Tabloid warns: “Hackers ‘could take over your dildo and make it go berserk’”

@Freemage A legit reason to have one. Also, could be TMI, but I know a lot about one, so to speak. They can be hilarious, but you need Bluetooth technology in order to use one, so only certain smart phones will work.

More to the point, none of these things are dildos. They’re all vibrators, which is not the same thing. Earlier versions of these things used to use the same kind of technology as remote control cars. Now they usually work on an app. I’m not sure whether that makes them less or more vulnerable.

katz
March 18, 2016 at 2:43 pm

Earlier versions of these things used to use the same kind of technology as remote control cars.

When you put them in reverse, they turned to the left?

*Bill Gates impression* It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!

Yawn, lame. Even if a woman had a fancy-computerized dildo (totally unnecessary to get the job done) and you actually managed to hack it, what’s the worst that you could possibly accomplish with an object that’s only capable of a few settings of motion?

Perhaps you could hack one to buzz out Derezzed by Daft Punk?

https://youtu.be/pCefSPQYA78

LITERALLY.

Or just imagine, you could be in the middle of a fancy dinner party with the Queen of England and this funky bass rhythm starts emanating from your nightstand drawer.

Alan,

perhaps you’d enjoy this game: http://www.amazon.com/National-Trash-Tabloid-Headline-Game/dp/B0010KNZK6

Freemage

Please, the Queen of England would just give you a saucy little grin and say, “I prefer Pomp & Circumstance, myself, but whatever floats your yacht.”

Absolutely. Just one minor amendment:
One prefers Pomp & Circumstance, oneself, but …

I seem to remember reading that Philip – being deemed suitable and genealogically eligible – was practically ordered to start chatting her up when he was a young adult and she was still a child.

This thread is sort of sciency so hope it’s ok to ask a techy question here.

Imagine a wormhole of aperture 10 metre^2 with one end on Earth at sea level (say pressure initially = 1 bar) and the other end in a hard vacuum in space.

How long would it take for the pressure to equalise (i.e. before the Earth’s atmosphere was totally bled off)?

(Don’t worry about the oceans and what might happen to them, only need to know to a first approximation)

Ta

Back on topic, kinda sorta: wake me up when they hack buttplugs.

@ EJ

More your classic “Stargate” style. I’m not sure how much different a proper Einstein-Rosen Bridge wormhole would be. But I’m thinking basically doorway or tube that leads somewhere else. Don’t suppose it would matter if it came out in a different time period.

@ occasional reader

An European Wormhole or an African Wormhole ?

Ooh, I don’t know; but my favourite colour is green.

@ EJ

The way I see it, on the Earth side there’d be a pressure caused by whatever normally causes pressure. I’m guessing that’s the weight of the atmosphere (basically the mass of the gasses being attracted to the Earth by gravity). The other side of the wormhole would be exposed to a hard vacuum in space, so effectively zero pressure (we can ignore those 3 atoms per m^2)

So the pressure differential would start off at 1 bar. That would attempt to equalise through the hole.

As the atmosphere went through there’d be less of it, so the pressure would drop. This would presumably slow down the exchange. In the almost relative infinite vastness of space though there would always effectively be a zero pressure and hard vacuum at the other end. So presumably the effect would continue until there was also a vacuum here.

Not sure what would happen with the oceans. They’d probably just boil off as pressure dropped and become part of the atmosphere. There’s that amazing picture that shows just how little atmosphere and water there actually is on Earth, so I thought it might be quite a quick process. But I can see thanks to Arctic Ape that there’s still a lot to squeeze through a 10m^2 hole.

Oh, I see. In that case it wouldn’t escape at all.

Remember that the atmosphere is already adjacent to the hard vaccuum of space, up at the top. It isn’t flying off into the void because gases are heavy, and are pulled down by the gravity of the earth. Some light gases like hydrogen do escape, but that’s more due to solar wind ablation than the effect of the vaccuum.

If gravity can act through the hole – and there’s no reason to suppose that it couldn’t – then any air which made it through the hole would be further away from the earth and therefore would be pulled back towards the hole.

As you point out, initially the pressure differential would be enough for some air to flow through. As it got further away from the hole, it would be further away from earth and therefore be pulled back “down” towards the hole by the earth’s gravity. Over time, this would form a ball of gas around the hole, like a miniature gas planet.

If the hole was far from a star, then the air would freeze into a solid mass of ice. This would block the hole, possibly quite quickly. If you would like me to work out how quickly, then I can. It’s possible that this would be so fast that it would block the gas pouring out and result in a smaller ball than there should be.

If it was closer to a star, then it might remain gaseous. The size of the ball of gas around the hole would be given by the hydrostatic equilibrium equation, which depends upon temperature. Assuming some rough values, most of the gas would be within 7km of the hole, although you’d get thinner layers a long way out. It would probably have its own Kármán line too, which is cool.

I’m going to estimate that this ball would have a mass of 0.00003% of the mass of the earth’s atmosphere.

With the price of gas being what it is, switching off the wormhole was probably the right thing to do.