But we'll have to balance the up and the down otherwise we'll end up with strange results....

Surely this signifies a distance civilizations discovery of the warp - this is a Cochrane radiation? (named after Zefram Cochrane), I expect the Romulans will be turning up very soon....

So what about the asteroid that was kicked out by some event in a solar system far far away, got accelerated around a Jupiter sized plant and flung out at speed. Now I accept not very likely, and we'd be unlucky to be on the receiving end. but that could come in quick enough that we would not spot it until late in the day?

feeling sick just thinking about it...

One of the reasons its so lethal, is that its not so lethal, SARS was so lethal it killed people before they had chance to infect may others. Isolate and wait = problem gone. Covid much less so, so spreads everywhere, then it bites many more people...

Although this has been denied, it would not supprise me if this turns out to be a publicity stunt....

I would question how long the driver has has the car, and therefore how familiar he was with the controls. With any "change" there is a time taken to get used to it. I would guess he'd not had it long...

Zefram Cochrane would be proud

Its one things accelerating to a close to the speed of light, but when it gets their it'll be travelling so fast that it'll flash by with little time for any measurements. Alternatively you could try a breaking maneuver, but the stresses on something so light would I'm sure render it useless. So instead slow down in down earlier - but any reasonable time frame for this would greatly extend the transit time (this is not linear , so starting breaking half way their would greatly more than double the time), or perhaps we should just burn it up in the atmosphere, and any (potentially) intelligent observer would probably just think it a meteor?

Then all's that's left is to name it "Rama"

It'll be a win if the other manufacturers follow suit with proper disclosure - come on Seagate....

Then with some reasonable (both sides) press around "suitable" use cases and most of us should be happy... at least then we'll be able to make informed choices...

I believe the CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording) used by Seagate(?) is just another name for PMR (Perpendicular Magnetic Recording) - which is the standard way (think like concentric rings) SMR is a way of packing more in by allowing the overwrite of the next tracks (so more can be packed in), see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... But if track next door contains data, that data needs to be re-written - therefore the drive has a lot more work to do in SMR when writing. When the drive is sparsely populated or only written to occasionally then the caching hides this additional effort, but when the cache runs out (quickly) then this will impact write speeds (massively in my experience) - thus under busy workloads this drives take a long time to write data, slowing everything down. Reliability is also in question given more work.... The argument goes if you just want a very large cheap drive, that your just going to write to and leave (for archive) - (SMR has higher density, therefore cheaper, and allows squeesing more from existing design, i.e. number of platters)- then SMR fine, just dont try to use in an everyday scenario (where may be heavily used).... IMHO - everyone is looking for the cheapest therefore as consumers we are driving the market, but it should be made clear (I dont want one in my NAS) - thus the point of the initial post.

Very timely - Following the installation of standard Baracuda drive 3 weeks ago, I noticed latency write time very quickly reached ridiculous levels > 220ms. Some googling revealed that the cheaper end are now SMR drives (this was 8Tb). It was returned for a refund and replaced with an IronWolf version, now under same workload write times 10ms. It is ridiculous that this change is far from clear, although I eventually found something buried in a spec sheet, that with more research brought me to the SMR conclusion, this was found only after a lot of digging. It is deceitful that this is not clear upfront. But lots of people dont want these drives (most tech heads) and so the manufacturers ARE hiding it (in different ways). This if false advertising, I would not expect to buy a Mustang and then find Ford swapped the engine for a tiny power plant inside with the excuse of "oh, you didn't notice the small print buried in the middle of the brochure"

Given that there is a school of thought suggesting that traumatic/stressful events strengthen and focus the impact of the recall.... How much did the risks and stressful events of the mission (especially following 13!), strengthen Edgar's view....? Now I'm not saying that it must be amazing... I remember seeing the "Dream is alive" at an IMAX, in the late 80's (a rare cinema experience at the time), all about the space shuttle with loads of shots of the earth below.... this has had a long lasting effect on me....