Well that went by fast

Lots of media huffing and puffing, but not much rain (especially when compared with Debbie last month) and not too bad for wind.  Power stayed on the whole time, so yay.

So in lieu of other blog fodder, here's an insanely cool story about a guy who made Linux run on a 1971 Intel 4004 chip:

Hardware hacker Dmitry Grinberg recently achieved what might sound impossible: booting Linux on the Intel 4004, the world's first commercial microprocessor. With just 2,300 transistors and an original clock speed of 740 kHz, the 1971 CPU is incredibly primitive by modern standards. And it's slow—it takes about 4.76 days for the Linux kernel to boot.

...

While it has no practical purpose, the Linux/4004 project demonstrates the flexibility of Linux and pushes emulation to its limits.

Linux on 50 year old hardware has got to be some sort of record.

First Herculaneum scroll decoded

Now this is cool:

Newly deciphered passages from a papyrus scroll that was buried beneath layers of volcanic ash after the AD79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius may have shed light on the final hours of Plato, a key figure in the history of western philosophy.

In a groundbreaking discovery, the ancient scroll was found to contain a previously unknown narrative detailing how the Greek philosopher spent his last evening, describing how he listened to music played on a flute by a Thracian slave girl.

What's even cooler is that this is one of the carbonized scrolls that people tried to unroll decades ago, causing enormous damage to the scroll.  They were still able to scan it and put it back in order.

 

If Bach (or other composers) wrote the Cantina song from Star Wars

These guys are really good.  This is great fun.  I particularly like the Oscar Peterson version, and the Pete Townsend (Teenage Wasteland) one is a hoot.

The preserved wooden artifacts from Herculaneum

It's not just carbonized scrolls, there is a whole set of wooden items that have been uncovered at Herculaneum, the Roman city which, with Pompeii, was buried by an eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD.  It's incredibly rare to have wooden items preserved for 2000 years, but there are a bunch.

When you consider that only a quarter of Herculaneum has been excavated, you have to wonder what else is waiting discovery.

Reading old scrolls

A couple months ago I posted about efforts to read the carbonized scrolls excavated from Herculaneum.  This is an update on that - progress is being made shockingly fast.  First up, a video that gives an easily digestible introduction to the efforts being made.

Groundbreaking efforts by the University of Kentucky team, but there are a lot of teams working toward solving the Vesuvius Challenge Prize.  This article highlights some of those efforts but essentially what has happened is that teams started with what was a brick of charcoal and found this:

There very well may be ancient lost texts that can be recovered here.

S.S. Minnow still going strong after 60 years

This is cool.

The day the Titanic's horn spoke again

Eighty-seven years after the Titanic slipped below the waves, the horn blew again.  This is the story of how that happened.

 

The crowd reaction on that day is really something.

Pigs Hackers In Space!

This isn't quite the 21st Century I was promised, but this sounds like a very interesting idea:

Assuming the weather and engineering gods cooperate, a US government-funded satellite dubbed Moonlighter will launch at 1212 EDT (1612 UTC) on Sunday, hitching a ride on a SpaceX rocket before being releasing into Earth's orbit.

And in roughly two months, five teams of DEF CON hackers will do their best to successfully remotely infiltrate and hijack the satellite while it's in space. The idea being to try out offensive and defensive techniques and methods on actual in-orbit hardware and software, which we imagine could help improve our space systems.

Each year there is a security conference held in Las Vegas.  The Black Hat Briefings are pretty corporate and button-down, but it's pretty much the high point of the security year.  Black Hat's red headed stepchild is held immediately afterwards: DEFCON is where security folks let down their hair and let their freak flag fly.  In may ways, it's more interesting than Black Hat.

For example, they set up a network where people play "capture the flag", computer security style.  The attendees are also notoriously skeptical of the government, and have a "Spot The Fed" contest each year.

This is a very interesting approach taken by the Fed.Gov in that the visibility and coolness factor of hacking a satellite in orbit will totally overwhelm the natural tendency of the attendees to avoid all things Fed.

Interestingly, Dwight (your go-to guy for obituaries and which coaches have been fired) is also your go-to guy on DEFCON reporting.

Communications for preppers

Secure comms are an issue for any emergency/disaster/Zombie-apocalypse scenario.  This looks like a pretty nifty solution for that problem.

Huh. It seems that the Moon needs a time zone

There are plans to build a GPS and data network, and it no workee (very well) without a reference time.  The Moon doesn't have that.  Yet.

Time being one of the fundamental parts of determining position using satellites, interoperability standards had to be agreed upon after the launches of the various GNSS constellations. 

That has meant making up for slight timing differences between GPS, Galileo and other GNSS systems by introducing fixed offsets – something that everyone involved would prefer to avoid in building out LunaNet and similar systems. 

ESA navigation system engineer Pietro Giordano said a joint international effort to create some form of Lunar standard time began after a November meeting of ESA's Space Research and Technology Centre. 

 I must say, this is very much the 21st Century that I was promised.

Seen oot and aboot

The Costco parking lot got a pretty sweet visitor.

It looks like a Willys MD, otherwise known as the M38A1 Truck, although repainted in Florida beachy colors.  If I'm right on the model it would be from the mid 1950s.

Building a medieval castle using only medieval technology

It seems that this is a thing, and has been for a couple decades:

Guedelon Castle in Burgundy, France, is built using only techniques and materials that were available in the Middle Ages. Michel Guyot and Maryline Martin started the project in 1997, and it has been nearing its inevitable completion ever since. Today, it has created over 55 jobs and draws more than 300,000 visitors every year.

It looks pretty cool:

Here's their web site, Building A Castle From Scratch.  I'd go there, if I ever get the chance.

Flight Deck Operations

The Queen Of The World found this.  It explains the different types of people who work on what is said to be the most dangerous workplace in the world - an aircraft carrier flight deck.



Son-In-Law is responsible for all the guys wearing brown shirts on his carrier.

Reproduction firearms

We picked up a flintlock pistol for my pirate costume at Party City, which meant that it was cheap and plastic.  The Queen Of The World thought it looked terrible, and so she went on Amazon and found this:

It is stunningly beautiful - their claim of "Museum Reproduction Quality" is no joke.  The box had a little brochure of some of the items they sell

Lemat pistol:

Broomhandle Mauser:

Thompson (they also have a drum magazine model):

There are a ton more, also including swords and other such.  The workmanship on my pistol is a delight, and it cost around $45 - a lot more than that piece of plastic junk from Party City, but this isn't going to end up in a land fill.  If you like cool old firearms, you'll enjoy their web site.  They even have a blog.

Denix is a small family-owned business that's been around for fifty years, producing a quality product.  If you are a reenactor you can get some kit from them.  If you are putting together a pirate costume, you can get some kit there.  Recommended.

Speed check

This is an old story - I posted it ten years or so ago - but I hadn't known that the pilot of the SR-71 that requested a speed check from Air Traffic Control told this story.  He's really funny.

Free online University course on Hadrian's Wall

This is pretty cool:

This six week course offers a comprehensive introduction to Hadrian’s Wall and its people and raises fascinating issues concerning colonisation, cultural transformation, immigration, integration and imperialism. We will explore life in the region before the construction of the Wall, the arrival of the Roman army and its impact on the local population. Detailed case studies will consider the different features of the Wall and its surroundings, considering the way in which the frontier system evolved throughout the Roman period. The changing face of both the Roman army and indigenous populations is richly illuminated through archaeological finds and reconstructions. To appreciate the range and character of native people, soldiers’ families, slaves, merchants and migrants, we will examine their homes, dress, diet, rituals and religious beliefs.

It's free, and open to everyone:

This course is intended for anyone with an interest in the archaeology or history of the Roman Empire. It focuses on the most heavily fortified Roman frontier, located in what is now northern England. It does not require any reading before you start, or previous experience of studying these subjects.

It's taught by a professor at Newcastle University in the UK.  If you have an interest in archaeology (*cough* Tim *cough*) then check it out.

Nazi sub base gets repurposed as a data center

It is near the termination of submarine cables from the Middle East, and so there's low latency (combined with political stability).  And it's pretty near bomb proof:

That has made Marseille a magnet for data-center operations—where data and application providers can "put platforms in a safe environment in terms of legal and financial environments like Europe and particularly the European Union and at the same time be connected to 46 countries directly with a very low latency," Coquio explained. "Basically, in the last 15 years, we have [cut] the cost of a submarine cable to a [10th of what it was] and multiplied the capacity by 50."

As a result of this transformation of the Internet world and the corresponding rise of Marseille as a digital content center for the world, demand for co-location space has driven Interxion to undertake an interesting construction project: the conversion of a former Nazi submarine base into a seaside data center.

Pretty cool in a Bond-villian-evil-lair sort of way.  But it has a way to go for top spot in that category:

In an underground bunker 100 feet beneath Stockholm lies a unique facility operated by the Swedish ISP Bahnhof. It’s become known as the “James Bond Villain Data Center” after it was featured on the Pingdom web site last year. Dean Nelson of Data Center Pulse recently got a tour of the data center from Bahnhof CEO Jon Karlung, who provided a look at the many unusual features of the facility, a former military bunker designed to withstand a hydrogen bomb blast. Karlung has said he drew his inspiration for many of the center’s flourishes from James Bond villains (especially Ernst Blofeld), hence the waterfalls, greenhouse-style NOC, glass-enclosed conference room “floating” above the colocation floor, and blue-lit diesel engines (supposedly used in German submarines).

But the Marseille one has "low latency", doesn't it?

Metallica - You're Looking At Country

This is one of the coolest things I've seen in ages:

Welcome to the colliding of your two little musical worlds, where that classic country connoisseur and twang hound in you meets the hard-driving metalhead who punched a hole in your bedroom wall in 7th grade while listening to Master of Puppets. This is what occurred when Metallica showed up in Nashville Thursday night (1-26) for their first show in Music City in 10 years, and were graced by the presence of other than country music legend Loretta Lynn who was there to soak it all in. 

... 

About halfway through the show, frontman James Hetfield took a break, and guitarist Kirk Hammett and bass player Rob Trujillo took the opportunity to play a stripped down version of Loretta’s 1971 hit, “You’re Lookin’ at Country.”

That's so awesome that it's in danger of collapsing into a black hole of awesome - not least that Loretta went to their concert.  The video quality is pretty bad here but it's a cool moment.



And who knew there was a web site called Saving Country Music?

DARPA creates a tracked wheel

This is cool:



Here's the story:

The DARPA Ground X-Vehicle Technologies (GXV-T) program has some pretty ambitious goals, all based around the fundamental concept that it’s getting harder and harder for armor vehicles to provide protection against modern weaponry, so instead of heading down a dead-end path to larger, heavier, more cumbersome, expensive, and less maneuverable vehicles, a new path should be taken.

The program lists its very ambitious goals as:

• Reduce vehicle size and weight by 50 percent
• Reduce onboard crew needed to operate vehicle by 50 percent
• Increase vehicle speed by 100 percent
• Access 95 percent of terrain
• Reduce signatures that enable adversaries to detect and engage vehicles

That has to be the most expensive tire ever made, but if they can pull off even half of their goals than it could be cheap.

Interesting prepping videos

$5 buys you tools to make a camp, making Roman concrete, casting a bronze skillet.

Not exactly my thing, but pretty cool