Nostr notes by Matt Gumbley

I’d read that!

2026-10-16T07:47:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…zqp5
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I’d read that!

do you find the LLM gets worse as you progress, as it has to ...

2026-10-08T21:27:54Z

In reply to nevent1q…5sr7
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do you find the LLM gets worse as you progress, as it has to refresh its context each time (I haven’t tried reasonix yet, so am unfamiliar with its use)? In your ongoing work with it do you run out of context, or are you “starting new sessions” regularly? I also much prefer small, focused sessions rather than “slop me a whole app”.

really good for TDD too :)

2026-10-04T09:51:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…73tj
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really good for TDD too :)

Would my Transputer emulation system qualify? ...

2026-09-23T07:16:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…ugee
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Would my Transputer emulation system qualify? https://devzendo.github.io/parachute/

Yes, but like romaji, it’s a crutch until you master the ...

2026-08-16T19:53:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…efrw
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Yes, but like romaji, it’s a crutch until you master the “proper” way. I just wonder why make it so hard? Is it really necessary? (And of course, complaining at my pathetic efforts to stuff Kanji into my head)

Take 友達 for example. (Friend, companion). In Hiragana, it’s ...

2026-08-16T19:37:02Z

Take 友達 for example. (Friend, companion). In Hiragana, it’s ともだち - I can read that, straight off, four syllables, tomodachi. Forty-eight symbols. Instead I’ve got to memorise 2136 Kanji.

Ranting (whilst bowing)

... Hendrix' "Small-C Compiler 2nd Edition" ...

2026-08-11T21:14:49Z

... Hendrix' "Small-C Compiler 2nd Edition" (https://ia600907.us.archive.org/29/items/collection-of-various-computer-literature/Books/A_Small_C_Compiler_2nd_Edition%5Bocr%5D.pdf) relates to a much enhanced version of his compiler.

I believe his first book describes Ron Cain's initial compiler (initial article from Dr. Dobbs in https://github.com/devzendo/transputer-k-r-c-compiler/blob/main/A%20Small%20C%20Compiler%20for%20the%208080s.pdf )

There's so much 'unobtanium' out there - masses of early microcomputer literature that's simply inaccessible.

please take a look at ...

2026-08-11T05:30:00Z

In reply to nevent1q…qpcq
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please take a look at https://blog.terrygodier.com/2026/08/09/mea-culpa-dark-hours.html - this plagiarism is something that does happen in real life

Hi John, thank you! And thank you for your self-study list, ...

2026-06-05T09:35:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…d8cf
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Hi John, thank you! And thank you for your self-study list, I’ve been recommended Enderton’s books on set theory & logic elsewhere. I agree it would be best to attend a course; I’d love to - but can’t due to time/finance. So I have to study (very) part-time. My current end-goal is to study foundations, then up to the level required to understand Davis’ Engines of Logic, so, theory of computation. Side-quests into analysis & transfinite numbers.

But LLMs are not truth, I know this! They’re only ...

2026-06-05T08:26:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…tcv5
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But LLMs are not truth, I know this! They’re only asymptotically approaching truth as models improve - but I don’t think the architecture is right to actually be intelligent at any point in the future.

So what’s a self-studying nerd to do?

There’s a great series of books by Lara Alcock - How to study ...

2026-06-05T08:21:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…ry6y
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There’s a great series of books by Lara Alcock - How to study for a maths degree; how to think about analysis; how to think about abstract algebra - I wish I’d had these prior to “real” study.

And Claude is very encouraging about these, and other books it has recommended in other areas of study (logic, analysis/calculus, set theory & transfinite numbers incl. Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, forcing)

… 4/n

But.. it’s not the same as asking Prof for their ...

2026-06-05T08:13:00Z

In reply to nevent1q…a7tc
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But.. it’s not the same as asking Prof for their recommendations.

Some writers are supremely generous with advice for self-study online - Peter Smith (npub1g0j…k8ap) ‘s Logic Matters site and superb freely available books are featuring on the logic strand of my studies (I have his Formal Logic in paperback); there are online books like Richard Hammack’s Book of Proof at https://richardhammack.github.io/BookOfProof/ that Claude suggested (parts of)… 3/n

I am not a member of any uni; not a student - if I were, I could ...

2026-06-05T08:04:38Z

In reply to nevent1q…u6wl
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I am not a member of any uni; not a student - if I were, I could ask maths faculty members for advice on which books are best for self-study, given my current knowledge.. but I don’t know anyone who might be able to offer such advice.

So I asked Claude and now have a study plan and list of books (some of which I had; some I’ve obtained 2nd hand).

It’s all extremely plausible (as LLMs are, by definition), and from reading so far, these books seem to work as a pathway. … 2/n

Trying to kick the #AI #LLM habit, help needed please! I have a ...

2026-06-05T07:59:14Z

Trying to kick the #AI #LLM habit, help needed please!

I have a long-running discussion with Claude, building a study plan/reading list for me to self-study various aspects of undergraduate #maths. (I did 2 years of it, 30 years ago, then switched to just computer science - the stronger of my 2 subjects; I was really struggling with maths at that level). I’ve always wanted to get back into it, but can’t justify an OU degree, nor do I have the 16 hrs/week to devote to it. … 🧵 1/n

Has anyone tried modifying store e-ink shelf displays to turn ...

2026-04-12T14:25:36Z

Has anyone tried modifying store e-ink shelf displays to turn them into useful gadget displays? I see them in many stores now - some are around 4 inches square, quite a useful size, with several colours. I looked on Aliexpress, and they certainly don't seem cheap in unit quantities - £35ish? There must be economies of scale for shops. Pimoroni sell their 'Inky wHAT' 4.2" 4-colour display for £36. Are there cheaper options? #eink #electronics #display #hamradio (ish)

The RP2050 in RISC-V mode?

2026-04-08T17:58:52Z

In reply to nevent1q…jt8q
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The RP2050 in RISC-V mode?

is it related to this problem? I had this, very annoying! ...

2026-03-23T10:46:54Z

In reply to nevent1q…hvyz
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is it related to this problem? I had this, very annoying! https://superuser.com/questions/1207195/cannot-dismiss-certain-reminders-in-lightning-thunderbird#1212160

Re-reading @npub1z8r…mrq6 ‘s excellent talk “Weathering ...

2026-03-13T17:49:47Z

Re-reading Devine Lu Linvegan (npub1z8r…mrq6) ‘s excellent talk “Weathering Software Winter” https://100r.co/site/weathering_software_winter.html and one line really struck home, in the light of all the woe we’re seeing (AI, sloperating systems, age verification aka biometric identity capture/surveillance etc.):

“I wanted a way of doing computers that nobody could take away from me.”

So the Transputer emulator is at the base of my attempt to do that.

If the planets align, and if I get a nice contiguous chunk of ...

2026-03-13T17:38:41Z

If the planets align, and if I get a nice contiguous chunk of time over the weekend, there’s a slight possibility of seeing “Hello World” run on the Pi Pico Transputer Emulator. Got a deadlock to fix, a refactoring of the logging system to do, and am yet to complete the USB CDC link implementation .. but I got it past initialisation to its “boot from link” stage last night.

ah! I see now! Is this an out-of-the-box System 6 theme, or did ...

2026-03-13T14:59:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…n5lv
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ah! I see now! Is this an out-of-the-box System 6 theme, or did it require lots of hacking together? (I’ve tried to get something like it working on Linux Mint XFCE4, with not much success). The Uxn programs look really great - I thought they must be System 6 programs, they fit so well.

Hi Devine, I’m intrigued by the desktop / wm / theme and apps ...

2026-03-13T09:33:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…qtxl
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Hi Devine, I’m intrigued by the desktop / wm / theme and apps you’re using here - I see from the thread that this is Arch, what’s the rest of this lovely minimalist stack please?

So, full-on retrocomputing with systems that aren’t connected ...

2026-03-06T16:31:55Z

So, full-on retrocomputing with systems that aren’t connected to the Internet. How do we share code? How do we collaborate? We’ll need to send USB drives by post. How did we do it in the olden days? Adverts in “micro mart” magazine. Dial-up modems :) I was reminiscing the other week about the early editions of BYTE magazine that had the subtitle “The Small Systems Journal”. Perhaps It Is Time for a new BYTE?

I should read “The Case for Working with Your Hands: Or Why ...

2026-03-06T16:23:27Z

I should read “The Case for Working with Your Hands: Or Why Office Work is Bad for Us and Fixing Things Feels Good”. And go Amish.

But… what happens when true AGI is developed? Not just “LLMs ...

2026-02-27T23:02:27Z

But… what happens when true AGI is developed? Not just “LLMs with greater scale”: the real thing.

AI booster doom has really drained me today. The career I’ve ...

2026-02-27T22:50:58Z

AI booster doom has really drained me today. The career I’ve had for decades is suddenly dead, really? Pretty much overnight? My tests suggest it’s useful at small scale but that’s all.

Zed? Helix?

2026-02-14T18:26:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…9lct
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Zed? Helix?

everyone writes software on 3.4GHz monster PCs, where they ...

2026-02-11T20:54:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…f7se
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everyone writes software on 3.4GHz monster PCs, where they can’t actually feel how much slower the latest change they made was from the earlier code. I do much of my hobby programming on a really old laptop and you know immediately when you’ve written slow code. (Well, after a slow build)

Today I read in slack-jawed amazement that Apple DOS 3.1 was ...

2025-10-10T21:32:49Z

Today I read in slack-jawed amazement that Apple DOS 3.1 was written in 35 days. On punch cards, fed into an Apple ][ by a paper tape reader built by Woz. From the starting point of the Read/Write Track/Sector code from Woz and Randy Wiggington. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_DOS

I wonder if there’s a long German word for wondering whether ...

2025-08-01T14:28:27Z

I wonder if there’s a long German word for wondering whether there’s a long German word for something?

Lovely Docker! You too can turn every microservice into its own ...

2025-05-12T15:42:48Z

Lovely Docker! You too can turn every microservice into its own special snowflake and implement Linux From Scratch every time! FML…

At the risk of igniting some controversy, but hopefully ...

2025-04-06T08:39:32Z

At the risk of igniting some controversy, but hopefully stimulating debate, I’d like to ponder the question: #Meshtastic and #LoRa mesh networks in general, #MeshCore, #Reticulum etc. … Are they “Amateur Radio”? #HamRadio - I know the technical UK answer “No, unless on 433MHz with the “Licensed Operator” setting on, with amateur license; no encryption, so no Reticulum allowed”. I’ll leave the question a bit open like that without further qualifications. Please boost for visibility! 73 Matt

Took my #Meshtastic node and my dog on a long walk to a local ...

2025-04-05T15:26:44Z

Took my #Meshtastic node and my dog on a long walk to a local high point, and heard another node briefly, but it doesn’t send its location, so no idea where. Makes me wonder whether putting some camouflaged solar nodes in the woods on high points might help the mesh grow. If I could build an ultra cheap node, and secrete many of them as in #Geocaching - I wonder if there’s some crossover opportunity there?

maybe add a GPS receiver and interface it (don’t know how) to ...

2025-04-01T18:06:06Z

In reply to nevent1q…zgjc
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maybe add a GPS receiver and interface it (don’t know how) to NTP?

I appreciate the argument (Must Use The New Hotness!) … but I ...

2024-08-30T12:26:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…e9cf
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I appreciate the argument (Must Use The New Hotness!) … but I work on a telephony microservice that has soft real time requirements, where memory safety and determinism are critical, written in Rust. Garbage collected languages are less useful in this space. We could have used C++ or maybe Go. I feel both would have been harder work (have only dabbled in Go). Trying to shoehorn Rust into the Linux kernel - will be a gargantuan undertaking, easier to start afresh.

I read this today - https://notgull.net/announcing-dozer/ - ...

2024-08-29T21:47:26Z

I read this today - https://notgull.net/announcing-dozer/ - peered into the rabbit hole that is bootstrapping, and considered my #Transputer tool chain, whose assembler is written in Scala and C compiler being written in Rust… it’s going to be hard to bootstrap.

I went the other way - for Rust development- VS Code is only half ...

2024-07-30T21:09:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…9f2y
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I went the other way - for Rust development- VS Code is only half an IDE in comparison to IntelliJ, but so much faster. JetBrains’ tools just hammer my older MacBook - VS Code much less so. Would be interested to discover your assessment of Zed: I was thinking of trying it.