Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Rattling the tin cup as you walk by
Local advertising revenue, such as it was, has completely disappeared overnight due to COVID-19 and local newspapers are falling by the wayside as a result. The family-owned Concord Monitor, financial and spiritual home of Granite Geek, is not folding but our business...
Calling all COBOL cowhands!
(UPDATE: IBM wants to train more COBOL programmers.) Regular readers will remember my 2018 story about the state upgrading its tax system because they were still running COBOL. After it ran I heard from COBOL programmers as far away as Brazil who offered their...
Accidental experiment shows ‘nuclear-free’ means ‘gas-abundant’
NHPR reporter Sam Evans-Brown pointed out an interesting electric-power experiment going on in New England: By coincidence, our nuclear power plants have all been offline for a few days. (Some were undergoing refueling, which happens every spring when demand dips, and...
To mask or not to mask – that is the question
Apologies to William Shakespeare, but these days when we step outside most of us become miniature COVID Hamlets and start to soliloquize: “To mask or not to mask – that is the question.” It’s not that we’re poetic, it’s that we’re confused. Which is understandable...
When you come home from the store, what should you do with your clothes?
(While reading this story, you might want to play this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2CWfSLyjx8) Here’s yet another surprising effect that COVID-19 has produced in everyday life: Stripping once inside the front door has become routine. As you’ve probably guessed,...
Turnpike traffic keeps falling
When you're staying at home, you're not driving. The number of trips by cars and trucks paying to go through tolls on New Hampshire turnpike system fell below 1 million last week, maybe for the first time ever since all the tolls were set up. Car trips are at about...
Nationwide testing for COVID would have a mathematical drawback
Obviously the United States needs lots and lots more testing for COVID-19 to determine who is and isn't carrying it. Future years will look back with horror at the federal government's failure to prepare during the first three months of this year for what everybody...
UNH research prodded state’s low arsenic standard in water
Who says academic research is all ivory tower and no real-world consequences? Not UNH, as they note in this recent release. From UNH News: New Hampshire adopted a new, lower drinking water standard for arsenic last year after University of New Hampshire researchers...
Zoom-bombing shows the perils of a program suddenly becoming very, very popular
(NOTE: I wrote this yesterday. Since then, New York schools have stopped using Zoom because of this concern and Zoom is going to change some settings as of Monday to make bombing harder.) Remember that time you went to a meeting of the local Planning Board, only to...
The collapse in local air traffic, visualized
A data analyst named Steve Deane with Stratos Jet Charters in Orlando, Florida, has been making depictions of plane traffic taken from Flightradar24 to illustrate how much COVID-19 has clobbered commercial aviation. It depends mostly on data from ADS-B transmitters,...
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