Dishwashers (or other large utilities) are actually quite simple machines.
There is usually a pump, one or more heating elements (most likely on a (solid-state) relay or thyristor), a motor (again on a relay or thyristor), a few buttons, small relays/low power circuits and switches (such as 'door closed', 'child lock', 'start/stop', 'cycle select', 'water basin full', 'water basin empty') and perhaps a few sensors (temperature and humidity would be my guess but I'm deducing from my own dishwasher that those are just on a timer).
All of those are relatively simple to run on any type of electronic board. Most likely the circuit board(s) just runs a few wires to each of the components and you can figure each of them out based on a repair manual and/or testing them out with some simple gear (a cheap scope, an analyzer (in case you get a fancy digital (I2C) sensor or LCD display) and a few multimeters should get you there). You could replace the entire circuit board with an Arduino-like device. You then simply have to figure out what you want each sensor and switch to do (and figure out all the possible failure scenarios). I doubt many machines still use hardwired failsafes (eg. cut the water flow if the basin is full without going through the chip) so you may flood your kitchen a few times before you figure out all the details - using timers to measure things would be a 'really bad idea' but it seems to me some designs do use that method (my dishwasher runs the pump on empty for what seems to be a very long time)
Modifying the chip will be harder, they're typically proprietary and custom chips, you could get very lucky to find a JTAG interface but most likely it's all soldered and glued/epoxied in (especially with 'wet' appliances). You'd be better off starting with another appliance. I found an old cheap clothes dryer to be the most simple of all (a 'program' switch which was really a divider for the timer speed and a multi-switch - each setting would just turn on/off one of the 2 heating elements and add a different resistor to the temp sensor), a timer (one that goes tick tick tick until it mechanically turns off the entire device), a temperature sensor, 2 heating elements and a motor).
a) Back in the day we did because memory was expensive and these things were to run on 386'es and other platforms that might not have the room for a sizable buffer and memory/bus/CPU bus were all equally fast. You only need a buffer if your machine is busy doing other things)
b) It might be a benefit on certain platforms but in certain situations it feels (without looking at the rest of the code) like the code might introduce a buffer overflow issue (he explicitly removes the zero-buffer option if the file read returns a null pointer as it's buffer).
c) Ask the original developer or do a blame-search for that code before 'fixing' things.
Battery packs are considered electronics but increasingly they are very unstable packages of chemical energy. If you combine just one or two laptop batteries easy to get on board, short them out or puncture them could blow a nice hole in an aircrafts hull.
There are various customer protections in both the US and the UK. In the US if you don't get boarded on a plane you have a ticket for the FAA states you are eligible for 4x the value of the entire ticket and any alternative transportation costs. There are also various insurances which will cover the entire trip for whatever cancellation.
I've lived it dude. I came from poverty in the EU. I went to bad schools because that's what we could afford. I walked and later biked to school because we couldn't afford the bus and we maintained chickens for food. And yes we had government support for food and housing. Electric was only paid up to 100W/h during the day and 500W/h at night (dual metering is standard there). Gas subsidy was calculated to maintain 18C in the house.
In the US families on government support have at least 1 working car, a decent sized house and a TV and can keep the heat and electric on and food on the table just on government support which simply requires you not being a criminal.
Teacher pay in private schools is lower than unionized teachers in public schools however the very good teachers often make more in private schools due to the parents wanting to keep these good teachers around. Parental involvement is also higher in private schools.
Unions just make it that teachers stay around even when not needed or utterly horrible at their job.
In a nearby school district we have a building filled with teachers that the school district is unable to fire but due to their performance can't put in front of a classroom, a few years ago it was decreed that teachers needed to have a college degree, the unions subsequently got it in a contract that the teachers couldn't be forced to go to school so they can't perform but they can't be forced to perform.
But in the end it's just a computer running a combination of relatively simple software. Putting it in the cloud sure adds complexity but it's just Linux machines running Java/C/Python programs which you could also run 'at home' or you could switch to a different stack that does the same thing.
I haven't worked with Docker much but it's similar to Chroot/Jails/Containers and I know how to work with those and working with Docker is thus not all that complex (or necessary IMHO but buzz words seem to drive the industry). Any developer that has difficulties switching stacks is quite honestly not good at their job, that's what makes a developer a good developer is the ability to adapt and think about their programs in such terms that it doesn't matter what you write in it. Sure each language has it's oddities but if it's documented (unlike.NET), it's something you look up and manage.
From what I understand, the article claims that because a few people (or their predecessors) seems to be swindlers, the entire field is considered bogus.
The entire field is not considered bogus, there are people that work on it as an actual science and they are well respected even though they work on something that may never be successful or proven.
The problem is that those particular people (eg. Rossi) are ACTUALLY swindlers, they may taint the field in the public's eye (as if anyone really knows/cares outside us geeks) but no science body is going to ever take them seriously if they can't actually produce proof.
If someone produces proof one way or the other (eg. it's impossible due to this chemistry/physics law or this combination of elements works according to this model), they would be respected as a scientist and be published IF their science is good; they would not be dismissed on the basis that Rossi has been trying to sell his junk for years which is what the article is claiming.
I think cold fusion may eventually work but by then it will be overshadowed by the cheap availability of small "portable" fission/fusion generators which are actually commercially 'available' (available as in if you want to deal with the restrictions the government puts on it and have a plan for it's maintenance, security and cooling, only viable for large entities (eg. military, universities or data centers)).
I mean, he's a philosopher but there is no such trap in science. There are people who are reputed to be swindlers like the Rossi guy, keep trying to sell their 'science' regardless that their proofs are irreproducible.
There are plenty of people working on fusion, it's not a dead science, it's just a very, very hard problem with no theoretical or experimental models that currently work and it may never work, hot fusion or even residential-grade fission is a lot closer than cold fusion will ever become.
The other problem is that most people couldn't logic their way out of a square box if their life depended on it. Most people don't know the difference between shall/none/and/or/whenever/if/else in even plain human language and can't think about the repercussions of actions two or three steps down the line. All that is necessary to be a programmer regardless of language, you have to be able to visualize or reason through several steps and ever widening branches of dependent logic.
I am part of a club with about 100+ people that elect their leadership. Most people didn't understand these simple steps: "7 people are required to be in the leadership"; "If less people are running for leadership than required, the elections will continue as normal"; "If less than the required number of people are elected, then the next leadership will decide how to fill the empty seats". During the elections, some people dropped out and the number of elected officials would've been less than 7. People panicked and deducted that situation somehow wasn't covered by these rules and called for a special vote to replace the dropouts.
People have been saying that since Fortran on punch cards and the 90's brought plenty of languages that allow any simpleton to 'program'. Between Logo, BASIC, HyperCard, JavaScript, Python etc I don't know how much simpler you can make it.
They haven't brought power or protection for a long time. They do so for line workers and people that are easily replaced and have a fixed cost (manual labor etc). People that aren't easily replaced (eg. programmers/developers) with fluctuating incomes (based on capability rather than seniority) don't benefit from a labor union. Unless you want all of us to work for 35k/year and 40h/week regardless of what you do and pay dues on top of that, you don't know what you're asking for.
Another problem is that rsync has to scan the entire file system, calculate hashes and transfer them and then do the same on the other side before it can transfer the difference.
If you have millions of files and directories that can take significant amount of time. I used to have rsync take a weekend to backup. With ZFS I can do hourly backups.
Even though you're right, a declining population is actually a 'good thing' overall except where you have a population expecting handouts from their government. The problem in European countries is that they don't have enough tax paying people to support the tax-based retirement establishment. Immigrants don't help much because the first few generations also rely on the taxes for their support and pay very little taxes in return and then they go on to mimic the natives in population growth when they do get richer.
One of the reasons I came to the US was because there was very little tax to support others, you make it your own way, invest in your own retirement etc. however that's being quickly undone by a growing generation of people expecting handouts.
They aren't random, they are based on a number of criteria which triggers an audit. They trigger if you'd have done frequent corrections in the past or certain life events in combination with certain transactions. Eg if you may have received a gift because someone related sold property for cash or you may have cashed in stock options when you retired without declaring them as income.
There's a reason it doesn't work that way. Wifi does support AP hopping (it will pick different APs depending on signal strength) as long as they have the same ssid and are on the same network. That's why your connection continues working even though it switches from 80211n to 80211g (which is technically a different AP) as you go out of range of the former.
Retailers have 'fixed' that by getting laws that a bounced check can have an 'electronic debit' so it automatically debits your account + $30+ fee regardless of your funds. In court you can even get up to 4x the value of the check.
The bank 'eats' the overage and then bills the customer another $30+ fee per day your account is in overdraft.
A lot of rent in cities are paid by governments. So a "low income" tenant may not even have to pay rent, get income assistance, food stamps they live "temporarily" with a partner, husband/wife or family that has the same arrangement (gets assistance etc) while subletting the entire house and netting the entire rent in cash to students or other transient residents.
But if you can get to interface with GRUB, that means it went through an interface (BIOS/EFI) which most likely you are likewise able to access. Any sort of pre-boot access gives you full control over the machine (make it netboot or mount a disk image to the virtual floppy).
It applies to Feds as well, luckily for society it applies to most criminals as well. Well thought out crimes are very hard for the authorities, see for example bank fraud, high profile heists and other professional crime. In some cases the criminals even end up changing the law to their benefit (Wall Street)
Slashdot Mirror
Dishwashers (or other large utilities) are actually quite simple machines.
There is usually a pump, one or more heating elements (most likely on a (solid-state) relay or thyristor), a motor (again on a relay or thyristor), a few buttons, small relays/low power circuits and switches (such as 'door closed', 'child lock', 'start/stop', 'cycle select', 'water basin full', 'water basin empty') and perhaps a few sensors (temperature and humidity would be my guess but I'm deducing from my own dishwasher that those are just on a timer).
All of those are relatively simple to run on any type of electronic board. Most likely the circuit board(s) just runs a few wires to each of the components and you can figure each of them out based on a repair manual and/or testing them out with some simple gear (a cheap scope, an analyzer (in case you get a fancy digital (I2C) sensor or LCD display) and a few multimeters should get you there). You could replace the entire circuit board with an Arduino-like device. You then simply have to figure out what you want each sensor and switch to do (and figure out all the possible failure scenarios). I doubt many machines still use hardwired failsafes (eg. cut the water flow if the basin is full without going through the chip) so you may flood your kitchen a few times before you figure out all the details - using timers to measure things would be a 'really bad idea' but it seems to me some designs do use that method (my dishwasher runs the pump on empty for what seems to be a very long time)
Modifying the chip will be harder, they're typically proprietary and custom chips, you could get very lucky to find a JTAG interface but most likely it's all soldered and glued/epoxied in (especially with 'wet' appliances). You'd be better off starting with another appliance. I found an old cheap clothes dryer to be the most simple of all (a 'program' switch which was really a divider for the timer speed and a multi-switch - each setting would just turn on/off one of the 2 heating elements and add a different resistor to the temp sensor), a timer (one that goes tick tick tick until it mechanically turns off the entire device), a temperature sensor, 2 heating elements and a motor).
a) Back in the day we did because memory was expensive and these things were to run on 386'es and other platforms that might not have the room for a sizable buffer and memory/bus/CPU bus were all equally fast. You only need a buffer if your machine is busy doing other things)
b) It might be a benefit on certain platforms but in certain situations it feels (without looking at the rest of the code) like the code might introduce a buffer overflow issue (he explicitly removes the zero-buffer option if the file read returns a null pointer as it's buffer).
c) Ask the original developer or do a blame-search for that code before 'fixing' things.
Battery packs are considered electronics but increasingly they are very unstable packages of chemical energy. If you combine just one or two laptop batteries easy to get on board, short them out or puncture them could blow a nice hole in an aircrafts hull.
Until you crack the Li battery after which your disabled recon vehicle becomes an active bomb.
It's while [ true ]; do cat song.mp3 > /dev/null; done
And an incrementing variable that echoes it to /dev/ttyS0 or wherever the lcd hangs out. No Python necessary, it's pure overkill.
Balls picked by a machine have a calculatable bias. There are papers on the subject.
There are various customer protections in both the US and the UK. In the US if you don't get boarded on a plane you have a ticket for the FAA states you are eligible for 4x the value of the entire ticket and any alternative transportation costs. There are also various insurances which will cover the entire trip for whatever cancellation.
I've lived it dude. I came from poverty in the EU. I went to bad schools because that's what we could afford. I walked and later biked to school because we couldn't afford the bus and we maintained chickens for food. And yes we had government support for food and housing. Electric was only paid up to 100W/h during the day and 500W/h at night (dual metering is standard there). Gas subsidy was calculated to maintain 18C in the house.
In the US families on government support have at least 1 working car, a decent sized house and a TV and can keep the heat and electric on and food on the table just on government support which simply requires you not being a criminal.
Teacher pay in private schools is lower than unionized teachers in public schools however the very good teachers often make more in private schools due to the parents wanting to keep these good teachers around. Parental involvement is also higher in private schools.
Unions just make it that teachers stay around even when not needed or utterly horrible at their job.
In a nearby school district we have a building filled with teachers that the school district is unable to fire but due to their performance can't put in front of a classroom, a few years ago it was decreed that teachers needed to have a college degree, the unions subsequently got it in a contract that the teachers couldn't be forced to go to school so they can't perform but they can't be forced to perform.
But in the end it's just a computer running a combination of relatively simple software. Putting it in the cloud sure adds complexity but it's just Linux machines running Java/C/Python programs which you could also run 'at home' or you could switch to a different stack that does the same thing.
I haven't worked with Docker much but it's similar to Chroot/Jails/Containers and I know how to work with those and working with Docker is thus not all that complex (or necessary IMHO but buzz words seem to drive the industry). Any developer that has difficulties switching stacks is quite honestly not good at their job, that's what makes a developer a good developer is the ability to adapt and think about their programs in such terms that it doesn't matter what you write in it. Sure each language has it's oddities but if it's documented (unlike .NET), it's something you look up and manage.
From what I understand, the article claims that because a few people (or their predecessors) seems to be swindlers, the entire field is considered bogus.
The entire field is not considered bogus, there are people that work on it as an actual science and they are well respected even though they work on something that may never be successful or proven.
The problem is that those particular people (eg. Rossi) are ACTUALLY swindlers, they may taint the field in the public's eye (as if anyone really knows/cares outside us geeks) but no science body is going to ever take them seriously if they can't actually produce proof.
If someone produces proof one way or the other (eg. it's impossible due to this chemistry/physics law or this combination of elements works according to this model), they would be respected as a scientist and be published IF their science is good; they would not be dismissed on the basis that Rossi has been trying to sell his junk for years which is what the article is claiming.
I think cold fusion may eventually work but by then it will be overshadowed by the cheap availability of small "portable" fission/fusion generators which are actually commercially 'available' (available as in if you want to deal with the restrictions the government puts on it and have a plan for it's maintenance, security and cooling, only viable for large entities (eg. military, universities or data centers)).
I mean, he's a philosopher but there is no such trap in science. There are people who are reputed to be swindlers like the Rossi guy, keep trying to sell their 'science' regardless that their proofs are irreproducible.
There are plenty of people working on fusion, it's not a dead science, it's just a very, very hard problem with no theoretical or experimental models that currently work and it may never work, hot fusion or even residential-grade fission is a lot closer than cold fusion will ever become.
The other problem is that most people couldn't logic their way out of a square box if their life depended on it. Most people don't know the difference between shall/none/and/or/whenever/if/else in even plain human language and can't think about the repercussions of actions two or three steps down the line. All that is necessary to be a programmer regardless of language, you have to be able to visualize or reason through several steps and ever widening branches of dependent logic.
I am part of a club with about 100+ people that elect their leadership. Most people didn't understand these simple steps:
"7 people are required to be in the leadership"; "If less people are running for leadership than required, the elections will continue as normal"; "If less than the required number of people are elected, then the next leadership will decide how to fill the empty seats". During the elections, some people dropped out and the number of elected officials would've been less than 7. People panicked and deducted that situation somehow wasn't covered by these rules and called for a special vote to replace the dropouts.
People have been saying that since Fortran on punch cards and the 90's brought plenty of languages that allow any simpleton to 'program'. Between Logo, BASIC, HyperCard, JavaScript, Python etc I don't know how much simpler you can make it.
They haven't brought power or protection for a long time. They do so for line workers and people that are easily replaced and have a fixed cost (manual labor etc). People that aren't easily replaced (eg. programmers/developers) with fluctuating incomes (based on capability rather than seniority) don't benefit from a labor union. Unless you want all of us to work for 35k/year and 40h/week regardless of what you do and pay dues on top of that, you don't know what you're asking for.
Another problem is that rsync has to scan the entire file system, calculate hashes and transfer them and then do the same on the other side before it can transfer the difference.
If you have millions of files and directories that can take significant amount of time. I used to have rsync take a weekend to backup. With ZFS I can do hourly backups.
Even though you're right, a declining population is actually a 'good thing' overall except where you have a population expecting handouts from their government. The problem in European countries is that they don't have enough tax paying people to support the tax-based retirement establishment. Immigrants don't help much because the first few generations also rely on the taxes for their support and pay very little taxes in return and then they go on to mimic the natives in population growth when they do get richer.
One of the reasons I came to the US was because there was very little tax to support others, you make it your own way, invest in your own retirement etc. however that's being quickly undone by a growing generation of people expecting handouts.
They aren't random, they are based on a number of criteria which triggers an audit. They trigger if you'd have done frequent corrections in the past or certain life events in combination with certain transactions. Eg if you may have received a gift because someone related sold property for cash or you may have cashed in stock options when you retired without declaring them as income.
There's a reason it doesn't work that way. Wifi does support AP hopping (it will pick different APs depending on signal strength) as long as they have the same ssid and are on the same network. That's why your connection continues working even though it switches from 80211n to 80211g (which is technically a different AP) as you go out of range of the former.
Retailers have 'fixed' that by getting laws that a bounced check can have an 'electronic debit' so it automatically debits your account + $30+ fee regardless of your funds. In court you can even get up to 4x the value of the check.
The bank 'eats' the overage and then bills the customer another $30+ fee per day your account is in overdraft.
These things are already legalized in areas and in contracts. The problem is that most people ignore those or don't know the restrictions exist/apply.
The same applies to people selling stuff on eBay and never reporting the income.
A lot of rent in cities are paid by governments. So a "low income" tenant may not even have to pay rent, get income assistance, food stamps they live "temporarily" with a partner, husband/wife or family that has the same arrangement (gets assistance etc) while subletting the entire house and netting the entire rent in cash to students or other transient residents.
But if you can get to interface with GRUB, that means it went through an interface (BIOS/EFI) which most likely you are likewise able to access. Any sort of pre-boot access gives you full control over the machine (make it netboot or mount a disk image to the virtual floppy).
It applies to Feds as well, luckily for society it applies to most criminals as well. Well thought out crimes are very hard for the authorities, see for example bank fraud, high profile heists and other professional crime. In some cases the criminals even end up changing the law to their benefit (Wall Street)