While there is probably more FORTRAN code out there, how much of it is being actively worked and updated?

Actually more than you would expect. While physicists (except for odd-balls like me) don't use it as much as they once did, astronomers never really stopped using it. The MESA stellar simulation project (project homepage) for example, is a modern research-grade stellar simulation written entirely in modern Fortran. Major packages like BLAS and Lapack are also still being maintained and are slowly being upgraded to take advantage of more modern language features as well.

The scientific community is small compared to the number of web developers out there, yes, but Fortran is a really efficient language [in man hours as well as execution time] for numerical simulations. That it doesn't have all the features of a language like Python also means the learning curve isn't that steep and there aren't nearly as many ways to shoot yourself in the foot.

-JS

Poor Rust, it lost out to both Shell and HTML in all three categories. Oh well, at least it consistently beat out Fortran and Cobol.

The AM radio _antenna_, on the other hand, carries a cost. It has to be relatively long, so it either has to stick out above the car body (which few buyers like), or it has to be carefully integrated into the shape of the car body.

You sir, obviously have no idea how an AM radio works. All AM radios built since the 30's use coil antennas where the antenna is a fine wire wrapped around a powdered-iron or ferrite rod. Total size: about three 8 cm (three inches). You can connect an external whip antenna if you want, and it can sometimes help signal reception, but it isn't required..

The real reason auto makers hate AM is because electric vehicles create tons of EMI and its cheaper to get rid of the now-unusable radio than it is to avoid creating a junk AM-transmitter on wheels. That it also creates interference for everyone around them (in violation of FCC regulations and US law) is just further reason to eliminate AM radio: problem solved if there aren't any AM radios left!

Where indeed:

• ADA, No. 26
• Fortran, No. 27
• COBOL, No. 31

So yeah, Fortran beat out some of the "trendy" languages in the headlines including Julia, F/#, and Dart. ADA and Kotlin were nearly tied. Just proving once again that Tiobe ratings are "sound and fury, signifying nothing."

From TFA,

The old technology works by processing the contents of a fixed graphic image, transmitting it through the landline via audio-frequency tones, which are then received by another fax machine, interpreted and reconstructed into a printed replica of the original.

That's the middle-aged technology we all came to know and love. The original technology, though, was analog (1880--1970's era). First used on radios for "wireless newspapers," it's still used to broadcast marine weather charts on HF.

Wikipedia has the full history.

-JS

Bitcoin is too big to fail

Oh, I don't know. It seems to be doing a pretty good job of it right now!

Gotta love those spoiled American brats whining that they can only afford two or three times as much as the average family in England, Scotland, and other developed countries.

Good luck trying to buy one of those 1000 square foot homes today. Around here (high wealth, high cost-of-living area with no rural areas left to expand into), to build one of those 2500 square foot beasts, we first tear town two or three 1000 square foot houses and consolidate the lots.

Not only is average size increasing, the total number of housing units is decreasing. And, since that increases demand and thus prices, all the current owners are violently opposed to any change in the status-quo.

He lists these reasons for wanting a smaller phone:
1. fits nicely in pocket
2. are much lighter
3. are easy to use one-handed without dropping
4. won't fall out of my pocket while bicycling

... 2 is nonsense, ...

Small phones aren't automatically lighter. My old iPhone SE (original SE, not the new ones) wasn't especially light because Apple gave it a bigger battery instead. And a big long-lasting batter is a useful feature in a phone, so #2 can be very useful if done right.

Science doesn't have an agenda - it is based upon facts, evidence, and the rigors of scientific reasoning.

Science does have an agenda: it says arguments should be based on "facts, evidence, and the rigors of scientific reasoning." Just because you and I agree with it doesn't make it any less an agenda.

Unfortunately, this isn't the 19th century world of Enlightenment-era Logical Positivism where reason reigned supreme [or pretended to]. We live in a post-modern world where the very existence of facts and communicable evidence are questioned and subjective emotion and experience are trusted more than the pronouncements of scientific authority. Facebook, Twitter, and even Slashdot simply reflect this culture back at us. When you have lots of "facts" to choose from, how do you know whose "facts" to trust? Both the medical establishment and the anti-vaxx crowd claim the mantle of science and have lots of people with fancy initials willing to back up their claims. If you've never taken a university-level science class [a real one, not the stuff we offer for Marketing or Communications majors], how would you know who's telling you the truth?

-JS

Physics has the problem that it must make models on what is observed in the physical world (hence the name).

Actually that's not where the name "physics" comes from. The discipline "physics" is named after Aristotle's Physics (one of the many books he wrote). In Greek, "phusis" or "physis" [wikipedial] means how a thing behaves or is (the nature of a thing).

Over time, the meaning shifted and in the 1750--1850's when natural philosophy moved out philosophy and became what we now call "the sciences," the word "physics" (now with a 'c') was applied to those of us who carry on Aristotles study the physical world and how it changes.

I'm not a mathematician but what I understood from my time in college was, Complex numbers are just a way to describe 2D reality using Calculus, when you could very well just use vector algebra.

I am a physicist, and well, not really. Yes, you can map from 3-D real spaces to complex 2-D spaces rather naturally in field theories [SO(3) to SU(2)], but if you're going to describe spatial positions, you would never use complex numbers to do so in any kind of ordinary mechanics problem.

Apart from quantum mechanics, the main place complex variables are used is with periodic functions because e^{i x} is often easier to work with than cos(x), even though they give the same answer in the end.

Just to follow up on the previous post, it's also a logarithmic scale, so each letter is 10 times more energetic than the previous (so M1 is 10x bigger than C1, and X-10 is 10x bigger than M-10).

Within a letter, the scale is linear so an X-3 is 3x bigger than an X-1. That makes the Carrington event an estimated 15-42x bigger than yesterday's flare.

-JS

The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market is to start with a large fortune.

Oddly appropriate for NFT's too...

-JS

Well, Parisi's portion was for work he did on the dynamical theory of spin glasses. That's pretty physics-y.

-JS

Rust rose from #30 to #27 Go rose from #20 to #13 TypeScript rose from #45 to #37 Haskellrose rose from #49 to #39

Yeah, but Visual Basic is #11 and Fortran is number #14. So, if you're not in the top 10, Visual Basic is still more popular than you are, and if you're not in the top 15, you got beat by Fortran!

Typescript and Haskellrose? Yeah, COBOL has both of you beat by a mile.

More seriously, if Fortran can jump from #50 to #14 in a single year, you really have to question the value of any language that's not in the top 10.

-JS