link dump #16

I follow a number of RSS feeds to make it easier to find interesting articles without having to regularly visit my entire list of interesting blogs, many of which aren't updated often.  As you can see, I find a dizzying array of topics interesting.

We live on former farmland which gives us some lovely views of the sky.  Here's a particularly nice sunset from a few days ago.

 

My second job in the computer industry was as a field engineer at a company which maintained systems built around the DEC PDP-11.  During the 7 weeks of training, I found that I loved the instruction set of the DEC PDP-11.  At other jobs, I discovered the Motorola 680x0 series of CPUs which had a very similar instruction set.  Both machines have orthogonal instruction sets.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/03/a-brief-tour-of-the-pdp-11-the-most-influential-minicomputer-of-all-time/

I was surprised to read that Apple AirPods may cause cardiovascular implantable devices such as pacemakers to malfunction.  Apparently AirPods create a magnetic field strong enough to affect pacemakers and other implantable devices.
https://www.engadget.com/2193554/airpods-pacemakers-magnet-interference/

Stronger magnets are also harmful to other types of electronic devices.  Since I've been working with computers for so long that I keep my devices away from magnets primarily out of habit.  Apparently there's good reason to do so with some types of devices.
https://hackaday.com/2026/05/21/magnets-are-bad-for-hardware-again/

I enjoy watching Rick and Morty because their humorous takes on science and science fiction make me laugh.  One of their episodes features a lightsaber which was dropped with the point down and which proceeded to burrow its way through the Earth.
https://laughingsquid.com/dropping-light-saber-vertically/

I've been finding the growing number of terms which end with "maxxing" such as "sleepmaxxing" annoying.  I'm glad to see others feel the same way.  I ignore the output of influencers but it becomes hard to do when it gets embraced by popular culture.
https://www.joanwestenberg.com/p/just-be-normal-about-st

I've been a fan of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings books since high school 50+ years ago.  That caused me to find the fact that a newly discovered species of cricket has been named after the Balrog amusing.
https://thedebrief.org/you-shall-not-pass-scientists-identify-new-balrog-cricket-species-in-greek-island-tunnel/

I'm not at all surprised that listening to music promotes mental health.   I find listening to music while I'm working helps me to achieve a deeper level of concentration particularly when audio distractions are present.  It only works that way if the music is something I'm quite familiar with.  I also watch videos of live musical performances regularly.
https://www.aesthetics.mpg.de/en/newsroom/news/news-article/article/is-there-a-link-between-listening-to-music-and-mental-health.html

In modern military conflicts, GPS jamming and spoofing is becoming increasingly common.  It's also being used as a form of economic warfare since it's so disruptive.
https://boingboing.net/2016/08/04/spoofing-gps-is-surprisingly-e.html

I've long felt that most technical interviews are a terrible way of choosing talented engineers.  Bad technical interviews are something I'm happy that I'll never face again since I'm so close to retirement. 
https://fagnerbrack.com/technical-interviews-reject-the-wrong-engineers-a8e78ca04b2e?gi=46f57f353ef1 

There's a new proposed theory for how the objects commonly known as black holes form.  I'm not sure I can get used to the term gravastar.
https://thedebrief.org/black-holes-arent-real-astronomers-propose-elusive-formation-mechanism-for-gravastar-alternative-that-is-easier-to-accept/

link dump #14

I follow a lot of RSS feeds to make it easier to find interesting articles without having to regularly visit my entire list of interesting blogs which aren't updated often.  As you can see, I find a dizzying array of topics interesting.  For example today while taking the dog outside over my lunch break, looking up treated me to this interesting halo around the sun.  Apparently it's caused by ice crystals interacting with the sun's rays.

Ronny Chieng, who you might know from The Daily Show or movies, gave one of the more amusing commencement speeches I've seen recently.  It was better received than the speech Eric Schmidt gave where he got booed for his comments about AI.  There have been a number of other recent commencement speakers telling graduates that they'll have a hard time finding employment thanks to so many CEO's obsession with AI.  I think that shows how out of touch these speakers, often members of upper management of various companies, are with their workers or potential employees.
https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/a/tracewilliamcowen/ronny-chieng-ai-speech-harvard

Apparently some of the Tesla staff members charged with reviewing video footage of their "Full Self Driving" feature in order to improve its performance don't trust Tesla's self driving technology.  I can't say I blame them.
https://www.reuters.com/investigations/why-teslas-ai-trainers-dont-trust-its-self-driving-tech-or-its-safety-stats-2026-05-28/

I love cool cars so I found this story about how hot rodders are using 3-D printing to help build parts for their cars interesting.  I've heard people are doing the same thing to restore old computers.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/old-school-hot-rodders-are-using-high-tech-3d-scanners-to-make-custom-parts

This proposed Lego kit for building a model of the CROCUS reactor looks very cool.  The instructions and parts are already available if you'd like to build it yourself.
https://beta.ideas.lego.com/product-ideas/e235fbd0-8ab8-4575-bd1c-37a25625f118

I found this article about the history of Digital Research's DR DOS interesting.  I used DR DOS in the late late 1980s when it was first released.  I even submitted a bug report to Digital Research when I found a program which didn't behave properly under DR DOS.  The bug was caused by a system call which behaved differently than the same system call on MS-DOS did when passed a string containing wildcards instead of an actual filename.  I even included a TSR (terminate and stay resident) program to work around the bug.
https://dfarq.homeip.net/dr-dos-revenge-of-cp-m/

This article about how people discovered someone they knew was super intelligent was interesting.  I used to work for a boss down at the Washington Navy Yard who would type long assembly language source files on the old CRT terminals we were stuck with on mainframes back in the late 1980s.  You could even ask him questions while he was typing and he would answer you with only a minor slowdown in his typing.  After typing these long programs, he would use the assemble and run option and his programs worked.  I was amazed that he could remember variable names he had used several pages of source code ago.  He was also amazingly effective with his explanations.  He's start out explaining at his level of understanding and if he saw you weren't understanding him, he'd adjust his explanation until you understood him and did it so you didn't feel insulted by the simpler explanation.
https://pleated-jeans.com/2026/05/22/people-share-the-moment-they-knew-they-were-in-the-presence-of-a-truly-massive-intellect/

Some of you may have build kits from Heathkit in the past.  I built two computer kits, an H-89 which ran CP/M and an H-151 which ran MS-DOS.  I also built one of their dot matrix printer kits.  Here's a video tour of their factory back in the day.
https://hackaday.com/2026/05/15/inside-the-heathkit-factory/

I found the news that plants react to anesthetics in a similar fashion to humans both fascinating and a little disturbing.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11586303/

If you've never seen the TV series Halt and Catch Fire, it's definitely worth watching.  It focuses on the early days of personal computing which sounds as if it would be boring but this show manages to keep it entertaining.  The title refers to the mythical HCF op code which causes the CPU to catch fire.
https://unstack.io/halt-and-catch-fire

Reading about Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon reminds me of how much I enjoyed watching it the couple times I've seen it.  I think I may be due to watch it again.
https://yusufaytas.com/why-crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon-is-a-masterpiece

If you've heard this story which Kurt Vonnegut told a few times, it illustrates why I like him so much as an author.  I think I would have enjoyed meeting him as well.  His books will both entertain you and lead you in directions you would have never expected when you started reading it.
https://chrisglass.com/2024/11/01/kurt-vonnegut-buys-an-envleope/ 

Before I became a father, I would have been skeptical about how much the experience changes someone.  When I held my daughter for the first time, it completely changed me.  Those changes were for the better although I would have doubted that a few years before.
https://www.sciencealert.com/fatherhood-dramatically-rewires-your-brain-scans-reveal

I've managed to clear out some of my backlog of interesting links with this link dump.  I hope you find something in here to inform or entertain you. 

More about me

I've been working in the computer industry since 1977.  For the first 6 years of my career, I worked as a field engineer which is basically a computer mechanic.  In those days I serviced Honeywell and GE mainframe computers followed by a short stint working on DEC PDP-11 minicomputers.  I only lasted 8 months maintaining DEC PDP-11 computers because they were so simple compared with mainframes that they weren't very challenging.  Most of the service calls involved fixing the peripheral equipment such as line printers, disk drives, magnetic tape drives, card readers/punches, paper tape reader/punches, and a variety of terminals.  The calls I enjoyed most were those which involved a computer which crashed or which failed to boot since those offered hours of debugging fun.

After having a DEC PDP-11 fall on me (it's a long story) in late 1982, I decided to make the switch from computer hardware to software since it seemed safer.  It wasn't a huge change since I had been filling my idle hours working night shifts figuring out how to write machine language programs via the maintenance panel switches (see image below).  After the long hours of figuring out the data patterns to write to memory via CPU maintenance panel switches, it was easy to use switch to using an assembler for generating the executable code for me.

Honeywell 6180 maintenance panel (from multicians.org)

 

Since then I've mostly worked on systems software in both assembly language and C.  I've occasionally worked on networking protocols.  There have also been a couple strange forays into other areas of the industry like 9.5 years working on the software which runs on cable TV set-top boxes.  The technology was interesting and I loved the company but I really missed systems programming.

In 1990 I discovered that I have a strong preference for Unix and Unix like operating systems when I took a job which gave me a Sun workstation to use. Unix made me so much more productive that I couldn't bear the thought of not having access to it.  Since then I've tried to only take jobs which satisfied that itch.  Whenever I've been stuck using Windows somewhere, I've usually installed Cygwin to give myself access to a Unix style development environment.  The exception is my current job which has given me a Windows laptop too locked down to be able to install Cygwin.  Fortunately, I have multiple Linux servers at my disposal as well.

Since 1994 I've been working mostly at startup companies.  Several have been bought by larger companies which inevitably leads to unpleasant changes in company culture which I haven't enjoyed.  For example, in 1996 I took a job at a startup which developed ISDN modems shortly after it had been bought by U.S. Robotics.  USR managed to preserve the small company feel of our office but that disappeared when USR was bought by 3Com a couple years after I joined.  It was a shame since I really enjoyed the great group of people I worked with there but 3Com's changes made it clear that they would eventually shut down that remote office which they did about a year after I left.

One of my favorite projects at USR was an ADSL modem which connected to a Windows PC via USB.  We were developing that device in late 1997.  Windows 95 only supported USB via a USB support package and it really didn't work that well.  Windows 98 and later Windows 2000 fixed many of Windows' problems with USB but we had to do full drivers before the USB interface was documented in the Windows DDK.  This was during the early days of USB so the USB communications device class didn't exist yet.  I spent many hours with a USB analyzer verifying that we had the protocol correct.  USB has remained one of my favorite technologies to work on ever since.

After leaving USR, I took a job at an optical networking startup called Ocular Networks.  That was another great group of people to work with until Tellabs bought the company.  I enjoyed the team I worked with so much that we started meeting for regular happy hours at the Old Dominion Brew Pub once a week after work.  After I left Tellabs, I didn't want to lose contact with my friends, so I started a mailing list to continue our regular happy hours.

Old Dominion Brew Pub was a wonderful place to meet.  They had great good, interesting beer, and a pleasant atmosphere.  Unfortunately, Old Dominion sold their brewery and brew pub around 2008 and the new owner moved their brewing operations up to Delaware. That left our happy hour group a number of places to meet for happy hours, none of which seemed to last more than a few months. We wandered from place to place until the Fairfax Dogfish Head Alehouse opened in 2009.  We continued meeting there until the pandemic made it hard to do in-person meetings.  After that, we changed our happy hours to virtual ones, meeting via video chats.  Unfortunately, between the slowdown caused by the pandemic and a landlord who kept raising the rent, DFHA ended up having to close their Fairfax location in 2023.