matt, Author at Peak Geek - Page 43 of 114

I’ve been following the story of the mystery rock on Mars with some interest. The aging rover Opportunity photographed the same area twelve days apart, and found that a new rock had appeared. It’s being compared to a jelly doughnut due to its size and dark center. So where did it come from? Possibly an meteorite impact, or (more likely) one of the rover’s wheels kicking it up out of place.

The appearance of the rock isn’t the only interesting thing about this though. For starters, it’s flipped upside down, exposing a side of the rock that the rover would otherwise never see. Further analysis has revealed even more surprises – the composition of this rock is unlike anything found on Mars so far. The darker center portion of the rock is high in sulfur, very high in magnesium, and has a lot more manganese than you’d expect, too.

No one knows what any of this means, but it’s pretty cool that a ten year old rover, originally expected to last three months, is still helping us learn more about the red planet.

Read more here.

A new report from Oxfam called “Working for the Few” casts some light on wealth inequality and the change over time. Around half of the world’s wealth belongs to 1% of the people…and if you look at the 85 richest people, you find they own more than half of the rest of the people on this rock. The share of income globally going to the richest one percent has been increasing since 1980, as well, which this graphic shows. I suppose everyone has their own opinions on whether or not this is good, but the basic concern is that as wealth becomes more and more concentrated like this, governments and corporations will gravitate towards serving that minority. Get the full report at Oxfam, or read more over at BoingBoing.

If you’re smart, you want to buy the most reliable hard drive possible…but what would that be? Enterprise-class drives are a common choice, but are they worth the extra money? How do the different brands compare? There’s a company called BackBlaze that runs a business backing up all the data from your computer, unlimited storage, for just $5 per month. So, as you might expect, they go through a lot of hard drives. At the end of 2013, they were using a total of 27,134 drives! Fortunately for the rest of us, they’ve tracked HDD longevity and made the results public at their blog (very smart marketing move!).

There are some interesting conclusions from their testing. First, they’ve found that if reliability is your priority, the extra cost of enterprise-class drives isn’t worth it. What I find most fascinating is the graph that’s posted here, showing how Seagate, well, sucks. In spite of that though, they’re still fans of Seagate and still buying new ones, as they explain in their blog. In short, some Seagate driaves are OK, others have a 120% annual failure rate (meaning, they won’t even last a year). If you want to be safe though, stick with Western Digital or Hitachi.

A leaked UN report paints a grim picture for the future of our species on this planet. It warns that climate change may be nearly impossible to solve if we don’t act soon. Dealing with the result of our current course of inaction will require technology that doesn’t exist currently, and may not even be feasible. The report acknowledges the economic damage that stopping climate change quickly will cause…but this pales in comparison to the damage that inaction will bring. I’m not convinced that yet another report like this will actually drive change…not when there are so many special interests focused more on their own short term profit rather than ensuring a stable planet for future generations to enjoy. Sad.

Author: matt

Mystery rock on Mars

85 Richest people wealthier than half the rest of us

HDD reliability test results

Leaked UN report warns of climate change consequences

Eco-friendly alternatives for K-cup lovers