IntrepidWorm

2 years agodiscuss

Although curiously, most processes theoretically capable of exposing large amounts of lunar mantle would likely generate a decent fraction of that heat just on their own merit.

IntrepidWorm

2 years agodiscuss

It does feel disingenuous, but its also nothing new. Military research has always been the one of the primary driving forces behind critical technology.

Commercial tech is vulnerable to all sorts of disruptions, regulations, and setbacks. If you make something that will make killing a whole bunch of people easier, rest assured theres a global market for it.

IntrepidWorm

2 years agodiscuss

Cotton also shrinks when wet and has poor thermal properties - polymer blend fabrics perform better in the cold, and are lighter and cheaper than wool. Goretex is wonderful stuff, but its also made of '"forever-plastics" and is known to slowly leach into runoff. Finding a polymer that can be cleanly manufactured for a competitive price with similar properties would be wonderful, as long as theres also a method for it to degrade safely when discarded.

IntrepidWorm

2 years agodiscuss

I'm just spitballing here, but I'd wager that the human toll required to evolve effective resistance to regular and prolonged asbestos exposure is more than most of us would be willing to pay.

We already evolved these massive craniums filled with (to date) the most intricate and powerful general computers in the world - it seems like the solution to asbestos exposure is simply engineering a way to avoid it. No evolution necessary.

IntrepidWorm

2 years agodiscuss

Unless you are pouring bat milk on your Cheerios, I'd reckon you're not going to be affected by that particular fun fact.

The same can't be said for the legally acceptable portion of rat feces that makes its way into pretty much all processed grain products.

IntrepidWorm

2 years agodiscuss

Sure, but ensuring all mechanics everywhere have access to use PPE, and then enforcing its correct use is way less effective in practice than removing the hazardous material from the workplace entirely. Being exposed to any fine particulate matter over long periods will be detrimental to health (we aren't evolved to breath large amounts of dust), but not every particulate is an acute carcinogen.

IntrepidWorm

2 years agodiscuss

Since the cycle of stellar observation repeats each solar year, the observation would itself be a method of time keeping. One would need only to track the azimuth of a series of regularly positioned star constellations to determine time, and from there one could then ascertain location.

IntrepidWorm

2 years agodiscuss

More damning would be the perchlorates found in Martian soil, toxic to most Earth-plants, not to mention Earth-humans.

IntrepidWorm

2 years agodiscuss

im not sure I want a lithe hunter stalking through my house, marking every surface and attacking everything that breathes. I much prefer my dopey dander machines that sleep on my chest, flop around on the ground chasing the pocket lint they dug out of my trashcan, and superhero-leaping off their tree onto the couch to wake the other one with a screech.

If I owned a farm and needed a ratter, I'd likely feel different.

IntrepidWorm

2 years agodiscuss

Found this:

http://www.ipodlinux.org/stories/piezo

    I got an iPod for christmas. The ipodlinux project was one of the main reasons for my choice and so I started exploring the iPod as far as I was able to. I patched the bootloader and got some basic code to run but there was no way to access any hardware other than the two CPUs yet. To get the LCD, Clickwheel and the harddisk working we needed to reverse engineer the bootloader in the flashrom. But to do that we first had to find a way to get that code. Seems quite impossible without any knowlegde about the IO-Hardware but I found a solution...

IntrepidWorm

2 years agodiscuss

Not an expert, but my read of the article was that he had code execution already, but needed to dump the bootloader so he could gain access to peripherals. You could no doubt pull the chip and read it out with a programmer: this has been done for many other devices, i have no trouble believing you could do the same with an iPod. The method he developed is noninvasive, though, simply requiring a soundproof box and some analysis software. Thats what makes it cool, to me.

IntrepidWorm

3 years agodiscuss

Hmm... You can run different CTF environments i to a VM, wouldnt take much to stream input back and forth to both machines. I just saw another item featured on HN for piped keyboard streams between multiple users on the same shell.

Sounds like glorious chaos.

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