en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanue...

www.reddit.com/r/askscience...

Which leads to wild stories (histories in their view) where random planets fly out of Jupiter and Saturn.

Because they understand, partially, electricity.

Because if they don’t understand something it isn’t real. The illogical simple explanation has to be right no matter how many contradictions there are.

Huge flaw in humanity.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_...

I’m convinced that a large part of the population in all (most?) countries stops learning around 10. Science after that isn’t learned. Math isn’t learned.

Hence they believe nuclear weapons aren’t real. The Earth is flat. That gravity isn’t real and it’s all electostatic attraction.

The first couple of years were tough. Switching from severe overwork to nothing. During the pandemic.

Now, it’s the greatest thing ever. Study things I want to. Work on small projects for fun. I just started learning Rust. For fun. Not for some huge multimillion dollar project.

It is amazing how many interesting people were in Colorado back then. Near the mountain. Near Lockheed.

I spent decades making it easier for people to be connected to the internet.

Voice band modems. Wireless.

I'm retired. And I wonder if what I worked on was actually a good thing.

And the fact that he never talked about what he worked on. Other than fun arguments about PL/1 vs C.

Online was bad in the age of BBS systems and Compuserve/GENIE/BIX/AOL/Usenet.

It's worse now. More people. Who either are idiots and don't believe in reality or are trolls who enjoy the carnage.

One had sat in a room for long stretches with one other officer. And two keys. He was transitioning to MAC when I met him. Nearing retirement and wanted lower stress than SAC.

Another who worked on Star Wars hit to kill weapons in the 80s. Guessing based on where he worked and what was done there.

One was a tech who worked on circuit boards that went into satellites. A tech at Kodak. The camera company. Any guesses what satellites those were? /s

I met some interesting people.

One had worked on the SW that run on the S/360s in the mountain.

Another had worked on guidance software for ICBMs and later for the Space Shuttle.

One is the only person I've met who has watched ICBM warheads headed towards him. Worked on Safeguard in the 60s.

I've run into a lot of weird people online. Including the "nuclear weapons are not real" ones. And a few who been at actual underground test sites in NV.

I'm a software guy. Wrote a word processor in the 80s. Worked on data comm for decades.

And back in the 80s, when computer clubs were a thing...

The whole internet is full of people with bad advice about chemical weapons. And conventional weapons. And, I’m fairly sure, about nuclear weapons.

And has been for decades.

Burning tear gas grenades have been clocked at nearly 800 deg C (1450 F), which is way hotter than most gloves, mitts, etc will ever bear. So don't pick them up.

For the 100 mile zone they use the land border, not the water border.

www.aclu.org/documents/kn...

I have a shirt with the school logo I bought at The Colorado School of Mines bookstore when I was a freshman.

Fall of 1978.

For some reason I suspect it no longer fits.

One of my favorite videos from you. Thanks.

In a box, somewhere, I still have a double speed cassette machine. Half the play time but much better dynamic range a fidelity.

There were a lot of interesting tape systems in the 60s to 90s.

It was still AT&T Bell Labs when I was there. I left several years before Lucent was spun out.

The worst was an early 2000s wireless chip at a startup. With one interrupt routine that had to complete in under 10 uS on a 47 MHz ARM 7. I kept trying to move that into RTL.

The good old days.

I did some work on the System 85 Test Switch (a modified rack controller with more ROM). I had to make sure the compiler never put a DIV into the code. It took too many cycles and could break the capture mode interrupt.

I don't miss embedded programming and weird timing restrictions.