When I first started studying computer science setting up a programming project was easy, write source code files and a Makefile and that was it. IRC was the only IM system and email was the only other communications system that was used much. Writing Makefiles is difficult but products like the Borland Turbo series of […]
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People in positions of power can get away with mistreating other people. For any organisation to operate effectively there have to be mechanisms to address bad behaviour, both to help the organisation to achieve it’s goals and to protect people who work for it. When an organisation operates in the public interest there is a […] There is an article The Inappropriately Excluded by the Polymath Archives [1] that gets cited a lot. Mainly by Mensa types who think that their lack of success is due to being too smart. The Main Claim is Wrong The main claim is: The probability of entering and remaining in an intellectually elite profession such […] I’m currently reading the second book of the TriSolar Sci-Fi series by Cixin Liu, I’ve only just started it so this post can’t have spoilers for it and I will also only have minimal spoilers for the first book (nothing more than you will get from pop culture references to it). In the second book […] The Tom Clancy book Debt of Honor published in August 1994 first introduced the concept of a heavy passenger aircraft being used as a weapon by terrorists against a well defended building. In April 1994 there was an attempt to hijack and deliberately crash FedEx flight 705. It’s possible for a book to be changed […] I think most people and everyone who reads my blog is familiar with the phone support scams that are common nowadays. There’s the “we are Microsoft support and have found a problem with your PC”, the “we are from your ISP and want to warn you that your Internet access will be cut off”, and […] The Bulwark has an interesting article on why they can’t “Reopen America” [1]. I wonder how many changes will be long term. According to the Wikipedia List of Epidemics [2] Covid-19 so far hasn’t had a high death toll when compared to other pandemics of the last 100 years. People’s reactions to this vary from […] A very famous blog post is Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is by John Scalzi [1]. In that post he clearly describes that life isn’t great for straight white men, but that there are many more opportunities for them. Causes of Death When this post is mentioned there are often objections, one […] Today I was at an office party and the conversation turned to race, specifically the incidence of unarmed Afro-American men and boys who are shot by police. Apparently the idea that white people (even in other countries) might treat non-white people badly offends some people, so we had a man try to explain that Afro-Americans […] Most zombie movies feature shuffling hordes which prefer to eat brains but also generally eat any human flesh available. Because in most movies (pretty much everything but the 28 Days Later series [1]) zombies move slowly they rely on flocking to be dangerous. Generally the main way of killing zombies is severe head injury, so […] |
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