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The article uses "robotic mobile probes," which also seems out of order.

I (native english speaker) would order it as "mobile robotic probes". But if I were writing it, I'd say "robotic probe", "surface probe", or "mobile probe". In this case, robotic and mobile mean the same thing, so using both is redundant.

And although I would order it as "private robotic spacecraft", I don't think that's correct. The spacecraft is robotic, but it's not private. It might be privately-operated, privately-owned, or privately-funded (each has a slightly different connotation). But private by itself means that a private company is somehow responsible for the mission.

So if I were writing it, I'd use something like "privately-funded robotic spacecraft" or "robotic spacecraft operated by private company XYZ".


Facial recognition is illegal where I live, both for gov't and commercial uses. Several major cities in the US have banned it (e.g., San Francisco, Boston, etc.).


I was not aware of this! That's kinda fun.

I did an entropy test on my Pi5 (according to https://rob-turner.net/post/raspberrypi-hwrng), and it (7.999832 bits per byte) has about the same entropy as /dev/urandom (7.999831 bits per byte).

However, when using it directly, it's pretty slow. /dev/hwrng is 200 KB/s, /dev/urandom is 40 MB/s.

Though, maybe that doesn't matter if it's just intended to be used to add entropy to the system entropy pool.


Oh how I wish I had a legion of junior engineers. Or even a squad.

My company has an aversion to hiring. It's so expensive to hire people, you know! There are no young engineers to teach the ropes to. There are very few senior people do everything.

Needless to say nothing happens fast, good, or cheap. And we don't ship projects, they mostly just bob up and down in the harbor.


oh how i wish I had a single junior engineer.

my company hires like crazy for new things, but the maintenance of critical things are just the same humans who always take care of it.

and then we get asked to work on the new things too, and it's like, uhhhh...


Or better yet, buy your phone from the used market. Get a phone in perfect shape that was $800 two or three years ago for $200. Put a new battery in it.

Though I'm seriously considering going back to a $50 flip phone and enjoying the 2 weeks of battery life and general indestructibility. My current phone spends most of its time sitting on my desk doing nothing. It's hard to get excited about a newer and much BIGGER phone for $500 that will also spend most of its time sitting on my desk, doing nothing.


This approach works very well. I've had dozens of extremely remote systems hooked up this way for about 8 years. The only problem I've seen is that occasionally the server ssh process will get stuck, so you have to log in to the server and kill it. It seems to happen when a remote goes offline and reconnects without closing the old connection first.

If I were doing it now, I'd probably use wireguard, probably. This is simpler to set up and works great.


Can't you just add something like ServerAliveCountMaxto help with solving stale connections?

So something like that would solve that

[Unit] Description=look ma, no autossh After=network.target

[Service] Type=exec ExecStart=/usr/bin/ssh -o ServerAliveInterval=60 -o ServerAliveCountMax=3 -o ExitOnForwardFailure=yes -Nn -R 7070:localhost:22 pc 'sleep 20m' Restart=always RestartSec=20 RuntimeMaxSec=30m

[Install] WantedBy=default.target


The default of ServerAliveCountMax is already 3


> The only problem I've seen is that occasionally the server ssh process will get stuck, so you have to log in to the server and kill it.

You also need ClientAliveInterval on the server side (in addition to ServerAliveInterval on the client). In other words, both the client and the server need to be configured to monitor the connection. With this setup I had no issues with reconnections.


> ssh process stuck

systemd's RuntimeMaxSec should help in this case but I've never had trouble with sshd personally

To add more context I use the above service to ssh from my phone to my laptop via my desktop PC. The service runs on my laptop and binds port 22 of my laptop to port 7070 of my PC but wiregaurd would probably work similarly


RuntimeMaxSec would have systemd kill a live forwarded connection though?


closing ssh doesn't close the ports if they are being used, at least with ControlMaster. You need to run something like this to force the ssh daemon to close the port

    ssh -O cancel -L 4102:localhost:4000 pc
but if ControlMaster is stuck maybe autossh is better in that case, or use this:

    Host *
        ServerAliveInterval 11


That's funny. $10 billion just to move junk around.

The Wheatridge solar/wind/battery facility in Oregon produces the same amount of power as a small nuclear reactor. $10 billion buys you a dozen of them.


It's not necessarily the organization's fault. In several companies that I've worked for (including government contractors) we are required to implement "certifications" of one kind or another to handle certain kinds of data, or to get some insurance, or to win some contract.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but many of these require dubious "checkbox security" procedures and practices.

Unfortunately, there's no point in arguing with an insurance company or a contract or a certification organization, certainly not when you're "just" the engineer, IT guy, or end user.

There's also little point in arguing with your boss about it either. "Hey boss, this security requirement is pointless because of technical reason X and Y." Boss: "We have to do it to get the million dollar contract. Besides, more security is better, right? What's the problem?"


I’ve had several companies, including cyber insurers, ask for specific password expiry policies and when I’ve gone back to them explaining that we don’t expire passwords and referencing the NCSC and NIST advice all of them have accepted that without any arguments.

As you say, these are largely box ticking exercises but you don’t have to accept the limited options they give you as long as you can justify your position


And to add to this, it can sometimes be helpful to reply to every wrongheaded security request with "I am not going to decrease the security of my users.". You can use before or after, but once you've explained why a request is not permissible, you can use this line instead of repeatedly explaining.


Phoenix does this:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-beat-the-heat-...

> Experts say road temperatures in the Phoenix area can rise to 180 degrees on a hot day

I guess being only 160°F means the gray is working. I wonder how well it would do if it were painted white.


Please make speed limit signs broadcast speeds by radio!

That would be incredible. If the road noise outside my house gets too loud, I can transmit a lower speed limit instead of turning up my TV.


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