I bought a 97 Ford Taurus off a friend for $800 back in 2008. Her dad thought it was on its last legs at 155k miles so he wanted to sell it. I drove it for four years. It was running fine until someone blasted it out in front of my girlfriend’s house and drove off. At the time it had 206k miles. 50k miles for $800 was certainly one of my best purchases.
While I agree with the fear mongering on solar storms, it is quite common for radio disruptions and GPS interference from solar storms. HF radios used by airlines and HAM radio operators work by bouncing light waves off the bottom of the ionosphere (~ 100km). When storms hit, it rapidly heats this region up, which causes expansion downward. This results in the radio waves either being absorbed or reflecting at lower altitudes causing communication difficulties. GPS satellites work by bouncing light between a transmitter (the satellite) and a receiver (your car for example). Solar storms produce showers of additional electrons that interfere with the light waves between the satellite and ground based instrumentation. These are fairly common occurrences during moderate geomagnetic activity that happens frequently during solar maximum and even solar minimum. Large storms are much less frequent (maybe a handful of times during each solar maximum) and that’s when you get continental aurora and total radio blackouts.
I’ve read a couple of Dean’s books and I don’t regret it, but also didn’t find them that good.
Outside a couple of disappointments, everything I’ve read from King has ranged from really good (Salems lot, tommyknockers, etc) to outstanding (the dark tower series, the tailsman).
While this is good news, the fight for privacy in the digital age will never end. They will continue to take small bites until they have the entire pie. Unfortunately we never (or rarely) regain any digital right to privacy that has been taken in the past. The best we can do is halt the further erosion of our digital privacy through vigilance, education and protest.
Done! Lots of scratches and belly rubs!