Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame

[Clamp-o-Tron]

On at 4:54 AM, roboslacker said:

How about bad science in fantasy?

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This is really old, but whatever. Maybe the equator of said fictional planet is red, and they're talking about inclination change dv and the boost you get from planetary motion.

Edited June 19, 2020 by Clamp-o-Tron
sorry for double post-- I was very tired.

[kerbiloid]

SW
(not South-West)

Not scientifically bad, but ideologically strange.

Why do the adepts of the Dark Side of Force use LightSabres?

[DDE]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Why do the adepts of the Dark Side of Force use LightSabres?

Why do you have to taunt the people who made the Expanded Universe?

[kerbiloid]

A Darksabre Jedi...

[Okhin]

5 hours ago, Clamp-o-Tron said:

Watched a couple more episodes of Space Force, and managed to ignore most of the stuff. The most egregious (even to me who doesn't know **** about cs, except for some bad python and C#) was the hacking of a military grade system by... pressing crtl-shft-6?!?

If we're being honest about the state of the computer security, crashing a military grade system by just entering a weird key sequences at a specific moment is actually accurate, and it's probably how it's done most of the time (and that is why the army tend to keep things offline if they can)

I've been working twenty years now in cs, mainly as a system operator, and believe me, those computerized system should not work. Be alone left in charge of critical systems. The only reason something such as internet is working is because there's a huge diversity of actors being involved (some cooperating, some competing with each others), which make it hard to take over the whole internet. But basically, any machine can be crashed, and sometimes just by sing it the way it was intended to be used.

I mean, one single network packet can crash a network (called a Ping of Death). So, as for fiction and computer security,you should consider that most of the time, the author got it right. Most of the time, real life hacking works in way that no show runner would accept because it would not be plausible enough for a story.

The latest, is the CIA cyberweapon cache being leaked because they (and they are the fricking CIA) didn't secure their data cache. It was bad to a point that they knew about the leak because wikileaks published it, if the data would have been recovered by, say, another state actor, they wouldn't even know that their weapons were in the wild.

Everything is broken. But not enough to get into space, so I'm ok with that.

[Nightside]

10 hours ago, Clamp-o-Tron said:

In other news, I've been reading Seveneves by Neal Stephenson and it's really quite excellent, both in the science and storytelling. Man do I love me some good hard scifi.

Yeah, he could use an editor, but I love his ideas.

[Clamp-o-Tron]

18 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

A Darksabre Jedi...

Who also is wearing Mandalorian-style armour...

 

12 hours ago, Nightside said:

Yeah, he could use an editor, but I love his ideas.

True, very true. He talked about "scouts" for several pages without mentioning what they were.

Also, in the book it mentions Blue Origin developing a VTOL around 2005, and apparantly he worked there for a while. Does anybody know if this is real?

Edited June 19, 2020 by Clamp-o-Tron
homophones

[DDE]

17 hours ago, Okhin said:

The latest, is the CIA cyberweapon cache being leaked because they (and they are the fricking CIA) didn't secure their data cache. It was bad to a point that they knew about the leak because wikileaks published it, if the data would have been recovered by, say, another state actor, they wouldn't even know that their weapons were in the wild.

They have serious discipline problems. That one time Kaspersky stole classified US intelligence? It was because an NSA employee opened a .7z containing several specimen of malware and several classified documents on a personal machine with a pirated Office 2013, an existing third-party infection, and a nosy Russian anti-virus for good measure.

https://securelist.com/investigation-report-for-the-september-2014-equation-malware-detection-incident-in-the-us/83210/

[kerbiloid]

39 minutes ago, DDE said:

They have serious discipline problems. That one time Kaspersky stole classified US intelligence? It was because an NSA employee opened a .7z containing several specimen of malware and several classified documents on a personal machine with a pirated Office 2013, an existing third-party infection, and a nosy Russian anti-virus for good measure.

Summary. Office 2013 sucs.

[Okhin]

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Summary. Office 2013 sucs.

Well, it's more, human sucks at security. Because Office 2013 was not the issue here, it's the person who opened the .7z. Or the fact that opening a file might damage your computer and threatens your entire organisation. I mean, it's a file. It's meant to be opened.

[kerbiloid]

7 minutes ago, Okhin said:

Well, it's more, human sucks at security. Because Office 2013 was not the issue here, it's the person who opened the .7z. Or the fact that opening a file might damage your computer and threatens your entire organisation. I mean, it's a file. It's meant to be opened.

7z is open source and GNUish. Would be nice to listen the GNUpen source adepts.

[Okhin]

It's not because a software is open sourced that it is exempt of bugs and flaws. I have a saying about software: All software have at least one major flaw. And they're one of two possible kind: the ones we know about and the ones we don't. Open source allows (and no, it does not work magically it's an enabling condition) to improve the quality of software by allowing anyone to write patch about the flaws we know. Or to find one that we don't know about. Closed source software don't allow for external research and patching, leading to have those software with more flaws of the second kind (the one we do not know about).

I'll add that even if a software (open or not) is patched against a specific flaw, it does not mean that all the installed version of this software in the world are patched. You'd be surprised by the amount of unpatched non updated system connected to internet.

So security is hard. It's a bit easier with open source software, but it's not a silver bullet, it does not make your code automatically safe. Nothing does. It's a process, and you need an entire industry to work toward a software world with less flaws we know about left unpatched (and a will and incentives to improve quality of software to try to reduce the number of flaws we don't know about). Which, given the whole startup ecosystem based on capital venture and mass adoption and the "move fast and break things" mentality, is not something we have right now.

(Also, technically, .7z files can be opened and extracted with something else than 7zip :p)

[wumpus]

2 hours ago, Okhin said:

Well, it's more, human sucks at security. Because Office 2013 was not the issue here, it's the person who opened the .7z. Or the fact that opening a file might damage your computer and threatens your entire organisation. I mean, it's a file. It's meant to be opened.

Then it is a windows issue.  And not just a windows issue, because it seems the entire software world has followed them into the "data is executable and executables are data" trap (see "move fast and break things").  So don't connect windows to any network that you want to be secure.  Second, if you are the CIA (or NSA), any computer connected to a network is no longer secure.  After that you can get into the basic problems that anybody should have to follow...

[tater]

So I ended up binge watching a couple seasons+ of the Expanse from Ep1 to give it another (third) go.

I first watched it in a spotty way on DirecTV. Since I could not stream back then (bandwidth), and they were too stupid to put the season and episode in each description, I watched a smattering out of order. When I tried a second time, I watched that episode with the slingshot around Jupiter's moons, changed the channel and stopped watching (because things happened magically fast that should have taken many weeks (months?)).

OK, so having watched from go... it's actually pretty good, though they consistently bugger travel times.

The slingshot was inexcusable. There was a railgun attack that was to 5 places scattered around the sun... and the rounds traveled that up to 2AU distance in less time than I have taken to type this.

There are some odd orbital mechanics—like things in a stationary orbit over a base on the surface being attacked, and somehow falling on the base below. For reasons.

Like I said, I actually like the show, but some of those things are just so very stupid.

 

[AngrybobH]

9 minutes ago, tater said:

I actually like the show, but some of those things are just so very stupid.

This is my exact feelings about that show. I'll continue to watch it if there are more seasons to come but, I'll likely groan many times while I do.

[tater]

2 minutes ago, AngrybobH said:

This is my exact feelings about that show. I'll continue to watch it if there are more seasons to come but, I'll likely groan many times while I do.

Like many shows (or novels like The Martian), all it takes is a little thought, sometimes just changing a line of dialog. For the travel times, have them say, "How long will this take?" as exposition (gov types watching a screen, they're definitionally dumb). Answer can be, "About a week, we'll call you back to the CIC when it's time." Switch to other events. Switch back, clothes changed on the gov people (military obviously in uniform). Dunno what they did about that smashed base from things in orbit in the book (trying to not do spoilers). Add a space elevator that can fall (just a moon)?

The slingshot? Just set everything up with it taking more time do do everything is the only way, then he comes back and it takes weeks... Maybe there's a trajectory that lets him do some real burns very close to Jupiter in a way that masks it so it take less time?

What sucks is that I can usually think of solutions in real time, while I am watching. And they don't change the story, and likely add very little in new scenes.

[Bill Phil]

6 hours ago, tater said:

Like many shows (or novels like The Martian), all it takes is a little thought, sometimes just changing a line of dialog. For the travel times, have them say, "How long will this take?" as exposition (gov types watching a screen, they're definitionally dumb). Answer can be, "About a week, we'll call you back to the CIC when it's time." Switch to other events. Switch back, clothes changed on the gov people (military obviously in uniform). Dunno what they did about that smashed base from things in orbit in the book (trying to not do spoilers). Add a space elevator that can fall (just a moon)?

The slingshot? Just set everything up with it taking more time do do everything is the only way, then he comes back and it takes weeks... Maybe there's a trajectory that lets him do some real burns very close to Jupiter in a way that masks it so it take less time?

What sucks is that I can usually think of solutions in real time, while I am watching. And they don't change the story, and likely add very little in new scenes.

The books are generally better about how much time it takes to do things.

[Codraroll]

10 hours ago, tater said:

Dunno what they did about that smashed base from things in orbit in the book (trying to not do spoilers)

Not sure if it's much of a spoiler, but I'll hide it anyway to be on the safe side:

Spoiler

The only instance of a thing in orbit falling down on a surface base that I can think of in the books, is early in the second one when a mirror array is downed over Ganymede and (possibly by accident?) hits one of the greenhouse domes there. We only see the event from the perspective of the two greenhouse technicians who work there, who get ample warning time to evacuate. One of them looks up to the sky, while the other says "you won't be able to see it before it hits us, we should go" and they evacuate by elevator. If I recall correctly, they're well into the subterranean tunnels when they feel the quake of the impact. Afterwards, the aftermath is seen from the air (well, vacuum) by another character, with the remains of the dome still being identifiable.

 

[tater]

4 hours ago, Codraroll said:

Not sure if it's much of a spoiler, but I'll hide it anyway to be on the safe side:

That is the event I refer to. In the show, it's the result of real time events, and happens faster than it would actually take for something to fall, lol.

[Codraroll]

1 minute ago, tater said:

That is the event I refer to. In the show, it's the result of real time events, and happens faster than it would actually take for something to fall, lol.

Aha. In the book you never see what caused it to go down or learn if it was intentionally targeted towards the domes. I think they mention rumours about somebody targeting mirror arrays, but not who does it or why (because both factions wants Ganymede to keep producing food, and its infrastructure is largely left intact after that one crash). The scene with the impact in question begins with the two lab technicians packing up their stuff after hearing an array is coming down in their direction. It could have been falling for minutes or even hours already by then.

[mikegarrison]

3 hours ago, Codraroll said:

Aha. In the book you never see what caused it to go down or learn if it was intentionally targeted towards the domes. I think they mention rumours about somebody targeting mirror arrays, but not who does it or why (because both factions wants Ganymede to keep producing food, and its infrastructure is largely left intact after that one crash). The scene with the impact in question begins with the two lab technicians packing up their stuff after hearing an array is coming down in their direction. It could have been falling for minutes or even hours already by then.

Obviously (at least to people in this forum), if a thing in orbit blows up, the pieces stay in orbit. (A few may have had enough negative delta-V added to de-orbit.)

But if it is not actually in orbit, but rather held in place by some kind of magic "counter-grav" or some such, then things would behave differently.

A "space elevator" is in orbit, but if it is cut, then neither half would be in orbit. The fall of the space elevator is an interesting bit in the Kim Stanley Robinson Mars books.

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Obviously (at least to people in this forum), if a thing in orbit blows up, the pieces stay in orbit. (A few may have had enough negative delta-V added to de-orbit.)

But if it is not actually in orbit, but rather held in place by some kind of magic "counter-grav" or some such, then things would behave differently.

A "space elevator" is in orbit, but if it is cut, then neither half would be in orbit. The fall of the space elevator is an interesting bit in the Kim Stanley Robinson Mars books.

An space elevator is another beast from an spaceship or station blowing up. Everything below GEO is held up by the mass above it. 
Cut it above GEO and the lower part will fall down while the above part ill raise its Ap, might even escape or the moon will play with it. 
Now impact on ground depend on the weight, if its just an wire, most likely an ribbon to negate micro meteorites lower parts will settle gently and upper part will come in so fast it burn up. 
It its an actual tower you have problems, no not the end of the world just an line of destruction like an group of heavy bombers with infinite bomb load flying. 

[wumpus]

3 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Obviously (at least to people in this forum), if a thing in orbit blows up, the pieces stay in orbit. (A few may have had enough negative delta-V added to de-orbit.)

But if it is not actually in orbit, but rather held in place by some kind of magic "counter-grav" or some such, then things would behave differently.

A "space elevator" is in orbit, but if it is cut, then neither half would be in orbit. The fall of the space elevator is an interesting bit in the Kim Stanley Robinson Mars books.

Why in the world wouldn't the counterweight remain in at least geosync?  They might have to cut the cable again (to as high above the atmosphere as they can.  And probably again cut away Low Earth Orbit (presumably it would burn up on rentry).  But outside of aerodynamic losses, I'd expect the thing to remain in orbit, although possibly a more eccentric one.

[Minmus Taster]

Star wars/trek exists

[mikegarrison]

52 minutes ago, wumpus said:

Why in the world wouldn't the counterweight remain in at least geosync?

The entire original elevator has to have the CM at geosync. (At least, with the usual design it does.) Since a substantial part of the elevator mass is at a lower altitude, then an equally substantial part has to be at a higher altitude.

When you cut the cable, the part that is above geosync is moving too fast for its altitude, so it will head on out. (How far it heads out depends on all the details.)

When I said it doesn't "remain in orbit" I should have said that one half is moving too slowly to stay where it is, and the other half is moving too quickly to stay where it is. I was thinking of the case where the upper half has enough energy to simply fly away completely, but it's possible it just stays in a more elliptical orbit.