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lonelygirl15aon Abandoned and Little-Known Airfields

One person's tireless work to document airfields from the past

lonelygirl15aon A midcentury map of New York, packed with weird local lore (2019)

Such takings of property under eminent domain had happened before; it was not a new idea in 2005.

This case was the result of a suit against such takings. The suit failed, and the takings continued.

lonelygirl15aon A midcentury map of New York, packed with weird local lore (2019)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

"[The Court held, 5–4, that the use of eminent domain to transfer land from one private owner to another private owner to further economic development does not violate the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment."

lonelygirl15aon Fitting 44% More Data on a C64/1541 Floppy Disk

I replaced the write-protect sensor with a toggle switch.

lonelygirl15aon Ask HN: Why are we more and more talking about the past here on HN?

There was a time, not long ago, when new products were built on new ideas, and the marketplaces were very, very heterogeneous.

Now, the marketplaces are largely commoditized and new products are incremental improvements and extensions of previous ones. The old ideas and products are still there, fascinating history to be explored.

An example - on a new Linux system, look at the man page for "termcap", and you will find configuration data for the Teletype model 33 and the Lear Siegler ADM-3. That makes people like me go "Hmm!" in a fascinated tone of voice.

History is like dead reckoning navigation. We only understand where we are by knowing where we were and what was done to get from there to here, and there are those of us very interested in such things.

This is only a partial answer to your question.

lonelygirl15aon 22% jump in airfares expected as airlines tackle climate change

Use roads at 60mph? I guess they're most efficient if they don't start the engines at all and you put the plane on a boat or a train.

lonelygirl15aon 22% jump in airfares expected as airlines tackle climate change

No, they typically fly at the most profitable speeds within the constraints of the flight and airspace parameters. Which results designing the planes to be efficient at those speeds.

https://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/articles/qtr_...

lonelygirl15aon 22% jump in airfares expected as airlines tackle climate change

Realizing that there are other issues with which to contend, why not just start slowing down airline flights?

Drag, and therefore fuel used, is a function of velocity squared. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics)#Aerodynamics

Slowing down from 500 to 400 knots adds a half hour to a 1000 nm flight, but could provide maybe 25-30% fuel savings?

lonelygirl15aon Exploded SpaceX rocket devastated a town and a wildlife reserve

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/exped...

Tyranny of the rocket equation

lonelygirl15aon The early days of Linux

I think the Alpha port stands out in memory because that was the cause for overcoming 32-bitness.

lonelygirl15aon Boustrophedon

Many dot matrix printers were boustrophedonic.

Also how I mow my lawn.

lonelygirl15aon Atari 800XL Remake

Or one of the Foenix systems, like:

https://c256foenix.com/16bits-new-retro-computers/?v=7516fd4...

lonelygirl15aon FAA selects sustainable design for new control towers at smaller airports

There is exactly this in Leesburg, VA. https://www.leesburgva.gov/departments/airport/about-leesbur...

It's getting closed, though, and replaced with a physical tower. https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2023/march/22/r...

lonelygirl15aon The Apple II Age: How the Computer Became Personal

Elektronika in the Soviet Union sold a number of LSI-11 home computers.

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

Fun to ponder what would it be like if the PDP-11 (and descendents like VAX) architecture had become dominant instead of x86.

lonelygirl15aon Walking 8k Steps Twice a Week Could Prolong Your Life, Study Finds

The word “mile” comes from Latin “mille passus”, one thousand paces. A pace was measures from same footfalls: left, left, left.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile#Historical

lonelygirl15aon 'Financial Times' Issues 103-Year-Old Correction (2017)

Reminds me of when the New York Times apologized to Robert Goddard when it turned out that rockets worked fine in outer space after all.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2018/07/19/the-corre...

lonelygirl15aon The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

I seem to recall that Sun put ZFS under a license that has been deemed incompatible with the GPL by pretty much everyone except Canonical, and so that it can't be integrated with the kernel but must remain a "bolt-on" for legal reasons.

It won't surprise me if one of these days Oracle decides that Canonical is a ripe lawsuit target over ZFS.

lonelygirl15aon The track of a bicycle back tire [pdf]

As a bicyclist, I use my front brake vastly more than the rear.

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/brakturn.html

lonelygirl15aon Linux Looks to Retire Itanium/IA64 Support

Relevant conversation here 11 days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34651799

lonelygirl15aon Ask HN: What sub $200 product improved your 2022

Shove crinkled-up newspaper into the boots, it will absorb moisture and hasten drying (was taught this by an Icelandic hiking guide).

lonelygirl15aon The original wing walkers who defied death

I think the Flying Circus in Bealeton, VA (near DC) brought back free wing-walking (i.e. not strapped to the plane), and continues their barnstorming airshows to this day:

https://www.flyingcircusairshow.com/

lonelygirl15aon NANDputer Lives (2013)

That's been done - the Apollo Guidance Computer that took people to the Moon was built from purely NOR gates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer#Logic...

lonelygirl15aon Ask HN: What is your fav “I can't believe in 2022 this still doesn't work right”

https://danluu.com/input-lag/

lonelygirl15aon Ask HN: Examples of Microkernels?

Nobody, and I mean literally NOBODY, can spell "Fuchsia".

lonelygirl15aon HDD Clicker – HDD Sound Simulator

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5908141/

"Sonification of network traffic flow for monitoring and situational awareness"

I've seen discussions on this concept back to the 90s but haven't found one yet. I think one is in this book:

https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/selectedpapers/

lonelygirl15aon Crumb Circuit Simulator

Imagine driving to a computer store in the late 70s or 80s, and buying a floppy disk in a stapled plastic sandwich baggie with some Xeroxed documentation stapled to it for $20. In 1980 dollars.

I was pretty happy to buy this app this morning for $8 2022 dollars - the current price of an ice cream cone.

lonelygirl15aon Telescope Rule (2008)

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/4284.315122

It's "Thompson's Rule", submitted by Bill McKeeman of the Wang Institute (a/o Sep 1985).

lonelygirl15aon Long Live Software Easter Eggs

The Basic Editor Monitor on the Sperry Univac OS/3, when it had an error, would put an ASCII image of a vague insect on the screen and state something like that "BEM, the Bug-Eyed Monster, strikes again".

lonelygirl15aon Ask HN: If you designed a new programming language, what would its features be?

I would like a language with real-world data types, with units and automatic unit conversion and checking. Along with Ada-style-ish value limitations (e.g. variable must be positive, or between 0 and 100, etc.)

> length i = 12 inches

> length h = 1 foot

> i * h

area 1 square_foot

> square_inches(ih)

area 144 square_inches

> hours(ih)

error: type mismatch

Time and money, as well (currency conversion not required)

lonelygirl15aon Signed integers are asymmetrical

Signed integers are symmetrical on architectures like the Sperry Univac 1100/2200 and derivatives (still available from Unisys, I believe) which use ones complement, and therefore have both positive and negative zero.