"NASA Shuts Off Voyager Science Instrument, More Power Cuts Ahead to Keep Both Probes Going"
Incredible engineering that two probes, launched 50 years ago, are still going and that we're able to control them from this distance to shut off systems and prolong their lives. Truly a marvel.
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"Cray 1 Supercomputer Performance Comparisons With Home Computers Phones and Tablets"
If you had asked me about comparative processing power between the Cray 1 and the Raspberry Pi, I would have guessed Cray 1 was more powerful - despite the decades of time between their technology.
"In 1978, the Cray 1 supercomputer cost $7 Million, weighed 10,500 pounds and had a 115 kilowatt power supply. It was, by far, the fastest computer in the world. The Raspberry Pi costs around $70 (CPU board, case, power supply, SD card), weighs a few ounces, uses a 5 watt power supply and is more than 4.5 times faster than the Cray 1"
I grew up knowing what a Cray was, and that it represented absurd "super" computer power. To think it is today slower than the Raspberry Pi is mindblowing to me.
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ChessCam.net takes video of chess games and transcribes them digitally
I originally heard about this tool on Lichess, the free chess website which I play on regularly. It was just a short blog entry, clearly intended to drive awareness of the online tool which the author 'BlindfoldBlunderer' created.
It didn't go into depth about the project but it was enough for me to dig further into it.
The video demo shows that at the start of the game you identify the four corners of the board, defining which is which square, and from there it orients, identifies pieces, and moves. At 1:36 it transitions out of watching the video and shows that it recorded the moves and can replay them digitally.
I don't have any plans to make use of this, but who knows, perhaps. Still an interesting tool and I'm sure a passion project for the author.
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I just abandoned a blog post this morning where I was trying to answer the question, "At what point in history did the world's computing power surpass the processing power of the computer in my pocket?"
It's an interesting question, but one which is not straightforward to answer and required too many steps of abstraction or assumption for me to feel like what I was saying was particularly interesting or, honestly, correct.
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An electrical engineer explains what a semiconductor is
Reading this gave me serious flashbacks. In high school, while I was trying to figure out what I wanted to be, my dad called upon a family friend who worked for Lucent (a chip maker.) We went over to his house one evening and he began explaining what he did. I grew up with computers and I loved them, but that evening quickly showed me I was not interested in computer engineering as I ended up actually dozing off as he talked. I felt so embarassed and bad. They also gave me a tour of the local Lucent facilities on another day.
I find the technology fascinating but it just doesn't click with me. I took a computer engineering course at Georgia Tech and thank god for my friend Jay, otherwise I would have absolutely failed. The underlying logic components of gates and everything makes sense and I enjoy that, but the steps going from that to physical component is where it loses me.
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