Posts by Hawkuletz 12 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Aug 2012
Now, I know that maybe jwz is a bit biased against ROtM, but he might have a point.
The incident happened in China Town, on an extremely crowded street, during festivities related to Chinese New Year. A human driven vehicle might have avoided trying to drive through a crowd. The robocar might not. Thus, conflict.
https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/02/burn-robot-burn/
I would suspect that Yet Another Anonymous coward might have been referring to coal burning. Coal - as most everything else that comse out of the earth - is not pure, and thus it alwsays contains some radioactive nuclei. The ash resulted from burning that coal can also be radioactive, see e.g.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/
or
https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html
However, the server in my case was (supposedly) protected by an UPS (Smart UPS 600VA). The UPS did a good enough job protecting against power failures (I tested it several times by unplugging its power lead - no trouble). However, when the server monitor (CRT, remember those?) was powered on, it would *sometimes* cause a reboot. Since the console was rarely used, the monitor was kept switched off and only powered when actually needing to use the console. Luckily for us it was a clear direct cause. Increasing the UPS sensitivity (the voltage threshold) did cause the UPS to switch to battery when monitor was switched on, but the reboots still happened.
Powering the monitor from a socket immediately upstrem from the UPS wouldn't help, while powering from a completely different socket would apparently make the problem go away (but introduce a tripping hazard in the form of an extension cord). In the end, it was simpler to instruct everyone to avoid switching the monitor off.
I, for one, stopped updating my home W7 box around the time when W10 was forced down on its users. I reckon in the event of an exploit it would take me less time to reinstall and restore, compared to the time lost with updates, reboots, loss of performance, loss of functionality etc. However, I am slightly cautious about what sites I visit, I mostly block JS etc. I am aware that this approach is not an option for company/work computers, or for computers used by less cautios people.
I do have a Linux machine that I use for most activities besides gaming and what little win32 development I still do. But I know from experience that Linux is still not yet ready for "the masses". And I'm afraid that when/if it will be, it might also be approaching Windows levels of un-usability. (Firefox is a good example of this tendency)
It seems to me that quite a lot of software - and Windows is a good example but far from the only one - tends to become increasingly user-hostile. Recently, when configuring a new (w10) computer for a friend I lost count of the number of hoops I had to jump through to avoid cortana, spying, edge etc. Not to mention additional hoops to uninstall the shovelware from both the manufacturer and MS.
Speaking of NSA, let's remind ourselves about the first great Internet/Arpanet worm.
From Cliff Stoll - The Cuckoo's Egg
I knew Bob Morris was on his computer at 6:30 A.M. Thursday morning. I could see him logged into NSA's Dockmaster computer. After posting a message to that machine, I called him on the phone.
"Hi, Bob. We've got troubles. A virus is spreading over the Arpanet, and it's infesting Unix computers."
"When did it start?"
"Around midnight, I'd guess. Maybe earlier-I just don't know. I've been up all night trying to understand it."
"How's it spread?"
"Through a hole in the Unix mail program."
"You must mean Sendmail. Hell, I've known about that for years." Bob Morris might have known, but he had never told me.
However, the challenge is not to keep Helium in as it is to keep air out. After all, Helium would only escape if there some pressure differential between the inside of the drive and the atmosphere. If air can't get in (airtight seal) surely the drive will not experience a vacuum caused by escaped helium.
About 15 years ago Epsons had the printing head fixed (as in not user-replaceable). If you somehow didn't use your printer for more than let's say two weeks, you had a good chance of clogged nozzles. This was not repairable under warranty - and the heads would cost as much as the (expensive) printer. I wonder if it would be the same now - I have avoided Epson ink jet printers since then. It seems that 'burning' HUGE volumes of ink might be the attempt to avoid the previous problem.
On the other hand, at that price, a color laser printer might be better. Yes, toner is quite expensive itself, but not as much as ink and doesn't come with all the other issues ink has.
From an old book about rocketry (published in 1972), begining of the chapter "Exotics":
Fifteen years ago people used to ask me "What is an exotic fuel anyway?" and I would answer "It's expensive, it's got boron in it, and it probably doesn't work."
(the book is Ignition! by John D. Clark)
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