Linus Torvalds and Dirk Hohndel speak at the Open Source Summit

At The Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit North America, Linus Torvalds and his good friend Dirk Hohndel, Verizon's Head of the Open Source Program Office, once more had a wide-ranging conversation about Linux development and related issues.

Sadly, it's a summary and commentary on their talk, not really a detailed copy of their talk. It's quite interesting, and not a long read. Their thoughts on AI are amusing: 'Spell check with steroids'.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-takes-on-evil-developers-hardware-errors-and-hilarious-ai-hype/

https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/04/19/1944235/linus-torvalds-on-hilarious-ai-hype

British Columbia bans self-driving cars!

Now, there's a major caveat, and that is they're banning anything that exceeds SAE Autonomy Level 2. Level 2 includes Teslas and almost all other driver-assist system, it includes all driver assist systems in Canada. Mercedes has one L3 system, and some are not far from release, I've heard the Mercedes system is quite good, but it's also geofenced for California and Nevada highways only: leave those areas and you can't turn on the fully automatic system.

What this does ban, at least as long as the law remains in effect, is things like Waymo and any planned robotaxis. If it doesn't have a person behind the steering wheel ready to take over instantly, it ain't gonna be legal in BC.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/self-driving-cars-banned-in-british-columbia

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/04/19/2219216/british-columbia-bans-level-3-and-above-autonomous-cars

A very sad day for women who code: the charity Women Who Code is no more

The organization Women Who Code provided scholarships to tens of thousands of women around the world during its time and was also useful to help women get a proverbial foot in the door through peer networking. The Board announced that effective pretty much immediately, the org is dissolving due to its inability to attract funding.

I started working in IT around 1983 or so. I've never seen a lot of women programming or in IT in general, but the ones that I've worked with were always quite good programmers and IT people. I'm sorry to see them go.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cw0769446nyo

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/04/19/2024202/women-who-code-shuts-down-unexpectedly

After 48 years(!) a tech legend is going out of production

The legend? The Zilog Z80 CPU.

Talk about a heck of a run! Could you imagine Intel still making Pentium II's today? But that Z80 has kept truckin' along for almost five decades! Talk about an incredible design. While it was a general purpose CPU like those made by Intel and AMD and others today, its low power consumption and well-understood programming and foibles made it very popular for embedded device controllers. I told a friend of mine who thinks he's a tech geek and holds a degree in EE, and he'd never heard of it! He's slightly younger than me, but not that much, he was never a generalist. The Z80 was a backbone for the C/PM and M/PM operating system and S100 bus architecture, which was what computing was done on before in the '70s and '80s until the IBM PC and Mac began revolutionizing and bringing it all to the rest of us.

From the Techspot article: "Federico Faggin, an Intel engineer, founded Zilog in 1974 after his work on the Intel 4004, the first 4-bit CPU. The Zilog Z80 was then released in July 1976, conceived as a software-compatible "extension" and enhancement of the Intel 8080 processor.

Developed by a team of just 12 people, the Z80 saw remarkable success, leading Zilog to establish its own chip manufacturing plants and expand to over a thousand employees within two years. Like its Intel counterpart, the Z80 was originally designed for embedded systems but went on to become a significant milestone in gaming hardware from the 1970s to the mid-1980s."

and

"Several home computers and gaming consoles were built around the capabilities of the Z80, including Sega's Master System and SG-1000, and Nintendo's Game Boy and Game Boy Color. Many classic arcade games also used the Z80, including the original version of Pac-Man. Additionally, the 8-bit processor was common in military applications, musical synthesizers like the Roland Jupiter-8, and various other electronic devices."

So pour one out - but not on! - the Z80.

While the Z80 is going away, its legacy lives on in the eZ80 and newer iterations of the classic chip.

https://www.techspot.com/news/102684-zilog-discontinuing-z80-microprocessor-after-almost-50-years.html

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/04/20/1916203/the-legendary-zilog-z80-cpu-is-being-discontinued-after-nearly-50-years

The fix for Tesla's CyberTruck accelerator pedal problem is riveting!

Literally.

Drilling a hole in the bottom of the pedal and snapping in a rivet.

They're supposed to take a measurement first and if whatever the measurement is falls within certain specs, replace the pedal. Otherwise, poprivet.

Not that I would ever own a Tesla, but were I to own one, I would be royally PO'd. That pedal should have been one unit, not one with a slip-on cover. This rivet detracts from the appearance of the interior of my butt-ugly truck. They should have machined the pedal out of a single piece of stock, which you might have expected out of a high-tech/high-cost car maker.

BUT NO! We're gonna drill a hole in your truck and pop in a rivet.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/20/24135876/tesla-cybertruck-accelerator-pedal-recall-fix

I just did something new (to me) and am happy!

I completed the New York Times Monday crossword - by myself! 18 and a half minutes!

Russet has been doing it for ages, and I would help her out occasionally on music and some other older pop culture references. When we were doing long-distance driving at night, I'd load up the puzzle on my iPad and we'd thrash it out while driving - she driving, me working the iPad.

About three months ago we started doing it together every night. When she worked, I'd call her and we'd do it over the phone. She liked the higher difficulty level of not being able to see it, though last week there was a tough one and I'd pause it, she'd pick it up, and eventually we thrashed it. Last night's was interesting: there were eight "locks" - the theme was safe-cracking, and each lock would rotate, and the four letters it contained would change the words as it rotated! It was pretty cool.

Tonight I was infusing and she decided it was nap time for her, after my infusion was over I grabbed my laptop and went to it. Now, granted, Monday is the easiest of the week's puzzles as they increase in difficulty with the weekend being the most challenging, but I was still pleased with completing it entirely on my own, and in a fairly good time as the two of us together usually take 15-20 minutes on early week puzzles.

Her specialty is jigsaw puzzles. She has competed in tournaments and will flip a completed puzzle over and do the blank back! Have I mentioned that she's just a teensy-bit insane?