George Budd @Gbudd@qoto.org

“For some reason our AWS bill spikes 4% in February once every four years. I don’t understand why.”

“You're comprised of 84 minerals, 23 Elements & 8galls of water spread over 38 trillion cells.
You're built from nothing by the spare parts of the Earth you've consumed according to a set of instructions hidden in a double helix, small enough to be carried by a sperm.
You're recycled butterflies, plants, rocks, streams, firewood, wolf fur & shark teeth, broken down to their smallest parts & rebuilt into our planets most complex living thing.
You're not living on Earth, you are Earth.”

- Aubrey Marcus

“We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion-year-old carbon”
Joni Mitchell

the last of today's nerd dump: look at this incredible illustration of the complexity involved in sending photos via cable across the Atlantic in 1926! I believe this is an illustration of the Bartlane Cable Picture Transmission System which translated images into variations of five-hole punches onto Baudot telegraphic tape and then transmitted, reversing the process at the other end using a teletype machine. #othernetworks

Mars Helicopter Ingenuity was a 30-day technology demonstration mission to test powered, controlled flight on another world.

Ingenuity completed its tech demo phase after the 3rd flight on April 25, 2021. After another 2 flights, it transitioned to a new operations demonstration phase.

Almost 3 years later, Ingenuity has completed 72 flights and is still going strong in support of the overall mission.

Overachiever much?
👏

https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/#Flight-Log
#Ingenuity #Mars
8/n

Swedish mathematician Niels Fabian Helge von Koch was born #OTD in 1870.

He established results in number theory, including one that relates the Riemann hypothesis to the asymptotic distribution of prime numbers. But he is probably best known for what we call the "Koch Curve" – one of the first examples of a fractal.

@daveliepmann I don't think spreadsheets could be invented today. "It's too complicated. Users won't understand. Who would buy this?" Instead of lifting peopled up towards general computing, we have dumbed computers down to cater for 7 second attention spans. We have A/B tested our way into stupidity.

After making my morning coffee I thought I’d experiment with a vacuum-insulated cup and some 100°C water… I’m betting it’ll go for a pretty long time!

So how do you make water at the South Pole?

It might seem simple since there are seven million cubic miles of frozen freshwater all around us, but the reality is a bit more interesting.

This past week we performed some annual maintenance on the rodwell. Over time, the ~160 foot hole from the surface to the reservoir begins to close up and needs to be re-melted. We do this by slowly lowering a 400 pound cone of naval brass heated to 250 F back down the hole.

David Mills, a true Internet pioneer, passed away on January 17, 2024. Probably best known for having led the development and maintenance of #NTP for decades, he was also involved in great deal of early Internet protocol development.

https://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/internet-history/2024-January/009265.html

The nature of emergency medicine means I can walk out of a room where someone was just pronounced dead after we did CPR on him for an hour and immediately have someone start yelling at me to get them a turkey sandwich.

After reading all about Stirling engines, I bought myself a miniature desktop model that can be powered by my cup of tea!

Atlassian have been studying the experience of their employees and that of other companies as they work remotely. They feel they still have things to learn but they have released their study.
#wfh #RemoteWork

In brief, they have found so far:

~ 92% of Atlassians say our distributed work policy allows them to do their best work.
~ Representation of women has doubled in certain geographies
~ 91% say it’s an important reason why they stay at Atlassian

https://www.atlassian.com/blog/distributed-work/distributed-work-report

async await async await async await async await
in the function, the mighty function, the child thread sleeps tonight 🎵

I love this, h/t @codinghorror

> Nobody wants developers to reinvent the wheel (again), but reading about how a wheel works is a poor substitute for the experience of driving around on a few wheels of your own creation.

https://blog.codinghorror.com/when-understanding-means-rewriting/

At the #library

Me: Okay. I’m going to go browse some books. You two stay here and read quietly.

9yo: What if we get abducted?

Me: Be annoying until they let you go.

Other library patron: *snort*

#parenthood

All engineering is reverse engineering if you document things poorly enough.

Jim quietly smiled in response while looking away from the young software engineer, “You know what I did before this? Before coding?”
“No.”
“I was a chemical plant operator. You can’t just restart one of those. The fire, the spark, the pressurization, the catalyzation, it has to keep running. Has to be tended at all times. You walk the jungles of process lines at 4AM and feel their swirling and vibration and heat. They are a physical thing. An obligation. They are more a child than the thing back there will ever be, John. You drop them and they break forever. You talk about your fear of machines. But I know someone killed by a machine.”
John started to talk, but was gently preempted in a rumbly voice.
“A human decided that. Not the braided stainlessless steel hose rotting away. A human decided it could last longer, to save money. That machine was just a messenger for the choice of a man.”

Being afraid doesn’t say anything bad about you, it’s your body’s signal to you that something in your environment is possibly dangerous. It’s just as right and worthy as any other feeling of being felt, and doesn’t mean you can’t handle the thing you’re afraid of - just that there’s possibly danger.

this is the only xkcd that matters and i've kept it bookmarked for years since i first found it