Steve44

In addition to this core RAM there was Core Rope Memory[1] which was used as the ROM for the Apollo Guidance computer amongst others. The cores were hand woven to program in the binary, a core could be wired to produce a 0 or 1 and any changes would require the core to be woven again.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_rope_memory

Interesting idea but there is no way you could get worldwide manufacturing to have a fixed colour scheme for products. Having said that, never say never…..

In your compost heap a plastic fork isn’t going to make much difference.

In commercial composting, where it is sold on to farmers etc., I’m fairly sure there will be a specification as it’ll need to run through their spraying systems and a plastic fork or piece of bag/film could inhibit that.

There is also the issue of partially degraded micro-plastics which are then spread across the field and potentially getting into the food chain.

AFAIK cellulose, for food packaging, is only available as a clear film and not as a firm rigid plastic. I also don’t think cellulose can be recycled so the end of life is either landfill or composting.

It’s also not as functional as OPP films, that is what most of the thin clear sealed plastic packs are made from and also the windows in some packaging. This is being addressed though with products such as Natureflex film which has a cellulose core and moisture barrier coatings on both sides. These barrier coatings themselves are a form of PVC which although not compostable is in an amount which allows the film to pass current certification for composting. This does have a limitation though as it affects the bags ability to be perforated, which many of the OPP bags are.

Natureflex is also, currently, a lot more expensive than OPP so where so much is price driven there isn’t the willingness to do this.

There is a lot of product development going on in packaging and as with most industries quite a few seemingly great ideas are not practical on a large scale.

> Decomposable plastics are not new and they’re perfectly usable for “throwaway” containers. I’ve always wondered why they’re not more commonly used in these cases.

There are basically two types of "compostable" [1] plastic. One type uses an additive which allegedly breaks down the long polymer chains into smaller pieces which are then degradable. These come under a few titles, but generally called oxo-degradable. Most scientific consensus is these are nasty and just result in micro-plastic fragments being left behind.

The second is PLA, derived from corn starch. This can look like regular plastic but has a lot of limitations, mainly around the usable temperature range and isn’t suitable for any warm/hot use. There are derivations such as C-PLA which can be used for cutlery and some other limited uses, it still doesn’t perform that well with heat though.

Both of these also have challenges for their end-of-life processing. They both look like regular plastic and are very hard / impossible to sort from regular plastic which means it’s very hard to avoid contamination both ways. If some regular plastic gets into the composting stream then the whole batch of compost is contaminated and will need to destroyed. Likewise, degradable plastic contamination will destroy a recycling batch.

It’s horrendously complex and involves the whole product lifecycle.

[1] Note I’ve used the term loosely as it’s a lot more complicated than that as compostable doesn’t mean what the man ins the street generally thinks it does.

> and we did destroy all the habitats in the process.

The deforestation of the UK is a lot older than I think many people realise. I used to have a really good link but can’t locate it now, https://treesforlife.org.uk/forest/deforestation/ is a less detailed timeline which looks to convey a similar story.

> The peak for Scotland's woodlands was about 5,000 years ago, when tree cover and diversity was at its greatest extent.

> "natural changes in climate, and around 4,500 years ago" and "The treeline became lower"

> By the time the Romans arrived, over half of our native forests had been lost

> By the 18th century, woodland cover reached its all time low

I’m not sure how I feel about lambasting other countries for deforestation after we’ve done ours. Perhaps we should offer to return ours to its natural state to set a good example……..

Lots of people don't like fizzy water, I love it though. I find it has a really lovely taste and mouth-feel. I’ve never really been a soda drinker not do I have a sweet tooth so perhaps that is an element with it.

I find waters have quite a variety of tastes, my favourite by far is San Pellegrino. It also works well with a good few shakes of Angostura bitters.

The Royal Institution in London has some lovely glass objects in its basement museum. Many are originals, made onsite, and as used by scientists such as Humphry Davy and Michael Faraday.

https://www.rigb.org/visit-us/faraday-museum

There are reports that this aircraft was trailing smoke and making unusual noises before it crashed.

From my understanding of the earlier crash it was a combination of the pilot fighting an auto-trimming system and I'm not aware that was smoking on its way down.

This would seem to be a different type of incident which just happens to be in the same model of plane.

A related one is to add a second section to the question asking how much extra rope would be needed to go round a tennis ball the same 1ft further out from the ball.

For someone who doesn’t know, or hasn’t calculated/thought about it that is pretty astounding.

> "coffin corner"

I watched a TV programme a couple of years ago talking about this on the U2 as the speeds were only a few knots apart and also varied with altitude and other factors.

The image at https://i.stack.imgur.com/Lu2Xt.jpg shows the airspeed corridor the pilots have to fly through. It's constantly flying on a knife edge.

I'd say they have the same amount of time, the difference is how they choose to use it. Going away for a weekend is great use of their time if they enjoy it and also get a benefit (both physically and mentally) out of it. Doing the sport is valuable to them.

From memory the IX and IY instructions took a lot of clock cycles and I avoided them unless there was a really good reason to use them.

I've just had a quick look at an instruction cycle table and it seems that without indexing they took 4 cycles more than HL then with an index that increased to 12 more.

Ref from search returning http://www.z80.info/z80time.txt

I learned Z80 through the Sinclair stable but did play around with the 6502 and found I much preferred the Z80 way of working.

One notable thing here is they are writing a code generator and not actually programming in assembly. As a result their modules need to be more general purpose than if directly programming.

> instead chooses to focus on the end result, his success as an adult.

Most people have been through various levels of shit[0] through their lives. I believe one should acknowledge your problems but certainly not dwell on them and should put your energy and drive into the good times.

[0]Trying to think of a better word, but that covers it quite well I think.

There is now quite a range of low/zero alcohol beers and they are getting more drinkable. Some of them can be fairly nice is small quantities but they all lack the depth of a good beer. I had an interesting one brewed with Kombucha recently, that was quite an interesting drink but still not as good as a real beer can be. Erdinger Alkoholfrei wheat beer is pretty good. https://wisebartender.co.uk/ has a really good range.

All the non alcoholic wines I’ve tried have been pretty bad, more like a sweet vermouth. Can be made drinkable with some tonic water.

There is also a boom in distilled non alcoholic 'spirits' which can be OK. Again they don't have the depths of a spirit and tend to be quite light with wither floral or spicy notes. They are also expensive, Seedlip is one of the better ones but at £26 a bottle it's comparable to a decent quality spirit.

It's great that there has been so much development but they're still quite different drinks.

One aspect which is often not considered with alcohol is that it’s one of the few drugs where you’re not just taking it to experience its affect – to get drunk. There are so many fantastically variable tastes and mouth feels with drinks that for many the majority of the pleasure is actually in consuming them. Wines & beers are a pleasure to drink and can go extremely well with food, often adding another layer to the enjoyment of the meal. Sipping spirits and cocktails can be a fantastic sensory experience, there is a whole world of flavours to explore and enjoy.

The getting tipsy / drunk part is, of course, part of it and some people do go too far. It also has a lot of other problems but don’t lose sight that there is so much more to it than just getting drunk.

In addition to the concrete sound mirrors there was a lot of development work done pre radar.

I'm sure I've seen the Observer Corps using them south of London in WW2 to help track incoming aircraft but can't find anything specific. I did find https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/aircraft-detection-radar-19... and http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/ear/ear.htm which have quite a lot of photographs of various devices.

On a related note last time I visited the Jodrell Bank radio telescope they had whispering dishes you could play about with.

https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4117915

Be aware that the clothing isn't made of bamboo fibres in the way someone would expect, especially based on how it's advertised.

They are generally Viscose rayon but use bamboo as the cellulose source rather than wood. I think several companies have been fined/prosecuted/told off for misleading advertising.

No, it's an additional perspective hence I said "the capital cities in particular attract a large diversity of population".

The accounting software we use has a built in calculator which has a similar problem.

5.55 * 1.5 = 8.3249999999999....

26.93 * 3 = 80.7899999999999....

I raised it with the supplier some time ago, they said it's just the calculator app and the main program isn't affected. Quite shocking that they are happy to leave it like this.

> The percentage of foreign-born people living in the United States is the highest it's been in nearly a century.

I think this is happening in a lot of countries, the capital cities in particular attract a large diversity of population. I was curious so spent a few minutes exploring figures.

In London 36.7% are Foreign-Born, rising to 42.2% for Inner London. [0]

Paris is about 21% [1]

Berlin is 18.4% [2]

New York city is 36%, Los Angeles is 41% [3]

In 1976, less than one in four Sydneysiders was foreign born. Forty years later the figure is nearly 40 per cent. [4]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_London#Foreig...

[1] https://archive.vn/20150404125339/http://insee.fr/fr/themes/...

[2] https://www.businesslocationcenter.de/en/business-location/b...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_City#...

[4] https://www.smh.com.au/interactive/2018/the-world-loves-sydn...

When I stopped programming I moved more into technical testing and that morphed into 'project guru' on some quite large projects. I could understand from low level network protocols up to the big fluffy clouds, I could also pick things up very quickly as I understood all the building blocks if not the latest buzz words. From my first exposure to SQL I was optimising databases better than the incumbent dba within a couple of months, and that wasn't even my job.

I loved the work, but the downside was no one ever advertised for that role despite it was very important to the project.

I used to be a games programmer, not an artist, but have always created mental models to help problem solving.

A little while ago I watched a series called The Brain with David Eagleman and one thing that really stuck with me was how the eyes and brain interact.

The eyes are not connected straight to the main brain, they feed into a 'frame buffer' which creates an image. The brain then looks at what is in the 'frame buffer' and can also add/feedback into it.

This is partially why psychosis can seem so real. One part of our brain feeds into the 'frame buffer', the other part of the brain interpreting what you see can't tell the difference between input from the eyes and feedback from the brain. Those spiders you are seeing are as real to you as if you really do see them with your eyes.

This also goes some way to explaining how the 'gorilla walking through the basketball game' illusion works and other visual tricks such as not seeing the blackout when your eyes move - you really didn't see that cyclist etc.

(I've explained that in my simple language from recollection as it's how I easily understand it.)

> as soon as I become aware, they fade almost instantly

I have this too. I feel that, for example, if I visualise a room of people I know but when I actually go and look at any detail then the situation goes. My hypothesis is that my immediate memory doesn't have the detail I'm wanting to look at so pushes me away rather than make something up or just give nothing.

The seeing with closed eyes is, I think, just the same but a local location.

The ending seems to have been missed off most quotes, it appears to have been "A computer on every desk and in every home running Microsoft software".

A little while ago I read that various historical records indicated that we would naturally sleep in two sessions overnight. This was changed by a combination of artificial light and also the industrial revolution giving us more regimented working hours.

"The myth of the eight-hour sleep" at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783 is an interesting starting point.

> I've always said to insomniacs that they should read textbooks.

I'm not a good sleeper and quite like reading. If I'm in a state where I'm very tired but also having trouble getting off to sleep then I'm generally too tired to read. I may be able to manage a paragraph or two before my eyes start to lose focus but that's it.

I'm not wide awake and fully functioning, I'm lying there tired but unable to get off to sleep - these are quite different states.

The best thing I can do is to close my eyes and build 3D models in my head and fly around them. That sometimes helps, I think it concentrates the mind.

Many years ago when you could visit Dounreay nuclear power station I remember leaning they used liquid sodium as the main coolant. It was used to transfer heat our of the reactor from what I recall.