Numlock News: July 15, 2024 • Longlegs, Splash Pads, Floppies

Jul 15, 2024

By Walt Hickey

Welcome back!

Das Boot from disk

The German Navy will modernize their Brandenburg-class F123 frigates and remove their reliance on 8-inch floppy disks in the process. The ships need floppy disks for their data-acquisition systems, which control frigates and play a role in power generation. The four F123 frigates were commissioned from 1994 to 1996 and aid in anti-submarine warfare. Saab won the contract to integrate new naval radars, fire-control directors and combat-management systems, a $436 million contract that will install a sensible Swedish storage solution to the system.

Scharon Harding, Ars Technica

Cape of Good Hope

Ships are avoiding the Red Sea these days and making a go of it around the southern tip of Africa on trips from East Asia to Europe. They’re also learning why the Suez Canal was such a big deal in the first place, as the region has notoriously tempestuous weather. The CMA CGM Benjamin Franklin lost 44 containers in strong weather conditions off the coast of South Africa, and the Panama-flagged MV Ultra Galaxy ran aground northwest of Cape Town earlier this week in bad weather. The number of ships arriving at the Cape of Good Hope fell to 18 last week, the fewest single-day total since October.

Alex Longley and Paul Burkhardt, Bloomberg

Common Ancestor

The most recent ancestor shared by all living organisms was a microbe that lived 4.2 billion years ago, according to a new study that examined the genomes of 700 modern microbes. That’s especially cool, because 4.2 billion years ago is only a couple hundred million years after the formation of Earth, which means that things started happening very quickly on the young planet. That little guy feasted on hydrogen gas and carbon dioxide, was a thermophile that loved heat, had a prosaic immune system to defend from viruses, and had a genome of 2,600 proteins. It would also be infuriated by kids these days, all gassed up on this newfangled oxygen (a trend!), too weak-willed to live their lives on a geothermal vent, coddled by an overbearing immune system, and stuffed with 24,000 protein-coding genes, most of them participation trophies.

Robert F. Service, Science

Hunks Hauling Junk

Astroscale Japan’s Active Debris Removal (ADRAS-J) satellite took a stunning photograph of some space junk, a discarded H-2A rocket upper stage that is trapped in orbit since it launched the GOSAT Earth-observation satellite in 2009. The piece of junk weighs 3 tons, is 36 feet long and is 13 feet wide. The photograph was taken from an eye-popping 50 meters away during the flyby, and Astroscale engineers are going to try to get a better look at it shortly. The second phase of the ADRAS-J mission will try to capture and deorbit some space junk before 2026.

Jess Weatherbed, The Verge

Minions

Despicable Me 4 continues to hold the top spot at the domestic box office with $44.7 million, bringing its global tally to $437.8 million and the aggregate box office of the Despicable Me/Minions franchise to over $5 billion. The horror movie Longlegs brought in $22.6 million, the best gross for an independent horror movie in a decade. Nicolas Cage and Maika Monroe starred, and for Cage it’s the biggest opening weekend in a leading role since National Treasure: Book of Secrets.

Pamela McClintock, The Hollywood Reporter

Splish-Splash

Cities with pools are struggling to make their aquatic amenities work thanks to a confluence of issues, including deteriorating or closed pools that have not been maintained and need replacement, budget crunches, as well as labor issues, with lifeguards routinely in a shortage. One way through this is to do as Lubbock, Texas, did and spend $5.1 million to replace three of their pools with splash pads, those stone areas that have fountains of water shooting upward for kids to play in. There are a couple direct benefits: Maintenance is cheap, the water use is less intensive, they’re open for eight months of the year rather than three or four, they don’t need a lifeguard as there’s essentially no risk of drowning, they’re free, and they’re usable by the 40 million American adults who cannot swim. On the other hand, there is something lost when a municipal pool disappears, not the least of which is that it’s where lots and lots of people get to learn to swim in the first place. Moreover, a third of the 309,000 public swimming pools nationwide are closed as of 2023 because of low staffing, and that’s a community investment problem, not a pool problem.

Jayme Lozano Carver and Jess Huff, The Texas Tribune

EPA

The EPA is considering consolidating its headquarters in Washington as more and more of its employees work from home. The agency’s space in Federal Triangle costs $90 million a year and accounts for 40 percent of the agency’s lease costs, money that goes to the General Services Administration. EPA is far from alone — last year the Government Accountability Office reported that 17 of 24 agencies used 25 percent or less of their office space — but said that in order to get occupancy above 60 percent, it would have to release several buildings in Federal Triangle, which would incidentally allow it to spend the rent savings on improvements and upgrades to its hybrid working arrangement.

Kevin Bogardus, E&E News

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