Monday Links from the Gap Between Teams Meetings vol. DCCCXIX

[ladymuck]

I have a 3 pesos note from Cuba that I illegally smuggled out of the country! I don't know if they still have two currencies there but in 2014 the 'tourist' one had buildings on it and the 'local' one had people. It was the easiest way to check you were receiving the right change/ paying the right rate.

[ladymuck]

Archive.ph is super useful. I think I've only come across one or two sites where it didn't work

[DoctorStrangelove]

Strange, it isn't for me

Try this (though it may be behind an anti-robot thing, rather appropriately in this case - we don't want them to know we're watching): Why do Waymos keep loitering in front of my house?

That worked. .

[NickFitz]

The waymo thing is behind a paywall.

Strange, it isn't for me

Try this (though it may be behind an anti-robot thing, rather appropriately in this case - we don't want them to know we're watching): Why do Waymos keep loitering in front of my house?

[DoctorStrangelove]

I got around it by opening in a private browser session and accepting cookies

Tried that. .

[ladymuck]

The waymo thing is behind a paywall.

I got around it by opening in a private browser session and accepting cookies

[DoctorStrangelove]

The waymo thing is behind a paywall.

[NickFitz]

When I finished work on Thursday, I had no meetings today except the morning standup. Yet somehow I've been in meetings virtually all morning, and don't have time for lunch yet because there's another one in a few minutes. Good thing I was able to get this choice collection of reading matter assembled while pretending to listen

• American Hindenburg - ”In the early days of flight, airships were hailed as the future of war. Then disaster struck the USS Akron.” The tragic story of the American R101
• Ant queen lays eggs that hatch into two species - The fall of our species to the ants now seems inevitable: ”Reproduction is strange in many social insects, but the Iberian harvester ant (Messor ibericus) takes the weirdness to the next level. Queens mate with males of another species and then clone them, researchers report today in Nature, which means this ant is the only known organism that propagates two species by itself.” The full paper is One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants
• 100 years ago, ‘ghost ship’ sails baffled Einstein—now they’re making a comeback - ”Could a high school math teacher’s 1920s invention make shipping greener?” A revival of a clever idea that fell out of use because of the availability of cheap fossil fuels.
• Why do Waymos keep loitering in front of my house? - ”When a Waymo pulls up and parks in front of her home on a residential street in West Los Angeles, 10-year-old Morgan rushes to the window. ‘The Waymo is home!’ she says, calling to her parents… Last year, a Waymo robotaxi dropped Delgin and Tucker off after a New Year’s Eve party and idled there for several minutes until it took off for the next ride. Since then, Waymos have been parking in that same spot, day after day, sometimes for minutes, sometimes for hours.” If the ants don’t get us first, the loitering robotaxis will
• Irradiating the planet - Alex Wellerstein uncovers early research into us getting rid of ourselves, without any help from either ants or robots: ”How many nuclear weapons would it take to make the world dangerously radioactive for human life? This was a real question that Frederick Reines, a 30-year old theoretical physicist at Los Alamos was contemplating in the spring of 1947.1 The result of his work is a report that I recently received as the result of a FOIA request I made to the National Nuclear Security Administration.”
• How Entombed U-boats Were Re-discovered Decades After WWII - HT to DoctorStrangelove for this interesting bit of post-WWII history: ”Forgotten in the decades following World War II, the Nazi U-boats were re-discovered in their crumbling concrete bunker in the 1980s.”
• Resurfacing the past - More maritime history with this interactive mapping project by Paul Heersink: ”More than 20,000 ships sank during World War II. One man is on a mission to map them all — and is uncovering untold stories along the way.”
• "This is the first:" The 16 year odyssey of "time, money, wrong turns and frustration" it took to finally emulate the Pioneer LaserActive - News from the world of console emulation: ”In April 2009, a Sega fan decided to look into emulating the Mega LD, a quirky and little-known hybrid of Genesis and LaserDisc. This week he finished the job.”
• A Navajo weaving of an integrated circuit: the 555 timer - Ken Shirriff branches out from silicon to wool: ”The noted Diné (Navajo) weaver Marilou Schultz recently completed an intricate weaving composed of thick white lines on a black background, punctuated with reddish-orange diamonds. Although this striking rug may appear abstract, it shows the internal circuitry of a tiny silicon chip known as the 555 timer. This chip has hundreds of applications in everything from a sound generator to a windshield wiper controller. At one point, the 555 was the world's best-selling integrated circuit with billions sold. But how did the chip get turned into a rug?” The post includes an interactive representation of the rug that lets you correlate the various parts of the design with the circuit diagram for the chip
• The currencies of Dear Leaders - An interesting numismatic collection: ”Money depicting murderous revolutionaries, dictators, and other bad actors who either couldn't help themselves and put their own likeness on the currency, or who ended up there as a consequence of a personality cult cultivated by their acolytes after the subject's death.” This one from the Central African Republic features Jean Bedel Bokassa, along with some buffalo and a nice rhino
  
  

Happy invoicing!