So extending that line of reasoning it's something like "I don't care about the internals long as the external effects pass my smell test" which is a quality/efficiency compromise.

I think it's limited by their software. The hardware buys them flexibility. Nobody is pushing it like the ps2 days.

Math was always a few levels removed but somehow sneaks in with engineering and basic science.

A proof itself is only an articulation of understanding. Traditionally having one was evidence you had an insight. But if a computer generates 10,000 pages of technical goop then we don’t learn anything.

For example if tell you P=NP with no other information, it doesn’t change anything. There are mathematicians who believe and act on both conditions. What we hope a proof would reveal is how a verifier could be used to derive the solver (even if doing so was impractical).

Why doesn’t the author even mention this and immediately jumps to utility arguments for why the research is important for the government to fund?

In our lifetimes computers have made a lot of combinatorial and graph questions meaningful that otherwise would not be interesting.

Thanks for pointing out a real difference.

void Em1eWeaponSet(cEm10* em) { Em10Work* w = EM10_WK(em);

    w->mot[41] = 0;
    w->mot[42] = 0;
    …
    w->mot[62] = 0;
    w->mot[63] = ARC(0x26C);
    w->mot[64] = ARC(0x26D);
    w->mot[65] = ARC(0x276);
    w->mot[66] = ARC(0x277);
    w->mot[67] = 0;
    w->mot[68] = 0;
    w->mot[69] = ARC(0x26A);
    w->mot[70] = ARC(0x26B);
    w->mot[71] = ARC(0x270);
    w->mot[72] = ARC(0x271);
    w->mot[73] = ARC(0x272);
    w->mot[74] = ARC(0x273);
    w->mot[75] = ARC(0x274);
    w->mot[76] = ARC(0x275);
    w->mot[77] = 0;
    w->mot[78] = 0;
}

You want to use this thing instead?