
Memory stick found in frozen seal faeces in New Zealand - hsnewman
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-47135528
======
kinow
Hey it was found by a co-worker. Here's the original article we published:
[https://niwa.co.nz/news/they-were-defrosting-leopard-seal-
po...](https://niwa.co.nz/news/they-were-defrosting-leopard-seal-pooyou-wont-
believe-what-happened-next)

Lots of funny tweets about it too:
[https://mobile.twitter.com/niwa_nz/status/109261054140158771...](https://mobile.twitter.com/niwa_nz/status/1092610541401587712)

Finally, hijacking the thread, but we also have a Python Open Source tool if
you are into weather forecast, workflow, schedulers, etc:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19081972](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19081972)

------
lota-putty
Irony, we can't see any photos of 'USB stick in seal faeces' despite 'camera
in every hand' these days!

Or did I miss them by 'JavaScript' blocking by default?

[http://www.leopardseals.org/scat-poo-
collection/](http://www.leopardseals.org/scat-poo-collection/)

------
gnat
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a leopard seal anus of USB flash drives
hurtling through the Pacific Ocean.

~~~
gnat
(original:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/20jlv3/n...](https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/20jlv3/never_underestimate_the_bandwidth_of_a_station/))

------
Grue3
What is the brand name/model of this thing? I'd imagine the fact that it
survived being eaten and frozen would be a great endorsement for the
durability of the product.

------
kekzzz
Did no one ever tell you to not plug every usb stick you find into your
computer? could've had malware on it... or worse: seal poop!

~~~
pvaldes
... or sealware. Fortunately the memory stick remained sealed after being un-
sealed. Able to stand both being dipped in strong acid, saltwater and very low
temperatures. Impressive if we think about it.

I had find a lot of plastic in whale stomachs, is not uncommon at all.

~~~
pvaldes
-> I had found

------
pts_
Was expecting the faeces to carbon date to some tens of thousands of year ago
(cue Timeline by Michael Crichton).

~~~
lupinglade
Yeah, that would be a lot more newsworthy.

------
peterjussi
Now that's some long con social engineering. I'm impressed.

------
Inception
Check it for BitCoin

------
danans
If it's frozen they probably just need to reboot it.

~~~
zoom6628
The drive was sealed for security reasons.

~~~
buchanan
A deep dive into the issue has secreted the secret.

------
andbberger
I am so very disappointed it's not ancient seal faeces.

I think we should carbon date it to be sure. Just imagine, forebearer design
committees!

------
userbinator
_But the discovery of the stick is a cause of concern._

No it isn't. This is AFAIK the first occurrence of its kind (which is why it
made the news) and very likely to be a rare accident. Start getting concerned
when this routinely happens, or other _usually considered disposable_ items
start getting found; otherwise it's just paranoic fearmongering.

~~~
bacon_waffle
I live a couple hours drive from where this scat was collected; the local
wildlife centre here has a box full of plastic "usually considered disposable
items" that came out of an albatross stomach on display. It's absolutely
gross, you can start being concerned now please.

~~~
bacon_waffle
While I've got an audience: I do embedded electronics/firmware for my day job,
and literally this morning bowed out of a volunteer project building a
monitoring system for that same local wildlife centre [1]. I have a good job,
and am kept busy between it, upkeep of a small home, and a healthy-ish mix of
fun and volunteer stuff - just can't make time for that project. It's a good
life, I am very lucky and am not trying to complain.

But, isn't it a bit weird that we collectively make decisions that lead to
this sort of situation - where I'm spending my day getting a VoIP phone better
(OK, posting on HN), instead of helping out make the world better?

I'd love to be able to dial back the "real job" to put more effort in to this
sort of thing, but it just doesn't seem like our industry would be OK with a
20-hour work week. And, it doesn't seem that the conservation groups would be
able to pay market rates for engineering work, which is also a shame.

How can we fix this?

[1] [https://albatross.org.nz/](https://albatross.org.nz/) Basically, what's
wanted is a system to 1) alert the staff when people peek under the lids of
nest boxes for penguins, and 2) attempt to read the RFID tags implanted in
those birds, so that when one parent doesn't come home, their egg/chick can be
rescued (lose 1 bird instead of 3).

~~~
kinow
That's a very good question. I know a few companies here in Auckland that give
their employees some days per year to work on volunteer projects. Maybe that
could be extended to longer periods?

Another alternative is to use industry veterans. We have few from programming
background, but I believe that might change in a few years?

~~~
bacon_waffle
Yeah, I'm sure my employer would be OK with a few days/year too, but what I'm
getting at is: Our society makes it impractical for skilled workers to put in
more like months/year in to socially beneficial projects, what can we do to
fix that?

