(EDIT, 2019: You can buy one of these here.) The GPS with my magic modification that makes it into a 1ms-accurate time source over USB arrived here last week. And…wow. It works. Not only is it delivering 1PPS where I can see it, it’s the best GPS I’ve ever handled on a couple other axes… Continue reading The “Plain Jane” timing GPS is real
Some figures that make me happy.
I got emailed summaries from a Coverity scan of the repo head version of GPSD today.
Falling through the cracks: why GPSD sometimes bogarts non-GPS devices
In a recent Google+ comment, H. Peter Anvin grumped about GPSD using “braindead heuristics” to determine which USB devices it should sniff as possible GPses when it gets a hotplug notification saying that one has connected. I was going to reply in a comment there, but the explanation ran too long for that. Short version:… Continue reading Falling through the cracks: why GPSD sometimes bogarts non-GPS devices
Penguicon 2012 party location
As promised, the Penguicon 2012 Friends of Armed & Dangerous party location: room 370. Begins 9PM tonight.
The long past of C
Hacking on the C code of giflib after an absence of nearly two decades has been an interesting experience, a little like doing an archeological dig. And not one that could readily be had elsewhere; nowhere other than under Unix is code that old still genuinely useful under any but carefully sandboxed conditions. Our reward… Continue reading The long past of C
Penguicon party 2012!
Reminder: The Armed & Dangerous party at Penguicon 2012 is now barely more than 72 hours away. Begins 9:00PM Friday night, room number to be announced on this blog and probably tweeted too. All readers of this blog will be welcome. See the real faces behind the Gravatar icons! Pursue discussion threads in person! Refrain… Continue reading Penguicon party 2012!
giflib: everything old is new again
In 1994 I handed off the maintainership of giflib, the open-source library used by pretty much everything in the universe that displays images for the single most widely used icon and image format on the World Wide Web, because patent issues made it unwise for the project to be run by someone in the U.S.… Continue reading giflib: everything old is new again
Open source warfare != open source software
One of my commenters brought up John Robb, a former SpecOps pilot who has made a name for himself as a counter-terror theorist by writing about “open-source warfare”. Mutual acquaintances confirm what Robb’s own writings suggest, which is that his notions of open-source warfare are heavily influenced by what I have called the bazaar model… Continue reading Open source warfare != open source software
Making simple connections
About six weeks ago I asked How would you like to help fix the Internet? It was an open invitation to help develop a cheap millisecond-precision time source for instrumented routers, so we can do delay tomography on the Internet and measure the bufferbloat problem. The discussion thread on that post was lively, but eventually… Continue reading Making simple connections
On not ceding the truth to racists
One of the most important reasons not to tell ourselves pretty lies about unpleasant realities is so that we do not hand evil people the power of being the only ones who are willing to speak the truth.
An intelligence test
Heads up, gentle reader. I’m about to give you an intelligence test. To begin the test, read “The Talk: Nonblack version“.
Feline health update
A brief update for those of you who were following the saga of our cat Sugar’s brush with death and remarkable rebound early last September.
The smartphone Wars: Finally, Android breaks 50%
The newest comScore figures, for February 2012, are out. Android has finally achieved majority market share in the U.S.. This is three months later than a linear fit to most of 2010 and 20111 predicted, but whatever happened in 4Q2011 to throw everybody off their previous long-term trend curves seems to be over. Android, in… Continue reading The smartphone Wars: Finally, Android breaks 50%
Trayvon Martin and the grievance factory
Even to a person as cynical and jaded as I have become about American politics, the brouhaha around the Trayvon Martin shooting is rather shocking. Usually, in past instances of even the most determined attempts to inflame racial hatred, there’s been at least a fig leaf of plausible deniability over the manipulation. Not this time.… Continue reading Trayvon Martin and the grievance factory
The Smartphone Wars: Exit Blackberry, pursued by a bear
Comes today the news that Blackberry is giving up on the consumer market. Of course this means the company will be as dead as Antigonus shortly.
Penguicon 2012 Geeks With Guns
The party for Armed & Dangerous readers is still on for Friday night at Penguicon, and we have a new event – actually, the return of an old favorite: Geeks with Guns. This year’s GWG is scheduled for 2:00PM on Friday the 27th; it will take place at the Firing Line range. We will be… Continue reading Penguicon 2012 Geeks With Guns
Where your contributions go
This is a thank-you to my tip-jar contributors. Today I spent $88.76 directly out of the tip jar on engineering samples of GPS dongles specially modified to carry the 1PPS signal out to USB. I will test them, and if the modification succeeds it is quite likely that the company I am cooperating with will… Continue reading Where your contributions go
Remembering the future
I own a rather large library of paperback SF which I have been collecting since the late 1960s; it includes a lot of stuff that is now quite rare and half forgotten. I owe a great deal to SF and consider these books cultural treasures, The last few years I’ve been wondering if there’s any… Continue reading Remembering the future
Michael Meets Mozart
I love classical music. It was my first musical vocabulary; I didn’t start listening to popular music until I was 14. When I grew up enough to notice that I was listening to a collection of museum pieces and not a living genre, that realization made me very sad. But go listen to this: Michael… Continue reading Michael Meets Mozart
Eggs a la ESR
For no particular reason, my recipe for scrambled eggs.