If you’re afraid of this kind of thing, then don’t use escalators when they aren’t moving, that’s fine.

According to a quick Google search, there are 2-3 escalator related deaths per year in the US. That’s not just counting malfunctioning escalators, it also counts morons doing dumb things on escalators (and “within the US” includes every Florida Man out there).

You can worry about this if you like worrying, but it’s probably not worth it.

Sure. But if the brakes have not failed… Then it’s safe to use for a reasonable period of time.

They’re also more expensive than regular copper or aluminum wiring, and in this case I suspect that their required proximity would be a downside.

I think I’m going to have to say “citation needed” here.

There are different grades of fiber optic cable, but for short distances you can generally use the lowest grade, so that’s probably what would be used if they were just components in a device, and that stuff is dirt cheap.

On the other hand, currently audio equipment tends to need higher end copper wiring, shielded cables, gold plated connectors, etc. digital interfaces are much less demanding of course, s/pdif or HDMI for example.

As for your comment about being vulnerable to drops and bumps, yeah I think you’re certainly right about that. And honestly, there are some other potential issues with the idea too. Foremost, a microphone like this would probably require a whole lot more analysis and signal processing than you really want for a simple audio input.

This is honestly pretty funny. This post is largely about software architecture and standards, and makes a valid point. But nobody (myself included) can think about anything but Mitch Headberg.

Another day on the Internet.

Oh no… You absolutely can’t be doing maintenance on an escalator while people are walking on it. Not only unsafe, that’s just not going to work at all most of the time. The maintenance crew and the public would be in each other’s way.

On the other hand, when it breaks on a Monday, and the crew says they can be there to do the repair on Thursday, that means that it’s safe to use the escalator as stairs for a couple of days while you wait.

And I… am that nerd!

Well I suspect that most feedback would still occur, because that’s largely an effect of sound from a speaker being picked up through the mic, then played back again through the speaker, over and over…

So you’ll run into feedback issues whenever you have a mic playing back to a speaker in the same place. (Any amplification scenario)

Honestly, why not investigate the utility of this? Could one develop a fiber optic coil based microphone? It would probably result in a microphone immune to RF and magnetic interference.

Well, it’s more novel than that…

A coil of fiber is not meant to be a listening device, so they almost certainly exist in places where it wasn’t previously deemed a risk.

That said, exploiting this in the wild seems like a pretty difficult job, I can’t imagine how to do it without already having access to a target computer.

This is more of a leak like… They forgot to seal the bottom of the boat, now they “have a leak”.

I mean, airplane brakes probably have about a 3% duty cycle (the percentage of time they’re in use), so they’re generally idle. For city driving, car brakes probably have about a 25% duty cycle.

If those numbers are close to accurate, that means planes are using their brakes about 10x less than cars.

BTW, I didn’t pull those plane numbers directly out of my ass, but they’re definitely a rough estimate. I’m figuring about 5 minutes of breaking time per flight, counting landing and during the taxi to and from the runway. And I’m assuming a 2.5 hour flight, figuring that could be close to an average flight time.

Wait a second… how can they enforce this legislation when a VPN is masking the user’s location? How do they know a user using a VPN is from Utah?

Correct me if I’m wrong here, but aren’t the users they’re trying to regulate the exact subsection of users that they don’t have the ability to identify as being citizens of Utah?

Like if a user appears to be in Utah, then they’re probably not using a vpn. And if the user appears to be from out of state, then they could be using a vpn, but also Utah law doesn’t apply to those people because they’re not from Utah (as far as they know)… So essentially this law can’t actually apply to… anyone?

Big websites will only have to do it for a little while though, a month perhaps. If suddenly Utah can’t reach youtube or Netflix… Constituents will complain, the citizens simply won’t have it, and then the legislators have a problem.

If this is some sort of hybrid battery that could be possible… Super capacitors take the initial charge, pass it on to the flow battery. But as far as I know, absorbing or releasing a lot of energy quickly is just not what flow batteries do, it’s their biggest limitation.

Does Linkin Park get a badge? Has anyone ever proven that Linkin Park is human? All their songs sound suspiciously the same…

What about Nickelback?

My answer will likely always be World of Warcraft. I played in my 20s and I played a lot. At some point when I typed /played, the number I got back exceed 1 year of in game time. I vowed never to look again out of shame. I this day I do not know what my total play time is.

It only needs to fly once. Honestly, it’d probably work.

But hey, I’m sure it’s all irrelevant, I mean who would ever want to vindictively drone strike Seattle…

It’s crazy, I haven’t bought a console in a while, so I’ve actually never spent more than $50 on a single controller. That said, I already think I’m going to buy this.

I was really impressed when I used a steam controller at pax years ago, but didn’t end up pulling the trigger, my usb Xbox controller was good enough. But that controller has some significant stick drift now, and I have had situations where I really wished it was wireless.

Honestly, I just have a good feeling about this device. I don’t know if it’ll be as reliable as items like my Logitech mouse for instance, but I’m hoping it lives up to that.

I want to believe you’re joking, I really do…

I mean sure, publicly “who knows”, but the relevant indicators are pointing to “imminently”.