28 ms·

NSA releases 1982 Grace Hopper lecture

• petercooper 2y ago
  Just watched this and it was fantastic. The first half is much like public lectures of hers I've watched before, but the second half goes into more depth in a variety of areas that were pretty cutting edge for 1982 like cybersecurity, loose coupling/modularity in software, VLSI/SoC, and programming language standardization.
  • philistine 2y ago
    I loved her few extremely specific references. She mentions the cheapest computer one can buy, the Intel 8021, a chip sold for 13 cents a piece if you buy a hundred. That's a great visualization of how cheap her system of computers can be.
    • 12_throw_away 2y ago
      Ok, this got me curious, how much have things changed for low-end embedded microcontrollers? Some numbers from a few minutes of searching: - Then: Intel 8021: 1 kB ROM, 64 B RAM, 11MHz, about $.40-.50 in 2024 dollars - Now: ATtiny25: 1kB ROM, 128 B of RAM, 20 MHz, maybe $.70-$.80 each for a huge order Not sure if this is the right comparison, and I'm sure there are lots of other differences that the topline numbers don't capture and that I don't know about (e.g, power consumption, instruction set, package size, etc. etc.)
      • msl 2y ago
        You might want to check out The Amazing $1 Microcontroller [1] which explores multiple microcontrollers that could be had for less than $1 (when buying a hundred of them) in 2020. I haven't checked how much the prices have dropped since (if at all) but it could still be a good starting point when looking for parts at the 8021's price range. [1] https://jaycarlson.net/microcontrollers/ https://jaycarlson.net/microcontrollers/
      • danhor 2y ago
        An ATtiny really isn't good value for money, except when looking for something simple to use. The CH32V003 is $.10-$.20, quite usable in my experience and features a 16 kB ROM, 2 kB RAM and a 32-bit 48 MHz RISC-V. The PMS150 is available for <$.05 with ~1.5 kB ROM, 60 B RAM and an 8-bit 8 MHz CPU. If you're excluding chinese manufacturers, the STM32G030 is sub-$.80 in quantity for 32 kBs of ROM, 8 kBs of RAM and a 32-bit 64 MHz ARM CPU.
        • fragmede 2y ago
          which is to say, an MMU to run a full blown operating system, and not a small C program with some interrupt handlers.
          • kragen 2y ago
            none of these have mmus, even the stm32g030 is a cortex-m0+
            • fragmede 2y ago
              dang. thanks for the correction. Looks like the cheapest chip with an MMU is the Allwinner F1C100S which is $2.20 in quantity.
              • kragen 2y ago
                happy to explore with you! mmus are a performance hack; they make your memory-protected code run faster than if you use a jit compiler that inserts memory bounds checks. but suppose running code that way costs you a factor of 10× in performance. so maybe your 30-dhrystone-mips processor (https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/Microcontrollers-MCU-MPU-SOC_PUYA-PY32F002AL15S6TU_C5292060.html https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/Microcontrollers-MCU-MPU..., say, or https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/Microcontrollers-MCU-MPU-SOC_Infineon-Cypress-Semicon-CY8C4045FNI-DS400T_C2952624.html https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/Microcontrollers-MCU-MPU... for 2×) performs roughly like a 3 dhrystone mips processor. if we believe https://netlib.org/performance/html/dhrystone.data.col0.html https://netlib.org/performance/html/dhrystone.data.col0.html that's roughly the performance of a sun 3/160, an amiga 2000, or a 40 megahertz amd clone 80386 pc (though much slower than an intel 386) that's much faster than many multiuser machines i've used the promise of java (and oberon) was that such large runtime overhead would be unnecessary with better static checking, and j2me and oberon seem to have largely borne that out the bigger issue is i think that cheap microcontrollers don't have much ram or off-chip bandwidth. if you want a megabyte on-chip, you end up with things like https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/stmicroelectronics/STM32H750VBT6/9453371 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/stmicroelectronic... (a 480-megahertz cortex-m7 with 128 kibibytes of flash and a mebibyte of ram for usd11.27), https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/infineon-technologies/CY8C624AFNI-S2D43T/16516853 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/infineon-technolo... (a dual-core 150-megahertz cortex-m0+ with 2 mebibytes of flash and a mebibyte of ram for usd12.92), https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/nxp-usa-inc/MIMXRT1062DVL6B/13635843 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/nxp-usa-inc/MIMXR... (a 600-megahertz cortex-m7 using external program memory and a mebibyte of ram for usd14.48), or https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/renesas-electronics-corporation/R5F572NNHDFP-30/12750997 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/renesas-electroni... (a 240-megahertz renesas rx72n with 4 mebibytes of flash and a mebibyte of ram for usd20.85) i'm pretty sure none of these have mmus either but i forget the rx architecture a whole esp32 module like https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/Development-Boards-Kits_LCKFB-LCKFB-ESP32S3R8N8_C20626143.html https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/Development-Boards-Kits_... is cheaper and has more ram though. that one has 8 megs of psram and costs usd4.93
      • kragen 2y ago
        all the following prices are for "under 100 dollars" quantities https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/Microcontrollers-MCU-MPU-SOC_Infineon-Cypress-Semicon-CY8C4045FNI-DS400T_C2952624.html https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/Microcontrollers-MCU-MPU... 1.5¢, 32 kibibytes in-application-programmable flash, 4 kibibytes sram, 48 megahertz, nearly 1 32-bit arm instruction per clock https://jlcpcb.com/partdetail/NyquestTech-NY8A051H/C5143390 https://jlcpcb.com/partdetail/NyquestTech-NY8A051H/C5143390 1.58¢, 1 kibiword otp prom, 48 bytes of ram, 20 megahertz, nearly 1 8-bit pic16-like instruction per clock, english datasheet https://www.nyquest.com.tw/upload/2024_02_293/NY8A051H_v1.6.pdf https://www.nyquest.com.tw/upload/2024_02_293/NY8A051H_v1.6.... https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/Microcontroller-Units-MCUs-MPUs-SOCs_PADAUK-Tech-PMC251-S14_C317604.html https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/Microcontroller-Units-MC... 10.5¢, 1 kibiword otp prom, 60 bytes ram, two hardware threads ('fppa') context-switching every cycle so you can get better real-time response, 16 megahertz, nearly 1 8-bit instruction per clock. english datasheet https://www.padauk.com.tw/upload/doc/PMC251%20datasheet%20V0.12_EN.pdf https://www.padauk.com.tw/upload/doc/PMC251%20datasheet%20V0... https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/Microcontrollers-MCU-MPU-SOC_PUYA-PY32F002AL15S6TU_C5292060.html https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/Microcontrollers-MCU-MPU... 8.7¢, 20 kibibytes flash, 3 kibibytes ram, 24 megahertz, nearly 1 32-bit arm instruction per clock. english datasheet https://download.py32.org/Datasheet/en/PY32F002A%C2%A0datasheet%C2%A0Rev.0.2_EN.pdf https://download.py32.org/Datasheet/en/PY32F002A%C2%A0datash... https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/Microcontrollers-MCU-MPU-SOC_WCH-Jiangsu-Qin-Heng-CH32V003J4M6_C5346354.html https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/Microcontrollers-MCU-MPU... 12.45¢, 16 kibibytes of flash, 2 kibibytes sram, 24 megahertz, nearly 1 32-bit risc-v (rv32ec) instruction per clock these are generally much lower power than the 8021, but really the place to look for power consumption is ambiq; these are all conventional cmos rather than the subthreshold logic ambiq uses they also incorporate a lot more peripherals
        • kragen 2y ago
          i thought i'd check out the 8021 to see how big the difference is. it's bigger than i imagined https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_MCS-48 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_MCS-48 says it's a cut-down 8048. the 8048 itself has a max clock speed 11 megahertz, 15 clocks per machine cycle, with about 70% of instructions taking one machine cycle, 30% taking two, for about half a mip. not vax mips, tho, an 8-bit mip. there's a manual for the chip family at https://manualsdump.com/en/download/manuals/intel-mcs-48/253276 https://manualsdump.com/en/download/manuals/intel-mcs-48/253... the biggest omission is that they cut it down from 28 to 21 i/o pins and eliminated interrupts, which would be a big loss in a modern microcontroller, but it was nmos rather than cmos, so you're looking at unholy power consumption anyway; 40 milliamps (typ., p. 192/478 (6-49)) at 5 volts is 200 milliwatts. but they also cut the clock speed, the minimal machine cycle time on the 8021 is listed as 10 μs (with a 3 megahertz crystal) rather than the 8048's 2.5μs or the 8049's 1.36μs. so you get 0.07 8-bit mips. it uses dynamic logic and dynamic ram to save space so you can't clock it at less than 20% of that, so you can't do low-power sleep, ever they also omitted the subtract instruction, which the 8048 doesn't have either. i guess you can use cpl, inc, add. (i see that what the manual suggests is cpl, add, cpl.) there's enough space for multiply and divide subroutines but they ain't gonna be fast also, you can forget about programming an 8021's program memory. it's mask-programmable only; you have to do your test programming on an 8748 before you place your order with intel for a batch of 8021s with a custom silicon mask encoding your 1024 bytes of already tested and debugged firmware. so those 42-cent∆ prices were necessarily in rather large batches. the 8051 and 8048/8049 had an 'ea' pin you can pull high to get it to execute code from external memory instead, but i don't think the 8021 did; the manual says, "no external rom expansion capability is provided." 0.07 8-bit mips is about 0.005 dhrystone mips, although i think the 8021 is too small to run dhrystone. the cypress chip i linked above is about 60 dhrystone mips at 48 megahertz, so about 12000 times faster, for about a 25× lower price. it also has 4096 bytes of ram instead of 64 (16×), 32 kibibytes of nonvolatile program memory instead of 1 (32×), plus 8 kibibytes of rom, and you can program the flash in-application (i.e., under the control of the program it's running). it has a hardware multiplier, which is about a 10× additional speedup for dsp type stuff. in deep sleep it uses 2.5μamps. at full speed it's a bit of a power hog by current standards, slurping a hefty 13 milliamps (at 1.8 volts if you like, so 23 milliwatts, almost ⅛ the 8021, but if you're in deep sleep most of the time you can go another 5000× lower). and it's 1.6mm×2mm. and you can program it in c. it has only 9 gpio pins, though! despite nominally being a psoc the cypress chip has no analog peripherals, not even a comparator. it does have internal oscillators (with no external components), pwm generation, i2c, spi, uart, and quadrature input, and its gpio pins have seven drive strength modes so depending on whether cpu speed or memory space is the bigger bottleneck for your application, price/performance has improved between 400× and 300000× since the 8021. for things that were constrained by battery life or reprogrammability, the difference isn't quantitative, it's just that the 8021 couldn't do the job at all in the metric of interest to hopper, though, which was computers per buck rather than mips per buck, it's only about 25× better than then ______ ∆ https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=.13&year1=198206&year2=202407 https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=.13&year1=1982... says 42¢
  • mikewarot 2y ago
    I was disappointed that she didn't really talk about multilevel security, which had solved the computer security problem by the time of this talk. However, her focus on breaking things into individual systems instead of multiprogrammed ones could be seen as an effective approach at the time. It wasn't until persistent internet connections became the norm, that this would have been shown to be an illusion. An illusion we continue to suffer for to this day.
• AdmiralAsshat 2y ago
  Does this lecture include her famous nanosecond/microsecond dioramas? The existing videos on it seem to be fairly low quality. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYqF6-h9Cvg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYqF6-h9Cvg
  • taxborn 2y ago
    Yes! About 40 minutes into the first posted lecture [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si9iqF5uTFk&t=2400s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si9iqF5uTFk&t=2400s
    • samstave 2y ago
      >"I'm beginning to push the velocity of light" Wow. 11.8" is a nanosecond. So much wisdon and understanding: "Get a molocule set, red balls can be computers, blue balls can be databases..." "Get out of the domain of the paper, you cant draw in paper any more, they've got to be in three diminsions."
      • kranke155 2y ago
        Was she right about three dimensional databases ? I’m not in IT
        • samstave 2y ago
          Yup - thats what an AI vector DB is all about - matrices. -- EDIT: @-probably_wrong You have to think that she also has to put things into the minds of others who dont have here prescient forethought of systems. Listen to all she says about "systems of computers" where "you need a computer to run all these other computers" and that you have ~160KB over head to run a 32KB program... andn how she breaks down all the constituents in a cluster, down to security auth... And she tells you to buy a Scientific Molocule Model set to be able to design computer systems in 3d. She is fn the foundation of cloud.
          • 2y ago
• ssklash 2y ago
  Is this the same video that was found via FOIA, but was on an old tape format of some kind that the NSA couldn't/wouldn't read?
  • KenoFischer 2y ago
    Yes. Linked press release says they borrowed equipment from NARA to play it.
    • toomuchtodo 2y ago
      Relevant Animats comment at the time. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40958494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40958494 Related: The NSA Is Defeated by a 1950s Tape Recorder. Can You Help Them? -https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40957026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40957026 - July 2024 (24 comments) Admiral Grace Hopper's landmark lecture is found, but the NSA won't release it -https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40926428 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40926428 - July 2024 (9 comments)
    • iNate2000 2y ago
      https://www.nsa.gov/Press-Room/Press-Releases-Statements/Press-Release-View/Article/3884041/nsa-releases-copy-of-internal-lecture-delivered-by-computing-giant-rear-adm-gra/ https://www.nsa.gov/Press-Room/Press-Releases-Statements/Pre... > able to retrieve the footage contained on two 1’ APEX tapes I'm no expert, but I think they meant 1-inch AMPEX tape. Also, perhaps they should record it in doubly. #ThisIsSpinalTap #Stonehenge #InchsToFeet
      • qingcharles 2y ago
        The page now says AMPEX. Did they read your comment? p.s. I'm imagining ECHELON flagging your comment and someone from the NSA quickly modifying the document on the sly...
        • philipwhiuk 2y ago
          Or someone in the NSA reads Hacker News. Hi, anonymous NSA employee!
• barathr 2y ago
  Amazing how prescient her talk is on so many levels -- things that in 1982 there were likely few folks really thinking about deeply and holistically.
  • TomK32 2y ago
    Don't forget she was born in 1906, having this thinking at 76 is something only few of us will be able to do. She had been born in an age before so many things that were important to the 20th century but are already outdated and being replaced in our 21st century. Amazing!
• refibrillator 2y ago
  I love her sense of humor! One story she tells is about the world’s first computer bug [1], I had never heard it nor the history of the word. She also mentions they were using computers to enhance satellite photos, it took 3 days to process but they could determine the height of waves in the middle of the pacific and the temperature 20 feet below the surface. [1] The Bug in the Computer Bug Story https://daily.jstor.org/the-bug-in-the-computer-bug-story/ https://daily.jstor.org/the-bug-in-the-computer-bug-story/
  • mighmi 2y ago
    Without detracting from her humor, Thomas Edison and other before him e.g. wrote about bugs in the 19th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bug_(engineering)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bug_(engineering)#History
    • vidarh 2y ago
      Hopper's involvement is not about being the one to coin the term, but about being the first to find an actual, physical computer bug. It's clear from the story the implication was not that it was the first use of the term as in that case the joke would make no sense.
      • brandall10 2y ago
        Right, otherwise the word "actual" wouldn't be in the notebook, which implies computer scientists were actively using the term prior to the event.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  • 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
    She goes on to say: "I think it's rather nice that the Navy is keeping a few of the early artifacts like the first bug and me and a few other things." :)
• saintradon 2y ago
  Who knows how many terabytes of incredible lectures like this our government is sitting on... Makes me sad to think about, frankly.
  • toomuchtodo 2y ago
    Don’t be sad, get busy digging and liberating. https://www.muckrock.com https://www.muckrock.com
    • robotnikman 2y ago
      Yep, the archives are there, its just a matter of going through the processes and finding them. The archives are HUGE though, so don't expect things to happen quickly.
      • cbm-vic-20 2y ago
        This may be a good job for AI/LLM.
  • mark-r 2y ago
    I can only think about that scene from the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark". Life imitates art.
• mrinfinitiesx 2y ago
  'I've gotten the most amount of blank stares I've ever gotten' when in regards to how people value their information. I mention two things outside of social media, which is what most people think is the internet, about what I can do with a computer and people stare at me like I'm speaking alien languages. I come to hacker news and realize I'm not even 1% as smart as most of you. A good video to watch. She's really funny. Really smart.
• joshstrange 2y ago
  I can't wait to watch this later. I watched just a few minutes starting at this timestamp [0] (it was linked in another comment) and it was gold, I love her sense of humor. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si9iqF5uTFk&t=2400s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si9iqF5uTFk&t=2400s
• mrandish 2y ago
  Wow! This being released is wonderful and unexpected. I first heard about these tapes being found six weeks ago yet the NSA being unable to release them due to not having a suitable working 1-inch VTR machine (via this article: https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2024/jul/10/grace-hopper-lost-lecture-found-nsa/ https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2024/jul/10/grace-hop...) That article was re-posted here on HN and elsewhere but didn't seem to get much attention and I feared the worst, since 1-inch magnetic video tape degrades with time. Very frustrating since such vintage VTRs do exist in working order in the hands of museums, video preservationists and collectors. Now six weeks later we get the best possible news! Hopefully, that article and the re-postings helped spread the word and someone in control of access to the tape got connected to someone with the gear. And what an amazing piece of history to have preserved. I'm only ten minutes into the first tape but she's obviously a treasure - clear thinking, great communication and a sharp wit. Even captured here later in life you can clearly see why she was so successful and highly regarded by her peers (including some the most notable people in early computing history).
  • molticrystal 2y ago
    From the press release on the page[0] explains they got a machine from the National Archives. Though it probably would of been more fun if they directly cooperated with citizens of the public to decode the tapes. >While NSA did not possess the equipment required to access the footage from the media format in which it was preserved, NSA deemed the footage to be of significant public interest and requested assistance from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to retrieve the footage. NARA’s Special Media Department was able to retrieve the footage contained on two 1’ APEX tapes and transferred the footage to NSA to be reviewed for public release. [0] https://www.nsa.gov/Press-Room/Press-Releases-Statements/Press-Release-View/Article/3884041/nsa-releases-copy-of-internal-lecture-delivered-by-computing-giant-rear-adm-gra/ https://www.nsa.gov/Press-Room/Press-Releases-Statements/Pre...
    • dtx1 2y ago
      The NSA being the good guys for once feels strange. Especially caring for public interest.
• spintin 2y ago
  [dead]
• hnpolicestate 2y ago
  So it's interesting to know why people say what they do *when* (1982) they do. At 5:23 Rear Adm. Hopper says "they are dumping polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) around the country side". Toxic waste was a highly relevant cultural phenomena at the time. I believe she was referencing the "Valley of the Drums" toxic waste site which was proposed as a superfund site in 12/82. Love Canal made the subject popular 5 years earlier. For some reason I'm extremely interested in toxic waste. Anyways bit of reference.
  • MisterTea 2y ago
    > For some reason I'm extremely interested in toxic waste. Anyways bit of reference. Toxic waste is a real life monster that make for the best horror stories. Fictional monsters as in creatures aint got shit on real life willful poisoning of entire communities causing the suffering and deaths of millions. And its all done intentionally because someone wants more money - greed. The real monsters take on a dual form - the head of the beast being the people responsible and the body being the invisible poisons carelessly tossed onto the earth. Makes lovecraft and others look like mickey mouse.
    • hnpolicestate 2y ago
      I agree. Well said. For anyone interested, this is far and away the best book I've read on the subject of toxic waste. It became rare over the past 5 years. Used to be available on Open Library but I think they received a DMCA. Even the NYC public library only has one copy located at the main branch. Library wouldn't let me loan it out. https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Road_to_Love_Canal.html?id=OFhfAgAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Road_to_Love_Canal....
      • MisterTea 2y ago
        I should also have mentioned that as a child this issue of Nat Geo truly scared me scared me more than any silly horror movie could: https://archive.org/details/edg-ng-1981/edg%20NG%201985-03%20167-3%20Mar/page/n41/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/edg-ng-1981/edg%20NG%201985-03%2...
• huijzer 2y ago
  “We’re now at what will be the largest industry of the united states.” (at 4:50) That aged pretty well.
• tgtaptarget 2y ago
  [flagged]
• scrlk 2y ago
  Great quote at 45:26 regarding vertical vs. horizontal scaling: https://youtu.be/si9iqF5uTFk?t=2726 https://youtu.be/si9iqF5uTFk?t=2726 > "Now back in the early days of this country, when they moved heavy objects around, they didn't have any Caterpillar tractors, they didn't have any big cranes. They used oxen. And when they got a great big log on the ground, and one ox couldn't budge the darn thing, they did not try to grow a bigger ox. They used two oxen! And I think they're trying to tell us something. When we need greater computer power, the answer is not "get a bigger computer", it's "get another computer". Which of course, is what common sense would have told us to begin with."
  • oasisbob 2y ago
    Additionally, with early pioneer logging, another solution to avoiding having logs which are too large to handle was to not drop them in the first place. In the Pacific Northwest, US, early loggers would leave the huge ones - to the point where pioneers could complain about a lack of available timber in an old-growth forest. When the initial University of Washington was built, land-clearing costs were a huge portion of the overall capital spend. The largest trees on the site weren't used for anything productive; rather, they were climbed, chained together, and domino felled at the same time. By attaching the trees together, they only needed to fell one tree which brought the whole mess down into a pile and they burned it. I think there's a lesson here about choosing which logs you want to move.
    • pests 2y ago
      Having not read the article yet, this was one confusing comment until I realized by "logging" you meant actual trees and not log files.
      • dredmorbius 2y ago
        The "to record an event" meaning of logging does in fact originate from wooden logs, which were used to calculate the speed of a ship under sail. A log, tied to a fathom-line, was cast off the stern, and the number of knots which passed through the sailors hands in a measured time interval determined the speed. This was recorded as "log", in what came to be known as the "ship's log". The term came to be used for event recording in general. This was used as a component of "dead reckoning" (that is, deduced reckoning of position) in navigation, prior to the development of accurate time-keeping and direct position reporting through LORAN, radar-navigation, and ultimately GPS. Dead reckoning was not especially accurate and had some rather notorious failure modes. <https://www.etymonline.com/word/log https://www.etymonline.com/word/log> (definition 2) Chip log: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_log https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_log> Dead reckoning: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_reckoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_reckoning> Scilly naval disaster of 1707, in which four warships and 1,400 to 2,000 sailors of the British fleet were lost in a single navigational failure: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scilly_naval_disaster_of_1707 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scilly_naval_disaster_of_1707> This directly inspired the Longitude Rewards prizes for developing accurate navigational methods (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_rewards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_rewards>) and John Harrison's invention of a marine clock (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison#Longitude_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison#Longitude_proble...>). More recently, the Honda Point disaster in which the US Navy, 1923 saw the loss of 7 destroyers at flank speed of 20 knots off the Santa Barbara coast: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Point_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Point_disaster>. It's interesting to note that advances in timekeeping typically translate to improvements in location determination.
• begueradj 2y ago
  Grace Hopper: she devised the first "true and modern" compiler ever (A1 was its name, if I recall).
  • begueradj 2y ago
    Just checked: her compiler was called A-0. If I remember well, she did it when she was teaching mathematics to help her students. (As a part of my English language exam when I was a student, I had to write a text about a subject of my choice. I wrote about the history of programming languages: that's where I discovered Grace Hopper and mentioned her work in my essay).
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
  "I have already received the highest award that I will ever receive no matter how long I live, no matter how many more jobs that I have- and that has been the privilege and responsibility of serving very proudly in the United States Navy." What a peach. She inspired this jarhead.
• cm2187 2y ago
  It's almost a stand up comedy special, but a smart version.
  • kranke155 2y ago
    Her humor was what blew me away the most. She is clearly an amazing public speaker. And I mean this - amazing - she is at a level that few CEOs and public figures ever got. She’s got tremendous charm, intelligence and wit
• biofox 2y ago
  The proof she presents in Part 2 (t=15:00) on software changes propagating through a system is perhaps the best theoretical justification I have ever seen for Object Oriented design principles and encapsulation: https://youtu.be/AW7ZHpKuqZg?si=Dzt6JeoX7MDT8D9M&t=899 https://youtu.be/AW7ZHpKuqZg?si=Dzt6JeoX7MDT8D9M&t=899
  • mrkeen 2y ago
    I think anyone can walk away from that explanation with their own methodology vindicated.
  • MajimasEyepatch 2y ago
    It's a strong case for loose coupling, but that can be achieved with object oriented programming, functional programming, or any number of other paradigms.
• rkagerer 2y ago
  A timeless piece of advice comes toward the end, where she describes all the smart, young professionals out there who are looking for positive leadership. It means respect those above and keep them informed, and look after your crew. The zeitgeist of the time was shifting emphasis onto management (MBA type stuff) but the army had a saying; you can't manage a soldier into war, you lead them. You manage things, you lead people.
  • stopyellingatme 2y ago
    This quote/idea needs to be tattooed on every senior managers arm
• russellbeattie 2y ago
  > "I think we forget that the four and five year olds are learning arithmetic. The little professor. The six year olds are getting Speak and Spell. You better look out, there's going to be a generation coming, that will know how to spell." > The seven-year-olds, of course, are learning BASIC, running the computers. I know one man that bought a computer and took it home, his son is teaching him BASIC. His son is seven. Of course I know another guy that took a computer home, now he has to apply to his three children for computer time." > They're tremendously bright and they are out there, the brightest youngsters we have ever had." As a GenXer who was a 10yo computer nerd programming BASIC in 1982, I'm proud to know that she was talking about myself and my peers! But then she goes on to predict that the brightest kids will come from rural areas because they have "good schools". No idea where she got that idea from - I moved from a city to a rural area around that time and the education wasn't any better and my access to computers was totally gone. In my experience, most rural areas, especially in flyover states, neither had the money for a computer lab, nor the teachers that knew how to use them.
  • Kon-Peki 2y ago
    > But then she goes on to predict that the brightest kids will come from rural areas because they have "good schools". No idea where she got that idea from She is speaking from the perspective of someone leading a team of people that volunteered for the Navy and were then selected to do technical work for her team. I think that given the years in which she lived, she would have certainly be seeing the side effect effects of the growing divide in opportunity between the urban and rural areas. A smart, hardworking kid in the city or suburbs is going to have a fulfilling job or go off to college at a higher rate than the equivalently talented and hardworking kid from farm country, where joining the military is probably the best chance at advancement that they're going to get.
    • WillAdams 2y ago
      Something like that --- my going to Stanford was torpedoed by my rural high school not being able to find a teacher for calculus my senior year, so, having aced the ASVAB, EDPT, and DLPT, I enlisted. That rural school system was a marked change from the one near Columbus AFB I had previously attended --- most students were from the base and the school received a generous amount of DoD funding to offset that, so all of the teachers had Masters degrees, and a number of them were accredited as faculty at a nearby college --- classes were strongly divided between social such as homeroom, P.E., social studies, &c. (attended at one's grade level) and academic (attended at one's grade level with a cap on 4 years ahead if in grade 8 or lower --- said cap was removed at 8th grade and students could begin taking college courses --- many graduated high school and were simultaneously awarded a 4 year college degree).
• karmicthreat 2y ago
  What computer is Harper talking about here? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW7ZHpKuqZg&t=375s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW7ZHpKuqZg&t=375s
• getpost 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • titzer 2y ago
    Please do not post facts you got from asking an LLM.
• gigel82 2y ago
  160Kb overhead was outrageous. I'm glad she didn't get to experience a monstrosity like Windows 11 booting up with 12Gb of overhead...
  • rationalfaith 2y ago
    [dead]
• mulmen 2y ago
  42 years later the storage cost of this information has not yet surpassed its value.
• thenegation 2y ago
  I did not watch the videos yet (saved for later), but did a fun experiment: Jump to a random timestamp. Listen for 3-4 seconds. Repeat it 10 times. Quite impressive.
• markunivac95 2y ago
  Partial stenographic record. Sept. 19, 1985. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/6566336 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/6566336
• huppeldepup 2y ago
  At 32 min she talks about a book called "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Microcomputers, but didn't know who to ask" by Slater. I found a reference on archive but nothing more, also nothing on the author. Leland W. Slater, "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Microcomputers," Computop i cs . 3/82, pp. 38ff.
  • pdw 2y ago
    Not a book, but a paper. I found two citations, but I can't find either version. Slater, L.W. (1982). Everything you ever wanted to know about microcomputers (but didn’t know WHO to ask). Navy Regional Data Automation Center Publ., Norfolk, Virginia, 19 pp. Leland W. Slater, "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Microcomputers," Computopics, 3/82, pp. 38ff. (Computopics appears to have been the magazine of the Washington DC chapter of the ACM.)
    • erk__ 2y ago
      There seem to exist a copy at the University of Virginia, School of Nursing: https://nursing.virginia.edu/nursing-history/collections-cnhi/individual-collections/graham-collection/ https://nursing.virginia.edu/nursing-history/collections-cnh... So it may be possible to either ask them or go there and get a scan of it.
      • erk__ 2y ago
        I have sent them a mail about it and will update somewhere if I hear back. Update: I have heard back and should have a scan of it soon.
        • erk__ 2y ago
          I got sent the scan which was very nice of them. The paper is pretty interesting and contains some good information from the time. https://archive.org/details/slater-1982 https://archive.org/details/slater-1982
          • 2y ago
• mewse-hn 2y ago
  I'm so glad the NSA released this despite trying to stonewall the FOIA request by saying they couldn't access it.
• hank808 2y ago
  "...and you can write programs that will run on anybody's computer." https://youtu.be/AW7ZHpKuqZg?t=1694 https://youtu.be/AW7ZHpKuqZg?t=1694
• hank808 2y ago
  Just fantastic!!! She was amazing! I'm so glad that they managed to get this digitized and released.
• sova 2y ago
  >Be looking at the information flow. Will have to contemplate and ruminate on this one, thanks Grace.
• madduci 2y ago
  Do you know if there is any transcript available?
  • gregw2 2y ago
    You can go to the Youtube page for the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si9iqF5uTFk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si9iqF5uTFk ( or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW7ZHpKuqZg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW7ZHpKuqZg for part 2) click on the "...more" link in the video description, then click on the "Show Transcript" button further down that appears and you will see a transcript in the upper right of your screen which you can scroll through and read.
  • gmn42 2y ago
    There's the automated Youtube transcript, of course, but while searching for a paper she referenced, I came across a transcript of essentially the same speech given at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1985 (three years later). https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/6566336 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/6566336
• robwwilliams 2y ago
  Ouch: conversation got dragged away by wild oxen. Back to Grace Hopper: What I lived most about the first presentation was her questions about “Valuing Information” and getting nothing but blank stares whenever she asked this question. This is also a huge missed research domain in biomedical research. For me the vale of information (data utility) is a function of data connectivity potential. If I have one vector of data that connects to 1000 other vectors of data then that vector has much greater utility (all else equal) than onr vector that only connects on one other vector. The first vector is “smart” data that leads to valuable information, the second vector is “mute” data—just barely information at all. Link on this general topic hat I hope GH would have enjoyed as much as I did her luminous and funny talk: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2751652/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2751652/
• dangsux 2y ago
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• vegetablepotpie 2y ago
  She said that there has been no research on measuring the value of information relative to other information and that the way priorities are set are by the squeakiest most senior person. In 2024 I can say this has not changed one bit. Even though we’ve gone through the Information Age, we still make decisions like we live in the Gilded Age.