Tag Archives: Tech

COVID-19: How We Got Here

Posted on 2021-06-09 by jcs

In a nice coda to yesterday’s post on origin of COVID-19, Erik Hoel has an excellent Substack essay on the lab leak hypothesis that isn’t a just rehash of the known evidence but instead considers the larger question of how … Continue reading →

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Another Look At COVID-19’s Origin

Posted on 2021-06-08 by jcs

Over at Vanity Fair, Katherine Eban has a very well researched article on the lab leak hypothesis for the origin of COVID-19. She interviewed more than 40 people and reviewed hundreds of pages of government internal memos, meeting minutes, emails, … Continue reading →

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The Apple Ecosystem

Posted on 2021-05-31 by jcs

Anyone who’s been around Irreal for any length of time knows that I’m an Apple user. I like the build quality of their hardware and macOS/iOS are generally good enough. But the thing that really makes it all work for … Continue reading →

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Markup Languages Compared

Posted on 2021-05-30 by jcs

There are several popular light weight markup languages for producing printed or displayed typeset output. I use “light weight” to distinguish them from heavy duty markup languages such as TeX, LaTeX, or Troff. One thing they all have in common … Continue reading →

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Corruption in Academic Computer Science

Posted on 2021-05-29 by jcs

According to a shocking Viewpoint article in the Communications of the ACM, there’s corruption in the computer science community. I know, I know: film at eleven. But this corruption involves cheating by academic computer scientists. Cheating is never okay, of … Continue reading →

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Washington State Sues a Patent Troll

Posted on 2021-05-27 by jcs

As you all know, Irreal doesn’t think very highly of patent trolls. Of course, nobody (except patent trolls) thinks very highly of them. Some organisms that might be characterized as parasitical actually enjoy a symbiotic relationship with their hosts. Patent … Continue reading →

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Google Channels Lucy

Posted on 2021-05-26 by jcs

Almost every fall during its 50 year lifetime, the Peanuts comic strip would run a variation of the Lucy and Charlie Brown football gag. The basis of the gag is that every year Lucy would talk Charlie Brown into trying … Continue reading →

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Sudo

Posted on 2021-05-24 by jcs

Anyone who works in a Unix or Linux environment is familiar with the sudo command. Sudo allows the user to execute a command as root. That’s sometimes necessary even for the most basic users who aren’t operating on a locked … Continue reading →

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Mechanical Keyboards

Posted on 2021-05-23 by jcs

I’m a huge fan of mechanical keyboards. Back in the old days that meant the IBM Model M and its latter day incarnation from Unicomp. I’ve had both—although I foolishly left my Model M behind at my last job—and there’s … Continue reading →

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Writing A Programming Book

Posted on 2021-05-15 by jcs

Juan Manuel Tirado is a programmer who decided to write a book on Go. I’m not a Go programmer so I can’t comment intelligently on the book other than to bring it to your attention. What I can comment on … Continue reading →

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