Ian Kenway @iankenway@social.cleverlibre.org

Silk woven portrait of Joseph-Marie Jacquard, woven by Michel-Marie Carquillat on a Jacquard loom - France, 1839.

The program for this weave required Carquillat to encode ~24,000 Jacquard punch cards.

The image is fine detailed enough to capture detail like the translucency of the curtains over the window.

This achievement was one of the main things that later convinced Babbage to use punch cards for his Analytical Engine, cascading into actual use in computing later on.

#art #retrocomputing

" #HS2 is already inflicting environmental vandalism on our countryside and woodlands as the cost of the project continues to spiral." https://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2019/02/11/greens-time-to-put-hs2-out-of-its-misery/ #GreenParty #uk

Ancient rock wiggles could be earliest trace of moving #organism | #Science | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/feb/11/wiggly-structures-in-ancient-rocks-could-be-earliest-trace-of-moving-organism

#Biology #Palaeontology #Evolution #Gabon #Africa

I wondered how much resources (network data, disk space) a #fedi instance would consume depending on the number of users, so I made a simple model.

tl;dr: the main issue with hosting a fediverse instance is the amount of data it sends on the network, which grows almost as the square of the number of users.

https://github.com/wimvanderbauwhede/limited-systems/wiki/A-simple-model-for-network-data-size-and-disk-space-usage-of-a-fediverse-instance

I’ve been suggesting we’ll have a “Joni Mitchell #Brexit” for months. Nobody will believe the “project fear” stuff until it’s happened. We don’t know what we’ve got till it’s gone.

Got around to producing the #song that those words imply yesterday. So here’s the song I call “Joni Mitchell Brexit”

https://youtu.be/C-QpbdWSjZQ

Interesting points on secret UK plans to monitor cross border traffic from/to N. Ireland & the Republic. Effectively the UK conducting mass surveillance on a foreign state (i.e. Ireland).

#Brexit #surveillance

Brexit Poll: 80% of UK Adults Disapprove of Government’s Handling of Brexit Negotiations https://www.globalresearch.ca/brexit-poll-80-of-uk-adults-disapprove-of-governments-handling-of-brexit-negotiations/5667748 #English #brexit

Revealed: The dark-money Brexit Ads Flooding Social Media https://www.globalresearch.ca/revealed-the-dark-money-brexit-ads-flooding-social-media/5667750 #Brexitdarkmoney #UnitedKingdom #English #brexit

Interesting Fact of the Day: Sign Language, like any language, has accents and regional dialects.