Ever heard of "Low orbit server stations"? | Hacker News Reader

Ever heard of "Low orbit server stations"?

thepiratebay.com

476 pointsflux_w42141 comments

I love Pirate Bay for pushing the envelope with everything they do. Personal opinions on piracy aside...the approach these guys take to to solving their problems, are always innovative. They push us to really think outside of the box of what is possible.

Most 'sane' people would be burned out by constantly fighting "the man" for so long. But these guys seem like they are machines.

Love it!

I wonder if pirates are the new innovators that porn were/are on the web.

I'm willing to bet porn and piracy go hand in hand.

That seems like such a myopic statement. Does that mean that all who pirate, likely consume a lot of porn? Or all who facilitate piracy - i.e. TPB, etc. - also serve porn?

I know of many private piracy sites/groups that explicitly forbid dealing with porn, but the quality of their releases is unparalleled.

Both groups are on the margins of polite society and have experiences censorship and oppression. Both groups would benefit greatly from a secure anonymous way to share data privately.

There's quite a few p2p trolling legal cases started by porn companies.

I love Pirate Bay for pushing the envelope with everything they do.

They have a lot of big lofty ideas but they often are unable to execute on them or they flop right after they get out the gate. Remember the time they were going to buy an island? Or when the bought the IFPI domain? The Suprnova relaunch? BOiNK? SlopsBox? ShareReactor? Baywords? ViO? The Video Bay? Also, and I can't find any info on this, but I'm pretty sure awhile back they claimed they were going to develop a new p2p protocol for anonymous filesharing.

I'm guessing this won't ever get off the ground, so to speak. It seems wildly impractical.

This is HN. We're regularly talking about startups, where most ideas fail.

I consider them resourceful in terms of producing new and interesting ideas and just about good enough in terms of execution. They're at least still around.

(yeah, it sounds impractical to me too)

That's just the point....Edison didn't invent the bulb on the first try. Apple went bankrupt (or close to it). Google hasn't found the next best thing, but they are not afraid to try. That's the point eh?

There is one thing people can't accuse TPB of, it is giving it all they have and being innovative. Look at all the things you listed. I haven't heard of half of them, which just proves my point even more.

Also, how is it that they are even still around? Didn't the supreme court of Sweden lock them down some time ago? I am CONSTANTLY surprised how these manage to keep going despite the opposition and keep coming up with new things.

It inspires me actually.

they were going to develop a new p2p protocol for anonymous filesharing

I don't remember they planned to roll their own. I do know that they advocate Tribler, maybe that's what you heard about. It makes tracker sites such as TPB redundant as the whole database is stored in decentralized form.

This is exactly the kind of endless stream of intellectually stimulating but mostly infeasible ideas that manifest in the mind of an intelligent person who consumes a certain amount of cannabinoids.

( I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing. )

Hey, crappy infeasible ideas are not exclusive to people who consume cannabinoids :) , I have those too.

Now, if only my useless brain would come up with a non-infeasible and decent idea to turn into a startup... :)

Edit: non-flamebait, do the people behind TPB consume cannabinoids? I haven't read their bios.

Edit2: obligatory XKCD http://xkcd.com/553/

People have been putting their servers in the cloud for a while now.

Whilst I don't want to turn this into a reddit style pun thread.. that genuinely made me laugh out loud

Once in a while you just have to give someone credit.

Very well thought :D made me laugh too.

Pretty good. I was trying to think of something like they must be high to put things high in the sky.

I'm wondering if I'll live long enough to where this won't be a joke anymore.

"A real act of war" - or, more likely, an act of civil aviation rule enforcement.

Obstructing airspace is a pretty serious issue. Unlike copyright law in general, there will be absolutely no absolutely no legal ambiguity if one of their machines is a public safety problem. That's hefty fines or jail time with little chance of public sympathy.

I'm sure they'll find some countries where simple air balloons by citizens will be allowed. And the real way to go ahead is to think about launching a satellite...

Why do you assume they would necessarily obstruct air traffic space? There are plenty of places that this could be done in existing no-fly or already obstructed zones, could they not?

No-fly zones tend to be sensitive areas. In fact, the only way they could get away with something like this would be to put them in out of the way unrestricted airspace. If you're in an area where visual flight rules (VFR) apply, then you're far less likely to have trouble with aviation authorities. Try and fly something in a no-fly zone, restricted airspace or controlled airspace and you're instantly breaking all sorts of laws.

In practice, in the UK, anything under 7 kg flown under 400 ft and within 500 m of the operator is legal without any certification or permission from anyone. It's possible that if you chose to fly your servers over no territory (international waters), and stayed out of accepted airways, then you'd have a little more leeway.

How high does the airspace restriction go? 10km? 100km?

Right, don't we have international treaties that say no one owns "space"?

This was more or less asked a a few days ago on Reddit[0]. The top comment explains it better than I've ever heard before, in the perspective of an American organization.

But, like the article hints at, even unlicensed radio frequencies aren't free and as the LightSquared[1] issues that have recently been making news, sending radio signals from space over a designated frequency still has it's own set of problems.

[0] http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/qujkt/if_a_rich_m...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LightSquared#Interference_issue...

Well if the range of the radio transmitters is really 50km then a balloon could be well above commercial airspace.

36 000 feet = 11km.

Your solution is to fly in no-fly zones? Really?

Besides putting them in unrestricted areas which I'm sure exist above land, too, can't they just put them in international waters, and use a boat to recharge them in international waters as well?

"just"?

I believe there are weight limits; you can launch whatever you want into airspace as long as it's under 4 pounds or so - so at least it will remain legal for a while.

Stuff a styrofoam box with a couple of Raspberry Pi's, an antenna and a battery pack, and tie it to a helium balloon, perhaps?

a swarm of networked load-bearing quadcopters.

12 lbs (in the USA), it has to be two separate payload boxes though (so 6 lbs and 6 lbs).

You can launch a lot of equipment with a single weather balloon and a styrofoam box. I've been there done that: http://nearspace.0x58.com/

In the United States, restricted airspace is (broadly, the rules are not simple) between 1,200 and 60,000 feet. Above and below that is unrestricted airspace.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airspace_class_%28United_State...

Pedantic niggle regarding TFA: Putting a server in a balloon is nothing at all like achieving orbit. An object in orbit is both high and fast. Really high (160km) and really fast. (7.8km/s) 7.8 kilometres per second is 17,000 miles per hour.

A server in a balloon is not in orbit in much the same way that a toddler in a tricycle is not a F1 car.

Weirdly - we were talking in the office last week about what it would take to get something into orbit from, for example, a rail gun.

We calculated that for a 100m rail gun and a 0.5 kilogram payload you'd need to feed it about a 100 MW power source (over about a tenth of a second) to accelerate it to the necessary 7.8 km/s. That doesn't include the energy needed to get it to altitude.

Naturally, if TPB could actually put something into orbit on a commercially viable basis, they could probably afford to fund their pirate service as a teeny part of the Enormous Space Freighting Corporation that would naturally to ensure... just sayin'.

A friend of mine just mentioned http://startram.com/ to me this weekend; apparently sending something into orbit from a ground-mounted rail gun is possible in certain parts of the world. They also propose magnetically levitating the end of the railgun by a few thousand more meters for a later version that can use lower G-forces. Last year I did some calculations about mounting the railgun on a dirigible: http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2011-August/...

The usual way to power railguns (or particle accelerators) is with giant high-voltage capacitors, which can discharge their energy very quickly. I forget the term of art used for this particular kind of capacitor, unfortunately. Startram suggests using superconducting magnetic energy storage, which has apparently become practical recently; and giant homopolar generators with flywheels are another (low-voltage) alternative.

They could use a commercial space transport service to send the payload into orbit. A company was offering suborbital space launches for a mere $250/kg in 2006: http://blog.makezine.com/2006/04/13/send-some-stuff-to-space...

It turns out that the "really high" part of getting things into orbit is actually considerably easier than the "really fast" part. Getting a rocket out of the atmosphere is one thing, but getting it to miss the entire Earth when it falls back down, which is what "orbit" means, is something else entirely.

There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about who "owns" the airspace of a given country. The US - as do other countries - retain the exclusive right of use of their airspace at all times. ICAO and all airspace classes are not global "laws" and/or treaties that countries are bound by, they are standards that countries choose to accept.

Any attempt to launch a "flying server" in "uncontrolled" airspace will be met instantly with one of the following measures by pretty much any country:

1. If it is assessed as a threat by whatever definition the government in question decides to use, and it is either in geo-stationary orbit above a country or in high altitude, it will be forcibly removed by the air force. (This is why we don't park satellites over Russia. They can and will assert their authority over their airspace and everyone will agree with them)... U2 anyone?

2. If it is low enough to be tethered to the ground, it will most likely fall under local zoning laws and/or within restricted airspace, and will be dealt with pretty damn quick as a hazard, regardless of intent.

3. If it isn't tethered to the ground and also in the middle of nowhere, its "broadcasting" more than likely violates a number of existing laws, and it will be deemed illegal and shut down, but the air force if necessary.

In short, it's probably a lot easier to find a "friendly" government and host a normal server in that country than it is to launch balloons that will most certainly be temporary, or "accidentally" flown into, perhaps during a "training exercise". And no, unless TPB is now a nation, it is not an "act of war".

Geostationary satellites are stationary over a point on the equator. You can have an inclined GEO orbit, at which point the bird describes a figure-8 ground track that's centered on the equator.

Unless there's been some extremely unusual geographical developments recently that I haven't heard of, there's no way for a GEO satellite to orbit over Russia.

...and that's what I get for trying to cram in too many topics into a single sentence.

You are of course correct. By "park" I wasn't intending to imply true geo-stationary orbit, rather "object not moving in relation to the ground", which would need to be done with self propulsion.

Bad (and incorrect) use of the term on my part. Cheers for pointing it out.

Isn't this the core spirit of the internet? ARPANET was designed to "emphasize robustness and survivability, including the capability to withstand losses of large portions of the underlying networks."

I've heard of remote parts of the world relying on amateur radios to access the internet (citation needed, please). This approach, to me, is simply a more technologically sophisticated. But it's nevertheless beautiful.

The goal was to use low-cost commercial radio equipment to connect users on Oahu and the other Hawaiian islands with a central time-sharing computer on the main Oahu campus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALOHAnet

It worked out pretty well, 3G mobile phones use a variant of the communication protocol.

Not to mention inspiring wired Ethernet.

In Canada uncontrolled airspace are the areas not in an aerodrome and goes up to 1,500 feet (?), I forget the exact height, that's where radio controlled planes, hangliders, ultra-light aircraft, hot air balloons can go without needing a pilot's license or special permit.

If there was some device floating or flying there but not in controlled airspace or a danger to other aircraft it is perfectly legal for it to be there.

Airspace classes in the United States:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airspace_class_(United_States)

Would US Airspace law be at all relevant? My understanding is that TPB goes out of their way to avoid conducting their business anywhere near the United States.

I imagine airspace classes in Europe would be a more valid topic.

Airspace law in other countries is likely to be similar or less restrictive.

What a difference a title makes...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3720699

+time

When I heard Reddit planning to build a low-orbit network, I realized they were going to build the "outernet". This is another stab in the same direction, and I would be surprised if the 2 forces didn't join.

This airborne/orbital network, combined with the "innernet" TOR, will allow for the future of the unregulated internet.

The original internet will become the walled garden that half of humanity wants to live within. Those of us in the other half will have our free innernet and outernet.

How about doing what radio pirates did, and having a station in international waters?

You are still bound by whatever law your vessel is registered under, but many of them just don't care. If you (probably illegally) could send out an autonomous unregistered vessel, it would be really hard to take out.

An armada of solar powered autonomous buoys ... that would also be kind of cool.

This all seems a little silly. How does it connect to the Internet? Keep in mind the main point is to obscure where it's proxying to.

There are ITU treaties and maritime laws which have changed since the pirate radio period of the 1960s, mainly to eliminate that possibility (mostly as a secondary consequence of trying to prevent platforms for territorial claims for oil/gas/mining at sea being used to exploit resources far from shore.)

I actually don't know what the rules would be for an autonomous sea robot (which wasn't transmitting, and which wasn't a hazard to navigation), like those ocean monitoring glider things. It might still have to be registered as a ship with a flag, but I don't know if there would be liability (other than seizure of the robot) for the operators otherwise.

"This way our machines will have to be shut down with aeroplanes in order to shut down the system [...] with modern radio transmitters we can get over 100Mbps per node up to 50km away"

...or just jam the signal, surely? If you were that serious about it...

It would be very difficult to jam a CDMA signal.

Because it's frequency hopping? I'm not an expert, but I thought that was only hard with a single antenna. If you can broadcast noise on all the channels, it's still jammable. No?

You would then be jamming all cellular activity, which presumably wouldn't fly (no pun intended).

To suggest that jamming a CDMA signal is impossible is BEYOND ignorant.

It is trivially easy to jam a CDMA signal. Hell, when Qualcomm was trying to get CDMA off the ground, they used to do it to themselves ALL THE TIME.

For the interested, just Google IS-95A for Crtl-F for Walsh code. Mix one part clock sync'ed publicly known Walsh Code with one part bit randomness. Stir gently and enjoy.

Except that no one suggested it was impossible...which leaves one to wonder why you are using ad hominem against an argument that was never made.

That's not ad hominem, it's just an insult. But you are right that he's attacking an argument that nobody made.

My apologies. What I meant to say is that jamming a CDMA signal is TRIVIALLY easy. It's been done, it doesn't require a lot of equipment, and it's very very effective.

There have been MULTIPLE attacks against supposedly jam-proof wireless systems that not only showed that they we not only jammable, but that the mechanism designed to make them jam proof only made it easier.

In particular, the control channels that manage access to the air interface are notoriously vulnerable to disruption.

So my beef is that the idea that a spread spectrum system is somehow more resistant to jamming is just plain wrong.

I believe you meant Straw Man fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Actually, it's rather 'easy' to jam DSSS/CDMA signals - Especially for nation states. There are a variety of techniques and tools that can be used.

Or prevent the drones from refueling.

An airplane a few kilometers in the air is _not_ in orbit.

Pity - if they had the bucks and the chops to actually orbit a server ... now that would be something.

I don't know. Getting something in orbit isn't too expensive, but there is only a few people who do it, and there is a big legislative bottleneck. Easy to compute trajectories and everything makes orbits easy to track, and hard to put up. Whereas trying to float many serves in the atmosphere, that sounds much more interesting and exciting to me. Dealing with wind currents is much more complicated than having to control an orbit trajectory anyways.

you can orbit a server without too much trouble. Then you still need to power it up and get it to a spot where you can route packets to it, which if you only orbit one server and have one groundstation means geo-synchronous orbit. That isn't cheap, and those that fly satellites into orbits like that typically are very much in bed with the very nation states that tpb is trying to get around.

And then, when you have finally cleared all those hurdles you'll realize that you can be just as easily blocked as though you had plugged that server into the nearest outlet at the groundstation.

Depends how fast it's going.

Australia is about to do this for bases in Antarctica (which all suffer from sporadic satellite coverage). The cheapest solution is two non-geosynchronous satellites in opposition to each other on highly elliptical orbits, providing pretty much constant coverage.

Total cost is about $40,000,000.

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3453168.htm

It wouldn't be impossible for TPB to raise $50M, I would think

Especially if it was for the purpose of launching a couple of satellites.

One hell of a kickstarter project... I'd donate

"This way our machines will have to be shut down with aeroplanes in order to shut down the system. A real act of war."

In my current state of disenfranchisement with the government I will not be surprised if this happens. They took the "ends will justify the means" policy long ago. All I can do is hope their latest 'ends' benefit me.

"They took the "ends will justify the means" policy long ago."

To be fair, with negligible exception, everyone of every political bent takes that policy.

That's hilarious but not remotely feasible, is it April 1st yet?

Had to look at the date to make sure it isn't April 1st yet.

How are they planning on powering these devices? The original article doesn't mention . . .

Solar seems the most obvious choice (to me).

Solar in Scandinavia?

One of the real problems with solar is that you need a lot of surface, which means more weight, which means more power needed...

Solar is probably the best option for electronics but, battery weight may become an issue...

This is an awesome idea for a repeater network. Its done in many countries.

Just wait until they get their boat...

;-)

Solar cells can generate around 80% their peak energy even on cloudy days.

It's not that I don't believe you, but it almost sounds too good to be true. Do you have any sources? What happens during night-time?

In order for this to work you have to get the balloon high enough where it won't be affected by simple weather patterns.

Then you have to make the device capable of withstanding extreme conditions.

Then you have to make the balloon stay in position.

Then you have to swap out the balloon's every X day to refuel and recharge.

Predicting the future here: they will make a balloon and radio system that works for about 20 minutes before it drifts off and then realize there is a whole lot more to putting computers in the sky than just announcing you are going to move your data-center into the sky.

Image a satellite BitTorrent tracker which flies over your head every 90 minutes. You got a 5 minute handshake window to discover the peer network, then the rest is handled on DHT.

Such a awesome idea, but most of the stuff thepiratebay has attempted has never really materialized into anything

See: Buying a island / Baywords / The Video Bay

http://server-sky.com/

great, instead of hiding those proxies in some random apartment complex with a fibre optic connection, you're putting them up in the sky for all to see - I doubt this post is serious. and btw. what about the ground receivers? your local law enforcer can take those down pretty easily and I imagine if you're gonna send 100Mbps thru the air, somebody's gonna pick up on that pretty easily.

if I was piratebay, I'd rent a cheap appartment somewhere in downtown zurich (switzerland is unlikely to take down filehosters (rapidshare is located here as well)), get one of those cheap fibre optics connections (check under: http://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/content/ewz/de/index/telecom/ewz... ) and install your servers in there. you get 100 mbps up for about 200$ a month. admitted it's still an expensive setup, but that would be some reliable hosting.

first time I see "cheap" associated with Zurich :-)

Rapidshares servers are in Germany though. And they've been sued (and won) in German courts. They are only incorporated in Switzerland. Not to mention that Swiss server bandwidth is relatively expensive, see eg http://www.softronics.ch/en/products/linux-dedicated-server....

Or, you put the decoy server in the sky, get lots of free publicity, ... while burying the real server out of sight.

I'd consider using free space optics instead or radio.

"what about the ground receivers?" exactly. unless they're planning on running a free wireless network from their servers in the sky, they're going to need to plug in to the internet somehow. there's not much point in having an untouchable server if the link is just as vulnerable as a traditional server.

You lost me at "cheap apartment in downtown zurich"

Good luck with that. Really, the only airspace they'll be able to fly in will be that of the sovereign nations they'll be overflying. Unrestricted typically means < 300 meters (the altitude that you can fly a model aircraft in). Flying a drone definitely != low orbit.

Way to go to get a lot of press but (ahem) this will never fly.

I think it would be way cooler to have something float in international waters and use tidal/wave power to keep running. I guess that would be a lot easier to mess around with though.

The pirates would become the pirated. Sorry I couldn't help myself.

Servers are the new power-hogs. Go one step further: put servers on actual satellites, using solar power. Endlessly scalable, free power, at the cost of some milliseconds of lag.

I doubt the "free power" would be enough to compensate for the energy cost of getting a dedicated server satellite into space, plus the construction cost of building the satellite, plus the increased power cost of communicating with it.

Perhaps true. But at least you wouldn't have the huge cost of cooling things down. Just imagine the possibilities, especially if/when SSD's catch up to HDD's in capacity/price.

You only need a tracker in space, nothing more.

Not sure what the disk usage is of the tracker though. I would guess it all fits in memory ?

Everything has costs, expecially data centers. Advantages are its wireless, unobstructed view from anywhere, and low-power satellite communications should compare favorably with the wired grid.

Also, freedom from regulations and nationalistic attempts to shut you down.

There are a variety of issues with airborne servers. It's hard to keep things in the air for long periods, and it's harder at low heights. Higher up, you can avoid a lot of weather issues, winds tend to be predictable etc.

Satellites mean big latency. Boats have supply issues. Sealand is apparently a bust. Frankly, if you want a data haven, do something similar Cryptonomicon talked about. Though that too has some issues, especially given how undersea cables work.

I don't think latency is that big of a concern. First, these are behind their global proxies. Second, this is all meta-data, so if it takes a second longer to load the magnet link and associated text, meh.

Some of the combination flying wings are getting pretty good flight time (2+ weeks[1]). It isn't an unreasonable direction to start looking, especially if you could use that time to hop from one base to another around the world.

1. http://www.suasnews.com/2011/06/5837/zephyr-the-new-standard...

The proposed system still has a very weak point, the drone-controll-station and land/take off spots. The government or the MAFIAA will simply intercept the drones on takeoff/landing. Wasnt it in the USA where a law was passed a few months ago to prohibit civil drones in the air, or at least "regulate" drone-flying? Sending stuff up in the air will be a crime.

With some helium and a few solar cells they can stay in the air until they fail. No need to land them.

Helium is actually pretty much impossible to contain over long periods of time. That's why running out and buying helium tanks isn't a smart investment, even though it's currently being sold at far below its longterm value; by the time everyone runs out of helium, yours will have leaked away.

Of course, in a thin, light vessel suitable for flight, the helium is going to escape much more quickly.

I do not know if this would be an issue for a hydrogen balloon.

You can remove hydrogen from water very easily, so refilling it would be easy. Plus, hydrogen is lighter than helium.

It's a potential perpetual motion machine...

Good enough solar cells, good enough membrane, good enough lightweight HHO, and a way to capture moisture from the air itself in the form on condensation or dew. It could be a small thing of water... whoa...

Build IT!!!

That would be an incredible, sci-fi level achievement, but it would not be a "perpetual motion machine" in the common sense, because it would derive its power from the sun rather than producing it internally.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion

It could work if you uses a Super Hydropholic membrane around the outer hull... Links on the subject:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_hydrophilicity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superhydrophobicity

It could just collect water into it, and using natural gravity it would accumulate @ the bottom where you could then, simply collect/filter it, and use it to run a HHO generator which who essentially fill the aircraft/dirigible, and power it, simultaneously...

Collecting water from the air itself...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troposphere

Program the damn thing to track weather patterns, along with the usual air-pressure & humidity patterns.

You could essentially, fly through clouds to absorb the water, or just keep flying within specific patterns along with the humidity patterns of the EARTH.

If you wanted to do it the cheap hacker-way, and small scale...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BY7uGJGvo9w&feature=rela...

http://hackaday.com/2007/12/27/24c3-build-your-own-uav/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain-X

A small jar HHO generator which would then feed a micro-engine(like in a R/C car) powering an electrical generator which would feed power to the HHO generator. This is already being done commercially.

Solar is a way better way then combustion in the end but, its the closest thing to a TYPE-2 civilization WE will see...

;-)

>"A small jar HHO generator which would then feed a micro-engine(like in a R/C car) powering an electrical generator which would feed power to the HHO generator."

Wait, so you split water and burn it in a generator to generate the power you're using to split the water? I would love to see someone work out the math on that one... Everything I know about chemistry suggests that the best you'll ever do is 100% efficiency, which you of course cannot hit if you're not burning all of your H2 (which you wouldn't be, since the point is to get H2 to lift the whole thing).

"This is already being done commercially."

Do you have an example?

It's the opposite, actually. It's illegal right now to fly any drone above 400 feet. Drones under 400 feet must be within line of sight of the operator. The FAA will now be forced to allow civilian drone flights, mostly for photography, law enforcement, search and rescue, industrial/commercial things like movie filming and power line maintenance. I hope there will be expedited shipping personally :)

But disabling the radio system that's on earth wouldn't it be the same as disabling the servers?

TPB could easily encourage its users to use a truly decentralised model. Given that TPB is effectively simply serving small magnet links of a few bytes in length, this would actually be extremely easy.

But of course then they would have made themselves irrelevant.

What do they mean by 'modern radio transmitters'? Are they planning to use open Wi-Fis or LTE networks or use something else that I'm not aware of? Is there some off-the-self tech available for this kind of thing?

This not feasible for two reasons (and many more). Lipo batteries won't last long enough for it to make sense. Carrying server equipment is also not feasible and further reduces battery / gas life.

Someone hit "publish" on the April Fools post instead of "save as draft".

I was just thinking of the possibilities of building a high altitude wireless network to serve rural communities. It almost seems uncanny that I find this same article pop up today.

Would you believe, my Irish ISP blocks piratebay access.

DNS, IP blackhole, or "transparent" proxy? All are trivial to defeat.

Filtering the Internet is nearly impossible unless you block it all.

Same here, both my providers Xs4all and Ziggo were ordered by a Dutch judge to block thepiratebay.org, an initiative of MPAA sockpuppet 'BREIN foundation'. See http://www.xs4all.nl/geblokkeerd/

I know that it can be easily circumvented, but this shouldn't be necessary. These censoring attempts should stop.

I'm doing something similar with an RC airplane I'm building. Streams live video feeds from 3 cameras via CDMA. Flight Simulator be damned.

I love the idea and I was actually thinking of doing something similar myself.

Any drones under 400ft and don't leave line of sight of the operator are legal.d

I hope that actual smart people aren't really working on this. It used to be that this kind of crazy ambition was what started the best companies. Its an almost Apple-ish goal from yesteryear. If this generation's Wozs spend their efforts simply trying to thwart dumb government, I think society will be poorer for it, even if they can watch all of the free movies they want over the blimp.

If this generation's Wozs spend their efforts simply trying to thwart dumb government, I think society will be poorer for it.

No. If they focus just on free movies, then you're probably right, but the statement that today's hackers shouldn't 'thwart dumb government' seems misguided. Government in many ways reflects a codification of societal rules and structures, and sometimes the power centers that enforce those rules need shaking up. That might be via new methods of communication, or new social structures, or something else we haven't really considered yet, but there's no question in my mind that the crazy ambitions of TPB, Wikileaks, and other groups are shaping our future in ways that can eventually enrich us all.

As opposed to hacking free phone calls from the phone company?

Actually, Woz did do stuff like this in the past. He used to hack the phone lines to get free calls, and other stuff like that:

http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/168957,rsa-2010-woz-revea...

As their first business venture together, he and Jobs sold blue boxes.

So, the irony level that was reached when Jobs ordered the creation of a locked-down cell phone platform wrapped clear around 2^32-1 and back to zero.

Talk is cheap.

So... what if a bird flies into it?

The bird becomes a Tor endpoint, using RFC 1149.

You just made my day.

This seems more like a silver lining to open sourcing space vehicles industry. Very recently I saw this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvDqoxMUroA which is an inexpensive hack to reach over (I mean as compared to what tax-payers shell out) 120,000 meters. That's real space! Much beyond the scope of corruption, but evidently an easy frontier to become a junkyard if greed and dumbness (read SOPA/PIPA & Govies) continue on the path of destruction.

Even if there IS a better way of doing it on the ground, this is a GREAT way to embarrass the ones who are trying to shut you down.An Aeroplane or helicopter needed just to shut down a floating computer?

Let's hope the 'Bay doesn't accidentally take out a 747.

Let's hope that 747s aren't flying around randomly in uncontrolled airspace.

Let's see - a foreign object positioned above the United States in a low orbit.... pretty sure that will get shot down.

A few kilometers up is not orbit.

And .. foreign satellites go overhead all the time. That's how orbit _works_.

It's also trivial to place an object into orbit at a speed such that it stays in the same place relative to Earth. So a given satellite in orbit does not necessarily need to pass over the United States. This is why you have to get on your roof and point the dish at some magical place in the sky. You're pointing it at the satellite

The term you are looking for is "geosynchronous".

Given the cost of sending missions to GEO, the time involved to put anything into orbit, how tedious and pesky rockets are, you have a funny definition of 'trivial'.

I'm referring to the difference in difficulty among putting a satellite into non-geosynchronous orbit and putting a satellite into geosynchronous orbit.

Geosynchronous orbit is not "trivial" - it's a long way from Earth.

A geostationary orbit is about 35,700 km above Earth.

That's about (correct me if I'm wrong) about 500 milli-seconds there and back.

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