Type of Extinguisher Effectiveness on Lithium-ion Fires

• Water ⚠️ Not effective
• Foam ⚠️ Risky; can spread fire
• DCP (Dry Chemical Powder) ✅ Better, but not always reliable
• Specialized Lithium Iron Extinguishers ✅ Most effective!

Class D extinguishers are designed specifically for flammable metals, making them effective against lithium battery fires. Other types, like CO2 and foam extinguishers, can be used in some cases but may not always be effective. Always check labels for proper use.

• Class D extinguishers: Best for lithium fires.
• CO2 extinguishers: Good for electrical fires, but not always effective on lithium.
• Foam extinguishers: Work for some flammable materials, but avoid lithium.

Now let's meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Rob" who at the time of Y2K worked for Sun Microsystems in the UK.

As a global company, Sun had an early warning system for any Y2K problems: Its Australian office was 11 hours ahead of the UK office, so if any problems struck there, the company would get advance notice.

Which is why, as midnight neared Down Under, Rob's boss called Sun's Sydney office … then heard the phone line go terrifyingly silent as the clock ticked pas midnight. Rob said that "scared the hell out of my manager" – at least for a few moments, because the phone soon rang.

"It was the Australian office, laughing their heads off," Rob told On Call. ®

Netinstall is a tool for installing and reinstalling MikroTik devices running RouterOS. Always try using Netinstall if you suspect that your device is not working properly. The tool is available for Windows (with a graphical interface) and for Linux (as a command line tool). 

In short, the Netinstall procedure goes like this: Connect your PC directly to the boot port (Usually Ether1, the port labeled BOOT or as otherwise indicated in the product manual) of the device you will be reinstalling. Turn on the device while holding the reset button until it shows up in the Netinstall tool.

Careful. Netinstall re-formats the system's drive, all configuration and saved files will be lost. Netinstall does not erase the RouterOS license key, nor does it reset RouterBOOT related settings, for example, CPU frequency is not changed after reinstalling the device.

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Traffic graphs will be deleted. Backup and restore if this history is desirable.

RouterBOOT reset button has three functions:

• Hold this button during boot time until the LED light starts flashing, and release the button to reset the RouterOS configuration (total 5 seconds)
• Keep holding for 5 more seconds, LED turns solid, release now to turn on CAPs mode (total 10 seconds)
• Or Keep holding the button for 5 more seconds until the LED turns off, then release it to make the RouterBOARD look for Netinstall servers

Part 2 There's a wealth of highly usable free software for the big proprietary desktop OSes. You can escape paying subscriptions and switch to free software without changing your OS.

In the first half of this short series, we looked at how to freshen up an aging Mac or Windows 10 PC, and ideally, how to wipe it and install a clean, bloat-free copy of its OS. That is all well and good, but this leaves the problem of what to put on that OS to get out of the trap of software you paid for but don't own. //

Compare OpenAlternative.co, which is snazzy and effects-heavy, with the decidedly low-tech Best FOSS Alternatives, which is very simple and austere. The latter has nothing to sell; it's just a plain, simple categorized list of FOSS tools. If you scroll to the end, it even has a short list of alternatives to itself. //

On a fresh new copy of Windows, the easiest way to get up and running is Ninite. https://ninite.com/

Yakisugi is a Japanese architectural technique for charring the surface of wood. It has become quite popular in bioarchitecture because the carbonized layer protects the wood from water, fire, insects, and fungi, thereby prolonging the lifespan of the wood. Yakisugi techniques were first codified in written form in the 17th and 18th centuries. But it seems Italian Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci wrote about the protective benefits of charring wood surfaces more than 100 years earlier, according to a paper published in Zenodo, an open repository for EU funded research. //

Leonardo produced more than 13,000 pages in his notebooks (later gathered into codices), less than a third of which have survived. //

In 2003, Alessandro Vezzosi, director of Italy’s Museo Ideale, came across some recipes for mysterious mixtures while flipping through Leonardo’s notes. Vezzosi experimented with the recipes, resulting in a mixture that would harden into a material eerily akin to Bakelite, a synthetic plastic widely used in the early 1900s. So Leonardo may well have invented the first manmade plastic. //

The benefits of this method of wood preservation have since been well documented by science, although the effectiveness is dependent on a variety of factors, including wood species and environmental conditions. The fire’s heat seals the pores of the wood so it absorbs less water—a natural means of waterproofing. The charred surface serves as natural insulation for fire resistance. And stripping the bark removes nutrients that attract insects and fungi, a natural form of biological protection.

David 132Silver badge
Happy
"Worst prank ever"?

at least for a few moments, because the phone soon rang.

"It was the Australian office, laughing their heads off..."

Ah, what they should have done, instead of just hanging up the phone at local midnight, is babble something incoherent about "my god... the koalas... wallabies... they've got machetes... oh the humanity... oh nooooo, the 'roos have taken Clyde..."

And then hung up the phone. //

jakeSilver badge
My y2k horror story.
I sat in a lonely office in Redwood City for a couple hours before and after midnight, playing with Net Hack[0]. My phone didn't ring once. As expected.

The cold, hard reality is that I and several hundred thousand (a couple million? Dunno.) other computer people worked on "the Y2K problem" for well over 20 years, on and off. Come the morning of January 1st, 2000 damn near everything worked as intended ... thus causing brilliant minds to conclude that it was never a problem to begin with.

HOWever, in the 2 years leading up to 2000, I got paid an awful lot of money re-certifying stuff that I had already certified to be Y2K compliant some 10-20 years earlier. Same for the embedded guys & gals. By the time 2000 came around, most of the hard work was close to a decade in the past ... the re-certification was pure management bullshit, so they could be seen as doing something ... anything! ... useful during the beginning of the dot-bomb bubble bursting.

[0] Not playing the game, rather playing with the game. Specifically modifying the source to add some stuff for a friend. //

Anonymous John
FAIL
Y2.003K
The government dept I worked had a flawless Y2K. Until a software update three years later. A drop down year menu went

2004

2003

2002

2001

1900

Quite an achievement for seven year old software that used four digit years from the start.

Big anniversaries are coming up in 2026: 200 years since the deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, 250 since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, 250 since Adam Smith published “The Wealth of Nations.”

But an anniversary this month deserves special attention, too — Dec. 16 marked 250 years since the birth of Jane Austen, one of the greatest novelists who’s ever lived.

She’s still read today, and millions of people who’ve never so much as peeked into the covers of “Pride and Prejudice,” “Sense and Sensibility” or “Emma” know Austen’s stories from their film and television adaptations. //

Like the Declaration of Independence and “The Wealth of Nations,” her works have stood the test of two centuries and more for a reason.

They are grounded in truths about human nature, and those truths are expressed in ways that enchant as well as instruct.