HN

Comments (52)

• Menu

  summa_tech
  This was a fascinating article, because I've seen so many results of the Eastern Bloc reverse-engineering efforts basically founder into obscurity. Many of these re-created (sometimes with minor variations, or quite novel and ingenious implementation choices) computers were made in small series, but could not compete against illegal imports, and in any case would only be briefly popular in their local university town.So it's cool to see that Bulgaria managed to muster enough government interest to force a cohesive strategy for the whole country. It sounds like it paid off.Also, after googling for Правец, I have found out that I can in fact read Bulgarian, which was quite surprising to me.
• paulnsorensen
  Thank you for this. Very enjoyable read. It reminds me of a post I saw discussing how code review is similar to reviewing mathematical proofs -- you have to know it like you wrote it, and now with AI, this is less and less the case. I definitely miss the days when I knew something was bulletproof because I wrote it and tested it thoroughly.
• varjag
  Interesting point about the grassroots origin. When I read the accounts in early 1990s it was alleged that a whole factory of a minor computer manufacturer in the USA was bought and relocated to Pravets. Including the furniture, broom closets and trashcans. Though am not sure if computer designs were also allegedly in the deal.Also that Bulgaria invested into some semiconductor manufacturer in Singapore to maintain uninterrupted access to the components.
• Menu

  grishka
  There was also a Soviet Apple II clone, called Агат (Agat). But iirc, for whatever reason, they couldn't clone the 6502, so they built one out of logic ICs, and the thing was too slow to run Apple II software unmodified. Later there was an expansion card with a real imported 6502 that added full compatibility.The USSR did make their own Z80 and 8080 clones later though. There existed an IBM PC compatible built completely out of Soviet-made parts. A lot of fully localized ZX Spectrum clones as well, of varying degree of homebrewness. Those were very popular in the late 80s and early 90s from what I gather, but I'm too young to have used one myself.
• Angostura
  I seldom enjoy a piece of writing this much. Loved it. Kudos to the author
• Menu

  ipeev
  I think my reaction is mostly puzzlement. I can see a sensible point or several in the article, but I was not always sure how big a point the author was trying to make.At the narrower level, it seems to be saying that benchmarks are easier to interpret when you know what they really are. That makes sense. If a circuit is known to be a multiplier, that tells you more than if it is just called `c6288`.That is also why I thought of Python benchmarks. In something like `pyperformance`, names such as `json_loads`, `python_startup`, or `nbody` already tell you something about the workload. So when you compare results, you have a better sense of what kind of task a system is doing well on. But so what? It is just benchmarks. They don't guarantee anything about anything anyway.What made it harder for me to follow was that this fairly modest point is wrapped in a lot of jokes and swipes about AI and corporate AI language. Some of that is funny, but it also made me less sure what the main point was supposed to be. Was the article really about benchmark interpretation, or was that mostly a vehicle for making a broader point about AI hype and technical understanding?So I do think there is a real point in there. I just found it slightly hard to separate that point from the style and the jokes.
• Minecodes
  Very interesting article. It's always fascinating for me as someone from Gen Z, to see how the computers worked in the beginning, and the stories behind them.
• gizajob
  Great writing and an enjoyable tale well told.
• flomo
  > A limitation, but also an engineering decision that had a certain brutal elegance: you get one alphabet at a time, comrade, and you will type in capitals.Same decision with the capitalist American Apple II, only upper case letters unless you added some additional board.
• Menu

  yehat
  I know there's predominant thinking that "communism" existed somewhere, but in fact it doesn't. It was the ideology developed in the West and brutally imported into the East. Why I say that and why it matters to understand the difference? Because there was no "communist" thinking behind the motivation to do whatever by the ordinary people. There was something deeper that manifested in a way that many people mistake for "communist" thinking. And that's natural, because people's thinking is not same in the West as in the East, and even more in far-East. Ok, enough on that, everyone's right to call it whatever they want, just pitching some clues that can help avoiding the cliché. My journey also started when first seeing IMKO-2 in 1984, then there was a popular magazine for the young "engineers" called "МЛАД КОНСТРУКТОР" (full archive here https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=0Bw941VGG9Tjc... )that started publishing a course of BASIC. So I learned virtually and even wrote programs on paper before the first actual contact with the computer, which happened 1 year later on the newly acquired by my school couple of PRAVETZ-82.
• exmadscientist
  > For fourteen years... nobody — nobody — knew what these circuits were actually supposed to compute.This is utterly, utterly mind-boggling to me. Seriously no one had any curiosity to look in to these things for 14 years? I mean, I guess someone was bored somewhere along the way, but usually that sort of thing becomes an open secret... not here, I guess.
• bogantech
  > More interesting is what happened next: an institute in Sofia was reportedly tasked with decapping the ICs, lifting the netlists under a microscope, and reproducing them with socialist lithographyGiven that (afaik) the Apple II logic would have all been jelly bean logic or otherwise off the shelf parts did they really reverse engineer ICs?
• r366y6
  [dead]
• Menu

  vhantz
  [flagged]
• somat
  "AMD’s AI director reports that Claude Code has become “dumber and lazier” since February, based on analysis of 6,852 sessions and 234,760 tool calls, which is the most thorough performance review any AI has received and rather more than most human employees get."Are there any good ways to measure agent ability? Or do we just have to go by vibes?