Garfield’s Proof of the Pythagorean Theorem
Garfield in 1881 Garfield’s proof of the Pythagorean theorem is an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem discovered by James A. Garfield (November 19, 1831 – September 19, 1881), the 20th president of the United States. The proof appeared in print in the New-England Journal of Education (Vol. 3, No.14, April 1, 1876).[1][2] At the […]
The Great Downzoning
In 1890, most continental European cities allowed between five and ten storeys to be built anywhere. In the British Empire and the United States, the authorities generally imposed no height limits at all. Detailed fire safety rules had existed for centuries, but development control systems were otherwise highly permissive. Over the following half century, these […]
System 7 natively boots on the Mac mini G4
(And Mac OS 8!) Hey, guys! Surely y’all know and have enjoyed Mac OS 9.2.2 booting and beautifully-running on all four Mac mini G4 models for close to 8 years now. (Wow!) Well, that was one massive revolution… … But most of us did not think we would live to see the day New World […]
Every mathematician has only a few tricks (2020)
From a physicist point of view I want to mention this trick and its generalization for operators: “Two commuting matrices are simultaneously diagonalizable” (for physicists all matrices are diagonalizable). Of course the idea is that if you know the eigenvectors of one matrix/operator then diagonalizing the other one is much easier. Here are some applications. […]
The Fatal Trap UBI Boosters Keep Falling Into
To win the argument for universal basic income, advocates must confront the myth that less work means less worth. By: Karl Widerquist The general idea behind universal basic income (UBI) is almost as old as America itself. You can trace it back to 1797, when Thomas Paine argued for guaranteed payments in his political treatise […]
Confessions of a Software Developer: No More Self-Censorship
I haven’t published since April because I’ve been afraid. I also avoided social media, news aggregators, and discussion forums for months. I’m done letting fear stop me. What was I afraid of? In this post I detail every single thing I’ve avoided admitting on this blog. Knowledge Gap Confessions First, why am I admitting these […]
A first look at Django’s new background tasks
Django 6.0 introduces a built-in background tasks framework in django.tasks. But don’t expect to phase out Celery, Huey or other preferred solutions just yet. The release notes are quite clear on this: Django handles task creation and queuing, but does not provide a worker mechanism to run tasks. Execution must be managed by external infrastructure, […]
Airbus A320 – intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical for flight
Toulouse, France, 28 November 2025 – Analysis of a recent event involving an A320 Family aircraft has revealed that intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls. Airbus has consequently identified a significant number of A320 Family aircraft currently in-service which may be impacted. Airbus has worked proactively with the […]
Flight disruption warning as Airbus requests modifications to 6k planes
Theo LeggettBusiness correspondent The issue was discovered after a JetBlue aircraft en-route from Mexico to the United States in October experienced a ‘sudden drop in altitude’. The plane made an emergency landing, with reports at the time suggesting 15 to 20 people suffered minor injuries. It’s thought the incident was caused by intense solar radiation, […]
Good engineers write bad code at big companies
Every couple of years somebody notices that large tech companies sometimes produce surprisingly sloppy code. If you haven’t worked at a big company, it might be hard to understand how this happens. Big tech companies pay well enough to attract many competent engineers. They move slowly enough that it looks like they’re able to take […]