1 HN user recommended this explainer1 month2021–2024score 1
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
Commenters link it whenever bit flips, cosmic ray errors or unexplained computer glitches come up, as a good accessible explanation.
Veritasium explains how cosmic rays and other particles flip bits in computer memory, with examples including a Belgian election count error, plane incidents and game glitches. It is inspired by a RadioLab episode on bit flips.
“The Universe is Hostile to Computers" by Veritasium is good video.” (HN, 2022)
I did some looking into this subject after Veritassium posted a video regarding cosmic rays changing the election result in Belgium some time ago[1]. But looking further into the issue, it seemed that there was (and is) scepticism regarding cosmic rays being the actual reason for the miscount. [2][3] 1. [this video] 2. [link] 3. [link]
Video on cosmic rays changing a Belgian election result
That's actually testable and determinable from several perspetives. - Isolate any other sources of ionising radiation. - Check to see if prevalence increases or decreases with increased or decreased cosmic ray exposure (atitude, shielding, detected cosmic ray storms). - Are the characteristics those of single-bit flips? (E.g., power-of-two changes to values, or similar.) - Are the errors nott repeated for the same hardware component. (E.g., under increased cosmic-ray influence, bits flip at an increased rate, as predicted, but which bits flip is random and has no detectable pattern, as predicted.) You end up with very strong circumstantial evidence of altered bits due to cosmic ray influence. [link] [this video]
It’s not about efficiency, think how many years a hard drive will last? 3 years. How many years a gold plate will last? thousands of years. Least reactive metal not for a reason lol Plus if there is a ion blast from a nearby supernova, it’ll erase all electronic storage devices on earth [this video]
A YouTube video on the subject : Veritasium - The Universe is Hostile to Computers [this video] Some of the same examples are in the article and the video.
In the Brazilian electronic voting system, there is no mechanism to check that the counting on each machine was performed correctly. Validation only occurs after that point. So if the machine somehow subtracts 256 votes from one candidate and transfers them to another, the total remains the same and this discrepancy isn't caught. It sounds ludicrous, but actually has happened before: [this video] This is just one example of how the Brazilian system isn't ideal. The criticism against it is very well supported by sound arguments, and it's a shame that it got politicised. It's a pure technical matter.
> There's an extent to which I think this is reasonable. If I'm accused of fraud based on evidence recovered from a bank computer, it should not be the case that I can require the prosecution to prove that the bank's computers function correctly, and the evidence be thrown out in case the prosecution are unable to do so. So a poor individual with no resources should find experts to analyze a software he doesn't even have access to (I know, discovery, but the practical limitations often make it near impossible to find the error within a given time, like having the access only in an isolated room without the internet or your own software, or having an access only to printed source code on paper), rather than the prosecutor (the state) or the company that definitely have the resources? Obviously almost no one would go to jail then. But this would be because of a very low coding standard. You pretty much can't prove the validity of software, because somewhere around 99,99% just isn't coded in a language and regime that would guarantee being bug-free. Check out the video by Veritasium "The Universe is Hostile to Computers" [1] - how much software, do you think, has internal error correction implemented to deal with a possible cosmic ray flipping a bit? The solution is to have extensive logs of data, stored by independent actors, with a lot of redundancy or otherwise error detection and correction. I find it horrifying that someone as well versed in law as you is fine with putting
There is no software at all, it is all hardware. These are mere abstractions because the reality offers some guarantees which allows one to transfer one system onto another as if the underlying system didn't matter. Those guarantees allows one to speak of commonalities between one stuff and another. ref : The Universe is Hostile to Computers [this video]
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