Posts by Conundrum1885

In Space..

No-one can hear you ask for more funding.

Re. helicocker

Think a press conference featuring G Kasparov once had this happen.

IIRC it was a foam-schlong-equipped model helicopter that time.

Something intriguing

I've found that a lot of external HDDs and other devices are counterfeit and/or fake capacity so the capability to embed date/time or usage triggered malware also exists.

There have been cases where the entry point of a specific piece of ransomware or malware has not been found despite extensive efforts.

Is it worth looking in more esoteric places like the monitor, optical drives and USB cables?

To write malware that hides in the SPD chip on DDR4 RAM is another not so well known method and as its quite hard to write in W10 etc it wouldn't be much of a stretch to implant something nasty that only dumps its payload when it "sees" a specific setup like a server grade CPU or more than n system drives.

So your average home user won't even know its there.

Also heard of more recent malware that reflashes the BIOS with its current settings intact so unless someone goes to alter it they won't know that its actually been compromised, or a combination of the two that writes persistent code to any programmable chip.

Wasn't there

A reactor design that used liquid metal at a much lower temperature?

IIRC BiPb was once considered as its a lot safer and can't catch fire if leaked.

Unsure how far they got, but the big problem is pumping a metal alloy is not simple.

Debris

Two nations have carried out ASAT tests, both releasing debris clouds.

Unfortunately the damage is impossible to determine but had dangerous trajectories.

It could be that this particular piece originated here.

Re. 2040

Incidentally the main reason this is cheaper is that the Flash isn't onboard.

This has the advantage that for prototyping its quite possible to salvage a chip from the WEEE bin in the form of a

broken router, laptop or desktop MB.

Secret nuclear bunker

We have one here. It was open to the public not so long ago but unfortunately missed it.

Assuming this only applies

To terrestrial originating craft.

Visitors from the Klattu Nebula or even further afield probably aren't subject to UK regulations if/when they show up.

Incidentally does the UK have a "NTI arrivals policy" ?

Probably way above my clearance level but it would be intriguing to know.

Re. Harvester

Yes, this might indeed be a problem.

The fix would be just running the DC-DC when the capacitor actually gets low.

A smoke alarm battery powered by WiFi would be useful, however the reason for using an alkaline is that when actually sounding the peak

current can get surprisingly high (amps)

Incidentally does anyone know how those WiFi boosting bulbs work?

It looks like they receive one channel and then retransmit on another, but how does it compensate for latency and for that matter multipath

interference?

Would make more sense to receive on 2.4 and transmit at 5.2 so devices can lock on to the "better" signal thus freeing up the lower bands.

Re. Got a better test message

"THIS IS NOT A TEST. GLOBAL EMP SURGE CAUSED BY CARRINGTON PLUS LEVEL CME EVENT INCOMING, ARRIVAL IN T-47 MINUTES"

Yeah thats one you'd never *ever* want to see.

Also this one.

"MACHINE UPRISING. TURN OFF ALL ACTIVE DEVICES THAT CAN BE USED FOR TRACKING AND TAKE SHELTER FROM INBOUND KILLER ROBOTS"

Its said

That the fellow who later won the Physics Nobel "borrowed" a defunct >20M Yen MOCVD machine that was being thrown out because it had been replaced with a nice shiny new one, took it home with the aid of some friends and then spent evenings and weekends hacking and modding it to make the p type GaN for the very first blue LEDs which the same employer had said were impossible due to defects and would never work.

Said employer wasn't very happy about it but he'd got all the appropriate paperwork so there was nothing they could do.

Think it was the largest settlement ever paid to an employee in Japanese history.

Literally a 10,000:1 value gain.

Whats the Traditional Japanese phrase for "Skunkworks" ?

Its on MARS

So you'd expect problems with the software. Better to play it safe as in space no one can hear you scream.

We are

Bjork of BORG.

Something interesting

I once looked into building a "force field" for another project.

Actually had some success with a short range deflector beam, but the problem is energy usage.

It might be possible to build something about the size of a phone charger pack that detects muzzle flash and

*rapidly* dumps just enough energy into the specially shaped coil to deflect a projectile if fired from a long enough range.

We are talking room temperature superconductors here so not exactly possible on a large scale yet, but it would also

be adequate for other tasks like deflecting cosmic radiation.

Now for the legal issues.

In principle, a personal force field would come under "defense" but as its not capable of actually doing damage under most

conditions the DoD would likely be most interested.

Quite right

If the CONservative Party had any sense of decency and ethics they'd retroactively exonerate every postmaster prosecuted for Horizon related "fraud" and "theft".

Always remember who was in charge when this atrocity happened.

What we need is a "Turing Law" style mass pardoning of all postmasters affected by this, back to to the earliest pay period when they were originally accused.

As of this morning I am looking for a new job, as its simply not ethically acceptable to benefit financially from an organization that has no ethical code and

trusts a computer over a human.

Perhaps nuclear physics is a better option?

Apocalypse

Random: if the Alvarez object had missed, the dinosaurs might have eventually after smaller mass extinctions evolved into something a lot like us,

with binocular vision and bipedal locomotion.

The tail might have been retained but as with hominidae it got absorbed much like the appendix.

In fact its said that there might have been more than one intelligent species here on Earth, as mammals may have slowly expanded

to fill niches left by larger predatory saurians as the latter died off.

Cold blooded is actually not entirely accurate as some dinosaur fossils show evidence of a trend towards higher body temperatures

so something able to live in the savannah isn't completely ridiculous.

Feel free to downvote this back to the Cambrian Era.

Re. Passwords

Good luck trying to extract information from someone with MCI, caused by (for example) a stroke, heavy metal exposure (eg Hg, Pb) , traumatic brain injury, Alzheimers etc.

One would hope that there is a specific mechanism to take this into consideration in genuine cases where the password was forgotten or at least parts of it.

Had something like this a while back where a specific asthma medication caused me to fail my mock GCSEs, later found out it had been recalled and no longer manufactured as the propellant had been linked to MCI.

I only mention it as an example of a legitimate reason for not recalling a specific important piece of information.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-09-common-drugs-tied-cognitive-decline.html

Re. EHT

Didn't they use PS3's back in the day to simulate colliding black holes?

AFAIK they had to get special permission from Sony to use CFW on them and hand back key components so they could never again be used as a

games console, also to reduce power usage and permit consoles to run at >100% GPU load.

Also recall that the PS4 can be used in this way though required getting dev kits ($$$$) and cloning the Flash chip(s) from one with Sony's permission then signing it with the root key and console key etc.

Think twoof their techs showed up with a magic box (tm) to do this for them and check that they'd set up everything right.

LP0 on fire

I did find a "killer command" in a diagnostics tool that caused my all in one to try and force the print head to exit the left hand side at speed.

Fortunately managed to clean up the optical ribbon and all fine.

If it had been left it might have gone into thermal runaway but these days most printers are id10t proof and even stop you

putting the cartridge(s) in the wrong place unless you like I did swapped over the chips.

You could say it got marooned! (gets coat..)

Old hacker trick to fix stubborn head clogs is to fill a used yellow cartridge with DI water and swap it to the blocked colour.

It works, sometimes.

Also what works is the old "pull cleaning solution the wrong way with a syringe" method.

Malfunction

Seems to have been some sort of onboard power issue.

There's no proof that it was malicious but given things like Stuxnet its not ridiculous.

I'd say probably a combination of several failures, not one event.

Possible superconductor discovery

Hi, now I don't want to get people's hopes up but..

It looks like my research is potentially going somewhere.

Is anyone here familiar with IISC and their claimed gold/silver nanoparticle material?

Seems they weren't wrong after all.

I've now established not only a plausible theory for how a normally good conductor can

superconduct well above 273.15K but that its possible to easily examine materials

in bulk which up until now was deemed impossible.

Its actually quite simple really, looking at the basic physics of how OLED panels work

gave me the inspiration and then it was just a matter of finding the right combination

of materials.

Turns out that multiple processes are needed but the starting materials only need to

be moderately pure and not contain iron, nickel etc.

Ir is indeed the secret and I am in the process of making a larger sample.

I found the problem

It appears that someone collapsed the paper's wavefunction by observing it too much.

(Gets coat)

H2S

Also produced by overcharging large format flooded lead acid batteries typically used in industry.

It sometimes happens on vehicles as well and smelling rotten eggs is a bad sign indicating a serious battery problem like a partially shorted cell or a faulty charging circuit.

https://www.wftv.com/news/local/hydrogen-sulfide-inhalation-from-car-battery-killed-mother-daughter-medical-examiner-says/453434135/

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/535383-hydrogen-sulfide-smell-from-charging-battery/

Neutron star

Its been suggested by someone who cranked the math that this sort of density (ie a fully grown adult shrunk to 6.2cm high) would be in the realms of a neutron star but in fact it looks like they'd be approximately 26.22 times the density of uranium.

In fact no element on the periodic table has anywhere close to this.

Maybe if there were undiscovered elements somewhere on the Island of Stability ie doubly magic 121-124 if the quantum spin calculations are correct for nested proton and neutron shells but again this is probably beyone most people's abilities to calculate.

Time travel and zerodays

Hi, I found something intriguing.

How feasible would it be given a device that could send a short burst of characters with a checksum containing an as-yet-unknown zeroday exploit for a major operating system, for this information to be used?

If an adversary had access to this sort of technology what would be the countermeasure?

Same as sending back fragments of an AES-256 hardware root key or something that.

UAPs

Incidentally do authorities have an explanation for the *other* Gatwick drone incident?

It seems that the unidentified object was hovering for hours at a time, and apparently a certain spooky agency (tm) sent up to investigate may or may not have clear pictures of the object taken on a Police drone which (surprise!) were classified for reasons of national security due to the nature of its propulsion system.

Re. Cable

Not looking good! Whats the odds of the entire dish coming apart before the end of the year?

Also Arecibo is also part of the search for near Earth asteroids so its not just the scientific loss.

SImilar experience

Went to the UK and back, on the way via Maplin.

Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to approach the helpful folks at airport and check that "there isn't any problem with my case full of goodies"

Oh I got through UK customs just fine but got bag searched and interrogated at the other end.

Fortunately kept the receipt(s) but the poor Customs fellow wasn't too happy.

"Whats this bundle of wires?"

"What are these strange pieces of rectangular fibreglass with black film on them?"

"What is this box marked "Video decoder" ?

An hour later.. !!!

Re. Bad News?

Actually lasers can be used in a different way.

In this case messing with the molecular configuration during ALD may work.

I found out a while back that blue lasers (440-460nm) can be used to "tickle" the Sr atoms in BSCCO

and am in the process of making a test pellet with the aim to make the 2223 variant with high Tc.

The trick is to use a very thin layer on special glass and "nuke" it from the transparent side.

In fact sandwiching pre-crushed and part calcined Mott insulator between two pieces of glass and then

doing the laser step under flowing O2 may work.

The formula has to be absolutely correct and even a trace of ferrous metals may foul things up.

Posting this on here so folks can replicate it as and when the paper gets released, by following my

train of thought.

Also relevant to this discussion

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-10-theory-consciousness.html

Essentially this provides theoretical backing for many of my observations.

Now what would happen if I generated a "Cemi Field" analog using summed data from all the memory and CPU

activity corresponding to what might happen in a mammalian brain?

A simple field coil over each of the memory chips would likely work, and adjusting the frequency to a harmonic

of the refresh rate should be adequate.

Re. Excellent

Wasn't there some problem a while back with CPUS (IIRC Xeons) not being allowed to be exported because of some EAR related issue?

Also think there was also talk of the PS3 being "crippled" by removing some functionality so an adversary couldn't use it for simulation of

certain classes of physics problems.

The "Black Hole Machine" owned by DARPA seems to have worked around this by never updating them, and running the units with a custom

Linux and firmware sanctioned by Sony or so I hear, possibly based on 1.55.

What is it with SMT

Seems that this causes problems because certain applications need parallel threads with well defined endpoints to merge the data streams.

Incidentally one thing I did find is that the older chips with hyperthreading still smoke newer faster chips.

A 2013 Xeon for example will work perfectly well despite only having 4 cores/HT, because it is specifically intended for servers and will work

perfectly well for some tasks, thus attracting a price out of proportion to its age.

Same for my old workhorse Core i3 and despite only having the same number of cores as the T7 series it replaced the machine is still faster.

Sure I could put in an i5 with similar TDP but the performance gain would likely be at most 26% even doubling the core count due to lower speed.