I made a really common and insidious programming mistake recently. I’m going to explain it in detail because every programmer in the world needs the reminder not to do this, and I hope confessing that even “ESR” falls into such a trap will make the less experienced properly wary of it. Our sutra for today… Continue reading Brute force beats premature optimization
Category: Hacker Culture
Why Hackers Must Eject the SJWs
The hacker culture, and STEM in general, are under ideological attack. Recently I blogged a safety warning that according to a source I consider reliable, a “women in tech” pressure group has made multiple efforts to set Linus Torvalds up for a sexual assault accusation. I interpreted this as an attempt to beat the hacker… Continue reading Why Hackers Must Eject the SJWs
From kafkatrap to honeytrap
I received a disturbing warning today from a source I trust. The short version is: if you are any kind of open-source leader or senior figure who is male, do not be alone with any female, ever, at a technical conference. Try to avoid even being alone, ever, because there is a chance that a… Continue reading From kafkatrap to honeytrap
SPDX: boosting the signal
High on my list of Things That Annoy Me When I Hack is sourcefiles that contain huge blobs of license text at the top. That is valuable territory which should be occupied by a header comment explaining the code, not a boatload of boilerplate that I’ve seen hundreds of times before. Hackers have a lot… Continue reading SPDX: boosting the signal
The FCC must not lock down device firmware!
The following is a comment I just filed on FCC Docket 15-170, “Amendment of Parts 0, 1, 2, 15, and 18 of the Commission’s Rules et al.” Thirty years ago I had a small hand in the design of the Internet. Since then I’ve become a senior member of the informal collegium that maintains key… Continue reading The FCC must not lock down device firmware!
Who are the famous programmers?
Who are the programmers who are famous for doing programmer things? I’m wondering about this because my wife Cathy asked me a simple question last night, and I realized I didn’t have an answer to it. “Are you” she asked “the most famous programmer in the world?”
How to submit a drive-by patch and get it accepted
I think it’s weird that I have to write this post in 2015, but earlier today I had to explain to someone with the technical skills to submit a good patch that he was doing the process wrong in some basic and extremely annoying ways. Googling revealed that most explanations of patch etiquette are rather… Continue reading How to submit a drive-by patch and get it accepted
On the duties of a geek-cred certification authority
Earlier today I was in an email exchange with a Tier 1 tech support guy at a hardware vendor who makes multiport serial boards. I had had a question in as to whether a particular board supported the Linux TIOCMIWAIT ioctl. Tier 1 guy referred the question to an engineer in their Linux development group,… Continue reading On the duties of a geek-cred certification authority
Remembering Terry Pratchett
I think Terry Pratchett’s death finally hit home for me today. I’ve been kind of numb about it before now, but today I learned abut this proposal for GNU Terry Pratchett. And as I was commenting about it on G+ I found myself crying. Here’s a very slightly improved version of what I said on… Continue reading Remembering Terry Pratchett
Why I won’t mourn Mozilla
An incredibly shrinking Firefox faces endangered species status, says Computerworld, and reports their user market share at 10% and dropping. It doesn’t look good for the Mozilla Foundation – especially not with so much of their funding coming from Google which of course has its own browser to push. I wish I could feel sadder… Continue reading Why I won’t mourn Mozilla
Meredith Patterson’s valiant effort is probably doomed
I just read Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy. and When Nerds Collide. I’m caught between admiration for Meredith Patterson’s writing ability and what she’s trying to do, and a feeling that the attempt is fundamentally doomed.
Self-sacrifice as hacker-culture glue
I’ve just had an insight I find a bit disturbing. Though perhaps I shouldn’t. Occasionally I visit Scott Alexander’s excellent and thoughtful blog, Slate Star Codex. Today’s entry reminded me of Laurence Iannaccone’s research on Sacrifice and Stigma, which argues that onerous religious requirements are effective ways of building in-group trust because they are commitment… Continue reading Self-sacrifice as hacker-culture glue
How To Learn Hacking: Version 1.2
How To Learn Hacking: Version 1.2, with a new section on being original. Incorporates more feedback from here and G++ For those of you who wondered why this didn’t just become a major section in How To Become A Hacker, it’s because I think it might become long enough to make that document too bulky… Continue reading How To Learn Hacking: Version 1.2
Emacs git conversion is done
Finally. After ten months of work, it’s done. Emacs is fully converted to git. You can clone from git://git.sv.gnu.org/emacs.git and if you have commit rights you can push to it and the changes will stick. The bzr repo is still up but only as an archive.
When hackers grow old
Lately I’ve been wrestling with various members of an ancient and venerable open-source development group which I am not going to name, though people who regularly follow my adventures will probably guess which one it is by the time I’m done venting. Why it so freaking hard to drag some people into the 21st century?… Continue reading When hackers grow old
In which I have reason to sound like Master Po
This landed in my mailbox yesterday. I reproduce it verbatim except for the sender’s name. > Dear authors of the RFC 3092, > > I am writing this email on behalf of your Request For Comment “Etymology of > ‘Foo’.” We are currently learning about the internet organizations that set > the standards of the… Continue reading In which I have reason to sound like Master Po
Master Foo and the Hardware Designer
The newest addition to Rootless Root:
Hackers and anonymity: some evidence
When I have to explain how real hackers differ from various ignorant media stereotypes about us, I’ve found that one of the easiest differences to explain is transparency vs. anonymity. Non-techies readily grasp the difference between showing pride in your work by attaching your real name to it versus hiding behind a concealing handle. They… Continue reading Hackers and anonymity: some evidence
Defending Andrew Auernheimer
There’s a documentary, The Hedgehog and the Hare, being made about the prosecution of Andrew Auernheimer (aka “the weev”). The filmmaker wants to interview me for background and context on the hacker culture. The following is a lightly edited version of the backgrounder I sent him so he could better prepare for the interview.
Sharecroppers, nomads, and early open source
The responses to my previous post, on the myth of the fall, brought out a lot of half-forgotten lore about pre-open-source cultures of software sharing. Some of these remain historically interesting, but hackers talking about them display the same tendency to back-project present-day conditions I was talking about in that post. As an example, one… Continue reading Sharecroppers, nomads, and early open source