Hinge of History Thread Part 3

[Valin]

I'm not gonna pretend I understand half of what they are talking about....Still

 

[Valin]

July 29 2019

State of Emergency Declared over Malware, Cyberattacks on the Rise Louisiana declared a state of emergency after malware attacks. A new type of mobile malware that users are completely unaware of has infected approximately 25 million devices has recently been discovered. A security company is creating a blockchain for hackers to exploit vulnerabilities. Police in the Netherlands and the UK have put together a legal intervention campaign for first time youth cybercriminals.

[Kamexceni]

Ok now Im tackling the lower core support. It really wasnt that bad, but I already had a new support that I was going to use the top half on a friends Tx DPS, so why not right ?

[Kamexceni]

Ok now Im tackling the lower core support. It really wasnt that bad, but I already had a new support that I was going to use the top half on a friends Tx DPS, so why not right ?

[Geee]

Water harvester makes it easy to quench your thirst in the desert

With water scarcity a growing problem worldwide, University of California, Berkeley, researchers are close to producing a microwave-sized water harvester that will allow you to pull all the water you need directly from the air — even in the hot, dry desert.

In a paper appearing this week in ACS Central Science, a journal of the American Chemical Society, UC Berkeley’s Omar Yaghi and his colleagues describe the latest version of their water harvester, which can pull more than five cups of water (1.3 liters) from low-humidity air per day for each kilogram (2.2 pounds) of water-absorbing material, a very porous substance called a metal-organic framework, or MOF. That is more than the minimum required to stay alive.

During field tests over three days in California’s arid Mojave Desert, the harvester reliably produced 0.7 liters per kilogram of absorber per day — nearly three cups of clean, pure H₂O. That’s 10 times better than the previous version of the harvester. The harvester cycles 24/7, powered by solar panels and a battery.

 

[Valin]

 

[Valin]

Here, on one sheet of paper, is a map of the entire internet as of 1973

A bit of internet history, via Twitter user David Newbury (@workergnome):

Going through old papers my dad gave me, I found his map of the internet as of May 1973. 

The entire internet.

 

[Valin]

11.23.19 |

Technology is advancing faster than ever, and it’s not slowing down. This decade was the era of smart phones, streaming, and the internet of things. But with 5G and AI on the rise, high-tech executive Jeff Brown believes 2030 will be a new world. Brown is an early-stage tech investor and analyst who’s seen the modern technological revolution firsthand. He describes quantum computing as a moon landing and 5G as game-changing. He predicts a near future full of artificial intelligence, self-driving cars, wireless surgeries, genetic healing, cryptocurrencies, and more! But with equal advances in encryption hacking and the AI tracking abilities of Google, Facebook, and even China, we must control our own data!

[Valin]

Nov. 28 2019

21st Century Space Race IS ON, Spaceports and TOP-SECRET Satellites The space exploration industry is expected to boom in the next 20 years. With companies' reusable rocket platforms for low costs, countries who never developed space programs are now entering the race.

[Valin]

 

[Valin]

 

[Valin]

Dec 23 2019

On December 23, 1947, three researchers at Bell labs demonstrated a new device to colleagues. The device, a solid-state replacement for the audion tube, represented the pinnacle of the quest to provide amplification of electronic communication. The History Guy recalls the path that brought us what one engineer describes as "The world's most important thing."

[Valin]

 

[Valin]

 

 

[Valin]

Dec 18, 2018

Historian Niall Ferguson argues that today’s political polarization echoes the religious polarization of the Reformation. Both were brought about by technological disruption: The printing press, in the case of the Reformation; and the personal computer and internet, in the case of today.

From Niall Ferguson's Long Now Seminar “Networks and Power”: http://longnow.org/seminars/02018/nov...

[Valin]

Aug 4 2020

[Valin]

20 Years Ago You would not have seen this. That little Silicon Chip, is changing Everything.

[Valin]

Aug 31 2020

Elon Musk's Starlink constellation has FCC approval to include up to 12,000 satellites in low-earth orbit to provide low-latency gigabit broadband internet virtually everywhere on Earth. Musk plans 30,000 more. But this massive increase of orbiting objects has some experts worried about a catastrophic collision cascade that effectively shuts off space exploration forever. It could also threaten astronauts aboard the ISS, our GPS system, and military surveillance capabilities...not to mention the Gravity of the risk to Sandra Bullock and George Clooney.

[Valin]

 

[Valin]

Starlink beta testers are impressed with the Internet speeds on the new service

Not perfect, but better than expected

Adrian Potoroaca

November 4, 2020

Forward-looking: It's still early days to make a definitive judgment on how well Starlink works, but beta testers seem positively impressed with the new satellite internet service so far. For people living in remote areas around the world, this might be what they've been waiting for, provided the company can make it more affordable.

Last month, SpaceX sent out invites to several people who expressed their interest in signing up for Starlink, its nascent satellite internet service. The company said at the time that more than 700,000 people were willing to give it a shot, so it launched the "Better Than Nothing Beta" program for people in Canada and the US.

The biggest question on people's minds has been whether the new service lives up to expectations. Elon Musk promised earlier this year that the installation process was very straightforward and that connection quality would be good enough for competitive gaming, but now the first beta testers are chiming in with their own experiences.

(Snip)

[Valin]

From Painfully Slow to Lightning Fast: SpaceX's Starlink Makes Rural Internet Usable

Rural Americans have long dealt with slow internet. But in interviews, SpaceX Starlink beta testers in Montana, Idaho, and elsewhere report speedy service that has transformed the way they use the web.

Michael Kan

November 10, 2020

Nickolas Friedrich lives in central Montana, where his local broadband connectivity hasn't been good.

Every month, he pays about $120 for a measly 0.8Mbps download speed from the only DSL provider in town. And his connection can freeze up when too many neighbors are on the service at once. 

As a result, streaming videos isn’t really possible. Instead, it can take an hour to download a low-quality 240p video from YouTube. The situation is so bad that Friedrich used to go to the local library to download internet videos to his laptop so he could watch them later. 

But recently, he’s been able to enjoy Netflix and YouTube at home, where the internet speeds can now shoot up as high as 170Mbps. The reason? Starlink, the next-generation satellite internet service from Elon Musk's SpaceX, which Friedrich has been helping test out.  

“It has been a lot faster than the only ISP that still services us with DSL,” Friedrich told us in a chat on Reddit. He's now considering canceling his account with CenturyLink—which has long promised a fiber rollout, but without any specifics—and switching to Starlink.

Is Starlink the Real Deal?

(Snip)

[Valin]

In search of lost time

Scott Johnson

Dec. 19 2020

Through sheer good luck, I came across the Osher Lifetime Learning Institute affiliated with Dartmouth College this past fall. It has been my goal to do the assigned reading I didn’t get to in my favorite college literature courses. Reviewing the Dartmouth Osher course offerings, I found two that met my needs. The first — the one I happened onto — was Professor James Heffernan’s course on chapters 7-12 of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Professor Heffernan was a member of the English Department when I was an undergraduate and is now retired from college teaching. He is an expert on the Victorian novel and on Joyce, among many other things. I regretted not having taken a course from him when I could. He gave the 24-part Great Courses lecture series on Ulysses and taught the book for something like 50 years. He must be one of the foremost living scholars of Ulysses. I couldn’t believe my luck in finding the course with its availability via Zoom.

(Snip)

[Valin]

Electronic Weapons: Shanghai Spoofer World Tour

February 5, 2021:

In late 2020 a growing number of Iranians in the capital (Tehran) were openly complaining of an odd problem with the GPS on their cellphones. At seemingly random times the GPS indicated another location than the one the user knew they were at. After months of complaints to the city government were ignored, one frustrated resident compiled evidence of the problem and sent it off to American government communications authorities, noting that complaints to their Iranian counterparts were futile. The complaint largely consisted of a spreadsheet where incidents of GPS malfunction, including time, known location and false location indicated by the cellphone GPS. The Iranian message asked if the Americans knew about the problem and what might be done about it. Many Iranians had access to foreign news, despite their censored Internet, and there were many Tehran residents who had family or friends in other countries that they could call or contact via the Internet. Apparently, it was widely known that Russia, China and North Korea had all manner of GPS jamming technology and that in 2019 it had become public that the Russians were using GPS spoofing to conceal the true location of senior leaders and some military units. Since 2018 a growing number of Iranians were openly demonstrating against their own government about mismanagement, which included a growing number of crashes by commercial and military aircraft. The failure of their own government to respond to the GPS problem led to some Iranians reporting the incidents to other countries. The spreadsheet sent to the Americans revealed several interesting patterns. The most telling item was that the GPS disruptions were all occurring in the vicinity of the Iranian Army Command And Staff University. Another feature of the problem was it only occurred in small areas and that location moved in a circular fashion at a speed of about 35 kilometers an hour. Finally, the incidents of GPS problems had been increasing for months, as had the government use of lethal force against demonstrators. The American government did not remain silent but could only speculate that the Iranian military was testing a new GPS spoofing technology in downtown Iran. American government requests for information from the Iranian government were also ignored and that alarmed many nations that operated commercial ships and airliners in the Persian Gulf and Iranian Indian Ocean coast. Iran has been caught making attacks on foreign shipping with naval mines in shipping channels or limpet mines attached, usually at night, to the hulls of foreign ships anchored in the Persian Gulf. Iran always denies responsibility but several major investigations, including one by the UN, concluded that Iran was behind this violence. That has not stopped Iran from using GPS spoofing against ship or airliner navigation systems would be likely.

Developers and users of GPS jamming gear tend to keep quiet about it because this sort of thing is illegal in peacetime and especially when civilians are going to experience the GPS disruptions themselves. When the United States tests military GPS jamming it does so at sea or in remote areas and warns nearby civilians who might encounter GPS problems to be aware of the tests and act accordingly. This warning policy has been in use for decades because of the growing number of new electronic equipment designs that could cause problems for civilians if the disruptive effect extended farther than expected.

Despite the secrecy about GPS disruption, since 2017 there has been growing evidence that Russia has been frequently jamming or spoofing GPS signals, mainly to hide the exact location of key people or military units..............(Snip)

The incidents of GPS spoofing declined during 2020 but China revealed no details about what happened. In the past China has given local hackers a choice between going to prison or quietly working for the Chinese government. Russia uses similar tactics as do many other governments. One thing that was noted about the “Shanghai Spoofer” was that the spoofing often took place around oil terminals where ships smuggling oil for Iran or to North Korea often operated. The governments of Iran and North Korea also noticed this and could have received useful information on how the Shanghai spoofing gear worked. That’s one of the conspiracy theories popular with many Iranians and South Koreans.

[Draggingtree]

Thank You

 

 Via Allen

[Valin]