Top all-time · #1988
François-René Rideau
Personal blog · fare.tunes.orgprogrammingphilosophyeconomics
François-René Rideau's personal blog at fare.tunes.org covers programming, philosophy and economics. Since 2007, 37 different Hacker News readers have linked it 47 times, most often “Lisp Machine Inc. K-machine (2001)”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (19) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link François-René Rideau's pages on Lisp machines (LispM, K-machine), the PCLSRing paper on process state in ITS, and hosted philosophy texts such as Ayn Rand's speech.
- Recommended for · 7 comments
- Called the PCLSRing paper "worth studying" and "fascinating", the K-Machine article "wonderful", and the hosted Rand speech a "brilliant case".
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 19 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Lisp Machine Inc. K-machine (2001)7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2014-06-24
- PCLSRing: Keeping Process State Modular6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2011-06-23
- A few things I know about Lisp Machines5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2007-11-18
- Ayn's Rand Speech to Officer Cadets at West Point3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-01-05
- Who controls your computer? and how to make sure it's you3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-05-30
- Why Lisp is now an acceptable scripting language2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-03-26
What Hacker News says?
[0a] http://fare.tunes.org/LispM.html [0b] http://www.loper-os.org/?p=405
Comment linking /LispM.html
on “Projects the Hard Way – Coding Projects for Early Coders”Submitted Who controls your computer? and how to make sure it's you as a story · 172 points
HN discussionAll system calls in ITS behaved as if they were atomic, using a mechanism called PCLSRing: http://fare.tunes.org/tmp/emergent/pclsr.htm Other systems which took a similar approach were WAITS, the Fluke Kernel, and EROS and its successors.
Comment linking /tmp/emergent/pclsr.htm
on “Things Unix can do atomically (2010)”Submitted Why Lisp is now an acceptable scripting language as a story · 149 points
HN discussionListen to "Philosophy: Who Needs It?" [1] (duration 40 minutes; and/or read it [2]) -- an address by Ayn Rand to the 1974 graduating class at West Point. Whether you agree with her philosophical theory or not, she makes a brilliant case for the layman needing philosophy (for life on earth). [1] http://aynrandlexicon.com/ayn-rand-works/pwni.html [2] http://fare.tunes.org/liberty/library/pwni.html
Comment linking /liberty/library/pwni.html
on “Eminent Philosophers Name the Most Important Philosophy Books from 1950-2000”Submitted Lisp Machine Inc. K-machine (2001) as a story · 114 points
HN discussionAlso in the LMI K-machine [1]. I got part way through building type checking hardware to use with Franz Lisp on 68k CPUs. Franz Lisp allocated objects of a single type in each page and the 68k had function code pins that meant you could tell whether a bus read was for data or instruction fetch, the idea was that I would modify the compiler to read a latched type value just after a Lisp object had been read into a re…
Comment linking /tmp/emergent/kmachine.htm
on “Lisp CPU”Submitted A few things I know about Lisp Machines as a story · 85 points
HN discussionGot one of these myself (in a IIci with a Daystar accelerator and an 8-24-GC video card, 8MW of memory, standard Genera patched for Y2K). It was quite expensive to source and to rehabilitate. Lisp machines are a bit hard to get used to, and I definitely don't claim to be a Lisp deity, but their interfaces demonstrate a great deal of thought and orthogonality that's profoundly missing from a lot of modern UI. Under t…
Comment linking /LispM.html
on “Lisp Symbolics Macivory 3 with loaded software”Submitted PCLSRing: Keeping Process State Modular as a story · 17 points
HN discussion> Lisp machines were thoroughly in the "mini"computer (cabinet-sized) category and completely missed out on the microcomputer revolution. Symbolics and TI both developed microprocessors for Lisp in the 80s. TI promoted their Lisp chip as the 'Megachip' enabling the 'Compact Lisp Machine'. It was the first microprocessor which integrated around a million transistor functions. Both put the Lisp Machine for example on…
Comment linking /files/pics/lispm/2003-01-19-lispm-macivory3-kneeled.jpg
on “NeXT: Steve Jobs’ Dot.com IPO That Never Happened”Submitted Patents Are An Economic Absurdity as a story · 11 points
HN discussionThat they ended up emulating Genera instead of porting it should tell you something. Maybe. Also, look at the trouble people go through to do that: http://fare.tunes.org/LispM.html Then there's this that makes it look easy but also shows the keyboard problem LispM was probably referring to: http://www.loomcom.com/genera/genera-install.html What I find on getting them running without LISP hardware is somewhere betwee…
Comment linking /LispM.html
on “Systems Past: software innovations we actually use (2014)”Submitted Who Controls Your Computer? (And How to Make Sure It’s You) as a story · 6 points
HN discussionFor the curious, there is more information on the K-machine here: http://fare.tunes.org/tmp/emergent/kmachine.htm
Comment linking /tmp/emergent/kmachine.htm
on “Archive of Lisp Machine, Inc”Submitted A Security Kernel Based on the Lambda Calculus as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThe "PCLSRing" technique to essentially back out of an active syscall is worth studying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCLSRing http://fare.tunes.org/tmp/emergent/pclsr.htm . It's much better than the UNIX approach of returning early with an error or incomplete data.
Comment linking /tmp/emergent/pclsr.htm
on “PDP-10/its: Incompatible Timesharing System”Submitted Passivism: To Save the World, Start with Yourself as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe last CPU that was being developed at Symbolics is actually RISC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolics#Sunstone The competitor LMI was also developing their next-generation Lisp machine RISC processor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_Machines#GigaMos_Systems More about the latter: http://fare.tunes.org/tmp/emergent/kmachine.htm
Comment linking /tmp/emergent/kmachine.htm
on “A Brief History of Lisp Machines (2008)”Submitted The Death of Politics, by Karl Hess (1969) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThose interested, who have read RPG's original article, might want to learn more about his example of "the right thing", PC-lusering, by reading PCLSRing: Keeping Process State Modular by Alan Bawden ( http://fare.tunes.org/tmp/emergent/pclsr.htm ), and then perhaps learn more about ITS, which can still be run on a PDP-10 simulator: http://its.victor.se/wiki/ Those who don't want to go too far down that particular r…
Comment linking /tmp/emergent/pclsr.htm
on “What “Worse is Better vs. The Right Thing” is really about (2012)”Submitted Why Lisp Is Now an Acceptable Scripting Language as a story · 3 points
HN discussionRuby is far from an 'acceptable' lisp. The article's first premise of what are lisp's virtues is dead wrong. First Lisp is NOT a functional language. A functional language is one that maintains referential transparency. i.e. where I can replace the reference/variable with its value its semantics are unchanged. Common Lisp is a multi-paradigm language and pervasively uses the the concept of places to setf state. And…
Comment linking /files/fun/fibonacci.lisp
on “Lisp as an alternative to Java (2000) [pdf]”Submitted Lisp Machine Inc. K-machine as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe K-Machine would be a super interesting retro-computing project to get going. The schematics, the Lisp Machine system associated for it, are available (I'm unsure of legal status). If anyone is interested in driving that, I'd be really interested to help (but my primary interest is just the CADR due to lack of hours in the day :-) ) Here is a wonderful article about the K-Machine: http://fare.tunes.org/tmp/emerge…
Comment linking /tmp/emergent/kmachine.htm
on “Symbolics Sunstone Development Plan (1987) [pdf]”Submitted Meta-Decentralized Crypto-Currency as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI posted these links elsewhere in the thread, but I think they'll be of special interest to HN readers, who might want to know about the more technical aspects of her philosophy. An index of her thoughts on many topics: http://aynrandlexicon.com/book/conceptual.html A graduation speech which summarises her views on philosophy in general: http://fare.tunes.org/liberty/library/pwni.html Her most technical work, her th…
Comment linking /liberty/library/pwni.html
on “The new age of Ayn Rand”Submitted The Semantics of Reflective Systems as Applied to Building Distributed Systems [pdf] as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAs someone who has never used a Lisp machine, it interests me to hear about the complexities of the machine. I have been considering buying one, perhaps through the same detailed here: http://fare.tunes.org/LispM.html . I don't think I'd use it for any active development, but it would be a fun hobby tool to hack around on. Anybody here besides Paul have much experience on a Symbolics LM?
Comment linking /LispM.html
on “Why did Symbolics fail?”Submitted PCLSRing: Keeping Process State Modular as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
