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
The Great Beast is armored!
All my readers should be aware of the Rowhammer attack by now. It gives me great pleasure to report that thanks to our foresight in specifying ECC memory for the design, the Great Beast of Malvern has armor of proof against this attack. The proof being over a thousand runs of the Rowhammer test. Thank… Continue reading The Great Beast is armored!
Newly published: Introduction to Time Service
I’ve published a background paper on precise clocks, time service, and NTP. It is Introduction to Time Service and is meant to be read as a companion to (or before) the GPSD Time Service HOWTO. Comments, critiques, and suggestions for additions will be welcome.
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
How not to botch an interview
I just dealt with an attempt to interview me by email that checked off pretty nearly every possible mistake in the form. As a public service, I now reproduce the advice I gave after bailing out halfway through the list of questions.
Leonard Nimoy: the first star geek
Leonard Nimoy, the man who played Spock, died yesterday. There have been some surprisingly sensitive eulogies for him in the mainstream press, but they all merely skirted the edges of what may have been his most important contribution to popular culture: he made braininess sexy.
Beware cut-price Korean monitors!
There have been a flood of big, cheap monitors (2560×1440 and up) becoming available on TigerDirect and other similar sites recently. But I’m here to tell you that these should come with warning labels, and explain why. I’ve had some dolorous experiences with the no-name pair of big flatscreens I bought back in 2013 –… Continue reading Beware cut-price Korean monitors!
GPSD 3.12 has shipped – bulletproofed from below
I’ve been radio silent the last couple of weeks mainly because I’ve been concentrating furiously on getting a GPSD release out the door. This one is a little more noteworthy than usual because it may actually have fixed a well-hidden flaw or vulnerability of some significance. Regular readers may recall from back in 2013 that… Continue reading GPSD 3.12 has shipped – bulletproofed from below
Me for a Campbell Award? Huh?
It has come to my attention that the Evil League of Evil is attempting to get me shortlisted for the John W. Campbell award. For those of you not in the know, this is an annual award intended to go to the most promising new writer in SF. It is taken pretty seriously. And my… Continue reading Me for a Campbell Award? Huh?
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.
Designed for the job
Every once in a while I have an experience that causes me to meditate on the question of how much variation in human behavior is genetically driven. I’ve written before about my gradually increasing awareness that I am genetically designed to enjoy combat. I had another experience something like this last night in a completely… Continue reading Designed for the job
Love is the simplest thing
There’s an idea circulating that two people who want to be in romantic love can get there by performing a simple procedure that steps them through asking and answring 35 questions and ends with staring into each others’ eyes for 4 minutes. I don’t know if these reports are true or not. But I’m writing… Continue reading Love is the simplest thing
Review: Gun Control in the Third Reich
Stephen P. Halbrook’s Gun Control in the Third Reich is a book that every advocate of “gun control” in the modern U.S. and elsewhere should read – but almost certainly never will. Most other historians have ignored or outright suppressed the role of weapons law and weapons confiscations in the Nazi imposition of totalitarianism on… Continue reading Review: Gun Control in the Third Reich
How do we explain the nonstandard nerd?
I spent parts of the the last couple of days reading the archives of the very thought-provoking blog Slate Star Codex. Two posts on it, Untitled and Why No Science Of Nerds? have reawakened my interest in the question of what exactly we mean when we describe someone as a “nerd” or a “geek”. I’ve… Continue reading How do we explain the nonstandard nerd?
First video from the Great Beast build
For my blog regulars, first video from the Great Beast build. Thanks once again to everyone who donated money to make this happen. I think you’ll see it was well spent. And there’s more video coming.
Fear the software guy with the soldering iron
Today, for the first time ever in my life, I used a soldering iron. Remarkably, I neither conflagrated my house nor inflicted horrible burns on sensitive portions of my anatomy. Cat and wife are looking visibly relieved at this. As well they might.
Pave the rainforests!
For decades – and I do mean decades – I’ve been saying that any environmentalist who is really serious about reducing fossil-fuel use and CO2 emission should be agitating to switch the power infrastructure to using nuclear plants for the baseload as fast as possible. But when the facts change, I change my mind. I… Continue reading Pave the rainforests!
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
The temptation to choose sides
One of the most unfortunate social behaviors of human beings is that in the presence of any dispute, they feel a strong need to choose a side. And then stick with it, even when their chosen side behaves very badly. I’m reminded of this with particular force in the aftermath of Ismaayil Brinsley’s revenge assassination… Continue reading The temptation to choose sides
Open source theory is rooted in evolutionary psychology
Yesterday I realized, quite a few years after I should have, that I have never identified in public where I got the seed of the idea that I developed into the modern economic theory of open-source software – that is, how open-source “altruism” could be explained as an emergent result of selfish incentives felt by… Continue reading Open source theory is rooted in evolutionary psychology