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kokojumbo

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We are talking about transporting tons of equipment trough light years of radiation many times stronger then the one that is already frying computers in satellites and probes within heliosphere, heck even on Earth's surface it's enough to flip bits in RAM dies. The simpler and radiation resistant stuff you can pack on board of transport ship the less effort you have to put in shielding that equipment during transport.

As for that passive LCD - I don't see how is that an argument for anything disputed about CRT. This is a far cry from manufacturing exact usable universal LCD display of resolution of even 200x320 that is not slower than snail in terms of responsiveness.

USSR was using tubes because it was technologically far behind the West (it was still producing cars that were between 30 to even 50 years behind the West) and was under heavy sanctions. Soviet bloc made chips were actually less reliable and that's one of reasons why commie bloc TTL based computers were so unstable as they had either to import components from the West (see story of Karpiński and his K-202 architecture) if they wanted components that they were allowed to order them in the 1st place or smuggle them (which would not work for large scale) or use inferior in quality components produced within the bloc. Vacuum tubes were much harder to fuck up while production – hence more reliable than commie bloc TTL or LSI. How do I know? I am from one of countries that been in that bloc.

Yea, just look at how much redundancy in satellites and space probes we need to operate within the range of Sun's heliosphere. Outer space outside it would be even more killer to current electronics. Even if we switch to silicon carbide (which could possibly still remain harder to manufacture process) stuff it still would be a factor to consider.

It's normal 101 of basic classic (non Keynesian nonsense) economics. So many tech companies were kept alive thanks to very cheap credit (loans) as they were barely breaking even or declaring negative income for years. High interest rates are obviously dealing serious financial blows to such companies. All that already existing debt is now much more expensive and getting new is not cheap either. So you must cut expenses – which might mean getting rid of most expensive projects that bring no income or even generate loses. That causes layoffs. If there was not so many years of zero or in case of some countries even negative interest rates all these projects would never been financed by debt or possibly even started.

Inflation (expansion of so called money supply by means of bank loans – especially in fractional reserve system – plus on top of that central bank money printing to finance governmental debt and deficit spending) additionally causes prices to rise as unit of currency is losing it's purchasing power as a result of monetary supply expansion. So costs of stuff like electricity and new electronic components are rising as much more money than before is arriving to compete for purchasing of same amount of products. Also prices of components all that electronics and electricity is being made of are undergoing same process. That's a sequential chain of price increases that stretches in time many months after money supplied been extended.

Of course employee that work for all these companies seeing rising costs of living start demanding rises which adds additional fiscal pressure on companies.

The result is obvious - layoffs. That's the cost of high inflation and years of low interest rates. Rising interest rates start to unwind years if not decades of capital misallocation caused by reckless monetary policies of central banks/governments fearing deflation because deflation would mean they cannot pay governmental debts that they can pay in inflationary environments using purchasing power of own currencies (which means paying with purchasing power of savings of citizens).

[dead] 3 years ago

MERA-400 was built as continuation of a line of famous K-202 architecture designed by Jacek Karpiński

Apr 28, 2018 LTO tape storage technology is very poorly designed, typically there are no air filters on the tape drives, and there is an air circulation system that constantly sucks dust directly through the tape drive mechanism.

But the drive system is sensitive to dust, and the solution is that you have to clean it with tape cleaning media. But even so the cleaning media is itself mildly abrasive and slowly wears down the drive heads until they no longer work.

... Here’s an idea, how about designing tape drives that turn themselves off, or go into an ultra low power idle state when they’re not doing anything, and don’t need cooling?

Or maybe design tape drive systems to have a HEPA micron particulate filter on the front of them to protect a stand-alone tape drive or robotic tape library from dust?

Yet oddly it seems absolutely no LTO manufacturer does this. It’s as if they are intentionally designing their products to slowly destroy themselves, due to environmental concerns that may be out of control of the equipment owner.