Monday Links from the Gap Between Teams Meetings vol. DCCXXIII

[northernladuk]

• Reverse-engineering Ethernet backoff on the Intel 82586 network chip's die - Ken Shirriff digs into a networking chip: ”In 1982, Intel announced the i82586 Ethernet LAN coprocessor chip, which went much further by offloading most of the data movement from the main processor to an on-chip coprocessor. Modern Ethernet networks handle a gigabit of data per second or more, but at the time, the Intel chip's support for 10 Mb/s Ethernet put it on the cutting edge.”

Love the way Ken must have the brain the size of a planet and his dedication to these tear downs is second to none but then little quirks in his text makes me smile. He's doing a full reverse engineer of a chip down to individual gates and doped silicon yet he mentions FIFO and has taken the time to explain it in brackets after 'Data is transmitted between the two halves of the chip by 16-byte FIFOs (first in, first out queues).'

You'd imagine if you'd stopped buy to read this you'd have half a clue and FIFO is well known to you.

Ok I'm a geek but I kinda like little quirks like that in his articles.

[vetran]

Just think, when "they" close the blast furnaces in Port Talbot that produce raw iron from ore, then we'll have all that lovely Chinese crap steel to look forward to.

but its important we get to Net Zero its a Climate emergency!!!!!

[DoctorStrangelove]

Just think, when "they" close the blast furnaces in Port Talbot that produce raw iron from ore, then we'll have all that lovely Chinese crap steel to look forward to.

[WTFH]

I have followed Auto Shenanigans for yonks!

Have you had a good week?

[ladymuck]

[*]Auto Shenanigans - HT to WTFH for this interesting YouTube channel covering all kinds of aspects of cars, roads, and such: ”From road trips, factual docuseries to pointless tests and challenges… It's all mainly about fun and not taking things too seriously.” This episode of their series Secrets of the Motorway is all about the A3M

I have followed Auto Shenanigans for yonks!

[NickFitz]

Some stuff to read in the break between being flooded out by the last storm and flooded out again by the next storm

• Two Thousand Miles From Home - The story of three women from Ukraine who all became pregnant at the same time as Russia invaded: ”Outside it’s a cold, pale winter’s day, December 30, 2022. We are in the Kharkiv region, about 20 miles west of the Russia-Ukraine border, and seven miles from the front line of the war between these two countries… When there’s a long, deafening roar outside that makes the windows tremble, or a series of more distant thumps, I’m the only one who flinches. The baby wriggles, then sleeps.”
• After the Flood - Tackling the challenge of restoring a wilderness when a dam is removed: ”In the early 2000s, however, the federal license for many of the dams was approaching its expiration date… Facing hundreds of millions of dollars in construction costs, the owner—PacifiCorp—agreed in 2010 to relinquish the dams and allow them to be torn down instead, setting in motion what has become the world’s largest dam removal project, a $450 million to $500 million effort funded by the state of California and PacifiCorp.”
• Mysterious Tjipetir Blocks Are Appearing on European Beaches - Curious objects to look out for at the seaside: ”A woman was walking along the beach in Cornwall, England in 2012, when she by chance spotted a dark tablet in the sand. On closer inspection she noticed it was inscribed with a strange word… Without knowing it at the time, she’d stumbled upon a phenomenon that others have been experiencing across Europe for decades known as the mystery of the Tjipetir blocks.”
• CPA Interview: Bay Bridge “Dangerous” Due To Chinese Steel - HT to DoctorStrangelove for this interview about the sub-par steel apparently used in the San Francisco Bay Bridge renovation: ”A key element of bridge-building, especially in an earthquake zone, is to build a structure with no cracks because cracks can grow and propagate over time with normal tensions. That’s especially true in this case… When Caltrans or the primary contractor told them they had to fix the cracks, it became clear the company was either incapable of fixing their mistakes or simply recalcitrant.”
• Auto Shenanigans - HT to WTFH for this interesting YouTube channel covering all kinds of aspects of cars, roads, and such: ”From road trips, factual docuseries to pointless tests and challenges… It's all mainly about fun and not taking things too seriously.” This episode of their series Secrets of the Motorway is all about the A3M
  
  
• Cowgirls All the Way - From 1981, E. Jean Carroll reports on Miss Rodeo America: ”In 1975 Miss Rodeo Colorado was bucked off in the grand entry of the Miss Rodeo America contest and rushed from the arena to the hospital with fractured vertebrae. In 1976 a horse fell on Miss Rodeo Arizona and broke her back. In 1978 Miss Rodeo Kansas, who later became Miss Rodeo America, pivoted her horse to avoid hitting a contestant who had just run over a spectator in the arena. She caught her foot in the gate, was jerked off backwards, and broke her arm. It’s a rugged kind of competition—no cakewalk.”
• The Top Ten Spitfire Marks Ranked by Number of Kills - ”We counted the number of kills per Spitfire mark so you don’t have to.” Some did well in this ranking despite being poorly regarded by pilots, simple because they happened to come into service at a time and place where there was a lot of action.
• The Revolutionary Concept of Standard Sizes Only Dates to the 1920s - ”Nearly everything in your home is a certain size, thanks to German architect Ernst Neufert.” This is why your kitchen cupboards are that far above the worktop
• Reverse-engineering Ethernet backoff on the Intel 82586 network chip's die - Ken Shirriff digs into a networking chip: ”In 1982, Intel announced the i82586 Ethernet LAN coprocessor chip, which went much further by offloading most of the data movement from the main processor to an on-chip coprocessor. Modern Ethernet networks handle a gigabit of data per second or more, but at the time, the Intel chip's support for 10 Mb/s Ethernet put it on the cutting edge.”
• Cans - Packaging - Sardine cans, to be precise, from the Portuguese Canning Industry Digital Museum: ”We provide images from collections of various institutions and individuals, in addition to our own collection. Therefore our digitized representations are brought together from multiple sources, for enjoyment and study in a manner largely determined by you, the individual user. Conservas de Portugal is a powerful tool for comparative study and for research into the Portuguese canning industry.”
  
  

Happy invoicing!