The Pentium as a Navajo Weaving

That&#x27;s some serious...multithreading!<p>(I applaud others for resisting such cringe, but I just couldn&#x27;t help myself.)

I&#x27;m building a stained glass window for our front entrance, as a sometimes chip designer it&#x27;s going to be a half adder (so much much smaller than a pentium) - the big challenge is showing all the layers (si, implantation, poly, metal, vias etc) I&#x27;m only doing 1 level of metal. The result is going to be more of a thin layered sculpture than a traditional stained glass window

A fun full-circle. The Jacquard loom was influential for input for early computers, and now the computer is influencing the output of looms

Author here for your obscure Pentium questions...

That story about Fairchild manufacturing at Shiprock is fascinating and heartbreaking. Glad to see it so thoughtfully researched and presented.

Wow, what a gem of a post. I knew about the Navajo codebreakers but didn&#x27;t ever hear about the Shiprock connection.<p>I also am admiring how deftly the author was able to weave in (heh) little bits of low-level computer knowhow. This is an article I can send to my non-tech friends!

I’ve long considered “hard tech” (semiconductors, high end manufacturing, aerospace, etc) to be the embodiment of our culture, because it’s not something you can just start doing, it takes generations of improvement to make anything worthwhile.

Absolutely fascinating article. I wasn&#x27;t aware of any of the Navajo history of Farichild Semiconductors.<p>Thanks for sharing.

I wonder how much debate and how many PhD dissertations in archeology will result when this rug in found in a excavation some 2000 years from now.

Fairly rare to be able to connect sheep with semiconductors.<p>I wonder if anyone is working on ovine AI opportunities yet.

This how I have always thought of the Giza plateau and other temple sites. They look like different digital components or circuits attached to each other. It was easy to convince myself that they were indeed designing some type of deep logic within the structures.

This triggered a memory about the Native American code talkers employed by the US military during WWII to encode communications using their own languages which were unknown to the Axis forces. First thought: &quot;ha! Now they&#x27;re doing firmware?&quot;:)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Code_talker" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Code_talker</a>

This sounds like the backstory for Alan Dean Foster&#x27;s &quot;Cyber Way&quot;. I enjoyed the novel, didn&#x27;t realize how well rooted it was in actual history.

Are there automatic looms the way there are CNC machines so that you can get a custom design on?

Wow. They have <i>got</i> to turn this into a 99% Invisible podcast episode. (if you stopped at the weaving - which is incredible in its own right - you missed the much more amazing story)

Do sha nada da da !

Speaking as an artist and a programmer, has it ever struck you how utterly <i>low</i> it is to sit in a room making things? You are interacting with little speck of dead stuff. Staring, unmoving, practically dead yourself. Playing with a little dream. There&#x27;s something deeply wrong with that. Spiritually wrong even. Sometimes I reflect and feel shame at my wastefulness.