19 5 / 2017
Tony Stark is categorically not ready for this.
Iron Man vol 1, #72 (1975)
19 5 / 2017
Congress Just Ignored Trump And Boosted America's Science Funding
Here are the highlights:
- The National Institute of Health (NIH) has had its spending increase by $2 billion to a total of $34 billion. Trump requested this to be cut.
- NASA has been granted $19.7 billion in funding, an increase even on what Obama requested. Of this, $5.8 billion is set aside for science research, including $1.9 billion for the Earth Sciences – something Trump officials said they wanted completely defunded.
- $37 million has been given to NASA’s STEM programs and outreach, with $100 million total going towards educational programs, something Trump also wished, and still wishes, to cut by 2018.
- The National Science Foundation (NSF), the largest federal fund for science and academia, has been given $7.5 billion, a slight increase from 2016’s budget.
- The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has been given $1.09 billion, a slight increase from 2016. Trump wanted to cut this by 10 percent.
- The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which faced a 31 percent cut by this year or the next, has only had its funding cut by 1 percent.
- The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been given $3.5 billion
- Renewable energies and clean energy research funding have been boosted by $17 million.
EAT SHIT CHEETO HITLER
!!!
(via orsino)
19 5 / 2017
what. why? someone pls explain to me pls i wasnt born yet in 1999 why turn computer off before midnight? what happen if u dont?
y2k lol everyone was like “the supervirus is gonna take over the world and ruin everything and end the world!!!”
This is the oldest I’ve ever felt. Right now.
WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN YOU WEREN’T BORN YET IN 1999.
Ahh the Millenium bug.
It wasn’t a virus, it was an issue with how some old computers at the time were programmed to deal with dates. Basically some computers with older operating systems didn’t have anything in place to deal with the year reaching 99 and looping around to 00. It was believed that this inability to sync with the correct date would cause issues, and even crash entire systems the moment the date changed.
People flipped out about it, convinced that the date discrepancy between netwoked systems would bring down computers everywhere and shut down the internet and so all systems relying on computers, including plane navigation etc. would go down causing worldwide chaos. It was genuinely believed that people should all switch off computers to avoid this. One or two smart people spoke up and said “um hey, this actually will only effect a few very outdated computers and they’ll just display the wrong date, so it probably won’t be harmful” but were largely ignored because people selling books about the end of the world were talking louder.
In the end, absolutely nothing happened.
Oh gosh.
I’ve been a programmer working for various government agencies since the early 1990s and I can say with some confidence:
NOTHING HAPPENED BECAUSE WE WORKED VERY HARD FIXING SHIT THAT MOST DEFINITELY WOULD HAVE BROKEN ON 1-JAN-2000.
One example I personally worked on: vaccination databases.
My contract was with the CDC to coordinate immunization registries — you know, kids’ vaccine histories. What they got, when they got it, and (most importantly) which vaccines they were due to get next and when. These were state-wide registries, containing millions of records each.
Most of these systems were designed in the 1970s and 1980s, and stored the child’s DOB year as only two digits. This means that — had we not fixed it — just about every child in all the databases I worked on would have SUDDENLY AGED OUT OF THE PROGRAM 1-JAN-2000.
In other words: these kids would suddenly be “too old” to receive critical vaccines.
Okay, so that’s not a nuke plant exploding or airplanes dropping from the sky. In fact, nothing obvious would have occurred come Jan 1st.
BUT
Without the software advising doctors when to give vaccinations, an entire generation’s immunity to things like measles, mumps, smallpox (etc) would have been compromised. And nobody would even know there was a problem for months — possibly years — after.
You think the fun & games caused by a few anti-vaxers is bad?
Imagine whole populations going unvaccinated by accident… one case of measles and the death toll might be measured in millions.
This is one example I KNOW to be true, because I was there.
I also know that in the years leading up to 2000 there were ad-hoc discussion groups (particularly alt.risk) of amazed programmers and project managers that uncovered year-2000 traps… and fixed them.
Quietly, without fanfare.
In many cases because admitting there was a problem would have resulted in a lawsuit by angry customers. But mostly because it was our job to fix those design flaws before anyone was inconvenienced or hurt.
So, yeah… all that Y2K hysteria was for nothing, because programmers worked their asses off to make sure it was for nothing.
Bolding mine.
Absolutely true. My Mom worked like crazy all throughout 1998 and 1999 on dozens of systems to avoid Y2K crashes. Nothing major happened because people worked to made sure it didn’t.
Now if we could just harness that concept for some of the other major issues facing us today.
this meme came so far since i saw it this morning. god i love tumblr teaching tumblr about history.
As a young Sys Admin during Y2K, I can confirm that it was SRS BZNS. I worked for a major pharmaceutical company at the time. They spent millions of dollars on consultant and programmer hours, not to mention their own employees’ time, to fix all their in-house software as well as replace it with new systems. Sys Admins like myself were continually deploying patches, updating firmware, and deploying new systems in the months leading up to Y2K. Once that was done, though, the programmers went home and cashed their checks.
When the FATEFUL HOUR came along, it wasn’t just one hour. For a global company with offices in dozens of countries, it was 24 hours of being alert and on-call. I imagine that other large organizations had similar setups with entire IT departments working in shifts to monitor everything. Everyone was on a hair trigger, too, so the slightest problem caused ALL HANDS ON DECK pages to go out.
Yes, we had pagers.
For hard numbers IDC’s 2006 calculation put the total US cost of remediation, before and after, at $147 billion - that’s in 1999 dollars. That paid for an army of programmers, including calling up retired grandparents from the senior center because COBOL and FORTRAN apps from the ‘60s needed fixing.
Also note that there were some problems, including $13 billion in remediation included in the figure above. Some of these involved nuclear power plants, medical equipment, and “a customer at a New York State video rental store had a bill for $91,250, the cost of renting the movie ‘The General’s Daughter’ for 100 years.”
Y2K was anything but nothing.
Reblogging because this is a side to the story I had never heard.
(via villainfetish)
![theprettyhelpless:
“ My Dragon Age Dreamcast [3/?]
“ Charlize Theron as Queen Anora Theirin
” ”](https://64.media.tumblr.com/34200753ee921af9fdad7b59295ec24d/tumblr_ni8kfaDMIU1rjplw9o1_r1_500.jpg)
19 5 / 2017
tygermama asked: Tony Stark becoming an industry leader in the fair and equitable treatment of his workers. Benefits, flex shifts, telecommuting, parental benefits, on-site daycare, employee credit unions, zero tolerance sexism and racism policies. Everyone else hates him. Tony could not give a fuck. People deserve better.
for fucking *SERIOUS*
Straight up, Tony is an engineer. He fixes problems. It gets him hot. He can spend DAYS crawling around inside a problem. It’s his jam. He loves it. So making a building or technology work for a person? Yeah, he’s going to do that. It’s a problem to be solved. Ignoring the human factor; he abhors unsolved problems. Just can’t leave them alone.
Bringing in the human part of it, though, makes it even more interesting. Tony does not fix *people*. People are not broken. He says it to General Ross when he gives him shit over the whole Hulk thing “I’m hardware, not software”. Tony innately seems to believe people aren’t problems. People have disabilities/illnesses but they’re not broken. They shouldn’t have to fit the world. The world should fit them.
(His ‘sounds exhausting’ crack re: Fury turning to see all the screens is a prime example. That shit would get old fast in the middle of a battle. Nick would practically have to spin like a top to keep up with the reports coming in from all sides and it seriously would be exhausting).
Like the idea of turning somebody’s skills away because they have mobility issues? The fuck you say? He’d be like “OKAY on it. Mind if I take some scans? Because this would be easier with scans. Hey, is that chair manual? Does that not fuck your fingers up? Like how, where, okay JARVIS you’re taking notes right buddy? Because this is a thing too. Sorry, we were talking about your office, but really we should work on the chair and then build around that, you mind if we do that? Be easier anyway.”
And kids? Kids are fucking AWESOME beta testers. They can break ANYTHING. (Okay they can’t go near the weapons division because the lawyers start crying) So an entire room full of them? Ah yeahhhhhhh. Bust shit up you tiny tiny Godzillas you.
But seriously, Pepper is the one who points out the turnover of parents and such, knowing full well he’ll be like “We need a whole daycare? Cool, buy one. They can’t buy houses? Eh, we can build a credit union, I’ve got fucktons of cash, so we can totally do that…what else? Great, let’s do that.”
Like even on the sexual stuff. Yeah, he likes sex, and strippers and the whole shebang, but it’s *consensual* and people getting harassed? Totally not consensual and totally not awesome. He wants to keep his staff. Especially the awesome women. Pepper is an awesome woman and he totally could not function without Pepper so a thousand more Peppers? NOT GIVING THAT UP.
This is the guy who shut down the weapons division when it was the primary part of his company. He did it without even blinking. Tony has absolutely no fucking problems with risking his business to fix something that’s wrong. Because he knows he can. He fixes stuff. And when something isn’t working for people? He changes it until he does.
Hell yeah SI’s turnover rate is so fucking low as to be ridiculous and all the other companies *HATE HIM*, but fuck it. They can’t keep up anyway so why is he going to worry?
Hardware, baby, not software. If the world doesn’t work for your people; fix the world.
Headcanon accepted.
I love everything about this post and would like to shower you with the virtual goodie of your choice whenever it’s convenient for you.
Headcanon so much accepted. Mind if I use this premise in a fic one day? If I ever do, you’ll be credited of course ;)
Omg that would be the best! Go for it! :D
Marvel get on this!
Further- Tony Stark surrounds himself with adaptive tech. Sure, he invents most of it and the scale and implementation is something no one without his privileges and abilities could replicate- but it really seems to me that Tony does constant patchwork to make up the gaps in his own abilities. Not just flying and shooting lasers- JARVIS as his executive functions and memory aide (though he can be overruled, can’t fix everything). The fancy holographic drafting tools that let him get his ideas down- almost as fast as he can come up with them. An intense awareness of needing to interact with people on certain levels that are difficult for him, but he pushes it anyway when he has to and if it’s too much he steps back and throws money and/or Pepper at them until they go away. (This is something I relate to- the ‘I know I need to interact with you and I want to, but I’m not sure how, and now it’s just awkward’ thing.)
Tony both has physical disabilities/chronic illness he’s adapted for (the shrapnel that constantly endangers him) and gaps in his ability to communicate and relate easily that he’s trying to bridge, with varying degrees of success. And he does what he does best- slaps some science on the hull and jury-rigs the comms so that something can get through, even if it’s too coded for immediate translation.
Don’t mind me, just thoughts that tumble out at too early in the morning.
im not cryin–yes im totally crying
Not to mention that this is definitely supported by comics canon–to the point of once asking a supervillain if he would stop if offered a steady job, then offering him one, and prioritizing his company and the wellbeing of the people working for him constantly. Ethical business (him) vs. non-ethical business is one of his themes, I’d say. And protecting his employees against the mob, going to the school of one of his employees’ sons to try to help him deal with a bullying problem, and so on, he takes a very personal interest in the lives of his employees, and employees a lot of diverse people. So of course he’d also institute awesome benefits, and have strict expectation in terms of racism, sexism, and harassment, and give them flexibility. It also makes sense, since it means his company would be attractive to the best people out there, and some great minds in the field might come to him over other employers because he would actually listen and pay attention to their needs. But Tony would just do it because of who he is.