In memory of that solicited piece of advice of his that changed my life forever.

Today is the birthday of my dear friend Kevin Kelly. I know that calling someone “dear friend” can be interpreted as an overstatement or understatement at will. In both occasions, if the friend in question is far more popular than me, I can plead guilty as charged to a criminal “name-dropping” offence.

For those who don’t know who Kevin Kelly is, you can get to know him through his opinions on AI or this presentation of a relatively recent talk on his notion of The Technium at the Long Now Foundation:

Kevin, a few days ago, for his 69th birthday, published his 99 Additional Bits of Unsolicited Advice that followed last year’s 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice.

So, we are having 167 pieces of advice…

It took me three stories with over three and half thousand viewers, together with many commentators and new friends to figure it out

Starting with Apple Silicon’s M1 notebook, I subsequently had reservations about the lack of PCIe v.4 support in all currently available laptops, eventually opted for an AMD Threadripper-powered desktop.

Words fail me to describe my happiness with its performance! This machine is bound to offer to my work months, if not years, of added progress.

Would you believe me, if I told you that it boots Windows 10 in just about 5 seconds?

So I captured the…

It is rather awkward that this story is one of few published on Medium regarding the AMD Threadripper CPU; all discoverable via google. If you search medium for Ryzen Threadripper no results are to be found.

I hope that our story curating algorithms will pay attention to it, and spare themselves from embarrassment/future fine-tuning: It will soon be obvious that they need not be trained on computer engineering; basic arithmetic knowledge suffices to understand how important this CPU truly is. Even Linus Torvalds took notice!

The Ryzen Threadripper Series 3 is by far the best CPU on the market that…

Please wait for the arrival of PCIe v.4 enabled laptops with much better CPUs and GPUs, just around the corner. Here is the story on how and why, I took this decision for myself.

How.

In my previous article I described how my initial enthusiasm on the prospect of getting an ARM-powered Mac ended up, after close inspection, in dismay and anger.

My disappointment was exaggerated from the fact that I was almost certain that I will get the Apple M1 powered MacbookPro; I was a Mac user for the past four years, while the principal architect of the RISC-based ARM…

If you need a fast small-form factor notebook today look elsewhere

I have less than ten days to buy a small notebook for my new job. I was intrigued to consider the new MacBookPro Silicon M1 but my initial enthusiasm was followed by dismay and anger

Sanity Check & Warning:

This review is not for Apple fanbois with the following traits:

• Those willing to spend about $2500 for a small laptop for the pleasure of carrying a stylish gadget — which in the Covid days they cannot even show off in meeting rooms and airport lounges.
• Sales and Marketing executives not minding that their Microsoft Office applications will need to be processed by Rosetta 2…

In the post-truth era Paul Karl Feyerabend’s “anything goes” is more relevant than ever

According to common sense, this is an impossibility:

• President Trump trails Joe Biden by over 10 percentage points in the poll-of-polls average.
• Expert pundits follow the rational reasoning that “Trump is going to get fewer votes than in 2016 whereas Joe Biden, who is by no means Hillary in provoking negative reactions, is bound to win more votes than she did; so Trump is going to lose”.
• Most important, Professor Alan Lichtman, who invented “13-keys” — by far the most reliable model of predicting US elections — suggests that Biden’s win is a certainty.

Yet, the post-truth era challenges common…

Looking backward to see ahead

The recent events regarding the demands to (re)write history, by removing inconvenient/unpleasant realities for sections of the public from display, led me to:
1. Rethink how history is applied in my own field of endeavour
2. Consider the ever-lasting benefits of the uncommon study of “failure” rather than the usual unilinear “success story”

Allow me to bring to the attention of our community of Astrophysicists, Computer Scientists, Engineers and Poets here in Predict a (hi)story that combines both:

Analogue and Hybrid Computing

Most of my friends who are aware of the differences between analogue and digital electronics, have the impression that computing is exclusively…

Would you tell your friends and family of your situation and urge those you had recent contact with to test themselves, or would you keep quiet about it?

Right now, if you said you had COVID-19 what do you think the reaction would be? Would it be panic from those who know you? What about if you told them this news 6 months from now? Worse yet, what if we don’t find a vaccine for this as quickly as we hope? What if we are in the “worst case scenario” — that is if we will have to co-exist with…