iam-TJ

Have you considered talking to the Debian infrastructure and build teams about the possibility of augmenting the Debian package builders to generate, collect, and publish this data as a standard part of the build process ?

It would provide an ongoing and always up-to-date data set rather than relying on external entities interest, good-will and resources to do it (such as yourself) and could provide significant insights into the entire Debian project.

A 'nit' about your phraseology - not aimed at you but at what has become 'received' usage.

I always take care to replace "users freedom" with "OWNERS freedom" in my conversations since so many people seem to have forgotten the distinction. Relatedly, I talk about "computer operators" not "computer users" to try remind people of this important distinction.

As another interested in this aspect, how about an 'info' tip alongside that states the minimum cost with an asterix?

"Yearly plan, paid monthly, £678" --> [ minimum cost £456 [[ a href="terms-cancel.html" ]] if cancelled early ]

Generally automation is applied to repetitive procedures with well understood bounds.

In this case all but the fine-phasing and possibly FOV alignment are one-off operations during commissioning. The pre-launch simulations may not match the actual behaviour and results of the telescope so it makes sense to perform each step under engineer/scientist control and be able to spend time studying the data and possibly improving the process along the way and revisiting earlier steps and/or segments.

So far I've not seen any comments that consider the wider context of the location in speculating what the aircraft may be.

Specifically, this aircraft is on the D1 taxi-way of the isolated EXTREMELY tall hanger 25 (H25) [2] at the south end of the runways, away from almost all other facilities.

Hanger 25 and the E1/D1 taxi-ways connecting it can be fully appreciated in aerial photographs [3] looking north published by dreamlandresort (DR). The hanger has direct links to both runways - the primary 14/32 (via taxi-way E1) and the short secondary (unmarked) 12/30 that only serves category A or B aircraft (via taxi-way D1).

Back in 2014 as hanger 25 was being constructed there were ground and aerial photographs that revealed the hanger's large size and especially its height which could accommodate a Boeing 747 tail rudder. There was much speculation [4] that it may support a project that has a mothership with 'parasite' aircraft attached.

It may be what we're seeing in this new imagery from Planet Labs is a 'parasite' flying-wing aircraft.

It's possible, based on remote location on the airfield, that this facility is supporting an ultra-high altitude or space launch system (think Virgin Galactic style). Mothership carries the parasite aircraft to a high altitude (taking off from runway 14/32) before it is released to climb to a higher altitude or possibly into very low earth orbit (100km+ altitude).

Note: structure references from page 5 of the Jeppesen HOMEY/KXTA airfield/airspace charts [0] published at dreamlandresort (DR) [1]

[0] https://dreamlandresort.com/maps/KXTA.pdf

[1] https://dreamlandresort.com/maps/index.html

[2] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/5279/area-51s-massive-...

[3] https://dreamlandresort.com/area51/aerial_1220_07.jpg

[4] https://jalopnik.com/new-panoramic-images-show-area-51-s-new...

I agree about the needless misleading of expectations. Some, but not all, is - I suspect - well-meaning public sharing of ambitions based on most favourable ideal timelines - something very common across most Musk-led businesses. I usually read that stuff as a partial sharing of stream-of-consciousness ideas and targets before there's a fully formed plan of execution - where reality often imposes impediments!

In your Viet Nam scenario and similar cases I wonder if it is (partially) a result of the Starlink plan to use direct satellite to satellite LASER links to relay data in low earth orbit to a more remote existing ground station?

As in, if I recall correctly, SpaceX originally expected to be launching 'block 2' satellites with LASER links in mid 2021 but suffered internal hidden delays (that led to Musk's internal SpaceX existential warning in October 2021 and firing of some senior staff) so the first batch were only recently launched in early 2022.

Those LASER links being in place are likely a prerequisite for serving territories where SpaceX cannot obtain favourable permissions for ground stations.

I suspect the original comment is referring to Starlink taking a (~ 15% deposit) and 'promising' 1-2 months wait time which isn't reducing so they end up still waiting 6 months later, and the expected delivery is still reported as 1-2 months in the Starlink account.

It's possible that the delay is due to lack of legal clearance in the customer country. Starlink needs to get approval to install and operate the ground station satellite links in each country. From the few authoritative statements I've seen those are sometimes delayed due to local country bureaucracy.

I ordered Starlink in the UK in February 2020 and the equipment finally arrived in May 2020. I /think/ the stated delivery estimate at the time was 2-3 months and never reduced until the order confirmation email arrived and I paid the balance, after which the equipment arrived a couple of weeks later.

In summary, 60 GHz is the CARRIER frequency (the central frequency) around which a modulated signal is centred or otherwise aligned. The modulated signal BANDWIDTH (channel width) is where the signal information is encoded and is going to be measured in Mega-Hertz (MHz).

E.g. for 802.11a/n/c the CARRIER is in the 5.x GHz band but the modulated signal BANDWIDTH will be one of 20, 40, 80, 160 MHz around a central frequency [0]. The 'base' 20MHz bandwidth at best performance (signal to noise ratio) will be able to modulate (encode) at a raw 54Mbits/second.

Intel publish [1] an easy-to-read set of tables that show the relationships between standards, frequencies, bandwidths, MIMO, and modulation schemes.

[0] simplified - actually there is a (frequency-hopping or direct sequence) spread-spectrum method

[1] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000...

First and foremost would be financial transactions, especially banks, that if these links were lost might be unable to make settlements and reconcile daily balances with overseas subsidiaries, partners, and correspondents. That would have an immediate impact on any business that relies on making or receiving international payments to/from suppliers/customers - think SWIFT [0].

Secondly is the affect on 'cloud' services (AWS, Azure, Goggle) with their complex inter-dependencies across services and geographical regions. We've seen several instances over the last couple of years where even a minor failure in one system has a knock-on effect to tens of thousands of other organisations that rely on it. Also, consider the reliance that AWS globally appears to have on US-East. If AWS Europe data-centers loose their link to US-East there could be major disruption of many services hosted on AWS, even those that use multiple availability zones.

Third would be the knock-on effect of switching to other routes (BGP) and the consequent 'traffic jam' as traffic between North America and Europe attempts to use alternate routes - maybe via Latin America and Africa or Asia.

Fourth, telecommunications ('phone) and VoIP services linking North America and Europe, Africa, and Middle East.

Fifth, and possibly the hardest to mitigate, is the by-product due to extensive use of CDN 'edge' services (Cloudflare, etc.). Most web sites nowadays have many dependencies on externally hosted services. Many are behind CDN edge servers. If the origin servers for those are on the other side of a major break then suddenly services you'd expect to be fully local will break in unexpected ways.

[0] https://www.swift.com/

More likely there is no comment until the UK government makes the announcement public - rather than responding to 'informed sources'.

BBC is caught between a rock and hard place. Its journalists 'need' to report the story or risk being accused of 'censorship' for not reporting on the rumour/leak/background-briefings when other news organisations are reporting those, but at the same time the BBC board [0] (10 non-execs and 4 execs) will presumably have been preparing a measured response to publish once the UK government makes the 'official' announcement.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/aboutthebbc/whoweare/bbcboard

Last time the undersea fibre optic cables (international and local) were broken (2019-2020) [0] a Kacific [1] K-band satellite emergency link was installed for and by the Tonga ISP EziNet [2] and others.

(the 2019 break was caused by a Turkish oil tanker prematurely dropping anchor in a restricted zone [3])

"DS Venture Ltd (DSV) was the owner of the Duzgit Venture. On 20 January 2019, as the vessel approached the Port of Nuku'alofa, its starboard anchor and chain were prematurely released from their housing. As the anchor and chain were winched back in, they caught and damaged a cable. The cable was one of two undersea communications cables owned by Tonga Cable Ltd (TCL) connecting Nuku'alofa, Ha'apai, and Vava'u with Fiji. As a result of damage to the cable, Tonga was without cable telecommunications for almost three weeks. "

[0] https://samoanews.com/regional/tonga-cable-break-located-rep...

[1] https://kacific.com/

[2] https://matangitonga.to/2019/01/26/geek-heroes-rescue-tonga-...

[3] https://cmlcmidatabase.org/ezinet-ltd-v-ds-venture-ltd

Title had to be trimmed to fit 80-character limit, from "Google's and Facebook's top execs allegedly approved dividing ad market among themselves".

This reports on an amended complaint filed Friday 14th January 2022.

"On Friday, Texas et al. filed a third amended complaint [0 PDF] that fills in more blanks and expands the allegations by 69 more pages. The fortified filing adds additional information about previous revelations and extends the scope of concern to cover in-app advertising in greater detail."

...

"The third amended complaint explains, "Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer [REDACTED] was explicit that '[t]his is a big deal strategically' in an email thread that included Facebook CEO [REDACTED]. When the economic terms had taken their form, the team sent an email addressed directly to CEO: 'We're nearly ready to sign and need your approval to move forward.' Facebook CEO wanted to meet with COO [REDACTED] and his other executives before making a decision."

[0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.56...

Depending on what you mean by "needs a lot of signalling bandwidth" I think that is incorrect.

I recall the early SMS functionality being added to cellular phones after the introduction of 2G in the early 1990s and as I recall, one claim was it monetised the massive amount of spare signalling capacity on the network. In the UK I recall that being said in 1994 by Orange (the first UK 'challenger' network vs 1G incumbents CellNet and Vodafone) when I had a Nokia 2010 handset.

That sounds like how there were two versions of MSN Messenger/Windows Messenger/Windows Live - one for 'personal' and the other for 'enterprise'. Cannot quite recall the exact differentiation now but I do recall many folks having problems with log-in credentials for one not working with the other about 20 years ago!

Same happened with Skype after it was bought by Microsoft, and I seem to recall this is relatively recent. There were (are?) two Skype clients - one for 'personal' (the original Skype) and another for 'enterprise' (rebranded Windows Live for Enterprise possibly?) and not compatible. Again, I recall trying to help confused Windows users figure out why the (incorrect) client wouldn't log-in with certain credentials.

"Applications are now being accepted to participate in Europe’s newest cybersecurity demonstration, bringing together cybersecurity experts to help ESA and European industry keep critical space services secure and resilient."

"During Cysec’s annual conference in April 2022, ESA’s OPS-SAT space lab will be made available to select, invited applicants to test their winning ideas in a controlled, robust environment – precisely the type of experiment the 30cm flying CubeSat was created for. The results will help ESA and European industry advance and further perfect cybersecurity in space."

The in-built robustness of OPS-SAT makes it the perfect flying platform for ethical hackers to demonstrate their skills in a safe but suitably realistic environment,

How about when the updated browser removes functionality that servers require?

Especially in 'enterprisey' networks there are devices that /still/ require SSL, Java applets, Flash (urghh!), SSH v1 support, or features of (X)HTML, CSS, and Javascript that have been removed or modified. Most of that hardware would be expensive and disruptive to replace.

I still maintain a version of 32-bit Netscape Navigator for accessing some key infra-structure devices that continue to work perfectly and are on isolated private networks.

Some examples: Cabinet Distribution Units (CDUs - network-controlled power switches), network KVM (Keyboard-Video-Mouse over Ethernet), Ethernet switches

In mid 2020 in the UK, The National Health Service (NHS) began introducing "green" and "ultra-green" pathways, and designating zones or entire hospitals as 'green' (CoVid-19 free) sites. 'Green' and 'ultra-green' refer to CoViD-19 prevention measures in the 14 days preceding non-emergency admissions and the status of zones (or entire sites) at the hospital during and after treatment.

This was to ensure non-emergency admissions could continue without risking infection.

Partly it's about friction and grip - ploughs are dragged through the ground at depths up to 30cm, turning the soil through 180°. The power required to do that is considerable but most critically the grip the power unit (wheeled or tracked tractor, animals) has controls speed, which depends on the conditions. In addition, as speeds increase the soil will not move smoothly over the mould-board and thus not leave a consistent result ready for the next operation.

Increased consumption per-person as more people have improved economic circumstances. See "How to Sustainably Feed 10 Billion People by 2050, in 21 Charts" [0].

"There is a big shortfall between the amount of food we produce today and the amount needed to feed everyone in 2050. There will be nearly 10 billion people on Earth by 2050—about 3 billion more mouths to feed than there were in 2010. As incomes rise, people will increasingly consume more resource-intensive, animal-based foods."

[0] https://www.wri.org/insights/how-sustainably-feed-10-billion...

As a Brit and in the interest of accuracy, Britain declared war on Germany both in 1914 [0] and 1939 [1] after an ultimatum to Germany expired. So technically 'we' did "start" the WORLD WARs (if we hadn't declared war it is debatable war would have spread to the rest of the world (at least immediately)).

[0] 23:00 August 4th 1914, in response to the invasion of Belgium by Germany.

[1] 11:00 September 3rd 1939, in response to the invasion of Poland by Germany.

DHCP protocol actively avoids specifying a policy - that is for the system administrator. It defines three 'mechanisms' for allocation [0]:

  * automatic == permanent address
  * dynamic == finite (time-limited) and possibly re-assignable to a different client
  * manual == assigned by system administrator (and simply conveyed by DHCP)

Static leases outside any 'pool' are "manual" allocations.

[0] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2131#section-1

"Kidnapping, assassination and a London shoot-out: Inside the CIA's secret war plans against WikiLeaks" [0] 26th September 2021

Yahoo News Kidnapping, assassination and a London shoot-out: Inside the CIA's secret war plans against WikiLeaks Zach Dorfman, Sean D. Naylor and Michael Isikoff September 26, 2021, 10:00 AM·39 min read In this article:

In 2017, as Julian Assange began his fifth year holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London, the CIA plotted to kidnap the WikiLeaks founder, spurring heated debate among Trump administration officials over the legality and practicality of such an operation.

Some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration even discussed killing Assange, going so far as to request“sketches”or“options”for how to assassinate him. Discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred at the highest levels”of the Trump administration, said a former senior counterintelligence official. “There seemed to be no boundaries.”

[0] https://news.yahoo.com/kidnapping-assassination-and-a-london...

I guess there'll be some reaction to Craig White's comments:

Mr Wright said the legal ruling confirmed he was the creator of the revolutionary digital asset. "The jury has obviously found that I am because there would have been no award otherwise," he said. "This has been a remarkable good outcome and I feel completely vindicated," Mr Wright said.

Fortunately there's an FAQ^h^h^h Story about that: "A GDS Story"

Introduction

The most common questions we’re asked by visitors to GDS are things like:

    “How did it all start in the first place?”
    “How did you get where you are now?”
    “How can I get my government/team/organisation to do similar things?”

This is an attempt to answer those.

https://gds.blog.gov.uk/story/

Incorrect according to the CMA Reports' clause 3 and clause 63:

Clause 3:

Facebook completed the acquisition of GIPHY on 15 May 2020, but has been required to hold the businesses separate since 9 June 2020, when the CMA imposed an Initial Enforcement Order (which was amended by a Variation Order on 29 June 2021).

Clause 63:

As noted above, we have decided that the sale of GIPHY is the only effective remedy to the SLCs that we have found. While divestiture of the acquired business is not an uncommon outcome when the CMA finds an SLC, divestiture of the GIPHY business poses particular challenges arising as a consequence of the completion of the Merger, and Facebook’s related actions, namely the termination of GIPHY’s revenue function and team, the transfer of almost all GIPHY staff on to Facebook employment contracts and the transfer of GIPHY’s back office functions to Facebook. These actions took place prior to the CMA issuing its Initial Enforcement Order holding the Facebook and GIPHY businesses separate and mean that, in several respects, GIPHY is in a significantly weaker position than it was pre-Merger.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/61a4bfa2e90e0...

Press release from the Competition and Markets Authority:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-directs-facebook-to-s...

Summary of final Report (30th November)

https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/facebook-inc-giphy-inc-merger-i...

Case documents:

https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/facebook-inc-giphy-inc-merger-i...

This is a follow-on from the June 2020 Initial Enforcement Order (IEO) that Facebook repeatedly breached and, after two appeals, was fined £50.5m in October 2021

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-fines-facebook-over-e...

Hedgerows were, and are, natural living fencing.

For farmers with livestock 'hedge-laying' is something that needs doing every 50 years or so (if well maintained) to ensure the lower sections are animal proof. Take a look at the British National HedgeLaying Society (NHLS) which holds national championships. Our local farming shows often hold competitions too (a neat way to get some of our hedges done for free!):

https://www.hedgelaying.org.uk/pg/info/styles.aspx

What got me most about this article is the ridiculous way RR described the power-pack:

"Roll-Royce said it also had the most power-dense propulsion battery pack ever assembled in aerospace with enough power to charge 7,500 phones."

Like that is a useful analogy, RR! Come on, we want minutes in the air with typical reserve!

UK farmer here - since childhood in 1970s we've always called it "corn harvest" when talking about wheat, barley, oats, rye, etc.; sometimes Maize is referred to as corn-on-the-cob.