Twenty years after

I just shipped what was probably the silliest and most pointless software release of my career. But hey, it’s the reference implementation of a language and I’m funny that way. Because I write compilers for fun, I have a standing offer out to reimplement any weird old language for which I am sent a sufficiently… Continue reading Twenty years after

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Categorized as Software

Dilemmatizing the NRA

So, the Washington Post publishes yet another bullshit article on gun policy. In this one, the NRA is charged with racism because it doesn’t leap to defend the right of black men to bear arms without incurring a lethal level of police suspicion. In a previous blog post, I considered some relevant numbers. At 12%… Continue reading Dilemmatizing the NRA

Trials of the Beast

This last week has not been kind to the Great Beast of Malvern. Serenity is restored now, but there was drama and (at the last) some rather explosive humor. For some time the Beast had been having occasional random flakeouts apparently related to the graphics card. My monitors would go black – machine still running… Continue reading Trials of the Beast

Some aphorisms on software development methodology

The net benefit of having anything that can be called a software development methodology is in inverse proportion to the quality of your developers – and possibly inverse-squared. Any software-development methodology works well on sufficiently small projects, but all scale very badly to large ones. The good ones scale slightly less badly. One thing all… Continue reading Some aphorisms on software development methodology

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Categorized as Software

Big fish, small pond?

As of tonight, I have a new challenge in my life. Sifu Dale announced tonight that next year he plans to send a team to next year’s Quoshu, a national-level martial-arts competition held every year in northern Maryland in late summer. I told Sifu I want to go and compete in weapons, at least. He… Continue reading Big fish, small pond?

Count the SKUs

The Washington Post is running a story alleging that surveys show gun ownership in the U.S,. is at a 40-year low. I won’t link to it. This is at the same time gun sales are at record highs. The WaPo’s explanation, is, basically, that all these guns are being bought by the same fourteen survivalists… Continue reading Count the SKUs

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Categorized as Firearms

My first maker recipe

I’ve been learning more about tinkering with electronics lately, soldering and casemodding and that sort of thing. The major reason for this is NTPsec-related and will be discussed in a near-future post, but here is an early consequence unrelated to that project: Converting a PS/2 TrackMan Marble to USB

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Categorized as General

NTPsec dodges 8 of 11 CVEs because we’d pre-hardened the code

While most of the NTPsec team was off at Penguicon, the NTP Classic people shipped a release patched for eleven security vulnerabilities in their code. Which might have been pretty embarrassing, if those vulnerabilities were in our code, too. People would be right to wonder, given NTPsec’s security focus, why we didn’t catch all these… Continue reading NTPsec dodges 8 of 11 CVEs because we’d pre-hardened the code

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Categorized as Software Tagged

Where your donations go (#1)

Because people do in fact drop money in my PayPal and Patreon accounts, I think a a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that I occasionally update everyone on where the money goes. First in an occasional series, Recently I’ve been buying Raspberry Pi GPS HATs (daughterboards with a GPS and real-time clock)… Continue reading Where your donations go (#1)

The Rule of Names

This is an entirely silly post about the way I name the machines in my house, shared for the amusement of my regulars.

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Categorized as General

Friends of Armed & Dangerous party 2016!

This year’s meatspace party for blog regulars and friends will be held at Penguicon 2016 On Friday, April 29 beginning at 9PM 10PM. UPDATE: Pushed back an hour because the original start time conflicted with the time slot assigned for my “Ask Me Anything” event. The venue is the Southfield Westin hotel in Southfield, Michigan.… Continue reading Friends of Armed & Dangerous party 2016!

The midrange computer dies

About five years ago I reacted to a lot of hype about the impending death of the personal computer with an observation and a prediction. The observation was that some components of a computer have to be the size they are because they’re scaled to human dimensions – notably screens, keyboards, and pointing devices. Wander… Continue reading The midrange computer dies

TPP and the Law of Unintended Consequences

Once upon a time, free-trade agreements were about just that: free trade. You abolish your tariffs and import restrictions, I’ll abolish mine. Trade increases, countries specialize in what they’re best equipped to do, efficiency increases, price levels drop, everybody wins. Then environmentalists began honking about exporting pollution and demanded what amounted to imposing First World… Continue reading TPP and the Law of Unintended Consequences

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Categorized as Politics

Too clever by half

The British have a phrase “Too clever by half”, It needs to go global, especially among hackers. It can have any of several closely related meanings: the one I mean to focus on here has to do with overconfidence in one’s intelligence or skill, and the particular bad consequences that can have. It’s related to… Continue reading Too clever by half

This may be the week the SJWs lost it all

This may be the week the SJWs lost it all…or, at least, their power to bully people in the hacker culture and the wider tech community. Many of you probably already know about the LambdaConf flap. In brief: LambdaConf, a technical conference on functional programming, accepted a presentation proposal about a language called Urbit, from… Continue reading This may be the week the SJWs lost it all