Earlier quoted context omitted.
boiling it down, what would you say is the link between most common HNers?
Internet access.
Reductio ad absurdum
Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers
191–200 of 277 posts
Re: Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers
#192Re: Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers
#193Re: Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers
#194Could I use it to power my iPhone? Frankly I’m fed up with the need for charging.
No. It lasts years because pacemakers have a really tiny power draw. There's not a miniature nuclear reactor in there, it's just a RTG, which is simple but also very inefficient. So it doesn't get the crazy amount of power from a tiny amount of material a fission reactor does.
> There's not a miniature nuclear reactor in there, it's just a RTG,
I believe these are not RTGs (radioisotope thermoelectric generators.) Rather they use radiovoltaic conversion, probably alphavoltaic conversion judging by the use of Pu-238. Such devices convert alpha or beta radiation directly to electricity using semiconductors, not unlike photovoltaic cells.
But your point still holds, these atomic batteries produce a tiny amount of power.
Re: Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious whether it was standard practice for you to check for a pacemaker prior to cremation or whether the process relied on a family member informing you?
The doctors that sign off the cremation have to provide info on pacemakers/artificial joints and so on to the crematorium
Vaguely related, the crematorium stole my grandpa's gold fillings, much to my grandmother's dismay.
Re: Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers
#196If you have one of those, are you then a nuclear cyborg? Because that's kind of awesome.
Re: Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
I saw a video about a recent advancement in nuclear diamond batteries. Basically look like normal AA batteries but used depleted uranium and lab diamonds to make them save and long lasting
A phone I never have to charge would be rad.
Sadly like most similar nuclear powered energy sources this is very low density, and provides very little power, despite lasting a long time. Think microwatts.
Only really viable in deployments that need very little power, where no other energy harvesting method is available, and periodically changing out batteries is not an option.
Re: Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2379009/Barnaby-Jac... - Oops - I didnt realize you were same poster from other comment
I don't think my particular pacemaker has the necessary circuitry to generate more than 5V, in pulses less than a few milliseconds. The voltage doesn't really matter much to the muscle. If you got in you could probably put the leads into single-ended mode (so that there's more current path to cause mayhem) and pace my atrium and ventricles at 210bpm, and effectively give me a seizure. I can't imagine it would kill me…
If they were able to cause the pacemaker to fire when they wanted they could time it during the repolarization, which could possibly cause a fatal arrhythmia even in a heart that doesn't need a pacemaker. It's called R-on-T phenomenon and it's usually caused by malfunctioning pacemakers.
Re: Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2379009/Barnaby-Jac... - Oops - I didnt realize you were same poster from other comment
I don't think my particular pacemaker has the necessary circuitry to generate more than 5V, in pulses less than a few milliseconds. The voltage doesn't really matter much to the muscle. If you got in you could probably put the leads into single-ended mode (so that there's more current path to cause mayhem) and pace my atrium and ventricles at 210bpm, and effectively give me a seizure. I can't imagine it would kill me…
The crazy thing was that this was when there was a lot of talk about Dick Cheney and how he was vuln to this attack -- and there was a lot of spec around if barnaby was silenced because it was the older, Cheney-esque politicians that could be taken out by this vector...
Perhaps, he got the 'reverse bounty' on this bug...
Re: Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
HackerNews truly does pull from a large swatch of interesting people, doesn't it?
boiling it down, what would you say is the link between most common HNers?
Even if HN mostly consists of people engaged in building or maintaining technology, technology is in every industry, so the discussion can credibly touch nearly every topic with some interesting depth.