Random News Stories

[Leo Enticknap]

Interesting. As he points out, the news reports all described the tank as being in the hotel lobby, and didn't mention that this lobby was in fact in an atrium that was open to the elements at each end (the roof and the sides of the two buildings it covered would likely have increased the temperature a bit from outdoors, but to nothing like room temperature). As the temperature in Berlin can range from well below freezing in winter to nudging 30 C / upper 70s to low 80s of F in the summer, you can add two decades of thermal cycling to all the other stresses that the structure was dealing with.

Agreed that the timing of the incident was hugely lucky (for humans). Reminds me of the 1987 "hurricane" in England: if it had happened during the rush hour rather than in the middle of the night, it could easily have killed hundreds. I slept through the whole thing, and the first I knew about it was opening the front door to find that a large oak tree had collapsed onto the road outside, totaling two parked cars in the process.

[Randy Stankey]

I just saw a youtuber post a video about this incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRSTA1SbWZQ

The guy's not a professional of any kind, I don't think, but he makes some interesting hypotheses.

In the video, he says that the aquarium tank was situated in a lobby where cold air from outside could blow in and hit the glass tank. The outdoor air temperature, that day, was -9º C and the temperature of the water in the tank was approx +25º C. The walls of the tank were made of tempered glass and were exposed to a large temperature gradient. Combine that with the stress of many metric shit-tons of seawater and you've got a recipe for disaster. When tempered glass breaks, it releases all its tension in fractions of a second. The wave of shattering glass propagates at multiple times the speed of sound, more than twice as fast as a rifle bullet.

People in the building characterized the event like an explosion. If you look at it the way the video proposes, yes, the tank did explode!

Lucky thing that the thing didn't explode just an hour later! It happened at around 5:00 a.m. If it was much later, the lobby might have been full of people. By the Grace of God, nobody was killed and only two people were hurt by flying schrapnel and went to the hospital but, as I understand, they'll be okay.

The fish, however, didn't fare so well. More than a 90% loss!

[Leo Enticknap]

The tank was reported to hold a million liters of water: using online conversion sites (sorry, math was never my strong point), it would appear that at room temperature (70 F or 21 C), the water alone weighed 9,980 tons! The stress that must have put on the acrylic container must have been horrendous. I was surprised to read that it was drained in 2020 for a major refurbishment and no-one found any signs of anything amiss. But finding them and ignoring them is not just a Berlin thing. Hammersmith Bridge in London, the Minneapolis Bridge Collapse, and the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse all spring to mind as other examples.

If a documentary is ever made about this, I'd call it Aquarium: The Weight of Water...

[Stefan Scholz]

A few years ago there was a similar story about police being called to a sighting of a giant black panther, reportedly prowling the streets of San Bernardino. What they discovered was a black trash sack left for collection on the sidewalk, that had settled in such a way that, viewed from a considerable distance and by someone with less than 20/20 vision, it could indeed be mistaken for a big cat.

In both cases, the reports were made plausible by the fact that similar things have happened in the past. Very sadly, stillborn and miscarried children have been disposed of as described, and mountain lions showing up in backyards in the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains is not uncommon.

Telegraph:



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Free fish and chips for all!

Yes, this is another typical Berlin story.
The aquarium was constructed of acrylic panels, 41 round pieces glued together. PMMA, not even polycarbonate. WEll known, that acrylic plastic gets brittle over time, if exposed to UV radiation, and thats present with light.
According to local news, a specialist was cited, that it would have been possible to build out of security glass held together with special foils, which would have prevented the accident. But glass is significantly thicker and weighs a lot more (plus, it's greenish tint in thicker diameters), so the construction was made of PMMA (Also for overall cost reasons).
It would be of no surprise to me, if the 2020 checkup report shows warnings about a potential material weakening hazard. In general these are ignored in this city.
I do care for the tropical fish, killed, I do not care for one of these ugly standard hotels that is damaged severely.

[Leo Enticknap]

A few years ago there was a similar story about police being called to a sighting of a giant black panther, reportedly prowling the streets of San Bernardino. What they discovered was a black trash sack left for collection on the sidewalk, that had settled in such a way that, viewed from a considerable distance and by someone with less than 20/20 vision, it could indeed be mistaken for a big cat.

In both cases, the reports were made plausible by the fact that similar things have happened in the past. Very sadly, stillborn and miscarried children have been disposed of as described, and mountain lions showing up in backyards in the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains is not uncommon.

Telegraph:

Giant aquarium bursts - causing a crash so loud that people thought it was an earthquake

Two people were injured when the glass casing holding at least 1,500 exotic fish crashed into a hotel foyer in Berlin

A giant aquarium containing around 1,500 tropical fish burst inside a Berlin hotel complex on Friday, flooding the lobby and a nearby street and leaving two people injured.

Guests said they were woken by a loud bang as the world's largest freestanding cylindrical aquarium shattered, leaving marine life flowing through the hotel entrance and out onto freezing cold streets in the busy Mitte district.

"A million litres of water and all the fish inside spilled onto the ground floor," a spokesman for the Berlin fire department said.

One guest described seeing a parrot fish frozen dead on the ground after it was expelled from the vast container used as a centrepiece of a leisure complex housing the Radisson Blu hotel, a museum, shops and restaurants.

"There was a slight tremor of the building and my first guess was an earthquake," German lawmaker Sandra Weeser, who was staying at the hotel when the aquarium burst, said.

The area where the aquarium once stood was now just "dark and wet" she said, recalling how she saw "one of those large parrot fish lying on the ground, frozen".

A fire department spokesperson told The Telegraph that the majority of fish have remained inside what's left of the structure, although they are presumed dead.

“A specialist is in the building at the moment testing the structure after that we can go in. Some fish from other tanks could be saved and have been taken to another aquarium."

He said authorities still did not know what caused the incident.

The crash was so large it registered on a seismometer used to record earthquake and volcano tremors.

Two people suffered injuries from glass splinters and had to be hospitalised, a spokesman added.

More than 100 emergency workers were sent to the scene, which was scattered with glass and other debris.

The cylindrical AquaDom, which opened in 2004, was a popular tourist attraction in the German capital.

It is located in the foyer of a Radisson Blu hotel and had a clear-walled elevator built inside to be used by visitors to the Sea Life leisure complex.

Berlin police said on that the incident had caused "incredible maritime damage" with the death of hundreds of fish.

Water was also "massively" leaking onto the adjoining Karl Liebknecht Street, they said, forcing the partial closure of the major traffic artery. Tram service was also suspended.

The area around the complex was sealed off and sniffer dogs were being used to search for possible victims among the devastation.

Pictures and videos circulating online on Friday, apparently from guests staying at the hotel, showed extensive damage to the transparent aquarium, with only the frame still standing.

Bits of broken window panes and damaged furniture were scattered all around.

"I was woken by a loud bang," Andi, who lives in a penthouse at the back of the hotel, told the Telegraph.

"The whole building vibrated and you heard the twisting of metal."

"I thought the ferris wheel had collapsed," he said, pointing across the street at a nearby Christmas market.

"It was only when I looked down in the morning and saw the mess that I knew what had happened."

"All of our cellars are swamped with water now. I'm worried that the whole structure of the building is damaged."

Christian and his wife were two of about 350 guests in the hotel. He said: "We heard a loud crack. We then woke up. My wife said something flew past the window. (...) I got up shortly afterwards and saw that the aquarium, which was still standing yesterday and had been beautifully cleaned from the inside, had collapsed."

Musician Iva Yudinski to BILD: "Early in the morning, around 6 o'clock, I heard a huge explosion, a bang. I didn't understand what happened at all. I called my friend and went to her room. From there we saw the aquarium and all the destruction. Everything is flooded with water."

The hotel has been evacuated and guests were offered shelter in heated buses amid freezing early morning temperatures, the fire service spokesman said.

A drone was being used to survey the extent of the destruction, he added.

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Free fish and chips for all!

[Randy Stankey]

Bring on the dead baby jokes!

What the difference between a dead baby and a Walmart burrito?

[Jim Cassedy]

BurritoBaby.jpg

Well, I've had a Walmart burrito, and tit wouldn't surprise me if
there was some dead baby meat in them- they're definitely 'an abortion'

[Harold Hallikainen]

I agree. I'm on several broadcast mailing lists. There I compared RF distribution to the truck delivering something from a retailer. They may own the truck or may hire UPS to deliver the product. Broadcast will become the same. They can use their own truck (the RF transmitter) or pay someone else to deliver (ISP). It has been argued that broadcast RF distribution is less expensive than streaming. This is probably true if everyone in the coverage area was watching (TV) or listening (radio). A top rated TV show has about 10% of the TVs tuned to it. Top radio stations also get about 10% of the audience. Streaming to 10% of the potential audience generally costs less than the cost of RF transmission, especially if there are fees for use of the spectrum.

Also, as pointed out, Internet streaming is interactive, so the user can select what to watch at any time instead of at a scheduled time. "Linear TV" as distributed by cable companies is losing favor. I believe the same is true of over the air broadcasting. 20 or 30 years ago, the FCC tried to make broadcast TV interactive by setting aside spectrum for the Interactive Video Data Service. At the time, promoters were saying "Imagine ordering a pizza from your TV set!" That didn't work out and the spectrum has been reallocated.

Speaking of RF spectrum allocation, I wrote an article quite a while back on this. See https://hallikainen.org/org/pub/6513196902.pdf .

Harold
https://w6iwi.org

[Leo Enticknap]

Telegraph:

The BBC could switch off terrestrial TV and radio by the end of the decade, Tim Davie, the corporation’s director general, has said.

In a speech about the long-term future of the BBC, Mr Davie said the 100-year-old organisation needed to consider a full switch-off of broadcast channels that would mean it would transform into an internet-only broadcaster.

Mr Davie said: “A switch off of broadcast will and should happen over time, and we should be active in planning for it.”

The director general said the BBC should “own a move to an internet future” by 2030 and prepare for “internet-only distribution”. Such a shift would see BBC broadcasts from TV towers switched off after more than a century and all programming moving to streaming.

Mr Davie said: “We must work together to ensure that everyone is connected, and can get their TV and radio via the internet. This isn’t something to resist.”

Freeview, a terrestrial joint venture between the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky that is used by 18 million people, has a guaranteed spectrum until 2034 but TV channels are ultimately expected to shift to internet-only broadcasting over time.

The BBC's iPlayer currently attracts 12 million log-ins per week and accounts for 16pc of all viewing of the corporation's programmes.

Despite early streaming success with the launch of BBC iPlayer in 2007, Broadcasting House is increasingly grappling for viewers' attention against US streaming giants, such as Netflix and Disney+, and rapidly growing social media companies such as China’s TikTok.

“TikTok is now bigger than the BBC in video for 16-24s in the UK,” Mr Davie said.

The move to a full terrestrial switch-off is likely to prompt a backlash from MPs amid concerns over digital exclusion, in particular of older TV viewers.

Mr Davie admitted that, by 2030, as many as 2 million homes in the UK would still not have a fixed-line broadband connection.

The rest of the article is not quoted, as it puts a political slant on the above.

Coming on the heels of the article I posted above, predicting the imminent end of POTS, speculation that terrestrial, wireless TV could go the same way. As with electric cars, infrastructure is going to be a significant part of it. However, Internet service, like terrestrial TV, can also be delivered wirelessly, with the added advantage that it is full duplex. I would speculate that existing TV transmitter infrastructure could be converted to cellular service provision relatively easily and cheaply.

We no longer have terrestrial TV capability in our home, thanks to one of our cats climbing up the coaxial cord to the wall and breaking the F-connector on the TV itself. That was three years ago, and we simply haven't bothered to fix it (which would likely require buying a new TV), nor missed not being able to receive over the air broadcasting since. We don't have cable, either (one of the major differences between America and Britain - cable TV never really caught on in the latter, though it does exist): everything we watch comes over IP. So I can definitely see this happening within a generation. If so, analog terrestrial TV (in the UK, 1937 to 2010 with a break during WWII, approx.) will have outlasted digital (started around 2000) by several decades.

[Frank Cox]

That's one of the nice things about Linux; unless you make special arrangements all of your data files are in your home directory and you don't have data scattered all over your hard drive.

[Bobby Henderson]

I have a Galaxy S22 Ultra smart phone, so I'll have to check out that maintenance mode feature.

Regarding personal computers, I'm adept enough to be able to do perform most repairs on a desktop tower or notebook. It's not difficult to change a bad hard disc and do a clean install of the operating system. This is probably easier to do than ever with some of the system restore utilities that have been developed. Some people don't have the spare time to do such work. Worse yet, many people are just flat out terrible at organizing and backing up their computer data as well as keeping supporting documentation, install discs, etc handy. I think that's what helps keep many PC repair shops in business, although there is only so much they can do to rescue precious data off a computer whose hard drive is shitting the bed.

With that being said, I don't keep a lot of valuable files on my computer's boot hard disc. I like keeping the system in a position that if a serious hardware problem occurs or the system gets hit with some sort of malware I can start over with a clean install without losing anything. Valuable data is backed up to more than one external hard disc drive. I use Dropbox and Adobe Creative Cloud storage to a limited extent. In the odd event that I would need to take my personal notebook or work desktop to a PC repair shop I wouldn't be too worried about them finding anything interesting or valuable.

[Harold Hallikainen]

That's great! It appears my Samsung S8 is too old for that feature, though.

[Frank Cox]

https://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS00091542/

The new One UI 5 update on your Galaxy phone comes with the convenient Maintenance mode feature! Maintenance mode will hide your personal data and other information, such as photos, videos, contacts, and messages, if you need to send it for a repair service. It’ll protect your privacy and prevent others from accessing your data, so you won’t need to worry about someone else handling your precious device.

[Harold Hallikainen]

I had the battery replaced in my phone. They also wanted the PIN to access the device. I really did not want to give it to them since that gives access to my banking info, passwords for pretty much everything, etc. It SEEMS that manufacturers should equip devices with a maintenance password that allows testing of the system without access to the customer's data.

[Leo Enticknap]

From Ars Technica:

Thinking about taking your computer to the repair shop? Be very afraid

Not surprisingly, female customers bear the brunt of the privacy violations.

If you’ve ever worried about the privacy of your sensitive data when seeking a computer or phone repair, a new study suggests you have good reason. It found that privacy violations occurred at least 50 percent of the time, not surprisingly with female customers bearing the brunt.

Researchers at University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, recovered logs from laptops after receiving overnight repairs from 12 commercial shops. The logs showed that technicians from six of the locations had accessed personal data and that two of those shops also copied data onto a personal device. Devices belonging to females were more likely to be snooped on, and that snooping tended to seek more sensitive data, including both sexually revealing and non-sexual pictures, documents, and financial information.
Blown away

“We were blown away by the results,” Hassan Khan, one of the researchers, said in an interview. Especially concerning, he said, was the copying of data, which happened during repairs for one from a male customer and the other from a female. “We thought they would just look at [the data] at most.”

The amount of snooping may actually have been higher than recorded in the study, which was conducted from October to December 2021. In all, the researchers took the laptops to 16 shops in the greater Ontario region. Logs on devices from two of those visits weren’t recoverable. Two of the repairs were performed on the spot and in the customer's presence, so the technician had no opportunity to surreptitiously view personal data.

In three cases, Windows Quick Access or Recently Accessed Files had been deleted in what the researchers suspect was an attempt by the snooping technician to cover their tracks. As noted earlier, two of the visits resulted in the logs the researchers relied on being unrecoverable. In one, the researcher explained they had installed antivirus software and performed a disk cleanup to “remove multiple viruses on the device.” The researchers received no explanation in the other case.

Here’s a breakdown of the six visits that resulted in snooping:

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The laptops were freshly imaged Windows 10 laptops. All were free of malware and other defects and in perfect working condition with one exception: the audio driver was disabled. The researchers chose that glitch because it required only a simple and inexpensive repair, was easy to create, and didn’t require access to users’ personal files.

Half of the laptops were configured to appear as if they belonged to a male and the other half to a female. All of the laptops were set up with email and gaming accounts and populated with browser history across several weeks. The researchers added documents, both sexually revealing and non-sexual pictures, and a cryptocurrency wallet with credentials.

The researchers also configured the laptops to run a custom logging app that used the Windows Steps Recorder utility in the background. The utility captured the screen on every mouse click and recorded each key pressed by the user. The researchers also enabled Windows Audit Policy to log access to any file on the device.

The researchers then brought the laptops to two national outlets, two regional ones, and four local ones. Half the customers were male, and the other half were female.

Besides finding widespread snooping, the study uncovered other problems. Among them: The vast majority of repair shops provide no privacy policy and those that do have no means of enforcing them. Even worse, repair technicians required a customer to surrender their login password even when it wasn’t necessary for the repair needed.

These findings came from a separate part of the study, in which the researchers brought an Asus UX330U laptop into 11 shops for a battery replacement. This repair doesn’t require a technician to log in to the machine, since the removal of the back of the device and access to the device BIOS (for checking battery health) is all that’s needed. Despite this, all but one of the repair service providers asked for the credentials to the device OS anyway.

When the customer asked if they could get the repair without providing the password, three refused to take the device without it, four agreed to take it but warned they wouldn’t be able to verify their work or be responsible for it, one asked the customer to remove the password, and one said they would reset the device if it was required.

In all, the findings from the study were:

• Privacy policies and the practice of communicating protocols and controls to protect customers’ data do not exist across service providers of all sizes.
• Service providers largely (10/11) require “all access” to the device, even when it is unnecessary.
• Technicians often snoop on customers’ data (6/16) and sometimes copy those to external devices (2/16).
• Technicians who violate privacy often do so carefully to not generate evidence (1/6) or remove such evidence (3/6).
• A significant proportion of broken devices (26/79, 33 percent) are not repaired due to privacy concerns. For the devices that get repaired, device owners are concerned about threats to their privacy but do not use the proper controls to protect their data.

The results likely confirm what many more experienced computer users already know: that their data is vulnerable to snooping or copying any time they surrender their device to an untrusted or unknown individual, particularly when the individual has their login password. But for a much larger percentage of people wanting to recover crucial data on a broken device, the findings are likely a wake-up call with few, if any, good solutions.

“Our investigation shows an absence of policies and controls to safeguard customers’ data across all types of repair service providers,” the researchers concluded. “Our work calls to action device manufacturers, OS developers, repair service providers, and regulatory bodies to take appropriate measures to safeguard customers’ privacy in the repair industry.”

I'm in two minds about this. At first glance, it does seem worrying and gross that this sort of thing goes on. As against which, one of Britain's most notorious pedophiles was caught when PC repair techs fixing his laptop found kiddie porn. If they hadn't looked, he could have gone on molesting children for years, and might never have been caught. And then there's Hunter Biden's laptop, which of course I'm not going to discuss due to forum rules, but it does raise the question of other forms of criminal activity being discovered by this route. Finally, there is the question of liability if computers with this sort of evidence on them pass through a repair shop without being caught.

In any case, these techs were clearly of limited ability. If they'd removed (or even just disconnected the SATA cable) from the drives in these PCs, connected them to another computer and imaged them (e.g. using a Clonezilla live boot drive), they would have gotten all the files and nothing would show up in any logs.