Say, the Siemens PLCs I earn my living programming uses SD cards which range from 64kB to, uh, 128MB, methinks.

They still work after decades, so clearly, you can get long term reliable flash storage; just don't expect to be able to store your 4k holiday videos on them.

NOTAMs, on the other hand? Go ahead!

I became a licensed ship's electrician a decade and change after doing my MSc in RF design - turned out that in the line of work I stumbled into, doing control systems for heavy offshore equipment, it was a massive benefit to be able to work hands-on on the systems during commissioning, rather than pointing at the stuff which needed doing and trying to agree with some poor guy I more often than not did not share a language with as to what I meant.

The supervisor at the local trades office had a laugh at that when I called and asked if I could get to take the test(s) based on relevant work experience rather than by having served a conventional apprenticeship.

Most often, the ones asking to take that path had started working as cable pullers and helping hands at fifteen; having an MSc ask was... ...uncommon.

It was quite the experience learning HOW to do all the stuff I knew needed doing.

Anyway - I can now do all sorts of rather competent work on a ship.

I'd be utterly useless (as well as in violation of the law) if I ever attempted to do anything in a house.

The latter has been very helpful - seeing as I've been asked often whether I can help out friends and relatives with electrical installations at home, seeing as I'm an electrician and all.

Sorry. Against the law. Phew.

(Do note I try to go to Berlin once or twice a year to visit friends - so the news of the (more impending than I realized!) closure of the Hoyerswerda museum simply made me get this fall's visit booked...)

I haven't been to the Deutsches Technikmuseum since October 2024, so I'll probably make another visit there.

Anyway, three minutes ago, after reading about the museum's likely fate (sigh!) on HN, I've booked tickets to Berlin in October.

Hoyerswerda or bust!

I started using them a couple of decades ago, but things escalated once my kids started school, seeing as I just sent them off with a couple of Hi-Unis.

Teacher noted she hardly ever had to help my kids sharpen their pencils, wondered why, asked me if I could get her those for the entire class...

Next thing I knew, I peddle in the pencil business - currently bringing in ~240 pencils a year...

(The lead is nigh on unbreakable, and it holds its point very well.)

Oh, and a Passat for the missus. The kids call the Passat 'The muggle car'.

I really could do with a couple cars less (mostly to make room for a Toyota Century, I have wanted one for years), but I love all of them for different reasons, so...

The 'problem' is that as it migrated (much like, say, Leica cameras and optics) from being tools for professionals into status symbols, a lot of its owners went from basically banging it about, relishing each and every battle scar obtained to (sigh) worrying about resale value.

Sigh.

It was still a VW van, but it gave a few unsuspecting BMW drivers a surprise. Some 370bhp tends to get others' attention when unleashed.

One of the links terminated in a seeming boathouse at Andøya in Norway.

It was a landmark. As in, if you were going fishing with a colleague and asked him which boathouse we'd embark from, he was as likely as not to say 'Three boathouses down from the hush one!'

(Reading Joseph Pearson's book on the Berlin airlift, in which he features prominently, do your last name stood out...)

Say, I have a Range Rover Classic (1972, 3.5l V8) I mostly use for fun and games during weekends in the summer months. Its A-pillars look like strands of spaghetti, making for excellent situational awareness from the driver's seat. It is effectively like driving around in a moving greenhouse. (Doubly so in summer, seeing as the A/C is of dubious efficacy, to put it mildly.)

If I ever roll the thing, I'll be done for, though.

Ranging from the understandable, but unacceptable (Say, CBDR/Constant bearing, decreasing range, which makes a lot of drivers misidentify an object as stationary even as it is moving towards them on a collision course) to the flat out unbelievable - I've been almost run over in a lit pedestrian crossing. While wearing hi-vis clothing. Pushing a baby stroller, also hi-vis. AFTER having made eye contact with the driver and even gotten a nod from her. After the car slowed down. Sigh.

In the latter case, it turned out she had assumed that us making eye contact meant that I had seen the car and would wait until it had safely passed the crossing. At least that was what she claimed when I asked why, oh why she'd approached the crossing, slowed down, made eye contact with the pedestrian - and yet proceeded to drive through...

Oh, and don't even get me started on the proliferation of touch screens forcing the driver to take his or her attention off the road to interact with the car. This was a solved problem, using physical buttons you soon learned the exact location of so you could reach for them while still keeping your attention on what was in front of you.

Looking at the statistics here in my native Norway, children killed in traffic is down a couple of orders of magnitude since the sixties - while traffic, at the same time, has increased by a couple of orders of magnitude.

Same goes for drowning - drastically reduced rates compared to the sixties.

Of course, I guess one can argue that maybe it has become too safe - in the sense that kids aren't exposed to enough risk to learn how to evaluate it, leading to major crashes with reality later on.

Then again, as a parent, I kind of like the idea that there's never been a safer time to be a child.

That doesn't stop me from urging them to ditch the screen time in favour of heading out into the boonies to find something to do, though.

I rely on Siemens automation products at work. They give me end-of-life warnings a couple of years ahead - and maintain a spares inventory for a decade and change after EoL.

That basically ensures I am never caught out, and makes me more than happy to (grudgingly) accept all their ideosyncracies...

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/05/gears...