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Monday Links from the Lockdown vol. DLXV

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    Monday Links from the Lockdown vol. DLXV

    A bit earlier today as my internal clock hasn't gone back yet. Maybe my internal clock and the microwave's are one and the same?
    • Chaos at the Top of the World - ”It was one of the most arresting viral photos of the year: a horde of climbers clogged atop Mount Everest. But it only begins to capture the deadly realities of what transpired that day at 29,000 feet. These are the untold accounts of the people who were there.” The story of the disaster that followed after the famous photo was taken in May 2019.


    • To Boldly Go Where No Internet Protocol Has Gone Before - Susan D'Agostino interviews Vint Cerf about the development of the interplanetary Internet: ”We’d been exploring the solar system for decades, but the exploration — both manned and robotic — has typically involved radio communication… Our group asked: Could we do better? Could we use the internet’s technology to improve space communication, especially as the number of spacecraft increases over time, or as we start putting settlements on the moon or Mars?”

    • Nedelin's disaster - Another secret catastrophe of the Cold War: ”On October 26, 1960, the Soviet newspapers published a short communique from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet of Ministers of the USSR informing that Marshall of Artillery Mitrofan Nedelin has died in the airplane crash… In 1989, Ogonyok magazine, a mouthpiece of Gorbachev's ‘perestroika,’ run a story called ‘Sorok Pervaya Ploshadka,’ (or Site 41 in English). The article revealed to the Soviet people that Nedelin died in the explosion of a ballistic missile in Tyuratam along with numerous other nameless victims.”

    • The Caproni Ca.60 Transaereo: pushing the dream a little further - ”On March 4 1921, the Caproni Ca.60 Transaereo – also known as “Capronissimo” and Noviplano Transaereo – tried to take off from Lake Maggiore with its nine, 30-meter-long wings… With eight American 400-hp engines, 750 square meters of wings and 23 of fuselage, [Gianni Caproni’s] gigantic hydroplane was over nine meters tall and weighed over 15,000 kilos when empty.” Didn’t work


    • How 30 Lines of Code Blew Up a 27-Ton Generator - An extract from Andy Greenberg’s book SANDWORM: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers: ”Among those acts of cyberwar was an unprecedented attack on Ukraine's power grid in 2016, one that appeared designed to not merely cause a blackout, but to inflict physical damage on electric equipment. And when one cybersecurity researcher named Mike Assante dug into the details of that attack, he recognized a grid-hacking idea invented not by Russian hackers, but by the United State government, and tested a decade earlier.”

    • The Network: How a Secretive Phone Company Helped the Crime World Go Dark - ”Vince Ramos wanted Phantom Secure to be the Uber of privacy-focused, luxury-branded phones—flood the market with devices, and sort out the law later. Then the FBI investigated him.” Not the same bust as Encrochat, of which we heard earlier this year. Seems like supplying secure phones to organised crime isn’t a particularly viable business model if you prefer not being in prison

    • How Medieval Bridges Were Built—An Animation - ”Building a bridge over water is a daunting task, and despite the many technological progresses, the basics have remain unchanged since ancient times… This process has been beautifully recreated in a 3D animation by Praha Archeologicka, a Prague-based project of the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS), Prague, and the National Heritage Institute. The example chosen in this animation is a real Medieval bridge—the Charles Bridge across the Vltava river in Prague, Czech Republic.”


    • Quantum Time Twist Offers a Way to Create Schrödinger’s Clock - ”Albert Einstein’s twin paradox is one of the most famous thought experiments in physics. It postulates that if you send one of two twins on a return trip to a star at near light speed, they will be younger than their identical sibling when they return home. The age difference is a consequence of something called time dilation, which is described by Einstein’s special theory of relativity: the faster you travel, the slower time appears to pass. But what if we introduce quantum theory into the problem?” Physicists doing their “What if we made this even more confusing?” thing again. The full paper is at Nature Communications, should you want your brain bent further: Quantum clocks observe classical and quantum time dilation

    • How the bootstrap load made the historic Intel 8008 processor possible - Ken Shirriff digs into the first 8-bit microprocessor: ”One unusual feature of the 8008 processor is its use of a ‘bootstrap load’ or ‘bootstrap capacitor’, a special capacitor circuit to improve performance. Federico Faggin, who led the development of the 8008, is the main character in this story; he invented a new way to fabricate bootstrap capacitors for the Intel 4004 and 8008 processors and says it ‘proved essential to the microprocessor realization’ and ‘without [the bootstrap load], there was no microprocessor.’”

    • Daisugi: The Japanese Forestry Technique of Creating a Tree Platform for Other Trees - ”Sometime in 15th century Japan, a horticulture technique called daisugi was developed in Kyoto. Written as 台杉 and literally meaning platform cedar, the technique resulted in a tree that resembled an open palm with multiple trees growing out if it, perfectly vertical. ” From looking at other sources such as Daisugi, The Ancient Bonsai Technique That Can Prevent Deforestation I suspect the title might be misleading, as it seems from that second article to be a way of training the trees to produce long vertical branches rather than growing trees on other trees. Either way, they look very cool



    Happy invoicing!

    #2
    Originally posted by NickFitz View Post



    Happy invoicing!
    I know ignore the law is a Silicon Valley operating model but I think I see the flaw in this plan - it's a very different and far more direct issue than starting a taxi firm or short term flat rental site.
    merely at clientco for the entertainment

    Comment


      #3
      Originally posted by NickFitz View Post
      • Nedelin's disaster - Another secret catastrophe of the Cold War: ”On October 26, 1960, the Soviet newspapers published a short communique from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet of Ministers of the USSR informing that Marshall of Artillery Mitrofan Nedelin has died in the airplane crash… In 1989, Ogonyok magazine, a mouthpiece of Gorbachev's ‘perestroika,’ run a story called ‘Sorok Pervaya Ploshadka,’ (or Site 41 in English). The article revealed to the Soviet people that Nedelin died in the explosion of a ballistic missile in Tyuratam along with numerous other nameless victims.”
      This says it all, really:
      Neither, Chief of NIIP-5 test range in Tyuratam, Major General Konstantin Gerchik, nor Chief of the 2nd Test Directorate Grigoryants responsible for R-16 testing found themselves capable of enforcing the safety rules in the presence of Nedelin, their boss.

      Comment


        #4
        Gosh.

        PMOS.

        Bootstrap capacitors.

        Half a flipping century ago.



        Them were the days.

        And now processor rails are sub 1 Volt.

        With processors taking as much or more power than a 100W proper tungsten lightbulb.

        What a thing, who'd have thunk it?

        And "light blue touch paper & retreat immediately" sounds like good advice to me.
        When the fun stops, STOP.

        Comment


          #5
          From the article:
          "The huge machine ... climbed too much in an effort to pull away from the flat waters of the lake"

          Of all the problems I thought this plane would have, I never expected flying too much would be one of them.

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by NickFitz View Post

            ..
            Looks like it would be much easier to scramble up those bare rocks, instead of trudging through all that snow and then having to queue!
            Work in the public sector? Read the IR35 FAQ here

            Comment

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