The most powerful, fully open, fully programmable desktop computer today is the Raptor Computing Systems Talos II workstation. It uses IBM OpenPOWER CPUs and the OpenBMC board firmware.

https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL2DS1/intro.html

Openess might be impacted by add-on hardware. For servers, more powerful OpenPOWER systems are available from IBM.

What kind of things is this generally used for?

It makes no sense to use the x86 ABI today. 32-bit processors are not produced anymore (since post Pentium 4/~10 years ago). 64 bit mode is much better and even provides a better 32-bit ABI. The improvement in GCC 5 should be seen as an improvement for legacy software.

As an analogy, seeing it as a "refresh" for the old x86 ABI is like a patient that goes to the doctor and says he cuts his wrists every week and the doctor solution is to give him iron supplements.

There are a lot of embedded 32bit x86 still being produced. Just because it's not in your desktop anymore doesn't mean it ceased to exist.

Indeed, Intel is still actively producing new 32-bit CPUs with their Quark line [1], and quite a few consumer products that people would easily recognize have shipped [2] in the last few years with 32-bit Atom SoC's.

The PC Engines ALIX [3] series (with a 32-bit AMD Geode LX onboard), is also pretty widely used as a firewall/router, and is actively supported by pfSense and several other software distributions.

[1] http://ark.intel.com/products/family/79047

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(system_on_chip)

[3] http://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm

See also, https://www-ssl.intel.com/content/www/us/en/do-it-yourself/e... . 32-bit x86 is alive and well in the embedded devices segment and will be for some time to come.

Up until recently, a lot of Atoms were 32-bit only. Mostly for market segmentation reasons.

Also power consumption/die area.

The author argues that discipline is what gets you started and motivation is what keeps you going.

> The author argues that discipline is what gets you started and motivation is what keeps you going.

I don't see that argument anywhere in the article -- it seems mostly to be that motivation and discipline serve the same purpose, but discipline is more reliable and better.

But then, I don't see the original article as being worth the electrons used to transmit it, its a rant that neither seems to have any grounding nor seems to have any correspondence with my experience.

I'd say the idea that motivation being very important in getting something started and both motivation and discipline playing important roles in keeping going is true.

I'm afraid that trying to squeeze the text on the analogy made me distort the message. What I meant is in this paragraph:

"The point is to cut the link between feelings and actions, and do it anyway. You get to feel good and buzzed and energetic and eager afterwards."

So, discipline will kick things off and later you'll have the feelings that should have been generated by motivation.