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The number of verified exoplanets is expected to soon reach 4,000. I have an old astronomy book where the author argued that detection of planets around other stars would be impossible with telescopes. Link:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47681239
My new house has WiFi enabled computers in the following:
Septic System
HVAC System
Water Heater
Water Softener
Garage Door Openers
Televisions
We had to go a bit out of our way not to have it in the fridge. Of course, that doesn't mean the fridge doesn't have it, just that they didn't advertise it on this model. I haven't connected any of them, but that doesn't mean they haven't done it anyhow.
Hmm, what about the Washer and Dryer? They clearly have computers, I wonder what they aren't telling us? They're from Samsung, who were caught spying on their customers through the TV a couple of years ago.
ETA: Generator! Dang, I knew I was missing one!
So, basically, your home can be controlled by a 14-yo hacker in Passaic. Cool.Quote:
Originally Posted by Trebuchet
Well, he did say he hasn't connected them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim
I have some wifi-enabled light switches that I've put in my house, but I keep them on a separate network which doesn't have a route to the Internet. No doubt a dedicated hacker specifically targeting me could hack my setup, but I'm pretty confident they're not connecting to the Internet on their own.
That is exactly what they want you to think until it is too late. I, for one, welcome our new masters of light and darknessQuote:
Originally Posted by SeanF
And then it drifts into time passages. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by The Backroad Astronomer
Until you find that ten years have got behind you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jens
A few years ago we had some huge power equipment (think tens of megawatts worth of rotating and moving parts) where we wanted to be able to watch the user interface remotely using Teamviewer and the likes. However, we wanted it to never ever ever be possible to interact remotely, so any and every mouse command or key stroke had to be blocked. We found the absolute unhackeable solution: communication was with COM ports, and we simply took tweezers and pulled out the relevant pins from the connector. They can't hack you when the copper wire is in the dustbin!Quote:
Originally Posted by SeanF
I told here before that we also had the opposite happen: two laptops connected by a network cable, and to test the behaviour at loss of connection, we pulled out the cable. Communication went down and...up again after a few seconds, even though the cable was clearly disconnected! Turned out those laptops had been connected to each other using WIFI somewhere in the past, and upon loosing the cable connection, both automatically fell back to WIFI. We didn't anticipate that!
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jens
“Air gapping” may prevent baddies from taking control, but not spying. SeeQuote:
Originally Posted by Nicolas
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename)
But then, I doubt anyone wants to spy on Treb’s septic system.
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E. coli powers my house! That's why everything smells bad.
https://phys.org/news/2019-03-bacter...ectricity.html
Bacteria could be a future source of electricity
March 27, 2019, Lund University
In recent years, researchers have tried to capture the electrical current that bacteria generate through metabolism. So far, however, the transfer of current from the bacteria to a receiving electrode has been highly inefficient. Now, researchers from institutions including Lund University have achieved a slightly more efficient transfer of electrical current.
One of society's greatest challenges is to meet the need for renewable and sustainable energy. Interest is growing around one potential such energy source: bacteria. "We pick up electrons from the bacterium and transfer them to an electrode. This enables us to obtain an electrical current from the bacteria in real time, while they are eating, as it were," explains Lo Gorton, professor of chemistry at Lund University in Sweden. "This study is a breakthrough in our understanding of extracellular electron transfer in bacteria," he says.
That might be a good way to terraform an extrasolar world. Have "warm pond" not just power your probe--but be like the entity Abhoth, and have your own Cambrian explosion from the batch.
Unless you keep time in a bottle.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jens
Trying to fix my internet this morning. Realized in the process that everyone just takes it for granted now that you will have multiple computers in your home, because "download drivers" is considered a sensible solution to "I can't get online."
In principle there also is the option of getting download assistance either from a friendly neighbor or from your local public library.
Another assumption is that you can set up a wired connection. I had to lend my daughter a laptop and Ethernet cable because her router defaults to “you can only configure via wired connection”*, and none of her devices (phones, iPad, etc) has an Ethernet port . After hitting the reset button, she essentially had a brick.
*I assume this is security-related.
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They really should offer recovery software that you can download to your telephone and move over to the computer.
I find it interesting that the past few times I've flown after being at home, I've had to go to the library to print out my boarding passes because we don't have a printer at home anymore. I don't know if this is common or if it's just us.
I guess the router company hasn’t quite moved to the wireless future of my daughter. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if your suggestion eventually takes hold - perhaps via Bluetooth.Quote:
Originally Posted by DonM435
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The problem was with my wired connection.Quote:
Originally Posted by Extravoice
Microscopic robots in your brain will let invisible computers telepathically fill your head with cat videos, or something like that.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-...ce-people.html
You tell me, I did the best I could.
When my daughter went to Cameroon, about ten years ago, in the Peace Corps, a friend of mine who had been in the British equivalent advised her to get a radio, for international broadcasts. He thought it essential, she decided against it, reasoning that the country was nearly covered with cell access.Quote:
Originally Posted by Swift
So, one night (midnight there) she called me. She and another volunteer were on their monthly 150km trip to do banking, which because of dirt roads and rain often took 12 or more hours. The driver and his assistant were trying to re-secure a wheel that had been wrenched off, and she and the other passenger were laying in a field on a blanket. But she had cell coverage, and called me. I had no idea how I could help, from a fourth of the earth away, but they just wanted to know what star they were looking at.
Quote:
My wife once called me when I was on a business trip (she was in Ohio, I was in Texas - over 1500 km apart) to tell me there was a mouse in the house.
There is an app for that. Several. (I use SkyView.)Quote:
Originally Posted by grapes
Come to think, there's also an app for chasing a mouse from the house, but it involves throwing your cell phone at it.
Living in the future:
Last week I had to send some form via the U.S. Mail.
I had to dig up an envelope and a stamp. The envelopes we had were so old that the glue on the flap was dried out and we had to add some adhesive. Fortunately, the stamps were still viable, and were of the "Forever" denomination, no matter how many postal increases had taken place since I last sent anything this way. (Pretty clever of the P.O. to sell lots of "Forever" that seemed a bargain, but will never be used.) A custom return address rubber stamp kit that I had purchased many years ago is now useless, having also dried out, so I had to hand-print the whole envelope (didn't want to risk running it through my printer). I used to keep my old typewriter around just for this, but finally got rid of it.
Finding a mailbox that had a daily pickup wasn't easy.
Your home doesn't have one?Quote:
Originally Posted by DonM435
There's one right in front of the mailboxes for my apartment building.Quote:
Originally Posted by DonM435
Yeah, that’s what the little flag is for. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by SeanF
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Yeah, but I don't trust that neighborhood!Quote:
Originally Posted by SeanF
;) Yeah, I guess I could have tried leaving it for the mailperson. Somehow, that never occurs to me. We took it to the post office and dumped it in the box there.
We don't have one because the government deemed unsafe, so we have use the community mailbox about 500 m away.
Pickup trucks with outstretched side mirrors keep destroying mailboxes along our road. After our own mailbox was knocked off two months ago, we easily changed our home mailing address to the P.O. Box we already had for getting large parcels and valuable mail. The age of the outdoor mailbox at the end of the driveway has ended, like the age of having a telephone with a "house" number, which we stopped using because my wife and I have personal cell phones. And we stopped watching broadcast TV using rabbit-ears antennae because we watch only YouTube shows now.