11 ms·

Before I moved my career to embedded software I was always incredulous when I read articles claiming such and such device has 100s of chips in it. Now I know th

by Paul_S 10y ago

Before I moved my career to embedded software I was always incredulous when I read articles claiming such and such device has 100s of chips in it. Now I know this to be true I am still amazed at how many "moving parts" each little device has (or to put it more intelligibly, how many semi-autonomous subsystems each computer system consists of) - it's a miracle we routinely manage to make them work. The pinnacle of processor cramming must the modern smartphone which just beggars belief. I'm more surprised there's only one microcontroller on that board.

agumonkey 10y ago
It's a bit "scary" because this is a non optimized "controller" from 2013. With today's processes and market evolution, anything could be a multicore arm processor in disguise. You can never be sure about anything anymore since it can be virtual information generated by some logic/source.
- carapace 10y ago
  (My nightmare is when nanotech gets good enough that you can't trust the written word on paper...)
  - i336_ 10y ago
    Ugh, I do not wish for that day. Ouch!
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    Now thats edging towards the gray goo scenario.
  - anonymfus 10y ago
    In what sense do you think that you can trust it know?
    - carapace 10y ago
      I trust letters a lot, it's the words that worry me.
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    Maybe nature is secretly violating our privacy ..
  - yongjik 10y ago
    That happens with emails. The future is here! There was one time I booked a flight. A few days before departure, that particular flight had an accident (Asiana 214 at SFO): I need to check if my flight will still depart as scheduled, so I dig my mailbox and the reservation confirmation email I received months ago(!) now says "Your flight is canceled." Apparently emails can be retroactively rewritten, WTF.
    - simcop2387 10y ago
      That shouldn't be possible. I wonder if they had put the message in there via an image on their site?
    - Tharre 10y ago
      Emails can't be rewritten by anyone except your mail provider, which is unlikely to ever happen. What most likely really happened is that the mail included remote content which got reloaded - and thus changed.
      - i336_ 10y ago
        Webmail provider* Sorry for being pedantic, but if you sync your mail to your own device (or collect all of it onto your own mail server), you eliminate this risk.
    - H4CK3RM4N 10y ago
      The message you were sent probably just embedded a webpage. Still creepy as fuck, but explainable.
      - jonknee 10y ago
        How is an email that loads remote assets "creepy as fuck"? It actually sounds useful in this case, all he had to do is look at an email to see what was going on with his flight. It doesn't have to be sophisticated, imagine an HTML email loading an image through a URL like so: /asiana/status?flight=214&date=2017-03-17 Pretty simple to return a standard "On Time", "Delayed" or "Cancelled" asset.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    I tried to work out how to do that at one point. I didnt succeed. So you can sleep well. Far as concealment, there was a $50 spray that made envelopes translucent to point you could see what was inside them. Unrelated note: I bought that book on Hamilton's methods. Finished it last night. Really enjoyed it outside of the filler, repetative, and overselling parts. The sections on requirements, specs, and spec-to-code (in abstract) were still accurate today for the most part. The HOS method itself reminded me of original LISP where its power and beauty came from how it reduced everything to a few primitives. Like LISP 1.0, there were severe usability & performance problems that prevented wider success. Fun to at least read on an early attempt.
    - carapace 10y ago
      Why bother changing the paper... climb into eyes and show the retina cells whatever you want... --- Oh hey awesome! Could you see applications for e.g. sitting down with a non-technical person and having them construct working software? That was something that really interested me: the claim that non-programmers could use it. What you say about how it reminded you of LISP is just fascinating. When I had refined my attempt to implement some HOS-like thing I eventually came up with something that I recognized (later, when I had learned LISP) as a crude subset of that. Imagine a system that uses a stack, like Forth, but the words/functions are built out of the three primitives (Sequence, Branch, Loop) in, uh, "HOS-style". Give it S-expr syntax and squint and I see a crude proto-LISP. ;-D (seq ...) (branch (...) (...)) (loop ...)
      - nickpsecurity 10y ago
        "Why bother changing the paper... climb into eyes and show the retina cells whatever you want..." Alternatively a psychadelic reaction in the brain combined with something like Oxytocin's claimed properties for enhancing trust. Then the person that shows up convinces the person in contact with the paper that what they're told is true. Many possibilities. " Could you see applications for e.g. sitting down with a non-technical person and having them construct working software?" What I see is it's like a combination of old CASE tools, a bit of functional programming, logical composition (see LCF provers), and a pile of dishonest marketing (aka "overselling"). I'm currently in a discussion about it elsewhere given Dijkstra personally nuked it while others found problems. Email me if you want and I'll give you a summary of some of that along with controversies that aren't settled yet.
digi_owl 10y ago
Frankly if one look at a 70s mainframe one have all the parts there, only running on transistors and tubes. "All" we have really done is shrink said transistors, and the boards holding them, down to something that can fit on a fingernail. Thing is that most of the people that are into computers these days don't know it, unless they dig into history. Because the mainframe world was so insular that microcomputers virtually started from a blank slate. Most of the "cloud" stuff people are going gaga over right now could be done on a 80s mainframe. Computing has been coasting on Moore's law for some 3+ decades.

by Paul_S 10y ago

agumonkey 10y ago

It's a bit "scary" because this is a non optimized "controller" from 2013. With today's processes and market evolution, anything could be a multicore arm processor in disguise. You can never be sure about anything anymore since it can be virtual information generated by some logic/source.

carapace 10y ago
(My nightmare is when nanotech gets good enough that you can't trust the written word on paper...)
- i336_ 10y ago
  Ugh, I do not wish for that day. Ouch!
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Now thats edging towards the gray goo scenario.
- anonymfus 10y ago
  In what sense do you think that you can trust it know?
  - carapace 10y ago
    I trust letters a lot, it's the words that worry me.
- agumonkey 10y ago
  Maybe nature is secretly violating our privacy ..
- yongjik 10y ago
  That happens with emails. The future is here! There was one time I booked a flight. A few days before departure, that particular flight had an accident (Asiana 214 at SFO): I need to check if my flight will still depart as scheduled, so I dig my mailbox and the reservation confirmation email I received months ago(!) now says "Your flight is canceled." Apparently emails can be retroactively rewritten, WTF.
  - simcop2387 10y ago
    That shouldn't be possible. I wonder if they had put the message in there via an image on their site?
  - Tharre 10y ago
    Emails can't be rewritten by anyone except your mail provider, which is unlikely to ever happen. What most likely really happened is that the mail included remote content which got reloaded - and thus changed.
    - i336_ 10y ago
      Webmail provider* Sorry for being pedantic, but if you sync your mail to your own device (or collect all of it onto your own mail server), you eliminate this risk.
  - H4CK3RM4N 10y ago
    The message you were sent probably just embedded a webpage. Still creepy as fuck, but explainable.
    - jonknee 10y ago
      How is an email that loads remote assets "creepy as fuck"? It actually sounds useful in this case, all he had to do is look at an email to see what was going on with his flight. It doesn't have to be sophisticated, imagine an HTML email loading an image through a URL like so: /asiana/status?flight=214&date=2017-03-17 Pretty simple to return a standard "On Time", "Delayed" or "Cancelled" asset.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  I tried to work out how to do that at one point. I didnt succeed. So you can sleep well. Far as concealment, there was a $50 spray that made envelopes translucent to point you could see what was inside them. Unrelated note: I bought that book on Hamilton's methods. Finished it last night. Really enjoyed it outside of the filler, repetative, and overselling parts. The sections on requirements, specs, and spec-to-code (in abstract) were still accurate today for the most part. The HOS method itself reminded me of original LISP where its power and beauty came from how it reduced everything to a few primitives. Like LISP 1.0, there were severe usability & performance problems that prevented wider success. Fun to at least read on an early attempt.
  - carapace 10y ago
    Why bother changing the paper... climb into eyes and show the retina cells whatever you want... --- Oh hey awesome! Could you see applications for e.g. sitting down with a non-technical person and having them construct working software? That was something that really interested me: the claim that non-programmers could use it. What you say about how it reminded you of LISP is just fascinating. When I had refined my attempt to implement some HOS-like thing I eventually came up with something that I recognized (later, when I had learned LISP) as a crude subset of that. Imagine a system that uses a stack, like Forth, but the words/functions are built out of the three primitives (Sequence, Branch, Loop) in, uh, "HOS-style". Give it S-expr syntax and squint and I see a crude proto-LISP. ;-D (seq ...) (branch (...) (...)) (loop ...)
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      "Why bother changing the paper... climb into eyes and show the retina cells whatever you want..." Alternatively a psychadelic reaction in the brain combined with something like Oxytocin's claimed properties for enhancing trust. Then the person that shows up convinces the person in contact with the paper that what they're told is true. Many possibilities. " Could you see applications for e.g. sitting down with a non-technical person and having them construct working software?" What I see is it's like a combination of old CASE tools, a bit of functional programming, logical composition (see LCF provers), and a pile of dishonest marketing (aka "overselling"). I'm currently in a discussion about it elsewhere given Dijkstra personally nuked it while others found problems. Email me if you want and I'll give you a summary of some of that along with controversies that aren't settled yet.

digi_owl 10y ago

Frankly if one look at a 70s mainframe one have all the parts there, only running on transistors and tubes. "All" we have really done is shrink said transistors, and the boards holding them, down to something that can fit on a fingernail. Thing is that most of the people that are into computers these days don't know it, unless they dig into history. Because the mainframe world was so insular that microcomputers virtually started from a blank slate. Most of the "cloud" stuff people are going gaga over right now could be done on a 80s mainframe. Computing has been coasting on Moore's law for some 3+ decades.