Numlock News: September 13, 2022 • Floppies, Elton, Sublimation
By Walt HickeyFloppy DisksWhile floppy disks are not being manufactured any more, they’re still needed, and when they are people will turn to companies that refurbish and resell the antiquated memory format like Floppydisk.com. The most in-demand are the 3.5-inch blank floppy disks, which have a capacity of 1.44 megabytes, and they’ve gone from about 10 cents apiece to a dollar apiece as supply dwindles and the machinery to make them simply stops existing. Among the unused disks that survive to today, about 30 percent don’t work, and it’s turned out that the best disks are the ones made during the era of mass production from 1985 to 2000. The biggest buyers outside of hobbyists are the airline industry — if the plane is more than 20 years old it probably still uses floppy disks in the avionics — the medical equipment business and the embroidery business, which uses thousands of machines that need floppy disks to operate. Basically, if the industry still has a ton of valuable equipment from the 1990s, they’re buying secondhand floppies to keep the lights on. I apologize for sharing the cursed knowledge that next time you fly in an older jet there’s a decent chance a floppy disk is keeping the bird in the air. Niek Hilkmann and Thomas Walskaar, AIGA Eye on Design DodgerDisney dropped $30 million to buy the exclusive livestreaming rights to Elton John’s last concert in the United States, which has now been scheduled for November 20 in Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles and will be livestreamed on Disney+. It’s the last stop on the Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour and will also have an accompanying documentary as part of the package. The venue has significance because in 1975 Elton played two sold-out shows that were integral in securing his trans-Atlantic bona fides. Balancing StonesIn frozen climates, it’s not uncommon to see frozen lakes with stones on them, and the stones are held up by a little tiny pedestal of ice, somewhat resembling balanced stones in a Zen garden. It’s weird, and there have been a number of theories as to why it happens and what makes the ice do that. One component could be that the pebble blocks light from the sun and slows down sublimation, the process by which where the solid ice becomes a gas. A laboratory experiment using an aluminum disc in lieu of a pebble found this is likely the case, as after 40 hours of sublimation at a rate of 8 to 10 millimeters of sublimation per day, they were able to replicate the effect and show that the rocks become basically a parasol. Nicolas Taberlet, Physics Today CodaWhales communicate using a series of clicks that are termed codas, and it’s possible to understand where a whale comes from based on different types of codas that function similar to dialects. A team of 27 researchers studying sperm whales in the Pacific gathered whale communications across 23 locations as part of the Global Coda Dialect Project, and they were able to extract 23,000 codas. After an analysis, they were able to split them up into seven sperm whale vocal clans with unique identity codas and dialects, and found that the further apart the groups were physically the more distinct they are in dialect. UnreelAccording to internal documents, Instagram users spend 17.6 million hours a day watching Reels, which is a tiny fraction of the 197.8 million hours a day that TikTok users spend on the platform. Instagram’s competitor to TikTok is in decline as of August, with Reels engagement down 13.6 percent in the previous four weeks. The issue is that Instagram’s users don’t actually want to make content on Instagram: while there are 11 million creators on the platform, only 20.7 percent post every month. Salvador Rodriguez, Meghan Bobrowsky and Jeff Horwitz, The Wall Street Journal FloodsFEMA predicts that the area in the United States with a 1 percent chance of annual flooding will increase by 45 percent by the end of the century. While that’s a low number in a given year, over the course of a 30-year mortgage you’re looking at a solid 25 percent chance of flood damage. When the government draws maps to update this, people get mad that they were “drawn into a floodplain” and begin complaining and suing and paying to get their own maps made, all because they want to avoid having to buy insurance. One investigation found 500 instances where FEMA remapped waterfront properties into lower-risk areas after such lobbying. For many, this will be fine, but it is a gamble, and inevitably lots of people are going to get flooded and not expect it. Ocean OrganismsExtensive treaty negotiations at the United Nations failed to lead to a final result on protecting large swathes of marine areas, and a major issue that scuttled it came down to profit sharing over commercializing the genetic resources of the sea. Ocean organisms provide the basis of drugs like remdesivir, which treats COVID, the drug Halaven, which is an anticancer drug derived from a sea sponge, and since the 1950s about 34,000 marine compounds have been found with commercial potential. All told, the marine biotech industry, which mines the genomes of marine organisms, is projected to be worth $6.4 billion by 2025. Olive Heffernan, Scientific American Start supporting Numlock with a paid subscription this week! It keeps the lights on, keeps the whole thing ad-free, plus you get to enjoy the delightful Sunday bonus edition. We keep the price just $5 a month normally, but if you buy this week you get it for $2.91 a month for year one. Thanks to the paid subscribers to Numlock News who make this possible. Subscribers guarantee this stays ad-free, and get a special Sunday edition. Consider becoming a full subscriber today. The best way to reach new readers is word of mouth. If you click THIS LINK in your inbox, it’ll create an easy-to-send pre-written email you can just fire off to some friends. Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips, or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news. Check out the Numlock Book Club and Numlock award season supplement. 2022 Sunday subscriber editions: Giant Hornets · Graphic Novels · Infotainment · Nuclear Energy · Fast Fashion · Salty · Twitter Friction · Fangirls · Air Quality · Non-Colonial AI · The Reckoning · Hippos · Fixing Baseball · Booze Trials · Oprahdemics · Losing It · Sustainable Cities · F1 · Coughgeist · Black Panther ·Car Dealerships · Black-Footed Ferret · Oil to Clothing · Just Like Us · How To Read This Chart · Pharma waste · Arcade Games · Blood in the Garden · Trading Cards · College Football2020 Sunday Edition Archive2019 Sunday Edition Archive2018 Sunday Edition ArchiveYou’re a free subscriber to Numlock News. For the full experience, become a paid subscriber. |
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Numlock News: September 12, 2022 • Barbarian, Salt, Donkeys
Monday, September 12, 2022
By Walt Hickey Welcome back! Doldrums This week a movie called Barbarian dropped at the box office, and America, which hasn't seen a new movie in weeks, said to hell with it, let's hear them
Numlock News: September 9, 2022 • Scams, Luck, Pine Nuts
Friday, September 9, 2022
By Walt Hickey Have a great weekend. Scams Romance scams are insidious, and the ability to make a digital footprint on a site like LinkedIn has only made the problem worse. For instance, as of mid-July
Numlock News: September 8, 2022 • Steak, Freight, Mitigate
Thursday, September 8, 2022
By Walt Hickey Blackout California deftly avoided rolling blackouts this week amid an energy surge through a novel innovation in the green energy space that researchers are calling “text everyone in
Numlock News: September 7, 2022 • Eternal Orbs, Raccoons, Fliers
Wednesday, September 7, 2022
By Walt Hickey Orbs Reports are brewing of a massive widespread currency crisis in the game Diablo Immortal related to the in-game currency of Eternal Orbs, which can go for $1 for a pack of 60 orbs or
Numlock News: September 6, 2022 • Jaws, Lux, Floppy Disks
Tuesday, September 6, 2022
By Walt Hickey Welcome back! Numlock's annual sale is on! It's the best deal I do. Upgrade to a paid subscription, start getting the Sunday edition, support an indie and save some money today:
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