Hackaday Newsletter 0xA1

Reading up on ancient artificial intelligence. [HACKADAY]() 8-Tracks Are Back? They Are In My House [Read Article Now»]( Giant Brains, Or Machines That Think By [Elliot Williams]( Last week, I stumbled on a marvelous book: “[Giant Brains; or, Machines That Think](” by Edmund Callis Berkeley. What’s really fun about it is the way it sounds like it could be written just this year – waxing speculatively about the future when machines do our thinking for us. Except it was written in 1949, and the “thinking machines” are early proto-computers that use relays (relays!) for their logic elements. But you need to understand that back then, they could calculate ten times faster than any person, and they would work tirelessly day and night, as long as their motors keep turning and their contacts don’t get corroded. But once you get past the futuristic speculation, there’s actually a lot of detail about how the then-cutting-edge machines worked. Circuit diagrams of logic units from both the relay computers and the brand-new vacuum tube machines are on display, as are drawings of the tricky bits of purely mechanical computers. There is even a diagram of the mercury delay line, and an explanation of how circulating audio pulses through the medium could be used as a form of memory. All in all, it’s a wonderful glimpse at the earliest of computers, with enough detail that you could probably build something along those lines with a little moxie and a few thousands of relays. This grounded reality, coupled with the fantastic visions of where computers would be going, make a marvelous accompaniment to a lot of the breathless hype around AI these days. Recommended reading! From the Blog --------------------------------------------------------------- [Displays We Love Hacking: DSI]( By [Arya Voronova]( In this installment of Arya's display series, she tackles the hardest, yet most rewarding, screen yet: DSI. [Read more »]( [Scrapping the Local Loop, by the Numbers]( By [Dan Maloney]( There is so much unused copper in the old phone network. Does it make sense to pull it up? [Read more »]( [Supercon 2023: Reverse Engineering Commercial Coffee Machines]( By [Jenny List]( This great talk from Supercon digs into the most important machine in any office: the coffee machine. [Read more »]( [Hackaday Podcast]( [Hackaday Podcast Episode 275: Mud Pulse Telemetry, 3D Printed Gears in Detail, and Display Hacking in our Future]( By [Hackaday Editors]() What happened last week on Hackaday? The Podcast will get you up to speed. [Read more »]( If You Missed It --------------------------------------------------------------- [Comparing Those Ten Cent Microcontrollers]( [Bidirectional Data Transfer Through Mud?]( [ESP32 Powered Crunch-E Makes Beats on the Go]( [Tight Handheld CRT Asteroids Game Curses in Tuscan]( [Marimbatron: A Digital Marimba Prototyping Project]( [2024 Business Card Challenge: T-800’s 555 Brain]( [Hackaday]() NEVER MISS A HACK [Share]( [Share]( [Share]( [Terms of Use]( [Privacy Policy]( [Hackaday.io]( [Hackaday.com]( This email was sent to {EMAIL} [why did I get this?]( [unsubscribe from this list]( [update preferences]( Hackaday.com · 61 S Fair Oaks Ave Ste 200 · Pasadena, CA 91105-2270 · USA