I was at the talk, and it's strange this what people take from it. You should watch the whole thing and see what he built over years.
I was a bit disappointed that most of the questions ignored his talk about a very cool jukebox he built and focused on OS drama.
He built a jukebox with all hit songs he could find in it 1900-2000 and for prerecorded music, got a player piano and sheet music and midi and integrated the whole thing. Touch screens, voice activation and so on. Hardware and software and data hoarding project.
He said he has massive cabinets of CDs, all the music he ripped and tested audio encoders with his own ears.
Ken is 80, and still building cool side projects and scratching his own itch! That's the story.
Be like Ken by building something cool, not by using whatever OS.
I was there too and, at first, was wondering if the music thing was just a warm up to the main talk. But soon enough I settled into the flow of it.
His slides were incredibly minimal throughout and then, at the end, he played a video of maple leaf rag pouring forth from his player piano midi setup and it was like choirs of angels singing.
How many boring ass talks have I sat through that I’ll never remember — but I suspect I’ll remember his talk for a long long time.
Edit: I've put a placeholder up there for the time being until we get a better suggestion. Submitted title was "Unix legend Ken Thompson announces he's switching From macOS To Raspbian Linux". I agree with the parent that this is trivializing (also cherrypicking and editorializing) and we should focus on the substance of the talk.
I listened to the question and answer at the timestamped link, and I wonder if he was giving a completely bogus answer to see if anyone was paying attention. Consider:
> I have for most of my life, because I was sort of born into it, run Apple.
Assuming that's actually still Ken Thompson talking, that makes absolutely no sense. He's several years older than Woz, never mind Apple itself. He was already well into developing Unix on DEC minicomputers when the Apple I came out in 1976. Then, all through the 80s and 90s, I'm sure he used whatever non-Apple computers they used at Bell Labs. I think I read somewhere that by the 90s they were using x86 PCs. Anyway, you get the idea. So I wonder if he was totally messing with us in that answer.
Thompson's talk is very interesting, but it's also interesting that Thompson has decided to use a UNIX clone for his daily compute over macOS. The original submission included the timestamp to concisely link to the comment. It might be that autocanonicalizing YouTube submissions to remove the timestamp is the actual issue, perhaps that could be reconsidered.
dang, it's far too late to change the submission title when there are already hundreds of comments focused on the old title. The commentary makes no sense now.
If anything, there should be a separate submission with the new title.
I have to say I was disappointed by the question at 59:23. They seemed to expect a retrospective on Ken’s career or some grand philosophical statement on software or open source. To be honest, I was pretty surprised by the direction of the talk myself, but I ultimately enjoyed it.
You see, Ken decided to talk about his 75 year project: his music collection. He talked about audio formats, collecting music from different groups, sourcing metadata, building hardware to play music and more. He was deeply interested in the topic and honestly probably a bit obsessive for multiple decades. This was very humanizing. And to be completely honest he reminded me a lot of my girlfriend’s father who we think is undiagnosed autistic.
Ultimately, I think the reason why Ken was so prolific over such a long time is his ability to be deeply interested in problems. He was not too fussy about tools. He didn’t push Go or Linux or UNIX. He wasn’t self aggrandizing. He just wanted to tell people about his project that he’s been working on. Honestly, I thought it was a great lesson that might have gone over a lot of people’s heads.
I was there in person and I debated with whether or not I should shout down the guy who basically insulted him for giving what I thought was a great talk. Obviously, I didn’t (because nothing good would come from making a spectacle like that), but it bothered me that he was insulted for presenting what I thought was a really beautiful and humanizing talk.
I met Ken the day before and he told me he was nervous about his talk. I hope he knows that most of us in the audience really loved what he shared.
It's a technically oriented, open source, Linux conference and he's talking about basically his home stereo.
Well ok, I guess he can do whatever he wants. There's expectations from the context though.
That speech was the first time I understood how people can become too famous for their own good.
I saw him the day before (and I've got the photos to prove it) and he made a bunch of factual mistakes. Nobody cared enough to push back. I only did a little when he claimed raspberry pi prices have been stable and plentiful throughout the pandemic. But even I quickly gave up and I'm usually an asshole about things being right. (2019: 1gb pi4 was $35.00 and now it's $132.95 for the record. Buying 1000 cheap computers to sit on them 4 years and then just resell would have made you about $100,000)
He can basically say whatever and do whatever and people just politely murmur in approval because he's computer royalty. There's no real feedback loop or anything to keep him in check.
It'd be like if Beyonce held a concert and then instead of singing, talked about composting and gardening. I mean sure, whatever.
I recall reading an interview many years ago where he mentioned downloading large quantities of music to build his personal collection and that his employer, AT&T, did not object.
“Unix Legend Ken Thompson, still out of step, taps his foot to the sterile sound of CDs just as they are now again being outsold by warm, pressed, analog vinyl”
He has already been using raspberry PIs for years, and if you watched the talk you will find this has nothing to do with iTunes, it predates it by decades.
what about designing the DSP/memory scsi disk that managed to do realtime ripping to PAC, then changing all that to mp3 using LAME, and the most important, creating usable metadata and finding all these CDs, and even finding ways to find a top-N song collection from dates that didn't have any relevant publications. I think you're underselling his achievement a bit ;).
I found the talk to be an epic geek journey.
Thompson: It's kind of a personal/research hobby/project. Let me explain it from an external point of view. Basically, I'm just collecting music. I'm getting lists from various sources—top 10s, top 50s—and I try to collect the music.
Right now, my list has around 35,000 songs, of which I've collected around 20,000. I compress the songs with a Bell Labs-invented algorithm called PAC [Perceptual Audio Coding] and store them on a jukebox storage system. I started this before MP3 was heard of on the network. PAC is vastly superior to MP3.
My collection is not generally available because of the legal aspects. I went to legal and told them I was collecting a lot of music, but I don't think they realized what I meant by "a lot." Anyway, they said that in the case of research there's something similar to fair use and that they'd back me, but wouldn't go to jail for me. So I can't release it generally. But it's pretty impressive. It's split-screen like a Web browser; you can walk down lists, years, or weeks.
Computer: It's a personal hobby.
Thompson: It's hard to differentiate since, if you haven't noticed, almost everything I've done is personal interest. Almost everything I've done has been supported and I'm allowed to do it, but it's always been on the edge of what's acceptable for computer science at the time. Even Unix was right on the edge of what was acceptable at Bell Labs at the time. That's almost been my history.
I feel privileged to watch this. I live in north Africa and I feel like taking a flight to California to go visit him, inquire about his health, tell him about my children progress at school, show him how much I love him and how much I'm grateful.
completely agree with you. ken and the not so big group of people who has positively shaped all our technology really need more appreciation from us users, although i'm sure he would be weirded out by it like any proper geek. That been said: thanks ken!
It's also worthy to note that shortly after that part of the video, he notes (from another question) that he has over 50 Raspberry Pis (including 12 stacks of 4xPi4s). So his choice of Raspberry Pi Linux is likely the result of that.
The announcement is in the Q&A after the talk - but the talk itself is definitely is worth watching. It starts at 10:56 (link below), and covers his "75-year project". It's kind of an amazing story that his life has spanned so many different eras of technology.
I was using a combination of windows/linux for a while until my archlinux laptop shit the bed after an update and I decided to say, fuck it, I'm finally buying a macbook because at least then I can still do unix shit without having to worry about everything working the next day.
I'm not happy about "Apple Silicon", it does feel restrictive and often times the only way to get around it is to use licensed VMs, which feels like a bit of a rip off. At the same time, my laptop runs phenomenally well, does everything I need it to do, and it never dies or gets overheated under normal use. I can't really complain.
Archlinux is a rolling release distro. Which mean you are supposed to:
- update them very frequently
- check the news before any update which mention any manual intervention needed
This is definitely a distro for people who want to get involved in the sysadmin part of it. A distro like Fedora will have a new release every 6 months and each release and ~390 days of support. You aren't expect to do manual intervention, just let it update itself upon reboot/poweroff from times to times and do a major upgrade, every 6 months to 1 year. Debian has 2y releases cycles and +- 3y of support, in the ubuntu world it is like Fedora or LTS (5y of support). If you want the longest extended lifecycle, RHEL and its clones have pretty much 10years of support without any fuss. Add to that the immutable distros like Fedora Silverblue, OpenSUSE MicroOS and some others where it is virtually impossible to make it shit the bed, even while being stupid.
So in the linux world you can definitely choose your poison, from the less eventful one to the one needing more attention. It looks like you didn't choose wisely. If I had to setup a distro for the least knowledgeable people, I would set it up with an RHEL or Almalinux and install a more modern browser through Flatpak. As long as the hardware is supported from day 1 they would expect a desktop that do not change at all for 10years.
I would love to know more about what you mean by 'archlinux shit the bed'. If you dont remember the exact error code, any text from the error screen, or even vague description is fine.
I believe that spending 15mins on the arch forums or IRC would probably result in somebody helping you out with the right pacman incantation. YMMV, my personal experience.
On a tangent, I would love to hear more about any Debian stable users out there and their experience with the conservative approach to updating.
I am particularly fond of this Debian wiki article on DontBreakDebian: https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian
You might like your macbook's hardware more than you think. It's a pretty open platform with a standardized instruction set and on open bootloader than can run Linux with pretty good hardware support for such a new platform.
So you went from archlinux, a system explicitly telling you you have to get involved in your own computer to make sure it works, to a macbook where everything is taken care of for you. What did you expect with archlinux exactly ?
That is a hacker's hacker. Hacked a 50s jukebox that combines LCD display with manual switches and supports voice input to play the chosen song on a player's piano - from a catalog that spans a century.
Also loved the video of his wife enjoying the setup - straightforward and effective.
What an incredible guy. Him, Dennis, the rest of Bell Labs, and all the other less known influential computing pioneers are such treasures. We're a fortunate field to have the kind of people that we do.
Readit News
I was a bit disappointed that most of the questions ignored his talk about a very cool jukebox he built and focused on OS drama.
He built a jukebox with all hit songs he could find in it 1900-2000 and for prerecorded music, got a player piano and sheet music and midi and integrated the whole thing. Touch screens, voice activation and so on. Hardware and software and data hoarding project.
He said he has massive cabinets of CDs, all the music he ripped and tested audio encoders with his own ears.
Ken is 80, and still building cool side projects and scratching his own itch! That's the story.
Be like Ken by building something cool, not by using whatever OS.
His slides were incredibly minimal throughout and then, at the end, he played a video of maple leaf rag pouring forth from his player piano midi setup and it was like choirs of angels singing.
How many boring ass talks have I sat through that I’ll never remember — but I suspect I’ll remember his talk for a long long time.
(By 'good' I mean accurate, neutral, and representative of the talk as a whole.)
((The submitted URL was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaandEt_pKw&t=3473s, but our software swapped in the canonical URL, which has no timestamp.))
Edit: I've put a placeholder up there for the time being until we get a better suggestion. Submitted title was "Unix legend Ken Thompson announces he's switching From macOS To Raspbian Linux". I agree with the parent that this is trivializing (also cherrypicking and editorializing) and we should focus on the substance of the talk.
> I have for most of my life, because I was sort of born into it, run Apple.
Assuming that's actually still Ken Thompson talking, that makes absolutely no sense. He's several years older than Woz, never mind Apple itself. He was already well into developing Unix on DEC minicomputers when the Apple I came out in 1976. Then, all through the 80s and 90s, I'm sure he used whatever non-Apple computers they used at Bell Labs. I think I read somewhere that by the 90s they were using x86 PCs. Anyway, you get the idea. So I wonder if he was totally messing with us in that answer.
If anything, there should be a separate submission with the new title.
I have to say I was disappointed by the question at 59:23. They seemed to expect a retrospective on Ken’s career or some grand philosophical statement on software or open source. To be honest, I was pretty surprised by the direction of the talk myself, but I ultimately enjoyed it.
You see, Ken decided to talk about his 75 year project: his music collection. He talked about audio formats, collecting music from different groups, sourcing metadata, building hardware to play music and more. He was deeply interested in the topic and honestly probably a bit obsessive for multiple decades. This was very humanizing. And to be completely honest he reminded me a lot of my girlfriend’s father who we think is undiagnosed autistic.
Ultimately, I think the reason why Ken was so prolific over such a long time is his ability to be deeply interested in problems. He was not too fussy about tools. He didn’t push Go or Linux or UNIX. He wasn’t self aggrandizing. He just wanted to tell people about his project that he’s been working on. Honestly, I thought it was a great lesson that might have gone over a lot of people’s heads.
---
This comment was copied from lobste.rs. https://lobste.rs/s/htwiag/ken_thompson_reveals_his_surprisi...
I met Ken the day before and he told me he was nervous about his talk. I hope he knows that most of us in the audience really loved what he shared.
Well ok, I guess he can do whatever he wants. There's expectations from the context though.
That speech was the first time I understood how people can become too famous for their own good.
I saw him the day before (and I've got the photos to prove it) and he made a bunch of factual mistakes. Nobody cared enough to push back. I only did a little when he claimed raspberry pi prices have been stable and plentiful throughout the pandemic. But even I quickly gave up and I'm usually an asshole about things being right. (2019: 1gb pi4 was $35.00 and now it's $132.95 for the record. Buying 1000 cheap computers to sit on them 4 years and then just resell would have made you about $100,000)
He can basically say whatever and do whatever and people just politely murmur in approval because he's computer royalty. There's no real feedback loop or anything to keep him in check.
It'd be like if Beyonce held a concert and then instead of singing, talked about composting and gardening. I mean sure, whatever.
High status gives people a pass
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Hmmm. I meant for that to be snarky, but it is a better headline.
(i have no beef with CDs, it's just a headline)
Computer: You're also collecting music?
Thompson: It's kind of a personal/research hobby/project. Let me explain it from an external point of view. Basically, I'm just collecting music. I'm getting lists from various sources—top 10s, top 50s—and I try to collect the music.
Right now, my list has around 35,000 songs, of which I've collected around 20,000. I compress the songs with a Bell Labs-invented algorithm called PAC [Perceptual Audio Coding] and store them on a jukebox storage system. I started this before MP3 was heard of on the network. PAC is vastly superior to MP3.
My collection is not generally available because of the legal aspects. I went to legal and told them I was collecting a lot of music, but I don't think they realized what I meant by "a lot." Anyway, they said that in the case of research there's something similar to fair use and that they'd back me, but wouldn't go to jail for me. So I can't release it generally. But it's pretty impressive. It's split-screen like a Web browser; you can walk down lists, years, or weeks.
Computer: It's a personal hobby.
Thompson: It's hard to differentiate since, if you haven't noticed, almost everything I've done is personal interest. Almost everything I've done has been supported and I'm allowed to do it, but it's always been on the edge of what's acceptable for computer science at the time. Even Unix was right on the edge of what was acceptable at Bell Labs at the time. That's almost been my history.
Source: http://genius.cat-v.org/ken-thompson/interviews/unix-and-bey...
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(with no random dude on github deciding to add microsoft directly into apt's trusted keys/repository list)
https://www.youtube.com/live/kaandEt_pKw?t=656
I'm not happy about "Apple Silicon", it does feel restrictive and often times the only way to get around it is to use licensed VMs, which feels like a bit of a rip off. At the same time, my laptop runs phenomenally well, does everything I need it to do, and it never dies or gets overheated under normal use. I can't really complain.
This is definitely a distro for people who want to get involved in the sysadmin part of it. A distro like Fedora will have a new release every 6 months and each release and ~390 days of support. You aren't expect to do manual intervention, just let it update itself upon reboot/poweroff from times to times and do a major upgrade, every 6 months to 1 year. Debian has 2y releases cycles and +- 3y of support, in the ubuntu world it is like Fedora or LTS (5y of support). If you want the longest extended lifecycle, RHEL and its clones have pretty much 10years of support without any fuss. Add to that the immutable distros like Fedora Silverblue, OpenSUSE MicroOS and some others where it is virtually impossible to make it shit the bed, even while being stupid.
So in the linux world you can definitely choose your poison, from the less eventful one to the one needing more attention. It looks like you didn't choose wisely. If I had to setup a distro for the least knowledgeable people, I would set it up with an RHEL or Almalinux and install a more modern browser through Flatpak. As long as the hardware is supported from day 1 they would expect a desktop that do not change at all for 10years.
I believe that spending 15mins on the arch forums or IRC would probably result in somebody helping you out with the right pacman incantation. YMMV, my personal experience.
On a tangent, I would love to hear more about any Debian stable users out there and their experience with the conservative approach to updating. I am particularly fond of this Debian wiki article on DontBreakDebian: https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian
Also loved the video of his wife enjoying the setup - straightforward and effective.