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New article out! Super in-depth, very furious manifesto. I get batted around. Join in the fun! Looks like it was a lot of work.
https://newdesigncongress.org/en/pub/who-will-remember-us-when-the-servers-go-dark/
RE: https://mas.to/@gabrielesvelto/116171755938331430
It is amazing that computers work at all.
One of my favorite research papers along these lines is "When the CRC and TCP checksum disagree": https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/347059.347561
By looking at cases where the Ethernet CRC indicated no error, but the TCP checksum was invalid, the authors found a whole host of bugs in networking hardware, such as faulty DMA engines and buggy router memory.
Hardware data corruption is everywhere!
(There are no doubt newer studies, I'm just personally acquainted with one of the authors.)
Reluctantly crouched at the command line
Desperately typing to keep it online
A green light flashes, the systems come up
Churning and burning for the latest markup
Deftly inserting some Python or C
While guzzling down a coffee or three
Reckless and wild, he pours through the code
His prowess is potent, an effortless flow
As he speeds through the lines, the servers go down
As 404 errors are suddenly found
The department is empty except for one man
Still loading and coding as fast as he can
The sun has gone down and the moon has come up
His coffee gone cold long ago in his cup
But he's typing and striving, debugging the terms
And thinking of someone for whom he still burns
He's going the distance
He's coding in C
He's all alone (all alone)
All alone in his time of need
Because he's typing and writing and viewing the source
Programming and scanning and switching the ports
He's going the distance.
No trophy, no flowers, no flashbulbs, no wine
He's haunted by variables he cannot define
Undeclared functions of doubt and remorse
Compile him, defile him with processing force
In his mind, he's still twelve, just hacking his grade
And he's hoping in time that those memories will fade
'Cause he's racing and pacing and switching the ports
He's typing and writing and viewing the source
The sun has gone down and the moon has come up
And his coffee's gone cold long ago in his cup
But he's typing and striving, debugging the terms
And thinking of someone for whom he still burns
He's going the distance
He's coding in C
He's all alone (all alone)
All alone in his time of need
Cause he's racing and pacing the processing ports
He's typing and writing and viewing the source
Cause he's racing and pacing and switching the ports
He's loading and coding and viewing the source
He's going the distance
He's coding in C
He's going the distance...
Here's a tale of how nature triumphs in the end.
Steel mills dumped molten slag in parts of Chicago and nearby areas. The slag hardened in layers up to 5 meters deep. These places became barren wastelands. Other industries dumped hot ash and cinders there.
But eventually the steel mills closed.
The deep layers of hard, toxic material were not friendly to plants. Cottonwoods are usually 30 meters tall or more. In the slag fields, stunted cottonwoods grow to just 2 meters.
But rare species that could handle these conditions began to thrive. The lakeside daisy, a federally threatened species lost to Illinois for decades, turned out to grow taller on slag than on topsoil! The capitate spike-rush, last recorded in Illinois in 1894 and considered locally extinct, was rediscovered growing on slag.
And more! Native prairie grasses like little bluestem. Native milkweeds. Even tiny white orchids called sphinx ladies' tresses.
A team of women ecologists began studying these unusual landscapes. They call themselves the Slag Queens.
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