Recently, I read an article about device fingerprinting, which argues that we’re in the post-tracking-cookie era. They’re no longer needed, because every browser can be fingerprinted with 100% accuracy.

https://royfish.dev/fingerprints-are-the-new-cookies

There’s an EFF page which allows you to test your device fingerprinting. https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

The information theory idea is that while there are millions of people who have the same time zone, time zone offset, fonts, etc., it’s the combination of all these things that makes it possible to identify.

The EFF has a page on this, which explains. After establishing that 33 bits of entropy is needed for identification:

So for instance, if we know someone’s birthday, and we know their ZIP code is 40203, we have 8.51 + 23.81 = 32.32 bits; that’s almost, but perhaps not quite, enough to know who they are: there might be a couple of people who share those characteristics. Add in their gender, that’s 33.32 bits, and we can probably say exactly who the person is.

The Liberty Bell, with its famous crack, hasn’t been rung in 180 years, but that hasn’t stopped scientists from pondering what the bell might have sounded like when tolling. In honor of the nation’s 250th anniversary, researchers at Penn State University have modeled its acoustic properties, drawing on data collected from one of the bell’s replicas. The work was first presented at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Philadelphia earlier this year, followed by an article in Physics Today.

Historians aren’t sure exactly when the Liberty Bell acquired its distinctive crack, just that it occurred sometime between 1817 and 1846. An 1846 account in the Public Ledger described the ringing of the bell on February 23 that year and mentioned that the bell had developed a crack, which someone had attempted to fix by filing the sides down. But it didn’t work: The February 23 ringing extended the crack even more, so much so that “the old Independence Bell … now hangs in the great steeple irreparably cracked and forever dumb.” Nobody has heard it ring since.

This wasn’t the first time the bell had cracked; the rim cracked shortly after it arrived in Philadelphia in 1752, the first time the clapper struck while testing the sound. It was recast by two local foundry workers, John Pass and John Stow, not once but twice, because the first recast produced a sound that one bystander likened to coal scuttles banging together.

The second recast’s sound was deemed acceptable, and the bell was typically used to summon the Assembly, among other purposes, until it fell into disuse after the American Revolutionary War. As for why the bell was so prone to cracking, a 1975 study of the bell’s chemical composition revealed that the metals used formed “an extremely brittle alloy” that also made it easier for souvenir collectors to chip off pieces from the rim. //

Autapomorphy Ars Praetorian
8y
569
Subscriptor
Since it's hard to imagine frequencies based on a number, I calculated the following based on equal temperament tuning using a standard concert pitch where A4 is 440 Hz.

174 Hz = -16.06 semitones. That's 6 cents flat relative to F2
323 Hz = -5.35 semitones. That's 35 cents flat relative to E3
381 Hz = -2.49 semitones. That's 49 cents flat relative to G3
510 Hz = +2.56 semitones. That's 44 cents flat relative to C4
623 Hz = + 6.02 semitones. That's 2 cents sharp relative to D4#

Yet these promises of a self-running state are illusory, because AI is never truly autonomous. Systems have to be built and maintained by a cadre of engineers and data scientists whose expertise political leaders cannot evaluate. The ruler who turns to AI to reduce a dependence on unreliable humans may end up relying, more blindly than before, on the few AI specialists who keep the system running. And this new digital Praetorian Guard may have the same weaknesses as the old, which makes it a threat to the ruler. //

Roman emperors typically had tens of thousands of people serving in the Praetorian Guard; modern autocrats rely on standing armies. But with AI, autocrats will need only a small clique of engineers to build and maintain large-scale AI systems. This might benefit rulers since they will have fewer people to watch, yet it also concentrates points of failure, since a devastating disruption requires only a handful of engineers and makes it easier for members to scheme against the leader. The new guard’s members may also be indispensable. A dictator can replace generals without destroying the army. But running complex machine-learning systems requires such a specialized set of skills that engineers can be difficult to replace without disruptions, giving these actors great leverage. //

AI will not let autocrats dismiss all their enforcers. Someone still has to make arrests and run the prisons, and autocrats can buy loyalty by offering supporters state jobs. But it will let authoritarians downsize, and the number of officials ultimately matters less than how the ruler oversees them. Keeping track of scheming or incompetent subordinates has always been the autocrat’s chief burden. AI could lighten it, letting rulers watch their officials more closely without paying as much active attention.

In the near term, then, AI may greatly benefit autocracies. Despite the many obstacles to deployment, the technology is already bringing autocratic regimes the upsides of cheaper surveillance, smarter censorship, and fewer human subordinates to fear and distrust. But for autocratic rulers, the temptations of artificial intelligence may re-create the same trap they are seeking to escape. The more a regime depends on AI, the more it depends on the people who keep AI running. And those people, like every other praetorian class in history, will quickly discover what their indispensability is worth.

• McDaniel has “drawn” the Mona Lisa, Munch’s The Scream, and a self-portrait
• N1810R has also been used for multiple positive messages
• See the most impressive sky art and how to follow along live

For the past few months, Flightradar24 users have been able to follow Benjamin McDaniel and his Cessna Skylane RG for hours each week as he completes intricate paths in the sky. From The Lord of the Rings to the Mona Lisa, from a self-portrait to The Scream, McDaniel puts an incredible amount of effort into his sky art.

McDaniel, known on social media as “Pilot Picasso,” and his 1978 Cessna R182 Skylane RG registration N1810R have captivated Flightradar24 fans and others with an unusually varied collection of subjects. His flights have been followed more than a million times on Flightradar24 and his sky art efforts consistently rank highly on the most tracked flights list.

July 20, 1989
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ACE Microsystems Ltd, the Brentford, Middlesex company that develops applications using the venerable Filetab-D language, which was around long before anyone started talking about fourth generation languages or, more bovinely, 4GLs just to show how clever they are and to ensure that no-one who over-hears them will have a clue what they are talking about, has come out with a version of its LEX-WP word processor, developed using Filetab, which can be used in place of DEC’s WPS-Plus within the All-In-1 office automation environment, offering All-In-1 users a powerful word processor with an integrated database and an unrivalled number of advanced features, including support for PostScript printers and the facility to add functions and related applications in Filetab; users can also run the same LEX-WP on Ultrix and MS-DOS machines as well as on VAXes running DEC’s VMS; prices under VMS start at UKP3,100.

DisplayWrite was a family of word processors from IBM in the 1980s. They were quite good in many ways, but never made it into the GUI era. DisplayWrite 3, for example, does not even have italics — it really is like a typewriter on a computer.

The default file format on DisplayWrite is a binary format. The default file extension is .TXT, but they are not what we think of as text files (I used to use DW3 as the extension). I have seen the odd request on the web about how to read old DisplayWrite files, so I thought I would document it here.

The trick is to go via WordPerfect 5.1 format, which can be read in by LibreOffice, because of the amazing stability of the WordPerfect file format.

First, download this convert.exe utility that used to come with WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS (I have no idea how long the link will remain live):

ftp://ftp.corel.com/pub/WordPerfect/wpdos/5x/convert.exe

https://ftpmirror.your.org/pub/misc/ftp.corel.com/pub/WordPerfect/wpdos/5x/

This website lets you freely view documents created with Dos and Windows Word Processors dating as far back as 1970’s, as well as convert and download them as fully formatted and editable Microsoft Word documents. It handles more than 50 once-popular word processors including:•WordPerfect•Old versions of Word•WordStar•Multimate•IBM Displaywrite•XyWrite•Leading Edge WP•and many more

Good ol' mnemonics
By Bernhard on Wednesday, Oct 14th 2026 06:43Z

seven-five: man with a knife
seven-six: hear nix
seven-seven: fall from heaven

LifeTap™ is a durable and dependable self-closing valve. It is specifically designed to withstand the wear and tear of a community tap stand, ensuring water is not wasted due to leaks or breakage. LifeTap is easy to operate even for children, provides an increased flow rate compared with other alternatives, resists contamination, and is long-lasting and durable. LifeTap helps prevent devastating water loss in under-resourced communities, allowing people to access the water they need for their daily lives.

There are many great free and open-source alternatives to closed source and/or paid note taking applications. This project aims to track and compare the feature set between the many different options with a focus on ‘Gratis’ (free as in free beer) open source note apps. ‘Libre’ (free as in free speech) projects are also welcome, but will likely need to be submitted via a pull request since the time in testing each different project is significant.

Self-hosting is the practice of hosting and managing applications on your own server(s) instead of consuming from SaaSS providers.

This is a list of Free Software network services and web applications which can be hosted on your own server(s). Non-Free software is listed on the Non-Free page.

There are many great free and open-source alternatives to closed source and/or paid book libraries. This project aims to track and compare the feature set between the many different options with a focus on 'Gratis' (free as in free beer) open source photo libraries. 'Libre' (free as in free speech) projects are also welcome, but will likely need to be submitted via a pull request since the time in testing each different project is significant.

A 1,526-ton submarine sat on blocks in a drained Wisconsin dry dock all summer, out of the water for the first time in 72 years, and gave up a flood valve stamped for her sister sub, lost with all hands in the war, before her tow back across Lake Michigan this month

USS Silversides just gave up a secret she'd been hiding underwater for 72 years, and it belonged to a submarine that never came home. //

Silversides is kind of a big deal. She was commissioned a week after the US declared war on Japan, and a joint Army-Navy committee credited her after the war with 23 enemy vessels sunk, according to the Navy’s history of the boat. Scott Hardin, the museum’s vessel curator, told WXYZ in July that the two subs ranked above her are both gone.
The weirdest find of the summer, and arguably the best, came out of main ballast tank 2D. Ballast tanks are how a submarine sinks on purpose. Let water in, and she gets heavy enough to dive. Blow it back out with compressed air, and she comes back up. The flood valves at the bottom of those tanks are where the water gets in.

That tank’s aft flood valve had USS Trigger stamped on it. Trigger and Silversides were sister boats, built side by side at Mare Island Navy Yard in California, and Trigger hit the water about two months later, according to the museum and the Navy’s official history of Trigger. Nobody seems to know how one of Trigger’s valves ended up on Silversides, including the museum.

Trigger never made it home. The museum says she was sunk with all hands on March 28, 1945, and the Navy’s history has Japanese planes and ships spending two hours attacking a submarine that day. Silversides was one of four American subs close enough to hear it.

Hardin sounded pretty thrilled about the valve, writing that it “could be the only surviving ‘Trigger’ submarine part.” It’s been pulled out and set aside for a display at the museum once the dry dock work wraps up, and I’d argue that exhibit’s worth the drive to Muskegon on its own.

Someone forgot not one or two but three Boeing 747 jumbo jets at Kuala Lumpur Airport, and after years of racking millions in parking bills the gigantic planes were sold and spectacularly transformed into a surreal Chinese classroom and a Coach handbag store. //

The international reaction was immediate. Bloomberg called them the most dramatic items ever to hit “lost and found,” highlighting the absurdity of a world-class airport trying to reunite an absentee owner with three aircraft the size of small apartment buildings. The story became even stranger when you looked at the economics. These were 747-200Fs from around 1980 and 1981, a generation of four-engine freighters that had become increasingly difficult to place. By the mid-2010s, the market preferred more efficient twin-engine jets, and the once-mighty 747-200F had fallen so far in value that its scrap price often outweighed its resale potential. Bloomberg noted that while a new 747-8F retailed for hundreds of millions of dollars, an old 747-200F might fetch a sliver of that on a good day. //

In the end, the three forgotten 747s did get claimed, just not by the people anyone expected. What began as a bizarre newspaper advert asking someone to pick up their jets ended with pieces of those aircraft scattered across Asia, reborn as classrooms, attractions, and a luxury-branded cafe. Kuala Lumpur International Airport cleared its parking bays. The world got a strange, delightful story. And three old Boeing 747s found new lives after spending one awkward year waiting for an owner who never came back.

To keep the long-delayed Air Force Ones and the Qatar-donated 747-8 flying for decades, the USAF has taken delivery of a perfectly fine Lufthansa jumbo just to carefully dismantle it in the Arizona desert and stockpile everything from the windshields to the escape slides //

The US Air Force has taken delivery of a former Lufthansa Boeing 747-8 that will have a very different second life from the one it enjoyed carrying passengers across the globe. The aircraft, registered D-ABYG and named Baden-Württemberg, has arrived in the United States to become a source of spare parts for the next generation of presidential aircraft. //

D-ABYG is the second of two Lufthansa 747-8Is purchased by the Air Force for about $400 million, but it is not destined to become an Air Force One itself. Instead, the aircraft is being incorporated into an organic parts pool that will provide components for the 747-8 fleet over the long term. Its sister aircraft, D-ABYD, has a different role and is being used as a dedicated trainer for aircrews and maintainers. The acquisition gives the Air Force relatively young 747-8 airframes that closely match the aircraft it is preparing to operate, while also providing a way to secure components for a jet whose production line has already closed, //

A government report on the VC-25B program noted in 2023 that commercial 747-8 aircraft had zero spares available in its windshield risk assessment. The report said the previous supplier had closed its factory, while Boeing had contracted PPG to develop replacement windshields that still required certification. Passenger windows have presented another manufacturing and quality challenge.

You can simply search for "Quick Assist" on Search or use the combination Ctrl + Win + Q to launch the app.

The next step depends on whether you're the one doing the helping or are being helped. The person doing the helping clicks "Help someone" on the app to generate a time-limited six-digit code, which they pass on by phone or by message.

The person on the other end, then, has to type in the code and allow screen sharing before anything shows up on the helper's screen. Once that's done, there's all there is to it. The helper can request control, and the sharer gets another prompt to either allow or deny. Nothing happens without the sharer's consent, and they can pull control back any time with "Cancel control." In the session, the helper also gets access to a few useful tools like a pointer, annotation tools, and a chat window for typed messages. //

Remote Desktop is unlike quick Assist, it's purpose-built for connecting to your own machines. The only catch is that it's limited to Windows 11 Pro and higher editions when it comes to hosting an RDP session, so if you want to reach your gaming PC from a laptop or jump into a Windows VM in Hyper-V, the host needs to be on Pro edition. The client side, however, works on any edition, so a Home machine can connect to a Pro host, just not the other way round.

Then, there's Windows Remote Assistant (msra.exe), which is the legacy option that predates Quick Assist by over a decade. The one real advantage it offers is that neither party needs a Microsoft account to use it. You can launch it from Run, send an invitation file, and the person on the other end can just connect with a password you've set. //

Ben
Rustdesk is my go to.

lacking a basic but very important feature "clipboard".

John Travolta’s former Boeing 707 is taking shape again at Australia’s HARS Aviation Museum, where a five-person crew from Worldwide Aircraft Recovery has begun reassembling the historic airliner following its journey from Georgia. At the end of March, we reported that John Travolta’s Boeing 707—once operated privately by the actor and former Qantas ambassador—was making its way to a new home in Australia. Donated to the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society (HARS) in 2017, the jet was dismantled by Worldwide Aircraft Recovery at the Port of Brunswick in Georgia in March 2026 and prepared for shipment to the museum at Albion Park.

Once reassembled, Travolta’s former jet will go on permanent display at HARS, where it will be preserved as one of the last surviving examples of the rare Boeing 707-138B.

The J58 engine temperature limited the top speed. The speed limit for the airplane ironically had nothing to do with the airframe; it had to do with the engines. Right in front of the engine compressor was a temperature probe that reported the temperature to the pilot; when the temperature was around 427C, 800 degrees Fahrenheit, that’s as fast as they were allowed to go. //

David Peters, former SR-71 Blackbird pilot, explained to me;

‘A little clarification on the speed thing. You are absolutely correct on the 427C. The issue is that I have been limited to less than Mach 3 on a few occasions because the outside air temperature was quite above standard and 427C came up at about 2.95. On other occasions like the Murmansk deal I got above 3.4 (3.49 on the one occasion) and wasn’t close to 427C. The actual limiting airspeed is around 3.55 that is where the spike being at full retraction loses the intercept on the shock wave and can no longer position it correctly in the inlet. ‘Also the overflow of the shock starts to go over the wing and interfere with the flight controls. So the limiting speed as configured would be about 3.55 so long as you don’t exceed 427C.’

Mike Relja, who worked on in with the SR-71‘s for over 30 years, added;

‘I don’t know of any warranty that P&W had or any other parts manufacturer for that matter.

‘On the March 6th [Mar. 6, 1990] speed run Ed Yeilding stated that Don Emmons gave them permission to fly the max limit of 3.3 M, they asked Lockheed if they could exceed that number and Lockheed said no if the aircraft had an unstart above 3.3 it may go out of control and come apart hard to keep the pointy end forward. Also, no fuel flow limits established above 3.3 M were ever tested.

‘P&W did give them clearance to exceed 427 CIT for 30 minutes to a limit of 450 CIT but that wasn’t needed they stayed at the book limit of 427 CIT.’*

The engines maker Pratt & Whitney would not warrant or guarantee anything beyond 427; after that, all bets are off the engine could come unglued or you could shed turbine blades. The SR-71 crewmembers were too responsible to risk and exceeded the temperature limit. They wanted to keep the warranty on the engines, the J58’s.

*SR-71 pilot Ed Yeilding (who along with JT Vida as RSO flew the Blackbird during the speed run of Mar. 6, 1990) told me that another reason they didn’t exceed 3.2 is that they were afraid they’d run out of gas before they got to Dullas airport.

Title: The Public HatingTitle Record # 41026
Author: Steve Allen
Date: 1955-01-00
Type: SHORTFICTION

With $100 worth of gasoline, an internal-combustion-engine car would go 862 miles; with $100 worth of electricity, an electric vehicle would go 2,310 miles—nearly a threefold advantage for the EV.

For home heating, $100 would buy enough fuel for a gas boiler to provide 30 days of heating; it would also fund enough electricity for a heat pump to provide 42 days of heating—a 40 percent edge for the heat pump.

The figures are 2025 global averages from the IEA report, and the gaps are probably larger today with gasoline and natural gas experiencing price spikes that exceed rising electricity costs.

Global electrification trends also tell the story. The world used 16.7 percent of its final energy—meaning the energy consumed by the end user—from electricity in 2000, and that share rose to 23.4 percent in 2025, according to the IEA.

China has had the largest change, and North America was among the smallest in that period, a difference largely attributable to levels of renewable energy use and EV adoption.