Mossad 101

#TNTSeries | Mossad 101
Started watching this series on Netflix last night. In Hebrew, I guess, with English subtitles. The above trailer I think has been dubbed in Portuguese. It might be realistic, I dunno. Being a spy requires a certain interpersonal skills that not everyone has. James Bond might make a great movie, but there aren't too many real-life James Bonds out there who would be willing to work for MI-5, or is it 6?

The only problem I have with the show is that the subtitles are often only on the screen for seconds which makes it tough to read them. I spent a lot of time rewinding and replaying.

Stuff In Space

GLONASS Satellite Orbits
From Stuff In Space

Stuff In Space is pretty cool. Shows you everyting that is currently in orbit, including satellites, discarded boosters and debris, but no pigs. NASA had something similar but it has gone away. You can pick and choose which orbits you want to see. I was surprised to see that GPS and GLONASS (the Russian GPS) were so far out. I thought they were all in LEO.

SBIRS - Space-Based Infrared System

SBIRS Mission Overview - Lockheed Martin
Took a little digging to find out who was actually watching out for missile launches, but I eventually got here: SBIRS.

Folding Bicycles

James May in Italy

I'm watching an old episode of Top Gear (Series 19, Episode 3 from 2013) on Netflix last night and at the very end James May unpacks a folding bicycle from his suitcase and sets off in pursuit of Richard Hammond. That was a surprise because until then I had no idea he was packing a bicycle.

Montague Paratrooper Folding Bicycle

Then today I come across an ad for this folding bike that the U.S. Military uses. Heck, two incidents in less than 24 hours, that's a blog post! Montague got a grant from DARPA to design this bike. You can buy one from Amazon for $900.

Montague Paratrooper, folded

World War I Italian Bersaglieri with folding bicycles

A little more digging turned up this picture from World War I. The coaster brake came from the military.

If you haven't had enough, here is an extensive web page about military bicycles.

North Korea Missile Launch

North Korea Missile Trajectory

North Korea's latest missile splashed down in the ocean 600 miles away from where it was launched, which doesn't sound like it is going to threaten anyone except their immediate neighbors. But then I read that it reached an altitude of 2800 miles. Could that be right? Or is it just a misprint? Turns out 2800 miles is correct. If North Korea altered the trajectory of this missile, theoretically it could reach halfway around the world, which puts just about everyone at risk.

I wonder how our satellite minders cope with this. Guess I better go check.

Net Neutrality

Is $10 a month for Netflix too little?

Some people are making a bunch of noise about Net Neutrality and how the FCC is in the pocket of the big internet companies. Then I came across a post about how what the FCC is doing is rolling back some regulations made over the last few years that have essentially restricted internet freedom. The arguments are a little complicated and given the amount of heat and noise, very partisan. Given that atmosphere, I'm not inclined to believe anything anyone is saying on the subject.

But it got me to thinking, and that led to trying to sort out the economics of the internet. Cable, whether coax or fiber-optic, seems to have an almost unlimited bandwidth. In a city with a million people and a thousand channels of broadcast it is almost certain that every one of those channels is being watched by somebody.

Installing the cables is a big expense. Stringing wires from poles and running lines into houses might only cost a couple of hundred bucks per house. Running fiber underground probably runs closer to $1,000, but you don't have the annual tree trimming expense or weather or other above ground mishaps to worry about. If you are looking at a 50 year timeline, you can see how the underground route could appeal to the capitalist investor.

But that's only part of the deal. You still need the equipment to pump your data into those cables and that means some kind of modem for every freaking channel. And then there are repeaters and boosters and who knows what all kinds of fancy commercial electronical gizmos are needed. I can see where a central distribution / collection point for a citywide network could easily cost $100,000. I guess in the overall scheme of things that's a pittance. If it costs on average $500 to hook up a residential customer, and 10% of the population in a city of a million people is connected, it will have cost $50 million to get them all connected. A hundred grand for a central hub is peanuts in comparison.

And then there are the shows that are broadcast, and their production costs. And advertising. And subscriber fees. The amount of money being thrown around is stupefying and it changes drastically every microsecond. Good luck trying to sort that out.

We're spending $175 a month for TV and hi-speed internet. We follow a couple of sports teams and that is basically all the TV we watch, unless you count the times we occasionally veg out in front of the tube. Now it might be possible to get those specific teams over the internet and save some money, but sorting that out is a colossal pain. Yes, you can get some of them here, and you can get some of them there, but finding someone who can give you everything you want is almost impossible. Well, not impossible, it just takes more than five minutes. which is all the time I am willing to spend on it. I have a low tolerance for useless information. Cable TV (Frontier Fiber-optic) gets us everything we want. It's expensive, but it works, and I don't have to read any legal boilerplate.

I suspect cable TV, like most big American businesses, is all about making money hand-over-fist. If someone in this business isn't making money fast enough, they might very well be tempted to go into illegal drug trafficking, another great American money machine.

Steigerwald Knives

Steigerwald Steampunk Knife

Stefan Steigerwald makes some very odd knives. Some, like the Steampunk Knife shown above, don't look particularly useful. They are more like mechanical works of art. From Germany.