What's with the recent wave of portable terminals? Has any of these made it ever into the hands of customers? I believe the only device that actually came out is the Cosmo Communicator (https://www.www3.planetcom.co.uk/cosmo-communicator)
> not sure why this one in particular made it to the frontpage
Because of HNs connection to Lisp via Paul Graham, but also because Lisperati1000's creator Conrad Barski is a bit of a legend in Lisp circles, having authored Land of Lisp (LOL)
My Psion Series 3A got lots of use until the third time I dropped it and wrecked the wiring in the hinge area, and it refused to power up again. Was sad.
HP LX series was a big one. The AlphaSmart Dana almost fits, too - it was a Palm device rather than just the dedicated word processor and keyboard functions.
Don't. I got a Cosmo Communicator, the successor device.
The good: the keyboard is great (At first - see below). It can be taken apart, which is great because you'll be doing that a lot...
The bad: Everything else. The device is fragile and impractical and the build quality is questionable. The case is sheet metal held in with tiny tabs - the hinge and bottom cover often pop off spontaneously. Breakages are common and no spares are available except by emailing support and begging; and if they agree, they will charge you the earth. The cover display cracked entirely by itself - a design flaw. Most unforgivably, after a year, the keyboard has worn in such a way that it frequently misses keystrokes. And - the coup-de-gras for me - there's no overcurrent protection on the right USB port, so it will melt the first time some lint shorts it (ask me how I know!).
I love my PocketCHIP - but I wouldn't go with that form factor again - or at the very least, not with the type of physical keyboard they included. It was very unwieldy and generally not fun to use, I always connected an external keyboard.
The game controls were also garbage with that type of input sensor. It would have benefited greatly from a better keyboard, or a gamepad and doing away with the keyboard entirely.
Thanks for this, I've almost bought one of those a couple of times and your experience may help ensure I don't click "buy" in a moment of weakness in future. I absolutely love the idea of it but the implementation is insufficiently good.
It seems to be a collision of custom keyboards, cheap and capable SoCs, easy access to displays and driver boards and a dose of nostalgia and tech weariness.
I like this one but I’d suffer it to be a bit larger to accommodate a standard keyboard and a pi4. I love the display, seems like you can buy them on Amazon and elsewhere since they are targeted at case modders and the like.
Custom keyboards often seem to follow different rules when it comes to ergonomics and intuitive keybindings. I have my arrow keys on Fn+h/j/k/l and they're much faster and more comfortable to reach than on any standard keyboard. I have my number row behind the Fn key and yet I'm faster and more accurate at entering numbers because the physical keys are placed better. It's very hard to predict how well a key combination works.
Also, tiny keyboards are usually programmable, so the key labels might not be correct. If your layout is custom enough it becomes very hard to find keycaps which match the setup(and basically impossible if you don't want to wait >6 months).
I also think that the keyboard was likely designed to be familiar to those comfortable with the standardized keyboard layout, as opposed to being efficient.
From an efficiency perspective, there's a lot that you can improve on, both in the general case (layout for English typing) and in the special case of Lisp programming - but I don't think that was their goal.
I wouldn't buy one of these myself, but I can understand why someone else would.
As a software hack, there's always Shift Parentheses[1].
> As a software hack, there's always Shift Parentheses
On any PC keyboard, just swap parentheses with square or curly brackets. That is way more useful even if you never program in Lisp. One of several things the Lisp Machine keyboard layouts did well.
Yes. From the same site's review of a different device:
"Cyberdecks are, almost by their very definition, mostly about aesthetics. There are very few of them that are designed to serve a real, practical purpose that can’t be done better by a modern laptop or tablet."
thank you, im looking at my old netbook which i still use from time to time and wondering how i can maybe lessen it's usefulness while making it more aesthetically interesting.
I was thinking e-ink and mechanical keys with a lightweight battery and retractable antennas
This is a common concern with this form factor, but I think there's a lot of variability between people on how comfortable they are with a "book reading" posture, such as required by a cyberdeck. It will work for some people, not so much for other people.
It comes from cyberpunk literature, where a "deck" is whatever portable device someone uses to access cyberspace/hack stuff/..., and has recently become somewhat of a catchall for DIY/customized/unusual "cool" portable computing devices that don't fit in the common laptop/tablet/... categories.
The Lisperati1000 can function in either posture. (I would argue that holding a book in front of you in the air is not a common way to read long-form books, due to arm fatigue.)
Hi, I'm with Lisperati and we're working hard to manufacture these. Feel free to ask any questions. No, we don't know when they'll be ready, but when they are ready we will sell them directly (no presale/crowdfunding/etc)
Also: we already have DIY build instructions with STL files available at lisperaticomputers.com. However, the official device will have an aluminum enclosure.
Assumedly it's Linux under the hood, and you'd be able to install whatever packages normally available through, say apt? So this could this be used for writing LaTeX, for example?
Also and tangentially, has there been any progress with Walking Dream?
LOL I've built a lot of tech for walkingdre.am, but my best prototype so far just isn't "fun" enough (based on a highly subjective definition of "fun") so I'm stuck at the moment, trying to improve that aspect of the game (particularly, the combat and crafting system)
Post updates sign-up page is broken, so I’m not sure if I’m subscribed. I’m an Oculus Quest user and really want to try a redirected walking game so I need those updates!
I'm thinking of purchasing one. Is it essentially just Linux with Lisp packages setup on top, or running some custom lisp OS on top of whatever is running on the pi?
Had I known that I would have probably been more inclined to immediately read more! I love lisps, but didn't need/want a dedicated machine, I feel foolish for assuming it wasn't something more straight forward :)
Everyone is using pretty much the same screen, model HSD088PW1. As for longevity, I guess if I'm honest I have to say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If you think this is a concern and think you know how to resolve the question and are an engineer with expertise in this subject matter, we'd be happy to talk to get a firmer answer.
The primary benefit over a Macbook Air is the full size 40% mechanical keyboard. Other advantages are hackability, smaller footprint, quicker access without having to open screen, more inconspicuous when using in public space.
But this is very much a "niche" device, if you are questioning if it would be useful, you almost certainly should get a general-purpose device like a macbook, instead.
I bought a Planck specifically to answer this question. Unfortunately, it has a significantly bigger footprint than a vortex core, so it would be difficult.
That's surprising. From the photo's top row, it looks like the Lisperati's keyboard is a key wider than the 12x4 Planck. Does the Vortex use smaller caps?
That’s too bad. I’ve been hoping the keyboard could be swapped out with something running QMK, but I’ve also been searching for a low-profile, Bluetooth Planck and realize there actually isn’t that much variety out there.
> Lisp is one of the oldest programming languages that is still in use today
I don’t like that this keeps getting repeated. Common Lisp is different from the original Lisp and other modern Lisps are even more different. It’s like saying Algol is one of the oldest programming languages still in use today, because many Algol-descendants are quite popular still.
There were no system specific functions in 01960 because there was only one system, which is to say, one implementation of LISP. EVAL was dynamically scoped. And good luck getting any FEXPR-based code from 01960 to run!
It may not be the fastest, but something like Common Lisp has extensive numeric capabilities built-in like computing with floats, bignums, complex, ratios, ... Extensive mathematical software has been written in Lisp like Reduce (written in Standard Lisp), Macsyma, Axiom, ... In education for a while something like Derive, MuSimp/MuMath, ... was used. Derive should also have been used in pocket calculators, which would be in the spirit of Lisperati1000.
Lisp was the favored language for programming AI back in the day. Though the kind of AI problems focused on then was much more symbolic-themed than numerical themed as they are now. Lisp is highly regarded when solving complex problems, though would probably not get hailed as the fastest language.
If you stick to floats and arrays of floats, Fortran is probably still faster.
But Common Lisp and fully conformant Schemes have an extensive numeric tower including arbitrary precision integers, rationals, and complex numbers built in, making Lisp useful for some kinds of numeric computing that would be cumbersome even in Fortran.
Plus, I once heard of a guy who wrote an FFT implementation in Gambit Scheme that beat FFTW in speed...
Giving up on assembly language was the apple in our Garden of Eden: Languages whose use squanders machine cycles are sinful. The LISP machine now permits LISP programmers to abandon bra and fig-leaf.
Alan Perlis, Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
89 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 163 ms ] threadThere's also
Devterm - https://www.clockworkpi.com/devterm
Popcorn Pocket - https://pocket.popcorncomputer.com/
Teenyserv - https://expanscape.com/teenyserv/the-teenyserv-prototypes/
Hackaday has quite a bit of cyberdeck projects on their blog, here:
https://hackaday.com/tag/cyberdeck/
I am guessing part of the appeal is having a portable device with a QWERTY tactile keyboard that does not have a locked-down OS.
Also, it is much easier to replace a damaged screen when compared to an iPad.
Because of HNs connection to Lisp via Paul Graham, but also because Lisperati1000's creator Conrad Barski is a bit of a legend in Lisp circles, having authored Land of Lisp (LOL)
http://landoflisp.com/
Of LOL, PG said, "Turns out the border between genius and insanity is a pretty cheery place".
So now you see why HN holds the Lisperati1000 especially dear :)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM1Zb3xmvMc
"Simple but refined, guaranteed to blow your mind! The Land of Lisp. Minimal and sleek but so clever you'll freak! The land of Lisp."
Now I too eat parentheses for breakfast, and lunch.
(Or at least I aspire to.)
I did not make the association with viaweb. Yay RTML.
I now have a deeper appreciation for the ethos of his particular cyberdeck implementation.
https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/898/Psion/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Portfolio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_Communicator
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_Libretto
Among plenty of other ones.
The good: the keyboard is great (At first - see below). It can be taken apart, which is great because you'll be doing that a lot...
The bad: Everything else. The device is fragile and impractical and the build quality is questionable. The case is sheet metal held in with tiny tabs - the hinge and bottom cover often pop off spontaneously. Breakages are common and no spares are available except by emailing support and begging; and if they agree, they will charge you the earth. The cover display cracked entirely by itself - a design flaw. Most unforgivably, after a year, the keyboard has worn in such a way that it frequently misses keystrokes. And - the coup-de-gras for me - there's no overcurrent protection on the right USB port, so it will melt the first time some lint shorts it (ask me how I know!).
;)
Thank you for the deterrent and inspiration to roll-my-own.
Adafruit and Sparkfun get ready.
The game controls were also garbage with that type of input sensor. It would have benefited greatly from a better keyboard, or a gamepad and doing away with the keyboard entirely.
Glad to see it coming back though!
I like this one but I’d suffer it to be a bit larger to accommodate a standard keyboard and a pi4. I love the display, seems like you can buy them on Amazon and elsewhere since they are targeted at case modders and the like.
I think it's a strange choice not to have them be first class, unshifted characters - and yet have such a dizzying array of modifier keys.
Also, tiny keyboards are usually programmable, so the key labels might not be correct. If your layout is custom enough it becomes very hard to find keycaps which match the setup(and basically impossible if you don't want to wait >6 months).
I also think that the keyboard was likely designed to be familiar to those comfortable with the standardized keyboard layout, as opposed to being efficient.
From an efficiency perspective, there's a lot that you can improve on, both in the general case (layout for English typing) and in the special case of Lisp programming - but I don't think that was their goal.
I wouldn't buy one of these myself, but I can understand why someone else would.
As a software hack, there's always Shift Parentheses[1].
[1] https://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/10/a-modern-space-cadet/#s17...
On any PC keyboard, just swap parentheses with square or curly brackets. That is way more useful even if you never program in Lisp. One of several things the Lisp Machine keyboard layouts did well.
is that it's purpose?
"Cyberdecks are, almost by their very definition, mostly about aesthetics. There are very few of them that are designed to serve a real, practical purpose that can’t be done better by a modern laptop or tablet."
https://www.hackster.io/news/the-griz-sextant-is-a-raspberry...
I was thinking e-ink and mechanical keys with a lightweight battery and retractable antennas
now I have some shopping to do
The Lisperati1000 can function in either posture. (I would argue that holding a book in front of you in the air is not a common way to read long-form books, due to arm fatigue.)
Also: we already have DIY build instructions with STL files available at lisperaticomputers.com. However, the official device will have an aluminum enclosure.
Really exciting!
Assumedly it's Linux under the hood, and you'd be able to install whatever packages normally available through, say apt? So this could this be used for writing LaTeX, for example?
Also and tangentially, has there been any progress with Walking Dream?
http://walkingdre.am/
I would have killed to have one of these things in high school. A broken Lisp on a TI-84 just doesn’t cut it…
All the best with Lisperati!
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberDeck/
If you think this is a concern and think you know how to resolve the question and are an engineer with expertise in this subject matter, we'd be happy to talk to get a firmer answer.
But this is very much a "niche" device, if you are questioning if it would be useful, you almost certainly should get a general-purpose device like a macbook, instead.
I don’t like that this keeps getting repeated. Common Lisp is different from the original Lisp and other modern Lisps are even more different. It’s like saying Algol is one of the oldest programming languages still in use today, because many Algol-descendants are quite popular still.
It still has the old operators: car, cdr, cons, eval, apply, append, cond, quote, lambda, set, setq, atom, and, eq, equal, list, map, mapcon, maplist, nconc, not, null, or, print, prog, read, remprop, rplaca, rplacd, ...
It has the old data structures like symbols and cons cells.
Thus programs from 1960 often can be made running in Common Lisp, unless they make use of system specific functions.
> But if you need some complex algorithms — particularly algorithms that do a lot of heavy mathematical lifting — then Lisp is the ideal choice.
Is this right? I never thought of LISP as good fit for numerical processing.
But Common Lisp and fully conformant Schemes have an extensive numeric tower including arbitrary precision integers, rationals, and complex numbers built in, making Lisp useful for some kinds of numeric computing that would be cumbersome even in Fortran.
Plus, I once heard of a guy who wrote an FFT implementation in Gambit Scheme that beat FFTW in speed...
It was even featured on HN a few days ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-yuZ2pejGU
Alan Perlis, Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
The Lisperati1000 Computer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26022797 - Feb 2021 (25 comments)
Thanks dang
I love the idea of a good keyboard + xterm + browser. A lot.