The Saddest Moment – James Mickens (2013) [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

The Saddest Moment – James Mickens (2013) [pdf]

scholar.harvard.edu

51 pointsrrampage17 comments

This is how I feel as I research CPU vulnerability mitigations. The earth beneath us is a thin hollow shell and to keep from falling through it into the abyss we must perform abominable rites.

Every year the security researchers find new evidence that literally all computers are fundamentally and irreparably broken, every year the software engineers add mitigations to the kernel, we hope that the vulns are mitigated but we sleep a little worse at night.

Who could know, in November 2014, that this phrase uttered ironically, would in 2022 (and 2023) become true, after Microsoft bought Github:

“You can’t just place a LISP book on top of an x86 chip and hope that the hardware learns about lambda calculus by osmosis.”

Saddest day indeed, maybe for more than just system programmers.

"There will be rich debates about the socioeconomic implications of Helvetica Light, and at some point, you will have to decide whether serifs are daring statements of modernity, or tools of hegemonic oppression that implicitly support feudalism and illiteracy."

The State Department has banned the use of Times New Roman and mandated Calibri in its stead, because serifed fonts are oppressive to people with reading or vision problems.

Mickens is a Goddamned prophet.

A large language model running on x86 absolutely can. Well, maybe not by osmosis, but OCR is very much a thing.

This is fantastic writing, and James should stop working for Microsoft and move to Hollywood like Barton Fink. Ok, maybe not the best example in the world..

You may be surprised to learn that James’ brilliant humor and willingness to speak truth to power didn’t work out so well for him at Microsoft.

He’s at Harvard now, which I think is a step up from Hollywood.

I wasn't entirely surprised when I read your response, although I didn't know that. I sort-of suspected somebody that entertainingly frank would have to confront some PR positioning issues.

Harvard has other fish to fry. They'll get to James when they're on top of the other stuff I guess. They let him publish https://mickens.seas.harvard.edu/wisdom-james-mickens which is a good sign!

You think his writing is a good time, you should have seen him when a VP would say, “Are there any questions from the audience?”

He’d saunter up to the microphone, and you could see the VP’s face droop…

Good times, my man. Good times.

Time for the VP to earn his pay, eh?

James left MSR for Harvard a few years ago (maybe almost a decade now?).

Superb :D I wish more of the insanity of this world could have the spotlight of James Mickens intense, humorous clarity shone upon it.

“Listen, regardless of which Byzantine fault tolerance protocol you pick, Twitter will still have fewer than two nines of availability.“

Ah fantastic. This is a great read to distract me from the Bitcoin fanatics I work with who insist “but they’ve solved the Byzantine generals problem! This is amazing technology and just wait until we find a practical application!”

More James Mickens:

https://youtu.be/ajGX7odA87k

https://youtu.be/D5xh0ZIEUOE

Anyone have a better version for mobile?

Second page has two columns and each one fits perfectly on a phone screen without the text being too small/large

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