flopunctro's comments

Though i wouldn't call it "hard scifi", the Culture series is indeed a classic and i second the recommendation.

Some enterprise-grade server platforms already have this functionality, it's called a "watchdog". Linux supports this since (at least) 2.4.

I've been using this with HP ProLiant servers and (for me, at least) it has always worked as intended.

For more info, search "linux watchdog timer".

> Companies that offer this service

You can't possibly trust any company with this kind of service. This is something you need to [learn how to] build yourself.

The concept of "deadman's switch" has an implicit component of "trust no one", IMHO.

Power over who? If you as an elite kill your subjects, who will provide for your needs? Who will work the fields that provide your food, who will repair your cars and house automations, who will mow your lawn? We're still far from a sustainable fully-automated food cycle.

So I believe the superclass don't want their subjects dead; they want them submissive, healthy enough to work without dying, and happy enough to not be motivated to try to change the system.

P.S. from a certain POV, money itself is a consolidation of power. The superclass uses money as an enslavement method -- see how most of middle-class are constrained to wage-work for paying back their debts.

You can't "turn off" that bunker, it has multiple diesel generators and lots of fuel reserves. It also has clean water reserves and air filtering capabilities, so you can't gas the people inside.

Physically cutting its uplink lines would be IMHO the most efficient way to neutralize that datacenter.

I believe there is at least one case of compromise where a trusted liveCD will not help: a hardware keylogger connected on the keyboard circuit. (I think i saw this in some movie, and I liked the idea very much).

So even if your kernel is trusted, your network stack is trusted at all layers, your communications are cryptographically secure, the words you are writing can be seen by an attacker through this device. Perhaps in or near realtime.

The "spam" and "ham" IMAP folders correspond to a certain file or folder(1) on the server. Email users have the learning commands in crontab. These are as simple as "sa-learn --spam /path/to/spam_folder; sa-learn --ham /path/to/ham_folder".

(1) file if the backend is mbox, folder if the backend is Maildir.

A private switchboard sounds complex, but it can be a single Asterisk server with 2 phone lines connected to it.

Dial in, optionally identify with PIN, type the number you want to call, Asterisk calls it for you, then connects your line with it.