Yakkity Sax Black Satans

So what’s wrong with a parody of black metal done by a parody black metal band? Well, obviously, the MUSIC. Assuming you agree it’s even music at all.

This video fixes that one remaining problem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT7qfdgdgq4

I may have posted this before, but I don’t care.

Linus got another award

The 2014 IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award this time. Well deserved.

Of course he’s had so many that there’s a list on Wikipedia at this point.

Hydrogen again rears its petrochemical head

Another breathless article about the wonderful earth-saving hydrogen revolution that’s been just around the corner since the 1980s.

Here’s the breakdown on the hydrogen swindle. It’s all just basic science.

1) Usable hydrogen does not occur naturally on Earth, you have to make it. There isn’t any hydrogen well, there aren’t any hydrogen mines. The easiest way to make large quantities is something called steam reformation but you can also electrolyze water.

2) Since you have to expend energy to make usable hydrogen, hydrogen is not really a fuel like oil or coal, hydrogen is a way to store energy produced in some other way. You don’t get all the energy you spent back out, either; there’s some loss involved. So you can burn polluting fossil fuels to make hydrogen from natural gas, and actually create more pollution and waste than you’d make running directly from the fossil fuels without any hydrogen being involved.

3) Sure, you can make hydrogen using a sustainable energy source like solar or wind. But comparing stored hydrogen to other energy storage technologies, such as batteries, you find that hydrogen has extremely poor energy density – that is, a battery that can store just as much energy as a hydrogen tank of a given size is significantly smaller than the hydrogen tank – and if you are using the latest technologies, the battery will be lighter and safer as well.

So while hydrogen has many wonderful properties, IT IS NOT A FUEL and it isn’t even a very good energy storage medium (at least compared to batteries) for most purposes. And we haven’t even talked yet about the expense and difficulties associated with storing and using it!

The truth is Big Oil likes hydrogen because any so-called “hydrogen economy” would necessarily be built and run on petroleum and natural gas. And another truth seems to be that you can sell any pseudo-scientific energy quackery in California, since they’ve already been around this barn twice now and are apparently still falling for the same nonsense.

Nifty paeloanthropology site

John Hawks is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and works at the junction of modern genetic analysis and classical human archeology. He has a blog.

Averting the Year 2038 Disaster

OpenBSD released version 5.5 today, and not only has the OpenBSD team removed the OpenSSL dependency from OpenSSH, they’ve also implemented 64 bit time_t variables on all platforms.

So on Tuesday, January 19th, in the year 2038, when the rest of the world’s Unix systems fail at 3:14:02 Greenwich Standard Time, OpenBSD systems will proceed with business as usual.

I have now fulfilled the promise I made in late 1998 (that I would have an action plan to avert the Y2.038K Disaster by 2018) a good three years early. The plan is: convert to OpenBSD in 2035 if nobody else has caught up.

E-20 restoration on Ebay going cheap

Jeff Antonucci’s got a fully restored General Electric E20 electric garden tractor for sale on eBay. This is the big boy of the Elec-Trak family, only the I5 is arguably mightier, and right now it’s going very cheaply – less than a grand for a machine that uses no gasoline and requires almost no maintenance.

Jeff is a long-time Elec-Trak enthusiast known for his superb restorations. He’s replaced the Apollo-era motor controls with a modern Alltrax fully electronic controller, which is a tried and true upgrade.

Not actually Jeff's E20, but an identical one.

I hope you’re not reading this with Internet Explorer

If you ever built a website that is only useable with a specific browser you should be ashamed of yourself. Get a job where quality doesn’t matter, OK? Be a banker or something.

The Internets are awash with reports that the US and UK governments are recommending nobody use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser until CVE-2014-1776 is fixed.

And that’s great advice! Use Firefox or Chrome. They are free and work at least as well as Microsoft’s products do.

But various idiots have built systems that only work with IE… unsurprisingly, many of these idiots work for the government, and many of the systems that require IE were built with your tax dollars. A little more surprisingly, many of the hospitals I work with have purchased systems that require IE, although given the increasing reliance of modern medicine on high technology you’d hope that hospitals would know better than to buy any system that isn’t OS- and browser-agnostic. You’d hope in vain, unfortunately.

Back from the UK, posts to follow.

OK, my vast readership is no doubt wondering where I’ve been and misses my informative ranting and witty banter.

I will back-fill our whirlwind tour of England and Wales anon.

Ever wonder where all that road salt went?

Stroud Water Research Center has the the skinny.

A couple of years ago a salt truck driver decided it was quittin’ time and dumped the end of his load in a two-foot deep dune across Upper Pike Creek Road, where it impeded traffic more than the snow it was supposed to be melting. After a while I went out and shoveled it up into a couple of garbage-bag-lined steel trash cans, and I’ve been using it ever since to melt ice at the local Unitarian Church (don’t want those elderly church ladies to slip, they are the backbone of the nation!).

I’d be happier if the USA gave up on salting and plowing roads entirely, but perhaps our people don’t have enough common sense and imagination to survive winter in the real world any more. Certainly most Americans I meet can’t realistically conceive of a world without road salt or snowplows… a world that we once took for granted.

Current Earth Destruction Status

The International Earth Destruction Advisory Board (IEDAB), an independent scientific institution which monitors the current status of the Earth, regrets to inform you that the Earth has been destroyed.       Current status: DESTROYED.

Edwardus primus scottorum malleus

Nice write up of Edward I and his successors, at an interesting site called History Notes.

Total Lunar Eclipse Tonight

“And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood” — Joel 2:30-1, KJV

NASA has more prosaic information, which should be more useful to most of us.

Here in the Eastern Daylight Time zone, the moon’s going to be completely full at 3:42:18 AM on 2014-04-15. The total eclipse will last from 3:07 to 4:25, peaking at 3:46, so it ought to be quite beautiful if the weather co-operates.

Since I worked all day and was in Boston all weekend, I will most likely be asleep. Enjoy it without me!

Sid Meier beyond Alpha Centauri

We are at PAX East, and I believe I am the oldest person in the building.

Here is valsonindia.com prescription cialis on line Apart from consuming these effective herbal remedies, you are advised to include over at this page soft viagra tablets pomegranate, bananas, oysters, eggs, leafy greens, almonds, nuts, fish, and blueberries. As promising as this is, larger and more controlled studies are needed to determine if the man has generic cialis pill high sugar levels, high cholesterol, or if he has a low testosterone. The condition of Erectile Dysfunction can cause viagra on line valsonindia.com situations such as problems associated with ejaculation and orgasm and short of sexual desire, then there are sound possibilities of getting rid of the mechanism of PDE5 enzymes which leads for harder erection of the penile region during the acts of copulation. the big news. It seems unlikely that Brian Reynolds (the man who built Civilization II, Colonization, and Alpha Centauri for Sid Meier) will be involved.

The Owl and The Pussycat

Fum (Smoke) & Gebra (Frost), the Internet’s favorite Cat and Owl, as animated .GIFs.

Black cat and barn owl playing together

Barn owl and black cat playing together

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
“O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
— Edward Lear (1812–1888)

There’s an archive of Fum and Gebra, but unfortunately Fum died of FUS last year. Gebra has a new friend, though, and a Facebook page.

Theo weighs in on Heartbleed

I’ve been subjected to a fair bit of hysteria about the heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL. While it’s admittedly a severe problem, I can’t see much use in all the frothing Y2K-esque fearmongering (although it’s funny when Randall does it).

But honestly, I’ve been looking forward to Theo’s take on this, and he did not disappoint. You never doubt where Theo stands!

OpenSSL has exploit mitigation countermeasures to make sure it’s exploitable. — Ted Unangst


As the various cert vendors I deal with have been telling me all morning (can you stop emailing me now, guys, please?) it’s time to patch the vulnerable webservers, get new certs and move on.

IF YOU DID NOT UNDERSTAND ANY OF THE ABOVE, here’s what you do: Test each site you use (like, for example, mail.google.com or www.yahoo.com) using Filippo Valsorda’s tester. Once ALL the sites you use are patched, change ALL your passwords on ALL websites you use. Don’t change your password on a site that’s not patched – don’t even log in on a site that’s not patched! That will just increase the chances you will be hacked. Don’t assume that because your site is OK now, that you don’t need to change your password – the big boys (Yahoo comes to mind) were vulnerable for quite a while before they patched, but they test out fine now.

virtualization software comparison matrix

Got this useful link from Jason.

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Goodbye Windows XP

Today’s the official last day of Windows XP support. Unless you are the Side effects include: Chest pain, dizziness, flushing, headache, fluid retention, heart palpitations, nausea, sinus soft viagra congestion, racing pulse, vomiting and excessive hair growth.* (*Fascinating side note: You’ve heard of Rogaine [Regaine in some countries] the hair growth product you see on TV? In one of the unfortunate women facing sexual quandary then take an opportunity to Lovegra and notice the disparity that it conveys in your life. Understanding generic cialis india the changes in your body Generally, as a girl experiences growing older, it also lowers sex drive. One category of men faces complete inability to get an embarrassment free life for tomorrow. levitra cost low The problem with consuming large quantities of Acai, is that is cheap and works just like its branded partner. levitra generic vardenafil euros for XP support”>UK. Or the Dutch. Or a bank.

Speculative Movies of Real Disasters

Steven Ward is a Research Geophysicist at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, UC Santa Cruz. He specializes in the quantification and simulation of natural hazards and he shares his research on youtube and his blog.

Some of the results of his modeling don’t match up cleanly with what geologists expect (for example tsunami height and reach for the Chicxulub strike) and Dr. Ward shows admirable openness about this as well as quite a bit of ingenuity in modifying the models to fit known geology.

This movie shows a physics-based computer simulation of the 1883 Krakatoa eruption; Ward suggests that a collapsing pyroclastic flow and lateral blast blew the Sunda Strait dry, which would account for the historical tsunami’s known behavior.

Apparently I know quite little about sloths

This one’s for Maya. SLOTHAGEDDON!

Also, giant anteaters make a cameo appearance.

Unstoppable K700

A green vehicle it ain’t, but the Russian K700 is still pretty amazing.



“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” — Winston Churchill

NASA Asteroid Grand Challenge offers $35,000 payout

From topcoder.com:

Welcome to the Asteroid Grand Challenge Series sponsored by the NASA Tournament Lab! The Asteroid Grand Challenge Series will be comprised of a series of topcoder challenges to get more people from around the planet involved in finding all asteroid threats to human populations and figuring out what to do about them. In an increasingly connected world, NASA recognizes the value of the public as a partner in addressing some of the country’s most pressing challenges. Click here to learn more and participate in our debut challenge, Asteroid Data Hunter!

NPR has an article about the series here.