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May 17, 2021 Archives

Monday, May 17, 2021

TRACKING WITH CLOSEUPS: How Many 3D Nets Does a 4D Hypercube Have?

And, when unfolded to one fewer dimension, do they tile it?

Posted at 15:41 Permalink

CONTEXT: Space Tourism—Back Again to Stay?

Posted at 13:04 Permalink

CONTINUITY: HP 9825 Repair Part 8: It Boots Again!

After digging into the tangled logic of the RAM board, simulating it with Logisim Evolution, the problem is narrowed down to an Intel 3242 dynamic RAM controller chip. This was was a single chip solution which handled multiplexing of row and column addresses as well as the refresh address to an array of dynamic RAM chips, and automatically kept track of the refresh address. This eliminated a handful of MSI chips in a memory board design. I used one in my 1979 M9900 64K RAM board.

Replacing the chip and…it boots!

Posted at 12:23 Permalink

THE HAPPENING WORLD: ULA Atlas V SBIRS GEO Flight 5 Launch

Streaming video of the launch will be available here.

Posted at 11:48 Permalink

CONTEXT: Slavers: Now They're Afraid People Will Escape to Mars

The article is profoundly ignorant. It confuses the Moon treaty, which manages to be both evil and silly at the same time (it has not been ratified by any nation which has launched its own citizens into space) with the Outer Space Treaty, which explicitly does not ban private property, defending the same, or establishment of whatever institutions residents of other worlds (natural or artificial) may choose to create.

One of the principal motivations of space migration will be getting away from technocratic tyranny and mushy logic like the following. “Ultimately, a city on Mars would simply be an extension of Earth, though separated by a different kind of sea.” “International law is clear about private property rights in space — there are none. Private property rights can only be created by a state on the property over which the state has sovereignty.” “Musk elaborated in 2020 that he plans for his government to be a direct democracy. Commentators have questioned why Musk would choose that form of government, which may be terribly ineffective in response to resource scarcity and constant danger.”

“[R]esource scarcity and constant danger” are the chains they use to enslave us (just look at what people have accepted as the “new normal” since early 2020). Expanding into space, where 99%+ of the mass and energy of the solar system is there for the taking, is the way to break these chains and unleash the human potential. This scares them. It should.

Let them have the fantasies they parrot in lockstep about “Great Reset” and “Build Back Better”. We shall be building elsewhere.

You might call it our obligation to the human endowment.

Posted at 10:59 Permalink