shmdeon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Engineers investigating NASA’s Voyager 1 telemetry data”
People interested in knowing more about Bitflip. "The Universe is Hostile to Computers" by Veritasium is good video. link to this video
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The Universe is Hostile to Computers
Veritasium
21M subscribers • 25 videos on Hallway
- Recommended by 1 person: 1 on Hacker News.
Beginner. No background in the topic needed.
26M views5 years ago1 recommendation
HardwareSystems programmingCPUs and computer architectureMemory management
How cosmic rays and other ionizing radiation can cause single-event upsets, flipping bits in computer memory and causing critical system errors.
Tiny particles from distant galaxies have caused plane accidents, election interference and game glitches. This video is sponsored by Brilliant. The first 200 people to sign up via brilliant.org/veritasium get 20% off a yearly subscription. This video was inspired by the RadioLab Podcast "Bit Flip" ve42.co/BF -- they're brilliant science storytellers. A Huge thanks to Dr Leif Scheick, Calla Cofield and the JPL Media Relations Team. Thanks to Col Chris Hadfield. Check out his book: chrishadfield.ca/books/ ▀▀▀ References: J. F. Ziegler, "Terrestrial cosmic rays," in IBM Journal of Research and Development, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 19-39, Jan. 1996, doi: 10.1147/rd.401.0019. -- ve42.co/Ziegler1996 D. Binder, E. C. Smith and A. B. Holman, "Satellite Anomalies from Galactic Cosmic Rays," in IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, vol. 22, no. 6, pp. 2675-2680, Dec. 1975, doi: 10.1109/TNS.1975.4328188 ve42.co/Binder1975 Ziegler, J. F., & Lanford, W. A. (1979). Effect of cosmic rays on computer memories. Science, 206(4420), 776-788 ve42.co/Ziegler1979 Drury, L. O. C. (2012). Origin of cosmic rays. Astroparticle Physics, 39, 52-60. ve42.co/Drury2012 Hess, V. (2018). On the observations of the penetrating radiation during seven balloon flights. arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.02927. --ve42.co/Hess2018 Carlson, P., & De Angelis, A. (2011). Nationalism and internationalism in science: the case of the discovery of cosmic rays. The European Physical Journal H, 35(4), 309-329. -- ve42.co/Carlson2011 Höeffgen, S. K., Metzger, S., & Steffens, M. (2020). Investigating the effects of cosmic rays on space electronics. Frontiers in Physics, 8, 318. -- ve42.co/Hoeffgen2020 Edmonds, L. D., Barnes, C. E., & Scheick, L. Z. (2000). An introduction to space radiation effects on microelectronics. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, National Aeronautics and Space Administration. -- ve42.co/Edmonds2000 NASA Mars 2020 website covering the specifications of the Perseverance Rover ve42.co/RoverBrains Australian Government Australian Transport Safety Bureau report on QF72 -- ve42.co/ASTBQantas Australian Government Australian Transport Safety Bureau summary on QF72 --ve42.co/ASTBQantas2 Great Blog post about QF72 -- ve42.co/DempseyQantas Michael Barr's report on the Toyota acceleration issue --ve42.co/Barr2015 NASA's Report on Toyota -- ve42.co/NASAToyota T. C. May and M. H. Woods, "A New Physical Mechanism for Soft Errors in Dynamic Memories," 16th International Reliability Physics Symposium, 1978, pp. 33-40, doi: 10.1109/IRPS.1978.362815. --ve42.co/May1978 P. M. O'Neill and G. D. Badhwar, "Single event upsets for Space Shuttle flights of new general purpose computer memory devices," in IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, vol. 41, no. 5, pp. 1755-1764, Oct. 1994, doi: 10.1109/23.317386. -- ve42.co/ONeill1994 Wikipedia about radiWhy it's here
1 person recommends thisWhat people say. Recommended as an engaging explanation of cosmic ray bit flips and their real-world impact on computer systems.
u/physicomorphicin r/compsci • Mentions
On “What is something you always thought about computers to be true but found later that you were wrong all along?”
Sort of adjacent to /u/Ebanflo's comment, I thought computers are always fully deterministic.
But in reality, everything from physics to the ridiculous complexity of software projects means that weird random shit _will_ eventually happen. Sometimes things just go pear-shaped and you have no idea why, could be anything from bit flips (at *almost any point during the existence of some digital data*, be it in-memory or on the wire) to compiler bugs to whatever.
In theory computers and programs are fully deterministic (and true randomness really is nontrivial to produce on computers). In practice however, this simply isn't the case.
reeeeeeon Hacker News • Mentions
On “Protecting Supercomputers from an Extraterrestrial Threat”
I did some looking into this subject after Veritassium posted a video regarding cosmic rays changing the election result in Belgium some time ago1. But looking further into the issue, it seemed that there was (and is) scepticism regarding cosmic rays being the actual reason for the miscount. 23 1. link to this video 2. link 3. link
dredmorbiuson Hacker News • Mentions
On “While posting to Tumblr, E and W keys just stopped working”
…, or similar.) - Are the errors nott repeated for the same hardware component. (E.g., under increased cosmic-ray influence, bits flip at an increased rate, as predicted, but which bits flip is random and has no detectable pattern, as predicted.) You end up with very strong circumstantial evidence of altered bits due to cosmic ray influence. link link to this video…
debduton Hacker News • Mentions
On “Totenpass is a permanent digital storage drive made of solid gold”
It’s not about efficiency, think how many years a hard drive will last? 3 years. How many years a gold plate will last? thousands of years. Least reactive metal not for a reason lol Plus if there is a ion blast from a nearby supernova, it’ll erase all electronic storage devices on earth link to this video
shagieon Hacker News • Mentions
On “The computer errors from outer space”
A YouTube video on the subject : Veritasium - The Universe is Hostile to Computers link to this video Some of the same examples are in the article and the video.
Scoring6931on Hacker News • Mentions
On “Brazilian hacker claims Bolsonaro asked him to hack into the 2022 voting system”
In the Brazilian electronic voting system, there is no mechanism to check that the counting on each machine was performed correctly. Validation only occurs after that point. So if the machine somehow subtracts 256 votes from one candidate and transfers them to another, the total remains the same and this discrepancy isn't caught. It sounds ludicrous, but actually has happened before: link to this video This is just one example of how the Brazilian system isn't ideal. The criticism against it is very well supported by sound arguments, and it's a shame that it got politicised. It's a pure technical matter.
Etherlord87on Hacker News • Mentions
On “Fujitsu says it will pay compensation in UK Post Office scandal”
> There's an extent to which I think this is reasonable. If I'm accused of fraud based on evidence recovered from a bank computer, it should not be the case that I can require the prosecution to prove that the bank's computers function correctly, and the evidence be thrown out in case the prosecution are unable to do so. So a poor individual with no resources should find experts to analyze a software he doesn't even have access to (I know, discovery, but the practical limitations often make it near impossible to find the error within a given time, like having the access only in an isolated room without the internet or your own software, or having an access only to printed source code on pape…
passion__desireon Hacker News • Mentions
On “Intelligence is not like height”
There is no software at all, it is all hardware. These are mere abstractions because the reality offers some guarantees which allows one to transfer one system onto another as if the underlying system didn't matter. Those guarantees allows one to speak of commonalities between one stuff and another. ref : The Universe is Hostile to Computers link to this video