Month: September 2024

Enlarge / A photo of Dmitry Grinberg's custom Linux/4004 circuit board. (credit: Dmitry Grinberg)

Hardware hacker Dmitry Grinberg recently achieved what might sound impossible: booting Linux on the Intel 4004, the world's first commercial microprocessor. With just 2,300 transistors and an original clock speed of 740 kHz, the 1971 CPU is incredibly primitive by modern standards. And it's slow—it takes about 4.76 days for the Linux kernel to boot.

Initially designed for a Japanese calculator called the Busicom 141-PF, the 4-bit 4004 found limited use in commercial products of the 1970s before being superseded by more powerful Intel chips, such as the 8008 and 8080 that powered early personal computers—and then the 8086 and 8088 that launched the IBM PC era.

If you're skeptical that this feat is possible with a raw 4004, you're right: The 4004 itself is far too limited to run Linux directly. Instead, Grinberg created a solution that is equally impressive: an emulator that runs on the 4004 and emulates a MIPS R3000 processor—the architecture used in the DECstation 2100 workstation that Linux was originally ported to. This emulator, along with minimal hardware emulation, allows a stripped-down Debian Linux to boot to a command prompt.

Enlarge (credit: Sonos)

In May, Sonos updated its mobile app—to the dismay of many users. With missing features and bugs, customers complained about a loss of functionality and hardware not working the way it should. As Sonos deals with the expensive repercussions, a report from Bloomberg today highlights how Sonos allowed the release of an update so buggy and incomplete as to overturn its goodwill with long-standing customers.

Illustrating how poorly this app update has gone, last month, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence said the company would spend $20 million to $30 million in the short term to get the app where it needs to be (which is, basically, functioning as well as the predecessor) and rebuild customer and partner trust. Sonos also expects to miss its annual revenue target by $200 million. This is partially due to its delay of two hardware releases to focus on the app. Bloomberg noted that “Sonos shares are down 25% this year.” Annual bonuses and merit-based raises have also reportedly been canceled.

Outdated code

One reason for the app’s failure is the outdated code and infrastructure that the prior app was running on. Anonymous employees Bloomberg spoke with claimed that the Sonos app’s technical debt had been building up for 20 years before the update.

When the first trailer for Gladiator II dropped in early July, it racked up more than 180 million views in its first 48 hours, so clearly there's an audience for Ridley Scott's long-awaited sequel to his 2000 blockbuster Gladiator. And no wonder; as I noted at the time, the film "promises to be just as much of a visual feast, as a new crop of power players (plus a couple of familiar faces) clash over the future of Rome." We've now got a shiny new trailer, and I stand by that initial assessment—especially since this trailer confirms what had previously been hinted about the protagonist's biological father.

(Some spoilers for Gladiator below.)

Gladiator II centers around Lucius Verus (Paul Mescal), son of Lucilla and former heir to the Roman Empire, given that his father (also named Lucius Verus) was once a co-emperor of Rome. Lucius hasn't been seen in Rome for 15 years. Instead, he has been living in a small coastal town in Numidia with his wife and child. Like Maximus before him, he is captured by the Roman army and forced to become a gladiator after the death of his family. Per the official premise:

Marvel Studios has dropped an extended teaser trailer for the final feature film in its Phase Six slate: Thunderbolts*, now with a mysterious asterisk to the title. The studio has touted the film as having a different tone from other recent MCU offerings—thanks in part to hiring "a crew of indie veterans who sold out" to make the film—and judging from the teaser, it looks like they just might deliver on that.

As previously reported, Thunderbolts* is a follow-up of sorts to 2021's Black Widow. It's directed by Jake Schreier and stars Wyatt Russell as US Agent/failed Captain America from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Contessa Valentina Allegra, Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier, David Harbour as Alexei/Red Guardian, Hannah John-Kamen as Ava Starr/Ghost, Olga Kurylenko as Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster, and Lewis Pullman as Bob/The Sentry.

Marvel Studios has dropped an extended teaser trailer for the final feature film in its Phase Six slate: Thunderbolts*, now with a mysterious asterisk to the title. The studio has touted the film as having a different tone from other recent MCU offerings—thanks in part to hiring "a crew of indie veterans who sold out" to make the film—and judging from the teaser, it looks like they just might deliver on that.

As previously reported, Thunderbolts* is a follow-up of sorts to 2021's Black Widow. It's directed by Jake Schreier and stars Wyatt Russell as US Agent/failed Captain America from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Contessa Valentina Allegra, Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier, David Harbour as Alexei/Red Guardian, Hannah John-Kamen as Ava Starr/Ghost, Olga Kurylenko as Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster, and Lewis Pullman as Bob/The Sentry.