- 52 Factorial (czep.net)
They seem harmless enough, 52 thin slices of laminated cardboard with colorful designs printed on their sides. Yet, as another illustration of the mantra that complexity begins from the most simple systems, the number of variations that these 52 cards can produce is virtually endless. The richness of most playing card games owes itself to this fact.
- 89 things I know about Git commits (jvt.me)
In no particular order, some things I’ve learned about Git commits and commit history, over the last 12 years. This is a mix of experience in companies with teams of 2-12 people, as well as in Open Source codebases with a vast range of contributors.
- A blast from the past: Disassembling DOS (softwarelitigationconsulting.com)
from Undocumented DOS: A Programmer’s Guide to Reserved MS-DOS Functions and Data Structures (2nd edition, 1994. Copyright (c) Andrew Schulman 1994-2020. All rights reserved. [This nearly-ancient text (along with others from Undocumented DOS and Undocumented Windows) is being presented as a case study in some methodologies of software reverse engineering, applied to mass-market software. Note that this chapter appeared in the 2nd edition of the book, not in the 1st edition.]
- A brief history of liquid computers (royalsocietypublishing.org)
A substrate does not have to be solid to compute. It is possible to make a computer purely from a liquid. I demonstrate this using a variety of experimental prototypes where a liquid carries signals, actuates mechanical computing devices and hosts chemical reactions.
- A ToC of the 20 part linker essay (lwn.net)
Since I couldn’t find any well-linked ToC of Ian’s 20-part essay on linkers either on his blog, or here, I decided to post one. (And yes, I know the post URLs are consecutive numbers; nevertheless…)
- Billiards is a good game (mag.uchicago.edu)
Michelson’s wonder was what his head did with his hands, and a few boxes and rotating mirrors. He measured things, especially things that were regarded as unmeasurable, ineffable, and precious as life itself. Among other things, he had measured light and a star. I watched him play billiards nearly every noon for several months before he retired from the University, and, in introducing myself, I could further say with equal truth, “Shake the hand that shook the hand of John L. Sullivan.” If I get the right opening, though, I prefer saying, “When young, I watched Michelson play billiards.”
- BlogScroll (blogscroll.com)
Welcome to BlogScroll! 👋 This is an open directory of personal sites and blogs, maintained entirely on GitHub. This project was created by Den Delimarsky in an effort to bring attention to little digital gardens people maintain outside, well - walled gardens.
- Breath of God: Tripping on Xenon Gas (tripsitter.substack.com)
Xenon induces a “euphoric nothingness” state of consciousness, which is void of all of these emotions. There’s no attachment, no resentment, no shame, no guilt, nothing.
- CyanIIde Applesoft Interpreter (paleotronic.com)
This is an Applesoft BASIC editor that extracts and updates code into a live Apple II VM. You can load examples through the dropdowns at the top-right of the screen. The CodeMirror-based editor separates out ‘stacked’ BASIC lines to make them easier to read.
- Ethernet History Deepdive – Why Do We Have Different Frame Types? (lostintransit.se)
In the early 70’s, Robert Metcalfe, inspired by ARPANET and ALOHAnet had been working on developing what we today know as Ethernet. He published a paper in 1976, together with David Boggs, named Ethernet: Distributed Packet Switching for Local Computer Networks:
- Get a person at the IRS (github.com/getaaron)
- Getting the World Record in HATETRIS (hallofdreams.org)
There’s no possibility at all of getting four lines at once with a well-placed I piece, since the game will never under any circumstances give you an I-piece that you could use to clear four lines.
- GitHub Business Card (scastiel.dev)
- Great American Rail-Trail (railstotrails.org)
The Great American Rail-Trail® is the nation’s first cross-country multiuse trail, stretching more than 3,700 miles between Washington, D.C., and Washington State. This trail is an iconic piece of American infrastructure that will connect thousands of miles of rail-trails and other multiuse trails, serving tens of millions of people living along the route as well as those who visit the trail from around the country and the world.
- Guide to attending a space launch in person (countdowntoignition.com)
Every launch site operates a bit differently. For most you’ll need a ticket or reservation of some kind, others may let you just turn up while some may not be open to the public at all…
- Heinlein’s Fan Mail Solution (kk.org)
Heinlein engineered his own nerdy solution to a problem common to famous authors: how to deal with fan mail. In the days before the internet, Heinlein’s solution was fabulous. He created a one page FAQ answer sheet – minus the questions. Then he, or rather his wife Ginny, checked off the appropriate answer and mailed it back.
- Homemade liquid nitrogen generator using Joule Thomson Throttling (homemadeliquidnitrogen.com)
I determined that there was no good tutorial on how the average person can liquefy nitrogen or air. A few references to cryocoolers, which use an internal helium Stirling engine to create a cold head exist, and I even saw one person use this as a means to liquefy nitrogen, allowing the gas to condenses as it passes over the head. This method is cheating because it relies on a self-contained refrigeration unit. I wanted to do this using regenerative cooling just like Carl Linde back in 1895.
- How Cathode Ray Tubes Work (youtube.com)
- How does a computer/calculator compute logarithms? (zachartrand.github.io)
There are many functions on a scientific or graphing calculator that we are introduced to as high school students that, we are told, just work. You select the function, put in the value that you need to calculate, hit “=” or “ENTER”, and SHABAM! You have the correct answer to some arbitrary number of digits that you are ensured are all 100% accurate.
- How the Square Root of 2 Became a Number (quantamagazine.org)
The ancient Greeks wanted to believe that the universe could be described in its entirety using only whole numbers and the ratios between them — fractions, or what we now call rational numbers. But this aspiration was undermined when they considered a square with sides of length 1, only to find that the length of its diagonal couldn’t possibly be written as a fraction.
- How to avoid a BSOD on your 2 billion dollar spacecraft (clarkwakeland.com)
The lifecycle of most spacecraft consists of a final phase where all the systems are tested to various levels of synergy. One of the most important and complex set of tests are the Closed Loop Tests (CLTs), where the spacecraft is sent simulated orbital data, and then its attitude response is observed.
- How to See Bright, Vivid Images in Your Mind’s Eye (photographyinsider.info)
Before I learned the technique that I’m about to share with you, experimenting with photographic composition was a manual task. I had to physically stand in front of my subject and actually move things. That, or I would fetch a sketchbook & pencils and begin drawing my ideas on paper.
- HOW TO SUCCEED IN MRBEAST PRODUCTION (leaked PDF) (simonwillison.net)
Whether or not you enjoy MrBeast’s format of YouTube videos (here’s a 2022 Rolling Stone profile if you’re unfamiliar), this leaked onboarding document for new members of his production company is a compelling read. \ It’s a snapshot of what it takes to run a massive scale viral YouTube operation in the 2020s, as well as a detailed description of a very specific company culture evolved to fulfill that mission.
- IMSAI 8080 Restoration (retrocmp.de)
- Inside the guidance system and computer of the Minuteman III nuclear missile (rightto.com)
The Minuteman missile was introduced in 1962 as a key part of America’s nuclear deterrent. The Minuteman III missile is currently the only US land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), with 400 missiles ready for launch, spread across five central states.1 The missile contains a precision guidance system, capable of delivering a warhead to a target 13,000 km away (8000 miles) with an accuracy of 200 meters (660 feet).
- Is My Blue Your Blue? (ismy.blue)
People have different names for the colors they see. Language can affect how we memorize and name colors. This is a color naming test designed to measure your personal blue-green boundary.
- John Wheeler Saw the Tear in Reality (quantamagazine.com)
When Johnny Wheeler was 4 years old, splashing in the bathtub in Youngstown, Ohio, he looked up at his mother and asked, “What happens when you get to the end of things?” The question would haunt him for the rest of his life. What happens when you get to the bottom of space? What happens when you get to the edge of time? It would lead him to suggest that space-time can’t be the true fabric of the universe. It would compel him, even in his final days, to search for some deeper reality beneath space-time and to wonder whether, somehow, that reality loops back to us.
- KAPLAY, The JavaScript easy game library (kaplayjs.com)
KAPLAY is the spiritual successor (and fork) of Kaboom.js, a JavaScript library that helps you make games fast and fun!
- Learning Music (learningmusic.ableton.com)
In these lessons, you’ll learn the basics of music making. No prior experience or equipment is required; you’ll do everything right here in your browser.
- Liquid Layers (grantkot.com)
- Making a falling sand simulator by Jason McGhee (jason.today)
- Martin Luther King Jr. in Berlin (german-way.com)
When Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia on January 15, 1929, his birth certificate listed his name as “Michael King Jr.” – after his father Michael King Senior. How and when did Michael King become Martin Luther King?
- Minesweeper Twist (polyreplay.com)
A variant of the classic game Minesweeper on an irregular grid, where each tile can have between 6 and 10 neighbors, leading to more challenging and mind-bending levels.
- Moon | Typeset In The Future (typesetinthefuture.com)
After studying 2001: A Space Odyssey in intimate detail, Duncan Jones’s Moon was the logical choice for my second foray into sci-fi typography. As its opening shot illustrates, Moon is a bleak, lonely, and above all beautiful love-letter to classic sci-fi typography and design. It’s also one of my favorite sci-fi films of all time.
- Notes on Tajikistan (mattlakeman.org)
Over the summer, I spent about two weeks in Tajikistan, mostly in Dushanbe (the capital) and various points along the Pamir Highway, which borders Afghanistan and later leads into Kyrgyzstan.
- On whether we’re living in a simulation (scottaaronson.blog)
If they say, maybe you should live your life differently, just from knowing that you might be in a simulation, I respond: I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I have a vague feeling that this discussion predates the 80 or so years we’ve had digital computers! Why not just join the theologians in that earlier discussion, rather than pretending that this is something distinctive about computers? Is it relevantly different here if you’re being dreamed in the mind of God or being executed in Python? OK, maybe you’d prefer that the world was created by a loving Father or Mother, rather than some nerdy transdimensional adolescent trying to impress the other kids in programming club. But if that’s the worry, why are you talking to a computer scientist? Go talk to David Hume or something.
- One Million Checkboxes (onemillioncheckboxes.com)
(checking a box checks it for everyone!)
- One Minute Focus - Improve Mental Focus in 1 Minute (oneminutefocus.com)
Look at the dot & breathe for just 1 min to improve mental focus for your next task
- Press the ‘f’ and ’d’ keys randomly. As randomly as you can. I’ll try to predict which key you’ll press next. (people.ischool.berkeley.edu)
- RadioSide Internet Radio Receiver (radioside.com)
As a shortwave listener and designer, I decided to designmy own radio, combining the way of a physical radio with the vast amount of internet radio stations for use on my spare devices. While using it I realized other people will likely enjoy it as well.
- Ray Tracing in One Weekend (raytracing.github.io)
I’ve taught many graphics classes over the years. Often I do them in ray tracing, because you are forced to write all the code but you can still get cool images with no API. I decided to adapt my course notes into a how-to, to get you to a cool program as quickly as possible. It will not be a full-featured ray tracer, but it does have the indirect lighting which has made ray tracing a staple in movies. Follow these steps, and the architecture of the ray tracer you produce will be good for extending to a more extensive ray tracer if you get excited and want to pursue that.
- REBOUND (github.com/hannorein/rebound)
REBOUND is an N-body integrator, i.e. a software package that can integrate the motion of particles under the influence of gravity. The particles can represent stars, planets, moons, ring or dust particles. REBOUND is very flexible and can be customized to accurately and efficiently solve many problems in astrophysics.
- Spacewar! (masswerk.at)
This is a virtual DEC PDP-1 (emulated in HTML5/JavaScript) running the original code of “Spacewar!”, the earliest known digital video game. If available, use gamepads or joysticks for authentic gameplay — the game was originally played using custom “control boxes”.
- Standard cells: Looking at individual gates in the Pentium processor (righto.com)
Intel released the powerful Pentium processor in 1993, a chip to “separate the really power-hungry folks from ordinary mortals.” The original Pentium was followed by the Pentium Pro, the Pentium II, and others, spawning a long-running brand of high-performance processors, Intel’s flagship line until the Core processors took over in 2006. The Pentium eventually became virtually synonymous with “PC” and even made it into pop culture.
- The First Men on the Moon: The Apollo 11 Lunar Landing (firstmenonthemoon.com)
In 1969, the entire world watched as three men explored the unknown. Watch, listen, and relive the excitement of the Apollo 11 lunar landing as experienced minute-by-minute by the courageous crew of Apollo 11 and Mission Control.
- The Last Question
- The Many Lives of Null Island (stamen.com)
At risk of ruining the secret for you, Null Island is a long-running inside joke among cartographers. It is an imaginary island located at a real place: the coordinates of 0º latitude and 0º longitude, a location in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa where the Prime Meridian meets the Equator, hundreds of miles from any real dry land.
- The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained (streets.mn)
When I moved to Minneapolis from upstate New York last year, I found myself puzzled by the layout of the streets and avenues across the city. Why, for example, did every street and avenue in my neighborhood have Southeast (SE) as a suffix? And why did that change to South (S) when I went to neighborhoods like Seward and Whittier? These questions lingered in my mind while wandering the city by bike, bus and light rail. I tried to find the origin of the north–south divide and the east/not-east divide, as well as the underlying structure of the streets and avenues.
- The origins of the steam engine: An essay with interactive animated diagrams (blog.rootsofprogress.org)
Steam power did not begin with the steam engine. Long before seventeenth-century scientists discovered the true nature of vacuums and atmospheric pressure, steam- and heat-using devices were being developed. Here we’ll explore the long, little-known story of how the steam engine evolved. And have fun playing with the ancient devices.
- The self awareness of the conscious mind (danielleeadair.wordpress.com)
Lucas Cranach- The elder Adam and Eve. This was a popular subject in 16th century art and is an interesting painting in terms of self awareness. It is capturing the moment in the biblical story where Eve takes a bite from the apple from the tree of knowledge and is about to give the apple to Adam. Adam in doubt, she has been transformed by eating a piece. The animals around them lived in a semi aware blissful state, after there is more self awareness with Adam and Eve. It is a process we all go through as babies are born in a blissful state and don’t even know they exist having a continuous blissful state and acquire later on that we are separate from the world and within conflict within the world. We are thrown out of our own garden of Eden by consciousness. No body knows like humans of our own existence, our own minds and unique position we occupy. Humans are the only beings that can reflect on their own mind.
- The time I spent three months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixed it in 1 line of code
I originally told the story over on the other site, but I thought I’d share it here. With a bonus! \ I was working on a hardware accessory for the OG iPad. The accessory connected to the iPad over USB and provided MIDI in/out and audio in/out appropriate for a musician trying to lay down some tracks in Garage Band.
- Thirteen Ways of Looking at Art (salmagundi.skidmore.edu)
Art is useless, said Wilde. Art is for art’s sake—that is, for beauty’s sake. But why do we possess a sense of beauty to begin with? A question we will never answer. Perhaps it’s just a kind of superfluity of sexual attraction. Nature needs us to feel drawn to other human bodies, but evolution is imprecise. In order to go far enough, to make that feeling strong enough, it went too far. Others are powerfully lovely to us, but so, in a strangely different, strangely similar way, are flowers and sunsets. Art, in turn, this line of thought might go, is a response to natural beauty. Stunned by it, we seek to rival it, to reproduce it, to prolong it. Flowers fade, sunsets melt from moment to moment; the love of bodies brings us grief. Art abides. “When old age shall this generational waste, / Thou shalt remain.”
- Twenty years of Valgrind (nnethercote.github.io)
On his last day he dropped by my office in the Computer Laboratory to say goodbye. I asked what he would be doing now, and he said he was going to spend some time on a project of his called Valgrind. “What’s Valgrind?” I asked. It was one of those this-will-change-your-life moments.
- Was the Internet created to survive a nuclear strike? (siliconfolklore.com)
This is the story of the various histories of the Internet, where they came from and which ones are real.
- Weird things I learned while writing an x86 emulator (timedbg.com)
- What Could Explain the Gallium Anomaly? (quantamagazine.org)
Physicists have ruled out a mundane explanation for the strange findings of an old Soviet experiment, leaving open the possibility that the results point to a new fundamental particle.
- What is Entropy? (johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com)
It’s easy to wax poetic about entropy, but what is it? I claim it’s the amount of information we don’t know about a situation, which in principle we could learn. But how can we make this idea precise and quantitative? To focus the discussion I decided to tackle a specific puzzle: why does hydrogen gas at room temperature and pressure have an entropy corresponding to about 23 unknown bits of information per molecule?
- Why Is Chile So Long? (unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com)
Chile is so long, it’s curved. How long is it? Why not longer? Why is no other country as thin? How does that make Chileans incomprehensible? All your answers in today’s article!
- Why is the Speed of Light So Fast? (Part 1) (profmattstrassler.com)
What in the name of physics — and chemistry and biology — is responsible for these bewildering features of reality? The answer is fascinating, and originates in particle physics and the resulting structure of matter. It is surprisingly intricate, though, so I’m going to approach this step-by-step over three blog posts. Here’s the first.
- Why This Great Mathematician Wanted a Heptadecagon on His Tombstone (scientificamerican.com)
Mathematician Gauss left behind a trophy case of mathematical achievements to highlight on his tombstone, but above all he wanted a regular heptadecagon etched on it
- Willingham Sends Fables Into the Public Domain (billwillingham.substack.com)
As of now, 15 September 2023, the comic book property called Fables, including all related Fables spin-offs and characters, is now in the public domain. What was once wholly owned by Bill Willingham is now owned by everyone, for all time. It’s done, and as most experts will tell you, once done it cannot be undone. Take-backs are neither contemplated nor possible.
- WordStar: A Writer’s Word Processor (sfwriter.com)
Many science-fiction writers — including myself, Roger MacBride Allen, Gerald Brandt, Jeffrey A. Carver, Arthur C. Clarke, David Gerrold, Terence M. Green, James Gunn, Matthew Hughes, Donald Kingsbury, Eric Kotani, Paul Levinson, George R. R. Martin, Vonda McIntyre, Kit Reed, Jennifer Roberson, and Edo van Belkom — continue to use WordStar for DOS as our writing tool of choice.
- World’s First Microprocessor (firstmicroprocessor.com)
The World’s First Microprocessor was designed and developed from 1968-1970. This site describes the design work for a MOS-LSI, highly integrated, microprocessor chip set designed starting June 1968 and completed by June 1970. This highly integrated computer chip set was designed for the US Navy F14A “TomCat” fighter jet by Mr. Steve Geller and Mr. Ray Holt as part of a design team while working for Garrett AiResearch Corp under contract from Grumman Aircraft, the prime contractor for the US Navy. The MOS-LSI chips, called the MP944, were manufactured by American Microsystems, Inc of Santa Clara, California.
- Hacker News is a high-quality forum where people share links of interest to hackers and other explorers of digital space.
