Recently in CONTINUITY
Monday, January 18, 2021
US Airways Flight 1549 Ditching in the Hudson River: A Pilot's Analysis
Posted at
16:10
Diogenes: “Learn to live on lentils”
The philosopher Diogenes was eating lentils for supper. He was seen by Aristippus, who said, 'If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.' Diogenes replied: “Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.” pic.twitter.com/qpY87aPbfG
— Michael Lambda (@Michael_Lambda) January 16, 2021
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02:10
Sunday, January 17, 2021
A Working Edison Light Bulb from 1896
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13:57
Tuesday, January 12, 2021
Origin of the UNIVAC 1103A Scientific Computer (1953, 1956) ERA, Sperry Rand
The Univac 1101 through 1105, all vacuum tube machines, were the first generation of ERA/Univac scientific computers. The second generation, the transistorised Univac 1107, retained the original 36 bit word length, but re-architected the machine into what would be the 1100/2200 series for decades to come. The story of the 1107 and successors picks up in my Univac Memories archive.
Posted at
19:34
So Many Ideas, So Little Time…
https://t.co/TKkruvgBth pic.twitter.com/ocy2gFRYvN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 12, 2021
Some day, let me tell you the story of MTBF.NET and DATAIMMORTALITY.COM….
Posted at
13:13
Monday, January 11, 2021
Monsanto's Plastic “Home of the Future” at Disneyland (1957)
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14:55
Sunday, January 10, 2021
Drilling Out the Microphone in Google's Stadia Game Controller
Careful Drilling Keeps Stadia From Listening In
— hackaday (@hackaday) January 10, 2021
Google’s fledgling Stadia service leverages the Chrome ecosystem to deliver streamed PC games on mobile devices, web browsers, and TVs. While not strictly required, the company even offers a dedicated Stad… https://t.co/QP4XT8RcsT
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16:31
Saturday, January 9, 2021
Most Popular Programming Languages, 1965–2019
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13:58
Friday, January 8, 2021
The Tyranny of Big Publishing
— Simon & Schuster (@simonschuster) January 7, 2021
Simon says, “Shut up”.
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14:44
Thursday, January 7, 2021
Jamie Hyneman Can't Delete His Content from Facebook
Deleting FB has only deleted my ability to log in. I don't mind if people read the stuff I posted, but I don't want to be associated with such a parasite. I'll just trash them on twitter and they can see how they like harvesting THAT data. They might prefer just deleting my page.
— Jamie Hyneman (@JamieNoTweet) January 7, 2021
Posted at
14:51
Tuesday, January 5, 2021
Orbital Launch Scorecard, 2020
Jonathan McDowell has published his “Space Activities in 2020” [PDF, 112 pages], with the authoritative data we have come to expect from this publication. Below is a summary I have extracted about orbital launch attempts in 2020 by country. There were a total of 114 orbital launch attempts from Earth in the year, of which 104 succeeded in placing their payloads in orbit. In addition, there was one successful orbital launch from the Moon, China's Chang'e 5 sample return ascender, which is not included in the table below.
| Country | Launches | Successes | Failures |
| China | 39 | 35 | 4 |
| U.S. | 37 | 34 | 3 |
| Russia | 12 | 12 | 0 |
| Europe | 10 | 9 | 1 |
| New Zealand | 7 | 6 | 1 |
| Japan | 4 | 4 | 0 |
| India | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| Iran | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Israel | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| TOTAL | 114 | 104 | 10 |
Because it has become increasingly common to deploy multiple payloads from a single orbital launch, whether constellation deployments such as SpaceX's Starlink or ride-share and cubesat swarms, the statistics for payloads orbited look very different from those of launches. Here are payloads orbited in 2020 by country,
| Country | Payloads |
| U.S. | 979 |
| Europe | 129 |
| China | 74 |
| Other | 57 |
| Russia | 22 |
| TOTAL | 1261 |
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11:50
Monday, January 4, 2021
Amazon Has Trucks Filled with Hard Drives and an Armed Guard
Amazon Has Trucks Filled with Hard Drives and an Armed Guard https://t.co/0DmMRbOywP
— Schneier Blog (@schneierblog) January 4, 2021
Related: “168 AWS Services in 2 Minutes”
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14:40
Sunday, January 3, 2021
“At Home, 2001”—Late 1960s View of the 21st Century Home
From the CBS TV series The 21st Century with Walter Cronkite.
Posted at
16:11
Saturday, January 2, 2021
Fourmilab Gridmark: Automated Benchmarks for Second Life
Available for free with full permissions in the Second Life Marketplace, with complete source code published at GitHub.
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13:52
Friday, January 1, 2021
Every Orbital Launch Of 2020
Includes launch attempts which did not reach orbit. A summary is at the end of the video.
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14:50
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
BLC1—The Proxima Centauri SETI Candidate
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12:30
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
Nobel Physics Prize Lectures, 2020
Addresses by laureates Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel, and Andrea Ghez. I have elided the five minute sanctimonious scientism liturgy at the start.
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12:15
Monday, December 28, 2020
Ma Deuce: The Venerable Browning M2 .50 Caliber Heavy Machine Gun
Still in service more than a century after its introduction. Here's an exemplar in action at the range.
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12:43
Sunday, December 27, 2020
Original Autochrome Colour Photos from Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition
Sir Ernest Shackleton's Trans-Antarctic expedition of 1914–1917 is considered to be the last major expedition of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. I have Babelised these autochrome images taken on that expedition by Frank Hurley 106 years ago. They are not colourised. pic.twitter.com/nt1kt7HRT0
— BabelColour 🎞 (@StuartHumphryes) December 27, 2020
Frank Hurley took a small number of photographs in Autochrome, an early colour process, during Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic expedition. These pictures have been corrected for fading, but are not colourised: the colour is in the original.
Posted at
23:13
How Sonar Works (Submarine Shadow Zone)
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14:46