.
... I needed block local variables, so I made the current local
variable scoping rule, which is "when a new local variable appears
first in a block, it is valid only in the block".
And *I was wrong*. This rule is the single biggest design flaw in
Ruby. You have to care about local variable name conflict, and you
will have totally different result (without error) if they conflict.
* Stephen Kell, [Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~srk31/research/papers/kell17some-preprint.pdf),
accessed September 5, 2017, .
* M. Douglas McIlroy, [Coroutine prime number sieve](https://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/sieve/sieve.pdf),
March 2014, accessed December 18, 2018, .
On the equivalency of coroutines, lazy lists, and pipes; a concise summary
written decades after his theoretical and engineering work.
* Oleg Kiselyov, [Monadic i/o and UNIX shell programming](http://okmij.org/ftp/Computation/monadic-shell.html),
July 1, 2001, accessed January 2, 2019, .
> "Doug McIlroy, the inventor of pipes, is said to point out that both pipes and lazy lists behave exactly like coroutines."
* Aditya Siram, [A (Not So Gentle) Introduction To Systems Programming In ATS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt0OQb1DBko),
September 30, 2017, accessed March 15, 2019, .
* Martin Sebor, [N2349: Toward more efficient string copying and concatenation](http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n2349.htm),
March 18, 2019, accessed March 20, 2019, .
Advocating for inclusion of memccpy over strlcpy and stpncpy.
* Jef Vurich, [WebAssembly Troubles part 2: Why Do We Need the Relooper Algorithm, Again?](http://troubles.md/posts/why-do-we-need-the-relooper-algorithm-again/),
January 30, 2019, accessed May 29, 2019, .
See also [this thread](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19996362) with a
[first-person account](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19997091) by
[cwzwarich](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cwzwarich) of the relooper
choice:
> "I worked at Mozilla Research in the early days of Asm.js and sat next to that team. I would frequently tell them that they should support arbitrary control flow, and that there were better ways to achieve it with Emscripten than the Relooper. There wasn't much interest in improvements at the time, although it appears that the LLVM WebAssembly backend now uses a better approach."
* John Regehr, [The Problem with Friendly C](https://blog.regehr.org/archives/1287),
December 23, 2015, accessed March 16, 2020, .
> "After publishing the Friendly C Proposal… I came to the depressing conclusion that there's no way to get a group of C experts… to agree on the Friendly C dialect."
* Lev Walkin, [On FaceBook's Thrift semantics, code generation, and OCaml](http://lionet.info/asn1c/blog/2010/07/18/thrift-semantics/),
July 18, 2010, accessed October 23, 2020, .
No particularly interesting insights, but I keep coming back to this page
to refresh my memory of its critiques whenever reading articles about
serialization formats.
* Denis Merigoux, Raphaël Monat, Jonathan Protzenko, [A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.07966.pdf),
November 16, 2020, accessed November 25, 2020, .
> "Closer to the topic of this paper, the logical structure of the US tax law has been extensively studied by Lawsky [18, 19], pointing out the legal ambiguities in the text of the law that need to be resolved using legal reasoning. She also claims that the tax law drafting style follows default logic [24], a non-monotonic logic that is hard to encode in languages with first-order logic (FOL). This could explain, as M is also based on FOL, the complexity of the DGFiP codebase."
* KC Sivaramakrishnan, Stephen Dolan, Leo White, Tom Kelly, Sadiq Jaffer, Anil Madhavapeddy, [Retrofitting Effect Handlers onto OCaml](https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.00250) [⌈PDF⌋](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2104.00250.pdf),
April 1, 2021, accessed May 31, 2022, https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.00250.
> "Effect handlers are a generalisation of exception handlers, where, in addition to the effect being handled, the handler is provided with the delimited continuation of the perform site. This continuation may be used to resume the suspended computation later. This enables non-local control-flow mechanisms such as resumable exceptions, lightweight threads, coroutines, generators and asynchronous I/O to be composably expressed."
Notably, generates stack maps for precise GC and precise DWARF unwind
information for call tracing across non-contiguous, mixed stacks---OCaml
stacks and C stack.
* Anonymous Authors, ["Rewrite it in Rust" Considered Harmful? Security Challenges at the C-Rust FFI](https://goto.ucsd.edu/~rjhala/hotos-ffi.pdf)
[⌈local⌋](mirror/goto.ucsd.edu/~rjhala/hotos-ffi.pdf),
March 18, 2023, accessed May 24, 2023.
# Long Form
* William Langewiesche, [A Sea Story](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/05/a-sea-story/302940/),
May 2004, accessed September 8, 2022, .
* Mark Singer, [The Castaways](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/02/19/the-castaways-singer),
February 11, 2007, accessed September 8, 2022, .
* Michael Finkel, [Here Be Monsters](http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201105/tokelau-teenagers-lost-ocean),
May 2011, accessed September 8, 2022, .
* Justin Heckert, [Lost in the Waves](https://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/lost-in-the-waves-19691231/),
November 2009, accessed September 8, 2022, .
* Cliff Judkins, [I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived](https://uss-la-ca135.org/60/1960Judkins-Knott.html),
2009, accessed September 8, 2022, https://uss-la-ca135.org/60/1960Judkins-Knott.html.
* Alan Bellows, [Rider on the Storm](https://www.damninteresting.com/rider-on-the-storm/),
October 2011, accessed September 8, 2022, .
# Mathematics
* Steven Wittens (), [How to Fold a Julia Fractal](http://acko.net/blog/how-to-fold-a-julia-fractal/),
accessed December 19th, 2017, .
Geometric explanation and visualization of imaginary and complex numbers.
# Miscellaneous
* Paul Flaherty, alt.folklore.computers, March 11, 1993, [Re: Sillycon Valley history](usenet/paul_flaherty_silicon_valley.txt),
accessed March 20, 2018, [paulf.731874319 @ abercrombie.Stanford.EDU](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/alt.folklore.computers/bvE0Ka5nCnM/NAIOQnrEyCAJ).
> "I think it's fair to say that Silicon Valley is dead. ... You can now find venture capital elsewhere, with the discount rate being what it is. The cost of housing and office space has spiraled out of control, thanks to the environmentalists and Prop 13. The trade secrets and intellectual property mania have pretty much destroyed open cooperation. The universities remain, but aren't the driving force they used to be."
* David Gerrold, Sm@rt Reseller, December 20, 1999, [Is That a Pita in Your Pocket?](img/david_gerrold_pita.jpg),
accessed March 29, 2018, [https://i.imgur.com/sHeyip7.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/sHeyip7.jpg).
> "I've got a cell phone, a pocket organizer, a beeper, a calculator, a digital camera, a pocket tape recorder, a music player, and somewhere around here, I used to have a color television.
Sometime in the next few years, all of those devices are going to meld into one. It will be a box less than in inch thick and smaller than a deck of cards. ... [It] will have enough processing power and memory to function as a desktop system. ... Oh, yes, and it will handle e-mail, as well.
I call this device a Personal Information Telecommunications Agent, or Pita for short. The acronym also can stand for Pain In The Ass, which it is equally likely to be, because having all that connectivity is going to destroy what's left of everyone's privacy."
* Amerigo Vespucci, Alternate History, June 11, 2007, [The Cuban Missile War Timeline](https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/the-cuban-missile-war-timeline.65071/),
accessed April 4, 2018, [https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/the-cuban-missile-war-timeline.65071/](https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/the-cuban-missile-war-timeline.65071/).
* Joseph Jordania, [A New Interdisciplinary Approach to the Study of the Origins of Traditional Polyphony](http://www.josephjordania.com/files/8-Jelena-article-2015-in-Serbia.pdf),
accessed May 7, 2018, .
* Connor Edel, [This is Why Paperweights Exist](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17689569),
August 5, 2018, accessed October 10, 2018, .
> "Office buildings all used to have ventilator shafts which effectively created lower pressure in the interior of the building. In order to make it work, you needed to have your office window open AND an interior window open (typically above your office door, so you could still keep your door closed). As you can imagine, there was a lot of wind whipping through offices. This is why the paperweight was invented -- and also why no one uses paperweights anymore."
* Michael R. Rodman, Louis I. Gordon, Arthur C-T. Chen, Exxon Nuclear Company, Inc., [Extraction of Uranium from Seawater: Evaluation of Uranium Resources and Plant Siting](https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/6191296),
February, 1979, accessed May 14, 2020, . See [HN comment](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21470357).
* Ben Letham (bletham@gmail.com), [In Defense of Fahrenheit](http://lethalletham.com/posts/fahrenheit.html),
May 24, 2019, accessed July 22, 2020, .
* William Finnegan, [Playing Doc's Games, Part 1](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1992/08/24/playing-docs-games-part-one)
([Part 2](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1992/08/31/playing-docs-games-part-two)),
August 24, 1992, accessed December 11, 2020, .
On Mark Renneker and surfing Ocean Beach.
* Eliza Gregory Wilkins, ["Know Thyself" in Greek and Latin Literature](https://www.forgottenbooks.com/en/download/KnowThyselfInGreekandLatinLiterature_10424649.pdf)
[⌈local⌋](https://25thandClement.com/~william/library/Know_Thyself_In_Greek_and_Latin_Literature-Wilkins-1917.pdf),
1917, accessed September 9, 2021, https://www.forgottenbooks.com/en/download/KnowThyselfInGreekandLatinLiterature_10424649.pdf.
Compare with Confucius' "Know Thy Place" and Jung's "Until you make the
unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it
fate." What's the extent and degree of overlap of these maxims?
Historically? Presently? These seem to be surprisingly malleable maxims
reflecting similar, universal themes but which as evidenced by Wilkins'
survey of "Know Thyself" shift their apparent emphasis according to local
contemporary mores and narratives.
* Natasha Tracy, [In Defense of Mental Illness Conservatorship—Despite the Britney Spears Case](https://natashatracy.com/mental-illness-issues/mental-illness-conservatorship-despite-britney-spears-case/),
June 28, 2021, accessed November 27, 2021, .
* Bernardo Malfitano, [Stealth Aircraft Design](https://understandingairplanes.com/Stealth-Airplane-Design.pdf) [⌈archive⌋](https://web.archive.org/web/20190701210612/https://understandingairplanes.com/Stealth-Airplane-Design.pdf),
October 10, 2018, accessed April 18, 2023, https://understandingairplanes.com/Stealth-Airplane-Design.pdf.
* John Gallagher, [As the Priest Said to the Nun](https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n11/john-gallagher/as-the-priest-said-to-the-nun),
June 1, 2023, accessed June 5, 2023, .
A discussion of Johannes Rütiner's Commentationes, a meticulous 10-year
recording of the goings-on of 16th century St. Gallen, Switzerland; but
also in passing my introduction to the term, [commonplacing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonplace_book).
* Simone Weil, [Gravity and Grace](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/simone-weil-gravity-and-grace) [⌈archive⌋](https://web.archive.org/web/20230708020543/https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/simone-weil-gravity-and-grace),
2002 (Routledge Classics ed.), accessed July 12, 2023, .
A book-sized compilation of Simone Weil's aphorisms, interesting if
nothing but for the form--her seeming preference for aphoristic,
sententious expression, enough to be compiled into a book.
* Dan Steinman, [The Dynamic Duo: Cross-Browser Dynamic HTML](https://www.dansteinman.com/dynduo/),
January 26, 2002, accessed September 23, 2023 (previously accessed circa 2000-2001), .
Early interactive web application tutorial and library ([DynAPI](https://www.dansteinman.com/dynapi/)).
# Networking
* Matt Mathis, John Heffner, [Packetization Layer Path MTU Discovery (PLPMTUD)](https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4821), RFC 4821,
March 2007, accessed July 20, 2023, https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4821.
# Pedagogy
* Alexander K. Zvonkin, [Math from Three to Seven: The Story of a Mathematical Circle for Preschoolers](http://www.msri.org/people/staff/levy/files/MCL/Zvonkin.pdf),
accessed May 7, 2018, .
* Michaeleen Doucleff, NPR, June 9, 2018, [How To Get Your Kids To Do Chores (Without Resenting It)](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/09/616928895/how-to-get-your-kids-to-do-chores-without-resenting-it),
accessed June 11, 2018, .
* Maxwell King, The Atlantic, June 8, 2018, [Mr. Rogers Had a Simple Set of Rules for Talking to Children](https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/mr-rogers-neighborhood-talking-to-kids/562352/),
accessed June 12, 2018, .
* Isaac Asimov, [Quick and Easy Math](https://archive.org/details/QuickAndEasyMath-English-IsaacAsimov) [⌈local⌋](pdf/asimov-quick-maths.pdf),
December 1, 1964, accessed June 2, 2020, https://archive.org/details/QuickAndEasyMath-English-IsaacAsimov.
* [Vintage Office Noise](https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/vintageOfficeNoiseGenerator.php),
December 30th, 2021, accessed September 30, 2022, https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/vintageOfficeNoiseGenerator.php.
* [The XY Problem](https://xyproblem.info/),
accessed June 21, 2023, .
Someone put a pithy name to the ubiqituous and well known (at least since
the Usenet days) issue encountered in technical forums:
> "The XY problem is asking about your attempted solution rather than your actual problem."
# Politics
* Bill Hayton, [China's Claim to the Spratly Islands is Just a Mistake](http://cimsec.org/chinas-claim-spratly-islands-just-mistake/36474),
May 16, 2018, . (See also .)
> "It is clear from official documents and newspapers of the time that the Chinese authorities did not know the difference between the Spratlys and the Paracels. They thought that the islands that France had just annexed were the same that China had claimed in 1909."
* Scott Alexander, [The Non-Libertarian FAQ](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/),
February 22, 2017, accessed November 28, 2018, .
* Bill Clinton, [First Inaugural Address](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton%27s_first_inaugural_address),
January 20, 1993, accessed December 5, 2018, .
> "Communications and commerce are global; investment is mobile; technology is almost magical; and ambition for a better life is now universal. We earn our livelihood in peaceful competition with people all across the earth.
Profound and powerful forces are shaking and remaking our world, and the urgent question of our time is whether we can make Change our friend and not our enemy."
* Richard D. Lyons, [How Release of Mental Patients Began](https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-mental-patients-began.html),
October 30, 1984, accessed January 31, 2019, .
See also [The Homeless Mentally Ill: A Task Force Report of the American Psychiatric Association](https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.36.7.782).
* United States Office of Personnel Management, [Executive Branch Civilian Employment Since 1940](https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/historical-tables/executive-branch-civilian-employment-since-1940/),
September 30, 2014, accessed June 10, 2019, .
Congressional compromise/conspiracy among Democrats and Republicans regarding the administrative
state to maintain civil service at absolute numbers and grow headcount via contractors?
* Peter Reuter, Domenic Schnoz, [Assessing Drug Problems and Policies in Switzerland, 1998-2007](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237422443_Assessing_Drug_Problems_and_Policies_in_Switzerland_1998-2007),
November 16, 2009, accessed September 29, 2021, .
Heroin use initiation peaked in 1990 (Figure 2.4, p29), and active usage
prevalence peaked 5 years later (Figure 2.5, p30). Switzerland's lauded
harm reduction programs began as prevalence had already begun a long
decline for other reasons. Much if not all of the supposed beneficial
effects of the programs are better understood as reflecting the decline
and aging of the using population. Notably,
> "Simultaneous with the strong emphasis on harm reduction, Switzerland's police vigorously enforce prohibitions on drug use and drug sale. Switzerland stands out from other Western European nations in the stringency of its policing."
* Marina Marren, [Political Myth in Blumenberg and Plato](https://jhiblog.org/2019/08/28/political-myth-in-blumenberg-and-plato),
August 28, 2019, accessed January 25, 2022, .
> "For Blumenberg, we seek to shelter ourselves from “absoluteness” of stark reality and, thus, we readily exchange our political responsibility for mythical political ideas."
* George Washington Plunkitt, William L. Riordon (ed.), [Plunkitt of Tammany Hall](https://archive.org/details/plunkittoftamman00rior) [⌈txt⌋](https://archive.org/download/plunkittoftamman02810gut/plnth10.txt),
September, 1905, accessed January 28, 2022, .
Plunkitt's discourses originally brought to my attention by Prof. Steven J. Eagle
in Spring 2010 seminar.
* E. Ann Carson, Ph.D., Bureau of Justice Statistics, [Prisoners in 2020 - Statistical Tables](https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/p20st.pdf) [⌈local⌋](mirror/bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/p20st.pdf),
December 2021, accessed May 6, 2022, .
Reports prison admission rates at TABLE 8 (pp 17-18) for 2019 and 2020,
but only encompassing incarceration for sentences of 12 months or longer.
In contrast to [incarceration rates](https://web.archive.org/web/20180608053136/https://www.prisonpolicy.org/global/2018.html),
by which the U.S. is an extreme outlier, prison admission rates are
substantially more inline with Europe, particularly England & Wales,
demonstrating that America's incarceration problem is primarily a
consequence of sentence duration, not the use of incarceration, per se.
(Because of the sheer magnitude of the latter gap, this necessarily holds
even assuming worst case admission rates for pretrial detention without
conviction and sentences less than 12 months. See, e.g.,
[Texas breakdowns](https://web.archive.org/web/20220505093813/https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/TX.html)).
* Marcelo F. Aebi and Mélanie M. Tiago, [Council of Europe Annual Penal Statistics - SPACE I 2020](https://wp.unil.ch/space/files/2021/04/210330_FinalReport_SPACE_I_2020.pdf) [⌈local⌋](mirror/wp.unil.ch/space/files/2021/04/210330_FinalReport_SPACE_I_2020.pdf),
December 15, 2020, accessed May 6, 2022, <https://wp.unil.ch/space/files/2021/04/210330_FinalReport_SPACE_I_2020.pdf>.
See Table 23 (pp 97-98) for 2019 penal admissions. Note that unlike BJS
data, this data does seem to include short (< 12 months) sentences.
However, it seems to count pre-conviction and post-conviction admissions
separately in some cases. Compare pre-sentence and total entries for
England & Wales and France. Also see [UK Ministry of Justice summary](https://web.archive.org/web/20211021222303/https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/offender-management-statistics-quarterly-october-to-december-2019/offender-management-statistics-quarterly-october-to-december-2019-and-annual-2019#prison-receptions-and-admissions):
"72,172 offenders were received into custody as first receptions in 2019."
* Rene Chun, [Why Americans Don't Cheat on Their Taxes](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/why-americans-dont-cheat-on-their-taxes/583222/),
March 10, 2019, accessed October 17, 2022, .
See also [Globally Speaking, American Taxpayers are Pushovers](https://reason.com/2012/04/17/globally-speaking-american-taxpayers-are/).
* Sippi Azarbaijani Moghaddam, [What my 20 years in Afghanistan taught me about the Taliban—and how the west consistently underestimates them](https://theconversation.com/what-my-20-years-in-afghanistan-taught-me-about-the-taliban-and-how-the-west-consistently-underestimates-them-167927),
November 30, 2021, accessed November 18, 2022, .
* Derek Thompson, [Six Reasons the Murder Clearance Rate Is at an All-Time Low](https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/07/police-murder-clearance-rate/661500/),
July 7, 2022, accessed January 18, 2024, .
Interview with Jeff Asher who identifies guns as one of the most significant reasons:
> "Guns make murders much harder to solve, and it leads to lower clearance rates everywhere."
# Quotations
General wisdoms.
* Howard H. Aiken as recounted by Robert Slater, [Portraits in Silicon](https://books.google.com/books?id=aWTtMyYmKhUC&pg=PA88),
1989, accessed January 2, 2019, .
> "Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats."
* Byrne Hobart, [Working in Public and the Economics of Free](https://diff.substack.com/p/working-in-public-and-the-economics),
August 7, 2020, accessed August 17, 2020, .
> "Running a successful open source project is just Good Will Hunting in reverse, where you start out as a respected genius and end up being a janitor who gets into fights."
* Oliver Wendell Holmes, [Speech of Mr. Justice Holmes at a Dinner of the Harvard Law Association of New York](https://archive.org/details/speechofmrjustic00holm),
February 15, 1913, accessed January 7, 2021, .
> "When the ignorant are taught to doubt they do not know what they safely may believe. And it seems to me that at this time we need education in the obvious more than investigation of the obscure."
* Yuan Longping, [Chance favors the prepared mind!](https://www.bilibili.com/video/av244700689/),
September 19, 2020, accessed June 1, 2021, .
Via [Yuan Longping, Plant Scientist Who Helped Curb Famine, Dies at 90](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/23/world/asia/yuan-longping-dead.html),
May 23, 2021, accessed May 23, 2021.
> "There's no secret to it; my experience can be summed in four words: knowledge, sweat, inspiration and opportunity (知识、汗水、灵感和机遇)."
* Félix Nieto del Río, Reader's Digest, Volume 50, p28,
March 1947, accessed January 4, 2022. Likely an old, well known proverb.
See also Reader's Digest, Volume 34, May 1939, p96, and Proceedings of the
National Wholesale Druggists' Association, 1911, p410.
> "All too often a clear conscience is merely the result of a bad memory."
* Stephen Crane, _A Man Said to the Universe_.
Via [_The (Mostly Forgotten) Writer Who Changed Literature Forever_](https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/mostly-forgotten-writer-who-changed-literature-forever-on-the-media1), On the Media, May 20, 2022, accessed May 27, 2022.
``` none linenumbers
A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
```
* Matthew Arnold, [Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism](https://25thandClement.com/~william/links/pdf/Culture_and_Anarchy.pdf), p173,
1869, accessed June 3, 2022. Paraphrasing Bishop Wilson's [maxim](#Wilson1781).
Via Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein lamentation, ["these are kids full of idealism, but the wrong ideals, misguided priorities"](https://etzion.org.il/en/philosophy/great-thinkers/harav-aharon-lichtenstein/my-education-and-aspirations-autobiographical#:~:text=These%20are%20kids%20full%20of%20idealism%2C%20but%20the%20wrong%20ideals%2C%20misguided%20priorities.%C2%A0),
via Yair Rosenberg, [What to Do About Racism in Israel](https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/62993fbd582ffb00208249bb/jerusalem-day-violence-jewish-far-right-racism/).
> "Firstly, never go against the best light you have; secondly, take care that your light be not darkness."
* Rev. Thomas Wilson, D.D., [Maxims of Piety and of Christianity](https://25thandClement.com/~william/links/pdf/Maxims_of_Piety_and_of_Christianity.pdf), p116,
1781, accessed June 3, 2022.
> "Two things a Christian will do: Never go against the best light he has; this will prove his sincerity:—and secondly, to take care that his light be not darkness; that is, that he mistake not his rule by which he ought to go."
* Alan Kay, [Keynote Address: The Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet](https://youtu.be/oKg1hTOQXoY?t=348) [⌈archive⌋](https://archive.org/details/AlanKayAtOOPSLA1997TheComputerRevolutionHasntHappenedYet), [OOPSLA '97](https://dblp.org/db/conf/oopsla/oopsla97.html), 5:48-5:57,
October 5-9, 1997, accessed August 24, 2022, https://youtu.be/oKg1hTOQXoY?t=348.
Via [HN comment](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32582827).
See also [Kay's apologia](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11799963), "This quote keeps on showing up out of context. Edsger and I got along quite well. He loved to be the way he was and pushed it."
> "I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras."
* Albert Camus, [Stockholm Press Conference](https://archive.org/details/AlbertCamusArthurGoldhammerAliceKaplanAlgerianChronicles/page/n15/mode/2up),
December 12, 1957.
Famously quoted as, "I believe in justice, but I will defend my mother
before justice", originating from [Le Monde's paraphrasing](https://archive.org/details/AlbertCamusArthurGoldhammerAliceKaplanAlgerianChronicles/page/n127/mode/2up)
passed off as a direct quotation.
> "People are now planting bombs in the tramways of Algiers. My mother might be on one of those tramways. If that is justice, then I prefer my mother."
# Security
Security-related bookmarks.
* Ilja van Sprundel (), [Are all BSDs created equally? A survey of BSD kernel vulnerabilities](https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2025/DEF%20CON%2025%20presentations/DEFCON-25-Ilja-van-Sprundel-BSD-Kern-Vulns.pdf),
accessed July 31, 2017, .
* Craig Gidney, [Shor's Quantum Factoring Algorithm](http://algassert.com/post/1718),
accessed August 29, 2017, .
* Benjamin A. Braun, Suman Jana, Dan Boneh, [Robust and Efficient Elimination of Cache and Timing Side Channels](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.00189.pdf),
accessed January 5, 2018, .
* William Allen Simpson (), January 21, 2014, [NSA Reputation Is Dirt](https://cryptome.org/2014/01/nsa-rep-dirt.htm),
accessed August 8, 2018, .
> "Have we forgotten that the NSA mole in the IETF, Steve Kent, removed the link encryption option from PPP before RFC 1134 publication in 1989?"
* Tarjei Mandt, Mathew Solnik, David Wang, [Demystifying the Secure Enclave Processor `[slides]`](https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-16/materials/us-16-Mandt-Demystifying-The-Secure-Enclave-Processor.pdf),
August 22, 2016, accessed October 4, 2018, .
* Tarjei Mandt, Mathew Solnik, David Wang, [Demystifying the Secure Enclave Processor `[paper]`](http://mista.nu/research/sep-paper.pdf),
August 23, 2016, accessed October 4, 2018, .
* Jordan Robertson, Michael Riley, [The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. Companies](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies),
October 4, 2018, accessed October 4, 2018, .
* Andrea Biondo, [Exploiting the Math.expm1 typing bug in V8](https://abiondo.me/2019/01/02/exploiting-math-expm1-v8/),
January 2, 2019, accessed January 2, 2019, .
* Alessandro Di Federico, Amat Cama, Yan Shoshitaishvili, Christopher Kruegel, and Giovanni Vigna, [How the ELF Ruined Christmas](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurity15/sec15-paper-di-frederico.pdf),
August 2015, accessed June 26, 2020, .
* Mark S. Miller, Ka-Ping Yee, Jonathan Shapiro, [Capability Myths Demolished](https://srl.cs.jhu.edu/pubs/SRL2003-02.pdf),
2003, accessed September 14, 2020, .
* Eduardo Novella, et al, [TEE reversing](https://github.com/enovella/TEE-reversing),
accessed November 25, 2020, .
Via [HN reply](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25199111).
# Unix & C
Unix and C programming-related bookmarks.
* Linus Åkesson, [The TTY demystified](http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/tty/),
accessed July 21, 2017, .
* Stefan Majewsky, October 24, 2016, [Argh-P-M! – Dissecting the RPM file format](https://blog.bethselamin.de/posts/argh-pm.html),
accessed March 20, 2018, .
* Сергей Бугаев, July 24, 2018, [Mach-O linking and loading tricks](http://blog.darlinghq.org/2018/07/mach-o-linking-and-loading-tricks.html),
accessed August 1, 2018, .
* Dennis M. Ritchie and Ken Thompson, [The UNIX Time-Sharing System](https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~brewer/cs262/unix.pdf),
July, 1974, accessed May 16, 2019, .
> "First, since we are programmers, we naturally designed the system to make it easy to write, test, and run programs. The most important expression of our desire for programming convenience was that the system was arranged for interactive use, even though the original version only supported one user. We believe that a properly designed interactive system is much more productive and satisfying to use than a "batch" system. Moreover such a system is rather easily adaptable to noninteractive use, while the converse is not true."
> "Second there have always been fairly severe size constraints on the system and its software. Given the partiality antagonistic desires for reasonable efficiency and expressive power, the size constraint has encouraged not only economy but a certain elegance of design. This may be a thinly disguised version of the "salvation through suffering" philosophy, but in our case it worked."
> "Third, nearly from the start, the system was able to, and did, maintain itself. This fact is more important than it might seem. If designers of a system are forced to use that system, they quickly become aware of its functional and superficial deficiencies and are strongly motivated to correct them before it is too late. Since all source programs were always available and easily modified on-line, we were willing to revise and rewrite the system and its software when new ideas were invented, discovered, or suggested by others."
* Andrew Newdigate (), [How a fix in Go 1.9 sped up our Gitaly service by 30x](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2018/01/23/how-a-fix-in-go-19-sped-up-our-gitaly-service-by-30x/),
January 23, 2018, accessed July 28, 2020, .
* Andrew Baumann, Jonathan Appavoo, Orran Krieger, Timothy Roscoe, [A fork() in the road](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2019/04/fork-hotos19.pdf),
April 9, 2019, accessed July 30, 2020, .
* ANSI, et al, [Index of ANSI C (C89) documents](http://port70.net/~nsz/c/c89/) [⌈local⌋](mirror/port70.net/~nsz/c/c89/),
accessed September 30, 2020, .
* Peter Wu, [RPATH support](https://lekensteyn.nl/rpath.html),
October 7, 2018, accessed December 1, 2020, .
* David R. Tribble, [ISO C 201X Proposal: Long Time Type](http://david.tribble.com/text/c0xlongtime.html),
August 22, 2009, accessed December 4, 2020, .
See the [Prior Art](http://david.tribble.com/text/c0xlongtime.html#Prior-Art)
section which documents `time_t` and equivalent types and representations
for ANSI COBOL, IBM CICS, IBM S/390, Java, MS-DOS, NTP, VMS, and Win32.
* IEEE, The Open Group, [POSIX.1-2017](https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/),
January 31, 2018, .
* Michał Górny, [Portability of tar features](https://mgorny.pl/articles/portability-of-tar-features.html),
November 25, 2018, accessed March 29, 2021, .
* Various authors, [Reproducible Builds: Documentation](https://reproducible-builds.org/docs/),
accessed November 24, 2021, .
[SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH](https://reproducible-builds.org/docs/source-date-epoch/).
* Scott Adams, [Dilbert: Computer Holy Wars](https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-06-24),
June 24, 1995, accessed November 27, 2021, .
> "Here's a nickel, kid. Get yourself a better computer."
* IEEE, The Open Group, [POSIX.1-2024](https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/),
June 24, 2024, .
* Marc Feeley, Laurent Huberdeau, Cassandre Hamel, Stefan Monnier,
[Pnut: C to POSIX Shell Compiler](https://pnut.sh/),
accessed July 23, 2024, .
* Peter Miller, [Recursive Make Considered Harmful](http://www.pcug.org.au/~millerp/rmch/recu-make-cons-harm.html) [⌈archive⌋](https://web.archive.org/web/20000817202652/http://www.pcug.org.au/~millerp/rmch/recu-make-cons-harm.html),
1997, http://www.pcug.org.au/~millerp/rmch/recu-make-cons-harm.html.
* Emile van Bergen, [Implementing non-recursive make](http://evbergen.home.xs4all.nl/nonrecursive-make.html) [⌈archive⌋](https://web.archive.org/web/20110621001123/http://evbergen.home.xs4all.nl/nonrecursive-make.html),
November 5, 2002, http://evbergen.home.xs4all.nl/nonrecursive-make.html.
# Woodworking
* [Sagulator](http://www.woodbin.com/calcs/sagulator/),
accessed May 30, 2018, .
* Ken Roginski, [Window Performance: Old Windows vs. Window Replacements](https://www.oldhouseguy.com/window-replacements/),
December 7, 2014, accessed August 20, 2024, .
# Inbox
Stuff that might be worth remembering or revisiting.
## Algorithms
* Nick Papoulias (), [Parsing Multi-Ordered Grammars with the Gray Algorithm](https://npapoylias.gitlab.io/lands-project/Multi-Ordered-Grammars-Gray-Algorithm-Papoulias-PeerJ-PrePrint.pdf),
March 17, 2019, accessed April 3, 2019, .
Multi-Ordered Grammars (MOGs) as an alternative to the CFG and PEG formalisms.
See also [project website](https://npapoylias.gitlab.io/lands-project/).
* Sasko Ristov, Radu Prodan, Marjan Gusev, Karolj Skala, [Superlinear Speedup in HPC Systems: why and when?](https://annals-csis.org/Volume_8/pliks/498.pdf),
September 29, 2016, accessed October, 18, 2019, [https://annals-csis.org/Volume_8/pliks/498.pdf](https://annals-csis.org/Volume_8/pliks/498.pdf).
Analysis of exceptions to Amdahl's Law and Gustafson's Law.
## Biology
* James Heathers, [Hurry, Don't Rush (The COVID Files #1)](https://medium.com/@jamesheathers/hurry-dont-rush-e1aee626e733),
April 13, 2020, accessed April 20, 2020, .
Link from Slate Star Codex, [A Failure, But Not of Prediction](https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/04/14/a-failure-but-not-of-prediction/).
* Timothy Gowers, [Questions About Coronavirus Policy](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/20792507/questions-about-coronavirus-policy.pdf) [⌈local⌋](pdf/questions-about-coronavirus-policy.pdf),
March 14, 2020, accessed June 1, 20212, .
Fields Medalist explains fatal flaw in UK's early herd immunity policy.
See also [Guardian article](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/28/a-look-at-prof-gowers-herd-immunity-document-sent-to-dominic-cummings).
Via May 28, 2021 comp.text.tex post by Jonathan Fine that noted Gowers'
letter was typeset using pdfTeX (and presumably LaTeX). See also Gowers'
[subsequent blog post](https://gowers.wordpress.com/2020/03/28/how-long-should-a-lockdown-relaxation-cycle-last/)
with more detailed math.
* Stefan Riedel, [Edward Jenner and the history of smallpox and vaccination](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/),
January 2005, accessed June 4, 2021, .
Via [HN comment](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394766).
## Culture
* Claire Lehmann, May 17, 2018, Quillette, [Understanding Victimhood Culture: An Interview with Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning](https://quillette.com/2018/05/17/understanding-victimhood-culture-interview-bradley-campbell-jason-manning/) [⌈archive⌋](https://web.archive.org/web/20180525082950/https://quillette.com/2018/05/17/understanding-victimhood-culture-interview-bradley-campbell-jason-manning/),
accessed May 25, 2018, .
* Otis Housing, Thomas Chatterton Williams, [The Singular Power of Writing: A Conversation with Thomas Chatterton Williams](https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-singular-power-of-writing-a-conversation-with-thomas-chatterton-williams/),
April 12, 2019, accessed April 22, 2019, .
> "I think that many white people kind of search for a way to survive something or to have gone through some type of trauma, because this seems to instill some type of meaning on a life that's otherwise too comfortable. I think there's a kind of perverse pride, and it's psychologically very difficult to give up. Even in my own life, back in high school, a lot of us felt very good at the segregated black table, and we kind of felt that we were defying all the odds and it was us against the white world that didn't want to see us do well. Just being part of that was exhilarating. You were in opposition; your identity felt opposed to the world around you. And we derive self-confidence from that. I think that has to be given up."
* Dave Itzkoff, July 18, 2018, New York Times, ['Simpsons' Creator Matt Groening Says Debate Around Apu Is 'Tainted'](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/arts/television/simpsons-matt-groening-apu.html),
accessed July 18, 2018, .
See also [clip from S29E15 "No Good Read Goes Unpunished"](https://twitter.com/sohamberlamps/status/983200703660351488).
* Megan Garber, [The Pernicious Double Standards Around Brett Kavanaugh's Drinking](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/09/the-impunity-of-brett-kavanaughs-binge-drinking/571435/),
September 28, 2018, accessed October 4, 2018, .
* Nathan J. Robinson, [How We Know Kavanaugh is Lying](https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/09/how-we-know-kavanaugh-is-lying),
September 29, 2018, accessed October 4, 2018, .
* Hillel Ofek, [Why the Arabic World Turned Away from Science](https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/why-the-arabic-world-turned-away-from-science),
Winter 2011, accessed January 2, 2019, .
As the article repeats multiple times, there's nothing unique in the rise
and fall of science in the Arabic world--it's the norm across history. But
arguably the author prematurely suggests that the West is an exception.
(Recent developments across the political spectrums in North America and
Western Europe give one pause.) It may be the case that we implicitly
define "the West" as those cultures where scientific thinking
predominates, which may shift regionally over time if not already. (As
opposed to simply expanding, contiguously or non-contiguously. I think
it's an otherwise trivial observation that some parts of East Asia are
part of the West.) We then continuously revise our historical narratives
to maintain harmony with where science predominates. (Which explains
massive inconsistencies in attempts to use Christian theology to explain
the Enlightenment. For example, how we conveniently overlook that "the
West" has not been the epicenter of Christianity since the Byzantine
Empire. Associations with Protestanism are just as problematic. Both
equivocations, whether causative or merely correlative, hide more
substantive phenomena.) Similarly, "the West" may just be an agglomeration
of subcultures; that is, a global elite that survive, increasingly
tentatively, within larger cultures. (This is almost certainly true in a
pedantic sense, but that's beside the point.) In other words, what might
turn out to be unique is not the persistence of science within any
particular culture, but rather the uninterrupted survival of a continuous
*global* scientific culture. The underlying sociological strata could be
varied, dynamic, and even ephemeral.
* Kara Swisher, Peter Jackson, [How Peter Jackson's team made World War I footage look new](https://www.recode.net/2018/12/15/18141509/peter-jackson-wwi-world-war-they-shall-not-grow-old-documentary-kara-swisher-recode-decode-podcast),
December 15, 2019, accessed March 7, 2019, .
* Jonatan Pallesen, [Blind auditions and gender discrimination](https://jsmp.dk/posts/2019-05-12-blindauditions/),
May 11, 2019, accessed October 23, 2019, .
* Michael J. Hiscox, Tara Oliver, Michael Ridgway, Lilia Arcos-Holzinger, Alastair Warren and Andrea Willis, [Going blind to see more clearly: unconscious bias in Australian Public Service shortlisting processes](https://behaviouraleconomics.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/projects/unconscious-bias.pdf),
June 2017, accessed October 23, 2019, .
> "The overall implications of our study are that on average, across a broad range of APS agencies, introducing deidentification would have the unintended consequence of setting back efforts to promote more diversity at the senior management level in the public service. As things stand, senior public servants appear to be promoting diversity in the way they make decisions when selecting job candidates for shortlists during the initial stage of the recruitment process. This is not possible if applications are de-identified."
* Tom Junod, [My Friend Mister Rogers](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/what-would-mister-rogers-do/600772/),
November 7, 2019, accessed November 12, 2019, .
> "It isn't that he is revered but not followed so much as he is revered because he is not followed--because remembering him as a nice man is easier than thinking of him as a demanding one. He spoke most clearly through his example, but our culture consoles itself with the simple fact that he once existed."
* Paul Graham, [Coronavirus and Credibility](http://paulgraham.com/cred.html),
April 6, 2020, accessed April 7, 2020, .
* Lee Jussim, Jarret T. Crawford, Stephanie M. Anglin, John R. Chambers, Sean T. Stevens, Florette Cohen, [Stereotype accuracy: One of the largest and most replicable effects in all of social psychology](https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/2016-jussim.pdf),
accessed August 21, 2020, .
* John McWhorter, [A Nation Divided by Language](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/nation-divided-language/618461/),
March 31, 2021, accessed April 1, 2021, .
* Chris Heath, [The Truth Behind the Amazon Mystery Seeds](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/07/unsolicited-seeds-china-brushing/619417/),
July 15, 2021, accessed July 15, 2021, .
If performative culture journalism is a thing, this is it. Performative
for the reader, who lured in by the low stakes reveals to themselves their
own (shared) prejudice after casually mocking it in others; it's just
proper investigative journalism for the writer. Or just proper journalism,
period, considering the poignancy comes more from identifying and
attempting to falsifiably confirm facile, hidden-in-the-open presumptions
(e.g. likelihood of the cynical Brushing narrative) than the laborious
pursuit of specific evidence, though it stands out for its commitment to
both.
* Jonathan Greenblatt, [Getting it Right in Defining Racism](https://j0nathan-g.medium.com/getting-it-right-in-defining-racism-3c01a517bf9d),
February 2, 2022, accessed February 2, 2022, .
ADL changes their definition of racism, [obviously in response to Whoopi Goldberg's Holocaust comments](https://www.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/sj6fc1/today_some_time_between_530pm_and_710pm_gmt_the/)
[⌈archive⌋](https://web.archive.org/web/20220203014350/https://www.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/sj6fc1/today_some_time_between_530pm_and_710pm_gmt_the/)
(comparing [definition before](https://web.archive.org/web/20220202173256/https://www.adl.org/racism)
and [definition after](https://web.archive.org/web/20220202191016/https://www.adl.org/racism)).
* Sacha Dekker, ['Disabled' is not a bad word. Stop telling people with disabilities it is](https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/disabled-is-not-a-bad-word-stop-telling-people-with-disabilities-it-is-1.4857377),
April 26, 2022, accessed April 26, 2022, .
* Ivan Oransky, [What really happened when two mathematicians tried to publish a paper on gender differences? The tale of the emails](https://retractionwatch.com/2018/09/17/what-really-happened-when-two-mathematicians-tried-to-publish-a-paper-on-gender-differences-the-tale-of-the-emails/),
September 17, 2018, accessed March 22, 2023, .
See also [the emails](https://retractionwatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Hill_RetractionWatchAppendix_Sep14.pdf) [⌈local⌋](mirror/retractionwatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Hill_RetractionWatchAppendix_Sep14.pdf).
Slices of the [variability hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variability_hypothesis) saga.
* Albert Camus, [Camus's New York Diary, 1946](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2023/03/14/camuss-new-york-diary-1946/),
March 1946, accessed April 14, 2023, .
* Tom Wolfe, [Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died](http://www.psy.vanderbilt.edu/courses/psy115w/Fall02/TomWolfe-SorryButYourSoul.htm) [⌈archive⌋](https://web.archive.org/web/20220406132719/http://www.psy.vanderbilt.edu/courses/psy115w/Fall02/TomWolfe-SorryButYourSoul.htm),
December 2, 1996, accessed October 19, 2023, http://www.psy.vanderbilt.edu/courses/psy115w/Fall02/TomWolfe-SorryButYourSoul.htm.
Via [HN comment](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37950313).
## Economics
* Maria João Kaiseler, Horácio C. Faustino, [Lottery Sales and Per-capita GDP: An Inverted U Relationship](https://depeco.iseg.ulisboa.pt/wp/wp412008.pdf),
November 12, 2008, accessed April 22, 2019, .
Interesting study. As an aside, this hypothesis stood out as odd:
> "Kearney (2005) found that, in the USA, black respondents spend almost twice as much on lottery tickets as do white and Hispanic respondents. We expect that Africans spend more money purchasing lottery products. Thus, we anticipate a positive relationship between lottery sales and African countries."
* J.P. Koning, [Esperanto, money's interval of certainty, and how this applies to Facebook's Libra](http://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2019/06/esperanto-moneys-interval-of-certainty.html),
June 25, 2019, accessed June 27, 2019, .
> "[T]he combination of these two factors—sticky prices and a wedding of the unit of account and medium of exchange—provides all of us with an interval of certainty…. We know exactly how many items we can buy for the next few weeks or months using the banknotes in our wallet or funds in our account. And so we can make very precise spending plans. In an uncertain world, this sort of clarity is quite special."
* Wang Dongjing, [The Three Laws of Chinese Officialdom](https://card.weibo.com/article/m/show/id/2309634492089764216920),
accessed December 2, 2020, .
Via [How the CCP Does Job Promotions](https://chinatalk.substack.com/p/how-the-ccp-does-job-promotions).
* Blair Fix, [The Truth About Inflation](https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2021/11/24/the-truth-about-inflation/),
November 24, 2021, accessed May 27, 2022, .
Via [HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31525941). A different take on inflation. See also
[power theory of value](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_value_%28economics%29#Power_theory_of_value),
[differential accumulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_accumulation), and more
generally [institutional economics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_economics).
* Jonathan Nitzan, [Inflation as Restructuring: A Theoretical and Empirical Account of the U.S. Experience](http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/id/eprint/207) [⌈PDF⌋](https://bnarchives.yorku.ca/207/1/19921000_nitzan_phd_complete.pdf),
October 1992, accessed June 29, 2022, .
Via [The Truth About Inflation](#Fix20211124). Parodying Milton Friedman,
> "[I]nflation is always and everywhere a phenomenon of structural change."
* Martino Comelli, [Why northern Europe is so indebted](https://theloop.ecpr.eu/why-northern-europe-is-so-indebted/),
March 20, 2023, accessed March 21, 2023, .
Revisiting commonly assumed relationships between welfare systems and
private debt. Via [HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35238878).
## Geology
* Daniel Grossman, [Why Our Intuition About Sea-Level Rise Is Wrong](http://oceans.nautil.us/feature/564/why-our-intuition-about-sea-level-rise-is-wrong),
May 29, 2020, accessed June 2, 2020, .
Via [HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23389690). See also [What Physics Teachers Get Wrong About Tides](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwChk4S99i4).
## Language Design
* Guido van Rossum, [Why operators are useful](https://neopythonic.blogspot.com/2019/03/why-operators-are-useful.html),
March 15, 2019, accessed March 15, 2019, .
* Mar Hicks, [Built to Last](https://logicmag.io/care/built-to-last/),
August 31, 2020, accessed January 6, 2021, .
> "It was this austerity-driven lack of investment in people--rather than the handy fiction, peddled by state governments, that programmers with obsolete skills retired--that removed COBOL programmers years before this recent crisis. The reality is that there are plenty of new COBOL programmers out there who could do the job."
> "Indeed, present-day tech could use more of the sort of resilience and accessibility that COBOL brought to computing--especially for systems that have broad impacts, will be widely used, and will be long-term infrastructure that needs to be maintained by many hands in the future. In this sense, COBOL and its scapegoating show us an important aspect of high tech that few in Silicon Valley, or in government, seem to understand."
* David A. Mundie, [Computerized Cooking (RxOL)](https://web.archive.org/web/20020621235055/http://www.anthus.com/Recipes/CompCook.html),
1985, accessed January 31, 2022, <http://www.anthus.com/Recipes/CompCook.html>.
Presents the programming language, RoXL, for recipes seemingly used by
[Cooking For Engineers](http://www.cookingforengineers.com/), which
renders their recipes to an index-card friendly graphical instruction
chart combining ingredients and process.
## Law
* Edward S. Corwin, [Marbury v. Madison and the Doctrine of Judicial Review](https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1274986.pdf) [⌈local⌋](pdf/Marbury_v_Madison_and_the_Doctrine_of_Judicial_Review.pdf),
May 1914, accessed January 08, 2021, .
> "That the members of the Convention of 1787 thought the Constitution secured to courts in the United States the right to pass on the validity of acts of Congress under it cannot be reasonably doubted. Confining ourselves simply to the available evidence that is strictly contemporaneous with the framing and ratifying of the Constitution, as I think it only proper to do, we find the following members of the Convention that framed the Constitution definitely asserting that this would be the case: GERRY and KING of Massachusetts, WILSON and GOUVERNEUR MORRIS of Pennsylvania, MARTIN of Maryland, RANDOLPH, MADISON, and MASON of Virginia, DICKINSON of Delaware, YATES and HAMILTON of New York, RUTLEDGE and Charles PINCKNEY of South Carolina, DAVIE and WILLIAMSON of North Carolina, SHERMAN and ELLSWORTH of Connecticut. True these are only seventeen names out of a possible fifty-five, but let it be considered whose names they are. They designate fully three-fourths of the leaders of the Convention, four of the five members of the Committee of Detail which drafted the Constitution, and four of the five members of the Committee of Style which gave the Constitution final form. The entries under these names, in the Index to FARRAND'S RECORDS occupy fully thirty columns, as compared with fewer than half as many columns under the names of the remaining members. We have in this list, in other words, the names of men who expressed themselves on the subject of judicial review because they also expressed themselves on all other subjects before the Convention. They were the leaders of that body and its articulate members. And against them are to be pitted, in reference to the question under discussion, only MERCER of Maryland, BEDFORD of Delaware, and SPAIGHT of North Carolina, the record in each of whose cases turns out to be upon inspection of doubtful implication."
* David A. Strauss, [Common Law Constitutional Interpretation (63 U. Chi. L. Rev. 877)](https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2999&context=journal_articles),
Summer 1996, accessed May 25, 2021, .
> "The common law approach restrains judges more effectively, is more justifiable in abstract terms than textualism or originalism, and provides a far better account of our practices."
* Jamal Greene, [The Meming of Substantive Due Process](https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/660/) [⌈PDF⌋](https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1654&context=faculty_scholarship),
2016, accessed July 11, 2022, .
> "This trend surely says less about substantive due process, which meant about the same (if not less, substantively) in the 1980s as it did before, than it says about prevailing practices of constitutional argumentation. The more or less sudden realization that 'substantive' contradicts 'process' in the Due Process Clause---and that this is a fatal defect---coincides with the rise of a certain kind of originalism. That rise was not organic but rather was deliberately orchestrated by conservative activists both inside and outside of the Reagan Justice Department."
* Jamal Greene, [The Age of Scalia](https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/661/) [⌈PDF⌋](https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1653&context=faculty_scholarship),
2016, accessed July 11, 2022, .
> "The present generation had Justice Scalia, who defended the dead Constitution with a vigor that only a verdant one could have produced."
## Miscellaneous
* Avery Pennarun, [Forget privacy: you're terrible at targeting anyway](https://apenwarr.ca/log/20190201),
February 1, 2019, accessed February 11, 2019, .
* DanHeidel, [The real reason Boeing's new plane crashed twice (comment on corporate culture)](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/bdfqm4/the_real_reason_boeings_new_plane_crashed_twice/ekyyd9g/),
April 15th, 2019, accessed April 16th, 2019, .
* smackgoesthepaddle, [The real reason Boeing's new plane crashed twice (comment on initial airframes)](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/bdfqm4/the_real_reason_boeings_new_plane_crashed_twice/ekz39ld/),
April 15th, 2019, accessed April 16th, 2019, .
* Chris Zacharias (), [A Conspiracy To Kill IE6](http://blog.chriszacharias.com/a-conspiracy-to-kill-ie6),
May 1, 2019, accessed May 1, 2019, .
* E.C. Zeeman, [Gears from the Greeks](http://zakuski.utsa.edu/~gokhman/ecz/gears_from_the_greeks.pdf),
January 1986, accessed June 30, 2020, .
> "I would like to conclude by telling a cautionary tale. Let us try and place the Antikythera Mechanism within the global context of ancient Greek thought. Firstly came the astronomers observing the motions of the heavenly bodies and collecting data. Secondly came the mathematicians inventing mathematical notation to describe the motions and fit the data. Thirdly came the technicians making mechanical models to simulate those mathematical constructions, like the Antikythera Mechanism. Fourthly came generations of students who learned their astronomy from these machines. Fifthly came scientists whose imagination had been so blinkered by generations of such learning that they actually believed that this was how the heavens worked. Sixthly came the authorities who insisted upon the received dogma. And so the human race was fooled into accepting the Ptolemaic system for a thousand years."
> "Today we are in danger of making the same mistake over computers. Our present generation is able to view them with an appropriate skepticism when necessary. But our children's children may be brought up within a society dominated by computers, that they may actually believe this is how our brains work. We do not want the human race to be fooled again for another thousand years."
* Rahav Gabaya, Boaz Hameiri, Tammy Rubel-Lifschitz, Arie Nadler, [The tendency for interpersonal victimhood: The personality construct and its consequences](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886920303238),
October 15, 2020, accessed December 11, 2020, .
([Summary](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/unraveling-the-mindset-of-victimhood/).)
([But see caveat](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-knowledge/202012/victim-personalities-and-the-sandcastle-problem), "psychologists do not really agree about what a personality tendency means.")
* Richard P. Feynman, [The Value of Science](https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/1575/1/Science.pdf),
December 1955, accessed January 21, 2021, .
## Pedagogy
* [Hejny method: An approach to mathematics teaching and child development](https://www.h-mat.cz/en/hejny-method),
accessed May 9, 2018, .
* James Somers, [You're probably using the wrong dictionary](http://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary),
May 18, 2014, accessed April 26, 2019, .
> "Notice, too, how much less certain the Webster definition seems about itself, even though it's more complete—as if to remind you that the word came first, that the word isn't defined by its definition here, in this humble dictionary, that definitions grasp, tentatively, at words, but that what words really are is this haze and halo of associations and evocations, a little networked cloud of uses and contexts."
* Randall Monroe, [Washington's Farewell Address Translated into Everyday Speech](https://blog.xkcd.com/2007/01/29/washingtons-farewell-address-translated-into-the-vernacular/),
January 29, 2007, accessed August 7, 2019, .
* Emily Hanford, [At a Loss for Words](https://www.apmreports.org/story/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading),
August 22, 2019, accessed August 24, 2019, .
* David Reser, et al, [Australian Aboriginal techniques for memorization: Translation into a medical and allied health education setting](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0251710),
May 18, 2021, accessed May 19, 2021, .
The reporting authors refrained from detailing the technique for fear of
cultural insensitivity, and possibly as a condition of Aboriginal
participation and instruction. According to an [HN comment](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27376741)
more details about the Australian Aboriginal system are given by Lynne Kelly
in [The Memory Code](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29759605-the-memory-code).
* Lars Eckstein, Anja Schwarz, [The Making of Tupaia's Map: A Story of the Extent and Mastery of Polynesian Navigation, Competing Systems of Wayfinding on James Cook's Endeavour, and the Invention of an Ingenious Cartographic System](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00223344.2018.1512369)
December 20, 2018, accessed June 3, 2021, .
* Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov: A Memoir ([excerpt](http://billwall.phpwebhosting.com/articles/Asimov_chess.htm)),
1994, accessed July 23, 2024, http://billwall.phpwebhosting.com/articles/Asimov_chess.htm.
Intelligence, patterns, and intuition. See last few paragraphs for
Asimov's reflection on the limitations of his own intelligence, excerpted
from pp 124-125 of his memoir.
## Politics
* Nathan J. Robinson, [Why Taxation is Neither Theft nor Slavery](https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/01/why-taxation-is-neither-theft-nor-slavery),
January 21, 2019, accessed January 30, 2019, .
* Oliver Norgrove, [Why Brexiteers forgot about the Border](https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/why-brexiteers-forgot-about-the-border-1.3831635),
March 20, 2019, accessed March 20, 2019, .
_Mea_ _culpa_ by Brexiteer activist.
* Dave McNeely, [Is the sun setting on the Texas sunset law?](https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Is+the+sun+setting+on+the+Texas+sunset+law%3f-a015443787),
1994, acccessed July 3, 2019, .
> ""[I] never saw so many alligator shoes and $600 suits as when some agency is up for sunset review.""
* Bernadette Devlin, William F. Buckley, [The Irish Problem](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFUKV5_EwdA),
March 25, 1972, accessed August 31, 2019, , via
[Twitter](https://twitter.com/danielcollins85/status/1107691596051632131). Most articulate
politician I've ever heard.
* Scott Alexander, [Too Much Money in Dark Almonds](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in-almonds/),
September 18, 2019, accessed September 19, 2019, .
* Dwight Stirling, [Why the US military usually punishes misconduct but police often close ranks](https://theconversation.com/why-the-us-military-usually-punishes-misconduct-but-police-often-close-ranks-127898),
December 6, 2019, accessed June 26, 2020, .
* Mapping Inequality, [Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America](https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining),
accessed September 21, 2020, .
Interactive map of 1930s redlining maps including official per district
rationales. See, e.g., [Chicago](https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=11/41.902/-87.83&maps=0&city=chicago-il).
* Brandon Watson, [The Cement of Society Is....](https://branemrys.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-cement-of-society-is.html),
September 22, 2020, accessed September 23, 2020, .
* William Burr (ed.), [The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II: A Collection of Primary Sources](https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/),
August 5, 2005, accessed August 30, 2021, [https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/](https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/).
Via [@mcguire HN post](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28361146).
* Isaac Kriegman, [The post that led to my termination](https://kriegman.substack.com/p/post-leading-to-termination-blm-falsehoods),
December 7, 2021, accessed January 6, 2022, .
On bias in police shootings and methodological bias in recent statistical
research.
* Corey Robin, [The Self-Fulfilling Prophecies of Clarence Thomas](https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-self-fulfilling-prophecies-of-clarence-thomas),
July 9, 2022, accessed July 12, 2022, .
I'm no fan of Thomas' jurisprudence, but this article comes off as an
accidental defense of Thomas' philosophy. Robin describes a cogent,
thoroughly black-centric accounting of American legal history and then
*presumes* that his predominately white, liberal audience would, like
himself, reject its implications out-of-hand for not comporting with their
own social policy sensibilities. Which is literally Thomas' (not to
mention many of those from or influenced by mid-20th century Black Power
movements, such as Dave Chappelle) primary criticism---that whites control
the political and social narrative inevitably to their benefit and so
priority #1 for escaping (or at least diminishing) the yolk of systematic
oppression (i.e. systemic racism) is limiting the power of whites to
control and *impose* their narratives upon the black community. From the
perspective of people like Thomas and Chappelle, issues du jour for the
white community like abortion can pale in comparison to broader dynamics
suppressing black agency. Insistence that the black community stands the
most to lose from, e.g., greater voting restrictions overlooks the fact
that the black community would have little power and agency regardless. In
many ways, value systems that favor participatory governance necessarily
put the minority black community at a disadvantage. Even if everybody
agreed on the same principles regarding abortion, environmental
protection, labor, etc, timing and prioritization can make all the
difference. From Thomas' perspective, even a regime that diminishes
overall liberty could still have the effect of *benefiting* the black
community (especially economically) if the new regime provided greater
consistency and less discretion. From a black perspective, American
history is largely a story of whites moving on to the next great thing,
with the black community left behind perpetually trying to catch
up--economically, politically, culturally. Even when whites acknowledge
these dynamics, such as in their nominal embrace of Critical Race Theory
(CRT), the dynamics fundamentally remain undiminished. Therein lies a
basic point of agreement between both CRT and Thomas' philosophy--both are
intrinsically pessimistic about racial relations (much like many other
mid-century black philosophers, such as Frantz Fanon), and the fact the
left instinctively defends one and abhors the other speaks to their
obliviousness regarding the nature and substance of the problems at issue.
* Arun Venugopal, [Black Leaders Once Championed the Strict Drug Laws They Now Seek to Dismantle](https://www.wnyc.org/story/312823-black-leaders-once-championed-strict-drug-laws-they-now-seek-dismantle/),
August 15, 2013, accessed October 13, 2022, .
## Security
* Avery Pennarun, [Factors in authentication](https://apenwarr.ca/log/20190114),
January 14, 2019, accessed February 11, 2019, .
> "I've more or less convinced myself that phone-based OTP (prone to phishing) or phone-push-based U2F (not useful after initial enrollment) add no interesting security but do make things harder for end users. I guess they call that "security theatre." Meanwhile, physical U2F tokens are unlikely to become popular with consumers because they're inconvenient."
* Nancy G. Leveson, [Engineering a Safer World](http://sunnyday.mit.edu/safer-world/index.html),
July 2009, accessed February 26, 2019, .
* Stewart Baker, [How Long Will Unbreakable Commercial Encryption Last?](https://www.lawfareblog.com/how-long-will-unbreakable-commercial-encryption-last),
September 20, 2019, accessed October 16, 2019, .
* Robert Buhren, Alexander Eichner, and Christian Werling, [Uncover, Understand, Own - Regaining Control Over Your AMD CPU](https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10942-uncover_understand_own_-_regaining_control_over_your_amd_cpu),
December 27, 2019, accessed January 1, 2020, .
* Bunnie Huang, [Can We Build Trustable Hardware?](https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5706),
December 27, 2019, accessed January 1, 2020, .
Includes discussion of [Betrusted](https://betrusted.io/), an attempt at a trustable
hardware device.
* Ryan O'Neill, [ASLR Protection for Statically Linked Executables](https://www.leviathansecurity.com/blog/aslr-protection-for-statically-linked-executables),
June 27, 2018, accessed june 26, 2020, .
* Kenneth White via Lily Hay Newman, [Encrypted Messaging Isn’t Magic](https://www.wired.com/story/encrypted-messaging-isnt-magic/) [⌈archive⌋](https://web.archive.org/web/20240302044228/https://www.wired.com/story/encrypted-messaging-isnt-magic/),
June 14, 2018, accessed March 1, 2024, .
Via [@somat HN comment](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38550930).
> "Good opsec will save you from bad crypto, but good crypto won't save you from bad opsec"
> -- Kenn White, [Open Crypto Audit Project](https://opencryptoaudit.org/)