Notices by Rob Ricci (ricci@discuss.systems)

There are a lot of cursed computers things but this is the most cursed computers thing

https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/h4N78m1PjXYsYfzkGV

I wonder if you can make symlinks on a Mac with 'lñ -s', and if so whether it adds that terrible yellow filter that American movies use to let you know you are In Mexico

I picked the wrong research area.

> The study provides evidence that unexpected events, such as the presence of a person dressed as Batman, can significantly increase prosocial behavior in real-world settings. Specifically, we found that when Batman was present, passengers were more likely to offer their seat to a seemingly pregnant woman compared to the control condition. Such “Batman effect” supports the hypothesis that disruptions to routine can heighten awareness of one’s surroundings and enhance sensitivity to the needs of others, ultimately promoting prosocial actions.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s44184-025-00171-5

Maybe the real treasure was the plums we ate along the way, so cold and so sweet

Problem: You have your printer listed twice for some reason, only one of them works, and you can never remember which one
Solution: Delete both and re-add the printer
Results: You have three copies of your printer listed

@jawnsy Where do you get a bunch of public-domain text with implied social connections? Court filings, it turns out.

It sometimes surprises me to learn that there are people who don't know that one of the first really big datasets used to train and evaluate computer language and social models was (and still is) a bunch of internal emails from Enron.

Yes, that Enron. Collected as part of the investigation into its collapse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_Corpus

Okay, you're skeptical of AI, but hear me out, what if we produce an entire generation of students who are *all* the ones who did nothing in the group project?

Can we please reclaim the ✨ emoji from the AI companies?

I think that many of us are starved for participation in small-scale systems in which we interact with other humans, and are treated like humans in return

Scientists have discovered that it is possible to just do something, without making a podcast about it

These are my favorite trees for fall colors

We have some more information on this! One of @regehr's grad students[*] did some excellent sleuthing and figured out that this was received by Martin Newell : https://archive.org/details/unix_news_july-30-1975/page/n9/mode/2up

If that name sounds familiar to you, it's probably because his teapot is ubiquitous in computer graphics: https://graphics.cs.utah.edu/teapot/

[*] https://cv.thalia.dev/

@heretical_i The person who is going to attempt to read it is hopeful: https://oldbytes.space/@bitsavers/115505135441862982

@jbowen @heretical_i @robpike @bitsavers

Fun fact, some of the students in our department saw Rob's post there, posted about it on a Slack I'm on - without realizing that it was us that found it until I replied to them. Two minutes later there were in my office to have a look at it.

News spreads fast in 2025.

@vaporeon_ Yeah I think that's the plan. No idea if it's still actually readable, though....

While cleaning a storage room, our staff found this tape containing #UNIX v4 from Bell Labs, circa 1973

Apparently no other complete copies are known to exist: https://gunkies.org/wiki/UNIX_Fourth_Edition

We have arranged to deliver it to the Computer History Museum

#retrocomputing

Error: password must be this tall 🫳 to ride

Password warning: What if our special characters... 👉 👈 😳

Error: that's the kind of password an idiot would put on his luggage!