8″ floppy drives are the earliest form of floppy drives connected to early minicomputers. By the time of personal computers, 8″ floppy drives had been replaced with 5.25″ floppy drives. But those 5.25″ (and later drives) were still often based on the Shugard interface.
Adrian’s Digital Basement shows how he hooked up an 8″ floppy drive from a TSR-80 Model II to a 386SX computer – and gets it to boot! This is almost certainly something I want to try some day.
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It turns out, many of the locations in Tolkien’s epics were inspired by real landscapes. No, they were not New Zealand – but Switzerland. When J.R.R Tolkien was 19 years old, he took a multi-week trek through the Bernese Alps in 1911. The trek with his family/friends was lead by his quirky aunt whom some researchers believe was at least partly the model for Gandalf. We know this because Tolkien said so in a letter he wrote his son in 1967:
The Hobbit’s journey from Rivendell to the other side of the Misty Mountains, including the glissade down the slithering stones into the pine woods, is based on my adventures in 1911. [The] wanderings mainly on foot in a party of 12 are not now clear in sequence. We went on foot, carrying great packs, practically all the way from Interlaken, mainly by mountain paths, to Lauterbrunnen and so to Murren and eventually to the head of the Lauterbrunnenthal in a wilderness of moraines.
J.R.R Tolkien 1967
Most of the rest of Tolkien’s major landmarks are there too. Tolkien’s Celebdil mountain (also called Silvertine (Silberzinne)) is a mountain in the Misty Mountain range. Along with Caradhras and Fanuidhol, it is one of the three mountains towering over the mines of Moria. The real life model for the Celebdil is the Silberhorn, the Jungfrau’s neighboring peak. Tolkien calls this white pyramid “the Silvertine of my dreams”. The mountain has old silver mine tunnels and mine shafts you can still tour today.
Read more about the amazing adventure that set the stage for Tolkien’s world on the links below.
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Microsoft researchers announced a new text-to-speech AI model called VALL-E that can closely simulate a person’s voice when given a three-second audio sample. Once it learns a specific voice, VALL-E can synthesize audio of that person saying anything—and do it in a way that attempts to preserve the speaker’s emotional tone and background environmental noise balance.
The scientists also note that since VALL-E could synthesize speech that maintains speaker identity, it may carry potential risks in misuse of the model, such as spoofing voice identification or impersonating a specific speaker.
You can find audio samples and the paper here.
It sure would make breaking into Werner Brandes office a lot easier (1992 movie Sneakers) than convincing your friend to record snippets of a really terrible date.
Koe Recast comes from developer Asara Near in Texas and it allows you to dramatically change your voice into a wide variety of styles – even opposite genders. They have a website demo that allows you to convert a 20 second clip. It’s a preview of their commercial product currently undergoing private alpha testing.
I guess the old TV trope of concealing your voice with a handkerchief over the telephone are long gone.
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The creators of PIXIO magnetic building blocks have invented another fun toy for building 3D art. VOXART uses lightweight panels which click together to create life-size voxel art. They fold flat, so you can store thousands without taking up much space. Sign up for a pre-launch discount, or get notified on Kickstarter.
The Action Lab does some great experiments and is a constant source of fun. They made a video about 5 years ago for fun that might well turn out to be more morbidly relevant today than they thought. In the video, they try a number of different experiments to see if they can confuse the tracking software in drones. Keep in mind, this tracking software is very rudimentary consumer-level tracking that assumes you are wanting to be found and followed by your device.
If you’re been paying attention to the Ukrainian war, there has been an unprecedented use of drones and drone technology. Russia has started using drones built from small airplane engines to deliver bombs to strategic sites. Both sides appear to be using drones in size all the way down to off-the-shelf mini drones that are being used to drop grenades and other explosives on individual troops.
While most of the footage coming from these drones indicates they are being controlled completely manually, the idea of using drones to track and target individuals is well within the capability of off the shelf commercial drones today. It was a threat that was outlined years ago by Elon Musk and other technologists. I think it’s absolutely something that we’re going to start seeing in war, or even assassination attempts, sometime soon.
With the right set of curvatures, it’s possible to make a clear object project an image that’s not visible until light shines through it. Science educator Steve Mould explains the optical and mathematical properties of these uniquely engineered lenses. It turns out the problem has a lot to do with moving the minimal amount of dirt to build a structure and was studied extensively by mathematicians who called it optimal transport. These transport theory problems have a number of solutions and applications.
A similar effect can be created with mirrors and reflected light. Rayform specializes in the technique for a wide variety of luxury and architectural items.
It looks like people have been using Raspberry Pi’s to connect and read floppy disks. Below are some of the links. Note that it appears they are only reading data, not writing. See my other posts for both reading and writing to 5.25″ and other floppy drive interfaces.
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Do we learn anything fundamentally new, or do we just know the answer to the question?
Elgindi
I’ve written about the problems of epistemology and using modern computing to solve problems before. Mathematical proofs are have long lived in a world of rigorous pure thought and universality. Computer assisted proofs are more recent constructions that have been used for a variety of questions with differing purposes and results – but largely on smaller problems.
Two mathematicians recently used computer assistance in their proof that Euler fluid dynamics equations have singularities that ‘blow up’ in certain badly behaved conditions. They developed some really interesting techniques to solve difficult numerical accuracy problems and deal with the numeric problems around mathematical singularities. They broke tons of new ground – inventing and creating a lot of new techniques in the fluid flow investigation. Despite all this and an interesting proof, the questions started up again.
What really qualifies for a proof? According to the mathematicians in the article, many say a proof has to convince other mathematicians a line of reasoning is correct. Others argue that a proof must also improve the understanding of why a particular statement is true, rather than just simply validate the reasoning is correct. “Did we learn anything fundamentally new, or do we just know the answer to the question.”
Constantin says, “A computer can help. It’s wonderful. It gives me insight. But it doesn’t give me a full understanding. Understanding comes from us.” Eigindi still hopes to work out an alternative proof by hand but says “I’m overall happy this exists, but I take it as more of a motivation to try to do it in a less computer dependent way.”
I think this recognizes two important points. First, did we just answer this question, or a universal question? Secondly, did we unlock some fundamental new understanding about the problem – often revealing some new first principles – or just answer a yes/no question? These questions are ones of epistemology which tells us that some answers are better, or provide different, kinds of knowledge.
Traditional mathematical proofs are universal. Once we have them, we know anything built upon them will stand the test of all time and all conditions anytime, anywhere, and in any forms in the universe. It’s the bedrocks that we build our mathematical, scientific, and engineering systems on. Proofs built from first principles often reveal deep truths about how a system operates. An example is describing planetary orbits in terms of mass and gravity forces. This system reveals fundamentally new understanding to the problem based on the first principles of gravity and mass as the basis for why orbits happen. At higher levels, simply answering a yes/no question can disprove a theory/proof or help us know if there is/isn’t at least one solution. This is good information and helps us at least put some bounds on problems that may or may not be actually provable; but they are not as useful as a rigorous proof.
I think it’s worthwhile for everyone, especially scientists and engineers, to understand the different kinds of knowledge and their inherent limitations and that we have solid discussions on computer assisted proofs. Otherwise, we might end up building knowledge upon sandy foundations that might get washed away in the future. Or worse, cost lives when the engineering, scientific, or economic systems we built on them break down catastrophically.
Trogdor the Burninator is one of the best skits done by the old web comic Homestar runner.
Little did I know they made an old King’s Quest style adventure game out of the skit – called Peasant’s Quest. You can even play it online.
