6 ms·

Thank you for continuing to engage! :) This is a good to great opportunity for me to practice my skills. I'll reply in a bit :)

graderjs 5y ago
> 650Mhz CPUs in the 1960s is nonsense. Prove it. :) > Don't assume independence between commenters. Am I? Heh :) Your independence is you can choose what to say. > That specific example is impossible. The CM-5 was 1990 technology. How do you know what's impossible? Are you an insider to NSA's SAPs? > We have that. We have lots of primary sources from that era which have been declassified. What we have is the declass story. The classified story could be different. > Why? Because of the nature of SCI SAPs. > Then you know nothing about Cray Research, and are seemingly coming up with ways to patch your conspiracy theory - because what you are suggesting is a conspiracy theory. You’re insisting SAPs are “conspiracies”. Hahaha :) > For your conspiracy theory to work, just where is this special compartmentalized project supposed to be located? The location of a SAP would be classified, obviously. > the population of the town in 1970 was 12,351. You don't hide a second project in a town like that. Pine Gap is a small town, many SAPs are hidden there. Los Alamos is a small town, many SAPs are there, including the Manhattan Project's Fat Man. > And Cray put it there so he wouldn't have to deal with business meetings….better than Cray[1] working at the other site. As the public face Cray is not going to be deep in any SAP, as it's a security mistake to allocate the senior leader to a technical role in an SAP, and a resource misallocation because the leader will have many other commitments. > It makes no sense unless you think there's thousands of people engaged not just in a conspiracy of silence, but also who managed to prevent any hint of tech transfer between the projects. You just described exactly how TS/SCI SAPs work > Then as a suggestion, don't bring up cockamamie [2] conspiracies about topics you know little about ("I'm not a supercomputer expert") in the hopes of getting that discussion. That’s the best way to get an answer. Just say, “I don’t know, I’m interested”, and people who show up. > There's a lot of literature about the history of supercomputing, the NSA, and related project. Read that literature to learn what sorts of multiple corroboration exist. Then you can seriously evaluate if alternative stories are a better fit to the evidence. I don’t need to read that. I can just enjoy it, thinking about it, looking at it. > Your conspiracy theory requires coming up with someone more clever than Cray as the tech lead, who never talk about it, and nothing ever became known about it. Not really, as the location is fine, and SAPs will be staffed with many experts more clever than Cray in their niche. The public face will not be deep into an SAP and probably wouldn't even be cleared for it. Do you think is Elon cleared for and deep into every SAP SpaceX has going?
- eesmith 5y ago
  > Prove it. :) You have yet to explain why a single comment, heard second- or third-hand, about a putative 650 MHz CPU in the 1960s, is so believable that you would rather believe there's a secret project a least a decade ahead of the rest of the world, than believe it was misheard or falsified. The only people I know who do that are conspiracy theorists. > The classified story could be different. Yes, and you could be living inside a Truman-like artificial environment, where everything around you is a carefully constructed zoo of what humans used to be like. Now prove you aren't. Or, Richard Dolan could be a cockamamie conspiracy theorist. Prove he isn't. > How do you know what's impossible? Because I have an idea of how much work it takes to make something like a Cray and what materials technology was like. Integrated chips were still new. The Apollo Guidance Computer famously was the first computer based on silicon ICs, and it was about the level of an Apple ][. The earlier discrete systems would be speed of light limited. 650 MHz means light travels 46 cm in vacuum. Which is roughly the size of the Apollo Guidance Computer. And we have many stories about how hard it was to build the AGC, and how much work it took to program it. Your conspiracy theory requires a system which is about 300x more powerful than the Apollo program could develop, despite access to the world's public resources. It seems you would rather make up a fake history about the secret world than enjoy the amazing work that actually did happen. > Manhattan Project's Fat Man The Manhattan Project is quite instructive about how hard it is to keep things a secret. Quoting http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/03/29/narratives-of-manhattan-project-secrecy/ http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/03/29/narratives-of-manh... ] There were leaks about the Manhattan Project (and atomic bombs and energy in general) printed in major press outlets in the United States and abroad. It was considered an “open secret” among Washington politicos and journalists that the Army was working on a new super-weapon that involved atomic energy just prior to its use. Don't forget the Soviets knew about it too. > many experts more clever than Cray in their niche In the niche field of high performance computing, there was no one better than Cray. Again, 'How do you talk to God?' That's one of the more annoying things about conspiracy experts. They demean the history we know about by presuming there must be a secret history so much better that brilliant people like Cray are but shadows of these unnamed people who never boast about themselves, never write memoirs, and whose works are never de-classified, even now when 1GHz laptops are passé. And they don't care to learn more about actual history to understand when something doesn't have the ring of truth.

graderjs 5y ago

> 650Mhz CPUs in the 1960s is nonsense. Prove it. :) > Don't assume independence between commenters. Am I? Heh :) Your independence is you can choose what to say. > That specific example is impossible. The CM-5 was 1990 technology. How do you know what's impossible? Are you an insider to NSA's SAPs? > We have that. We have lots of primary sources from that era which have been declassified. What we have is the declass story. The classified story could be different. > Why? Because of the nature of SCI SAPs. > Then you know nothing about Cray Research, and are seemingly coming up with ways to patch your conspiracy theory - because what you are suggesting is a conspiracy theory. You’re insisting SAPs are “conspiracies”. Hahaha :) > For your conspiracy theory to work, just where is this special compartmentalized project supposed to be located? The location of a SAP would be classified, obviously. > the population of the town in 1970 was 12,351. You don't hide a second project in a town like that. Pine Gap is a small town, many SAPs are hidden there. Los Alamos is a small town, many SAPs are there, including the Manhattan Project's Fat Man. > And Cray put it there so he wouldn't have to deal with business meetings….better than Cray[1] working at the other site. As the public face Cray is not going to be deep in any SAP, as it's a security mistake to allocate the senior leader to a technical role in an SAP, and a resource misallocation because the leader will have many other commitments. > It makes no sense unless you think there's thousands of people engaged not just in a conspiracy of silence, but also who managed to prevent any hint of tech transfer between the projects. You just described exactly how TS/SCI SAPs work > Then as a suggestion, don't bring up cockamamie [2] conspiracies about topics you know little about ("I'm not a supercomputer expert") in the hopes of getting that discussion. That’s the best way to get an answer. Just say, “I don’t know, I’m interested”, and people who show up. > There's a lot of literature about the history of supercomputing, the NSA, and related project. Read that literature to learn what sorts of multiple corroboration exist. Then you can seriously evaluate if alternative stories are a better fit to the evidence. I don’t need to read that. I can just enjoy it, thinking about it, looking at it. > Your conspiracy theory requires coming up with someone more clever than Cray as the tech lead, who never talk about it, and nothing ever became known about it. Not really, as the location is fine, and SAPs will be staffed with many experts more clever than Cray in their niche. The public face will not be deep into an SAP and probably wouldn't even be cleared for it. Do you think is Elon cleared for and deep into every SAP SpaceX has going?

eesmith 5y ago
> Prove it. :) You have yet to explain why a single comment, heard second- or third-hand, about a putative 650 MHz CPU in the 1960s, is so believable that you would rather believe there's a secret project a least a decade ahead of the rest of the world, than believe it was misheard or falsified. The only people I know who do that are conspiracy theorists. > The classified story could be different. Yes, and you could be living inside a Truman-like artificial environment, where everything around you is a carefully constructed zoo of what humans used to be like. Now prove you aren't. Or, Richard Dolan could be a cockamamie conspiracy theorist. Prove he isn't. > How do you know what's impossible? Because I have an idea of how much work it takes to make something like a Cray and what materials technology was like. Integrated chips were still new. The Apollo Guidance Computer famously was the first computer based on silicon ICs, and it was about the level of an Apple ][. The earlier discrete systems would be speed of light limited. 650 MHz means light travels 46 cm in vacuum. Which is roughly the size of the Apollo Guidance Computer. And we have many stories about how hard it was to build the AGC, and how much work it took to program it. Your conspiracy theory requires a system which is about 300x more powerful than the Apollo program could develop, despite access to the world's public resources. It seems you would rather make up a fake history about the secret world than enjoy the amazing work that actually did happen. > Manhattan Project's Fat Man The Manhattan Project is quite instructive about how hard it is to keep things a secret. Quoting http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/03/29/narratives-of-manhattan-project-secrecy/ http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/03/29/narratives-of-manh... ] There were leaks about the Manhattan Project (and atomic bombs and energy in general) printed in major press outlets in the United States and abroad. It was considered an “open secret” among Washington politicos and journalists that the Army was working on a new super-weapon that involved atomic energy just prior to its use. Don't forget the Soviets knew about it too. > many experts more clever than Cray in their niche In the niche field of high performance computing, there was no one better than Cray. Again, 'How do you talk to God?' That's one of the more annoying things about conspiracy experts. They demean the history we know about by presuming there must be a secret history so much better that brilliant people like Cray are but shadows of these unnamed people who never boast about themselves, never write memoirs, and whose works are never de-classified, even now when 1GHz laptops are passé. And they don't care to learn more about actual history to understand when something doesn't have the ring of truth.