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
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
Thinking like a master programmer, redux
Yes, there was a bug in my vint64 encapsulation commit. I will neither confirm nor deny any conjecture that I left it in there deliberately to see who would be sharp enough to spot it. I will however note that it is a perfect tutorial example for how you should spot bugs, and why revisions… Continue reading Thinking like a master programmer, redux
Thinking like a master programmer
To do large code changes correctly, factor them into a series of smaller steps such that each revision has a well-defined and provable relationship to the last. (This is the closest I’ve ever come to a 1-sentence answer to the question “How the fsck do you manage to code with such ridiculously high speed and… Continue reading Thinking like a master programmer
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
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
More scenes from the life of a system architect
Haven’t been blogging for a while because I’ve been deep in coding and HOWTO-writing. Follows the (slightly edited) text of an email I wrote to the NTPsec devel list that I I think might be of interest to a lot of my audience. One of the questions I get a lot is: How do you… Continue reading More scenes from the life of a system architect
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
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
With a little help from my friends
I had a great time at Penguicon 2016, including face time with a lot of the people who help out on my various projects. There are a couple of thoughts that kept coming back to me during these conversations. One is “It is good, having so many impressively competent friends.” The other is that without… Continue reading With a little help from my friends
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.
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
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
Sometimes I should give in to my impulses
For at least five years now I’ve been telling myself that, as nifty as it would be to play with the hardware, I really shouldn’t spend money on a small-form-factor PC. This was not an easy temptation to resist, because I found little systems like the Intel NUC fascinating. I’d look over the specs for… Continue reading Sometimes I should give in to my impulses