When “what CAN happen” is as important as “what SHOULD happen”

UNIX is a general-purpose, multi-user, interactive operating system for the Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11/40 and 11/45 computers. It offers a number of features seldom found even in larger operating systems, including: (1) a hierarchical file system incorporating demountable volumes; (2) compatible file, device, and inter-process I/O; (3) the ability to initiate asynchronous processes; (4) system command language selectable on a per-user basis; and (5) over 100 subsystems including a dozen languages. This paper discusses the nature and implementation of the file system and of the user command interface.

This is such a beautiful piece of computer science exposition. Man, it’s no wonder everyone wanted to copy these two guys.

see: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~brewer/cs262/unix.pdf see: https://mit.edu/6.1800/www/readings/02-unix.shtml

Also why universal healthcare matters. Gotta maintain all parts of a system!

via: https://mit.edu/6.1800/www/readings/01-wrong.shtml

It’s not that I’m afraid of rejection — it’s that I assume it. That’s what I was really mad about as a kid. Why do I have to be the screw-up? Why do I have to be all of these things that I wouldn’t want, either? Emotionally fragile, socially shut-in, in equal parts sexually perverse and timid — and worst of all, self-loathing. That self-loathing has fed avoidance, which has led to a failure to express my needs and desires, which has led to dysfunction in my relationships, which resets the cycle.

On the terrible system dynamics of dating and sensitive young man syndrome. Beautiful cycle depicted.

This summer at the Topos Institute, under the supervision of Dr. Sophie Libkind, I studied the composition of attractors. The project itself started earlier with my advisor, Dr. William Kalies, who asked me the following question: how do attractor lattices behave when we combine dynamical systems? In this post, I explain how attractor lattices in decoupled product systems can be characterized algebraically in terms of the lattices of their component systems.

Since our last blog post about CatColab, we’ve had two releases, meaning we’re now at v0.4: Robin. This brings a few major new features, including compositional notebooks and novel analyses for Petri nets.

In truth, much of this “are we, aren’t we in a bubble” talk isn’t actually useful if you are operating in our current environment. What is more important to ask is “what should I do?” and “what are some of the things to watch out for?” and “how do I make sense of our current moment?”

What starts out as a response to a comment on the importance of reading business biography transforms into an excellent commentary on why tech is where it currently is, and how the reader can take the time to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors.

If we want to build robust systems in which humans play a part, we cannot write off human decisions as random. We must investigate what made the human act that way because that’s the only way we can improve system robustness. I’m not making a philosophical statement by saying human behaviour isn’t random – it’s a practical standpoint for the purpose of safety engineering. Human decision-making never fails. Instead, human error is a symptom of a system that needs to be redesigned.

Firstly, you need to hold in your head the knowledge that you will probably–no, almost certainly–fail. You will need to hold that uncomfortableness in your heart and carry it with you always. Never to share, but always to hold. Ground yourself in the impossibilities of what you’ll attempt, lest your hubris lead you to ruin.

Secondly, you will need to hold firm and irrationally deep conviction. Unshakable. Unshatterable. Conviction that you will succeed. This is the conviction that you have to share, that you have to use to lead people along with you, that you have to embody fully and without reservation.

Like, ohmigosh, you really gotta work hard to meet people where they are and get them on your side.

Anyone who’s the target of punishment will see what is happening. They don’t want to feel anxious all the time, and they especially don’t want to feel anxious about doing what to them are normal, everyday things. If you try to change their behavior in this way, they will find you annoying and do their best to avoid you, so you can’t create so much conflict inside them. Imagine how much less effective this strategy is, compared to finding a method of convincing that people don’t avoid, or that they might even actively seek out.

Excellent work here! Goblins is ready for local-first. Kinda makes me wonder if the work of the Beehive team at Ink and Switch is a bit redundant.

Recent discussion about the perils of doors in gamedev reminded me of a bug caused by a door in a game you may have heard of called “Half Life 2”. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.

It’s always floating point precision.

This talk is an extension of my earlier Data Replication Design Spectrum blog post. The blog post was the analysis of the various replication algorithms, which concludes with showing that Raft has no particular advantage along any easy analyze/theoretical dimension. This builds on that argument to try and persuade you out of using Raft and to supply suggestions on how to work around the downsides of quorum-based or reconfiguration-based replication which makes people shy away from them.

The purpose of a system is what it does (POSIWID) is a heuristic in systems thinking coined by the British management consultant Stafford Beer, who stated that there is “no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do”.

via: https://www.are.na/block/36987735