The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald: the *science* version

My last G+ post reported this: Something out there kills about one oceangoing ship a week. It is probably freakishly large waves – well outside the ranges predicted by simple modeling of fluid dynamics and used to set required force-tolerance levels in ship design. Turns out these can be produced by nonlinear interactions in which… Continue reading The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald: the *science* version

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From molly-guard to moggy-guard

In ancient lore, a molly-guard was a shield to prevent tripping of some Big Red Switch by clumsy or ignorant hands. Originally used of the plexiglass covers improvised for the BRS on an IBM 4341 after a programmer’s toddler daughter (named Molly) frobbed it twice in one day The Great Beast of Malvern, the computer… Continue reading From molly-guard to moggy-guard

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PSA: “E-Shielder Security” and “CyberSec Buzz” are gangs of idiotic scum

This is a public service announcement: E-Shielder Security, describing itself as “leading importers and suppliers of high end electronic technology solution systems” is a gang of idiotic scum. Yesterday they posted a Hacktivists on the rampage in 2017, which largely reproduced my Hacker Archetypes post. They did so in obvious ignorance of who the hackers… Continue reading PSA: “E-Shielder Security” and “CyberSec Buzz” are gangs of idiotic scum

Hacker Archetypes

There’s a book about martial arts called On the Warrior’s Path that tries to understand the differing psychologies of martial artists through the lens of half a dozen archetypes – Seeker, Ronin, Tribal Warrior, and others. I have not yet read the book, but my friend and regular A&D commenter Susan Sons reports having found… Continue reading Hacker Archetypes

Four modes of creole formation

A ‘pidgin’ is a language formed by contact between speakers of different languages. A ‘creole’ is what happens when a pidgin becomes a birth language for children raised where a pidgin is spoken. Pidgins are simple languages, stripped to the running gears, Often creoles re-complexify in later generations, retaining grammar mostly from one parent language… Continue reading Four modes of creole formation

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Odlyzko-Tilly-Raymond scaling

I’ve been ill with influenza and bronchitis for the last week. Maybe this needs to happen more often, because I had a small but fundamental insight into network scaling theory a few minutes ago. I’m posting it here because I think my blog regulars cast a wide enough net to tell me if I’ve merely… Continue reading Odlyzko-Tilly-Raymond scaling

src 1.13 is released

My exercise in how small you can make a version-control system and still have it be useful, src, does seem to have a significant if quiet fanbase out there. I can tell because patches land in my mailbox at a slow but steady rate. As the blurb says: Simple Revision Control is RCS/SCCS reloaded with… Continue reading src 1.13 is released

Things Every Hacker Once Knew: 1.12

Latest version, as usual, here. New stuff: Note just how crazily heterogenous the six-bit character sets were. FTP. Ctrl-V on Unix systems. A correction about uu{de|en}code. Timeline updates for ’74 and ’77. The pace of submissions continues to slow.

Reposturgeon recruits the CryptBitKeeper!

I haven’t announced a reposurgeon release on the blog in some time because recent releases have mostly been routine stuff and bugfixes. But today we have a feature that many will find interesting: reposurgeon can now read BitKeeper repositories. This is its first new version-control system since Monotone was added in mid-2015.

Things Every Hacker Once Knew: 1.11

The newest version of Things Every Hacker Once Knew is only a minor update. There’s material on SIGHUP; six-bit characters on 36-bit machines; a correction that XMODEM required 8 bits; and why screensavers are called that. New submissions are ramping down; I don’t expect to need to issue another update of this for some time.

Finding jazz again

I had a very powerful experience recently. I found my love of jazz again. Here’s the recording that did it: Simon Phillips & Protocol + Ndugu Chancler + Billy Ward: Biplane to Bermuda.

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