jwz

DNA Lounge update

2012-06-01T03:36:50Z

DNA Lounge update, wherein love for the city goes unrequited.

Mirrored from jwz.org.

BLIMP!

2012-06-01T00:31:43Z

Mirrored from jwz.org.

"Secure Boot" and free software

2012-05-31T08:37:44Z

Interesting, long post on how the hell Linux vendors make their product work now that MICROS~1 has enabled BIOS DRM.

(The tl;dr version: running a custom kernel on modern hardware just became rocket surgery.)

Fedora 18 will be released at around the same time as Windows 8, and as previously discussed all Windows 8 hardware will be shipping with secure boot enabled by default.
Most hardware you'll be able to buy towards the end of the year will be Windows 8 certified. That means that it'll be carrying a set of secure boot keys, and if it comes with Windows 8 pre-installed then secure boot will be enabled by default. This set of keys isn't absolutely fixed and will probably vary between manufacturers, but anything with a Windows logo will carry the Microsoft key. [...]
Secure boot is built on the idea that all code that can touch the hardware directly is trusted, and any untrusted code must go through the trusted code. This can be circumvented if users can execute arbitrary code in the kernel. So, we'll be moving to requiring signed kernel modules and locking down certain aspects of kernel functionality. The most obvious example is that it won't be possible to access PCI regions directly from userspace, which means all graphics cards will need kernel drivers. Userspace modesetting will be a thing of the past. Signed modules are obviously troubling from a user perspective. We'll be signing all the drivers that we ship, but what about out of tree drivers? We don't have a good answer for that yet. [...]
If I take a signed Linux bootloader and then use it to boot something that looks like an unsigned Linux kernel, I've instead potentially just booted a piece of malware. And if that malware can attack Windows then the signed Linux bootloader is no longer just a signed Linux bootloader, it's a signed Windows malware launcher and that's the kind of thing that results in that bootloader being added to the list of blacklisted binaries and suddenly your signed Linux bootloader isn't even a signed Linux bootloader. So kernels need to be signed.

Mirrored from jwz.org.

Nico Vega

2012-05-31T08:14:56Z

Awesome show. How does such a huge voice come out of such a tiny pregnant lady?

I got a kick out of the "we're going to play an instrumental now because she has to pee" interlude.

People who liked Concrete Blonde, Le Butcherettes and PJ Harvey also enjoyed Nico Vega.

Mirrored from jwz.org.

The Form Has Been Chosen.

2012-05-31T03:54:44Z

Mirrored from jwz.org.

DNA Lounge update

2012-05-31T02:44:06Z

DNA Lounge update, wherein Yelp oh-so-politely tells us to get fucked.

Mirrored from jwz.org.

King City

2012-05-30T09:13:49Z

You should read King City by Brandon Graham. It's the best comic-book-type thing I've read in quite some time. The trade is a huge phonebook-sized thing and it's awesome.

It's hard to describe. Well, it's not hard to describe the plot, but it would sound really goofy, which it is, but it's amazing. This dude has a cat who can turn into lock picks or a grappling hook and he has to defeat a tentacle monster. And it's full of puns. But it's not really about that. You see what happens when I try to describe it? That's like saying Scott Pilgrim was about a slacker who punches people.

So you should just take my word for it and read it.

Mirrored from jwz.org.

Pop. 1280

2012-05-27T07:48:31Z

What are all these goths doing here? I thought I came to a post-punk show.

Mirrored from jwz.org.

Magazines from the future

2012-05-27T05:34:21Z

I think I used to subscribe to a couple of these.

Future Noir:

Turning down the block and ducking into a futuristic newsstand revealed the most humorous touches of layering, for it was here that this author immediately noticed that a number of faux twenty-first-century magazines had been stuffed into racks mounted on the newsstand's walls, and that many of them sported decidedly tongue-in-cheek covers.
These publications had been designed by BR art department member Tom Southwell. Periodicals of note include Krotch (going for $29 a copy!), Zord (at $30), Moni, Bash, Creative Evolution, and Droid. Horn, the "skin mag" of the future, had a cover which offered articles such as "The Cosmic Orgasm" and "Hot Lust in Space." Kill (whose logo was "All the News That's Fit to Kill") sported cover stories like "Multiple Murders - Reader's Own Photos."

Mirrored from jwz.org.

DNA Lounge update

2012-05-26T03:25:58Z

DNA Lounge update, wherein I think out loud about webcast upgrades.

Mirrored from jwz.org.

Lego Strandbeest!

2012-05-25T22:27:17Z

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Mirrored from jwz.org.

Turtles, all the way down. Or gliders. Or glider turtles.

2012-05-25T19:15:31Z

Conway's Game of Life, emulated in Conway's Game of Life:

The life simulator used is Golly which has a built-in script to generate these metapixel grids (select a pattern, and choose "metafier.py" from the scripts list).

Outer Totalistic Cellular Automata Meta-Pixel:

The metacell uses a period 184 tractor beam, which acts as a clock. It pulls a block downwards by eight cells per impact, releasing a glider in the process. Some of the gliders are utilised; the rest are eaten. When the block reaches the base, it is restored at the top to begin the cycle again. Period 46 and 184 technologies (which are compatible) are used extensively throughout the configuration.
The rule is encoded in two columns, each of nine eaters, where one column corresponds to the 'Birth' rule and the other corresponds to 'Survival'. The nine eaters correspond to the nine different quantities of on cells (0 through 8). The presence or absence of the eater indicates whether the cell should be on in the next meta-generation. The state of the eater is read by the collision of two antiparallel LWSSes, which radiates two antiparallel gliders (not unlike an electron-positron reaction in a PET scanner). These gliders then collide into beehives, which are restored by a passing LWSS in Brice's elegant honeybit reaction. If the eater is present, the beehive would remain in its original state, thereby allowing the LWSS to pass unaffected; if the eater is absent, the beehive would be restored, consuming the LWSS in the process. Equivalently, the state of the eater is mapped onto the state of the LWSS.

Previously, previously, previously.

Mirrored from jwz.org.

Slinky on a Treadmill

2012-05-24T00:09:22Z

Such pathos!

Mirrored from jwz.org.

Dum Dum Girls

2012-05-23T06:10:54Z

(I'd say they're 3/5th Split-era Lush, 1/5th Belly, and 1/5th that inexplicable country twang you get from Raveonettes and White Stripes.)

Mirrored from jwz.org.

Tamaryn

2012-05-23T04:46:15Z

(Hi Grimace!)

Mirrored from jwz.org.

Young Prisms

2012-05-23T03:49:53Z

(These shoes aren't gonna gaze themselves!)

Mirrored from jwz.org.

It's alive

2012-05-23T02:31:50Z

Today I implemented about two-thirds of the OpenGL 1.3 API in terms of the OpenGLES 1.0 API.

Gibbering commences now.

Though it's actually been a lot easier than that time when I implemented four-fifths of Xlib in terms of Cocoa.

Here's a gem: look upon my works and despair.

#define WRAP(NAME,SIG) \
void jwzgles_##NAME (ARGS_##SIG)                              \
{                                                             \
  if (state->compiling) {                                     \
    void_int vv[4];                                           \
    FILL_##SIG                                                \
    list_push (STRINGIFY(NAME), (list_fn_cb) &jwzgles_##NAME, \
               PROTO_##SIG, vv);                              \
  } else {                                                    \
    NAME (VARS_##SIG);                                        \
  }                                                           \
}

WRAP (glTranslatef, FFF)

Previously.

Mirrored from jwz.org.

Legalizing domestic misinformation

2012-05-23T01:02:06Z

But would we really be able to tell?

An amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill.
The tweak to the bill would essentially neutralize two previous acts -- the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987 -- that had been passed to protect U.S. audiences from our own government's misinformation campaigns.
In a little noticed press release earlier in the week -- buried beneath the other high-profile issues in the $642 billion defense bill, including indefinite detention and a prohibition on gay marriage at military installations -- Thornberry warned that in the Internet age, the current law "ties the hands of America's diplomatic officials, military, and others by inhibiting our ability to effectively communicate in a credible way."
The new law would give sweeping powers to the government to push television, radio, newspaper, and social media onto the U.S. public. "It removes the protection for Americans," says a Pentagon official who is concerned about the law. "It removes oversight from the people who want to put out this information. There are no checks and balances. No one knows if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false."

Um, guys, I think "entirely false" is the whole idea here...

Mirrored from jwz.org.

An Introduction to Objectivist-C

2012-05-23T00:54:23Z

An Introduction to Objectivist-C

In Objectivist-C, an object -- every object -- is an end in itself, not a means to the ends of others. It must live for its own sake, neither sacrificing itself to others nor sacrificing others to itself.
In Objectivist-C, software engineers have eliminated the need for object-oriented principles like Dependency Inversion, Acyclic Dependencies, and Stable Dependencies. Instead, they strictly adhere to one simple principle: No Dependencies.
In Objectivist-C, there are only two numerical data types: rational and real.
In Objectivist-C, there are not only properties, but also property rights. Consequently, all properties are @private; there is no @public property.
In Objectivist-C, each program is free to acquire as many resources as it can, without interference from the operating system.
In Objectivist-C, there are no exceptions.

Mirrored from jwz.org.

Today in Haunted Vagina news:

2012-05-23T00:29:36Z

Carlton Mellick III:

When a living corpse climbs out of her during an awkward night of sex, Stacy learns that her vagina is actually a doorway to another world. She persuades Steve to climb inside of her to explore this strange new place. But once inside, Steve finds it difficult to return... especially once he meets an oddly attractive woman named Fig, who lives within the lonely haunted world between Stacy's legs.

Not to be confused the previous haunted vagina. Since this guy appears to write 7+ books a year, I'm guessing this is what happens when the underbelly of Usenet meets self-publishing.

You should probably just read Kathy Koja's The Cypher instead.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.

Mirrored from jwz.org.

301 Moved Permanently

2012-05-20T00:03:31Z