olympus

Its possible, but the fact that they applied for a US license that was denied makes any actions taken by a foreign headquartered company look fishy. At the very least, the US based portion of the company is still responsible for following the law in the US and the foreign country would be held responsible for approving the launch of a dangerous satellite if there is ever a collision. Considering that the founder and the employees live and work in California there probably isn't a foreign headquarters and probably isn't approval from a foreign country.

The FCC is charged with regulating communications of all distances, not just those crossing state lines. One of their primary missions is ensuring fair access to the wireless spectrum and keeping someone from jamming it and preventing others from communicating legally. Satellites must communicate to be effective, and satellites form a significant portion of our communications backbone. A rogue satellite operating over spectrum it isn't licensed for prevents other from using that spectrum, and a rogue satellite colliding with another satellite could cause debris and disable a bunch of other communications platforms.

The FCC isn't being orbital traffic cops, it is doing its job. While the FCC has done a bunch of distasteful stuff regarding net neutrality recently, the folks taking actin agains Swarm are clearly in the right.

Have you ever flown on a commercial plane? There are several parts of the US that you can't fly over because the USAF says you can't. They also control the GPS constellation and can turn it off at will or degrade the accuracy however much they like- although they've promised that they won't use the ability. The Army Corps of Engineers is involved in a significant portion of public construction like hydroelectric dams and do a lot of environmental regulation.

The military has jurisdiction over more than you might think, they just try to stay out of the way unless it impedes the national defense.

No it's not.

As long as the satellite is behaving itself, it can fly over any country and will not be subject to any laws from that country. The Outer Space Treaty was set up in part to clarify issues like this (also to keep nukes out of space). The US has no authority to restrict operations of an overhead satellite- which is good, because then they could prevent satellites orbiting in some of the most valuable inclinations. The only instances that I know of where a country did anything about an overhead satellite was China, when they blinded a satellite with a laser from the ground and when they tested an anti-satellite missile on one of their own satellites.

The short answer is that the Outer Space Treaty states that all commercial satellites are under the jurisdiction of the country in which the company exists, regardless of where they are launched. SpaceBees is a California based company, so the US government is the ones they answer to, not the country they hired to launch their stuff. Since satellites must communicate and could potentially disrupt the communications of others, the FCC gets a say in what goes on. The FCC is not the only authority in town, just the ones taking action here.

As far as satellites with covert missions or missions other than what is publicly stated, we should probably assume they already exist. The NRO is pretty sneaky and the USAF has never stated what the heck the X-37 is doing. There's a good chance that they have other satellites with publicly acknowledged missions that are doing something else behind the scenes. They are probably attempting to guard against that same behavior from others as well.

Doing optical imaging probably isn't feasible for a cubesat, it takes quite a bit of fuel to get next to another satellite and not hit it, so a cubesat can't zip up to dozens of satellites to get detailed images with a smartphone size sensor- it would run out of fuel too quickly. Instead, optical satellites will probably have their own orbit and accept that they will be far away from their targets. Large distances require a huge aperture if you want a good image, but it's not hard to imagine a satellite such as Hubble occasionally rotating to catch an image of Russian or Chinese tech. Plus, the NRO has sent up several very large payloads that we don't know what they do, so there's probably a large aperture imaging satellite snapping images we don't know about. What cubesats can do is extend long antennas that were folded up for launch. A small cubesat could be effective at RF surveillance and a constellation of cubesats and good signal processing could provide a surveillance system for other satellites that could spot various communication types and record the orbital information of the satellites doing the transmitting.

You might enjoy reading Glory Season by David Brin. It's a scifi novel with pirates and a competitive version of Conway's Game of Life- it's not central to the plot, but I've forgotten the plot and still remember Life. I read it several years ago and it piqued my interest the way Brin describes the time spent searching for new patterns.

It won't help you understand the mathematics of the game, but it might help you appreciate the beauty.

Just because the US does it doesn't make it right, and it doesn't make it any less concerning for the other countries in the region. Moral relativism isn't a good defense.

"could have great implications for homelessness"

Thinking like a politician, one of the implications might be- since we can count a car as a home, all the people living out of their cars aren't homeless anymore. With this huge reduction in homeless people we can cut the budget to the shelters because they are serving fewer people. They'll definitely win re-election because they simultaneously reduced homelessness and cut spending, and they didn't even have to put forth any effort. Total win for the politicians.

It doesn't just disturb the US, but every country surrounding China that is dominated by the strongest power in the region. The weaker countries have no choice but to accept unfavorable trade deals, give up ocean territory away from what is the accepted as international convention, etc.

China is big. China being ran by a dictator becomes a big bully.

This is a sign that Xi Jinping wants to become a dictator, and it concerns other countries if a giant country like China with a massive military is controlled by a dictator with unlimited power. China has every right to have a large military to defend itself, but a dictator might use the military to be aggressive to other countries.

China's GDP is several times bigger[1] than Vietnam, Korea, India, and Singapore, so spending a smaller percentage is still a larger absolute amount. Even India, the closest competitor that you listed is only 1/5 as big by GDP, and in absolute terms has a smaller military.

[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?order=wb...

I know that you didn't go out and buy the iPhone just for this purpose, but dang, this might be the pinnacle of modern consumerism. "I have a spare smartphone to use for apps that I don't want on my main smartphone."

Yeah, I meant something along the lines of using CRISPR or a future derivative to make a person genetically predisposed to having the fastest mind, most durable body, and best hand-eye coordination.

Oh, look. Another great thing that graphene can do.

I'm starting to think that I'll see genetically engineered pro athletes before I get to see graphene powered gadgets. And probably I'll see true human level AI before mass market graphene as well.

Air density does have an effect, but the density change from temps that we've seen in the last few years (say a 75 degree game vs an 80 degree game) is only going to get you a couple feet of ball travel. While it make a difference on balls that just barely clear the fence, it definitely doesn't account for the entire boom in home runs.

For comparison, a ball hit 400 ft at Yankee Stadium (400 ft elevation) would go 440 ft at Coors Field (5280 ft elevation). That's a 10% increase in ball distance for a 17% decrease in density. Increasing the temp by 5 degrees F drops the density by 0.8%, which is probably only good for 1-3 feet.

https://chem.libretexts.org/Exemplars_and_Case_Studies/Exemp...

https://wahiduddin.net/calc/calc_da.htm

Statistics is not the core of psychology, it is the core of having a publishable result. Psychologists want to do just enough statistics that they can claim to have a p-value<0.05 so they can get it into a journal. They don't care if their assumption of normality is correct, or if their assumption of independence is correct, or if the question they asked on the survey is actually measuring the thing they want to measure (spoiler alert: it usually doesn't, but we have a hard time measuring the brain). So they willfully ignore the assumptions because acknowledging that they were violated would mean that they would have to learn more complicated statistical methods. The current use of stats in psychology is just an attempt to make it look like their research is rigorous, when in reality it is usually broken.

The ideas of the scientific method are fine in psychology, but since most studies use WIERD samples, don't be surprised that many of those results don't generalize to other demographics.

I'm not blaming the victim, most* of the purchasers are in on the scam- they think they can "stick it to big Google" and buy a product that they know isn't a real Chromecast and save $10 over the price of a real Chromecast. As Dave Chappelle said, "You were in on the heist, you just didn't like your cut." They thought they could get a product without paying for the R&D effort goes into making a good product.

If you pay less money you can't expect to get the same thing. Situations where you get a better product for less money are pretty rare when the product is sold in large quantities- manufacturers won't give up free profit margin. If someone knowingly buys an inferior product, they don't get to complain when it isn't as good as the original. "Oh, man my $50k Hyundai Equus isn't as nice as a $70k Mercedes, I thought they'd be exactly the same."

*I'll accept that a few old grandmas bought these thinking they were the real deal, but most people knew they weren't getting real Chromecasts in the first place.

On one hand, anyone can obviously see that this is clearly ripping off the Chromecast's looks (and trademarked logo). But on the other hand, anyone who buys this thinking they are getting a Chromecast obviously didn't read the description. The first line is "special note: this isn't a Chromecast." One of the product pictures clearly shows that it can do several things but not Amazon Video or Netflix. I'm not sure I feel sorry for people that buy this. Didn't you learn that MegaBlox weren't as good as Legos when you were a kid?

Also, I don't know if the description has changed in the last couple months, but the top review (2 out of 5 stars) focuses on the fact that it's not 5GHz capable, but it never claims that it can. Again, it's possible that they changed the description since the review was posted, but I can't see anything on this product that is an outright lie. This company is staying on the right side of shady behavior and not straying into criminal territory.

Crappy product? Probably. Trademark infringement? Almost definitely. Counterfeit? Not quite. It's just MegaBlocks vs. Legos.

How do you feel if instead you got dolphins with tracking devices?

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/uncle-sams-dol...

It shouldn't take more than 1MB, but a "power user" with the stock Slack desktop client will probably see RAM usage of 1.5 GB[1]. So* GP was referencing the fact that currently the Slack desktop client is using >1GB and that is way too much.

* I recognize your sarcasm, but figured I'd reply anyway since the internet is a weird place and lots of people might not catch the joke.

[1] https://medium.com/@matt.at.ably/wheres-all-my-cpu-and-memor...

Government censorship is no fun, but the best part about this article for me was learning that Xi Jinping is sometimes compared to Winnie the Pooh. The comparison picture is dead on.

https://twitter.com/vinayak_jain/status/899886641157783553

Not to mention that if you rely on estimating pregnancy rates by taking birth rates and then shifting backwards nine months, you have lost three quarters of time, and thus there is no way to use this data to predict a recession even if pregnancy rates do precede a recession by three quarters. So it's fun to look at, but ultimately useless for forecasting if you can't get real time pregnancy rates instead of waiting nine months.

The graph doesn't look like pregnancy rates precede recessions at all, it looks like they occur at the same time (and thus aren't good for prediction). What's going on is that we have a goofy rule for recessions that require continuous retraction for a recession to be official. In most of these recessions it looks like the economy peaked the same time as pregnancy rates, but a tiny upward blip two quarters later prevented us from being officially in a recession. If you smoothed the idea of a recession into something like "contraction in 3 out of 4 quarters" you wouldn't have tiny blips delaying the official recession, and you wouldn't see pregnancy rates preceding anything, they would just be following the rest of the economy.

Savings in the US are not quite disincentivised, but not actively encouraged. You're only taxed on interest, the principal in a savings account isn't taxed.

His prediction would carry a lot more weight if he had written about it prior to the recession. A lot of people can say "I predicted that" after it happened, but those who have proof they can point to have a lot more credibility. All he has is that he "won a bet" after a "conversation with a friend."

Unless he was wrote about it ahead of time, we have no way of knowing whether he also made a similar bet with another friend in a different conversation to say that housing prices were going to continue towards the moon. If he had also structured the bet in which he got his school payed for and seemingly no downside if he lost, then he could have guaranteed free school, and looked like Nostradamus either way.

So it's quite possible that this is selection bias at work, and he "flips coins" on a regular basis and only brags about the ones that come up heads.

I believe this works in the Netherlands because they have a robust pension system. Disincentivizing savings without having a good system in place for retirement would break a country in a single generation.

It means a lot of extra space. You are duplicating installations of Chrome and Node for each Electron app that is installed, instead of having one install and each app using the common dependency.

So yes, the developer gets complete control over which version of Chrome and Node is used, but you end up with a 150 MB text editor, a 150 MB chat app, and a 150 MB music streaming app, when you could probably get all three done with 152 MB using common dependencies.

There is self selection going on in the comments of just about every article. In general people with strong feelings are more likely to comment, and on the internet strong negative feelings seem to be more common (and especially in an article about failing institutions).

In this case, people that hated going to college (or hated the idea of going) are more likely to comment. People that were pleased with their experience probably don't care as much about the article so they either don't comment or don't read it at all.

I worry that they will somehow tie the functionality of the sensors to an internet connection somehow. I wonder how hard it will be to write an entire car firmware from scratch.

My car of the future will have a very complicated hosts file. The manufacturer had better not try to break the self-driving features if I block the ads. If they do I volunteer to be the pedestrian that gets hit by a car with ad-block so I can sue them for the stupid decision.

The ineffectiveness of the Norden is overstated, since that's the trendy thing to do right now.

Admittedly, the Norden did not live up to its hype. Almost nothing performs as well in real life as it does under perfect conditions- this is commonly seen when going from the "golden testers" in development that graduated from test pilot school to the "regular testers" during operational test. But once appropriate tactics were developed (this takes a while with all new technology) and they found a few bombardiers good enough to lead bombing formations, it was effective. Not at the level of pinpoint accuracy, but the performance improved quite a bit over the 1943 results. They never took the Norden off the B-17s because any time the Norden had bad results any previous technology would have been worse.

To the point of my prior comment, Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren, the place that is working on the USN's railguns, is the same place where they were able to get Carl Norden's design into a production ready state where 90,000 of them could be made with the precision of a master Swiss watchmaker. Dahlgren isn't staffed by a bunch of software devs that call themselves "engineers" because they think it sounds better. They have real engineers working on solutions to their problems, and a history to back it up. While you can't assume they've looked at every possible idea, they have considered many novel ways to fix the main issues of railguns.