steveanderson.digital

In 1947 a moth was found in a relay switch on the Mark II electromechanical computer, a true computer "bug." What's most interesting here isn't that an insect was found in the machine, but that the computer operator taped the moth into the logbook. It's almost as if the moth was trapped in a thin sheet of amber, preserved as the pre-digital ancestor of the tricksters within our own modern devices. 

The insect was found by Grace Hopper (Wayback Machine link), a computer scientist and rear admiral in the US Navy. Google recently paid homage to Hopper with a "doodle" (below) showing her working on an early mainframe computer. Not only does the computer display an answer on a paper printout, but a moth also flies out at the end of the sequence.

(Revised and republished April 19th, 2025)

Apple - Making the Mac Pro (2013)

I love videos like this, especially the “How it’s Made” series on the Discovery science channel.

The robotic ballet is mesmerizing, and it’s great that the new Mac Pro is assembled in the United States. With the complexity of the global marketplace, it seems unlikely that new high-tech devices could also be completely manufactured in the US though.

Google is producing the Motorola Moto X smartphone in the US too.

(Revised and republished April 19th, 2025)

Murlyn Hakon of Bletchley Park explains how the Enigma Machine worked.

The remarkable thing about Enigma, is that when you press a letter on the keyboard and the subsequent enciphered letter lights up to the rear of the machine, the chances of that letter lighting up are nearly 158 million million million to 1.

(Revised and republished April 21st, 2025)

Mavis Batey was one of the codebreakers working at Bletchley Park during World War II. She recently passed away at age 92. Batey was part of the codebreaking team that ensured a successful landing for Allied forces on D-Day.

She initially worked in London, checking commercial codes and perusing the personal columns of The Times for coded spy messages. After showing promise, she was plucked out and sent to Bletchley to work in the research unit run by Dilly Knox. Knox had led the way for the British on the breaking of the Enigma ciphers, but was now working in a cottage next to the mansion on new codes and ciphers that had not been broken by Hut 6, where the German Army and Air Force ciphers were cracked. “It was a strange little outfit in the cottage,” Mavis said. Knox was a true eccentric, often so wrapped up in the puzzle he was working on that he would absent-mindedly stuff a lunchtime sandwich into his pipe rather than his tobacco: “Organisation is not a word you would associate with Dilly Knox. When I arrived, he said: 'Oh, hello, we’re breaking machines, have you got a pencil?’ That was it. I was never really told what to do. I think, looking back on it, that was a great precedent in my life, because he taught me to think that you could do things yourself without always checking up to see what the book said."

Mavis Batey - obituary

(Revised and republished April 21st, 2025)

Horror film legend George Romero on zombies:

I always used the zombie as a character for satire or a political criticism...

I think the zombies could be anything. They could be a hurricane or a tornado. It’s not about the zombies. The important thing to me is the way the people react to this horrible situation, misbehave, make mistakes and screw themselves up.

George A. Romero interview: “The Walking Dead is just a soap opera with the occasional zombie” (Wayback Machine link)

And I need to get a pair of those glasses too!

(Revised and republished April 21st, 2025)

Google, NASA, and D-Wave are teaming up to take quantum computing to the next level.

The case or container of the D-Wave is much more empty than I had suspected. It’s so different from portable computing which seeks to maximize internal dimensions for power usage and heat.

The biggest question is the question itself – “we don’t know what the best questions are to ask that computer, that’s exactly what we’re trying to understand now” (Eleanor Rieffel @ 4:52 in the video above).

(via kottke.org)

(Revised and republished April 19th, 2025 — I can’t help but think of Everything Everywhere All At Once)

Quantum Computers Animated, Piled Higher and Deeper (PHD Comics)

The illustrations for this video on quantum computing are fantastic, especially the "0/1" transition at 1:40.

(via Hacker News)

(Revised and republished April 19th, 2025)