I had never heard of plated-wire memory, the whole computing system of the Voyagers is interesting. Apparently a bunch of the original staff (those who are still alive) keep NASA updated with their contact information just in case they need to be contacted with any questions.

Ah, haven't lived in Michigan since the early '90s. Guess I'll have to use a different state for example now.

That's why property taxes pay for schools, so rich neighborhoods have nice schools and poor ones have crappy schools. Schools in Benton Harbor, MI, haven't been painted in 20 years and some classrooms are unusable because of roof leaks. Three hours away the high school in Gross Pointe Shores has a heated swimming pool and they go on class trips to Europe.

That's logical and practical, but unfortunately this is happening in Louisiana where logical and practical are outlawed.

This is an interesting article:

https://hackaday.com/2024/05/0...

There are no microprocessors in the CCS. Rather, the processors are built from discrete 7400-series TTL chips. The machine does not have an operating system but rather runs bare-metal instructions. Both data and instruction words are 18 bits wide, with the instruction words having a 6-bit opcode and a 12-bit address. The 64 instructions contain the usual tools for moving data in and out of registers and doing basic arithmetic, although there are only commands for adding and subtracting, not for multiplication or division. The processors access 4 kilowords of redundant plated-wire memory, which is similar to magnetic core memory in that it records bits as magnetic domains, but with an iron-nickel alloy plated onto the surface of wires rather than ferrite beads.

I mean that he's ignorant in the sense that he knows nothing about the wider world beyond his own social milieu, and has no interest in learning more. Also ignorant in that he does not even read the leading newspapers, so knows only what the butt-kissers tell him. (Apparently he was shocked recently when informed of the shortage of distance weapons and air defense interceptors, and screamed at Hegseth about it.) He's intelligent and cunning, but his overriding self-interest, utter amorality, lack of curiosity, and almost compulsive lying make him the most utterly incompetent president in the 250 years of the Untied States.

Where in Thailand they eat rice, in Peru it's potatoes. There are over 3,000 varieties of potato (really!) grown in the country, they originated there. They also eat rice, but it's just a side and almost always just the cheap short grain white variety.

One advantage Peru has over Thailand is that they have every climate there, from the Amazon rainforest, up to cloud forest, wet grasslands, tundra, dry grasslands, semi-desert, and down to the irrigated valleys on the coast in the Atacama Desert, the driest in the world. The terrain also kept communities relatively isolated so every area developed its own cuisine depending on what was abundant locally. Now that transportation allows mixing Peru has become a foodie 'Mecca'.

But he is senile, willfully ignorant, and surrounds himself with butt kissers who keep him ignorant.

They also are now building the world's largest windmills at a site just off their southern coast. They're so large they've had to construct a special ship just to transport and install the blades.

The supposed justification is "national security", apparently US radar systems are so deficient that "the enemy" (whoever it is today) could sneak their ships/aircraft/missiles close to the coast just by staying behind the windmills. At least that's their claim. Everyone involved knows it's pure bovine byproduct of course, including the ones making the claims.

We'll likely be moving to Peru if things get much worse. The government there is even more corrupt, but at least they're open and honest about it. Besides, it's the best food on the planet.

IIRC the accident statistics on Tesla and Google auto-driving vehicles show that they're safer than an average newly minted 16 year-old driver, and we've (almost) all been that person at one time.

Ad when has any member of this Sadministration bothered to comply with the Constitution, the law, or an executive order? They do whatever they feel will please the Orangutan in Chief so that he can direct some of the graft their way.

Their airfoil design was what got the aviation industry under way, no one else had worked out an actual functional design yet. Otto Lelienthal for example was killed when his glider stalled because of poor airfoil configuration. IIRC they also worked out the mechanics of a wind tunnel trying to figure out the correct shape.

Pretty much everyone ignored the Wright brothers' patents at the time, if they hadn't the worldwide aviation industry would have have been stunted for decades.

Aircraft just have an obvious beginning that pretty much everyone is aware of, feel free to pick your own example.