Snippets (technology)

Things to use or delete. See Snippets.

Can you nuke a hurricane?

• Trump suggests using nuclear weapons to stop hurricanes @ Boing Boing (August 26, 2019)
• Can You Nuke a Hurricane? by Adam Weinstein @ Mother Jones (August 9, 2011)
• Why don't we try to destroy tropical cyclones by nuking them? @ National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Research Administration, Hurricane Research Division

Siemens contractor hid logic bomb in spreadsheet

https://boingboing.net/2019/07/26/siemens-staines.html

Box kite cellular automata

• Box kite
• Lawrence Hargrave
• Cellular automaton (nonfiction)
• Wind Lover
• Tesseract kite

Zero Days

Zero Days is documentary film focused on Stuxnet, a piece of self-replicating computer malware that the U.S. and Israel unleashed to destroy a key part of an Iranian nuclear facility, and which ultimately spread beyond its intended target.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5446858/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1

Life in the age of electrical grid cyberattacks

"No problem - the Invisible Hand of the Free Market will take care of this. When the power goes down in the middle of your surgery, you can just vote with your dollars and switch to that other electric utility in your city."

• user Boundegar @ Boing Boing

Witness wire

A more simplistic application of safety wire, more commonly referred to as witness wiring, is the use of light gauge, single strand, copper wire to provide positive visual confirmation of the security or closure of specific equipment within the aerospace industry. Common applications include the security of safety equipment such as fire extinguishers, and safety equipment bags, but also as an assurance that critical system switch covers remain in place, such as those associated with the application of fire suppression, or ejection systems. This application of witness wires is widely varied, and may cover a broad range of types of equipment and numerous situations.

Witness wires also serve the purpose of providing a rapid method for ensuring critical safety equipment or systems have not been used or tampered with since their last repair, reset, or inspection, and also that the container of such equipment has not been inadvertently opened, disturbed or tampered with, therefore providing confidence in their readiness for use. In a similar manner, critical system switch covers are protected from inadvertent activation, through the application of witness wire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_wire

Kryha

The Kryha machine was a device for encryption and decryption, appearing in the early 1920s and used until the 1950s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryha

Cyberpunk helmet

Cyberpunk Helmet by syn9

Cyberpunk Helmet Build Steps by syn9

Via Boing Boing: Cool cyberpunk face shield with how-to steps

Project E

Project E was a joint project between the United States and the United Kingdom during the Cold War to provide nuclear weapons to the Royal Air Force (RAF) until sufficient British nuclear weapons became available. It was subsequently expanded to provide similar arrangements for the British Army of the Rhine. A maritime version of Project E known as Project N provided nuclear depth bombs used by the RAF Coastal Command.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_E

Bugged Planet

BuggedPlanet.info is a Wiki created in 2011 by Andy Müller-Maguhn, former spokesman of the Chaos Computer Club, that tries to list and track down the activities of the surveillance industry in the fields of "Lawful interception", Signals intelligence (SIGINT), Communications intelligence (COMINT) as well as tactical and strategical measures used to intercept communications and the vendors and governmental and private operators of this technology.

The site maintains a list of vendors of cyberweapons and surveillance technologies as well as a "country knowledgebase" that aims to accumulate country-specific news, activities and vendors on the topic. A special focus is placed on vendors that sell such technologies to undemocratic countries and related lobbying efforts.[ https://buggedplanet.info/

Virilio on technology and accidents

"[Paul] Virilio believes that technology cannot exist without the potential for accidents. For example, Virilio argues that the invention of the locomotive also contained the invention of derailment."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Virilio

Photos from Inside NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain Combat Center

http://thememoryhole2.org/blog/inside-norad

Ballistic gel farts

Ballistic gel farts after a bullet passes through it:

https://boingboing.net/2016/11/02/ballistic-gel-farts-after.html

Design is Fine

Ugo La Pietra, Globo Tissurato, 1968. For Zama Elettronica, Italy. Triennale Design Museum 2/ The designer with the model, 1967.

http://www.design-is-fine.org/post/162294306969/ugo-la-pietra-globo-tissurato-1968-for-zama

Via Slash:

https://slash-paris.com/en/artistes/ugo-la-pietra/a-propos

Quality control anecdote

True story. I used to work for a company that did low-cost assembly for big vendors. Razor-thin margins, which means that the whole business depends on a highly efficient supply chain composed of other low-cost suppliers. When it came to a specific production line, a change of less than 1% in components rejection would either cause a financial loss on the whole batch, or create an expensive shipping buffer which also incurred unsustainable losses. So at one point the company ditched a "mostly high-quality" supplier for a consistently terrible one. Being able to tune the production line and let it run at a predictable rate was immensely more profitable than getting fewer average component rejections.

https://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10736551&cid=54613935

Whirlwind I computer

Whirlwind I computer

Phantogram

Phantograms, also known as Phantaglyphs, Op-Ups, free-standing anaglyphs, levitated images, and book anaglyphs, are a form of optical illusion. Phantograms use perspectival anamorphosis to produce a 2D image that is distorted in a particular way so as to appear, to a viewer at a particular vantage point, three-dimensional, standing above or recessed into a flat surface. The illusion of depth and perspective is heightened by stereoscopy techniques; a combination of two images, most typically but not necessarily an anaglyph (color filtered stereo image). With common (red–cyan) 3D glasses, the viewer's vision is segregated so that each eye sees a different image.

Phantograms can be created using drawn images, photographs, or computer-generated images. Phantograms are usually placed horizontally and are intended to be viewed standing back from the image, though they can also be placed vertically and viewed at an angle from above or below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantogram

Hinman collator

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinman_collator

Teleview

Teleview was a system for projecting stereoscopic motion pictures invented by Laurens Hammond, best known as the inventor of the Hammond organ. It made its public debut on 27 December 1922 at the Selwyn Theatre in New York City, the only theater ever equipped with the system. The program included several short films, a live presentation of projected 3D shadows, and the 95-minute feature film M.A.R.S. (or The Man From M.A.R.S.), later re-released in 2D as Radio-Mania.

Submarine cable disruptions

The 2008 submarine cable disruptions were three separate incidents of major damage to submarine optical communication cables around the world. The first incident caused damage involving up to five high-speed Internet submarine communications cables in the Mediterranean Sea and Middle East from 23 January to 4 February 2008, causing internet disruptions and slowdowns for users in the Middle East and India. The incident called into doubt the safety of the undersea portion of the Internet cable system. In late February there was another outage, this time affecting a fiber optic connection between Singapore and Jakarta.

On 19 December, FLAG FEA, GO-1, SEA-ME-WE 3, and SEA-ME-WE 4 were all cut.

2011 submarine cable disruption refers to two incidents of submarine communications cables cut off on 25 December 2011. The first cut off occurred to SEA-ME-WE 3 at Suez canal, Egypt and the second cut off occurred to i2i which took place between Chennai, India and Singapore line. Both the incidents had caused the internet disruptions and slowdowns for users in the South Asia and Middle East in particular UAE.

Nuclear events

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Beard_(nuclear_weapon)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaris_(UK_nuclear_programme)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevaline

Shortt–Synchronome clock

Shortt–Synchronome clock

The Shortt–Synchronome free pendulum clock was a complex precision electromechanical pendulum clock invented in 1921 by British railway engineer William Hamilton Shortt in collaboration with horologist Frank Hope-Jones, and manufactured by the Synchronome Co., Ltd. of London, UK. They were the most accurate pendulum clocks ever commercially produced, and became the highest standard for timekeeping between the 1920s and the 1940s, after which mechanical clocks were superseded by quartz time standards. They were used worldwide in astronomical observatories, naval observatories, in scientific research, and as a primary standard for national time dissemination services. The Shortt was the first clock to be a more accurate timekeeper than the Earth itself; it was used in 1926 to detect tiny seasonal changes in the Earth's rotation rate. Shortt clocks achieved accuracy of around a second per year, although a recent measurement indicated they were even more accurate. About 100 were produced between 1922 and 1956.

Shortt clocks kept time with two pendulums, a master pendulum swinging in a vacuum tank and a slave pendulum in a separate clock, which was synchronized to the master by an electric circuit and electromagnets. The slave pendulum was attached to the timekeeping mechanisms of the clock, leaving the master pendulum virtually free of external disturbances.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortt%E2%80%93Synchronome_clock

Pstarch-Synchronome syndrome

The Shortt–Synchronome free pendulum clock was a complex precision electromechanical pendulum clock invented in 1921 by British railway engineer William Hamilton Shortt in collaboration with horologist Frank Hope-Jones, and manufactured by the Synchronome Co., Ltd. of London, UK. They were the most accurate pendulum clocks ever commercially produced, and became the highest standard for timekeeping between the 1920s and the 1940s, after which mechanical clocks were superseded by quartz time standards. They were used worldwide in astronomical observatories, naval observatories, in scientific research, and as a primary standard for national time dissemination services. The Shortt was the first clock to be a more accurate timekeeper than the Earth itself; it was used in 1926 to detect tiny seasonal changes in the Earth's rotation rate. Shortt clocks achieved accuracy of around a second per year, although a recent measurement indicated they were even more accurate. About 100 were produced between 1922 and 1956.

Shortt clocks kept time with two pendulums, a master pendulum swinging in a vacuum tank and a slave pendulum in a separate clock, which was synchronized to the master by an electric circuit and electromagnets. The slave pendulum was attached to the timekeeping mechanisms of the clock, leaving the master pendulum virtually free of external disturbances.

Paper Aircraft Released Into Space

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_Aircraft_Released_Into_Space