I stared at Google Earth for a while, using the 41:30 and 73 as a guide, but wasn't able to pinpoint the location of the site. With these huge vents, it shouldn't be too hard to find where this site was located.
Good thought, but switching to LTE only didn't work. Same result of ending up in SOS only. Cellular over wifi works perfectly fine though. Wish we could count on better post mortems from the phone companies, but I'm not holding my breath for it.
Why would a power meter allow an unauthenticated client to turn the thing on and off wireless?!? Sure, if you flip a switch handling a large current often enough, something will break (and I am impressed it's not the AC in this case).
But why does the power meter accept commands from something 'outside', something untrusted?
I mean why are power lines not locked up and buried underground secured locked steel cages?
Because some things work better with trust vs convoluted security.
I think this is something a lot of computer nerds don't get (myself included at one point). It's almost like if something can be accessed we are allowed to access it and it's the fault of the person securing it. But a lot of our society works on trust and I think we'd live in a much more difficult world if everything had to be secure enough to resist any attack.
If this thing was connected to the internet I get it, but you already need physical access to the meter why add another layer of security on top of that? If someone has wants to mess up your power and they have physical access there's plenty of ways they can do it without wireless communication.
I would just add a simple layer of device-id based password generation function which is hard to reverse engineer. The devices used by authorized people would auto-generate it and will be transparent to them, yet it'll prevent many people from getting in. Add a rate-limiter on top of it, and it's impractical to brute force it.
If Philips can secure its SoniCare brush heads this way to prevent tampering and counterfeiting, a utility company or meter producer which enables a much more important infrastructure can be a little more mindful about what they are doing.
Definitely agree with you here. The parent has a very valid point about not always over-securing things that don't need to be secured, but physical line cutting and wireless shutoff are very different threats.
Someone walking around your neighborhood cutting every single electric line on the side of a house, risking electric shock and trespassing on your private land is much more likely to get caught than somebody rolling through your neighborhood with a flipper zero and a high power antenna turning off all of your meters.
If someone had a grudge against you, and they started to "release the magic smoke" from your meter once a week and the power company is upset with you and your HVAC system doesn't work anymore, in addition to the fact that the compressor in your AC is toast because of someone energizing and de-energizing the circuit so rapidly. Now you are out thousands of dollars and, on top of all that, no matter how many cameras you put up, you'll have a hard time figuring out who's doing it.
Which is exactly how you end up with more etrash when a company goes out of business.
Also, you've just made replacement/repair/support far more complicated and dangerous for everyone than it need be. You must be 10% smarter than any piece of equipment you are operating to safely use it, and be "ahead of the machine".
I truly believe we have suffered greatly as a civilization for our willingness to lose sight of that, and to have allowed the siren call of "abstraction" to charm us into making things so absurdly complicated that short of neverending population growth to bring into existence more people to solve all the new problems people have created, one is hard pressed to even read everything necessary to understand why most things are the way they are.
When done with proper contracting and documentation, losing a company is not a problem, because either you put the spec and the algorithm on the table, and people implement it to get certified, or you get the technical docs to use when/if the company goes out of business.
Practically, it doesn’t do anything more complicated. Device provides you an ID without a password, but accepts everything else with a password. In many countries, if not all, infrastructure equipment is already protected property. Nobody except the utility company touch, repair, reconfigure that meter, anyway.
Overcomplicating stuff is indeed a problem, and it’s a combination of poor engineering plus monetary greed in most cases. Also it’s a side effect of evolution of technology. I would love to discuss it to death, but this is not the place and I don’t have much time for it either.
Yeah, a lot of this infrastructure was built on a trust-based society so we're having to slowly learn that isn't possible in our current culture and population size. It's sad.
Because security is not a priority for the industry. Most have no security, default authentication in the rare case that they have it, and they use protocols with no support for it. The field is decades behind in security practices (it's pretty much IoT) and won't improve unless forced to.
It's also difficult to update such devices in the field so even if they do fix such issues it's only for new units or a new product line which most customers won't bother with until forced to by regulations / incidents as it's expensive to replace them (you have to send someone out on the field as there are pretty much no OTA updates).
The field is decades behind best practice because these systems have multi-decade operational lives.
There's an absolute chasm between implementation intervals that can be achieved through pure software systems and those with distributed hardware components. Throw in a few layers of abstraction where those designing, purchasing, installing, operating, and maintaining those components are all unrelated parties with different (and potentially conflicting) motives and any sort of cohesive systems engineering is hard.
This doesn't excuse continued irresponsibilities in product security, because they absolute exist, but "impressively fragile yet surprisingly functional" is a completely logical Nash equilibrium to settle on given the surrounding non-technical components.
> The field is decades behind best practice because these systems have multi-decade operational lives.
This would be more convincing if not for the fact that smart meters are IIoT. They're a new thing. IIoT is kind of an unholy breed between those hardcore industrial engineers you talk about, designing hardware with multi-decade operational lives, and the people implementing the IoT part using webdev practices, trying to put Docker containers full of NPM modules onto the industrial devices (and if they can't fit there, then plugging them immediately upstream).
Now that latter group is (mis)using bleeding edge tools to develop greenfield solutions - and thus should very much be able to keep up with basic security practices developed in the last 20 years.
But we are not talking about them using too weak RSA keys from 2 decades ago, or even not about transmitting passwords unencrypted, so anyone with a right radio could glean that.
We are talking about a complete lack of any access control. Like two wires instead of an ignition lock. An electric box with a mechanical meter and switches would at least have a padlock on it.
Neither is long term functioning of the electric grid if you read the IEEE. Go read the IEEE journal where every few years someone writes an article warning that the electric grid will fail catastrophically when an 1859 level solar flare occurs that we can prevent with a relatively straightforward fix.
Technical debt exists in disciplines other than software development.
> Why would a power meter allow an unauthenticated client to turn the thing on and off wireless?!? Sure, if you flip a switch handling a large current often enough, something will break (and I am impressed it's not the AC in this case).
I would guess until recently power meters just had no reason to be secured. We live in a multi unit building (I would guess around 120 of them). There is a shared key that goes to the central electricity room where the meters for all units are. I could turn off anyone's electricity by either unscrewing the main fuses there or by switching the breaker. People are a lot more trustworthy in practice than you would think.
Most people abstain from committing crime not because they will go to jail, but because pointlessly harming another human being is stupid, a waste of time and effort, pointless, and only makes the world worse.
The security of billions and billions of devices (e.g. industrial control systems, PLCs,[0] SCADA,[1] ERTs,[2] etc.) that are responsible for controlling and monitoring virtually every aspect of modern life (e.g. power grid, water purification, natural gas transmission, oil and gas extraction, vehicle traffic control, rail signalling, pharmaceutical manufacturing, etc.) is appalling.
The manufactures and integrators of these devices are just now beginning to realize that the internet exists and that their devices aren't always connected to perfectly isolated RS-485[2] networks or connected to a network at all. They commonly contain hard coded passwords, passwords with staggeringly limited length and complexity, plain text authentication, default passwords, and other backdoors. Working with such devices is like taking a Delorean back to the early 90s, the eighties, or even earlier... it's the wild west.
It pleases me beyond words that hacking contests like Pwn2Own[4] have begun to include these systems in their competitions. This is a massively important area of security research that has historically been ignored.
The security of these systems is indeed terrible. From my experience, operators often justify it by saying that they are not connected to the internet, while at the same time assuring you that they can easily handle emergencies through remote access from their personal laptop :/
However, what scares me when looking at open vulnerability research taking off in this space, is that these components have a much longer lifetime than regular IT, and are harder to update, not to mention that outages due to bad updates will almost always directly impact production. So it does seem to me that while increase in awareness is a good thing, the vulnerabilities ound in Pwn2Own and similar might be used more easily by attackers than defenders.
That said, i don't have a better solution either.
We don't know whether the meter accepts every command, or the device has a fixed security protocol reverse engineered and known by researchers.
These protocols exist to get current readings from meters for data retrieval ease, and generally have a combination of security through obscurity and simple authentication to enable mass readings (by authorized people) easier. IIRC, these things can talk P2P in densely populated areas, and you can get all meters' readings in mere minutes, tops.
In any way, after and initial PoC, the rest of the video gets into territory of equipment abuse, and I got angry and sad while watching it. You can do it, OK, then why damage things which are not yours? Document your findings and leave.
That also made me angry to watch. He knew what he was doing and got the result he was hoping for. I hope his electric company is aware of what happened. The serial number and electric company name are both clearly visible in the video.
In my area of jurisdiction certain public places like bars and restaurants are required to have an externally accessible way for fire teams to cut power in the event of e.g a flood or a fire that would require soaking the place.
These are usually placed above the main door, and are made of a lever ending in a loop in which you hook a spear and pull down.
Neighbours unhappy with such places making noise would regularly pull them, cutting power, destroying wares that are in fridges, and whatnot.
The typical (and only, really) defense is to make the lever inoperable so you can frequently see them destroyed.
Having open remote RF access in these cases would be a disaster (until tinfoil is used as a defense)
> Because your a terrorist or an AI looking to destroy mankind?
I didn't know we reached Ghost in the Shell level cybernetics, sorry. TIL.
> You're drifting off into is/ought territory in why people do things and that is something that is very difficult to predict and control.
No, I'm just asking a question. What he has done has no place in my ethics and morals. I don't tell anyone what to do, either. It's his life, he should deal with the consequences.
I don't disagree, this is why we typically have laws against destruction of property.
Conversely we have an increasingly globally connected world that is wholly dependant on software to keep functioning day to day. If someone figures out how to modulate your wireless router (I mean, long shot, yea) to smoke your neighbors power connection the 'ethics and morals' of said remote attackers is nearly meaningless. Especially in the case they live in a foreign country. Said attackers will be able to harass you with impunity while your power company is walking around with its thumb in its ass trying to figure out what's going wrong.
An untrusted finger can just switch the main breaker or an untrusted hammer can just smash the meter. There’s far easier ways to be destructive if you have physical access to the meter, which by default everyone is going to have because meters are required to be accessible by the public per electrical/fire/building codes.
A camera can easily catch someone with an hammer, it's kind of much harder to go one by one to destroy them that way and it's also probably much more dangerous to try to break something connected to the power lines like that.
This on the other hand is quick, can be done away from the meter, away from cameras, and can reach many meter at the same time. Considering the few terrorist acts that have been done to electricity distributions points, it does seems like a good ways for them to do a big impact easily, with the right antenna and amplifier.. you could do quite a bit of damage.
Right!?! NSFW features like the Oral-B brush has, where you can order a special brush that helps you relieve certain stress in the bedroom. With the modified Sonicare firmware, the brush won't stop after 2 minutes but keeps "brushing" until, well, you're 'done'...
Reminds me of the time I bought a lamp plug-in dimmer on Amazon, and I noticed that my "personal massager" was one of the "frequently bought with" items.
My wife and I had a lot of fun that night! Turns out the "personal massagers" work a lot better that way.
I might have misinterpreted the article, but I imagine that if the NFC tag on the brush locks out, the handset is no longer able to write new data to it (no 'brush seconds' can be added to the counter). This suggests to me that the handset will not start blinking and reminding you that you need a new brush, but will be happy to brush to infinity. I cannot imagine that the handset will refuse to brush if it can't write to the brush...
I have a third party brush head for my Philips Sonicare with none of the smart features and no electronics in the head (there's an air gap where they usually are) and it still works fine. This makes me wonder all the more why they put the effort in to secure the head.
Engineer gonna engineer. Someone probably just had the time and misplaced passion for security, and when they explained at the weekly standup that they'd added lockout after three attempts, everybody just nodded and moved on.
This has long been a temptation for engineers. 40 years ago the textbook in the digital electronics class I took at Caltech had a chapter called "The Engineer as Dope Pusher" that talked about it.
It gave as an example clothes dryers. The way most home clothes dryers working back then was you put the clothes in, you turn a dial on a timer to the number of minutes you want the dryer to run, and you press start.
The mechanical timers were very reliable. There hadn't been any substantial improvement in their design in decades because there really wasn't anything to improve. There had been improvement in the materials used, and in the cost, but fundamentally mechanical timers was a solved problem.
If the mechanical timer ever broke the repairperson would have replacements in their van. Even if they didn't have the specific one for your dryer it didn't matter because they all worked pretty much the same. They could just put in another one. Maybe the mounting holes wouldn't be in the right place, but they could easily improvise some way to mount it in your dryer.
The book went on to say that somewhere there is an engineer designing a new clothes dryer, and instead of a mechanical timer that engineer is putting in a digital timer. It has a microprocessor, 7 segment LED digit displays for the time, some buttons for interacting with it (such as setting the time and correcting mistakes), and a power supply. And let's not forget that it has software.
That digital timer has no advantage to the user over a mechanical timer. But it has disadvantages. The interface will be worse. It will cost more. It won't be more reliable and possibly will be less reliable, and if it does need repair the repairperson probable won't have the parts. If they have another brand's digital timer on hand they probably won't be able to adapt it to your dryer.
So why is that engineer designing the new dryer with a digital timer?
Because mechanical timers are boring. Digital electronics was at the cutting edge of consumer engineering then, and so by using a digital timer the engineer got to play with exciting new technology.
Mechanical timers are fine, but digital circuitry is by far going to be more reliable if designed properly. There isn't anything physically moving, so the failure modes are much more restrictive. Also, digital provides advantages with offering variable timing on a dryer, for instance, based on the input of a moisture sensor. Mechanical methods for that are more complicated.
Additionally, I would be very surprised if the digital solution is not cheaper to make. Maybe not when first originally introduced, but nowadays it very likely is.
You're right that repair-ability is hurt in some ways... but the industry has moved to compensate. You can buy boards and replace them. They aren't inherently hard to service, because the form factor doesn't really have limitations.
There is something physically moving: the machine itself. You can't wash or dry clothing without moving it around. Given that the entire machine moves (and on spin cycles, reasonably quickly), you need to make sure your circuitry is capable of handling the strain.
As a homeowner, I wish someone (anyone!) still sold reliable analog appliances that just did their job simply and made repair parts and schematics reasonably available.
Nobody would attach the timer to the actual moving drum, so the worst it has to deal with is physical vibrations from use (which, admittedly, can be quite violent if you have an unbalanced load). There are very few digital circuits that are actually meaningfully sensitive to vibrations. At worst, it's a manufacturing problem to make sure the PCB/solder joints don't crack from vibration.
In comparison, the mechanical timer is physically moving. A clockspring, or some sort of mechanism that physically sets the time remaining. Depending on how it's built, vibrations are a harder problem to solve. Not impossible, obviously, but it certainly adds cost.
Also, for most appliances we deal with today... they usually ARE simple to work on. Simple switches and mechanical contrivances. Parts are typically readily available... even PCBs, although possibly not at great pricing. There's certain appliances where you are basically screwed (fridges come to mind...), but that is mainly in my view because the typical failing part is the compressor. Nobody is rebuilding a compressor themselves.
In a fridge the typical failing part is the plastic shelves in the door. The compressor almost never fails and discarded fridges are a great source of cheap pumps if you need to scavenge them.
Source: The episode of 'The Secret Life of Machines' on fridges. Search it on YouTube.
Maybe for certain models. Personally I've never had a shelf break on any fridge I've used, which makes it sound like that's a user error to me.
On the compressors, there was a vast swath of Samsung and LG fridges that had known defects on compressors causing them to fail. Right now, the ice machines are probably most problematic. If you own a Samsung fridge with an ice maker you know what I mean.
A few years ago I was renting a house that came with a Samsung fridge that provided chilled water / ice. My kids loved the chilled water.
However, our usage of it caused the paint to start bubbling below the dispenser, and the owners of the rental wanted me to replace the door at a cost of ~$800 USD(!).
I argued that we were using the fridge as designed, so we weren't liable, instead they should discuss what looked to me like an obvious design flaw with Samsung.
They disagreed, so we ended up in court. My defence was about 12 pages printed from an appliance review site of people specifically complaining about this paint bubbling.
Easiest win ever, but seriously, how do you put a device that works with water into a fridge and fail to ensure it can't leak under the paintwork?
I do minor appliance repairs on occasion and the current time of manuals, videos and parts availablity feels like a golden age.
Granted, none of my large appliances are younger than 10 years, but I think I could build new ones (expensively) for the all the parts and schematics available, even wiring diagrams.
Yup exactly. And the electronics in a clothes washer allow for a lot more functionality than mech. When they say the "timer" was replaced with electronics, what they really mean to say is "the timer was replaced by electronics, which also allow you to select different temperatures/runtimes and whatnot based on the type of fabric you're washing or how fast you want it to be done, if you want stain removal or extra rinse then you can enable that, amongst other new options".
"Repairability" is becoming slightly nonsense because even as someone who is a programmer, who has done electronics at a hobbyist level myself, I'm not going to be able to fix a lot of stuff purely because you have to become an expert on it, the time investment is too high. As systems get more complex (to the overall benefit of all of us) the value of repairing something yourself vs getting an expert to do it, changes.
I think right to repair is good though, but purely meaning that companies to not intentionally attempt to thwart the repair of their devices and that parts/manuals are available where needed. Even so, this doesn't mean that every phone repair place is going to debug some sub-circuit inside some small part of the newest iPhone - they'll just identify the overall broken module and replace the entire board/module.
Yeah, I’m always skeptical of “it was better in the old days” type arguments (even though I recognize the aesthetic appeal of analog).
People make similar claims about cars, but old cars broke down all the time and new ones are basically appliances that “just work” without the driver needing to know anything. Similar for computers to smart phones (though obviously both digital in that transition)
It wasn’t the old days. At the time the book was written and at the time I took the class mechanical timers in dryers were ubiquitous. Digital was new, expensive, and didn’t offer any advantages for that application.
Eventually digital became cheap, and enabled new features like dryers that had various sensors that could be used to optimize drying, but that was several years down the road.
Back in the "good old days", a car was ready for the junk heap after 50k miles. These days, that's barely broken-in. "But you could fix it yourself!" Who cares when the thing has such a short lifespan? It's really strange hearing people pining for the days of shitty old cars that you needed to constantly adjust the carb, set the points, etc. Insane.
> If the mechanical timer ever broke the repairperson would have replacements in their van
> That digital timer has no advantage to the user over a mechanical timer. But it has disadvantages.
The mechanical timer is known to degrade over time, which is why the repair person has spares in their van. Does the digital timer really have no advantages? Will it ever fail and need to be replaced? How much more does it cost?
Yes, engineers are tempted to use shiny tools all of the time. Evaluating whether or not the tool is right for the job is _hard_. But it feels wrong to say that novelty is the only motivation behind upgrading tools?
The digital timer was made by an engineer, too, who designed it to be a more reliable replacement for faulty mechanical timers. It has both advantages and disadvantages compared to mechanical timers, which is why the engineer made it in the first place?
> The mechanical timer is known to degrade over time, which is why the repair person has spares in their van. Does the digital timer really have no advantages? Will it ever fail and need to be replaced? How much more does it cost?
Surely the expected lifetime of a digital timer is shorter than that of a mechanical timer.
Surely is a very strong statement here. I see no reason that a properly designed electronic timer wouldn't have effectively infinite lifetime, which is not possible with a practical mechanical timer. It has no moving parts (other than switches, which can be substituted for capacitive touch). A mechanical timer has many small mechanical parts and wear points, and can get gummed up over time if it doesn't outright stop functioning.
In practice, cost engineering is going to mean neither is completely reliable, but it should be cheaper to make an electronic timer reliable enough. Especially today, where the cost of a functioning mechanical timer is probably an order of magnitude more than an equivalent electronic timer.
I'm willing to believe that the best electronic switches can last longer than the best mechanical switches, but there's so many more ways for an electronic switch to fail that it's a lot easier for me to trust an off-the-shelf mechanical switch than an off-the-shelf electronic one, especially if the cost of failure of the mechanical switch is just an easy swap in of another one.
Capacitors can die, for example. Anything with a battery backup, the battery can leak and damage components. Electronics are more prone to ESD and water damage than mechanical parts.
Going into the realm of unlikely scenarios, electronics are more susceptible to EMPs.
The thing is: It is moving as there are vibrations. There is a fair amount of acceleration and a high frequency. Then there are temperature cycles as the machinery is not perfectly isolated. There is migration of atoms at contact boundaries. Plenty things move.
What do you mean by "reliable" wrt mechanical timers? I'm pretty sure the clothing dryer is a harsh environment for such a component (moisture and heat can easily cause corrosion and mechanical stress). Also, I guess timing gets less accurate over time. If there are rubbers preventing moisture from entering and oil from leaving, those rubbers will wear out.
Like another commenter said, the timer is segregated from the harsh dryer environment.
But also, some slop in the timing accuracy is just fine. The user doesn't really know how long precisely the drier needs to run to dry their clothes. They just know that if they set this timer to 45 then the clothes come out dry.
I wish there were an easy way to screen these type of engineers out in the hiring process. It's very hard to judge whether a candidate's excitement over new technology is simply showing passion for what they do or a red flag. A certain degree of passion is desirable, but too much is not.
The worst engineers I've worked with are ones who, in their first week, fall behind on their onboarding plan because the company's compiler needs a rewrite.
When I was a kid I thought it would be cool to be an engineer because I was really interested in creating elegant and efficient designs for things that made them simpler and easier to produce. But I didn't end up becoming an engineer...
More likely the toothbrush had to pass a security audit. And the last thing you want to have to explain to management is the DEFCON presentation on toothbrush security flaws. No. You. Don't.
Perhaps some compliance to a too-broad security policy. Like, across the board, all NFC enabled electronics with read/write capabilities must have a password mechanism.
They probably knew it was dumb but implementing it was easier than getting around all the organizational permissions to make an exception.
I don't know what people get out of repeating this on every single fusion article. It's not inventive or insightful, and it doesn't further the discussion in the slightest.
some people are new to the Fusion discussion. They've missed the last 50 yrs of "fusion is 10 yrs away" claims. Over the years, I've learned to temper all discovery excitement. Its the other side of the coin equivalent of the the XKCD 10000 comic[1].
Because it's A) true, B) relevant to keep all of the hype in check. The year of Linux on the desktop is always right around the corner too. Yes, they are tropes, but they were not born out of nothing.
Someone has to keep the bloviated PR campaigns checked with reality. Otherwise, some crazy fools might actually start believing that fusion is real and gets duped out of their money. If you can't stand a bit of real criticism, then maybe you should sell your scam somewhere else. Otherwise, take it on the chin, retool your message, and come at it honestly.
It's not true. The original quote was 30 years given current funding. They reduced the funding and surprise surprise it didn't get done. It's like when you estimate how long a project will take given a thousand people, and they reduce the number of people on the project to one person and then hold you to the original estimate.
Okay, but then if the funding has decreased, what hasn't the "years away" increased? No, that wouldn't sound good in a press release now would it. So they keep saying it is just around the corner. It's like the religious people saying that the second coming is right around the corner for over a thousand years now. I know, I know, religious zealots and science (zealots?) are different. Or are they?
Show me a fusion scientist saying fusion is 30 years away.
No one in the article is even saying that. It's people in the comments repeating the same thing from the 80s.
What article? It's people speculating on the announcement that another announcement is coming. It just feeds into the hype machine. With this level of hype, watch them come out and show off the Segway!
If you want to keep the hype in check, do it with facts like /acidburnNSA did above. Let people debate. You don’t even know what will be announced. Repeating the same joke in every single fusion article is tiresome and has long past its funny expiration date.
Why does it have to be funny? It's just a sad statement about the situation. Maybe you're tired of people not being as excited as you, or even willing to for a second hold their breath any longer on this topic. But here we are at another announcement essentially saying "this shit is hard. with more funding, we could possibly maybe do something in the nearish future". Anything announced in the PRs is just mumbojumbo hand waving to explain why what they are saying isn't really saying anything substantive other than to keep fusion in the news so it is easier to raise money. This is the main perception of fussion by the masses.
Personally, I just don't see fusion being a viable solution for anything in any of our lifetimes. I will gladly admit how wrong I was if/when someone solves it. I just have a much stronger doubt in sci-fi vs reality, and don't get swooned by the hype machines surrounding fusion.
What is tiring to me is calling the skeptics tiring. But to each their own
I think one can be simultaneously excited about a big breakthrough like this, but also understand that there's still a ton more to do before we have viable fusion power.
And it's unreasonable and annoying to expect everyone to say "This is amazing, but..." rather than just "This is amazing". Yes, we know, fusion power isn't ready, and we have no idea when (or if) it will be.
I haven't been "holding my breath". I've been watching from afar, checking in occasionally (like when this sort of news comes out), and I genuinely think this particular breakthrough is exciting. I don't need the tiresome -- yes, incredibly, frustratingly tiresome -- legion of naysayers coming in and stating the obvious every single time.
It's also weird to watch people debate passionately but without the passion to actually gain expertise in the thing they are debating. I find it weird that we do this. I'm not immune, we all do it. We should at least be cognizant and try to reduce how heated we get over things we know so little about. It is just weird.
It's not a trope; it's a cliché. There's nothing wrong with poking holes in overinflated hype, but do they have to be so boring and repetitive about it.
It's also just a parrot trick. There's no reason behind why it is 30 years away or even why 30 instead of 15 instead of 20. It is just a line. These numbers are meaningless but touted as a way to add validity to the argument without providing actual evidence for why fusion is such a tough nut to crack. We should dispose of hype, but let's do it from a place of understanding. I hope we're a bit smarter than parrots.
If you keep telling me the same thing with the same lack of results, I could say the same to you as being boring and repetitive. Just because you say 2+2=5 and someone tells you you're wrong every time doesn't mean they are boring and repetitive.
How is this "lack of results"? This particular announcement is a huge result!
Maybe it's not the result you think it should be ("with all they hype over decades, we should have fusion power by now"), but... too bad. It is what it is, and this particular announcement is indeed impressive.
It is not, in fact, a huge result, except insofar as it is convenient for further weapons research. It does not bring civil fusion power even a single day nearer.
While we're on the "wartime economy" topic - is your country currently at war? Is any EU country currently formally at war? Is the US? How would that justify a "war time economy decision"?!?
You can't just throw all democracy laws and regulations overboard just because Russia is messing in their backyard (okay - that is an understatement, but you get the point)...
No we don't need to throw democracy and regulations overboard, but we do need policies that reflect the urgency of the situation. Europe needs be entirely off of Russian gas for the foreseeable future. And unfortunately in the short run this means bringing some coal plants that were slated for decommission back online just to get through the winter.
In the slightly longer term, the rest of the world really needs to get off of fossil fuels and be cutting carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions. This is critical and urgent, but not at the cost of the rule of law or democracy.
What we got is a society fully dependent on cheap electricity, that must further increase energy usage in order to prevent greater catastrophe, and which is on the verge of economic depression.
We can't throw all democracy laws and regulations overboard, but we can't continue with statue quo. Without energy we don't have working cities, agriculture stops producing food, heating and then public health starts to break down. The agricultural sector was one of the first areas that got hit when energy prices jumped.
Those things are close enough to be wartime-like, and could easily turn into actually wartime.
Not sure how this would work outside the Netherlands where I live, but there seems to be a relation between the housing market and the interest rates...
We currently see the interest rates go up rather quickly. This has a great effect on your monthly mortgage payments, and (at least here) the amount of money the bank is willing to lend you.
While the EU had interest rates close to zero percent for the past decade, buying an expensive house was not a problem: your monthly payments for interest were almost zero. With the interest rate climbing, the number of people that still can buy this expensive house reduces significantly. And so the prices of the houses start dropping as well.
Of course, as long as you are happy with your house and all is well there is no problem. But when you get unemployed, decide to get divorced or otherwise have to sell your house but the bank still owns it, you have an issue. Where you bought it for 600.000, you now get 400.000 - and the bank really wants the 200.000 back...
With the centrally heated house rising, so we forgot the skill (and pleasure) to heat your house with a fire (coal, wood). We buy fully-prepared meals in the supermarket - no longer willing to go to three or four separate shops to buy the ingredients and spend time at home putting them together. Even bread-making at home has been replaced by a machine that does it for you.
Technology takes over, and there are always people that think this is a bad thing. But it's of all times and started before our ancestors decided to walk upright...
The skill and pleasure of heating your house with coal? The house my mother grew up in had a coal furnace in it through sometime in the 1960s, and on cold mornings somebody had to be the first out of bed to get the furnace going. I don't know who that person was--probably an uncle--but I doubt he missed the chance to exercise the skill.
Anyone an idea?