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\title{Circumlunar Transmissions}
\subtitle{Issue One}
\author{sloum \and joneworlds \and tfurrows \and solderpunk \and durtal \and wholesomedonut}
\date{May 2021}
\publishers{\textsc{Shell-to-Shelf}}
\uppertitleback{Circumlunar Transmissions\\*
Issue One\\*
May 2021\\
Edited by mieum\\*
Produced by the sundogs of circumlunar.space\\
Typeset using {\KOMAScript} and {\LaTeX}\\
Visit us on the \textsc{Smolnet:}\\
\textsc{Mare Tranquillitatis People's Circumlunar Zaibatsu}\\*
\texttt{gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space\\*
gemini://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space}\\
\textsc{Mare Serenitatis Circumlunar Corporate Republic}\\*
\texttt{gopher://republic.circumlunar.space\\*
gemini://republic.circumlunar.space}\\
\textsc{Mare Crisium Soviet Socialist Regency}\\*
\texttt{gopher://soviet.circumlunar.space\\*
gemini://soviet.circumlunar.space}\\
}
\lowertitleback{\textsc{Shell-to-Shelf\\*
CC BY 4.0}}
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\begin{document}
\frontmatter
\maketitle
\tableofcontents
\chapter{Preface}
\begin{multicols}{3}
\lettrine[lines=2, slope=4pt, findent=3pt, nindent=0pt]{B}{ack in February},
around the time of the ogre incident, Jone wondered out loud on the
circumlunar.space BBS, telem, about the possibility of a CS zine. The idea was
well-received by the rest of us sundogs, and for some time, talk of the zine
flooded telem as we proceeded to howl at the moon in excitement. Amidst this
jubilee, I somehow ended up wearing the proverbial editor pants--for this
inaugural issue, at least.
Anyone who has had the pleasure of perusing the many phlogs and gemlogs here at
circumlunar.space will be aware of the impressive diversity of interests,
talents, and backgrounds of the sundogs residing here. It will be interesting
to see how these influence the zine over time, but currently what the zine is
and how it will be produced is largely still up in the air. It's really just a
fun experiment, and this first issue is a kind of pilot episode.
The strategy of this first run has been to just get it out there. Rather than
prematurely exhausting our energy on determining what it should be, or
pidgeonholing ourselves into a niche or format without actually having produced
any content, we elected to first just give it a go and see what we get. So for
this first issue, we have what has been endearingly termed a ``topic salad.''
And I believe it has turned out to be quite a nutritious one at that.
Circumlunar Transmissions will be distributed exclusively over Gopher and
Gemini by whoever would like to host a copy on their own gopherhole or capsule.
That is, anyone can clone the git repo of the project and serve its contents
from their own smolnet space. This kind of ``newstand'' method of distribution
solves a lot of the logistical issues of where and how to bi-host such a thing
in an accessible way. In addition to Gopher and Gemini editions, we intend to
provide printable formats that readers can easily print-and-bind for their own
enjoyment offline or to distribute locally.
It has been a pleasure to contribute something to this wonderful community of
thoughtful and creative individuals whom I respect and admire sincerely. During
my relatively brief inhabitation of the Zaibatsu, I've learnt a great many
things and have been inspired to create and wonder about things I would not
have otherwise. It is with profound gratitude and pride for this habitat and
its inhabitants, and the smolnet ecosystem at large, that I present to you this
first issue of our smolzine, \emph{Circumlunar Transmissions}.
\begin{flushright}
mieum\\*
\textsc{April 25, 2021\\*
Incheon, Korea}
\end{flushright}
\end{multicols}
\mainmatter
\chapter{The Circumlunar Mixtape}
\begin{center}
\begin{BVerbatim}
.------------------------.
| CT001 |
| __ ______ __ |
| /. \|\.....|/ \ |
| \__/|/_____|\__/ |
| sloum |
| ________________ |
|___/_._o________o_._\___|
\end{BVerbatim}
\end{center}
\begin{multicols}{2}
\lettrine[lines=2, slope=4pt, findent=3pt, nindent=0pt]{T}{he} Circumlunar Mixtape is an ongoing series for Circumlunar
Transmissions where one user per issue shares 10 tracks they have been
listening to. Y'all have all kinds of ways to stream or otherwise find
and listen to music, so tracks are just listed and it is on the reader
to locate them. As a courtesy, when a weblink to streaming is available
playlist curators may choose to supply it.
\section{sloum's covid-year
playlist}
These are songs I have listened to at various points throughout the last
year. Some are old some are new. It has been a weird year and this is a
kind of weird mix. I provided Bandcamp weblinks for each track except
the Charlie Parr, which is a Youtube link because I like this song live
and this is my favorite performance recording of it and the recording
doesn't appear on any of his albums.
\noindent{Enjoy!} \\
\end{multicols}
\begin{tabular}{c l}
\multirow{4}{*}{\Huge{0}} & \textbf{Forward Beckons Rebound} \\
& by Adrianne Lenker\\
& from \emph{Songs} \\
& \small{https://adriannelenker.bandcamp.com/track/forwards-beckon-rebound} \\
\multicolumn{2}{c}{} \\
\end{tabular} \\
\begin{tabular}{c l}
\multirow{4}{*}{\Huge{1}} & \textbf{Catamaran} \\
& by talons' \\
& from \emph{Songs for Boats} \\
& \small{https://talons.bandcamp.com/track/catamaran} \\
\multicolumn{2}{c}{} \\
\end{tabular} \\
\begin{tabular}{c l}
\multirow{4}{*}{\Huge{2}} & \textbf{Possessed by the Devil} \\
& by Charlie Parr \\
& (Live) \\
& \small{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P46hGYUycoE} \\
\multicolumn{2}{c}{} \\
\end{tabular} \\
\begin{tabular}{c l}
\multirow{4}{*}{\Huge{3}} & \textbf{Some Voices} \\
& by Pinback \\
& from \emph{Some Voices} \\
& \small{https://pinback.bandcamp.com/track/some-voices} \\
\multicolumn{2}{c}{} \\
\end{tabular} \\
\begin{tabular}{c l}
\multirow{4}{*}{\Huge{4}} & \textbf{Get to Know You} \\
& by Tomo Nakayama \\
& from \emph{Melonday} \\
& \small{https://tomomusic.bandcamp.com/track/get-to-know-you} \\
\multicolumn{2}{c}{} \\
\end{tabular} \\
\begin{tabular}{c l}
\multirow{4}{*}{\Huge{5}} & \textbf{Just a Cloud} \\
& by Lusine \\
& from \emph{Sensorimotor} \\
& \small{https://lusine.bandcamp.com/track/just-a-cloud-feat-vilja-larjosto} \\
\multicolumn{2}{c}{} \\
\end{tabular} \\
\begin{tabular}{c l}
\multirow{4}{*}{\Huge{6}} & \textbf{Good Morning Captain} \\
& by Slint \\
& from \emph{Spiderland (Remastered)} \\
& \small{https://slint.bandcamp.com/track/good-morning-captain-remastered} \\
\multicolumn{2}{c}{} \\
\end{tabular} \\
\begin{tabular}{c l}
\multirow{4}{*}{\Huge{7}} & \textbf{Step Into You} \\
& by Hum \\
& from \emph{Inlet} \\
& \small{https://humband.bandcamp.com/track/step-into-you} \\
\multicolumn{2}{c}{} \\
\end{tabular} \\
\begin{tabular}{c l}
\multirow{4}{*}{\Huge{8}} & \textbf{Kingfisher} \\
& by Windhand \\
& from \emph{Grief's Infernal Flower} \\
& \small{https://windhand.bandcamp.com/track/kingfisher} \\
\multicolumn{2}{c}{} \\
\end{tabular} \\
\begin{tabular}{c l}
\multirow{4}{*}{\Huge{9}} & \textbf{Nue} \\
& by Nils Frahm \\
& from \emph{Wintermusik} \\
& \small{https://nilsfrahm.bandcamp.com/track/nue} \\
\end{tabular} \\
\chapter{Ask Jone}
\begin{center}
W. asks:\\[8pt]
\texttt{\small{I have a strained relationship with my sister.\\*
What are some things I can do to help repair it?}}
\end{center}
\begin{multicols}{3}
\lettrine[lines=2, slope=4pt, findent=3pt, nindent=0pt]{I}{ remember} my dad and I went through this patch where we were both
pretty pissed off at each other, not that I remember why at this point.
But sharing is caring, right? So to keep things going, I'm still
dropping off cans of Chunk'n'Dunk soup for him, because it's all he ever
feels like eating anymore. Although that stuff is just not very
nutritious. But because I'm mad at him, I don't bother to bring his
favorite, the meatball-carrot stew one. Instead, I bring him can after
can of turkey-a-la-king. You ever try that one from Chunk'n'Dunk? Not
great. And I guess dad's thinking along the same lines as me, because
every time I come by he leaves me another pair of snow tires he found.
But I'm not selling tires any more by then, so I don't want them. And he
knows that, but he keeps on getting tires anyhow.
And so we go on like this for weeks: I come by and put like 5 more cans
of turkey-a-la-king on his kitchen counter, and he stacks a few more
snow tires outside his door for me. And all this stuff is piling higher
and higher and higher, and we're gradually getting madder and madder at
each other. Until one day I go over there with another box of cans, and
he starts screaming and yelling about how he hates turkey-a-la-king. And
he gets so mad he accidentally knocks over the stack of cans. And some
falls on his head and he falls over, and the rest of the cans come
crashing down on him. Pretty bad scene. So I go to help him up, but I
slip and trip on a can on the floor, and hit the ground hard too. And if
you've ever fallen on a pile of Chunk'n'Dunk turkey-a-la-king cans, you
know that hurts pretty bad.
So we're both groaning on the ground, and then there's this weird sound
by the front door. When I get out there to check it I find that
co-incidentally the big pile of snow tires out there has also fallen
over, and it's crushed some unlucky little gnome who must have been
milling around by there. Those things are so bad at staying alive, I
just can't believe it sometimes.
Anyways, if you're looking to patch things up with your sister, I would
say maybe don't do it with canned soup, or snow tires. It sure didn't
help us any. It just wasn't a good result for anyone, especially for
that gnome. Or if you have to go with soup, at least stick with the
meatball-carrot one. It's actually not bad.
\noindent{Thanks for writing in. I hope that helps.}
\end{multicols}
\begin{center}
\emph{Do you have a problem?\\*
Send your questions to:} \\[8pt]
\begin{BVerbatim}
________________________
|\ /|
| \ joneworlds / |
| \ @ / |
| \ mailbox.org / |
| \______________/ |
| / \ |
| / \ |
|____/_____________\_____|
\end{BVerbatim}
\end{center}
\chapter{Manifesto of a Granular Ideologue}
by tfurrows
\begin{multicols}{2}
\section{Passing Thoughts of an Impractical
Idealist}
\lettrine[lines=2, slope=4pt, findent=3pt, nindent=0pt]{O}{ur} ancestors stood on the banks of the Euphrates and cast their ideas
into the inexhaustible current. First they cast in words, ephemeral.
Then they learned permanence; epochs brought clay tablets and papyrus,
script and type, bits and clouds.\\
Permanence dammed the river, a logjam of ideas tossed in as if each was
a consummate standard. Life-giving waters slowed, intelligence waned,
the elastic mind seized and crumbled. The word manifesto dates to the
fourteenth century, but the notion dates to our earliest written
conclusions.\\
This is not the manifesto to end all manifestos. It is a message in a
bottle that few will find. It is a loose model for dealing with the
mountainous dam of manifestos that stop the flow of creativity, passion,
and progress. At the risk of making the problem worse, I proffer:
\subsection[From a Message in a Bottle]{From a Message in a Bottle, Sitting Atop the Dam of Manifestos}
\begin{description}
\item [Let] your mind move freely, become a seeker
\item [Accept] that knowledge is scattered broadly
\item [Find] kernels of truth and germinate thoughts
\end{description}
\begin{center}
\rule{1cm}{0.5pt}
\end{center}
\begin{description}
\item [Take] something from every ideology, fear nothing
\item [Subscribe] to that which you find value in
\item [Mistrust] labels, they carry unimaginable baggage
\end{description}
\begin{center}
\rule{1cm}{0.5pt}
\end{center}
\begin{description}
\item [Acknowledge] all that came before, but accept the utility of your journey
\item [Never] believe that you have the best vision for the world
\item [Don't] try to fashion the world to your ideals; your ideals are cursory
\end{description}
\begin{center}
\rule{1cm}{0.5pt}
\end{center}
\begin{description}
\item [Be] a maximal minimalist, distill purity from immensity
\item [Find,] purify, share, repeat
\item [To] conclude means to cease to grow\\[10pt]
\end{description}
\end{multicols}
\begin{center}
\texttt{tfurrows@circumlunar.space}\\*
\texttt{tfurrows@sdf.org}
\end{center}
\chapter[What's the Deal with Leap Seconds]{What's the Deal with Leap Seconds? A Brief Overview of Timescales}
\chaptermark{What's the Deal with Leap Seconds}
by solderpunk
\begin{multicols}{3}
\section{Astronomical Seconds}
\lettrine[lines=2, slope=4pt, findent=3pt, nindent=0pt]{W}{hy} is a second as long as it is, and not a little shorter or a little
longer? This is a seemingly simple question which leads down a deep and
delightfully twisted rabbit hole. It's something that I wish Neal
Stephenson had written an epically long, inexplicably compelling 1990s
Wired article about, in the spirit of his ``Mother Earth, Mother Board''
or ``In the Kingdom of Mao Bell''. But he didn't, so you're stuck
reading this, instead: a brief, incomplete, possibly slightly inaccurate
overview based on my own characteristically obsessive reading on the
topic over the past week or so.
For most of the time that the concept of the second has been around, its
length has been defined implicitly by that of the day. Everybody knows
the answer to ``why is a day as long as it is?'' - one day is the time
it takes the Earth to complete a single revolution about its axis. And
since there are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour and 24
hours in a day, a second is simply one 86,400th of the time it takes the
Earth to rotate once. Or, if you like, a second is the time it takes for
the Earth to rotate one 240th of a degree, out of the full 360. End of
story, right?
Well, no. This is a perfectly sensible way to define time - for some
applications, it's the best way to do it. This astronomically defined
time scale is still in use today in certain contexts. The official name
of its modern incarnation is Universal Time, or UT (technically, there
are a few subtly different variants, denoted UT0, UT1 and UT2, but we'll
gloss over that here). The official determination of UT nowadays is
based mostly on measurements made at observatories tracking the movement
of distant radio sources across the sky as the Earth rotates. This is
easier than making precision measurements of the sun, but is still
measuring the exact same thing.
\section[Earth is not the Best Clock]{Earth is a Nice Place to Live, but it's not the Best
Clock}
The problem with an astronomical definition of the second is this: the
Earth doesn't actually rotate at a perfectly constant rate (it wasn't
until the 19th century that we could build clocks accurate enough to
notice this). In fact, the Earth's rotation is slowing down. Very
slowly, of course. Every century, a complete rotation takes about 2
milliseconds longer than it used to. The rate of slowing down is not
steady. Some years the change is more and other years it's less. In
fact, even though the overall trend is one of slowing down, some years
the rotation actually speeds up. The dynamics of the process are
complicated, and we can't make accurate long term forecasts.
Gravitational interaction between the Earth and the moon is the primary
driver, but the movement of tectonic plates and friction between Earth's
surface and its atmosphere and oceans have their say, too. The Indian
Ocean Earthquake in 2004 was powerful enough to shorten the length of a
day by 2.68 microseconds. There are even periodic variations in the rate
of rotation that we just don't understand the cause of yet. But the take
home message is that, whatever the causes, astronomical seconds actually
have small, random fluctuations in their duration over long time spans.
If you define the second by looking into the skies, no two seconds are
exactly the same.
That's a pretty inconvenient property for the official definition of a
fundamentally important unit like the second to have. For most of the
time this definition was used, the fluctuations were smaller than we
could reliably measure. Certainly, they weren't enough to have an impact
on everyday life. Nobody was going to be late to lunch because of the
Earth's unsteady rotation. But by the 20th century, scientific and
technological progress meant these tiny fluctuations started to matter,
as we began measuring natural phenomena and building machines which
operated on very small time scales. A 10 megahertz radio oscillator, for
example, has a period of 0.0000001 seconds - only 100 nanoseconds!
Gigahertz radiation, which is important in radio astronomy and was used
for communications and radar during WWII decades before it came to
underpin modern technology like GPS, WiFi, and mobile data networks, has
periods measured in \emph{picoseconds}. Even very, very small variations
in the length of a second are enough to make the measured frequency of
radio waves change, even if the \emph{actual} frequency is fixed. Modern
technological society simply couldn't be built using a wobbly clock like
the Earth.
\section{Atomic Seconds}
Fortunately, in the 1950s, atomic clocks were invented which kept time
better than any previous mechanism. I'll gloss right over the details,
but suffice it to say, we came up with a new way to define the second
which involved measuring the properties of caesium atoms instead of
looking at things moving through the sky. In 1967, the relatively young
International System (or SI, for the French ``Système International'')
of units redefined the second on this basis. The new atomic second was
defined such that it had the same length as the astronomical second in
use before it, as far as measurements at the time could tell, but it had
the added bonus that the length of the second was then fixed and
unchanging. Caesium atoms at a given temperature ``vibrate'' (very
loosely speaking) at a frequency which, as far as we can tell, is
completely and perfectly stable, and which can be measured very
accurately in a sufficiently advanced laboratory.
With the arrival of atomic seconds, a new time scale was also defined:
International Atomic Time (or TAI, for the French ``Temps Atomique
International''). At midnight on January 1st in 1958, TAI and UT were
perfectly synchronised. Ever since then, they have slowly but surely
drifted apart. The seconds of TAI are of perfectly unchanging length (as
measured by averaging hundreds of atomic clocks all over the world), but
the seconds of UT fluctuate with the Earth's rotation. The accumulated
drift up until now is a little less than 40 seconds, but it will
continue to grow, without limit. And while the perfectly uniform seconds
of TAI make it the perfect tool for some tasks, this drift apart from UT
makes it problematic for others. If you go outside at noon UT in
Greenwich, England (or anywhere else at 0 degrees longitude), the sun
will \emph{always} be high in the sky. This is true today and it will be
true in a thousand years, Because UT is fundamentally linked to the
Earth's rotation. TAI, on the other hand, is fundamentally divorced from
it. Thousands of years in the future, there will come a day when,
according to TAI, the sun rises in Greenwich at midnight.
This isn't just an abstract concern for the distant future. In the late
'50s when TAI was defined, it was still common for ships at sea to
figure out where they were by using a sextant to record the position of
the sun above the horizon at a certain time and consulting a printed
table of conversions. For this purpose, ships carried the most accurate
clocks they could afford, and compared them regularly against true UT
time using time signals broadcast by radio stations all over the world.
Celestial navigation works very well when using a timescale which is
tightly linked to Earth's rotation, and hence the position of things in
the sky. But if the radio time signals switched to broadcasting TAI
instead of UT, celestial navigation would become increasingly less
accurate as TAI drifted further out of synch with the Earth and the
stars. This meant that the ``new and improved'' TAI time scale wasn't
actually an improvement for everybody.
\section{Coordinating Chaos}
Instead of broadcasting two different time signals for different
purposes, which could easily lead to confusion, on January 1st in 1960
the powers that be (back then that was the International Time Bureau, or
BIH, for the French ``Bureau International de l'Heure'', but today the
torch has been passed to a combination of the International Bureau of
Weights and Measures, or BIPM, for the French ``Bureau International des
Poids et Mesures'' and the International Earth Rotation Service, who
have the gall to abbreviate the \emph{English} version of their name and
go by IERS) defined yet another time scale, in an attempt to achieve the
best of both worlds and make everybody happy. Enter Coordinated
Universal Time, or UTC - at last, something normal people have heard of!
The abbreviation UTC is a strange compromise between the English
abbreviation CUT and the French abbreviation TUC (for ``Temps Universel
Coordonné''). This is somewhat fitting, because UTC itself is a strange
compromise time scale between UT and TAI. Like TAI, UTC is an atomic
time scale. Every second of UTC is exactly as long as any other, using
the SI standard second based on caesium atoms, allowing scientists and
engineers around the world to calibrate their instruments and reliably
measure time intervals and frequencies very precisely. But whereas TAI
is destined to drift ever further away from UT, to the chagrin of
sailors and astronomers, UTC is kept synchronised closely enough with UT
that it allows seafarers to perform celestial navigation with sufficient
accuracy for safe ocean passage. This synchronisation is achieved, like
all technical compromises, using ugly hacks. It cannot be any other way,
as UTC is a stubborn attempt to reconcile two desirable but
fundamentally incompatible properties of a timescale: perfectly regular
seconds, and synchronisation with a spinning globe whose rate of
rotation is unpredictably irregular.
The precise nature of the ugly hack underlying UTC has changed somewhat
since it was first defined, but for almost 50 years now, starting in
1972, the ugly hack of choice has been the leap second. The way it works
is this. The difference between UTC and UT - a quantity denoted DUT - is
carefully monitored. Any time it looks like that difference is on track
to exceed 0.9 seconds, in either direction, UTC is kicked back into
alignment by either inserting or removing a single second on one
particular day. This makes UTC the \emph{only} time scale where the
number of seconds in a day is not absolutely fixed at 86,400 by
definition. There almost always \emph{are} 86,400 seconds in a UTC day,
but 86,401 and 86,399 are also allowed when necessary to keep the time
scale locked to the movement of the sun across the sky.
So far, there have been 27 leap seconds defined, although UTC and ATI
are today exactly 37 seconds apart - the other 10 seconds come from
hacks applied before leap seconds were established in 1972. All of them
to date have been insertions rather than removals. They don't happen on
a regular, predictable basis, like leap years (which are an adjustment
for the fact that the time it takes the Earth to orbit the sun once,
defining a year, is not perfectly divisible by the time it takes the
Earth to rotate once, defining a day). Because the Earth's rate of
rotation fluctuates randomly, sometimes slowing down and sometimes
speeding up, astronomers need to be actively on the lookout for
excessive values of DUT. When it's decided a leap second is needed -
it's the IERS who makes that call - they are announced at least six
months in advance. They're allowed to occur on either June 30th or
December 31st, and are inserted or deleted at midnight UTC (which is the
middle of the day in some time zones, of course) on those days. At the
time of writing, the last leap second happened on December 31st, 2016.
In principle, six months is enough advance warning that nobody doing
anything which depends on precise time synchronisation should be caught
by surprise when a leap second rolls around. In practice, it's not
always so simple.
\section[Implementation Burden]{Increasing Implementation Burden and an Uncertain
Future}
Leap seconds have always had their critics, but at the time they were
adopted, their benefits arguably balanced their associated hassle. 50
years later, this hack is starting to show its age. The advent of cheap
and reliable GPS technology means that celestial navigation at sea is
now rarely a matter of life or death (although some sailors still
appreciate the relative simplicity of the technology it relies on),
removing some of the argument for making sure UTC stays in lock step
with the Earth's rotation. At the same time, the internet has come
along: a massive network of computers talking to each other, with the
frequent need for activity on one to be synchronised with activity on
another (hence tools like the Network Time Protocol, NTP). Computer
programmers \emph{hate} leap seconds, for the same reason they hate
Daylight Saving Time: they complicate time calculations (you can't
accurately calculate the number of seconds between two UTC timestamps
without consulting a table of when previous leap seconds were inserted)
and are a frequent cause of confusion and errors, when one system
implements them differently from another its trying to interoperate
with.
Affordances for leap seconds are often added to software as an
afterthought - if they are added at all. Some systems represent the
extra second using the timestamp 23:59:60, but others instead repeat the
timestamp 23:59:59 twice (since some software will fail to parse a
timestamp ending in :60). Other systems ``smear'' the leap second out
over longer time periods, like 24 hours, to avoid problems associated
with sudden discontinuities. This just leads to a whole day of small,
slowly varying errors compared to non-smearing systems. Some systems, of
course, forget to do anything at all. Because all the leap seconds to
date have been insertions rather than removals, it's a safe bet that
there's plenty of software out there which has worked correctly so far
but will fail the first time a second is removed. And the Earth's
rotation is going through a bit of a fast phase right now, so the first
negative leap second might be looming on the horizon.
The software interoperability situation at the time of a leap second is
bad enough that several major stock exchanges simply agreed to
voluntarily shut down for an hour around midnight UTC in 2016, rather
than risk problems by continuing to trade during the leap second. Given
that a number of major web services, including Amazon, Instagram,
Netflix and Twitter, experienced outages around this time, this was
probably not a bad idea. Of course, simply shutting time critical
services off for every leap second isn't always an option. It's one
thing to shut down the New York Stock Exchange for an hour, but Air
Traffic Control has to stay up 24/7. It's no surprise that increasingly
many voices in the tech industry are calling for leap seconds to be
abolished. Plenty of people are very unhappy with that idea, of course,
not to mention there's no consensus on what to do instead.
It's far from clear what the future holds for the leap second. As
software continues to eat the world, the headaches leap seconds cause
are only likely to get worse. The atomic definition of second likely
isn't going away any time soon, though, and that means that getting rid
of leap seconds entirely means abandoning the millennia old notion that
the way we represent time is intimately linked with the natural cycle of
night and day. Assuming we're not willing to do that, there are only two
alternatives: coming up with a new ugly hack which is somehow less
problematic, or giving up on a ``one size fits all'' time scale.
\section{But Wait, There's More!}
If you think this story has been needlessly fiddly and complicated, rest
assured I have skipped over a tonne of details. If you're actually
interested to learn more, I highly recommend the article ``The leap
second: its history and possible future'', which you can easily find on
the web (full citation below), along with, as always, following
Wikipedia links wherever they take you. Along the way you can learn the
difference between UT0, UT1 and UT2, meet other exciting astronomic and
atomic time scales like Ephemeris Time (ET), GPS Time (GPST) and
Terrestrial Time (TT), and discover that the SI system of units defined
the second based on something other than Earth's rotation when it was
established in 1960, seven years before the caesium definition was
adopted.
\end{multicols}
\section{References}
\begin{raggedright}
\hangindent=0.25cm
\hangafter=1
Nelson, R., McCarthy, D., Malys, S., Levine, J.M., Guinot, B., Fliegel,
H., Beard, R., \& Bartholomew, T. (2001). The Leap Second - Its History
and Possible Future. Metrologia, 38, 509-529.\\[4pt]
\hangindent=0.25cm
\hangafter=1
Ronningen, Ole Petter. ``Time-nuttery 101''. \href{https://efos3.com/TimeNut.html}{https://efos3.com/TimeNut.html}\\[4pt]
\hangindent=0.25cm
\hangafter=1
Allen, Steve. ``UTC might be redefined without Leap Seconds''. \href{https://ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/timescales.html}{https://ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/timescales.html}\\
\end{raggedright}
\chapter{The Hearth of the Matter}
by durtal
\begin{multicols}{3}
\lettrine[lines=2, slope=4pt, findent=3pt, nindent=0pt]{I}{t seems} that Kepler first used the Latin word `focus' in 1604 to refer
to `the point of convergence' in the mathematical sphere. It is possible
that this is an analogical use of the term and may reference the point
of light created with a lens. You probably know what I mean. I remember
another child showing me a trick with a magnifying glass outside one
sunny day. He quickly adjusted the glass's height over my forearm to
effect a sharp pain as the converging rays burned a hole in my skin.
Hobbes brought `focus' into broader English parlance nearly fifty years
later. I don't know if he did this with a magnifying glass or not. But,
Hobbes is certainly not my favourite philosopher. With its particular
take on human nature, he published Leviathan about the same time he
popularised a word whose use is ubiquitous but whose original meaning is
too often unknown. Sometimes the abstractions of science and a specific
sort of philosophy separate us from the mundane realities of life in
unfortunate ways.
Ironically, the political philosopher who espoused that humans are ``all
take and little give'' used a word that belied his contentions in the
original. Focus is the Latin equivalent of the Old English word
`hearth'. People still used the latter term in my youth, especially in
rural regions. Phrases like ``hearth and home'' and ``keep the home
fires burning'' catch something of its ethos. The hearth was where
household members gathered to cook or to work by the hearthstone's
firelight. In its warmth, children sat to hear the stories of the family
and community after dusk. Kith and kin entertained themselves with music
and drinking and dance nearby. In some cultures, families kept ancestral
bones beneath the hearthstone. Here was a point of convergence in the
human habitat.
The rising or setting sun reminds me of a hearth fire as it converges on
the horizon. I know what it is to wait in anticipation for the warmth of
a fire on a cold winter's morning. Other's gather close to you, hoping
to absorb a little of your body's heat while they wait too. You each rub
and blow warm breaths onto your hands and comment on the cold, and you
remark on the day ahead. As the kindling catches, hope builds and
blossoms as the flames devour the larger pieces of wood. The fire roars
madly as you back away, waiting for the wooden pyramid to collapse. When
there are coals left mostly, you cook your breakfast over them and drink
your morning coffee. You smile and share a joke or two with your
fellows. One of them ruefully remembers that it is his day to do the
dishes; they are piling up as the others finish and go. This time, like
its later double, is a short space of intimacy before separation.
By analogy, sunrise is like the birth of a child for whom the family
cares. Such brief familial intimacy is still most often the case for the
young. But, not so for the elderly. We fill the noon meridians of our
lives so completely with striving and drift so far from one another
that, too often, family members no longer live near to one another at
the sunset of a loved one's life. Now others, not family members, nurse
the frail and wash their bodies late in life and at its very end.
Frequently, there is only the intimacy of strangers who alone know where
the bare bones of our final days lie before we slip into the deep dark
of death's night. This is all that the world offers in this day when
hearth fires and home are all but forgotten. We now only focus camera
lenses (automatically).
Did old Thomas Hobbes have a point?
\end{multicols}
\chapter{Why I Still Game Proprietary}
by wholesomedonut
\begin{multicols}{3}
\section{Proprietary Gaming Isn't All
Bad}
\lettrine[lines=2, slope=4pt, findent=3pt, nindent=0pt]{S}{ince} getting into the FOSS community, I see a lot of pushback towards
the gaming industry as a whole. I can see why: DRM runs rampant,
terrible business practices regularly conflagrate internet forums,
anti-cheat programs are basically consensual (and mandatory for official
online play in some cases) trojans, and to make it all worse it costs a
mint to get into the hobby nowadays due to scalpers and crypto miners
running rampant in the market.
I agree with all of those observations. They tire me. They concern me.
They frustrate me daily.
However! There are still reasons -not- to go the route of some I see in
the FOSS world and eschew gaming altogether on anything but a FOSS
platform, with FOSS games, because\ldots FOSS. That argument is just as
dumb in practice, because it's an artificial limitation that stands on
somewhat subjective, opinionated reasoning. ``But wholesomedonut, thou
angereth me!'' I hear in the imaginary comments section because this is
Gemini and you can't do that. I am certain you will find peace through
measured contemplation and a cup of whatever warm or cold liquid you
enjoy.
\section{Why Do I Use Steam?}
Well\ldots everyone else that isn't a computer nerd usually does too.
And the overhead for getting people of minimum technical understanding
(that like playing video games) into FOSS gaming generally is much more
costly in terms of mental and social capacity than the clout I usually
have with my friends or family on such matters.
King's English: If I have to instruct them to download the latest
version of the game directly from Github in the Releases tab, or from
some random website they've never heard of (even if it looks nice and is
HTTPS secure) instead of just adding it on Steam or Epic or Microsoft
Store or PS/Xbox or some-other thing, there is a solid 90\% chance I'm
going to lose that argument unless they are very specifically interested
in that particular kind of game, its' content, or have a better
socially-driven reason. This comes from years of trying and f'nagling
with people from many walks of life; the UI and UX of FOSS gaming needs
to be on-par with modern commercial offerings; this means all the way
from landing on a page, to funneling through a sales conversion or free
download, to playing the game with their friends needs to be
understandable, unobtrusive and transparent. That is, if the overall
userbase is to grow and sustain itself on a higher magnitude than
current.
\subsection[Benefit of the Doubt]{Give People the Benefit of the
Doubt}
People are intelligent, generally. They're very skilled in a multitude
of things that aren't computers. But asking someone who \emph{isn't} tech
savvy to figure out how to pull down the right version of a FOSS game
from a code repo (or heaven forbid build it themselves with cmake or
whatever) is like asking ME to diagnose a car's problems using nothing
but a flashlight and a screwdriver. I have no idea what the hell I'm
doing anyway in that department. Without the proper tools and education
too? I'm screwed. Therefore I urge empathy and patience in introducing
others to FOSS gaming. It's a bit more finicky than the plug-and-play
mentality commercial systems have fostered.
\section{Enter the Mech Man}
A good example of a FOSS game that has plenty of good and bad would be
MegaMek. It's basically a fully computerized version of the Classic
Battletech rules, which is a board game that's existed since the 1980s
and is going on 40 years of conniving, number-crunching tomfoolery that
only a particular subset of people even enjoy. All in the name of
combined-arms strategy on a hex board that involves groups of multi-ton
robots, tanks, airplanes and infantry taking and giving damage to
individual components, weapons and armor locations in a somewhat
realistic and highly detailed simulation of 31st-century warfare.
To alleviate the issue of significant calculational overhead for
every-single-action-attack-or-damage-roll-ever, this program does all of
the math, calculations, and rules proofing for you. So you can enjoy the
game with others, wherever they may be, instead of reaching for your
G.A.T.O.R. card for the tenth time to show the newbie of the group what
happens when an SRM-6 missile spread hits a light vehicle whose armor is
already exposed on its' left flank. There are plenty of grognards out
there who know these rules well and can do half the game in their head:
they're obviously not the target of this article.
I shiver at the thought of doing all that stuff manually if I don't have
to. That kind of tedium takes away from the moment-by-moment gameplay,
forcing everybody to get ox-in-the-mired over details that don't matter
overall instead of letting their big stompy robots blow each other up.
Megamek works wonders in that regard. A game of Classic Battletech that
could easily take 5 or 6 hours in person without any sort of calculator
apps or an otherwise breakneck pace of gameplay and rules-lawyering will
only take an hour or two maximum with Megamek. It's a godsend for a
hobby that would otherwise be relegated to local play over predetermined
days, not a ``Hey want to play a match? Sure!'' kind of casual pickup on
a boring afternoon.
\subsection[Sunshine and Rainbows]{But It Isn't All Sunshine and Rainbows.}
Nope! Megamek is, in my humble and donut-shaped opinion, a terrible
example of UI and UX. I played a round recently, and another aficionado
of the series played against me. Quoth my opponent: ``This program looks
like something out of Windows 95.'' Neither of us had played the most
recent version of the game. I hadn't touched it in a year at least.
Some changes were welcome, and the development progresses smoothly. But
it's still just as much a spaghetti plate in terms of user experience:
configuration options laid out in long lists of check boxes organized by
multiple top-window tabs; a decidedly 15-years-old design language that
clashes with modern perceptions of UI and UX (which is bad considering
that taking in new blood is crucial for both userbase and developer
contribution reasons); and the final nail in the coffin is the fact that
the much easier and more recent Alpha Strike ruleset isn't included at
all by default, to my knowledge. You might be able to configure
something like that using plugins, but we're already putting the cart
before the horse at that point.
\subsection{To Be Fair}
The project started in 2000. It's 21 years old in some places, if only
in logic and not literal syntax. It's written in Java. And it's been a
community effort by dozens of talented people over the decades. The fact
that it's alive at all is impressive, but so's the fact that the
franchise whose boardgame it emulates even has a fanbase still. BT fans
aren't quitters, certainly. And this is all considering the fact that
trying to automate, obfuscate and de-FUBAR the mountain of minutiae that
Battletech's rulesets and technical data (on a per unit and per variant
basis no less) is a monumental task. I can hardly think of a video-game
adaptation of a more complex board game that does a better job, in
proportion to the complexity of the physical source material and
gameplay flow.
So considering it was made in the waning days of Win98 (because Windows
ME doesn't exist and you can't convince me otherwise) it's expected that
it's ugly as most things were back then. It was written in Java (yea
verily, begone foul JVM!), which for all its' foibles makes a very easy
cross-platform distributable program. It's solidly a relic of an earlier
time of online gaming, where dial-up connections were still common.
That's a given. And it is what it is. I won't waste time bemoaning those
facts that are immutable in this context. I'm only stating them to set
the stage.
\section[Interesting Impasse]{I'm Left at an Interesting
Impasse}
There is no other way I could ever play Battletech with friends from all
over the world in such a great degree of fidelity. Megamek serves its'
purpose very well for what it is: a highly detailed computerization of a
niche franchise that has a fanbase spanning generations. However, it
also stands out to me as one of the prime examples of a FOSS project
being understandably opaque to newcomers. It's hard to use at first,
hard to look at always, and sometimes hard to find other people to play
it with. Those three things will nail the coffin of any fledgling game
shut. That concept is true regardless of genre, art style, or UI/UX.
So, I leave it to you to put the pieces together here. I can choose to
play with average people that A) aren't technically inclined, B) don't
have a heart that beats for free-as-in-freedom, and C) want something
that ``just works,'' or confine myself to a much smaller content base
with an even smaller playerbase to share it with.
Call me the gaming nerd Whore of Babylon, but I don't see the point in
beating my head against the wall overtly trying to make my hobby free
and open if there isn't a platform for those newcomers to even stand on
and explore once (or if ever) they choose to get involved in FOSS gaming
of their own volition.
\section{At the End of the Day}
I encourage people who play video games which are also interested in
free and open source software to consider the prospect of inviting
others into this world of free-as-in-freedom/beer/whatever with a grain
of salt. Until we make it easier to onboard new people from all walks of
life, significant adoption of FOSS systems or the games that run on them
will not be seen. And therefore we will not see the requisite uptick in
talent, contribution and playerbase that will consequently drive a
growth in production quality, variety, and competitiveness in the market
space of people's free time.
\end{multicols}
\begin{center}
external email: wholesomedonut at tuta dot io \\*
mastodon: at wholesomedonut at fosstodon dot org\\*
matrix: at wholesomedonut colon matrix dot org
\end{center}
\backmatter
\thispagestyle{empty}
\mbox{}
\clearpage
\end{document}