There’s a very interesting article just out, C Is Not a Low-level Language;. in which David Chisnall punctures the comforting illusion that C is really a “close-to-the-metal” language and relates this illusion to the high costs of Spectre and other processor-level bugs. Those of us who think seriously about language design have long been aware… Continue reading Embrace the SICK
Friends of Armed & Dangerous gathering 2018
The 2018 edition of the annual Friends of Armed & Dangerous FTF will be held in room 821 of the Southfield Westin in Southfield, MI between 9 p.m. and 12 p.m. this evening. If you are at Penguicon, or in the neighborhood and can talk yourself yourself in, come join us for an evening of… Continue reading Friends of Armed & Dangerous gathering 2018
Review: The Mutineer’s Daughter
I greatly enjoyed Thomas Mays’s first novel, A Sword Into Darkness, and have been looking forward to reading the implied sequel. His new collaboration with Chris Kennedy, The Mutineer’s Daughter, isn’t it. Instead, we get a crossover YA/space-opera that is a bit cramped by having been written to the conventions of the YA form. Also… Continue reading Review: The Mutineer’s Daughter
Flight of the reposturgeon!
I haven’t posted a reposurgeon release announcement in some time because there hasn’t been much that is very dramatic to report. But with 3.44 in the can and shipped, I do have an audacious goal for the next release, which may well be 4.0. We (I and a couple of my closest collaborators) are going… Continue reading Flight of the reposturgeon!
The UPSide state diagram
I think this diagram is now stable enough to put on the record. Both this diagram and the Go code for the policy logic are generated from this pseudocode: render.state(“DaemonUp”, “Daemon running”) render.action(“DaemonUp”, “ChargeWait”, CHARGING) render.state(“ChargeWait”, “Charge wait”) render.action(“ChargeWait”, “MainsUp”, CHARGED) render.action(“ChargeWait”, “OnBattery”, MAINSDROP) render.state(“MainsUp”, “On mains power”) render.action(“DaemonUp”, “OnBattery”, MAINSOFF) render.state(“OnBattery”, “On battery power”)… Continue reading The UPSide state diagram
UPSide progress report
The build-a-better-UPS project is progressing nicely. About a week ago we had first hardware lightup; I successfully threw messages over an I2C bus to the 20×4 LCD we plan to use as a status display. Hey, it’s not the power plane (yet) but it’s something.
How many Einsteins per Africa?
In 2008, Neil Turok, an eminent phycisist, gave a talk about trying to find the next Einstein in in sub-Saharan Africa. I was thinking about this a few days ago after his initiative re-surfaced in a minor news story,and wondered “what are his odds?” Coincidentally, this morning I stumbled across the key figure needed to… Continue reading How many Einsteins per Africa?
Fthagn to you too
I learned something fascinating today. There is a spot in the South Pacific called the “Oceanic pole of inaccessibility” or alternatively “Point Nemo” at 48°52.6?S 123°23.6?W. It’s the point on the Earth’s ocean’s most distant from any land – 2,688 km (1,670 mi) from the Easter Islands, the Pitcairn Islands, and Antarctica. There are two… Continue reading Fthagn to you too
Progress in UPSide, and a change of plans.
Much has changed in UPSide over the last week. Ground has been broken on the software; one key piece of the control daemon, the policy state machine, now exists.
UPSide needs a battery technologist
The design of UPSide is coming together very nicely. We don’t have a full parts list yet, but we do have a functional diagram of the high-power subsystem most of which can be expanded into a schematic in a pretty straightforward way. If you want to see what we have, clone the repo, cd to… Continue reading UPSide needs a battery technologist
Sneaky sifu tricks
My wing chun sifu played a classic martial-arts-master trick on me tonight.
UPSes compared to guard dogs
Somebody using the handle JeffyPoooh (yes, ‘ooo’) left a comment on The Register that is an only slightly exaggerated summary of the reasons for UPSide:
How to get started on the UPSide project
The current state of play is: We have a high-level system design and a map of the behavior states. We have a capacity target (300W for 15 mins) and a peak-continuous-load spec (400W) We know we’re going to build a double-conversion design and we’re considering a couple of alternative topologies. We pretty much know the… Continue reading How to get started on the UPSide project
Stop logging in local time!
Inertia is a powerful force. The computing world retains a lot of practices that are odd little dysfunctional relics of past stages of its technology. The one I’m here to talk about today looks like this: Mar 6 15:11:07 snark postfix/qmgr[3927]: 0422513A6C53: removed That’s a log message hot’n’fresh from my /var/log/mail.log file. It’s entirely typical… Continue reading Stop logging in local time!
All of his complexion…
Andrew Klavan has a thoughtful essay out called A Nation of Iagos. In it, he comments on William Shakespeare’s depiction of Jews in a way I think is generally insightful, but includes what I think is one serious mistake about the scene from The Merchant of Venice in which the (black) Prince of Morocco woos… Continue reading All of his complexion…
Why the Culture books were bad SF
There’s a lot of buzz about Iain Banks’s Culture universe lately, what with Elon Musk naming his drone ships in Banksian style and a TV series in the works. I enjoyed the Culture books too, but they were a guilty pleasure for me because in a fundamental way they are bad SF.
upside wants a firmware dev
The UPSide project, announced here two weeks ago, has come together with amazing speed. We now have: * A hardware lead – A&D regular Eric Baskin – with thirty years of experience as a power and signals engineer. He is so superbly qualified for this gig that my grin when I think about it makes… Continue reading upside wants a firmware dev
How elites are blind about immigration
I had been thinking about posting about immigration recently, because some facts on the ground have caused me to move away from a pure laissez-faire position on it. A few minutes ago I wrote a long comment on G+ that I realized says a lot of what I wanted to. This is a slightly revised… Continue reading How elites are blind about immigration
If you blow up the Constitution, you’ll regret it
Predictably, the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting has triggered some talk on the left – and in the mainstream media, but I repeat myself – of repealing the Second Amendment. I am therefore resharing a blog post I wrote some time back on why repealing 2A would not abolish the right to bear arms, only… Continue reading If you blow up the Constitution, you’ll regret it
In the face of uncertainty, buy options.
Yesterday I posted about how the streetlight effect pulls us towards bad choices in systems engineering. Today I’m going to discuss a different angle on the same class of challenges, one which focuses less on cognitive bias and more on game theory and risk management. In the face of uncertainty, buy options. This is a… Continue reading In the face of uncertainty, buy options.