Recommended Links of the Week (#614)

Disney's gas masks, the Argentine owner of Google, road movies, and the deepest rivers in the world. Not enough? There's much more below, if you keep reading. Go for the Recommended Links!

This Week's Recommended Links

Restarting a computer could have saved lives in the Gulf War: "Many of us surely remember the First Gulf War and the US attack on Iraq in early 1991. It has been said countless times that it was the war broadcast live on television. As always in war, the technology of the time was important. But there was a software failure in the American Patriot missiles."

The gas masks Disney designed: "The famous Walt Disney participated, in his own way, in World War II. First by producing pro-Allied and anti-Nazi animations, and second, and this is less known, by designing a gas mask with the face of his famous mouse Mickey adapted for children's use."

This is what motivates programmers to collaborate on open source projects: "For many (even for many supporters of free software), it is difficult to understand how some great programmers rejected the salaries offered by proprietary software development companies, and how with such apparently weak incentives, they were able to create products that ended up rivaling proprietary ones, and even surpassing them."

The life cycle of a Xenomorph

The night a young Argentine was 'owner' of Google.com.ar: "The story begins with a tweet: 'I want to clarify that I entered http://nic.ar and saw the name http://google.com.ar available and I bought it legally as appropriate!', a statement that belongs to the Twitter account of Nicolas Kuroña (@Argentop), an Argentine who claimed to have bought the ownership of the URL of the world's most popular search engine."

The closed cities of the Soviet Union: "The closed cities were known internally as \"post office boxes\". On the rare occasions when residents were allowed to leave, they were forbidden to talk about where they lived; if required by authority, they had to claim to live in the nearest large city."

What are the filmmakers' tricks to make cameras disappear when there's a mirror in the shot: "If you are one of those who has ever wondered how filmmakers keep cameras from showing up in the shot when there is a mirror involved, you must watch the latest video that the YouTube channel Paul E.T. has uploaded. As you might have imagined, there is no single way to fool the viewer, since there are various methods that can work depending on how the scene was conceived."

10,000 worms eat tomato, broccoli, and corn

Twenty Road Movies - twenty films to hit the road: "In this list there are escapes and landscapes, highways and motels, fights and reunions. In this list there are cars, motorcycles, and even tractors. The reasons do not matter; their only common point is making a journey."

The 10 deepest rivers in the world: "Many of the largest rivers in the world also have great depth. The list we make today contains the 10 deepest rivers in the world and, if we look closely, they are also some of the most popular rivers on the planet. All of them are located in different parts of the world, flowing through various cities and countries."

The fabulous inventions of Leonardo da Vinci: "Leonardo showed from a young age a great interest in understanding the laws of nature and using them in creating his inventions. He designed or improved a large number of gadgets of all kinds, from war machines to everyday objects; even devices that at that time seemed like science fiction, such as flying machines, automobiles, or underwater suits."

The pig's call in metal

Bronze Age, a series of catastrophic misfortunes: "It was one of the greatest geopolitical and climatic cataclysms in human history. During a period of barely fifty years, almost all the great civilizations that dominated the eastern Mediterranean were destroyed. Literally: almost all the important cities of entire regions were reduced to rubble."

Are we the most intelligent species on the planet?: "At first glance, the answer to this question seems simple. We are the only species that asks these questions, so our cognitive ability must far surpass that of other animals, right? However, we should not approach the topic without first asking another question: how can we define – and measure – intelligence?"

Writing, alcohol, and other demons: "To subvert this block, some authors, such as W. Faulkner or Bukowski, used alcohol as a stimulant with which to rescue literary genius from intellectual depth; others, like Edgar Allan Poe, exploited it as a painkiller against their anxieties and sorrows. But all of them, intoxicated in front of the blank page, hid the same purpose."