Collaborate Disseminate
Within the world of CAD there are the well-known and more niche big commercial players and there are projects like FreeCAD that seek to bring a OSS solution to the …read more Continue reading The End of Ondsel and Reflecting on the Commercial Prospects for FreeCAD
In a new installment on computer history, [Bradford Morgan White] takes us through the sordid history of Cyrix, as this plucky little company created the best math co-processors (FasMath) and …read more Continue reading A Brief History of Cyrix, or How to Get Sued By Intel a Lot
On November 5th, the United States launched an LGM-30G Minuteman III ICBM from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Roughly 30 minutes later the three warheads onboard struck their targets …read more Continue reading Minuteman ICBM Launch Tests Triple Warheads
We usually think of a hydraulic system as fully self-contained, with a hydraulic pump, tubing, and actuators filled with a working fluid. This of course adds a lot of weight …read more Continue reading Why the Saturn V Used Kerosene for its Hydraulics Fluid
After extracting all the useful stuff from a mine, you are often left with a lot of empty subterranean space without a clear purpose. This was the case with the …read more Continue reading Welcome to SubTropolis: the Limestone Mine Turned Climate-Controlled Business Complex
Building a paper tape reader by itself isn’t super complicated: you need a source of light, some photoreceptors behind the tape to register the presence of holes and some way …read more Continue reading Building a Motor Feed For the UE1 Vacuum Tube Computer’s Paper Tape Reader
It is a fact of life that 3D-printed parts from an FDM (fused deposition modeling) printer have weaknesses where the layers join. Some of this is due to voids and …read more Continue reading Brick Layers: the Promise of Stronger 3D Prints and Why We Cannot Have Nice Things
A characteristic of any thermal power plant — whether using coal, gas or spicy nuclear rocks — is that they have a closed steam loop with a condenser section in …read more Continue reading Exploring the Physics Behind Cooling Towers
Generally when assuming a chaotic (i.e. random) system like an undirected graph, we assume that if we start coloring these (i.e. assign values) with two colors no real pattern emerges. …read more Continue reading Ramsey Numbers and the Appearance of Order in Random Numbers
We have seen a recent surge of interest in whether it’s possible to grow potatoes and other plants in Martian soil, but what is the likelihood that a future (manned) …read more Continue reading LEAF Mission Seeks to Grow Plants on the Moon