https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3PzbGGaImo
Elon Musk has been doing his best to help Ukraine amid the Russian invasion.
Musk warned Starlink users in Ukraine to turn on the system “only when needed” because they could be targeted amid the invasion.
Continue reading “Elon Musk And NASA Mocks Russia Insane Decision” »
Hard drives and flash storage have gotten more reliable over the years, but only on a human timescale. What if we need data storage that lasts longer? Decades? Millennia? The key to that vision might be 5D optical storage, which has a data density 10,000 times that of a Blu-ray disc. But it’s always been far too slow to write data onto glass plates in this way—until now. A new technique developed at the University of Southampton speeds up the process dramatically, without impacting the reliability of the data.
This type of data storage uses three layers of nanoscale dots in a glass disc. The size, orientation, and position (in three dimensions) of the dots gives you the five “dimensions” used to encode data. Researchers say that a 5D disc could remain readable after 13.8 billion years, but it would be surprising if anyone was even around to read them at that point. In the shorter term, 5D optical media could also survive after being heated to 1,000 degrees Celsius. You can see an earlier, smaller version of the disc above.
This is not the first time 5G optical data storage has popped up. It was just impractically slow before. Data is added to the discs with lasers, but if the laser moves too fast, the disc’s structural integrity is compromised. The technique devised by doctoral researcher Yuhao Lei uses a femtosecond laser with a high repetition rate. The process starts with a seeding pulse that creates a nanovoid, but the fast pulse doesn’t need to actually write any data. The repeated weak pulses leverage a phenomenon known as near-field enhancement to sculpt the nanostructures in a more gentle way.
As I suspected, SpaceX is now doing well with building laser satellites and is rushing to launch them so, among other things, they can service East Ukraine.
They are launching Starlink satellites from SLC-40, Cape Canaveral SFS (Space Force Station) on March 8th, only 15 days after they launched Starlink satellites from the same tower. At this rate, with their 3 towers, they can do more than 1 launch/week on average.
Last year, SpaceX did 31 orbital launches. This year they will do closer to 62. The last Starlink launch was March 3rd from LC-39A Kennedy Space Center.
Musk and SpaceX sent Starlink terminals to Ukraine at the request of a government official after internet service was disrupted across the country by the Russian invasion. A shipment of Starlink ground terminals, which use an antenna and terminal to access the satellite broadband service, arrived in Ukraine by Monday Feb. 28). With the terminals in use, SpaceX is working to keep them online, Musk said.
“Some Starlink terminals near conflict areas were being jammed for several hours at a time,” Musk wrote in a Twitter statement Friday (March 1). “Our latest software update bypasses the jamming.”
I wonder how many of the satellites are damaged?
Elon Musk’s Starlink internet project continues to move forward, launch by launch.
SpaceX launched another 47 internet-beaming satellites from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday morning.
Continue reading “Watch a SpaceX rocket fly for a record 11th time” »
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is warning users in Ukraine who have received one of the company’s Starlink dishes that the connection could be targeted by Russian state actors.
“Important warning: Starlink is the only non-Russian communications system still working in some parts of Ukraine, so probability of being targeted is high,” Musk tweeted on Thursday.
“Please use with caution,” he added.
Russia’s attacks on Ukraine continue to take lives and destroy infrastructure as the country invades. This infrastructure damage has disrupted internet access in Ukraine, leading a government official to publicly request Starlink satellite internet access for the country from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Musk obliged, activating Starlink service in Ukraine and sending additional hardware. But with continued attacks on infrastructure, how will Ukraine stay connected?
Fedorov brings up an important point: Even though Starlink operates without the need for traditional internet infrastructure, the Earth-bound hardware still needs power. And, as Russian attacks bombard the country, Ukraine’s internet access will continue to be threatened.
Fedorov’s statement publicly reached out for help acquiring generators to keep Starlink online for Ukrainians. But Musk responded with an alternative suggestion.
Continue reading “How will Ukraine keep SpaceX’s Starlink internet service online?” »
Engineers sometimes turn to nature for inspiration. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Associate Professor Saket Navlakha and research scientist Jonathan Suen have found that adjustment algorithms—the same feedback control process by which the Internet optimizes data traffic—are used by several natural systems to sense and stabilize behavior, including ant colonies, cells, and neurons.
Internet engineers route data around the world in small packets, which are analogous to ants. As Navlakha explains, “The goal of this work was to bring together ideas from machine learning and Internet design and relate them to the way ant colonies forage.”
The same algorithm used by internet engineers is used by ants when they forage for food. At first, the colony may send out a single ant. When the ant returns, it provides information about how much food it got and how long it took to get it. The colony would then send out two ants. If they return with food, the colony may send out three, then four, five, and so on. But if ten ants are sent out and most do not return, then the colony does not decrease the number it sends to nine. Instead, it cuts the number by a large amount, a multiple (say half) of what it sent before: only five ants. In other words, the number of ants slowly adds up when the signals are positive, but is cut dramatically lower when the information is negative. Navlakha and Suen note that the system works even if individual ants get lost and parallels a particular type of “additive-increase/multiplicative-decrease algorithm” used on the internet.
Rather than an open, ubiquitous Internet that is accessible to the entire planet, Facebook’s new vision is about immersive reality.
