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Links April 2023

Cory Doctorow has an insightful article Gig Work is the Opposite of Steampunk [1] about the horrors that companies like Amazon are forcing on their employees.

Valerie Aurora and Leigh Honeywell wrote an insightful article about the al Capone theory of sexual harassment [2]. Why people who sexually harass others usually perform other anti-social activity that is also easier to prosecute.

The IEEE has an interesting article about using ML for parts of the CPU design process, both the technical issues and the controversy about competing ideas which is probably caused by sexism [3].

“Love and taxes are forever my heart” is a line from an anime dating sim game that prepares US taxes [4]. Unfortunately it was removed from Steam. The existence of the game is a weird social commentary and removing the game because you can’t have an anime hottie do taxes is bizarre but also understandable given liability issues. There’s no mention in the review of whether male hotties are available for people who prefer dating guys. As an aside my accountant looks like he is allergic to exercise…

The Killdozer Book web site (which has an invalid SSL certificate so you have to click on “advanced” in Chrome to get to the content) has an insightful article debunking some of the stories about the Killdozer [5]. He wasn’t some sort of hero of freedom, he was just a jerk who reneged on a deal hoping to get more money, thought that laws shouldn’t apply to him, and killed himself because of it.

Apparently some big tech companies are knowingly hiring people to not work unlike the usual large corporate case of unknowingly hiring people to not work [6]. Silicon Valley is a good TV show, and it’s apparently realistic.

Ron Garrett wrote in insightful blog post about theoretical attacks on Bitcoin and how Bitcoin could be used [7]. The conclusion is not good for Bitcoin.

Compiler Explorer is a program that shows how various C++ compilers produce assembly code for various architectures, this site hosts the main active instance [8]. There are other instances, here is an instance that produces code for the Ruzzian Elbrus architecture [9]. The Elbrus Wikipedia page is interesting [10]. Apparently the Ruzzians don’t want this information to be spread, LOL.

The Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting article about pet parrots being taught to video call each other [11]. Apparently parrots are social animals and can develop psychological problems if kept alone, so the video calls can be good for them. Also the owners had to monitor the chats to ensure that they played nicely together, just like play-dates for kids!

Phoronix has an amusing article about the drama regarding the AMD Spectral Chicken bit in the Linux kernel source [12].

This page listing bad free software licenses is amusing [13].

The ACS has an interesting article about how Samsung fakes photos of the moon and presumably could fake other photos of notable objects that don’t change [14]. The way that they proved the forgery was interesting.

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