Quick Links for Wednesday, August 23

The moment TV went from black-and-white to color for the first time. “Resurfaced footage has emerged of the historical moment a television channel in the U.S. switched from its black-and-white programming to color for the very first time. On April 14, 1967, WMT-TV Channel 2 in Iowa aired its first-ever color TV broadcast—transitioning from black-and-white to color as the anchor read the evening news.”

The maverick design choices that may have doomed the Titan sub. “Until the Titan disaster on June 18, no one had ever died while piloting or riding a submersible into the deep’s unending darkness. This remarkable safety record stood for nearly a century, despite explorers making many thousands of dives.”

› There of course have been a million articles about the integrity of this vessel, but I’m not sure any fact has struck me as hard as the one quoted above. That’s just nuts.

I think the thing that bugs me the most is how obvious all of the flaws seem to even total amateurs; the materials, the design generally, etc. Many of these weaknesses seemingly were made in the name of cost-cutting, but we’re talking about BILLIONAIRES here, wittingly risking their lives in these death bubbles. Surely 1) they could pay scientists/engineers (even arm-chair ones) to review this thing and tell them it was something they should stay away from; and/or 2) pay the OceanGate guys to make it as legit as possible.

This all seems so ridiculously obvious that one has to wonder WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?

10 facts about climate change. Great read.

Hackers rig casino card-shuffling machines for “full control” cheating. “They found that if someone can plug a small device into a USB port on the most modern version of the Deckmate—which they say often sits under a table next to players’ knees, with its USB port exposed—that hacking device could alter the shuffler’s code to fully hijack the machine and invisibly tamper with its shuffling. They found that the Deckmate 2 also has an internal camera designed to ensure that every card is present in the deck, and that they could gain access to that camera to learn the entire order of the deck in real time, sending the results from their small hacking device via Bluetooth to a nearby phone.”

How scientists bring Webb’s images to life in beautiful color.