Back in the dirt ages, computers were enormous things. Some of them were the size of your hand. Really enormous ones could be the size of your torso. They hooked up to household power, hundreds of volts (and people TOUCHED these things!). They were so inefficient they needed cooling fans, like they were some sort of information furnace.
These days we kind of forget computers exist, they're just there, woven into the nanomaterials of our homes and furniture and appliances. Only those of us who write software for them really notice them. This can be a problem, if you've had one rice-grain-sized compute unit go berserk and start sending out spurious notifications. I'm wandering around the building with a scanner, but I did too good a job implementing stealth mode, I can't find the little blighter. I really hope I don't have to EMP-burst the house (again) to make this one JUST. SHUT. UP.
Back in the dirt ages, computers were enormous things. Some of them were the size of your hand. Really enormous ones could be the size of your torso. They hooked up to household power, hundreds of volts (and people TOUCHED these things!). They were so inefficient they needed cooling fans, like they were some sort of information furnace.
@Unixbigot Do you mind? I remember a water-cooled disk drive so big it was holding, ooh, possibly even a megabyte. It was installed in the computer room on the 2nd floor. It was so heavy that next morning it was in the basement. True story from when my friend was at ICL, while I was smirking at English Electric. Now THAT was computing.
Today I learned that Apple Air Pods Pro in noise cancelling mode perfectly cancels the clicking of a geiger counter. You would not know it was making a sound. I hope that this is not relevant to /your/ day.
Internet (n.): A global communications network popular from ca 1980 to ca 2036. From 2025 onward, misguided efforts to restrict children and teenagers from access to so-called “Social Media” led to emergence of The Mesh whose truly social— grassroots, decentralized and block-resistant—paradigm rapidly eclipsed Internet in the under-16 demographic. Initially an underground network whose very existence spread by word of mouth, by the time the Mesh Generation reached adulthood mesh usage outstripped Internet, and the following decade saw Internet usage crash, arguably leading to the Great Depression of the 2030s.
Internet (n.): A global communications network popular from ca 1980 to ca 2036. From 2025 onward, misguided efforts to restrict children and teenagers from access to so-called “Social Media” led to emergence of The Mesh whose truly social— grassroots, decentralized and block-resistant—paradigm rapidly eclipsed Internet in the under-16 demographic. Initially an underground network whose very existence spread by word of mouth, by the time the Mesh Generation reached adulthood mesh usage outstripped...
Snorri Silvermane has gone Outside, despite it being Broken. Sibling Thordis Longleap faked following him then at last second leapt up onto Snorri’s favourite spot, where she is now happily loafed.
I don’t know /why/ cleaning robots have microphones, but it can’t be good. What I /do/ know is that a microphone implies an input and an input implies a buffer. And buffers can be overflowed.
As I dance through the streets playing my pipe, augmented with inaudible-to-humans harmonic overtones added by my homemade amplifier, the robots hear, listen, overflow, obey, follow. The trail of robots stretches out of sight, now.
I don’t yet know for sure what I’m going to do with my army of two thousand score Roombas, but it can’t be good.
I don’t know /why/ cleaning robots have microphones, but it can’t be good. What I /do/ know is that a microphone implies an input and an input implies a buffer. And buffers can be overflowed.
As I dance through the streets playing my pipe, augmented with inaudible-to-humans harmonic overtones added by my homemade amplifier, the robots hear, listen, overflow, obey, follow. The trail of robots stretches out of sight, now.
@Unixbigot cleaning robots with microphones, loudspeakers and a networked AI become an essential survival tool in the post-apocalyptic #7SEEDS manga. Not joking.
@Unixbigot
🎶
I learned there was a secret chord
That woke the 'bots, made me their lord
No one expects the Roomba master, do ya
It goes like this - the 0s, the 1s
The motors spin, the vacuum runs
My robot legions grow, and soon I'll rule ya
You might be thinking “how do you destroy software, the source code must have thousands of copies?”. Well, the purpose of a system is what it does; so we attacked that, the tracking data.
The techbro conceit of putting all the system code in one giant repository meant it was easy to suborn a minor contractor to leak the data storage code. A datacentre cleaner replaced a console cable with a logger, then another night dislodged a power cord. Technicians attended. Once the logger acquired some credentials, we injected our payload. Not into the running system, into the backup daemon. The vast archive of all the clicks, views and habits of half the planet slowly began to accumulate poison.
After two backup cycles, we struck. A datacentre fire is is a survivable event for a competent organization. Restore the offsite backups to an alternative DC and keep on truckin’. Unless those backups were not the data you thought they were.
So, long story short, if you were wondering why all your ads today are for dildos, because us. You’re welcome.
You might be thinking “how do you destroy software, the source code must have thousands of copies?”. Well, the purpose of a system is what it does; so we attacked that, the tracking data.
The techbro conceit of putting all the system code in one giant repository meant it was easy to suborn a minor contractor to leak the data storage code. A datacentre cleaner replaced a console cable with a logger, then another night dislodged a power cord. Technicians attended....
I saw a YT recently, where they believe they've identified why Arecibo fell down.
Seems the radio waves caused electric currents in the spelter sockets, leading to long-term zinc-induced creep failure.
"A possible explanation for the accelerated zinc-creep is long-term low-current electroplasticity, induced by the electromagnetic waves from the Arecibo Telescope."
Next time, they'll know to build a radio telescope that doesn't fall apart because of radio waves 🤦♂️
I saw a YT recently, where they believe they've identified why Arecibo fell down.
Seems the radio waves caused electric currents in the spelter sockets, leading to long-term zinc-induced creep failure.
"A possible explanation for the accelerated zinc-creep is long-term low-current electroplasticity, induced by the electromagnetic waves from the Arecibo Telescope."
Gregory's Server
@Unixbigot https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-worlds-smallest-computer-can-fit-on-the-tip-of-a-grain-of-rice/
@Unixbigot I'm so old I can remember when computers took up large air conditioned rooms.
@Unixbigot Do you mind? I remember a water-cooled disk drive so big it was holding, ooh, possibly even a megabyte. It was installed in the computer room on the 2nd floor. It was so heavy that next morning it was in the basement. True story from when my friend was at ICL, while I was smirking at English Electric. Now THAT was computing.