no backup, no sympathy

keep at least one backup air-gapped, otherwise it’s not a true backup

theoretically you should be right but there’s software hidden in the hardware that you can’t uninstall or modify that could (hypothetically) be surveilling you. like in the networking equipment that’s inside the phone.

realistically, i think the chances for that happening are actually very low, also because the networking firmware could only see your encrypted data packets, but it could still figure out the IP addresses that you communicate with. i’d rate it a none/low risk level. your ISP could also surveill you in the same way, with probably less technical difficulty. also you could circumvent that by using VPN.

also people can actually check what the networking firmware actually sends through the air (you need special equipment to intercept the packages mid-air) so it’s risky for them to do it because they could be caught and exposed.

it’s cheap. mine was like $200 new. can recommend.

I actually bought a new Motorola phone 2 months ago precisely because i wanted a phone with an unlockable bootloader, and motorola delivered that.

Vote with your wallet.

This could be interesting for a mars settlement.

yeah i guess it depends on the time frame that you look at things. I was only considering the next 1-3 years.

The price is dropping but not that rapidly. IIRC the price dropped like 95% over the last 25 years … That’s a 12% reduction annually on average. Compare that to computer chips where prices dropped 60% annually IIRC and solar panels where it dropped 30% annually.

This also reminds me of something else: Yes, you can have all kinds of problems in space missions. Not just bit flips.

I have been thinking about planning a mars mission. And one of the things that you need to guarantee is the safety of the crew in untested environments. Like on the surface of mars, you have to guarantee that the crew can survive at least until the next ship can arrive to help them. And launch windows to mars appear only once every two earth years (once every martian year), so crew has to survive that long.

You also have to survive when there’s a power outage for any reason. Could be that the coworker stumbled over a cable and pulled out a power line’s connection. Could be that there’s 3-months-long dust storms (which would block solar panels). (they appear each martian year, sometimes more sometimes less severe, i think typical duration is less than 50 days, but just to be sure make that 100 days). Could be that there’s a problem with your electronics and they simply won’t work anymore and you can’t figure out why.

So imagine you’re standing in your apartment. I recommend you live inside the Starship for the first few years because it’s already a habitat since you flew in it for 6 months to get to mars in the first place.

Power outage. How do you get out of the door? There’s obviously a pressure door between your apartment and the outside world. And the power line’s outside. So if the power line disconnects because a rover messed up and pulled it out, there’s a power outage. And if the door is electrically operable, you can’t get out of the door to repair it. That is why i say that every door has to be manually operable. Like, pressure doors should have manual operation mode. You need to be able to operate the pressure door with your bare hands. I already thought of some designs that can actually deliver that, but i’m too lazy to do a drawing now.

Like, very interesting article. It also mentions bit flips.

I think the major protection against bit flips is to use larger structure sizes. Like, today’s desktop computers use structure sizes around 2 nm or sometimes even less than that. Which means you only need to shift a few electrons around to cause a bit flip. If you use larger wires inside the processor, they store more electrons so it takes more energy to flip them around. So there’s a much much smaller number of radiation particles that have a minimum of that energy, so lower risk of bit flips.

Does anybody have actual numbers on the structure sizes needed to effectively prevent bit flips? I mean, outer space missions like NASA flights already need this today.

You know how much it costs to transport stuff into space? Well, currently, around $1k/kg of material. Let that sink in.

Note this is only payload. Ship’s own weight is already included in this.