pjettter 5 years ago

I like mimetics.

I'm not a distributed database expert.

But I'm wondering: is this analogous to sharding? Not really, I guess. Eventual consistency? Not really, I guess.

Is it: sharding + replication + "ordering" => Eventual consistency?

What do we have in tech that behaves like this?

  • JakeKalstad 5 years ago

    The way p2p torrents work to some degree? One node can draw on surrounding nodes to retrieve smaller portions of the full data.

mogadsheu 5 years ago

It’s pretty amazing that we’re capable of identifying behavior like this.

They’re like little DNA paratroopers behind enemy lines

mehrdadn 5 years ago

It's really eerie how similar biological viruses are to computer viruses. Even though that's obviously why they transferred the name, I feel like you still wouldn't expect quite such a similarity...

  • pizza234 5 years ago

    Multipartite viruses actually don't work like that. The difference is here:

    > researchers realized that a [biological] virus could be composed of two or more independent pieces, all of which were vital for infection

    multipartite computer viruses are monolithic; when they infect a boot sector, if there is not enough space, additional segments of the virus are stored in other parts of the disk (eg. masked as bad sectors), but it's still a single logical unit.

    It would certainly be an interesting idea for malware to break into independent pieces in separate logical locations (boot, files, etc.), but that's not how multipartite viruses traditionally work (or worked; I'm referring to DOS viruses).

    • pointlessss 5 years ago

      I think your mention of boot disks and sectors is a conceptual abstraction that is not relevant to the basic idea.

      Taking a literal technology example, and including the design choices of some corporation, has nothing to do with other possibilities or choises and designs that function without the peripheral devices you specifically point out.

      What about a system that doesn't operate according to ideas of "booting" or "restarting"?

oldman123456789 5 years ago

Perhaps unrelated. Could biophotons be connected to this in some way?

  • toby- 5 years ago

    I think you're misunderstanding what a biophoton is?

    Biophotons are just regular old photons produced by a living being (biological system). I'm not sure how they could be relevant, here.

gilbertmpanga12 5 years ago

They are ninjas... Isn't this phenomena similar to the way biomarkers from antibodies work?

Jonathanks 5 years ago

This is amazing. Is it like MapReduce, but for virus replication and transmission?