The Weekly Weird - 2015-07-31
- It has come to my attention that some of you are not acquainted with Peter Watts. Hopefully this will convince you of your tragic error http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6116 Now go read all his fiction, much of which is freely downloadable
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Oh dear, you've lost your remotely piloted vehicle? Don't worry, you can get it back with:
- Another drone: https://youtu.be/32IPBmcwplQ
- A tow truck: https://youtu.be/b0DpURNDvX0
- The coolest helicopter pilot ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffEYqGGYXRk
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Anyone have $30k I can borrow? https://bokeh.digitalrev.com/article/canon-camera-can-film-at-iso-4-million
- Various comments suggest this is mildly oversold as "the first" but still newsworthy: http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/semiconductors/devices/the-first-white-laser
- Oh, you thought using a typewriter would protect you from being bugged? Ha. https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/cryptologic_histories/learning_from_the_enemy.pdf
- Ever wonder why NYC is called 'Gotham' ? WONDER NO MORE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wise_Men_of_Gotham
- Here's a tank putting out an oil fire with jet engines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsTe6CMQQgQ
- I...have no words: https://i.imgur.com/uSgz83b.jpg
- Go Soyez, it's your birthday (ok, no it's not but still): http://i.imgur.com/4v9nLC2.gifv (Why you ask is it doing this? Towers of hanoi: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2013/07/nasa-planning-module-relocations-future-vehicles/ )
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"Rules" on wikipedia:
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The NYC Subway system is old. Warning, includes a 9-minute video about train signaling (i.e. train porn): http://secondavenuesagas.com/2015/07/22/the-long-tail-of-the-subways-history-of-deferred-maintenance/
- Jupiter Rising: Google's network infrastructure: http://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2015/pdf/papers/p183.pdf
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Some good case studies on scaling websites:
- LinkedIn: http://engineering.linkedin.com/architecture/brief-history-scaling-linkedin
- "Algolia" which I'd never heard of but is interesting (parts 1 and 2 are ok, this is the best part): http://highscalability.com/blog/2015/7/27/algolias-fury-road-to-a-worldwide-api-part-3.html
- Note the reference to multiple ASes and read about BGP: https://blog.opendns.com/2015/06/18/bgp-and-the-system-of-trust-that-runs-the-internet-pt-1/ and https://blog.opendns.com/2015/06/25/bgp-and-the-system-of-trust-that-runs-the-internet-pt-2/
- CircleCI demonstrates how hard it is to get right: http://blog.mihasya.com/2015/07/19/thoughts-evoked-by-circleci-outage.html
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Did you remember to test everything? (Spoiler: no) http://blogs.msdn.com/b/micahel/archive/2004/07/07/did-i-remember-to.aspx (via http://blog.codinghorror.com/doing-terrible-things-to-your-code/ )
- "Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea." - Johnson.
- Cat tax: https://i.imgur.com/mPIbHwm.jpg
