Monday Links from the Gap Between Teams Meetings vol. DCCXCVII

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Monday Links from the Gap Between Teams Meetings vol. DCCXCVII

Some respite from watching the numbers go down around the world

The Balloon that Fell from the Sky - High drama: ”Fifteen teams lifted off from Switzerland in gas ballooning’s most audacious race. Three days later, two of them drifted into Belarusian airspace—but only one would survive.”
Ukraine’s Secret Weapon, 'Kropyva' Software - HT to Netraider for this one, in which he was involved: ”Ukraine utilizes Soviet-era equipment alongside modern software like Kropyva to achieve remarkable military successes against Russian forces.”
Extensive compositionality in the vocal system of bonobos - New research suggests bonobos may use more complex forms of communication than previously thought: ”Recent research has found the presence of trivial compositionality across a number of species, but it has been argued that nontrivial compositionality is unique to humans. Berthet et al. used a large dataset of bonobo vocalizations in conjunction with a distributional semantics approach and found that not only did they display compositionality, but three of the four types were nontrivial.”
Brain-to-voice neuroprosthesis restores naturalistic speech - A worthwhile use for AI: converting brain activity into speech without it sounding like a robot. ”Using recent advances in artificial intelligence-based modeling, the researchers developed a streaming method that synthesizes brain signals into audible speech in near-real time… This technology represents a critical step toward enabling communication for people who have lost the ability to speak.”
Starliner’s flight to the space station was far wilder than most of us thought - The problem that left astronauts stranded on the ISS seems to have been more serious than was initially reported: ”Starliner had flown to within a stone's throw of the space station, a safe harbor, if only they could reach it. But already, the failure of so many thrusters violated the mission's flight rules. In such an instance, they were supposed to turn around and come back to Earth… But what if it was not safe to come home, either?”
George A. Philbrick Researches Archive - HT to DoctorStrangelove for this archive of many early advances in analogue electronics: ”I dedicate this site to the many engineers that gave the Analog industry its great start with their state-of-the-art Philbrick products, and by setting new professional standards, and creating new ways to solve engineering problems with the application of analog elements. After Philbrick, these engineers went on to lay the foundations of the analog industry in new companies like Linear Technology, Analog Devices and National Semiconductor, among many others.”
Ghosts in the Kinect - Microsoft's old motion sensor is now popular with paranormal researchers, possibly because it's designed to show them what they'd like to see: ”Fifteen years after its release, just about the only people still buying the Microsoft Kinect are ghost hunters… The Kinect’s ability to convert the data from its body-tracking sensors into an on-screen skeletal dummy delights these investigators, who allege the figures it shows in empty space are, in fact, skeletons of the spooky, scary variety.”
Unsure Calculator - A clever calculator for figuring things out when you only have a rough idea of what the numbers are: ”The idea is simple: apart from regular numbers (like 4, 3.14 or 43942), you can also input ranges (like 4~6, 3.1~3.2 or 40000~45000)… The range notation says the following to the calculator: I am not sure about the exact number here, but I am 95% sure it's somewhere in this range.”
Notes on the Pentium's microcode circuitry - Ken Shirriff explores the code that runs the code: ”Most people think of machine instructions as the fundamental steps that a computer performs. However, many processors have another layer of software underneath: microcode. With microcode, instead of building the processor's control circuitry from complex logic gates, the control logic is implemented with code known as microcode, stored in the microcode ROM. To execute a machine instruction, the computer internally executes several simpler micro-instructions, specified by the microcode. In this post, I examine the microcode ROM in the original Pentium, looking at the low-level circuitry.”
Wilton Way of Cake Decorating (1979) - Another great find from the stationers of Present & Correct: ”From 1979, scans from the Wilton Way of Cake Decorating. Vol 3. Purchased and scanned by us.”