Why I don’t accept would-be disciples

Every few months I get a letter from a would-be hacker petitioning me to accept him (always a “him” so far) as my disciple. Happened again today; I think this time I’ll share part of the request, and my response, so I have it to point to next time this happens.

Sugar turns twenty

This is a bulletin for Sugar’s distributed fan club, the hackers and sword geeks and other assorted riff-raff who have guested in our commodious basement. The rest of you can go about your business. According to the vet’s paperwork, our cat Sugar turned 20 yesterday. (Actually, the vet thinks she may be 19, but that… Continue reading Sugar turns twenty

Is closed source worth it for performance?

The following question appeared in my mailbox today: If a certain program (that you need) was proprietary, and its open-source counterpart was (currently) 40% slower. Which would you use, the open-source one or the proprietary one? The answer is: it depends. I’m going to answer this one in public because it’s a useful exercise in… Continue reading Is closed source worth it for performance?

Coding Freedom: a review

My usual audience is well aware why I am qualified to review Gabriella Coleman’s book, Coding Freedom, but since I suspect this post might reach a bit beyond my usual audience I will restate the obvious. I have been operating as the hacker culture’s resident ethnographer since around 1990, consciously applying the techniques of anthropological… Continue reading Coding Freedom: a review

Charisma: a how-to

A couple of weeks ago a friend asked me how he could become more charismatic. Because the term “charismatic” has unhelpful religious connotations, let’s begin by being clear what he was actually asking. A person is “charismatic” when he or she has the ability to communicate a vision to others in a way that makes… Continue reading Charisma: a how-to

How to fix cable messes

A friend of mine recently posted this image of a hideous network-cable tangle: I have invented an algorithm for fixing this kind of mess. Probably other people have developed the same technique before, but it wasn’t taught to me and I’ve never seen it written down. Here it is…

Announcing cvs-fast-export

For those of you who have been following my work on tools to muck out the swamp that is CVS, a new shovel: cvs-fast-export. Note, this is an alpha release for testing purposes; double-check the quality of any conversions you do with it carefully.

robotfindskitten – the Mayan Apocalypse Edition!

Today’s very special non-world-ending software release, triggered if not originated from here at Eric Conspiracy Secret Laboratories is the amazing Zen simulation, Robot Finds Kitten. I bow in respect before Leonard Richardson and the other giants of kitten-finding history and am humbly proud to be counted among the select few who have contributed to this… Continue reading robotfindskitten – the Mayan Apocalypse Edition!

Refuting “The Mathematical Hacker”

Evan Miller’s essay The Mathematical Hacker is earnest, well-intentioned, and deeply wrong. Its errors begin with a serious misrepresentation of my views and my work, and fan out from there.

Heavy weapons

I should have known it. I really should have expected what happened. So it’s about week 7 at kuntao training, the tasty exotic mix of south Chinese kung fu and Philippine weapons techniques my wife and I are now studying, and we’re doing fine. The drills are challenging, but we’re up to the challenge. Our… Continue reading Heavy weapons

Don’t overinterpret the Sorrell Doctrine!

I have submitted an essay to the Stanford Law Review for publication. I didn’t tick the box for “exclusive”, so I think I can blog it as well. It’s a reply to Andrew Tutt’s essay on Software Speech.

English is a Scandinavian language?

Here’s the most interesting adventure in linguistics I’ve run across in a while. Two professors in Norway assert that English is a Scandinavian language, a North Germanic rather than a West Germanic one. More specifically, they claim that Anglo-Saxon (“Old English”) is not the direct ancestor of modern English; rather, our language is more closely… Continue reading English is a Scandinavian language?

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The wages of secrecy

One of my regulars, contemplating the increasingly pathetic series of clusterfucks that have passed for exciting new products at Microsoft, wonders why a company with all its advantages – more money than $DEITY to hire the best developers, lots of experience, dominant position in a major technology market – can’t seem to release a decent… Continue reading The wages of secrecy

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Categorized as General