There’s been a lot of public talk about “identity” lately, stimulated by high-profile cases of transsexuality (notably the athlete now named Caitlyn Jenner) and transracialism (Rachel Dolezal). It needs to be said: most of the talk, on all sides of these disputes, has been obvious nonsense – utter drivel that should not have survived five… Continue reading Your identity is not your choice
You shall judge by the code alone
I support the open letter by Drupal developers protesting the attempted expulsion of Larry Garfield from the Drupal commmunity. As a Drupal contributor who has never in any respect attempted to tie the project to his beliefs or lifestyle, Garfield deserves the right to be judged by his code alone. That is the hacker way;… Continue reading You shall judge by the code alone
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
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
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
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
How to act like you’re bright
This blog post is brought to you by a recent bad experience I had watching a 5-minute clip from Big Bang Theory on the recommendation of a friend who thought I might find it amusing. Bleagh. This is supposed to be a show about geniuses? It’s not. It’s a show about a dimwit’s idea of… Continue reading How to act like you’re bright
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
When ancient-history geeks go bad
A few minutes ago here at chez Raymond, my friend John Desmond says: “So, have you heard about the new Iraqi national anthem?” I said “Uh, OK, I’m braced for this. What about it?” He said “In the good old Sumer time.” I pointed a finger at him and said “You’re Akkad!” Yes. Yes, we… Continue reading When ancient-history geeks go bad
cvs-fast-export 1.43 is released
Maintaining cvs-fast-export is, frankly, a pain in the ass. Parts of the code I inherited are head-achingly opaque. CVS repositories are chronically prone to malformations that look like bugs in the tool and/or can’t be adapted to in any safe way. Its actual bugs are obscure and often difficult to fix – the experience is… Continue reading cvs-fast-export 1.43 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.
An apologia for terminal games
Yes, to a certain segment of the population I suppose I define myself as a relic of ancient times when I insist that one can write good and absorbing computer games that don’t have a GUI – that throw down old-school in a terminal emulator. Today I’m shipping a new release of the game greed… Continue reading An apologia for terminal games
Semantic locality and the Way of Unix
An important part of the Way of Unix is to try to tackle large problems with small, composable tools. This goes with a tradition of using line-oriented textual streams to represent data. But…you can’t always do either. Some kinds of data don’t serialize to text streams well (example: databases). Some problems are only tractable to… Continue reading Semantic locality and the Way of Unix
Ones-complement arithmetic: it lives!
Most hackers know how the twos-complement representation of binary numbers works, and are at least aware that there was an older representation called “ones-complement” in which you negated a binary number by inverting each bit. This came up on the NTPsec development list recently, with a question about whether we might ever have to port… Continue reading Ones-complement arithmetic: it lives!
How to change the world in Zen easy lessons
This morning I stumbled over a comment from last September that I somehow missed replying to at the time. I suspect it’s something more than one of my readers has wondered about, so here goes… Edward Cree wrote: If I’m really smart enough to impress esr, I feel like I ought to be doing more… Continue reading How to change the world in Zen easy lessons
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.