Why do steel sparks do this thing: they fly straight and seem to explode at the end of their trajectory. [Read more…]
Stderr
All the unbuffered error messages
Why do steel sparks do this thing: they fly straight and seem to explode at the end of their trajectory. [Read more…]
This is part of a short series that I will try to drop over the course of the year. I grew up reading National Geographic and it wasn’t until I was well into my adulthood that I discovered that I had been absorbing subtle doses of propaganda along with the cool stuff that excited and inspired me. While you’re reading about this one, you may be thinking “What about PROJECT JENNIFER?!” and, if you are, don’t worry – I’ll get to that one eventually, too.
There’s a small bit of kerfuffle around the new iPhone facial recognition feature.
New databases are being assembled for ‘tone’ surveillance. What’s that? It’s not Miss Manners.
I fly a lot. Back in the 90s, I flew nearly a million miles in one year (mostly round-trips to Singapore and Japan). Some of the flights I’ve been on nearly ended badly – there was a landing in Orlando where the plane jerked to the side violently in a cross-wind and it looked like the wing was going to hit the ground. Then, there was a landing in Pittsburgh where a tire blew on one side, and things got bumpy.
This is another example of credulous/bad reporting about my field. Whenever I see the press utterly fail to “get” something to do with computer security, I assume they’re equally lazy and wrong about every other field that requires more understanding than “who made Kim Kardashian’s shoes?” (because they are labelled)
It was Raid Night (sunday, 9:00pm) for my World of Warcraft raiding guild, and we had a couple of guests along for the quests. Per usual procedure, we were all collected in audio-chat, logged in to WoW, and most of us had a bottle of wine or some beer open, and as the raid continued – as was our wont – we got merry.
To get to Lavecon, I took the midlands train from London/Euston up toward Birmingham, and got off at Northampton. On the way up, I went past Bletchley, the home of Bletchley Park – where the British code-breakers (including Alan Turing) worked during WWII.
“NASA Scientists Baffled by Mysterious Pit Photographed on Mars” – like a trout to a clickbait fly, I rise and bite at the hook. [huff]
We’ve recently been treated to a round of Sokal-style hoax papers that were declared to invalidate (or at least severely damage) parts of a field, because they were accepted by publications within that field. [pharyngula]