I'm feeling a bit under the weather today, and I was just on a Teams call with somebody who looked dreadful and was sniffling a lot, so now I'm wondering if I've seen my own future. Better get this lot posted while I still can 
Happy invoicing!
- The Worst 7 Years in Boeing’s History—and the Man Who Won’t Stop Fighting for Answers - HT to ladymuck for this one: ”Fatal crashes. A door blowout. Grounded planes. Inside the citizen-led, obsessive campaign to hold Boeing accountable and prevent the next disaster.”
- Is Dark Energy Getting Weaker? New Evidence Strengthens the Case. - ”Last year, an enormous map of the cosmos hinted that the engine driving cosmic expansion might be sputtering. Now physicists are back with an even bigger map, and a stronger conclusion.” If it disappears completely, they'll have to make up something else to explain why the numbers don't add up
- Kanzi the Bonobo, Who Learned Language and Made Stone Tools, Dies at Age 44 - Sad news from the Ape Conservation and Cognition Initiative: ”Kanzi the bonobo, who learned how to communicate with humans using symbols, has died at the age of 44. Raised and kept in captivity, Kanzi was the subject of many studies aimed at illuminating ape cognition and the origins of human language and tool use.” Among his other skills, Kanzi was an enthusiastic and proficient gamer; here's a video about him learning to play Minecraft
- Hover Train (Tracked Hovercraft) Experiments, Earith-Sutton Gault - HT to DoctorStrangelove for this forgotten train of the future: ”I was told the piers were virtually all that remained of ‘the Hovertrain experiments’. I couldn't remember anything about that nor had friends or neighbours and wondered why a piece of Britain's recent history had apparently become forgotten. I soon discovered it certainly hadn't been, in fact the Hovertrain itself had been preserved first at Cranfield for 21 years then at Railworld in Peterborough since 1995.” I remember occasionally seeing reports about this on the BBC regional news programme Look East in the early 1970s
- How Commodore Invented the Mass Market Computer - ”The untold story of Jack Tramiel, Holocaust survivor and home computing's first king.” The latest in Gareth Edwards’ series of profiles of the major players in the early days of microcomputers
- Austin Gas Turbine Car - DoctorStrangelove’s investigation into the history of unfeasible modes of transport continues with this strange conveyance: ”Dr John Weaving led the team to look if it was feasible to produce an engine that could be fitted into a car. At this time Rover had demonstrated in March 1950 with Jet 1. These engines had an output of 230bhp at 26,000 rpm which was fitted to the rear of a standard P4 chassis. Austin did not wish to be seen as not keeping up with modern thinking.”
- How The Dis-integrated 6502 Came To Be and This 6502 Made From 74-Series Logic Can Run At 20 MHz - DoctorStrangelove again with these two unusual implementations of the classic 8-bit microprocessor, both well summed up by the following quote: ”It’s not surprising to hear that he was initially trying to prove that this couldn’t be done. Unable to do so, there was nothing left to do but devote almost six-months of his free time to completing the design, layout, and assembly.”
- The First Computers in East Africa –and what became of them - Thanks once again to the good Doctor for this look at an aspect of computer history that’s perhaps less well known than it should be: ”One of them ended up at the bottom of the ocean, because of a snake, a gun, and bureaucracy. Another ended up in China, somehow.”
- A USB interface to the "Mother of All Demos" keyset - To finish this week’s computer-history-rich selection, Ken Shirriff tries out a bit of hardware from Doug Engelbart’s famous demo: ”Engelbart developed many features of modern computing that we now take for granted: the mouse, hypertext, shared documents, windows, and a graphical user interface. At the 1968 Joint Computer Conference, Engelbart demonstrated these innovations in a groundbreaking presentation, now known as ‘The Mother of All Demos.’ Engelbart's demo also featured an input device known as the keyset, but unlike his other innovations, the keyset failed to catch on. The 5-finger keyset lets you type without moving your hand, entering characters by pressing multiple keys simultaneously as a chord. Christina Englebart, his daughter, loaned one of Engelbart's keysets to me. I constructed an interface to connect the keyset to USB, so that it can be used with a modern computer.” Similar concept to that used by the later MicroWriter
- Owls in Towels - ”Wildlife rahabbers and veterinarians often wrap rescue owls in fabric before weighing, treating and feeding them, otherwise they get in a flap. The result? Oodles of Owls in Towel.” This is a baby mountain scops owl being tended to at Leofoo Village Theme Park, in Taiwan
Happy invoicing!
Love the owl 
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