I mean… what is your threat profile? Are you a LinkedIn engineer with an unpatched Plex install and access to the company file server?

Are you going to do something that would attract the attention of law enforcement or nation-state threat actors?

Are you going to be using this mini PC to do your taxes?

Is it going to be in a DMZ with open access to the Internet?

Are you going to use it as an authentication server for other critical assets?

If you aren’t assessing your risk level with some realistic idea of what threats actually apply to you and weighing that against the possible consequences of a breach, then you’re pointlessly worrying about low-probability scenarios. Operational Risk Management right? Judge your risk by probability of occurrence and severity of impact and then make decisions based on that.

I think he got away in this case, but he was definitely close to fucked. Apparently hippos kill about 500 people every year.

As one of the Mastodon users pointed out, it’s very likely that those cells are still producing some current when exposed to light. The electrical contacts would be a hazard.

I would also expect this thing to get pretty hot in sunlight - after all it’s designed to absorb energy.

If you’re faced with the tradeoff between security and another priority, your answer is clear: Do security. In some cases, this will mean prioritizing security above other things we do, such as releasing new features or providing ongoing support for legacy systems.

~Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, May 3, 2024

It’s adorable.

Yep, yep… until the teeth grow in.

Such a cutie.

I agree that redundancy is a good way to mitigate risk, but there are so many problems between us and successfully colonizing another world that this is basically a pipe dream.

Astronauts experience a lot of health issues.

• kidneys fail in low gravity

After less than a month in space, the tubules that fine-tune calcium and salt balance showed signs of shrinkage, which the researchers say was likely due to microgravity rather than GCR.

• the eyes degrade in space

The study suggests that optic disc edema and choroidal folding contribute to spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome, whose symptoms include headaches and visual impairment such as far-sightedness (hyperopia), which causes near objects to appear blurred due to lower visual acuity at short range.

• low gravity weakens the heart muscle

The scientists said the heart tissues “really don’t fare well in space,” and over time, the tissues aboard the space station beat about half as strong as tissues from the same source kept on Earth. […] Previous studies showed that some astronauts return to Earth from outer space with age-related conditions, including reduced heart muscle function and arrhythmias (irregular heartbeats), and that some, but not all, effects dissipate over time after their return.

And of course there’s all the problems caused by radiation exposure once you’re outside the Earth’s magnetic field (Mars doesn’t have a global magnetic field). Basically, we can put ourselves in a tin can and venture into space, but the human body evolved in Earth’s gravity and radiation profile and it doesn’t do well outside of that. At the present you’d have to be suicidal to try to live long-term away from Earth, and I don’t think these are problems that we can just engineer our way out of.

Brilliant.

Context for the uninitiated:

The Enigma of Amigara Fault

Everything goes in the square hole

This is a constraint designed into bitcoin to produce artificial scarcity so that the volume of tokens doesn’t massively inflate and destroy their value. A blockchain doesn’t have to operate this way if the goal is to produce unique tokens as identifiers rather than as currency.

There probably is such a conspiracy theory, or many based on the same theme. Occam’s razor applies though - it’s far simpler to just assume that Putin is a self-aggrandizing dictator who dreams of conquest (what do you get for a girl who already has everything?). After all, if it looks like a selfish asshole, and it swims like a selfish asshole, and it quacks like a selfish asshole, then it probably is.

Of course, there are many groups within the military-industrial complex who are happy to take advantage of his behavior.

Cool, cool cool cool… your pocket knife isn’t spring-assisted is it? or a gravity knife?

The difference is scale. The larger they are, the longer they last, the more people they collect. More people means greater sociocultural presence which means more widespread acceptability even with non-believers. More people also means more money and other resources which means more power, the capacity to bend the society in which they exist. The larger “religions” label the smaller religions as “cults” as a form of basic anticompetitive practice.

So, like, which one goes in first? And if you need that, do you have to pull everything else out of your pocket to get to it?

Russia, the best recruiter for NATO.

400 years in the future and they’re still using 5-wheeled office chairs.

Only one thing matters to Trump: Trump. Everything and everyone else is disposable.

Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with blockchain technology, but Surprise! the people most interested in unregulated financial systems are thieves and scammers. Who could have guessed.

If we had the technology to terraform another planet, it would be far easier to just fix the climate on this planet. People like Elon Musk who are peddling this idea of terraforming Mars for habitation are charlatans.