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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • This Xerox Alto restoration series is a really interesting reflection on that. Here’s the point in the series where they finally get it running. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OQMhvArI9g

    Yeah, Xerox made revolutionary progress. But it appears that their proximity to a viable consumer product is a bit exaggerated. It really did still take another set of eyes and minds to wrangle it in. I think if they did release it sooner, and without the leaks, the next competitor still would have seen that and soon come along and done a better enough job to nullify their first-mover advantage.

    Those days were chock full of companies that ended up just contributing to the zeitgeist of computing without themselves reaping in the glory.

    I think Steve Jobs’ comments about what Xerox could have been… Is largely him stroking his ego that he and Apple pulled off what they couldn’t.

    I don’t think Xerox would be the Mac of today in most timelines.





  • Ah, well I don’t know the specific details. So I’ll have to go off of just your one sentence summary… But what you describe is good in general. It should in theory help to address the oppressed groups, which largely overlap with minorities so will indirectly benefit them. It seems to be making a good target on groups that need it, while avoiding the counterproductive targeting, though it still could be used by bad actors to only let poor whites in. I don’t know how to resolve that level.

    It’s another type of drop in the bucket thing that is needed, and it seems evident that more things are still needed.

    Edit to add: And if the UC program are admitting very unqualified students from those groups at the cost of accepting other more qualified students, they might lead to similar problems as AA too. So hopefully they’ve found an amicable balance. And also btw it doesn’t have to be a zero-sum after all, filling one slot doesn’t have to remove another, slots can be added in various ways.