Comments | hirez: Towards a theory of the pixie event horizon.

hirez

Towards a theory of the pixie event horizon.

Jan 30, 2016 18:26

Elsenet (as said once in 1995 on The Well, by someone who probably quite liked Bruce Sterling books and had a pile of Mondo 2000 mags) someone was pondering-out-loud (Twitter. It's a poorly-monitised poorly-realised simulation of what having angry voices inside your head all the time might be like. Christ what a bunch of bastards. Jabber jabber oi ( Read more... )

spod comedy, you couldn't make it up, the ant can see legs

Comments 8

nojay January 30 2016, 18:45:52 UTC

I've found that repairing stuff usually requires a blood sacrifice to propitiate the Gods of Tech, and I don't just mean barking your knuckles when a wrench slips on a rusted bolthead. Even computers have sharp edges -- I spent a day decommissioning servers in a data centre once and it was only when my workmate pointed out the trail of blood I was leaving behind me that I realised one of the Dread Beasts had bitten my fingers on its way to the Great RoHS Graveyard in the Sky. The slice was so clean it didn't hurt at all.

hirez January 30 2016, 19:41:11 UTC

Ha. Yes. The Dell box that was trying a 4x10Gb card in ended up with blood on the heatsink...

... There's a name for a quasi-Dylan tech/folk LP.

'quasi-Dylan tech/folk' is a long name for 'filk', isn't it?

Buggeration.

quercus January 30 2016, 18:58:16 UTC

Cheer up and watch someone making pixies out of tech,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVrM5gqICRw

hirez January 30 2016, 19:41:52 UTC

That'll clear plenty of space at a con bar...

steer January 30 2016, 18:58:45 UTC

Reminds me of "friction demons"

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YrbanNOQ-bcC&lpg=PA67&ots=vgotm3a33k&dq=random%20walks%20in%20science%20friction%20demons&pg=PA67#v=onepage&q&f=false

There are pixies in BGP. I know exactly one person who really truly understands BGP -- he's brilliant and great fun but he uses semi-ring theory which most mortals find confusing -- so while he can explain BGP most cannot understand.

andrewducker January 31 2016, 12:55:00 UTC

Clarke's Third Law?

hirez January 31 2016, 13:05:17 UTC

Pretty much. 'Any sufficiently poorly understood technology may as well be magic'.

I think there's some stuff in there about bad models, conflation of symptoms and cargo culting, too.

I have many examples.

oryctolagus February 1 2016, 18:50:45 UTC

This is because once you disturb a working system, it is never right again.

This is true of bodies too, as anyone who has ever had surgery will know.