Mind Grenade (2019)

This is the web site of John Walker, founder of Autodesk and co-author of AutoCAD, living in Switzerland for a long time now, and still a hacker (in the good sense) despite being very wealthy.

Reminds me of how these days it&#x27;s almost impossible to register a patent. Some of the techniques I used in some of my open source projects are probably just innovative enough to be patent-worthy but it&#x27;s too expensive and the potential financial returns are unclear.<p>Tech nowadays is a two class system. The innovator needs to have a certain pedigree or else their innovations don&#x27;t register.

The tradition of using shift registers for automated music generation very much lives on! These days they are typically called &quot;Turing Machines&quot; (I know, kinda of confusing for us CS folks), due to the influence of a popular version which came out in 2012: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.musicthing.co.uk&#x2F;Turing-Machine&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.musicthing.co.uk&#x2F;Turing-Machine&#x2F;</a>

Great to know about one of the brains behind Intel 8008 microprocessor - Harry S. Pyle. An interview with him at CHM - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.computerhistory.org&#x2F;collections&#x2F;catalog&#x2F;102702017" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.computerhistory.org&#x2F;collections&#x2F;catalog&#x2F;10270201...</a>

Reminds me of this device: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=phPp5oYnps0">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=phPp5oYnps0</a>

Can we interpret these 9-bit square arranged combinations as letters in Marain, the language of The Culture?

Is this supposed to affect your mind somehow?

Don&#x27;t build this. Don&#x27;t bring it to school. Don&#x27;t show it to anyone.<p>This is the kind of thing that get you expelled, jailed, or shot.