Why Are Computer Storage Units Called 'Memory'?

Why are storage units in computers called "memory"? It might seem natural today, but the anthropomorphism does seem odd after a bit of thought. As many concepts in computing, this is attributable to von Neumann. A short thread on the history of this naming. 1/5 #computinghistory

— Sujith Jay Nair (@suj1th) January 11, 2020

UPenn Electrical Engg. Department had designed & built ENIAC, the first programmable electronic computer, between 1943-1945. This team roped in von Neumann to help design a successor to ENIAC. The first output of this collaboration was "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC". 2/5

— Sujith Jay Nair (@suj1th) January 11, 2020

Github Sponsors

1/ The recent announcement of @github sponsors (https://t.co/OjxZU1t6UT) is an interesting development in OSS. I feel it is a great time to revisit my essay on the questions facing open-source software: https://t.co/UgK40taf9R #GitHubSponsors 1/N

— Sujith Jay Nair (@suj1th) May 23, 2019

Q.1: Can we make the open-source movement self-sustaining? Open source survives on philanthropy: the altruism of the initiator of an open source project, the unpaid labour of the maintainer, and the monetary donations to foundations. Is there an alternative, self-sustaining way?

— Sujith Jay Nair (@suj1th) May 23, 2019

Github Sponsors could, prima facie, remove the reliance of OSS projects on foundations. It would continue to be based on philanthropy. Of the sponsors. Is that an improvement over the present? I am not sure.

— Sujith Jay Nair (@suj1th) May 23, 2019

Q.2:
a) Can we pay back for the effort of the maintainer and the individual contributor?
b) Can we provide economic incentives to the maintainers and contributors to help continued development?
c) How do we assign value to an open source project & contribution?

— Sujith Jay Nair (@suj1th) May 23, 2019

Catastrophic Forgetting

1/ Catastrophic Forgetting is a long-recognised problem in neural networks; and is of great interest in cognitive sciences. In plain words, it is the destructive interference effect of learning a new skill on pre-existing skills. #deeplearning

— Sujith Jay Nair (@suj1th) December 1, 2018

2/ Research in Deep Learning has had a particular focus on this problem in recent time, particularly in the realm of reinforcement learning. e.g. [Rolnick, Ahuja, Schwarz et al. 2018], [Shin, Lee, Kim et al. 2017] among others. #deeplearning

— Sujith Jay Nair (@suj1th) December 1, 2018

3/ A common thread in these research is the replay of past data to reinforce acquired skills from the past. Rolnick et al. (https://t.co/jluXqvN2Qr) choose a 50-50 split of replay vs. new task data. #deeplearning

— Sujith Jay Nair (@suj1th) December 1, 2018

Caveat to Open Source Disruption

I believe an important caveat exists to this postulate: the physical capital necessary for the production & innovation of the resource should have low-cost access & wide distribution. I will try & explore this caveat a bit. https://t.co/p57V70PiCr

— Sujith Jay Nair (@suj1th) October 20, 2018

Open Source Eats Patents

@asynchio postulates that every patent-heavy industry will be dis-intermediated by open source. A thread on why this prediction could turn out to be true. 1/N

— Sujith Jay Nair (@suj1th) October 19, 2018

Demsetz' Theory on Property Rights models the emergence of property around a resource as a function of the cost of implementing & enforcing property rights.

— Sujith Jay Nair (@suj1th) October 19, 2018

A resource, managed as property, could evolve into commons when the implementation cost of property rights exceeds the value of the increase in the efficiency of utilisation of the resource caused by adoption of property rights.

— Sujith Jay Nair (@suj1th) October 19, 2018