animation - others

ibm mainframe computing bitcoin hash function (slowly)

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ibm_mainframe

This animated GIF comes from Ken Shirriff's blog. Shirriff used a vintage IBM mainframe computer to compute the cryptographic "hash" functions that are the basis of bitcoin mining:

The IBM 1401 can compute a double SHA-256 hash in 80 seconds. It requires about 3000 Watts of power, roughly the same as an oven or clothes dryer. A basic IBM 1401 system sold for $125,600, which is about a million dollars in 2015 dollars. On the other hand, today you can spend $50 and get a USB stick miner with a custom ASIC integrated circuit. This USB miner performs 3.6 billion hashes per second and uses about 4 watts.

Shirriff's also produced a Mandelbrot image on the mainframe. His photos of the hand-wired guts of the IBM 1401 are fascinating.

word dot com GIF (late '90s) -- enlarged

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word_dot_com_400x400

So-called "art" GIFs were around in the late '90s -- I used to see them on Word.com. They were made mostly by graphic designers as opposed to self-identifying artistes. The above GIF came from there; the original was 102 x 128 pixels. I enlarged it to 400 x 400 using "nearest neighbor" resizing to preserve the sharp edges. Still, this is an incredibly small (19 kilobyte) GIF in terms of ecological impact, in case you are thinking about alternatives to binge-watching Mad Men. Not that you can look at this one for very long.