This raises a question for me: Why the actual fuck are safety-critical systems able to receive commands from anywhere other than the driver's controls or diagnostic port? Perhaps I am old-scool, naive, ignorant, etc, but given what "safety-critical" means, that strikes me as egregiously unacceptable.

I can sympathize with the idea of convenient remote diagnostic and repair, but in my opinion, this is a case where the saftey risk not just to the driver and passengers, but anyone else nearby, outweighs the convenience of logging into Ford's/BMW/Honda's website, click button, car works again.

1. https://xkcd.com/1053/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29113336

Points: 2

# Comments: 2

My objections with the situation described in the article are twofold.

First, the mill is not a designed as a long-term waste storage facility and is being treated as such. My understanding from the article is that the mill was originally designed and intended to be there for 15 years, then reclaimed. But it's still in operation. The holding cells for tailings were designed for the original planned life of the mill, and are still in use. Generally, I like it when things are useful for a long time. But from the OP, the mill and its temporary waste storage is running well past its design lifetime, and more waste continues to be added to the site, allowing it to be treated as long-term radioactive waste disposal by loophole. That's not acceptable. I don't disagree with long-term radioactive waste storage. I do disagree with it being stored long term in a place not properly designed for it and where a containment failure, however small, endangers the health and safety of surrounding communities or otherwise general usefulness of the land. The article describes how the groundwater in the area has been acidifying. The locals worry that such is because of contamination caused by the mill's waste. The mill claims that such is a natural process that just happens sometimes. Regardless of who is (more) correct, those holding cells were designed when the groundwater (and thus soil) were far less acidic, and are being operated decades after their intended design lifetime. The water in the cells is measuring with a pH as low as 1. You can't tell me that's not creating a needless contamination risk.

Second, the age of the mill and thus their processes. As a millennial, I read "Built in the 1980s" and reflexively think "Oh, of course that's modern," because it's something that happened in my lifetime. But it's not; that's 30-40 years ago. I would be in no way surprised that the wastes produced by this mill are as dangerous as they are because of the process they use. From the description in the article, and on the NRC website[1][2] it sounds like this mill is using a conventional process (crush, leach out the uranium with sulfuric acid). Have there genuinely been no improvements in the conventional process over 30-40 years that improve its extractive efficiency, resulting in less radioactive tailings? Or improving the solvent recovery so the tailings don't acidify the soil and ground water so much over the long term? Or in extracting the other heavy metals, (lead, molybdenum, selenium), further reducing the the hazard of the tailings, and possibly providing a useful feedstock for other industrial processes? I find that unlikely, and would be disappointed if that were the case. Even if it doesn't make sense to retrofit such improvements to this mill (more capex on something already past its original design life, etc), the economic need for nuclear capability doesn't mean that this mill must remain. Is is genuinely so impossible to build a newer, better one?

1. https://www.nrc.gov/materials/uranium-recovery/extraction-me...

2. https://www.nrc.gov/materials/uranium-recovery/extraction-me...

I do find myself wondering some things though.

Ethernet cables are 4 differential pairs. As I understand, the whole idea of these twisted pairs carrying a differential signal is that any RF the cable picked up from the environment would be common-mode, and get cancelled out receiver side, allowing the transmitted signal to arrive unspoiled. So, in theory, one would have a hard time injecting spurious transmissions into an Ethernet cable via RF.

Is this supposed to work in reverse, where the common-mode rejection of a differential pair would prevent RF from leaking out of the cable? Or is this one of those theory vs. practice things, where in theory, it shouldn't, but in practice, being a not-ideal twisted differential pair (e.g. twist rate is wrong for frequency of interest, untwisted section, conductors of slightly different lengths, etc) allows some RF emission to leak out, uncancelled. And in the case of a cheap cable, something claiming to be Cat 6A in actuality might never have passed spec for Cat 5, and thus leaks way more RF than it should, because the quality and balance of the twist was half-assed?

Or am I badly misunderstanding how this works because I haven't started studying for an amateur radio license yet?

More Edit: Turns out I picked a bad example. I missed reference to a name collision with an actual National Socialist band using the original name. The original edit is below.

Edit: Figured I should support my thesis with an example.

Let us take the band Sturmtruppen, from the Hate section of the linked article. From Encyclopaedia Metallum[1][2], they are a Black/Death metal band with themes of war and genocide. Per and interview referenced on their Encyclopedia Metallum page, their choice of those themes is not to glorify them, but to have something evil sounding enough to fit the style of music.

I am not saying that all the listed bands don't belong there. I know that actual neo nazi bands that take their imagery and themes seriously are a real thing that exist. But I do suspect at least some bands are on that list because of imagery and lyrical themes alone.

1. https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Sturmtruppen/12143

2. https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Truppensturm/98034

I have no doubt that the publicly published post-mortem report (if there even is one) will be heavily redacted in comparison to the internal-only version. But I very much want to see said hypothetical report anyway. This kind of infrastructural stuff fascinates me. And I would hope there would be some lessons in said report that even small time operators such as myself would do well to heed.

Some thoughts:

* The volume ramps up a bit too quickly. In trying to blend hese, I don't think I've taken a single one above 10. Finer gradations in volume, if possible, would be great.

* It would be great to set some of the sounds to happen randomly or intermittently pop or fade in and out, and possibly at different intensities. E.g. if you're chilling in a coffee shop that's playing lo-fi beats while it's raining outside, there probably not going to be a constant wind, but occasional gusts, some stronger than others.

The non-stainless alloys will have an easier time taking and keeping a very sharp edge. This makes them more useful, and for longer. Not only does a very sharp edge make the knife easier and faster to work with, is safer to use than a not-so-sharp knife.