An original, unusual and very funny glimpse into a corner of the semiconductor industry, presented in the pilot episode of a series conceived in 2009 and first published in 2012.
Have fun and support The Sacred Computer: Thinking Machines, Creativity and Human Development
The main volume of "The Prophets of the Thinking Machines..." will be published soon and the next virtual conference: SIGI-2026 is starting on 1.1.2026. Be an early-bird there, LOL. :))
The next work is "Genesis: Creating Thinking Machines" and it is not designed to be "just" a set of 20-some books, monographs and papers, more than 4000 pages. (...)
https://twenkid.com/smartasses/2025/
Premiere of the colorized and enhanced version of the pilot episode of my satirical comic “Superumintsi” (2012) — cheerful adventures and absurdities from the semiconductor industry and from life:
https://twenkid.com/smartasses/2025/
Episode One: “Companions”
Concept, text, and pencil drawings: Tosh
(Idea and descriptions for several episodes / storyboard sketches: 2009; first fully realized large pilot episode: summer 2012)Coloring and enhancements of some of the drawings (12/2025): Tosh with Gemini, plus a few manual touch-ups (one horizontal flip was required).*
Some drawings from the draft were kept as they were or only lightly colorized, with the original outlines preserved. Overall, I aimed to follow the composition, shapes, and style of the originals, with exceptions where that wasn’t possible or where I preferred it as is. The original pencil-only version can also be seen via the links above.The story is inspired by a legendary company that was later acquired by Broadcom, after many years of close collaboration. Broadcom is now listed with a market capitalization of about $1.67 trillion; around 2008–2009 it was valued at $3–4 billion (they were later acquired for $37 billion in 2015, and then went on to acquire the other company in question in 2016 and adopt its name).
Did any colleague happen to be a “player” and buy shares in time?
…
With more redraws or further refinement of the sketches, the characters could have been improved even more, but I didn’t feel like investing the extra effort— I only tried a few prompts, and they didn’t turn out well.
You can help me if you wish: donate hardware or services, support me, connect and help in the development and experiments.
According to early 2010s "wishful" ideas and designs, while working on the Infrastructure, and to what was counted as an AGI, universal artificial intelligence, a thinking machine, capable to think and create at a single human/super-human level/speed/scale/performance/quality/complexity level*, were "dreamed" to work on a quad-core PC with 32 GB RAM and a desktop GPU from that era - equipped with sensors: one or several cameras, microphones, Internet and other sensors, used for bootstrapping - without pre-trained and existing modules which are now available, we may not count them in the requirements. :)
Ask if you are interested in these articles or search the blog in 2013-2014, Issues on AGIRI list, "What's going on - Everything", "The infrastructure" (now called Vsy, Jack of All Trades, Вседържец etc.)
* I.e such a machine is not required to be capable of generating photorealistic 4K videos in real time - this is vastly superhuman. It should be at least as fast as me or reasonably slower.
