Notices by Ian Douglas Scott (ids1024@mathstodon.xyz)

@thomasfuchs Don't forget to surround the oil trebuchets in anti-drone trebuchets to defend againt attacks.

@whitequark People say they want the *resource usage* of an Apollo Guidance Computer. But when you also give them the *user interface* of the Apollo Guidance Computer, they aren't very happy.

If we call all Norse people from the Viking Age "Vikings", it's only fair to also call all British people from the Age of Sail "Pirates".

"William Shakespeare was inarguably the most famous Pirate playwright."

"Most Pirates at the time were at least nominally loyal to Pirate Queen Elizabeth."

"Under James, the noted witch-hunting enthusiast, the Pirate homeland had finally been united under a single king."

"Most Pirates practiced a religion called 'Anglicism' that differed from that of pre-piratical Britain. But in the far north some adhered to the cult of 'Presbyterianism' and yet others clung to the ancient Catholicism of their heathen forebearers."

"The Pirates once again captured Napoleon Bonaparte, and left him stranded on the remote island of Saint Helena."

"I am descended from Scottish Pirates. Which sounds a lot cooler than saying my ancestors were probably farmers from Fife and sheep thieves from the borders."

@maxleibman
Real name = name you go by in daily life
Legal name = name that an arcane bureaucracy considers yours
True name = name that allows another sorcerer to wield power over you (cf. Le Guin 1968)

@graydon I don't think it's really possible to define if precautions are "overzealous" or "overdoing it" without considering what the specific precautions are, and things like "masking" are pretty broad. (Wearing a mask in a crowded convention center? Bus? Grocery store? Outdoors in a remote part of a forest?)

@mattl AROS is a fun one I'd like to see improved more and ported to more things. But not as anything that should be considered "practical" or "useful".

@mothcompute A device should come with a paper manual, with a section indicating the DIP switch positions for "run only legitimate software" , "run legitimate software and malware", and "run only malware" modes.

@dalias @ariadne @cb Yeah, it shouldn't really be that hard to create a server than converts Wayland to an X11 backend. Easier than doing the reverse.

@lanodan Solaris 10 may not be the *best* upgrade path for Windows 10 users, but at least it's an option.

A big open secret in software development is that we like to pretend "code review" is more effective than it really is.

"It's not a problem that the AI produces weird buggy code, it will be caught by reviewers!"

"Open source software is secure, because someone would notice if there was a vulnerability or backdoor in the source code."

"I reviewed this mildly complicated PR to this C code, so I know it doesn't add undefined behavior."