Actual HouChron headline (on their homepage):
Archive for the ‘Geek’ Category
Thanos, call your office, please.
Friday, August 30th, 2019Random notes: August 28, 2019.
Wednesday, August 28th, 2019Tweet of the day:
My coworker brought in some biscuits from Germany called Choco Leibniz and I asked if there'd been a dispute over whether them or Fig Newtons had been invented first and nobody got it đ
— Robin Johnson (@rdouglasjohnson) August 26, 2019
Michael Drejka was convicted of manslaughter. (Previously.) You can call me lazy, but I’m going to point to Andrew Branca again, who is an actual lawyer and knows something about use of force and the law:
This case is an excellent example of how tiny changes in the fact pattern could lead to drastically different legal outcomes. If McGlockton had made any apparent movement consistent with re-engaging Drejka, Drejkaâs perception of an imminent attack would likely have been unquestionably reasonable. Even a mere shift of McGlocktonâs body weight toward, rather than away from, Drejka might have been sufficient. Such evidence was not in the case, however.
Also extremely unhelpful to Drejka was his post-event interrogation by police, to which he voluntarily consented, without legal counsel present. In that interrogation a happily compliant Drejka, believing heâs just helping the police understand why his shooting of McGlockton was no problem, hardly an inconvenience, as the internet meme puts it, agrees to conduct a re-enactment of the shooting.
“Really, seriously, just shut the f–k up.”
Interesting post from Stephen Wolfram’s blog that sits at a couple of intersections: rare book geekery, computer science (the rare book belonged to Turing), and detective work.
Actual headline from the Austin American-Statesman:
The article goes on to state that, according to industry experts, all of the Statesman reporters are intelligent, attractive, and all of their bodily functions smell like apple cinnamon Glade plug-ins.
Perhaps slightly more interesting: this column about the Texas State Cemetery, tied to Cedric Benson’s burial there. While the writing is slightly grating, it does answer some questions I had about who gets in and how.
Please refrain from tasting the KNOB.
Friday, August 16th, 2019As a Bluetooth guy, and as someone who just posted a bunch of DEFCON 27 stuff, I feel compelled to say something about the Key Negotiation of Bluetooth Attack (aka KNOB) which has been getting a lot of attention the past few days.
Here’s the actual paper from the USENIX Security Symposium.
Here’s a higher level overview of how the attack works.
Also of interest, also from USENIX, also getting some media attention: “Please Pay Inside: Evaluating Bluetooth-based Detection of Gas Pump Skimmers“. What’s cool about this is that the authors have developed Bluetana, an Android app that scans for Bluetooth devices in the area (every five seconds), displays a list of devices it found, and highlights ones that show characteristics similar to those of Bluetooth skimmers.
I’m fascinated by both of these papers, just based on a preliminary skimming. I’m hoping to do a detailed reading at that mythical point in the future when I have more free time…
Oh the weather outside is frightful…
Wednesday, July 31st, 2019…actually, it’s not all that bad in Austin. The estimated high today is a mere 99 degrees Fahrenheit (558.67 degrees Rankine).
But I know many of my readers are suffering from the heat, so here’s something that I hope will cool you down for a few minutes:
“The Stranding of the MV Shokalskiy”.
Beyond my interest in polar exploration, there’s a lot of stuff in here that prompted chuckles:
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Reached by the BBC, the poor marketing person for the adventure company put it succinctly: âThe hull has a hole the size of a fist and the outlook is not so positive for the ship at the moment.â
The outlook became less positive a few minutes later, when the ship sank.
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There had already been choral music, and there threatened to be more.
Non historical note, not suitable for use in schools.
Saturday, July 20th, 2019I bow to nobody as far as my interest in the space program goes.
But I don’t have a darn thing to say about Apollo 11, or the 50th anniversary of same. This just feels like one of those big round number anniversaries where everybody is on top of it, everything that can be said has already been said, and there’s nothing left.
If you want something, go over to Lawrence’s.
Disappointment.
Wednesday, July 17th, 2019I saw a post about the Kickstarter for Papillon and said to myself, “Man! What a cool idea!”
I’m not really into MMORPGs, but the idea of one where you could play a prisoner in a penal colony in French Guyana, dodging guards, forming alliances with other prisoners, struggling to survive solitary confinement, and plotting escape? I could get behind that.
Then I clicked through to the link. Apparently it has something to do with butterflies.
I like my idea better.
Obit watch: May 22, 2019.
Wednesday, May 22nd, 2019Stanton T. Friedman, UFOlogist.
Mr. Silverstein was serving three consecutive life terms for the killing of two fellow prisoners and a guard while behind bars. He had been incarcerated continuously since 1975, originally on an armed robbery conviction. He was said to have joined the Aryan Brotherhood, the white nationalist prison gang, while serving time at Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas.
He was in solitary confinement for 36 years, more than half his life. The American Civil Liberties Union has cited his case in its campaign against long-term solitary confinement.
More:
In 1981, Mr. Silverstein and another inmate, Clayton Fountain, were convicted of murdering Robert Chappelle, a member of the D.C. Blacks prison gang. During the trial, the gangâs national leader, Raymond (Cadillac) Smith, was transferred to Marion, apparently intent on killing Mr. Silverstein in revenge. (Prison officials, Mr. Silverstein said later, were aware of the threats but âdidnât take any action to make me safe.â)
Mr. Silverstein and Mr. Fountain got to Mr. Smith first, stabbing him 67 times with makeshift weapons, then dragging his body along prison catwalks as an object lesson. Mr. Silverstein received two more life sentences, for the murders of Mr. Chappelle and Mr. Smith. He insisted that he was innocent of the Chappelle murder and that he had killed Mr. Smith in self-defense.
By 1983 Mr. Silverstein had taken up art, teaching himself and becoming accomplished at it. One day, on his way back from showering, another prisoner handed him another makeshift knife and a homemade key. Using it, he managed to unlock his handcuffs and then fatally stabbed Merle E. Clutts, an unarmed correction officer, about 40 times.
His running buddy Mr. Fountain killed another guard that same day. These incidents are (at least in part) what prompted the construction of the SuperMax prison in Colorado.
Mildly interesting fact that I ran across last night: Clayton Fountain, who was also confined in solitary, took theology courses, converted to Catholicism, and was accepted as a lay brother by a Trappist order after his death.
Obit watch: May 14, 2019.
Tuesday, May 14th, 2019Robert Maxwell, the kind of badass that’s rare these days.
September 7, 1944:
Technician Fifth Grade Maxwell and a few other G.I.s were on observation duty outside their battalion headquarters near the city of Besançon in eastern France when German soldiers got within yards of their outpost and opened fire.
The Germans blasted away with automatic weapons and even antiaircraft guns, seeking to destroy the stone house where the battalion commanders were stationed. The G.I.s on sentry duty were armed only with .45-caliber automatic pistols, but they fired back.
And then a grenade was hurled over the fence in front of the houseâs courtyard and landed beside Technician Maxwell. Using an Army blanket for protection, he fell on the grenade.
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The grenade exploded, knocking him unconscious, tearing away part of one foot and peppering his head and left arm with shrapnel. World War II was over for Technician Maxwell, but he received the Medal of Honor. It cited him for inspiring his fellow G.I.s to join with him in a firefight that delayed the German onslaught and then, having âunhesitatingly hurled himself squarely uponââ the grenade, âusing his blanket and his unprotected body to absorb the full force of the explosion.â
The citation called it an âact of instantaneous heroismâ that âpermanently maimedâ him but âsaved the lives of his comrades.â
Mr. Maxwell was 98 when he passed away Saturday. According to the NYT obit, there are three Medal of Honor recipients from WWII that are still alive.
Fleming Begaye Sr., one of the Navajo code talkers.
Mr. Begaye survived the Battle of Tarawa, a costly offensive on a Japanese-held Pacific atoll that took place in 1943. Out of 18,000 Marines who landed on Betio, more than 1,000 died.
âHis landing craft was blown up and he literally had to swim to the beach to survive,â Mr. [Peter] MacDonald [also a code talker – DB] said of Mr. Begaye at the White House ceremony.
Mr. Begaye landed on Tinian, one of the Mariana Islands, in 1944 and was âshot up real badly,â Mr. MacDonald said. He spent a year in a naval hospital.
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CĂŠsar GonzĂĄlez BarrĂłn, aka “Silver King“, died last Saturday. Silver King was a lucha libre wrestler, who also played “Ramses” in “Nacho Libre”. He died during a match in London against “Youth Warrior” (Juventud Guerrera).
Mr. GonzĂĄlez BarrĂłn was a star in Mexican wrestling, known as lucha libre, in which combatants wear elaborate masks and take on outlandish personas.
At the event in London, called the Greatest Show of Lucha Libre, Mr. GonzĂĄlez BarrĂłn had reprised his role as the evil Ramses.
He was the son of a famous wrestler known as Dr. Wagner, and he had been wrestling professionally since 1985, according to his profile on the film website IMDB. During his career, he was a CMLL World Heavyweight champion, an AAA World Tag Team champion and had won many other championships.
Goro Shimura, mathematician, passed away about a week ago.
Elliptic curves are pretty important to modern cryptography, and Mr. Shimura’s work is foundational in that area. But there’s more to the story:
So basically, this reduced the problem of proving Fermat’s Last Theorem to proving the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture.
The story I’ve heard (I wasn’t there) is that Wiles spent the better part of two days going through his proof of the conjecture, finally finished it…and then added, “Oh, by the way, by Ribert’s result, this means that Fermat’s Last Theorem is also true. Q.E.D.”
Obit watch: April 17, 2019.
Wednesday, April 17th, 2019Owen Garriott, astronaut.
In 1973 he was the science pilot of Skylab 3, the record-breaking 59-day mission â more than double the duration of any previous flight â to Skylab, the first United States space station.
He logged nearly 14 hours outside Skylab in three spacewalks, during which physiological and biomedical metrics were monitored to determine the bodyâs response to long periods spent in reduced gravity.
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He returned to space in 1983 on the 10-day flight of the shuttle Columbia, which carried the European Space Agencyâs Spacelab 1 module, on which a multinational team of scientists conducted research.
On that mission, Dr. Garriott operated the first amateur radio station from space. He used his stationâs call sign, W5LFL, to connect with about 250 ham operators, including his mother in Enid, Okla.; Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona; and King Hussein of Jordan.
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Happy Pi Day!
Thursday, March 14th, 2019Yes, there is pie: a bunch for work, and a bunch more to take down to the CPA class tonight.
Obit watch: March 8, 2019.
Friday, March 8th, 2019Ralph Hall, former Republican House rep from Texas.
Mr. Hall was 91 when he left the House after 34 years. He was defeated in a Republican primary runoff in 2014 by John Ratcliffe, a former United States attorney less than half his age.
An avid jogger who began his days with two-mile runs, Mr. Hall celebrated Memorial Day 2012, when he was 89, by skydiving. That Christmas he became the oldest member of the House, breaking the record set by Charles Manly Stedman of North Carolina, who died in office in 1930 at the age of 89 years, seven months and 25 days.
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(Hattip: Lawrence.)
Jerry Merryman. You’ve probably never heard of him, but to my mind, he was one of the great men of history.
While working at Texas Instruments, Mr. Merryman co-created the first pocket calculator.
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Years later, when a friend mentioned that Mr. Merryman had designed the calculatorâs circuitry in only three days, Mr. Merryman leaned toward him and said, âAnd three nights.â
He, Mr. Kilby and Mr. Van Tassel initially built a prototype, which spanned an entire room at their Texas Instruments lab. Then, over the next two years, they packed the same circuit design into a hand-held casing using microchips.
The device had 18 keys, and it could handle addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, printing calculations on a tiny spool of paper. It reached the market in 1970 after Texas Instruments licensed the technology to Canon, carrying a $400 price tag. Soon a second partner, Bowmar, introduced a $250 version called the Bowmar Brain.
The first calculator I ever used only supported six digits (not eight) and the basic math operations. I don’t know how much it cost. I think my dad paid around $300 for a Rockwell scientific calculator sometime in the 1970s. It wasn’t that many years later that I got a TI-30 for Christmas: I think by that time they were somewhere around $20 or $30.
Moore’s Law, man.
Obit watch: January 16, 2019.
Wednesday, January 16th, 2019I wanted to give the Carol Channing obit a chance to shake out before posting it. I’m kind of glad I did: now they’re leading off the obit with the Hirschfeld drawing, which fills me with delight down to the bottom of my coal black heart.
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As Lawrence pointed out to me yesterday, she was also in “Skidoo“. (Honest to Ghu, I thought that had been released on Criterion, but apparently not.)
This one goes out to my friend Todd: Alan R. Pearlman, synthesizer pioneer and founder of ARP Instruments.
ARPâs analog synthesizers â particularly the compact, portable ARP Odyssey, introduced in 1972 â grew ubiquitous in pop and electronic music. By the mid-1970s, ARP was the leading synthesizer manufacturer, commanding 40 percent of the market and outselling its predecessors and competitors, Moog and Buchla.
ARP sounds were central to numerous songs, including Edgar Winterâs âFrankenstein,â Herbie Hancockâs âChameleon,â Kraftwerkâs âThe Robots,â Underworldâs âRez,â Nine Inch Nailsâ âThe Hand That Feedsâ and the early-1980s version of the theme to the television series âDoctor Who.â
The five-note signature motif of âClose Encounters of the Third Kindâ was played on an ARP 2500 synthesizer, which is seen in the film. An ARP 2600, mixed with natural sounds, provided the voice of R2-D2 in the first âStar Warsâ movie.
Obit watch: December 23, 2018.
Sunday, December 23rd, 2018Audrey Geisel, the second (and surviving) wife of Dr. Seuss.
Timothy C. May, noted cypherpunk. I never met Tim May, but I was on the cypherpunks list, and an avid reader of sci.crypt, back during the peak of the movement. It’s a little strange to see someone who is perhaps most famous as a provocateur on mailing lists get an obit in the NYT, but…
Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat…
Wednesday, December 12th, 2018…please put a penny in the old man’s hat.
Or, you know, buy some books. (Yes, most of these links are Amazon links, and yes, I do get a kickback if you buy things through them.)
Books from Lame Excuse Books make fine presents for everyone on your list! Or, at least, every SF fan on your list. And if they are not an SF fan, books from Lame Excuse will make them one! If you sign up for the mailing list now, you’ll get the brand new Lame Excuse Books catalog absolutely free!
Speaking of SF fans on your list, I confess: I have not read these yet. But I backed the Kickstarter, am a big fan of the author himself, and have heard good things about the books, so I’d also suggest you consider Travis J. I. Corcoran’s The Powers of the Earth and Causes of Separation. The Powers of the Earth won the Prometheus Award this year: how could you go wrong with this choice? (Okay, maybe the SF fan on your list isn’t a Libertarian. Yet. Like I said, how could you go wrong?)
Also unread by me, but in my “to read” stack, and another person I like: Amy Alkon’s Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence.
Here are some books I did read, and liked, this year, that don’t pertain to my more esoteric interests. (If that’s your cup of tea, you probably already have the book on Savage rifles: as a matter of fact, you probably bought it when Ian mentioned it was on sale at Amazon.) They didn’t necessarily come out this year (one did, and one was reprinted): these are just a few things I liked, and that I think deserve more attention. I know we’re getting close to Christmas, but many of these books are available in Kindle editions and can be delivered more or less instantly, if your recipient has bought into the Kindle lifestyle.
Under an English Heaven: The Remarkable True Story of the 1969 British Invasion of Anguilla, Donald E. Westlake: I wrote about this back when the book was first re-released, and I finished it not too long after the Amazon shipment arrived. This is every bit as good as I thought it was going to be: definitely more Dortmunder than Parker, but with the added bonus of being 100% true. Wikipedia really doesn’t do justice to the whole bat guano insane story, especially the British involvement in it: even after being repeatedly whacked across the nose with a metaphorical 2×4, the British government still failed to understand that the people of Anguilla didn’t want to be governed by a ruler who threatened to strip the whole island bare and reduce them to “sucking on bones”. Enthusiastically recommended, and not just for Westlake fans.
The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, Reverend James Martin, SJ: This was a Half-Price Books discovery. I feel obligated to note here that Rev. Martin is kind of a controversial figure on the Catholic Twitters. Briefly summarizing something that’s more complex, he represents and advocates for a more liberal Church, which puts him crosswise with certain other Catholics who I also respect greatly.
With that said, I thought this was a very good book. It’s not just about being a Jesuit (though there’s a lot of Jesuit history in it), but about applying the Jesuit way of thought and general principles in your daily life, whether you are a Catholic or not. You could be a Zen Buddhist or even an agnostic: Father Martin’s idea is that applying these principles can make you a happier, more spiritually balanced person. This is a book I want to go back to, perhaps next summer when I’m on a break from other activities.
The Geometry of Love: Space, Time, Mystery, and Meaning in an Ordinary Church, Margaret Visser: I loved Visser’s Much Depends on Dinner when I read it (mumble mumble) years ago (and I need to re-read it). I was unaware of this book, though, until TJIC retweeted someone quoting from it (everything comes back to TJIC), so I went out and found a copy on Amazon…
…and I’m delighted I did. Visser’s basic idea is to take a “typical” church (St. Agnes Outside the Walls, in Rome) and show how the design and architecture of the church feeds into the liturgy of the church, how the liturgy of the church feeds into the design and architecture of the church, and how “all the pieces matter”. (Yeah, I know, I’m mixing the sacred with the profane. So shoot me.)
When I was reading this book, there was something on almost every page that was moving or profound or stunning or funny or that I just simply wanted to make a quote of the day over here. This is the kind of book that I want to buy more copies of and give out to people: that’s how strongly I feel about it.
Walking Through Holy Week, Karen May: Disclaimers: Karen May goes to one of the churches I go to, and I got this book for free because of something I was involved in at that church. All of that aside, I thought this was a wonderful guide to the liturgy and meaning of Holy Week. If you’ve ever wondered “What does this mean?” or “Why do we do this?”, this is the book for you. It’s also a book that I plan to re-read during holy week next year.
How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler, Ryan North: I backed the Kickstarter for this (it was also the last Kickstarter I backed before I deleted my account) so I got the signed package deal. But you can still get the book from Amazon, or probably from your favorite bookstore.
When I was young, we had a two-volume set around the house called something like “How Things Work” that explained the basics of how everyday objects (like car engines, generators, etc.) worked. North (also the guy behind Dinosaur Comics) seems to be trying to do a similar thing, but not just concentrating on mechanical objects. The book itself is contained in a sort of narrative: basically, it’s intended to be a guide for a stranded time traveler so that they can rebuild civilization from scratch (or near it) to the point where their time machine can be repaired. I found parts of that narrative to be slightly annoying, honestly. But that’s a minor part of the book, and it’s offset by North’s coverage of, basically, how stuff works: everything from brewing beer and distilling alcohol, to designing a Pelton turbine, to “inventing” music and logic.
One of the things I like about North’s book is his concept that there are five foundational “technologies” you need if you want to re-invent civilization: spoken language, written language, a “non-sucky” number system, the scientific method, and a calorie surplus. I haven’t seen things laid out in that way before, and it makes a lot of sense. Language lets you communicate ideas, the scientific method lets you test them, numbers let you do math to implement your ideas, and surplus calories let you sit around and have ideas, instead of trying to scratch survival out of the dirt.
There are also a off-the-wall ideas, like “instead of inventing clocks that work on ships, let’s invent radio!” that I’m not completely sure I agree with, but are interesting to consider. (In fairness, most of these, like the radio idea, are only being relayed by North.)
In a way, it reminds me of James Burke’s “Connections” (which I rewatched a few months ago), except instead of showing how invention proceeds in fits and starts, the idea is to bypass all the fits and starts and speed things right along. If you have a curious and reasonably mature child (there’s some factual material in here about human reproductive biology, so parental advisory), you could do a lot worse than to give them a copy of this book and a flash drive with all the episodes of “Connections” on it for Christmas.
If anybody else has any recommendations, please feel free to leave them in comments. Even if you’re plugging your own book: go ahead and do it, just don’t be obnoxious about it.
Obit watch: November 30, 2018.
Friday, November 30th, 2018Lady Trumpington (Jean Alys Campbell-Harris).
She was a member of the House of Lords from 1980 to 2017, and held various other governmental positions.
But she gets her obit linked here because she was one of the Bletchley Park codebreakers.
This month, she was among a group of Bletchley Park veterans awarded the LĂŠgion dâHonneur, Franceâs highest honor, for their contributions to the liberation of France.
âOh, I had such fun in Paris after the war,â she said after receiving the medal in a ceremony at her home. âWhile this award recognized my time at Bletchley, I still find it difficult to discuss my time there, as we were taught to never talk about it.â
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During her husbandâs tenure at the Leys School in Cambridge, Lady Trumpington kept up her society habits. âI smoked and drank and did everything naughty,â she said.
Once, when presenting awards to Leys athletes, she jumped fully clothed into the schoolâs swimming pool, followed by the students. âMy husband was furious,â she said.