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Harder Drive: Hard drives we didn't want or need [video]
11–20 of 43 posts
Re: Harder Drive: Hard drives we didn't want or need [video]
#12Its.. a delay line?
This is a weird way of implementing one, but it's using multiple ICMP queries, each acting as their own delay line.
Re: Harder Drive: Hard drives we didn't want or need [video]
#13Tom7 is brilliant for anyone that hasn't seen him before. His Reverse Emulation video ( https://youtu.be/ar9WRwCiSr0 ) and Weird Chess Algorithms ( https://youtu.be/DpXy041BIlA ) are a must watch. His dead pan delivery coupled with the ridiculous amount of effort he puts into things that don't _really_ matter is honestly inspiring.
We first enjoyed his AI based video game players... they're also really good!
Re: Harder Drive: Hard drives we didn't want or need [video]
#14When I think of "hack", these are what I have in mind. Completely bending something to a purpose never intended. Utterly bonkers. But the fact that he offers multiple concepts, implements them, and documents them in an ELI5YE (explain like i'm a 5th year engineer) is a true sign of genius.
Re: Harder Drive: Hard drives we didn't want or need [video]
#15Its.. a delay line? This is a weird way of implementing one, but it's using multiple ICMP queries, each acting as their own delay line.
I see you haven't gotten to the part about the other harder drives yet.
Re: Harder Drive: Hard drives we didn't want or need [video]
#16You need not waste electricity to maintain a consensus network. For those who made it to the end.
However, it just so happens that all the most successful ones do.
Re: Harder Drive: Hard drives we didn't want or need [video]
#17Why limit ourselves to ping, when all of DNS is available for exploitation.
If we are willing to run an authoritative DNS server, we can simply find open DNS resolvers, then query TXT records from our own domain, with a suitably near-infinite TTL. It's free real estate^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H storage.
Perhaps that's not hard enough for harder drives. We can do the same thing, except use NX records from an arbitrary domain as the storage medium. We can query e.g. a01234-somedatahere.example.com, which will produce an NX record in the resolving DNS server. We can later "read" this data by issuing the same query and seeing that the TTL is not the original NX TTL of example.com. This is a destructive read process, so we will need to immediately write whatever we read, but suitably altered to avoid a collision, e.g. a01235-somedatahere.example.com.
Re: Harder Drive: Hard drives we didn't want or need [video]
#18Why limit ourselves to ping, when all of DNS is available for exploitation. If we are willing to run an authoritative DNS server, we can simply find open DNS resolvers, then query TXT records from our own domain, with a suitably near-infinite TTL. It's free real estate^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H storage. Perhaps that's not hard enough for harder drives. We can do the same thing, except use NX records from an arbitrary dom…
Great idea, and pretty much exactly how DNS tunnels work (only there you want the TTL to avoid caching--through an explicit 0 TTL or changing names--because you want to exchange every packet only once except for retransmits).
However, I'm not sure it's fair to talk about "limiting ourselves to ping", as I'd argue that there are vastly more generic hosts replying to ICMP echo than there are open DNS resolvers (which I know includes all openly available nameservers). I believe the video also has shown that the number of pingable hosts pretty much approaches the number of hosts with an external IPv4 in the first place, at least the map he's shown looked lighter than dark to me.
Re: Harder Drive: Hard drives we didn't want or need [video]
#19I haven't finished the video just yet, but so far what he's describing is strange, weird, fanciful versions of Delay Line memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-line_memory
Same thought, and also I remember hearing about the idea to misuse buffer memory in routers as storage somewhere.
I always get a kick of delay line memory. The Mercury memory also mentioned on the Wikipedia page, which I've seen in person (but sadly not in operation) at the Computer History Museum, is literally sound waves in liquid metal. How much cooler than that can memory get...
Though the nearby (and at their time quite popular) "storage tubes" that were effectively CRT screens with very long image persistence are cool, too, and one of the fewer dynamic storage technologies where you can see the individual bits. The actual ones, not just a representation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_tube
Re: Harder Drive: Hard drives we didn't want or need [video]
#20I haven't finished the video just yet, but so far what he's describing is strange, weird, fanciful versions of Delay Line memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-line_memory
Same thought, and also I remember hearing about the idea to misuse buffer memory in routers as storage somewhere. I always get a kick of delay line memory. The Mercury memory also mentioned on the Wikipedia page, which I've seen in person (but sadly not in operation) at the Computer History Museum, is literally sound waves in liquid metal. How much cooler than that can memory get... Though the nearby (and at their ti…
My favorite glowy storage device is the Dekatron:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekatron
In action: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vVgc8ksstyg