Mis-swiping the Point: NYC Subway Payment Systems
https://tedium.co/2023/01/25/nyc-subway-payment-systems-challenges/ [tedium.co]
2023-01-27 18:20
tags:
history
transport
urban
The NYC subway system—a mishmash of new and old technology—still struggles to build payment systems that work for everyone. And often, the tech often separates the haves and have-nots.
It’s Time to Stop Talking About “Generations”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/10/18/its-time-to-stop-talking-about-generations [www.newyorker.com]
2022-04-03 22:33
tags:
article
history
hoipolloi
From boomers to zoomers, the concept gets social history all wrong.
Capital crossings
https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/interactive/2021/washington-dc-bridges-new-and-old/ [www.washingtonpost.com]
2021-04-01 17:21
tags:
architecture
article
history
maps
photos
transport
urban
Washington is a city of great bridges and terrible bridges. These are their stories.
Cincinnati Built a Subway System 100 Years Ago–But Never Used It
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cincinnati-built-a-subway-system-100-years-ago-but-never-used-it [www.atlasobscura.com]
2021-01-06 01:13
tags:
history
transport
urban
The Cincinnati subway stations are still there. But if you’re still waiting for a train to come, you’ve been waiting for almost a century. To this day Cincinnati remains home to the largest unused subway system in the world, with over two miles of empty tunnels. Engineers who inspected the tunnels recently deemed them in “very good condition.”
source: HN
A Cryptologic Mystery
https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/neinnines/ [www.mattblaze.org]
2020-12-24 23:02
tags:
article
history
opsec
Did a broken random number generator in Cuba help expose a Russian espionage network?
I remember concluding that the most likely, if still rather improbable, explanation was that the 9-less messages were dummy fill traffic and that the random number generator used to create the messages had a bug or developed a defect that prevented 9s from being included. This would be, to say the least, a very serious error, since it would allow a listener to easily distinguish fill traffic from real traffic, completely negating the benefit of having fill traffic in the first place. It would open the door to exactly the kind of traffic analysis that the system was carefully engineered to thwart. The 9-less messages went on for almost ten years. (If I were reporting this as an Internet vulnerability, I would dub it the “Nein Nines” attack; please forgive the linguistic muddle). But I was resigned to the likelihood that I would never know for sure.
Hasselblad, Kodak, & Apollo 11
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLVSA43cZRo [www.youtube.com]
2020-07-29 02:56
tags:
history
space
tech
video
A probably not entirely wrong history of cameras developed for the moon.
Space Oddity
https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2020/07/20/nearly-100-years-ago-man-tried-blast-off-venus-now-documentary-crew-is-mission-find-rocket-built-that-journey/ [www.washingtonpost.com]
2020-07-25 19:16
tags:
article
history
space
In 1927, a Baltimore man was on a mission to blast off to Venus. Nearly a century later, a documentary crew is on its own mission to find the rocket built for that journey.
Some great illustrations, too.
"Kharkovchanka" - The Colossal Soviet Antarctic Cruisers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6R-h06IsJw [www.youtube.com]
2020-07-19 04:16
tags:
cars
geology
history
video
“The Kharkovchanka” - Russia’s Colossal Antarctic Cruisers which have been continuously operating in some of the most extreme environments on Earth for over 50 years. Produced in Kharkiv, Ukrainian Soviet Socialistic Republic and originally operated by USSR, the ’Харьковчанка’ (literally ‘Kharkiv Women’), these amazing Snow Cruisers were built in the late 1950s and featured everything a polar explorer could need in the field. In their half-century mission, they have crossed thousands of miles on Antarctic Ice, visited the South Pole, the pole of inaccessibility as well the dozens of outposts and research stations on the continent.
Previously: “The Snow Cruiser“-Antarctica’s Abandoned Behemoth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR0M7KjnJTE
A Century Later, the Expensive Lesson of Reversing the Chicago River
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2014/01/century-later-expensive-lesson-reversing-chicago-river/8069/ [www.citylab.com]
2020-07-12 06:41
tags:
history
transport
urban
Way back in 1673, the French Canadian explorer Louis Jolliet noticed that the land around present-day Chicago had “a very great and important advantage, which perhaps will hardly be believed.” The area, he foresaw, could become the great node of a huge continent, with the Great Lakes on one side and, just a few miles to the southwest, the Illinois River and the entire Mississippi Basin. Jolliet envisioned, rather hopefully, that connecting the two — and creating a water route from Lake Erie all the way to the Gulf of Mexico – would be as simple as building a canal through just “half a league of prairie.”
Pictures from inside the German intelligence agency BND
https://www.electrospaces.net/2014/05/pictures-from-inside-german.html [www.electrospaces.net]
2020-05-24 18:25
tags:
hardware
history
opsec
photos
The German foreign intelligence service Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) is moving to a brand new headquarters in Berlin. Here we show some unique pictures from inside the former headquarters in the village of Pullach and also give an impression of what the new building looks like.
source: grugq
Engineering and Technology History Wiki
https://ethw.org/Main_Page [ethw.org]
2020-05-17 03:46
tags:
archive
history
physics
reference
retro
science
tech
The ETHW is not a “how-does-technology-work” site. The scope of the ETHW is historical; instead of focusing on the inner workings of technology, it aims to explain how the technology was developed, who were the major players involved, and what long term significance the technologies have. The ETHW is not only an encyclopedia of the history of technology, but it also contains a full range of materials that relate to the legacy of engineering, including personal accounts, documents, and multimedia objects. In that sense, it is a combination reference guide, blog, virtual archive, and on-line community.
A Codebreaker's Dream: The Bombe!
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2013/11/a-codebreakers-dream-bombe.html [www.darkroastedblend.com]
2020-05-17 03:28
tags:
crypto
hardware
history
photos
retro
What is this, sporting dozens of colorful knobs, almost like a “turn-the-knob” toddler’s game at a playground in a nearest mall? This the awesome British Bombe electro-mechanical codebreaking machine which only had one purpose: to determine the rotor settings on the German cipher machine “ENIGMA” during WW2.
Great collection.
source: grugq
Turbojet SVL - the “forgotten” train of Russia and its American predecessor
https://tver.livejournal.com/1046327.html [tver.livejournal.com]
2020-05-03 21:28
tags:
flying
history
transport
What if we put a jet engine on a train engine? In Russian.
Long Con
https://tedium.co/2020/04/20/con-artists-nature/ [tedium.co]
2020-04-21 18:22
tags:
history
hoipolloi
ideas
links
Cognitive scientists have identified a number of common ways in which people avoid being gullible. But con artists are especially skillful at what social scientists call framing, telling stories in ways that appeal to the biases, beliefs and prominent desires of their targets. They use strategies that take advantage of human weaknesses.
Good collection of cons.
Cross post: https://theconversation.com/why-do-people-believe-con-artists-130361
How to explain the KGB's amazing success identifying CIA agents in the field?
https://www.salon.com/2015/09/26/how_to_explain_the_kgbs_amazing_success_identifying_cia_agents_in_the_field/ [www.salon.com]
2020-03-25 01:16
tags:
history
opsec
Their argument was simple. How could these disasters have happened with such regularity if the agency had not been penetrated by Soviet moles? The problem with this line of thought was that it did not so much overestimate CIA security as underestimate the brainpower of their Russian counterparts.
source: grugq
David Rumsey Historical Map Collection
https://www.davidrumsey.com/ [www.davidrumsey.com]
2020-03-13 04:23
tags:
archive
history
maps
reference
visualization
The David Rumsey Map Collection was started over 30 years ago and contains more than 150,000 maps. The collection focuses on rare 16th through 21st century maps of North and South America, as well as maps of the World, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. The collection includes atlases, wall maps, globes, school geographies, pocket maps, books of exploration, maritime charts, and a variety of cartographic materials including pocket, wall, children’s, and manuscript maps. Items range in date from about 1550 to the present.
This is fantastic.
The 1918 Parade That Spread Death in Philadelphia
https://daily.jstor.org/the-1918-parade-that-spread-death-in-philadelphia/ [daily.jstor.org]
2020-03-10 02:20
tags:
history
hoipolloi
medicine
philly
urban
The influenza pandemic of 1918-19 killed between 50 and 100 million people around the world, more than died in the battles of World War I. In the United States, the hardest-hit city was Philadelphia, where the spread of the disease was spurred by what was meant to be a joyous event: a parade.
Point Of Saturation
https://tedium.co/2020/02/27/aloha-pos-system-history/ [tedium.co]
2020-02-28 22:11
tags:
business
food
history
tech
75k - The number of restaurants around the world that use the Aloha point of sale system. Aloha is an industry stalwart that has managed to stay relevant while often still looking like it was designed in 1998.
Plus some NCR history.
The Fairey Rotodyne, the vertical takeoff and landing airliner time forgot
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/02/the-fairey-rotodyne-the-vertical-take-off-and-landing-airliner-time-forgot/ [arstechnica.com]
2020-02-17 02:46
tags:
flying
history
tech
transport
The phrase “Urban Air Mobility” (UAM) seems like it’s been with us for quite a while, but really it’s only been in widespread use for two or three years. NASA officially recognized UAM in 2017, calling for a market study of remotely piloted or unmanned air passenger and cargo transportation around an urban area. Most people would probably call this the “air taxi” idea—a vision of hundreds of small, unmanned electric multi-copters shuttling two or three passengers from nearby suburbs or city spaces to vertiports at about 100 mph (roughly 161 km/h).
But if things had worked out differently in the late 1950s and early 1960s, we might have a very different understanding of UAM—something more like mass-transit. We might have had a city-center to city-center 55-passenger vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) airliner shuttling between urban heliports at 180 mph (289 km/h).
Actually, we did have that, it’s just few people remember. It was called the Fairey Rotodyne.
source: ars
OldNYC: Mapping Historical Photographs
https://www.oldnyc.org/ [www.oldnyc.org]
2020-02-12 01:41
tags:
archive
history
interactive
maps
nyc
photos
visualization