developed by dissonent | Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux
“A puzzle game that connects the past and present through a supernatural take on the polaroid-within-a-polaroid fad.
“Inside a mysterious room with no door, you seek a way to get out. A set of polaroid photos on the wall hint at the story of this room’s past. With only an old polaroid camera in hand, you must solve the puzzle of each photo by matching them to the scene.”
When programmers at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory set out to develop the flight software for the Apollo 11 space program in the mid-1960s, the necessary technology did not exist. They had to invent it.
They came up with a new way to store computer programs, called “rope memory,” and created a special version of the assembly programming language. Assembly itself is obscure to many of today’s programmers—it’s very difficult to read, intended to be easily understood by computers, not humans. For the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC), MIT programmers wrote thousands of lines of that esoteric code.
Here’s a very 1960s data visualization of just how much code they wrote—this is Margaret Hamilton, director of software engineering for the project, standing next to a stack of paper containing the software:
The AGC code has been available to the public for quite a while–it was first uploaded by tech researcher Ron Burkey in 2003, after he’d transcribed it from scanned images of the original hardcopies MIT had put online. That is, he manually typed out each line, one by one.
“It was scanned by an airplane pilot named Gary Neff in Colorado,” Burkey said in an email. “MIT got hold of the scans and put them online in the form of page images, which unfortunately had been mutilated in the process to the point of being unreadable in places.” Burkey reconstructed the unreadable parts, he said, using his engineering skills to fill in the blanks.
“Quite a bit later, I managed to get some replacement scans from Gary Neff for the unreadable parts and fortunately found out that the parts I filled in were 100% correct!” he said.
As enormous and successful as Burkey’s project has been, however, the code itself remained somewhat obscure to many of today’s software developers. That was until last Thursday (July 7), when former NASA intern Chris Garry uploaded the software in its entirety to GitHub, the code-sharing site where millions of programmers hang out these days.
Within hours, coders began dissecting the software, particularly looking at the code comments the AGC’s original programmers had written. In programming, comments are plain-English descriptions of what task is being performed at a given point. But as the always-sharp joke detectives in Reddit’s r/ProgrammerHumor section found, many of the comments in the AGC code go beyond boring explanations of the software itself. They’re full of light-hearted jokes and messages, and very 1960s references.
One of the source code files, for example, is called BURN_BABY_BURN--MASTER_IGNITION_ROUTINE, and the opening comments explain why:
About 900 lines into that subroutine, a reader can see the playfulness of the original programming team come through, in the first and last comments in this block of code:
In the file called LUNAR_LANDING_GUIDANCE_EQUATIONS.s, it appears that two lines of code were meant to be temporary ended up being permanent, against the hopes of one programmer:
In the same file, there’s also code that appears to instruct an astronaut to “crank the silly thing around.”
“That code is all about positioning the antenna for the LR (landing radar),” Burkey explained. “I presume that it’s displaying a code to warn the astronaut to reposition it.”
And in the PINBALL_GAME_BUTTONS_AND_LIGHTS.s file, which is described as “the keyboard and display system program … exchanged between the AGC and the computer operator,” there’s a peculiar Shakespeare quote:
This is likely a reference to the AGC programming language itself, as one Reddit user . The language used predetermined “nouns” and “verbs” to execute operations. The verb pointed out 37, for example, means “Run program,” while the noun 33 means “Time to ignition.”
Now that the code is on GitHub, programmers can actually suggest changes and file issues. And, of course, they have
You can find the official Apollo 11 AGC source code on GitHub here
so apparently, monocles became a popular fashion accessory amongst lesbians in the early 20th century. there was even a lesbian bar in Paris in the 1920s named Le Monocle.
what was the name of the fish my geology teacher called “bad dude” because i put bad dude in my notes and have no idea what the real name is
update:
this is the bad dude
it’s called dunkleosteus and it’s basically a tank with teeth
that is one bad dude
slam dunkleosteus
Interestingly, though the genus is named after a guy called Dunkle, if you break down the etymology of that name, dunkleosteus works out to something like “Dark Bone”.
So not only do they look like something you’d fight in a JRPG bonus dungeon, they’re named appropriately, too!
@thebibliosphere look what I found? I saw it and thought of you.
in a good way, i promise!!!
I love the caption that says “they’re baaaack” both implying there is more to this, and the author is a 1980s equivalent of s shit poster.
I have. THREE. Of these books. They are a collection of short stories featuring the ridiculous fantasy tropes of women warriors. It’s a group of lady writers taking the piss out of lazy male fantasy writers and they’re FANTASTIC. If you ignore the shitpost covers.
TO AMAZON USED MARKETPLACE
I was gonna add that these books were fucking great.
READ THESE. They are so funny and clever and they take a literary morningstar to the patriarchy.
There are six books in this series. Five of them came out between 1995 and 2004; Book Six came out in 2015 after an 11-year hiatus, so here’s hoping for more. They are, in order:
Chicks in Chainmail
Did You Say Chicks?!
Chicks ‘N Chained Males
The Chick is in the Mail
Turn the Other Chick
Chicks Ahoy! (trade omnibus of the first three books, no new stories)
Chicks and Balances
One of the things I love best about the series is that the various authors will often write short stories for them about the same set of characters: there are several stories about the Ladies’ Aid & Armor Society, a support group/workers union for women in the army; merc-for-hire Hallah Iron-Thighs and her partner in violence Gerta Dershnitzel; single mother/also merc-for hire Rivakonniva; etc.
So yes, go out and buy them, they are so fun.
Also edited by the same person, but not in the same series:
Well, fuck me, is there a vampire/horror series!? Don’t leave me fanging!!
UPDATE: It’s the Suburban Fantasy Anthologies.
I need this in my life. Bless my dash and bless you ppl for spreading this
*adds to to-read, buy-if-possible list*
Esther Friesner is a blessing to fantasy literature and should be canonized as a fandom saint. If you can track down her Majyk By Accident series, it’s amazing and hilarious.
She’s a bubbly, pink-haired schoolgirl who’s secretly a magical princess from space! He’s a broodingly mysterious white-haired pretty-boy whose cursed blood carries a terrible power! Together… they fight crime!
(I like to imagine that every time he goes off on one of his grandly nihilistic rants, she interrupts him with a well-placed whack upside the head with her sparkly princess wand.)
He’s a shy, bookish middle-schooler with an adorable pet monster. She’s a world-weary full conversion cyborg with PTSD. She teaches him how to stand up for himself; he teaches her how to feel again.
(It only gets worse from here.)
She’s an up-and-coming high school volleyball star looking to step up her game in preparation for the big tournament. He’s a legendary ninja assassin looking for one final student to pass his ultimate techniques onto before the slow-acting poison inflicted upon him by a traitorous ex-pupil claims his life. A chance meeting leads them to discover that maybe – just maybe – they can help each other.
(This one could get messy.)
He’s a gruff, scar-faced pirate leading a life of epic romance and intrigue on the fringes of Federation-controlled space. She’s his perfectly ordinary pet cat, whose adorable misadventures – chasing bugs through the cargo holds and getting stuck in the ventilation shafts – are somehow accidentally responsible for the success of all of her owner’s schemes. He never figures it out.
(Only slightly meta.)
She’s an adorable five-year-old girl whose irrepressible curiosity and high spirits help her adjust after she’s sent to live with her estranged father following her mother’s sudden illness. He’s the Sorcerer-King of Lost Atlantis, and is adjusting to the challenges of fatherhood rather less well.
(No, don’t touch that. Or that, or that, or…)
One’s a disgraced ex-samurai on a bloody-handed quest across Sengoku period Japan to avenge the death of her murdered child. The other’s a wacky, pop-culture-loving Shinto demigoddess who’s traveled back from the 21st Century in search of her missing cat, accidentally binding herself to her new companion in the process. They hate each other’s guts, but it looks like they’re stuck with one another!
(Angry yuri shipping edition, posted by request.)
One’s a cynical, hard-drinking ex-police detective turned private eye on the trail of the conspiracy that killed his former partner. The other’s an energetic young martial arts prodigy whose superhuman prowess is fueled by the power of friendship. After a series of disastrous and seemingly coincidental encounters, it transpires that they’re both after the same villain; can they work together – or at least stop getting in each other’s way – long enough to see justice done?
(One for the boys.)
One’s a hard-working single mom struggling to make ends meet as she raises her precocious four-year-old daughter. The other’s a slacker angel who got kicked out of Heaven after she carelessly killed God’s favourite potted plant. Through a chain of unlikely events, they end up sharing an apartment!
(It’s about responsibility or something.)
One’s a terminally shy shut-in who gets most of her information about the outside world from overwrought romance novels. The other just wants to help her sister get out more, make friends, maybe even meet someone nice – a plan complicated by her day job as Grand Inquisitor of the Galactic Imperium.
(Work-life balance is tough!)
One’s a librarian. The other’s the goddamn Devil.
(That’s it. That’s the entire premise. Just the Devil hanging out in a library, bothering the librarian for the entirety of each weekly 22-minute episode. They probably kiss at the end, because of course they do.)
One’s an incredibly boring salaryman. The other is… also an incredibly boring salaryman. It is a heartwarming tale of two incredibly boring people in love.
Kimchi and Justice 