Love the story of the Rad Lab and radar before and during WW2. Two relevant books I've read recently(ish) that I'd recommend to anyone interested in learning more would be 1) The Invention That Changed the World by Robert Buderi and 2) a biography of Alfred Loomis, Tuxedo Park by Jennet Conant.
The foreman had pointed out his best man - what was his name? - and, joking with the puzzled machinist, the three bright young men had hooked up the recording apparatus to the lathe controls. Hertz! That had been the machinist's name - Rudy Hertz, an old-timer, who had been about ready to retire. Paul remembered the name now, and remembered the deference the old man had shown the bright young men.
Afterward, they'd got Rudy's foreman to let him off, and, in a boisterous, whimsical spirit of industrial democracy, they'd taken him across the street for a beer. Rudy hadn't understood quite what the recording instruments were all about, but what he had understood, he'd liked: that he, out of thousands of machinists, had been chosen to have his motions immortalized on tape.
And here, now, this little loop in the box before Paul, here was Rudy as Rudy had been to his machine that afternoon - Rudy, the turner-on of power, the setter of speeds, the controller of the cutting tool. This was the essence of Rudy as far as his machine was concerned, as far as the economy was concerned, as far as the war effort had been concerned. The tape was the essence distilled from the small, polite man with the big hands and black fingernails; from the man who thought the world could be saved if everyone read a verse from the Bible every night; from the man who adored a collie for want of children; from the man who . . . What else had Rudy said that afternoon? Paul supposed the old man was dead now - or in his second childhood in Homestead.
Now, by switching in lathes on a master panel and feeding them signals from the tape, Paul could make the essence of Rudy Hertz produce one, ten, a hundred, or a thousand of the shafts.
As a mentor, I like to set explicit expectations for how much time someone should spend digging before asking for help, and I encourage others to do the same.
For an intern or new grad whose information gathering skills likely have gaps they don't even know about, I'll tell them to come check with me if they're completely blocked and haven't made progress for an hour, as it's frequently a small pointer or hint from me that can get them back on track. As they get more more knowledge about the systems and experience unblocking themselves, this grows to half a day, a day, and more from there.
The same applies even for experienced engineers who are new to the team, though the timeboxes grow much faster. There will always be little things to learn, and there's no point burning a day of chasing threads if it's some quirk in the system you just happen to not be aware of.
On a much less optimistic dark humor note, this is the same argument in If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies about a superintelligent AI emerging and being a threat to humans.
I remember learning about the complex pumping machines running some of the reservoir pumps in Boston (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Waterworks_Museum), where they made such distinct noises when working (and malfunctioning) that an engineer could diagnose the problem by ear.
I sometimes think about what a modern analogy would be for some of the operations work I do — translate a graph of status codes into a steady hum at 440hz for 200s, then cacophonous jolts as the 500s start to arrive? As you mentioned, no perfect analogy as you get farther and farther from moving parts.
They have extremely distinct sounds coming from the GPUs. You can hear the difference between GPT-OSS-20b and Qwen3-30b pretty easily just based on the sounds that the gpu is making.
The sound is being produced by the VRMs and power supply to the GPU being switched on and off hundreds of times per second. Each token being produced consumes power, and each attention and MLP layer consumes a different amount of power. No other GPU stress test consumes power in the same way, so you rarely hear that sound otherwise.
Hrrm. Maybe up to 25 years ago, but certainly 30 years ago you had similar phenomena via FM-Radio. Depending on what you did, there were different interferences in the radio. Unzipping something made different sounds than compiling, running a raytracer, or zooming into fractals.
One could use that while half asleep in the bedroom, whith a radio tuned into the right frequency, almost muted, and then know if Portage on Gentoo, or build.sh/pkgsrc on NetBSD was ready, or interrupted.
Cars are a pretty common example. Any new noises or changes in noises are indicating something. Usually a developing problem. E.g. a groaning or roaring noise, especially in turns, that varies with speed, is likely a worn out wheel bearing.
Sound is a good cue to problems. In one place I worked, we had a big board of dials showing what was happening to our web servers. The hands were moved by little servomotors that made a slight noise when they turned. I couldn't see the board from my desk, but I found that I could tell immediately, by the sound, when there was a problem with a server.
Reminds me of the purported Ralph Waldo Emerson quote which rings true for myself as well: “I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
Generations hence, I see a future where school children are taught their lessons:
“Now that we’ve studied the classic American authors, like Emerson, let’s learn about the next generation. Their leading light was cantor_S_drug, who brilliantly updated a classic author with modern sensibilities. Just look at those double ellipses — truly a poetic legend.”
Honestly, I actually take OP’s somewhat flippant remark as a very real counterpoint to both the article and to the Emerson quote: be careful what you consume, lest you become it. I have met people whose core sexuality is obviously shaped by porn, I’ve met people who eat unhealthy food every day and are surprised that they’re unhealthy, and I’ve met people who read/watch a ton of useless shit and it subconsciously or consciously starts to shape their identity and beliefs, even if they don’t start out believing what they’re reading/watching.
I take the opposite perspective on everything you've said.
Is it really that sad of a death? Many people die every day, and a few of them happen to have a ton of cameras shoved in their face. Why should anyone care about some minor celebrity?
I don't know what all this mourning is about, but it seems fake to me. The real reason why people should be upset is that it sets a precedent for political violence, so why not be upfront about it?
>It made me think about the famous part in The Twits (how if you say nasty stuff, you become ugly).
Ugly people are ugly, and nasty people are nasty. Don't get it twisted, real life is not a fairy tale. The cause and effect is reversed.
> AFAIK It's not true, but it's such a wonderful analogy. Kirk was an inflammatory figure, and spent a great deal of time talking about negative things. This was, essentially, a big part of what he did for a living - he talked about really sad things to win debates.
I don't know, it seems like he pretty much just rattled off standard talking points from the conservative playbook. My perspective is the opposite, the takeaway is that he wasn't that controversial or meaningful or deeply effective.
The tragedy is not that his life's work was cut short, it's just that his life's work was not that important in the first place. It's inevitable that we all kick the bucket one day, what matters is how we spend our time.
That's also what makes the killing so strange to me. He was a rather inconsequential figure, so the idea that someone would be driven to madness over him is pretty unusual and speaks to some sickness.
>Less that it makes you ugly, and more that a tragedy can seem, after the fact, strangely coherent for people who make their lives around tragic things.
People are cheering or mourning because they want to see "their side" win regardless of the principles or civility. It's not that complicated.
I can't tell you whether it was 'that sad of a death', I'm afraid - one of the ways I cope with the abject horror at all the suffering that exists is by convincing myself that suffering is a binary state, and cannot be ranked. That's something I choose to believe to my own sanity. It could be desconstructed in multiple ways.
I just know that I am better to other humans and animals, in terms of my own actions, where I don't think of a death as 'more' or 'less' sad. For me, personally (and this is not a judgement about anyone else, or an implication it would lead anyone else to such thoughts) I would find it to be an incredibly slippery ethical slope. It's a stance, in a semi-Kierkegaardian way, that I choose to take. I would rather not rank suffering.
> Ugly people are ugly, and nasty people are nasty. Don't get it twisted, real life is not a fairy tale. The cause and effect is reversed.
Ditto, I'm extremely handsome, so I can't go around posting about people being ugly. That's not in the secret code they give insanely good looking / handsome guys, and most of us follow to this day.. I guess you didn't get taken out of lessons for those classes? (I jest - I'm a conventionally ugly man.)
> I don't know, it seems like he pretty much just rattled off standard talking points from the conservative playbook. My perspective is the opposite, the takeaway is that he wasn't that controversial or meaningful or deeply effective.
> The tragedy is not that his life's work was cut short, it's just that his life's work was not that important in the first place. It's inevitable that we all kick the bucket one day, what matters is how we spend our time.
On that second one, that's a question of my ethical preference not to speak about people in certain ways so soon after their passing. Again, no judgement, and I'm not saying one position is more moral than the other. In fact, the only thing I'll say against Kirk for a little while in public is that many Christians don't believe it's humanity's job to do the judging.
Purely politically, yes, I strongly disagree with both his beliefs and methods. It's hard for me to know how much I'll mind when people shit-talk my politics when I eventually die. Again, I'm sorry, I'm arguing from emotion here - I just prefer not to for a little while. I don't know what that might feel like. I'm sure you can infer my political beliefs (and if you despise them, you are welcome at my funeral, should I beat you there - it might be a learning experience for me).
> That's also what makes the killing so strange to me. He was a rather inconsequential figure, so the idea that someone would be driven to madness over him is pretty unusual and speaks to some sickness.
This part is, genuinely, fascinating, and what I'm interested in and happy to talk about personally.
While two of the 'great American assassinations' (MLK, Malcolm X) of the 20th Century weren't serving politicians, I don't think it's unfair to say that Kirk was not a man who cast a similar image in the popular imagination.
I'm speaking completely in media-theory, star-theory terms, here.
You're right: it's deeply deeply strange.
We have been on a trajectory for some time where the idea of what I think is best described as 'divine right to celebrity' has been in a process of entropy. There are lots of theories about that, but I don't buy the 'we have more access to them, so they have to be more authentic' argument which seems to be most common.
(Personally, I believe that it's due to the increasing secularisation of the West; no matter how good an actor is, it must have been so much easier to understand Marilyn Monroe as an Athena than it is for us today to understand Sydney Sweeney the same, despite them sharing other archetypical qualities. It wasn't many years before Monroe's time that the audience's primary consumption of the feminine image would be as religious figure. I am not saying one mode is better or worse; I am saying that the context around "seeing a human image" has changed drastically in the West, and I believe this is overly discounted by many.)
This is important, and strange, I think, because Kirk's death is the crystallisation of this. His imagine is described as an 'icon' but is entirely divorced from the idea of an 'icon'. He is described as 'political' but was not a politician. I could go on, and I thought the image on Fox News of Trump announcing they'd caught a possible perm - looking for all the world like he belonged on the sofa - was one of the perfect images of the Trump campaign. Trump is by nature a pundit more than he is a politician, and I think he'd be the first to say as much. He would be a perfect president of the US if all that job entailed was sitting on a sofa being [charming/off-colour/a mix].
None of this, either, is a value judgement. You cannot force meaning onto star images. I don't think most politicians understand that. I think most people see their images in a fairly accurate way, and agree or disagree with the idea that they should be politicians based on that.
But it is a very very important to understand that:
- When the media treats the assassination of (forgive me if I'm wrong) a man who was essentially in charge of a big youth club and YouTube channel the same way they would the killing of a very, very important politician, this is new.
- When other world leaders phone in condolences for the same guy, this is new.
- When his body will be displayed in the Rotunda(?) this is extremely new ground for a man of his profession.
Utah is a death-penalty state. Assuming no inside job, if a killer knew that and still chose the Utah date, on a literal list of tour dates, this means that the killer sees this person's image as of high importance.
Because you really can just take a shot at anyone you like, really.
To choose a guy who is, functionally, a vlogger (right?) is new. And while I'm not saying the killer is of sound mind, or not of gainful employment by other parties, they are still a person who consumes news media and made this decision.
I think that had the assassination weapon been a drone, people would understand so much more how new this is. It's totally, totally new ground. I think it shows how completely meaningless the old ideals and images of the Anglo-American sphere are becoming, and I think it points to why it often seems like different people are looking at America, or the world, from completely different planets.
(NB - I know we killed John Lennon, which is somewhat analogous. But at least Charlie Kirk pretended to listen to and debate people, whereas I don't remember seeing any videos of Lennon showing any empathy to his audience prior to some of his contributions to the later Beatles stuff, eg White Album. If only Lennon had been carrying a copy of the record when he was shot. Not that the vinyl would have stopped a bullet, but there would, at least, be one fewer copy of it in circulation. I'm only joking - and mostly because I want people to understand that despite what I said above, I do think it's fine at a point - I do quite like that album. It's really useful, for example, if someone asks you which Beatles album you think Charlie Kirk was most akin to, because they're both basically about as bad as it gets.)
I remember seeing this in React's __SECRET_INTERNALS_DO_NOT_USE_OR_YOU_WILL_BE_FIRED, and I've always enjoyed similar lighthearted and unwieldingly-long names.
That's a great call-out, and it (along with the change itself) underlines the importance of not letting fun get in the way of actual engineering improvements. Defunnification as a side effect, if you will.
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