far less. They were teenagers with almost no training, being sent up against American veterans who had been taught by the best combat pilots in the fleet. The outcome was no longer a contest. It was a slaughter. The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot Nowhere was that clearer than in the skies over the Mariana Islands in June 1944. When the Japanese launched hundreds of aircraft against the American fleet, they flew into a wall of Hellcat fighters, guided by radar and expert fighter direction that positioned the Americans at the perfect height and moment to strike. The green Japanese pilots in their now outdated Zeros never had a chance. In and around that battle, Japan lost nearly 480 aircraft, while the Americans lost only a few dozen. It was so one-sided that the American aviators nicknamed it the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot. Japan's naval air power, once the terror of the Pacific, was broken in a matter of days. Better Aircraft, Better Technology It was not only the pilots. It was the machines too. America kept producing better and better aircraft, like the tough, heavily armed F6F Hellcat, designed after studying a captured Zero and built to beat it. It could take punishment, out-dive and out-gun its opponent, and it was forgiving enough that even a less experienced pilot could survive his first fights and become a veteran. Over the war, Hellcat pilots claimed more than 5,000 enemy aircraft for a tiny fraction of that in losses. Japan, meanwhile, kept sending men up in the aging Zero, a plane that had been revolutionary in 1941 but was now underpowered, fragile, and outclassed. It was fast and agile, but a single burst of American fire could tear it apart, because it had traded armor and protection for maneuverability. Better pilots, in better planes, backed by better technology. The advantages stacked on top of one another. The Spiral Ends By the end, Japan had reached the final, desperate stage of the spiral. With almost no trained pilots left, and no way to make more in time, it turned to the kamikaze. A pilot did not need 500 hours of training to crash his aircraft into a ship. He only needed to take off, aim, and die. It was the last resort of an air force that had run out of the one thing it could never mass produce. Experienced men. America won the Pacific air war for many reasons. Its factories out-built the enemy. Its radar and intelligence gave it eyes the Japanese lacked. Its aircraft grew deadlier every year. But underneath all of it was something simpler. America treated its best pilots as a resource to be protected and passed on. Japan treated them as fuel to be burned. One of those choices built an air force that kept getting stronger. The other burned brightly, and then burned out. This was why America won the Pacific air war. I post a story like this every single day. Most people never see them. Follow so you don't miss the next one.

Untold War Stories

155,561 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat