Evil Empire?
"Today, a Russian Soyuz rocket shot the first 4 of 12 satellites in a new constellation that are designed to provide affordable, high-speed Internet to people in nearly 180 'under-connected' countries.
The orbiters, part of a project dubbed O3b for the 'other 3 billion'
people with restricted Internet access, were built by the Franco-Italian
company Thales Alenia Space. They will orbit at 8,062 km and will weigh
only 650 kilogrammes (1,400 pounds) each. 'There are already
geostationary satellites providing this type of services, but at a
prohibitive cost for many end-users. Existing satellites generally obit
at an altitude of some 36,000 kilometres (22,000 miles) above Earth,
weigh in at a hefty four to six tonnes each, and take much longer to
bounce a signal back to Earth—about 500 milliseconds to be exact,
according to an O3b document.
"It is such a long delay that people speaking over a satellite link will
shorten conversations, interactive web has an extremely poor experience
and many web-based software programmes just won't function." Crucially,
they will communicate with Earth four times faster, said the company,
and six would be enough to assure permanent coverage. "O3b's prices will
be 30 — 50 percent less than traditional satellite services," said the
document. ... Launch company Arianespace, which will put the satellites
in orbit, said the O3b constellation will combine "the global reach of
satellite coverage with the speed of a fiber-optic network." ... The
next four satellites will be launched within weeks, according to
Arianespace, and a final four "backup" orbiters early next year.'"
NSA won't like reading this, but the role reversal is hilarious
Where
are Snowden’s defenders in the media? The editorial pages of the Times
and the Washington Post, the two most influential papers in the country,
hadn’t even addressed the Obama Administration’s decision to charge
Snowden with two counts of violating the Espionage Act and one count of
theft.
We will never forget the government's unprecedented breach of our priv-OH COOL, NEW VIDEO GAMES!
"The Verge has a great photo-essay about Tûranor PlanetSolar, the first boat to circle the globe
with solar power. 'The 89,000 kg (nearly 100 ton) ship needs a massive
solar array to capture enough energy to push itself through the ocean.
An impressive 512 square meters (roughly 5,500 square feet) of
photovoltaic cells, to be exact, charge the 8.5 tons of lithium-ion batteries
that are stored in the ship's two hulls.' The boat is currently in NYC.
Among other remarkable facts, the captain (Gérard d'Aboville) is one of
those rare individuals who solo-rowed across both the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans, journeys that took 71 and 134 days, respectively. The
piece has a lot of detail about control systems and design."
Today, one of my
students brought in an old guitar case that was literally held together
with a bungee chord. He opened it and out pops a 1960's gibson with
original everything, and not a scratch on the body. He had NO IDEA what
he was holding.
On the tip of Africa
The Australians and Dutch are wrong. As an American, this is the proper way to slice cheese.
Grains of sand from a beach in Maui, magnified ~150 times, taken by Gary Greenberg
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