A knight's tale | Hacker News Reader

A knight's tale

blogs.bl.uk

78 pointspepys36 comments

The site is full of gold, like https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2024/03/annual-manu...

> Splendor Solis, an alchemical treatise made in Germany in the 1580s: 3.067 kg, or a flamingo standing on one leg

> All measurements have been scrutinised by the Guinness Book of Records, who have kindly asked us never to bother them again.

This is what I miss from the modern internet.

Did the title of this article remind anyone of that old movie about the life of a knight with the same title? A fun little satirical comedy. I found out the lead actor died at 28.

Im still salty about it. He had such a great career ahead of him. Welp, now I know what I’m doing tonight.

Not sure if you're sarcastic or not, but it was Heath Ledger, and his death was all over the news when he died right after filming of his Joker role, even here in Europe.

I love that movie, my favorite. So fun how it starts with We Will Rock you to convey that this is not a historic accurate movie, but somewhat also accurately portrays how the event itself was like a rock concert at the time.

I was 8 or 9 so I wasn’t really paying much attention to news.

That's fair, not sure if I had seen any of his movies when I was that age either. Maybe 10 Things I Hate About You. It was a big deal at the time and his death still makes me more sad than any other pop figure that's died in my lifetime, I think. I'm not sure if the death of River Phoenix felt the same way to his fans, but Heath Ledger made such a big impact for the short time he was with us... it's so sad that he didn't get more time to grow because he was one of the best.

Especially terrifying is that the source of his work and the source of his death may be the same.

Now I'm having flashbacks to Heat Legend memes. Time has flown.

I was sat at home drinking brain fluid when fred ring

"Old movie".... Now I feel old....

Sorry

I'll live. I'm only halfway to 98...

You'll live, for now. Personally I've never made it past the present

What is it about the age 28 anyway.

Supplying twelve fish pasties / moving fancy lances. Interesting that these are logistical type services. I wonder if logistics of sorts was a bigger concern then than we have now.

Logistics is one of those things that grows to fill the space around it. Any time you have more than required to sustain yourself for the moment, logistics rears its head.

By which I mean to say, logistics is always around as big a concern as it is right now, whenever 'now' is. Probably something to do with Pareto. Hah, that guy, hey?

Oh, most definitely. The distances covered in older travel tales are often shorter than many people’s contemporary daily commutes.

Although, I think carrying 12 fish pasties is not a great logistical feat. I bet the main goal is for the knight to perform a token act of service for their lord. A good-natured way to signal obedience.

I assume that many of these tasks are symbolic / used to socially bind folks together. Similar to that friend who orders the first round of beers for everyone or something. He has his place and everyone knows it and enjoys it. Not unlike any kind of ritual, etc.

Many roles I know had physical symbols you carried or wore. Jim the beer buyer would be proud to his staff of beer buying, value it, and so on just as much as the fish guy.

I seem to remember that a big concern in feudalism was whether your underling lords would actually show up when you needed them. This kind of “bring me 12 pasties” thing is as you say most likely a token that he will show up in court and bring the pasties.

So it's like a service health check periodically run by the load balancer :-D

$ ping -c 12 -p fishpasty king.gov

Well, it is feudalism so really the line between .gov, .org, and .name is probably a little blurry.

Or more like removing only the brown m&ms from the bowl.

The BL’s elongated ransomware attack recovery has robbed the internet of a remarkable resource of primary source documents like the above. I’m into older maps and it’s a gaping hole in my browsing. Wish there was a meaningful way to help them recover more quickly.

I hadn't heard about this, how terrible. It sucks to give in to the attackers, but 20 BTC seems like a small price to pay compared to rebuilding from scratch.

One interesting bit toward the end of this article indicates the royal family has paid ransomware attackers too.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240412005905/https://www.newyo...

Whilst the British Library is spending a lot more money rebuilding, and expected to take a year or more to be fully operational again, there are some upsides to this. Their IT infrastructure used outdated and insecure practices, which enabled the attack in the first place, and the rebuilding forces them to modernise it. It also sidesteps the possibility of the ransomware group retaining a foothold in their systems, unbeknownst to the BL (though I will add that ransomware groups are, perhaps surprisingly, usually pretty honest once you pay them).

AIUI, many of their antiquated core systems couldn’t be reinstalled on modern more secure OS, hence the very slow recovery

What are "fish pasties"?

Presumably a pastie (like the famous cornish ones) with fish in.

A pastie is a particular kind of savory pie. The filling usually includes meat. There is a top crust (or just a single crust folded over). It is sized for a single person and readily handheld.

Calzones are sort of the same thing, just with a different national origin.

Though TIL there's a completely unrelated Irish pastie as well.

Of the Cornish variety, the singular is pasty.

So the middle ages too had Doordash.

> Rent could be in the form of token gifts like a rose or an arrowhead

2024: That will be thousands of dollars every 30 days please. HANG ON. Let me see if you qualify first. You don't. I hereby decline you, not only that but we recorded the fact that you were declined, making it harder the next time you try, kick rocks.

Wait, two men jousting on sheep!? How does that even work.

It's just a picture, like the tiny knights fighting snails. Not something that happened.

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