this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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The probability of losing your life to a cosmic ray bit-flip is increasing daily (lemmy.ml)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/showerthoughts
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (2 children)

statistics are statistics I should have clarified this in the post; i had electric cars and scooters(record breaking sales where i live) in mind when i originally had the thought

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Regarding electric scooters, I'm not really sure what bits there are to be flipped, which could cause issues. My understanding is that when you hit the brakes for example, that electrical signal is sent directly to the brakes, and there's not a digital buffer of inputs which are stored to memory to be read, which is where a bit flip could happen. I assume braking and acceleration are analog voltages on the wire, so a brief cosmic ray would be miniscule and probably not noticeable.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Perhaps there is regenerative braking. Harder braking requires activation of disc brakes. If the battery is too full to safely dump energy into, disk brakes would be needed. All of which requires some amount of sensors and logic procrssing.

But, all that is moot. Bit flips are known about, any decent system with life critical aspects will be designed with this in mind.
Its the cheap shit ya gotta worry about

[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago

Like bamboo said; electric scooters aren't digital