"Everyone has that story," writes Slashdot reader alaskana98: You know, the one where you spilled a Big Gulp-sized cup of sugary Coke all over your laptop and it somehow still works to this day — although the space bar is permanently glued in place.

Or that time you left your iPhone out in a pouring thunderstorm, stuck it in a bag of rice and after a few days it miraculously turned back on. Yes, we've all been there, maybe cried a little and then went on with life — a little wiser for the wear.

So, fellow Slashdotters, what's your worst tale of hardware horrors?
The original submission has already drawn some interesting tales from long-time Slashdot readers, including two thunderstorm hardware horror stories. And there's also the user who remembers how "In the mid 1980s I blew up a $75,000 laser by not turning the cooling water on before firing it up."

But what's your story? Share your own tale in the comments.

What's your worst damaged hardware horror story?

RockDoctor (Slashdot reader #15,477) wants to build a personal network-attached storage solution, maybe using a multiple-disk array (e.g., a RAID). But unfortunately, "My hardware pool is very shallow." I eBay'd a desktop chassis, whose motherboard claims (I discovered, on arrival) RAID capabilities. There, I have a significant choice — to use the on-board RAID, or do it entirely in software (e.g. OpenMediaVault)?

I'm domestic — a handful of terabytes — but I expect the answer to change as one goes through the petabytes into the exabytes. What do the dotters of the slash think?
Share your own thoughts in the comments. Is a hardware RAID better than a software RAID?

"I am curious as to what other Slashdotters use for backing up of home machines," asks long-time Slashdot reader serviscope_minor: I moved away from the "bunch of disks with some off site" method. I found most of the methods generally had one or more of the following problems: poor Linux support, weak security (e.g. leaking file names), outrageously expensive, hard to set up, tied to a single storage supplier I don't fully trust, entirely proprietary (which makes me doubt long term stability), lack of file history, reputation for slowness, and so on.

My current solution is Unixy: separate tools for separate jobs. Borg for backups to a local machine. Rclone for uploading to business cloud storage, versioned cloud storage to provide resistance against bitrot and other corruption.
They're interested in "what other Slashdotters use," as well as "why and what your experience has been given more than superficial testing." So share you own thoughts in the comments.

What do you use for backups at home?

After their house was vandalized, long-time Slashdot reader lsllll needs some help finding a battery-powered, wifi-enabled camera that can dump motion-detected videos to a local server: There are some nice cameras out there that'll work for nearly 5 months off a rechargeable battery. You can even pair them with a solar panel which would keep them constantly topped off. But none of them offer anything other than local storage (free on SD card) or in the cloud (subscription).

Obviously, being a programmer and a sysadmin, I realize that the effort to dump a video to a cloud service and opening a connection to a local FTP/SMB server require the same bandwidth, battery usage. So this decision to not support local FTP/SMB servers must be intentional and the way everything is going nowadays: juice the customers for as much money as you can after they've purchased your product.

The question is, are the any cameras out there that run on rechargeable batteries, support WiFi, and dump videos to a local server?
Share your suggestions in the comments!

Long-term Slashdot reader couchslug believes that "Howls of anguish from betrayed CentOS 8 users highlight the value of its long support cycles..." Earlier this month it was announced that at the end of 2021, the community-supported rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS 8, "will no longer be maintained," though CentOS 7 "will stick around in a supported maintenance state until 2024."

This leads Slashdot reader couchslug to an interesting question. "Should competitors like Ubuntu and SUSE offer truly long-term-support versions to seize that (obviously large and thus important to widespread adoption) user base?" As distros become more refined, how important are changes vs. stability for users running tens, thousands and hundreds of thousands of servers, or who just want stability and security over change for its own sake...? Why do you think distro leadership are so eager for distro life cycles? Boredom, progress or what mix of both?

What sayeth the hive mind and what distros do you use to achieve your goals?
The original submission argues that "Distro-hopping is fun but people with work to do and a fixed task set have different needs." But what do Slashdot's readers thinks? Leave your own thoughts in the comments.

And how long do you think a vendor should support a distro?

What are some good movies and TV shows that you watched this year? You do not have to narrow down your selection to titles that came out this year, but feel free to give one a shotout.

Long-time Slashdot reader t0qer has a question: why haven't we gone to an open source, Public Key Infrastructure-based voting system? "I'm fairly well versed in PKI technology, and quoting this site, it would take traditional computers 300 trillion years to break RSA-2048 for a single vote." SSL.com has a pretty interesting piece on using Public Key Infrastructure in voting. There's also a GitHub project that leverages PKI and IBM blockchain technology...

It just seems like paper at this point has outlived its secureness. A closed sourced voting system doesn't really seem like the kind of thing Slashdot would really get behind.
SSL's article points out that the technology seems to exist already. Nearly half the population of Estonia already votes online, and four U.S. states (Arizona, Colorado, Missouri and North Dakota) already have web portals that allow for absentee voting. (And West Virginia has a mobile voting app that uses blockchain technology.) [L]uckily, the groundwork for securing the practice of remote, online voting is already there. We have been conducting many delicate transactions online for some time — the secure transfer of information has been a cornerstone for many industries that have successfully shifted online such as personal banking and investing, and those methods of securing and authenticating information can be employed in voting as well. For years, people have suggested that the use of blockchain technology could be used to secure elections and increase voter turnout.
Share your own thoughts in the comments. Why haven't we implemented Public Key Infrastructure voting?

Yesterday, Apple released the latest version of macOS: macOS Big Sur (also known as macOS 11.0) and the rollout was anything but smooth. Many users have complained about Apple services such as iMessage, or even Apple Pay, not working for them. Personally, my 5K iMac (2013), which isn't even compatible with Big Sur, ground to a halt yesterday, as I was unable to open up Google Chrome or any of my Adobe Creative Cloud apps. Even navigating my system preferences was painfully slow.

According to developer Jeff Johnson, the reason apps were failing to launch was because a process called "trustd" failed to attempt to connect to Apple's Online Certificate Status Protocol website (oscp.apple.com). "[D]enying the connection between "trustd" and oscp.apple.com fixes the issue, as does disabling a Mac's connection to the internet," notes Apple Insider. Slashdot reader shanen shares their experience: The story is about different problems, so I'll just start with my own anecdote. The 12GB download was amazingly slow. I'm being charitable and willing to attribute that to high demand. Eventually it did finish. The installation process didn't seem to be too bad. Then I did something with the Mac and it immediately wanted another upgrade. Turned out to be a double upgrade of two slightly different versions of some tools, but another (slow) GB bites the dust. Meanwhile, it decided to do that double-upgrade again? One of those two must have succeeded, because the third attempt failed with the appropriate notice that it had succeeded.

Bottom line? Not reassuring, but it seems to be okay now. I should have made a note about what triggered the extra GB, but I don't think I did anything unusual that should have required an OS-level extension of the system. Ergo, whatever was going on, I think it belonged in the original 12 GB download... Disclaimer needed: I just had an extremely negative interaction with Apple about the battery swelling problem in the course of attempting to consider whether or not I should upgrade my old MacBook Pro. It started on the Apple website, which was amazingly unhelpful even after it dangled a trade-in offer of some kind. Then it continued with a long phone call to a very kind and friendly person who seemed to know not so much, though he eventually led me to the search that revealed "Optimized Battery Charging" as an option that my old Mac cannot use. By the way, new iPhones apparently have it, too. So right now I think Apple finally figured out how to stop the battery swelling, but I am still screwed. I regard the Mac as a sunk cost, and the second rule of sunk cost is to NOT throw good money after bad. The first rule is that no one wants to talk about their mistakes, eh?

So did your upgrade to Big Sur go better than mine? I really hope so. Why share the misery? We have plenty of that with "He whose name need not be mentioned" anymore.

"Its that time of year again," writes long-time Slashdot reader rufey: Millions of people around the world will be adjusting (or have already adjusted) their clocks... Over the years it is apparent that most people who have spoken about the twice-yearly clock change oppose it.

So I ask, why are we still changing clocks in the year 2020?
Long-time Slashdot reader thegreatbob believes the answer is: inertia. Personally, I am less opposed, and much more indifferent to its continued existence. One thing (arguably good) that it does do is provide distinct, specific temporal reference points that the gradual changing of seasons does not, by forcing people to take some sort of irregular action.

Do I think this in any way helps cancel out the harm caused by upsetting the sleep cycles of a huge portion of the population? Absolutely not.
But Slashdot reader Anonymouse Cowtard argues they're grateful for the time change — because "I was sick of the sun waking me at 5 a.m."

Since it is that time of year again, share your own thoughts in the comments.

And why do we keep setting our clocks back an hour?

Dev & Gear created a long list of YouTube channels that offer technical videos to help you learn web development from scratch or just improve your skills. Some of the channels listed include: LearnCode.academy, Dev Ed, Traversy Media, Codecourse, and Wes Bos.

Is your favorite YouTube channel for web development and programming included on the list? If not, let us know what it is in a comment.

Long-time Slashdot reader goombah99 wonders how college students should approach this next academic year.

First, should defer their next academic year? Even universities opening their dorms are still limiting their dining facilities to take-out box lunches and offering most of their classes online. (Though some give students a choice of online or in-person classes). Yet despite the new rules, "Some universities are sticky about deferrals, requiring medical excuses, or else re-application for majors and scholarships. Others are more generous."

And that's just first decision students are facing: If you chose to attend online, would you opt to be in the dorms — or in your parent's house or your home town? What would you be losing (or gaining) by that choice, compared to socially distanced in-person?
For a real-world example, the original submission asks what's the best strategy for a CS major taking just one or two classes online. "Take a freshman core course? Take a super hard foundational upper level course like Algorithm's and Data Structures? Or take a simpler class like Intro to Object- Oriented Programming in Java. Which of these benefit the most from having in-person study buddies and labs with in-person TAs?"

Utimately the original submission asks what it is that makes college transformative — the classes, or being there (and living on-campus) in-person? "For me, I recall not even knowing all the possible majors when I attended, and it was networks, chance, new friends and upperclassmen who were how I learned what I wanted to pursue... What does one lose by remote learning and why, either academically or socially?"

Share your own thoughts in the comments. How should college students approach this academic year?

Andy Jones, a London-based machine learning researcher, writes: An overhang is when you have had the ability to build transformative AI for quite some time, but you haven't because no-one's realised it's possible. Then someone does and surprise! It's a lot more capable than everyone expected. I am worried we're in an overhang right now. I think we right now have the ability to build an orders-of-magnitude more powerful system than we already have, and I think GPT-3 is the trigger for 100x-larger projects at Google and Facebook and the like, with timelines measured in months.

GPT-3 is the first AI system that has obvious, immediate, transformative economic value. While much hay has been made about how much more expensive it is than a typical AI research project, in the wider context of megacorp investment it is insignificant. GPT-3 has been estimated to cost $5m in compute to train, and -- looking at the author list and OpenAI's overall size - maybe another $10m in labour, on the outside. Google, Amazon and Microsoft all each spend ~$20bn/year on R&D and another ~$20bn each on capital expenditure. Very roughly it totals to ~$100bn/year. So dropping $1bn or more on scaling GPT up by another factor of 100x is entirely plausible right now. All that's necessary is that tech executives stop thinking of NLP as cutesy blue-sky research and start thinking in terms of quarters-till-profitability.

Jennifer Riggins is participating in the Oxford Vaccine Trial. She's an American technology journalist and marketer who's self-employed in London — and she's also agreed to answer some questions from Slashdot!

Slashdot: Can you give me any details on what it's like when you go in for your shots? (Like, are they somber, or enthusiastic...?) Do you chat at all? Do they know you by name?

JR: For sure they know me by name, at least after glancing at charts or if I call the hotline. The doctors and nurses don't know which dose I got — this COVID vaccine or the placebo which is the meningitis vaccine. It's their job to make me feel comfortable so I stay volunteering and they can get as much info from me (like about reactions) as they can.

It's actually a lot of fun for me. I love the medical talk and ask loads of questions and they are totally transparent and kind.

Plus working from home with my also full-time-working husband and our three year old during the pandemic, a surprise benefit is a bit of me time including the hour-long walk to hospital each way.

Slashdot: Have you ever made contact with any of the other participants?

JR: Just a nod "hello" here and there. No one I've seen chats like me — ha. But also we are kept far apart because, you know, pandemic.

And Jennifer had a lot more to say about her experience, the rewards, the reactions, and the media coverage of it all...

Long-time Slashdot reader shanen is facing "the death of another smartphone from acute battery swelling." And he wants to know if you're having the same problem: It seems to me that they've become quite good at designing smartphones to last two years and little longer, which is a bit worrisome since my primary phone is entering into its third year. Can you share your experiences...?

It seems fair to start by summarizing what I can remember of mine:

- First was an HTC that lasted a little over 2 years. Not so good, but at least it died slowly.

- Samsung Galaxy lasted about 4 years. Basically killed by battery swelling combined with lack of replacement batteries.

- Two Huawei's. First one died slowly after about 3 years of heavy use.

- Freetel died by battery swelling after 2 years.

- ASUS, which just died by the worst battery swelling I've seen. Mostly light usage for something over 2 years.

Pretty sure I'm forgetting at least one smartphone. Also I'm deliberately not counting a Sharp wannabe smartphone before the HTC... Maybe the real source of my grief is that most of my smartphones were low-end models. I just noticed a new smartphone priced over $1,000. Maybe it will last 3 or 5 times longer?
I've also been buying low-end smartphones, so they're cheaper to replace when I inevitably drop them after exactly two years, turning their screens into an unreplaceable spiderweb of cracks. But what's your experience? Share your own thoughts and stories in the comments.

And how long do you expect your smartphone to last?

What are some titles -- movies, TV shows, or any console video games -- that have helped you stay calm in recent months? (No need to limit the listing to recently releases.)

Long-time Slashdot reader dhammabum writes: As reported in the recent slashdot story, starting in September we system admins will be forced into annually updating TLS certificates because of a decision by Apple, abetted by Google and Mozilla. Supposedly this measure somewhat rectifies the current ineffective certificate revocation list system by limiting the use of compromised certificates to one year... But in an attempt to prevent this pathetic measure, could we instead use DNS to replace the current certificate revocation list system?

Why not create a new type of TXT record, call it CRR (Certificate Revocation Record), that would consist of the Serial Number (or Subject Key ID or thumbprint) of the certificate. On TLS connection to a website, the browser does a DNS query for a CRR for the Common Name of the certificate. If the number/key/thumbprint matches, reject the connection. This way the onus is on the domain owner to directly control their fate. The only problem I can see with this is if there are numerous certificate Alternate Names — there would need to be a CRR for each name. A pain, but one only borne by the hapless domain owner.

Alternatively, if Apple is so determined to save us from ourselves, why don't they fund and host a functional CRL system? They have enough money. End users could create a CRL request via their certificate authority who would then create the signed record and forward it to this grand scheme.

Otherwise, are there any other ideas?

Long-time Slashdot reader lpq writes: I followed a link that pointed at a Microsoft security advisory about ".lnk" files. The original link, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/technet/security/advisory/2286198.mspx, produced this message:

Your request has been blocked. This may be due to several reasons. 1. You are using a proxy that is known to send automated requests to Microsoft. Check with your network administrator if there is any proxy and what User-Agent they are sending in the request header. 2. Your request pattern matches an automated process. To eliminate, reduce the volume of requests over a period of time. 3. Reference ID: 41.70790b91.4823110533.409105b4

It turns out the advisory number doesn't matter, just the extension for "Active Microsoft Server Page" (https.../.mspx) at the end. I guess there were too many security advisory lookups for MS to handle! *snort*!
The .mspx extension indicates a page using a special internal Microsoft rendering framework with a custom web handler (built in ASP.Net). But I ran some tests Saturday, and observed the exact same glitch described above using three different browsers — Firefox, Edge, and Brave. Anyone have a theory about what's going on?

Leave your thoughts in the comments. Why is Microsoft blocking its own server pages?

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Microsoft Build kicks off online Tuesday as a free virtual event after plans for an in-person Seattle conference with a $2,395 entry fee and 6,000 or so attendees were shelved due to the coronavirus outbreak. It is just one of many large in-person developer conferences that were canceled in response to the pandemic.

While the deep-pocketed sponsors of Microsoft Build (virtual for 2020), Facebook F8 (canceled for 2020), Google I/O (canceled for 2020), and Apple WWDC (virtual for 2020) won't miss the loss of conference revenue, one wonders what the effect may be on nonprofit-run conferences like the Grace Hopper Celebration. GHC is also going virtual in 2020 (details to be determined) after hosting nearly 25,000 in-person attendees last year — registration fees were $1150 (general), $600 (academic), $450 (students)...

They may be cheaper, more accessible, and have a lower carbon footprint than face-to-face conferences, but are virtual conferences "better" than meeting in person?

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: With all the news stories about how the pandemic is impacting our world, some of us have been just plain lucky. As an information worker, I was already working from home, so I still have my full-time job — and my full-time income. So my question is, if we really are all "in this together," then what can I be doing to help the others who need it?

Here's what I've done so far. First just by staying at home, I'm keeping myself healthy, while not adding to the burdens of medical workers, or spreading the virus to anyone else. But I'm also at least trying to place some food orders at local restaurants, having it delivered to my home (and also adding a big tip.) The post office will be sending me two sheets of "Forever" stamps that I bought to help pre-fund future postal services. And though I haven't bought any gift cards yet, I've ordered $40 worth of books to support my local bookstore, and placed a second order for a bunch of graphic novels from my favorite local comic book shop.

Bookstores do need our support. You can also try buying your books through BookShop.org, a new e-commerce site whose profits go to local independent bookstores while giving book-buyers an alternative to Amazon. But some stores are just turning to crowdfunding campaigns. When people heard that San Francisco's iconic City Lights Bookstore might be forced to close after 60 years, they contributed over $484,000 to its GoFundMe campaign to keep it alive.

In fact, there's now at least 30,000 coronavirus-related GoFundMe pages to choose from. If you want to do something more organized, the New York Times has launched its own fundraising page for "four nonprofit organizations that provide assistance to those facing economic hardship." The nonprofit-evaluating site Charity Navigator has also created a list of trustworthy organizations seeking donations to support communities affected by the pandemic.

Everyone's got their own ideas about how to help — so what are the rest of you doing? If you've been lucky, what ways have you found to give back, to pitch in, or just feel like you're connecting to the community beyond your door?
Leave your answers in the comments.

What are you doing to help?

The pandemic has "proven conclusively that the internet should be a public utility," argues Quartz. "It's a basic necessity in the 21st century, like running water, gas, and electricity. Indeed, the United Nations in 2016 declared that internet access is a human right." Sure, you could theoretically survive without it, just as you might light your home with candles or warm it by fire. Just as you could arguably trek to the closest freshwater source and walk back with buckets of the life-sustaining stuff. But in wealthy societies, like the U.S., those are absurd notions. Living under such conditions is virtually impossible and endangers everyone... [T]hough we have a whole lot of social woes to contend with right now -- pressing medical and economic needs -- it's not too soon to recognize that internet service providers' profits are not the top priority and that lack of access exacerbates existing class divides....

Increasingly, towns, cities, and states are taking a close look at Chattanooga, Tennessee, which built its own high-speed fiber-optic internet network in 2009. A 2018 Consumer Reports survey found the city's broadband was rated best in the US. There are already more than 500 communities nationwide operating public networks or leveraging their massive contracts with broadband providers to ensure free wiring of schools, libraries, and other publicly-accessible wifi hotspots. This patchwork approach to public access is taking hold across the U.S. and there is a growing understanding that internet access is a social issue that has to be addressed by governments, not private companies operating with profit as their sole motivator.

Perhaps after the pandemic panic gives way to a new state of normalcy, the people will demand inexpensive and reliable high-quality broadband, and maybe private internet service providers will have to sing a different tune.
An anonymous reader asked how exactly this could be accomplished, and long-time Slashdot reader Futurepower(R) suggested towns and cities should own the fiber lines, and then rent it out "to as many Internet-providing companies as are interested."

But the original submission also asks, "If you aren't convinced yet, why not?" So share your own opinions in the comments.

Should the internet be a public utility?