Having worked in classified areas, both as an admin and an unprivileged user, CDs were normally the method of transferring data up the network. (Transferring down rarely occurred, and even then you’d be limited to plaintext files or printouts.)

I’ve seen more places use data diodes to perform one- or two-way transfers so that requests can be streamlined and there’s no loose media to worry about tracking. It’s not super fast and higher speeds mean more expensive equipment, but it covers 98% of software update needs, and most non-admin file transfers were under 20MB anyways.

Anything that did require a USB drive, like special test equipment (STE) or BIOS updates, had to use a FIPS-140-1 approved drive that offered a ready-only mode via PIN. This drive could only be written to from a specific workstation that was isolated from the rest of the machines (where data was transferred via CDs of course) and required two persons to perform the job to ensure accountability.

Not the most time-efficient way of doing things, and not completely bulletproof, but it works well enough to keep things moving forward.

Oh I didn’t know the Air Force Reserves did that! Though that makes a lot of sense given how it’s surveilling in proximity to the States. Good use of aircraft and brainpower in that pursuit.

Well shit, I read the Wikipedia link and some articles from the comment about the NOAA Hurricane Hunters and assumed you were referring to them.

The C-130J you linked from the ADS-B recorder seems to be military. Guess they’ve been using them for a while for storm reconnaissance.

Seems that the C-130s won’t be ready until 2030. Looks like they’re using WP-3D Orion aircraft currently.

Thanks for linking to the reports. I pulled September’s to review and was shocked at the amount of disasters still funded for recovery/operations. Considering my own reaction, I don’t think people realize just how many simultaneous projects are still being managed and how long they’ve taken to use up funds. (Not the fault of FEMA; Louisiana apparently requested an extension to use $1.66B in 2022 as it couldn’t exhaust it by the Aug 2023 deadline.) A lot of the money is already committed or awarded and waiting to be spent. Handling so many projects at the same time explains the sudden drain you see from some months. All of this is categorized down to each region receiving funds per disaster response. Simple enough to track.

we use different search engine so you didn't find this particular hit

Tangential due to personal curiosity, but which engine did you use? I was testing via Google while logged in. Most of my development at work and at home uses Python with some Rust once or twice a month. I just realized that when I’m searching I usually am not looking for books to purchase but instead trying to find answers in forums or Stackoverflow. Perhaps the reading material was not presented as Google was trying to personalize results to match my search habits.

I was a bit cranky

As was I, and I apologize for that since it triggered all of this.

I'm quite fed up with the attitude that it is someone elses obligation to spoon feed you with knowledge that exists right under the nose

I suggested it in response to someone else’s comment, but I believe part of the issue is a lack of a polished collection of material aimed towards newcomers from particular languages. By that I mean there’s definitely volumes of “good” material, don’t get me wrong, but learning from them individually doesn’t necessarily help with understanding how to think and plan things out with a Rust mindset.

In my own journey I’ve found many guides, posts, and videos that help you get launched into writing basic code. However I struggle to discover ones that go beyond the code to plan and anticipate pitfalls you normally may not encounter from another language. I brought up static lifetimes because halfway through coding a multithreaded project I’ll get an error about this or a struct being partially moved. At which point I would need to refactor things somewhat to make the compiler and borrow checker happy, but mentally it didn’t make sense as to how to correctly do so with what I sought to achieve.

A community-compiled collection of resources that guides you in your journey from Novice to Expert would probably help stem the tide of requests people make for getting into Rust. The official YouTube channel has some interesting videos from conferences but nothing that walks you through proficiency. And the forums, as far as I can tell, don’t have something pinned for users to point towards when someone asks the same thing.

Perhaps if people are asking to be spoon-fed when a lot is available, we should be asking them if they’ve tried to search and why they need help looking for more. Maybe it’s not laziness; perhaps there’s something specific they can’t quite find that helps fill in the gap of their understanding, and we should work towards making those resources easier to discover autonomously.

I didn’t say they were bad. I was pointing out that:

1. Blaming a user for not hitting the same results on search engines is a flawed argument; my search did not present the book that was linked in the original comment, even while using the title of the book as the search phrase. It instead was a mix of forums, social media, and YouTube tutorials, all of which do not have the same depth as a good book.
2. The material presented in some of the “Rust for C++ programmers” videos and posts focused more on direct translation of syntax. This is good “first step” material to make the user more comfortable, but again they didn’t cover the common pitfalls that a C++ developer will encounter when they’re still approaching Rust with a C++ mindset.

That said, the guide you’ve shared was in fact on the first page of my results, and is definitely a good example of the type of content that is available. What I think should take place is a compilation of similar guides and books to be posted either in the Rust forums as a pin or a YouTube playlist in the official channel, perhaps even with a small list of suggested crates to review the source code of as pristine examples.

There are lots of guides, tutorials and documentation.

is one I found using a tool called search engine...

Strange. That’s not what I get when I search for “Rust for C++ programmers”. I get flooded with anecdotal accounts/posts from people on Reddit and YouTube talking about their love or hate towards Rust.

Then there’s 3 hour-or-longer videos about Rust which target C++ devs directly. Two are from 2022 and 2019 with one from 2023. Only the 2022 video starts from basics with features that a C++ dev would actually need to understand, like ownership, borrowing, and references. One jumps right into multithreading ideas by discussing mutex. The other jumps into how everything is made “easier” because the compile does borrow-checking instead of having the developer manage it.

These videos probably aren’t bad, but they don’t touch on the larger “gotchas” that C++ maintainers will be scratching their head at, like explicit lifetimes, inevitable headaches with error handling, and reference/target mutability. Some of them are a good start, but they mostly focus on just technical features. It’s difficult to find a resource that helps you learn how to plan out your project early on so you’re not refactoring later due to the topics mentioned earlier.

And to be honest, if you are unable to use them to learn rust, maybe your c++ skills isn't that impressive either.

And this is why 6% of non-Rust users have cited the community as a barrier of entry. Immediate pettiness and hostility rather than trying to get the best resources into the hands of newcomers.

Disclosed responsibly

Received a Cease & Desist order with threat of litigation if released to the public

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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whatever the Indian equivalent is

Uncle Vivek

And the Chamber of Commerce is undoubtedly going to sue in court this week to have it overturned while telling us that it’s actually pro-employee to not be able to work elsewhere because of overreaching NCAs.

Oh wait…