April 2017 – Armed and Dangerous

You shall judge by the code alone

I support the open letter by Drupal developers protesting the attempted expulsion of Larry Garfield from the Drupal commmunity. As a Drupal contributor who has never in any respect attempted to tie the project to his beliefs or lifestyle, Garfield deserves the right to be judged by his code alone. That is the hacker way;… Continue reading You shall judge by the code alone

The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald: the science version

My last G+ post reported this: Something out there kills about one oceangoing ship a week. It is probably freakishly large waves – well outside the ranges predicted by simple modeling of fluid dynamics and used to set required force-tolerance levels in ship design. Turns out these can be produced by nonlinear interactions in which… Continue reading The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald: the *science* version

From molly-guard to moggy-guard

In ancient lore, a molly-guard was a shield to prevent tripping of some Big Red Switch by clumsy or ignorant hands. Originally used of the plexiglass covers improvised for the BRS on an IBM 4341 after a programmer’s toddler daughter (named Molly) frobbed it twice in one day The Great Beast of Malvern, the computer… Continue reading From molly-guard to moggy-guard

PSA: “E-Shielder Security” and “CyberSec Buzz” are gangs of idiotic scum

This is a public service announcement: E-Shielder Security, describing itself as “leading importers and suppliers of high end electronic technology solution systems” is a gang of idiotic scum. Yesterday they posted a Hacktivists on the rampage in 2017, which largely reproduced my Hacker Archetypes post. They did so in obvious ignorance of who the hackers… Continue reading PSA: “E-Shielder Security” and “CyberSec Buzz” are gangs of idiotic scum

Hacker Archetypes

There’s a book about martial arts called On the Warrior’s Path that tries to understand the differing psychologies of martial artists through the lens of half a dozen archetypes – Seeker, Ronin, Tribal Warrior, and others. I have not yet read the book, but my friend and regular A&D commenter Susan Sons reports having found… Continue reading Hacker Archetypes

Four modes of creole formation

A ‘pidgin’ is a language formed by contact between speakers of different languages. A ‘creole’ is what happens when a pidgin becomes a birth language for children raised where a pidgin is spoken. Pidgins are simple languages, stripped to the running gears, Often creoles re-complexify in later generations, retaining grammar mostly from one parent language… Continue reading Four modes of creole formation