OSnews Decries ‘The Mass Extinction of Unix Workstations’

Anyone remember the high-end commercial UNIX workstations from a few decades ago — like from companies like IBM, DEC, SGI, and Sun Microsystems?
Today OSnews looked back — but also explored what happens when you try to buy one today> :
As x86 became ever more powerful and versatile, and with the rise of Linux as a capable UNIX replacement and the adoption of the NT-based versions of Windows, the days of the UNIX workstations were numbered. A few years into the new millennium, virtually all traditional UNIX vendors had ended production of their workstations and in some cases even their associated architectures, with a lacklustre collective effort to move over to Intel’s Itanium — which didn’t exactly go anywhere and is now nothing more than a sour footnote in computing history.

Approaching roughly 2010, all the UNIX workstations had disappeared…. and by now, they’re all pretty much dead (save for Solaris). Users and industries moved on to x86 on the hardware side, and Linux, Windows, and in some cases, Mac OS X on the software side…. Over the past few years, I have come to learn that If you want to get into buying, using, and learning from UNIX workstations today, you’ll run into various problems which can roughly be filed into three main categories: hardware availability, operating system availability, and third party software availability.

Their article details their own attempts to buy one over the years, ultimately concluding the experience “left me bitter and frustrated that so much knowledge — in the form of documentation, software, tutorials, drivers, and so on — is disappearing before our very eyes.”

Shortsightedness and disinterest in their own heritage by corporations, big and small, is destroying entire swaths of software, and as more years pass by, it will get ever harder to get any of these things back up and running…. As for all the third-party software — well, I’m afraid it’s too late for that already. Chasing down the rightsholders is already an incredibly difficult task, and even if you do find them, they are probably not interested in helping you, and even if by some miracle they are, they most likely no longer even have the ability to generate the required licenses or release versions with the licensing ripped out. Stuff like Pro/ENGINEER and SoftWindows for UNIX are most likely gone forever….

Software is dying off at an alarming rate, and I fear there’s no turning the tide of this mass extinction.
The article also wonders why companies like HPE don’t just “dump some ISO files” onto an FTP server, along with patch depots and documentation. “This stuff has no commercial value, they’re not losing any sales, and it will barely affect their bottom line.

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It’s DOOM’s 29th Anniversary. What’s Your Favorite Story?

It was 29 years ago today that DOOM was first released — and we’re still using it! Here in 2022, the latest mod reportedly converts its demons into the zombies and creepers from Minecraft. This week Hackaday wrote about a simple emulated RISC-V processor that runs DOOM. Last month someone even got DOOM running in Notepad. And recently WebTV enthusiasts not only jerry-rigged a contemporary TV to a WebTV unit, but then actually got it to play a 1990s-era WebTV version of DOOM on their TV screen.

The last 29 years have been a long, strange trip. A hidden Doom level appeared in Microsoft Excel. A Doom video was also used to promote Windows 95. And then there was that weird Doom movie starring The Rock and Karl Urban… By 2015 Doom was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. In 2016 John Romero created a new level. Later that year a new release of Doom even featured a mod with one of the the original Doom II levels from 1994.

In 2016 we’d asked Slashdot readers to share their own favorite stories about Doom — and the best thing about that post is those 351 comments. (“I went to the door, confused why the police were banging on my door…. They said they had reports of shots being fired.” )

Is anyone still playing Doom today? Share your own thoughts and memories in the comments.

And what’s your own favorite story about Doom?

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Source Code for Adobe’s PostScript Publicly Released

The story of PostScript “is a story about profound changes in human literacy,” argues Silicon Valley’s Computer History Museum, “as well as a story of trade secrets within source code.”

And 40 years after it’s creation…
The Computer History Museum is excited to publicly release, for the first time, the source code for the breakthrough printing technology, PostScript. We thank Adobe, Inc. for their permission and support, and John Warnock [Adobe’s 82-year-old co-founder] for championing this release….

From the start of Adobe Systems Incorporated (now Adobe, Inc.) exactly forty years ago in December 1982, the firm’s cofounders envisioned a new kind of printing press — one that was fundamentally digital, using the latest advances in computing. Initial discussions by cofounders Chuck Geschke and John Warnock with computer-makers such as Digital Equipment Corporation and Apple convinced them that software was the key to the new digital printing press. Their vision: Any computer could connect with printers and typesetters via a common language to print words and images at the highest fidelity. Led by Warnock, Adobe assembled a team of skillful and creative programmers to create this new language. In addition to the two cofounders, the team included Doug Brotz, Bill Paxton, and Ed Taft. The language they created was in fact a complete programming language, named PostScript, and was released by Adobe in 1984.

By treating everything to be printed the same, in a common mathematical description, PostScript granted abilities offered nowhere else. Text and images could be scaled, rotated, and moved at will, as in the opening image to this essay. Adobe licensed PostScript to computer-makers and printer manufacturers, and the business jumped into a period of hypergrowth….

Today, most printers rely on PostScript technology either directly or through a technology that grew out of it: PDF (Portable Document Format). John Warnock championed the development of PDF in the 1990s, transforming PostScript into a technology that was safer and easier to use as the basis for digital documents, but retaining all the benefits of interoperability, fidelity, and quality. Over the decades, Adobe had developed PDF tremendously, enhancing its features, and making it a crucial standard for digital documents, printing, and for displaying graphics of all kinds on the screens from laptops to smartphones and smartwatches.
Thanks to guest reader for submitting the story.

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Can a ‘Virtual’ Manual Transmission Bring the Stick Shift to Electric Cars?

Lexus is apparently working on a “virtual” manual transmission, reports the Verge, “to find out if the stick shift can survive the electric revolution…”
British car enthusiast publication Evo reported this week that Lexus, which now leads Toyota’s high-performance EV efforts, is developing a kind of shifting system that mimics the feel of a clutch and a stick shift in an electric car. Of course, it comes without the traditional mechanical connections for such a transmission because an EV doesn’t need those things, but it mimics the motions involved with three-pedal driving. The company has even been showing it off on a special version of the Lexus UX 300e, an electric crossover not sold in the U.S.

Evo reports the “transmission” has an unconnected gear stick and clutch coupled to the electric powertrain, with fake internal combustion sounds and software that augments the electric torque output. In other words, it’s a full-on pretend manual in an EV, complete with the “vroom vroom” sounds…. If this electric transformation really happens, being an enthusiast in the future could mean paying big bucks to simulate the things that got lost along the way.
Their headline puts it less charitably. (“Lexus could save the stick shift for EVs, if drivers are willing to pretend.”)

But Evo writes that Toyota’s ultimate goal is “making EVs more engaging to drive,” noting it’s also equipped with haptic drivers “to generate ‘feel.'”
Clumsy shifts will be accurately translated; you’ll even be able to stall it. Toyota says it’ll be able to theoretically recreate any engine and transmission combination through both sound and torque deliveries from the powertrain…. Takashi Watanabe, Lexus Electrified Chief Engineer, explained: “It is a software-based system, so it can be programmed to reproduce the driving experience of different vehicle types, letting the driver choose their preferred mapping….”

The sound being created from this sort of system is bound to only get better too, as other factors like vibrations through the cabin could be recreated by motors in the seats. This is a system used in BMW’s latest high-end Bowers & Wilkins sound systems, which use vibrating motors in the seats to create more depth to the bass coming from its speakers…. It might not be the real thing, but in a future where we don’t have a choice on the matter and have to drive an EV, it might be the next best thing…

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Apple Sued By Stalking Victims Over Alleged AirTag Tracking

schwit1 shares a report from Popular Science: [T]wo women filed a potential class action lawsuit against Apple, alleging the company has ignored critics’ and security experts’ repeated warnings that the company’s AirTag devices are being repeatedly used to stalk and harass people. Both individuals were targets of past abuse from ex-partners and argued in the filing that Apple’s subsequent safeguard solutions remain wholly inadequate for consumers. “With a price point of just $29, it has become the weapon of choice of stalkers and abusers,” reads a portion of the lawsuit, as The New York Times reported […].

Apple first debuted AirTags in April 2021. Within the ensuing eight months, at least 150 police reports from just eight precincts reviewed by Motherboard explicitly mentioned abusers utilizing the tracking devices to stalk and harass women. In the new lawsuit, plaintiffs allege that one woman’s abuser hid the location devices within her car’s wheel well. At the same time, the other woman’s abuser placed one in their child’s backpack following a contentious divorce, according to the suit. Security experts have since cautioned that hundreds more similar situations likely remain unreported or even undetected.

The lawsuit (PDF), published by Ars Technica, cites them as “one of the products that has revolutionized the scope, breadth, and ease of location-based stalking,” arguing that “what separates the AirTag from any competitor product is its unparalleled accuracy, ease of use (it fits seamlessly into Apple’s existing suite of products), and affordability.” The proposed class action lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for owners of iOS or Android devices which have been tracked with an AirTag or are at risk of being stalked. Since AirTags’ introduction last year, at least two murders have occurred directly involving using Apple’s surveillance gadget, according to the lawsuit.

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DeepMind Created An AI Tool That Can Help Generate Rough Film and Stage Scripts

Alphabet’s DeepMind has built an AI tool that can help generate rough film and stage scripts Engadget’s Kris Holt reports: Dramatron is a so-called “co-writing” tool that can generate character descriptions, plot points, location descriptions and dialogue. The idea is that human writers will be able to compile, edit and rewrite what Dramatron comes up with into a proper script. Think of it like ChatGPT, but with output that you can edit into a blockbuster movie script. To get started, you’ll need an OpenAI API key and, if you want to reduce the risk of Dramatron outputting “offensive text,” a Perspective API key. To test out Dramatron, I fed in the log line for a movie idea I had when I was around 15 that definitely would have been a hit if Kick-Ass didn’t beat me to the punch. Dramatron quickly whipped up a title that made sense, and character, scene and setting descriptions. The dialogue that the AI generated was logical but trite and on the nose. Otherwise, it was almost as if Dramatron pulled the descriptions straight out of my head, including one for a scene that I didn’t touch on in the log line.

Playwrights seemed to agree, according to a paper (PDF) that the team behind Dramatron presented today. To test the tool, the researchers brought in 15 playwrights and screenwriters to co-write scripts. According to the paper, playwrights said they wouldn’t use the tool to craft a complete play and found that the AI’s output can be formulaic. However, they suggested Dramatron would be useful for world building or to help them explore other approaches in terms of changing plot elements or characters. They noted that the AI could be handy for “creative idea generation” too. That said, a playwright staged four plays that used “heavily edited and rewritten scripts” they wrote with the help of Dramatron. DeepMind said that in the performance, experienced actors with improv skills “gave meaning to Dramatron scripts through acting and interpretation.”

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Saudi Arabia’s Sci-Fi Megacity Is Well Underway

Mark Harris writes via MIT Technology Review: In early 2021, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia announced The Line: a “civilizational revolution” that would house up to 9 million people in a zero-carbon megacity, 170 kilometers long and half a kilometer high but just 200 meters wide. Within its mirrored, car-free walls, residents would be whisked around in underground trains and electric air taxis. Satellite images of the $500 billion project obtained exclusively by MIT Technology Review show that the Line’s vast linear building site is already taking shape, running as straight as an arrow across the deserts and through the mountains of northern Saudi Arabia. The site, tens of meters deep in places, is teeming with many hundreds of construction vehicles and likely thousands of workers, themselves housed in sprawling bases nearby.

Analysis of the satellite images by Soar Earth, an Australian startup that aggregates satellite imagery and crowdsourced maps into an online digital atlas, suggests that the workers have already excavated around 26 million cubic meters of earth and rock — 78 times the volume of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. Official drone footage of The Line’s construction site, released in October, indeed showed fleets of bulldozers, trucks, and diggers excavating its foundations. Visit The Line’s location on Google Maps and Google Earth, however, and you will see little more than bare rock and sand.

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AI Learns To Write Computer Code In ‘Stunning’ Advance

DeepMind’s new artificial intelligence system called AlphaCode was able to “achieve approximately human-level performance” in a programming competition. The findings have been published in the journal Science. Slashdot reader sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine:
AlphaCode’s creators focused on solving those difficult problems. Like the Codex researchers, they started by feeding a large language model many gigabytes of code from GitHub, just to familiarize it with coding syntax and conventions. Then, they trained it to translate problem descriptions into code, using thousands of problems collected from programming competitions. For example, a problem might ask for a program to determine the number of binary strings (sequences of zeroes and ones) of length n that don’t have any consecutive zeroes. When presented with a fresh problem, AlphaCode generates candidate code solutions (in Python or C++) and filters out the bad ones. But whereas researchers had previously used models like Codex to generate tens or hundreds of candidates, DeepMind had AlphaCode generate up to more than 1 million.

To filter them, AlphaCode first keeps only the 1% of programs that pass test cases that accompany problems. To further narrow the field, it clusters the keepers based on the similarity of their outputs to made-up inputs. Then, it submits programs from each cluster, one by one, starting with the largest cluster, until it alights on a successful one or reaches 10 submissions (about the maximum that humans submit in the competitions). Submitting from different clusters allows it to test a wide range of programming tactics. That’s the most innovative step in AlphaCode’s process, says Kevin Ellis, a computer scientist at Cornell University who works AI coding.

After training, AlphaCode solved about 34% of assigned problems, DeepMind reports this week in Science. (On similar benchmarks, Codex achieved single-digit-percentage success.) To further test its prowess, DeepMind entered AlphaCode into online coding competitions. In contests with at least 5000 participants, the system outperformed 45.7% of programmers. The researchers also compared its programs with those in its training database and found it did not duplicate large sections of code or logic. It generated something new — a creativity that surprised Ellis. The study notes the long-term risk of software that recursively improves itself. Some experts say such self-improvement could lead to a superintelligent AI that takes over the world. Although that scenario may seem remote, researchers still want the field of AI coding to institute guardrails, built-in checks and balances.

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Did Sam Bankman-Fried Finally Admit the Obvious?

CoinDesk’s Daniel Kuhn writes in an opinion piece: Despite the focus on FTX following its catastrophic collapse, it’s remarkable how little we know about how the crypto exchange and its in-house trading firm Alameda Research actually operated. New CEO John Jay Ray III has called Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto trading empire the “greatest failure of corporate controls” he’s seen. Wednesday, Coffeezilla, a YouTuber with a rising star who has made a career of shining a light on sketchy projects in and out of crypto, pressed Bankman-Fried for information related to how different customer accounts were treated at the exchange. It turns out, there wasn’t much differentiation — at the very least during the final days the exchange was in business, Bankman-Fried admitted. “At the time, we wanted to treat customers equally,” SBF said during a Twitter Spaces event. “That effectively meant that there was, you know, if you want to put it this way, like fungibility created” between the exchange’s spot and derivatives business lines. For Coffeezilla, this looks like a smoking gun that fraud was committed.

At the very least, this is a contradiction of what Bankman-Fried had said just minutes before when first asked about the exchange’s terms of service (ToS). “I do think we’re treating them differently,” Bankman-Fried said, referring to customer assets used for “margin versus staking versus spot versus futures collateral.” All of those services come with different levels of risk, different promises made to customers and different responsibilities for the exchange. According to FTX’s ToS, everyday users just looking to buy or store their cryptocurrencies on the centralized exchange could trust they were doing just that, buying and storing cryptographically unique digital assets. But now, thanks to skillful questioning by Coffeezilla, we know there were instead “omnibus” wallets and that spot and derivatives traders were essentially assuming the same level of risk.

We can also assume this was a longstanding practice at FTX. Bankman-Fried noted that during the “run on the exchange” (pardon the language), when people were attempting to get their assets off before withdrawals were shut down, FTX allowed “generalized withdrawals” from these omnibus wallets. But he also deflected, saying what, you wanted us to code up an entirely new process during a liquidity crisis? Before now, Bankman-Fried had been asked multiple times about the exchange’s ToS and often managed to derail the conversation. He would often point to other sections of the document that stated clients using margin (taking out debt from FTX) could have their funds used by the exchange. Or he would bring up a vestigial wire process in place before FTX had banking relationships. Apparently, according to SBF, customers had sent money to Alameda to fund accounts on FTX and somewhere along the lines this capital ended up in a rarely seen subaccount. This also had the benefit of inflating Alameda’s books, another dark corner of the empire. Further reading: FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Is Said To Face Market Manipulation Inquiry

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Windows 11 Is Finally Getting a Built-In Screen Recording Tool

Microsoft is finally bringing a built-in screen recorder to Windows. The Verge reports: The Snipping Tool in Windows 11 will soon be updated to include screen recording, meaning Windows users won’t have to rely on the Xbox Game Bar or third-party tools just to record their screens. Windows 11 testers will start getting access to the updated Snipping Tool today, and the new record option will allow you to record an entire screen or even a section that gets cropped. The update comes more than four years after Microsoft first introduced a new screenshot experience for Windows. […] Microsoft has only just started testing this with Windows 11 testers in the Dev Channel, so it’s likely some weeks or months before this Snipping Tool is released to everyone using Windows 11.

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