link round-up

[cellio]

Some stuff has been accumulating in browser tabs. Some of it lost relevance because I waited too long (oops). Here's the rest.

This article explains the Intel problem that's going to slow your computer down soon. I don't know much about how kernels work and I understood it. I do have some computer-science background, though, so if somebody who doesn't wants to let me know if this is accessible or incoherent, please do. In terms of effects of the bug, you're going to get an OS update soon and then things will be slower because the real fix is to replace hardware, but you probably want to take the update anyway.

This infographic gives some current advice to avoid being spear-phished. It has one tip that was new to me but makes a lot of sense: if you have any doubt about an attachment but are going to open it anyway, drop it into Google Drive and open it in your browser. If it's malicious it'll attack Google's servers instead of your computer, and they have better defenses.

Sandra and Woo: what the public hears vs. what a software developer hears.

This account of one hospital's triage process for major incidents blew me away. I shared the link with someone I know in the medical profession and he said "oh, Sunrise -- they have their (stuff) together" -- they have a reputation, it appears. Link courtesy of metahacker and hakamadare.

I was one of the subject-matter experts interviewed for this study on Stack Overflow's documentation project. Horyun was an intern and was great to work with.

From siderea, the two worlds, or rubber-duck programming and modes of thinking.

The phatic and the anti-inductive doesn't summarize well, but I found it interesting. Also, I learned some new words. "Phatic" means talking for the sake of talking -- so small-talk, but not just that. Social lubricant fits in here too.

Rands on listening for managers.

From the same source as the "phatic" post, a story about zombies made me laugh a lot.

From Twitter:
Three logicians walk into a bar. The bartender says "Do you all want something to drink?"
The first logician says "I don't know."
The second logician says "I don't know."
The third logician says "Yes."

Comments

[richardf8]

Um, how does the third logician know that both of the others want drinks?

[ndrosen]

If the first logician did not want a drink, he would have known that whatever the desires of the other two, they did not all want something to drink, and answered "No.". Similarly with the second logician.

[conuly]

If the first two didn't want a drink, then they would have known that they did not ALL want drinks. So they would've said no.

The first one wants a drink, but she doesn't know if the others do. The second one wants a drink. He knows the first one would've said "no" if she, personally, didn't want a drink. He also says no. The third one wants a drink. You'll be surprised to hear this, but xe is also aware that One and Two would've said "no" if they, personally, didn't want a drink. So Xe deducts that all three of them want drinks.

[shewhomust]

I've encountered the idea of 'phatic utterances' as a way of classifying all those 'uh-huh' and 'yeees' noises that don't fit into noun-verb-adjective classes. But that article is an interesting extension of the idea.

[madfilkentist]

That's one of the better explanations of Meltdown I've seen. If I'm reading it correctly, it gives a piece which I hadn't understood before: that the kernel data is, in some circumstances, mapped to an application's address space (i.e., it's at some address, such as 002f3A44), but the application's process has neither read nor write permission for that address. Speculative execution can read that address anyway, which should only allow the result into the processor's cache. Then (I'm still waving hands on this part) the application can somehow sneak a peak at the cache.