Internet of shit
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@boomzilla said in Internet of shit:
water gets stored locally in tanks up on stilts, basically. Like...100 feet in the air?
Our land is uneven enough that most of these are bunkers (the cistern is under ground level and the structure above it is covered in a lot of dirt) on suitable hill, so I guess that helps.
@boomzilla said in Internet of shit:
I believe most of our water comes from lakes and rivers, so it's not trial underground either.
Water from sufficiently deep (dam) lake can be actually colder than ground water if drawn near the bottom, because the water stratifies and as it heats from the surface, the summer heat never makes it to the bottom. But if your surrounding is too flat, you may not have high enough dam (even though a couple of metres should suffice) for this to work well.
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@Bulb said in Internet of shit:
Water from sufficiently deep (dam) lake can be actually colder than ground water if drawn near the bottom, because the water stratifies and as it heats from the surface, the summer heat never makes it to the bottom. But if your surrounding is too flat, you may not have high enough dam (even though a couple of metres should suffice) for this to work well.
More to the point, the winter cold doesn't make it to the bottom either, because (under vaguely normal conditions) liquid water's maximum density occurs at around 4°C, so water that's colder than that rises to the top (by convection) just like water that's hotter than that does.
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@dcon said in Internet of shit:
I thought that wasn't so much for storage - rather it's for creating pressure.
More properly, it's for controlling pressure so that people's pipes don't get broken or anything. The pumps that push the water up there in the first place will be operating under more pressure, but probably aren't delivering it very evenly; after all, there's no need for them to do that with the tank there so a cheaper pump can be used.
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@boomzilla said in Internet of shit:
@Bulb I don't know what that converts to in normal numbers but it seems physically impossible without outlandish refrigeration expenses here.
Maybe you should live somewhere that's not such a shit hole then
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@Jaloopa said in Internet of shit:
@boomzilla said in Internet of shit:
@Bulb I don't know what that converts to in normal numbers but it seems physically impossible without outlandish refrigeration expenses here.
Maybe you should live somewhere that's not such a shit hole then
Yeah, we've definitely considered it. This area has been going a bit downhill since we moved here 20 years ago. Unfortunately there are a few nice things in the shittier shit hole across the river that I'm not ready to give up.
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@boomzilla said in Internet of shit:
This area has been going a bit downhill since we moved here 20 years ago.
Are these two things related?
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@loopback0 it's not impossible!
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Internet of shit:
@Bulb said in Internet of shit:
Water from sufficiently deep (dam) lake can be actually colder than ground water if drawn near the bottom, because the water stratifies and as it heats from the surface, the summer heat never makes it to the bottom. But if your surrounding is too flat, you may not have high enough dam (even though a couple of metres should suffice) for this to work well.
More to the point, the winter cold doesn't make it to the bottom either, because (under vaguely normal conditions) liquid water's maximum density occurs at around 4°C, so water that's colder than that rises to the top (by convection) just like water that's hotter than that does.
Which is how the temperature can actually stay 4°C there all year long when the average temperature is, say, 12°C.
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@Bulb said in Internet of shit:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Internet of shit:
@Bulb said in Internet of shit:
Water from sufficiently deep (dam) lake can be actually colder than ground water if drawn near the bottom, because the water stratifies and as it heats from the surface, the summer heat never makes it to the bottom. But if your surrounding is too flat, you may not have high enough dam (even though a couple of metres should suffice) for this to work well.
More to the point, the winter cold doesn't make it to the bottom either, because (under vaguely normal conditions) liquid water's maximum density occurs at around 4°C, so water that's colder than that rises to the top (by convection) just like water that's hotter than that does.
Which is how the temperature can actually stay 4°C there all year long when the average temperature is, say, 12°C.
But also when the average temperature is, say, 2°C. (It goes both ways, that is.)
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Apparently one of my neighbours has an unsecured WiFi speaker. WCGW.
No, I've not tried connecting to it.
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@loopback0 said in Internet of shit:
Apparently one of my neighbours has an unsecured WiFi speaker. WCGW.
No, I've not tried connecting to it.
For
purposes, create a small program that connects to it at a very specific time during the dark hours and play a few short ghostly sound bites, then disconnect again.
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@Bulb said in Internet of shit:
@boomzilla said in Internet of shit:
I believe most of our water comes from lakes and rivers, so it's not trial underground either.
Water from sufficiently deep (dam) lake can be actually colder than ground water if drawn near the bottom, because the water stratifies and as it heats from the surface, the summer heat never makes it to the bottom. But if your surrounding is too flat, you may not have high enough dam (even though a couple of metres should suffice) for this to work well.
Also, it should be mentioned that the "summer heat" is usually around 25C (77F). Anything over 30C (86F) is actually called "Tropical Heat" - and I think it's even an official or semi-official term (there are usually official warning in all media when such a heat wave is forecast).
It's easy to imagine how useful water cooler is in area where 90s (F) is normal weather.
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@Carnage
Or play some short porn sound bites during the non-dark hours
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@Carnage said in Internet of shit:
@loopback0 said in Internet of shit:
Apparently one of my neighbours has an unsecured WiFi speaker. WCGW.
No, I've not tried connecting to it.
For
purposes, create a small program that connects to it at a very specific time during the dark hours and play a few short ghostly sound bites, then disconnect again."Dear citizen, the authorities have selected you for the cloud-based reform program. Vaccination will follow shortly. Do not resist!"
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@topspin
Go stand outside with your mouth wide open towards the sky, close your eyes and await the drone delivered vaccin
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@Bulb said in Internet of shit:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Internet of shit:
@Bulb said in Internet of shit:
Water from sufficiently deep (dam) lake can be actually colder than ground water if drawn near the bottom, because the water stratifies and as it heats from the surface, the summer heat never makes it to the bottom. But if your surrounding is too flat, you may not have high enough dam (even though a couple of metres should suffice) for this to work well.
More to the point, the winter cold doesn't make it to the bottom either, because (under vaguely normal conditions) liquid water's maximum density occurs at around 4°C, so water that's colder than that rises to the top (by convection) just like water that's hotter than that does.
Which is how the temperature can actually stay 4°C there all year long when the average temperature is, say, 12°C.
I don't know what they do wrong in my region then, but the water is and has always been significantly warmer than fridge-cooled one, and I have my fridge set to 5 degrees. And that's not just at my house, but everywhere I've been to.
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@Gąska said in Internet of shit:
I have my fridge set to 5 degrees. And that's not just at my house, but everywhere I've been to.
You go around setting people's fridge temp?
You're weird
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@TimeBandit almost nobody notices, and I get a better tasting alcohol, so win-win!
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@Gąska said in Internet of shit:
@Bulb said in Internet of shit:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Internet of shit:
Which is how the temperature can actually stay 4°C there all year long when the average temperature is, say, 12°C.I don't know what they do wrong in my region then, but the water is and has always been significantly warmer than fridge-cooled one, and I have my fridge set to 5 degrees. And that's not just at my house, but everywhere I've been to.
It's the temperature of the water in the deeper parts of a very deep reservoir (look up the term "thermocline"), but unless you're drinking it directly from down there, it will have had time to pass through basic treatment (final filtering and chlorination, stuff like that) and a bunch of pipes before it gets to where you are. And of course most non-tropical lakes (including reservoirs) are what's called "holomictic", where the the different layers mix on a seasonal basis, and that's a good thing, because it stops them from exploding.(1)
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@Steve_The_Cynic It's possible that the source for water in that area is mainly rivers, which can be quite a bit warmer than lakes or reservoirs.
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@Luhmann said in Internet of shit:
@topspin
Go stand outside with your mouth wide open towards the sky, close your eyes and await the drone delivered vaccin"do note we're beta testing out our environmentally friendly animal emulation style drones."
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@Tsaukpaetra The "birds aren't real" conspiracy folk are way ahead of you on that
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@hungrier said in Internet of shit:
@Tsaukpaetra The "birds aren't real" conspiracy folk are way ahead of you on that
There's gotta be some corollary to R34 that no matter how dumb the theory, there's a conspiracy theorist out there believing it.
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Another victim of automatic updates:
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@topspin said in Internet of shit:
There's gotta be some corollary to R34 that no matter how dumb the theory, there's a conspiracy theorist out there believing it.
Poe's Law could possibly help in proving it.
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@Zerosquare said in Internet of shit:
Another victim of automatic updates:
Solved! Go to Solution.
We are aware of customers who have reported an issue with boot loops on some Blu-Ray players and we are looking into this further. We will post an update here on this thread when we have more information.
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@MrL said in Internet of shit:
@cvi said in Internet of shit:
@GuyWhoKilledBear ... and the really high-end ones have a cold drinking water dispenser with DRM?
You wouldn't want for you cold water to break copyright, now would you?
You wouldn't download a glass of water...
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@topspin said in Internet of shit:
@hungrier said in Internet of shit:
@Tsaukpaetra The "birds aren't real" conspiracy folk are way ahead of you on that
There's gotta be some corollary to R34 that no matter how dumb the theory, there's a conspiracy theorist out there believing it.
Bush Did North Dakota
Continuing yesterday’s discussion of fake news: Guess et al says that 46% percent of Trump voters endorsed the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. Does this mean fake news is very powerful? We can c…
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@topspin terrible sequel to Debbie does Dallas
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@Zerosquare said in Internet of shit:
Another victim of automatic updates:
My bet isn't automatic updates, but Samsung not realizing they have to pay attention to PKI and certificate expiration dates. Just a wild guess, though. Though the theories out there that it's a hack from North Korea are entertaining (and would be even more entertaining, if my DVD/Blu-Ray/Netflix player wasn't unplugged while I wait for Samsung to figure out how or whether they're going to fix problems in a product line they no longer sell).
I'm imagining a meeting of Samsung engineers all trying to puzzle out what's going wrong, while some smart guy that got "let go" years ago in a "restructuring" is thinking to himself, "I told them this is what would happen in 2020." But that's all entirely in my imagination.
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@pcooper said in Internet of shit:
while some smart guy that got "let go" years ago in a "restructuring" is thinking to himself, "I told them this is what would happen in 2020."
That would be a "non-Korean smart guy".
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@pcooper said in Internet of shit:
My bet isn't automatic updates, but Samsung not realizing they have to pay attention to PKI and certificate expiration dates.
Given it's Samsung, it would make sense, but several persons in the forum mentioned the problem started just after an automatic update.
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@pcooper said in Internet of shit:
this is what would happen in 2020
Like some custom date-time-handling causing an overflow?
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@hungrier said in Internet of shit:
@Tsaukpaetra The "birds aren't real" conspiracy folk are way ahead of you on that
Wait, it's a thing? I though it's just a joke!
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@Zerosquare said in Internet of shit:
@pcooper said in Internet of shit:
My bet isn't automatic updates, but Samsung not realizing they have to pay attention to PKI and certificate expiration dates.
Given it's Samsung, it would make sense, but several persons in the forum mentioned the problem started just after an automatic update.
Could still be an expired certificate, although it's a bit lame to ship an already-expired certificate...
Or there's an expired code-signing certificate in the chain somewhere, both for the certificate in the updated code and the certificate in the previous code:
- Boot from new bootloader, check signature, fail because it's got an expired certificate.
- Switch to backup bootloader, reboot.
- Boot from backup bootloader, check signature, fail because it's got an expired certificate.
- Switch to the backup backup bootloader, which is the new one, reboot.
- Repeat ad nauseum.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Internet of shit:
an expired code-signing certificate
That was my initial thought too.
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Some of the users mention the menu being displayed for a few instants, so it looks like the firmware actually starts executing but immediately crashes/reboots.
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@Zerosquare said in Internet of shit:
Some of the users mention the menu being displayed for a few instants, so it looks like the firmware actually starts executing but immediately crashes/reboots.
That's certainly the symptoms I'm seeing on my Samsung BD-J5100 (which is a DVD/Blu-Ray/Streamy-stuff player that I got on sale for maybe $30 or so probably in late 2015). It gets to the point of just showing the main menu and then reboots. I think it had asked before installing prior firmware updates (though perhaps there are other types of automatic updates it could in theory get besides "Firmware", but it certainly didn't ask anything before whatever broke it), there haven't been any new firmware updates published for it since Dec. 2017, and it seems to be hitting a lot of Samsung's (former) product line at once, which is all adding up to why I'm guessing it's something "expiring" that they use across multiple systems.
Hopefully there's some option to have it boot from a recovery file on a USB stick or the like. For my specific case if it's just garbage now it's not too terrible if I need to just buy a new physical media player (or finally invest in figuring out how to rip the discs I have easily which is probably the way to really go), but some people are having problems with significantly more costly "home theater" systems. It'll be interesting to see how Samsung handles this, as they've got a lot of unhappy customers right now and haven't done a great job of getting out information.
And of course, this all still only the beginning stages of companies and consumers trying to figure out what a level of expected long-term support for devices should be, given that devices are now all Internet-connected and need patching and certificate updates and back-end servers to connect to and so forth. "Of course you're not buying it, you're just renting it for however long the manufacturer wants to support it," seems to be the mindset more and more…
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@pcooper said in Internet of shit:
And of course, this all still only the beginning stages of companies and consumers trying to figure out what a level of expected long-term support for devices should be, given that devices are now all Internet-connected and need patching and certificate updates and back-end servers to connect to and so forth. "Of course you're not buying it, you're just renting it for however long the manufacturer wants to support it," seems to be the mindset more and more…
What would be interesting from a legal perspective: if they just don't fix it and everybody's player breaks at the same time, will they be liable for any damages? The players are out of warranty so if yours would break personally you wouldn't get any replacement, but surely it's not acceptable if they just put in a time-bomb that breaks everything after "warranty+1day".
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@topspin said in Internet of shit:
What would be interesting from a legal perspective: if they just don't fix it and everybody's player breaks at the same time, will they be liable for any damages? The players are out of warranty so if yours would break personally you wouldn't get any replacement, but surely it's not acceptable if they just put in a time-bomb that breaks everything after "warranty+1day".
A lot might depend on the (likely state-specific) law on whether companies can explicitly disclaim any warranty of a product being suitable for any specific purpose, like Samsung's warranty (for at least my Blu-ray player) attempts to do after the 1-year warranty period:
THERE ARE NO EXPRESS WARRANTIES OTHER THAN THOSE LISTED AND DESCRIBED ABOVE, AND NO WARRANTIES WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, SHALL APPLY AFTER THE EXPRESS WARRANTY PERIODS STATED ABOVE
I could certainly understand one court ruling that nobody had any expectation of it working at all after 1 year based on that language and that one would expect vendor support to be needed for a digital device to keep working, while another court would say that's ridiculous and of course one buying a Blu-ray player would expect it to last more than one year. It also might depend on whether there was "gross negligence" or "good faith" or whatever on the part of Samsung. And that's of course assuming that anything actually got to a court, most likely if anything actually rose to the level of a class-action lawsuit it would just be settled out of court for some nominal payment (or coupon for buying a replacement) with the only real winners being the lawyers.
It's possible that there's some case law on this, but I don't think much has actually gotten to a court ruling, though I'm certainly no legal scholar who knows where to look such things up. I know I was mighty annoyed by Microsoft Money back in the day, which had a time bomb of 3 years after you first installed it forcing you to upgrade to the next version. That was explicitly in the fine print somewhere, though, if I recall correctly. There have been other things in this thread of remote bricking of devices, did any of those have any resolution?
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@pcooper said in Internet of shit:
And that's of course assuming that anything actually got to a court, most likely if anything actually rose to the level of a class-action lawsuit it would just be settled out of court for some nominal payment (or coupon for buying a replacement) with the only real winners being the lawyers.
That would also depend critically on the jurisdiction. In particular, no amount of class action status in the US is likely to be significantly binding on EU plaintiffs given that the company concerned is primarily based in neither area. And in the EU the matter's would probably be regarded as wholly settled at upper court level; the expected lifetimes of devices depends on things like original price and how they're meant to be used (using ordinary expectations and the company's own literature at the time that the device was first sold). A premium DVD player brand would probably have an expected lifespan of somewhere between 2 and 5 years. A failure of this sort wouldn't be regarded as ordinary wear and tear either.
If this is a worldwide problem, Samsung's going to be on the hook for quite a lot of money and there's not going to be much they can to do mitigate at least the EU part of it.
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I don't know how it works in the USA, but here, there's a legal definition for something called vice caché (not sure how to translate it exactly, something like "hidden defect"). It covers problems that significantly affect the usefulness of a product and are not expected or obvious to the consumer (such as design faults, as opposed to normal wear and tear). In that case, the consumer protection lasts longer than the standard warranty.
In that case, you could argue "had I known Samsung was going to turn my player into a brick, I'd have bought a model from a different brand" and possibly get some money or a repair from them.
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@pcooper said in Internet of shit:
A lot might depend on the (likely state-specific) law on whether companies can explicitly disclaim any warranty of a product being suitable for any specific purpose, like Samsung's warranty (for at least my Blu-ray player) attempts to do after the 1-year warranty period:
That sort of thing doesn’t really fly in the EU anyway. You have the right to a device that works for as long as it can be reasonably expected to work. A fridge that quits working after a year is almost certainly the vendor’s problem, for example, regardless of what the manufacturer’s warranty terms may claim, because your average person will expect a fridge to last longer than that. That same fridge quitting after ten years is the owner’s problem, though, for much the same reason: most people would not expect one to last that long trouble-free.
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@Gurth said in Internet of shit:
@pcooper said in Internet of shit:
A lot might depend on the (likely state-specific) law on whether companies can explicitly disclaim any warranty of a product being suitable for any specific purpose, like Samsung's warranty (for at least my Blu-ray player) attempts to do after the 1-year warranty period:
That sort of thing doesn’t really fly in the EU anyway. You have the right to a device that works for as long as it can be reasonably expected to work. A fridge that quits working after a year is almost certainly the vendor’s problem, for example, regardless of what the manufacturer’s warranty terms may claim, because your average person will expect a fridge to last longer than that. That same fridge quitting after ten years is the owner’s problem, though, for much the same reason: most people would not expect one to last that long trouble-free.
A law that mandates devices to work for a reasonable time is way too vague to work. There really should be mandated a mandated minimum time for appliances to work, since producing them consumes a massive amount of energy and rare non-renewable resources and companies will do everything they can to make them last as short as possible.
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@Gurth Yeah, but in this case it seems to be a software problem so this leads to the question: Do we simply transfer hardware assumptions to software or do we make new rules for that?
This could have rather far-reaching consequences for security patches, for example.
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@magnusmaster said in Internet of shit:
@Gurth said in Internet of shit:
@pcooper said in Internet of shit:
A lot might depend on the (likely state-specific) law on whether companies can explicitly disclaim any warranty of a product being suitable for any specific purpose, like Samsung's warranty (for at least my Blu-ray player) attempts to do after the 1-year warranty period:
That sort of thing doesn’t really fly in the EU anyway. You have the right to a device that works for as long as it can be reasonably expected to work. A fridge that quits working after a year is almost certainly the vendor’s problem, for example, regardless of what the manufacturer’s warranty terms may claim, because your average person will expect a fridge to last longer than that. That same fridge quitting after ten years is the owner’s problem, though, for much the same reason: most people would not expect one to last that long trouble-free.
A law that mandates devices to work for a reasonable time is way too vague to work. There really should be mandated a mandated minimum time for appliances to work, since producing them consumes a massive amount of energy and rare non-renewable resources and companies will do everything they can to make them last as short as possible.
It's not reasonable for the law to list the values of reasonable time for all kinds of devices, so it is left to precedents to establish it.
But it is actually even more complicated than that, because the law also cares about why it stopped working. If it was a design defect, it might be vendor's problem after any time, especially if it should have been obvious or is potentially dangerous.
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@Bulb said in Internet of shit:
It's not reasonable for the law to list the values of reasonable time for all kinds of devices, so it is left to precedents to establish it.
That's what regulations are for. Laws give a rough outlook and regulations get into the specifics.
I mean, just look at anything which emits wireless data - the law probably (
) only says: "Devices which transmit data wirelessly are bound to use certain frequency ranges only.", the respective government agency then divided the EM spectrum into discrete ranges and then said: "Devices of specific type A shall only use range B at a maximum power of C" or something.
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@magnusmaster said in Internet of shit:
A law that mandates devices to work for a reasonable time is way too vague to work.
And yet it does.
There's just too much detail in the real world to encode every acceptable state in statute. It would bog down everything with huge lists of things that remain useless to virtually everyone. So instead we use lesser legal mechanisms like regulation and precedent to work out the details and try to manage all the detail. It's a bit like filling in frames in an animation between the key frames. I suppose those correspond to the parts of the rules that are set by law in this dodgy analogy.
Now, I don't know what is the actual reasonable expected amount of time for a home video player to work, but it's highly likely to be several years. It is also highly unlikely to be considered acceptable for the manufacturer to terminate it at their whim, especially if there was no explicit warning of this in the product documentation (and no, a catch-all claim doesn't count; the legal status of those is super-dodgy anyway, and probably just acts as an invitation to the court to make up its own mind about what the device is for).
Wumo 10. Jun 2020
