Tues. Oct. 29, 2024 – busy, busy, busy, and more busy… that’s this week

By on October 29th, 2024 in culture, decline and fall, march to war

Another pretty nice day. Really, other than the humidity being high, it’s been nice for weeks. Mid 60s to mid 80s to mid 70s at night. And clear. Other than the weirdness of high RH in mild temps, you really couldn’t ask for better weather.

Except for the dry grass and drought conditions. Pretty sure things are getting dire for farmers and ranchers.

Monday I was productive and got things done. I did my pickups. One was a new-to-me auctioneer, where I won 5 gallons of lamp oil and some ham radio stuff. He asked if he could call me about the trailer full of ham radio stuff he couldn’t sell 2 years ago, that he’s finally trying to sell. Oh heII yes! I would absolutely love to help go through that… and cherry pick the good stuff, or buy the whole lot…

Maybe nothing will come of it, or maybe it will be a honey hole. Either is fine, because the potential is there. Meatspace! And chatting with people there.

Later, after the kid taxi service, I worked on my yard decor. I think I’m pretty much done. I’ve got a couple of things to add on Halloween, but I am pretty sure I won’t be banging together a whole new display or theme. I’ve got “fun” and “classic” going so far, and it’s good. I still need to hit Costco and get some candy though. We get about 120-150 kids coming by, mainly from the neighborhood earlier in the evening, and then surrounding area later. Participating is being part of our community, and it gives me an identity that isn’t “scary loner with guns”.

Today it’s more driving and pickups. Kid taxi in the afternoon, band concert in the evening… and I need to prep for auction, and for doing a mini-seminar for D2’s theater class. I volunteered, but didn’t expect the teacher to take me up on it until after the current production. I have to pull some gear out of storage and make sure it works and works together…

Yeah, did I mention, busy week? It’s a good life, if you don’t falter.

And I’ll maybe fit in some stacking… besides the meatspace networking and community building and goodwill expanding….

nick

62 Comments and discussion on "Tues. Oct. 29, 2024 – busy, busy, busy, and more busy… that’s this week"

  1. Greg Norton says:

    My Starlink goes up at my office and downlink to Dallas, Texas.  Kind of interesting how they keep the downlink relatively close to the uplink.  Maybe to minimize satellite traffic ?

    Does the router show this in an interactive display?

    The Seattle Trainwreck’s product “spin” when I worked there was about creating a mesh network node on an airplane based mostly on stock Common Criteria RHEL using a very sophisticated routing model which was the “secret sauce”. I imagine SpaceX does something similar but with the benefit of eleven years of Moore’s Law for the ground station hardware.

    Unlike the Trainwreck, he satellites may not actually be as sophisticated as the ground nodes.

    Linux, no doubt, is key.

  2. Greg Norton says:

    There was also the fact that their new policy was a substantial change to the employment contract.  I may have won even if they did show up.  We’ll never know.

    The Roberts’ majority opinion on the OSHA large employer mandate for jabs threaded the needle very fine on relative workplace risk. If your hearing took place after the Supreme Court issued the ruling, the hospital may have wanted to avoid sworn testimony in a TWC tribunal about your specific situation from an HR pinhead not truly qualified to assess the risk which could bite them in a lawsuit later, especially if conclusive evidence surfaced later from scientific studies that the jabs were dangerous.

    Or the HR pinhead could have been lazy and overwhelmed.

    Is Batman a transvestite?

    In my brush with TWC, the tolling company reached a point where they could no longer keep the lies straight and simply punted, allowing me to collect my check and clear my name with a judgement of wrongful termination while they avoided sworn testimony from the former Chipotle manager local HR pinhead which could have been used against them in my pursuit of ADEA-based criminal charges later.

  3. Nick Flandrey says:

    Awake.  Stumbling around.  Coffee soon.

    ———–

    Starlink uses a mesh network in space, with optical links- tiny space lasers (would be called free space optics links on earth) doing at least some if not all of the backhaul, assuming they met the RFP for DoD.  I think there is a fair amount of brains in the spacecraft.   They maneuver in space, keep track of their neighbors and maintain targeting for their lasers, route traffic, etc. all while doing what must be a LOT of signal processing to pull the different subscriber uplinks out of the background noise.   They do geofencing or at least pass geo location data along (probably better to filter it at the source and keep the denied traffic off the net).  They do station keeping and attitude adjustments, and that HAS to be automated giving the numbers…and I wouldn’t be surprised if they do optical star field recognition to know where they are, as I don’t think GPS works on orbit.

    And SOMETHING is managing provisioning, since dozens enter the mesh and leave it all the time.

    ———-

    Joe Rogan Addresses YouTube Censorship Concerns, Says Harris Interview Still Possible 

    by Tyler Durden

    Tuesday, Oct 29, 2024 – 06:20 AM

    Former President Trump sat down with Joe Rogan for a three-hour interview on Friday. Several days later, the viral interview appears to have been censored on the video-sharing platform. 

    On early Tuesday morning, Rogan addressed censorship concerns by uploading the full video on X. He said, “Since there’s an issue with searching for this episode on YouTube here is the full podcast with Trump.” 

    It came up for me this morning- but even an ATTEMPT is contemptible.

    37M views according to yt, which has lied in the past about number of views.

    ————

    Time to poke some kids…

    n

  4. dcp says:

    My Starlink goes up at my office and downlink to Dallas, Texas.

    Entertaining display:  https://satellitemap.space/?constellation=starlink

  5. Nick Flandrey says:

    Perhaps Disney girl’s company is looking at OneWeb…

    Although all the satellites OneWeb needs for worldwide coverage are in position, ground segment delays are currently holding back global services.

    Previously slated to begin global low Earth orbit services in early 2024, Eutelsat recently said it expects to have completed only 90% of OneWeb’s ground network by the end of June following a mix of installation and licensing setbacks.

    Key enterprise and government customer markets for OneWeb that are waiting for services to come online include India and Saudi Arabia.

    still, it’s one thing to have a ground station in a box, where is the backhaul coming from?   Unless you can put the box on the roof at the local telco office…you still have to get to the internet somehow.

    n

    added– the lack of terrestrial bandwidth and the difficulty of getting it to where it was needed was why it made sense to put the network in space in the first place.

  6. Nick Flandrey says:

    73F this morning, and damp.  Mild breeze and clear sky.

    Sun’s coming up and the horned moon is in the sky.

    n

  7. dkreck says:

    I’m really not much of a sports fan but I often watch baseball come October. The series only if it has teams that I have some interest in so this year I’m all in. What a joy to watch the Yanks going down in flames.

    Best of all a feel good story I read this morning.

    https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2024-10-28/freddie-freeman-grand-slam-ball-dodgers-fan-zachary-world-series

    Even makes a grouchy old man like myself smile.

  8. MrAtoz says:

    LOL

    EXCLUSIVEMan who’s taken $92 million in 2024 presidential election bets reveals why his platform is a better predictor than polls

    This is probably more accurate than the cheating pollsters. tRump at 63% sounds more accurate to me. The Kamel Humper and her campaign have turned into a dumpster fie trying to go woke and call everybody who doesn’t vote K-H raycisss and Hitler.

  9. lpdbw says:

    You know, the whole betting market gives me an idea.

    Cowardly courts dodged a lot of the election fraud cases by denying standing to people who brought suits.  The people who run the betting markets have a financial interest in fair, honest, and auditable elections, so when cheating is uncovered, they may be able to force standing.

    A man can dream, can’t he?

  10. Bob Sprowl says:

    I ordered a refurbished  Apple iPhone Plus with 256 GB of memory from Amazon for $600.  Should be here November 7th.  My most expensive phone ever.

    I wonder how long it will take me to set it up and make it useful.  My guess is several days, I know my son will apply the engineer’s correction factor for time estimates:  change the units of measure to the next higher one, thus days becomes weeks.  I hope he is wrong.

  11. Greg Norton says:

    Cowardly courts dodged a lot of the election fraud cases by denying standing to people who brought suits.  The people who run the betting markets have a financial interest in fair, honest, and auditable elections, so when cheating is uncovered, they may be able to force standing.
     

    IIRC, the vast expansion in gambling on various events, particularly NFL games, has happened thanks to a court ruling highlighting a loophole in the law which Congress refuses to close properly.

    The bookies taking bets on the election may not have standing.

  12. nick flandrey says:

    the engineer’s correction factor for time estimates:  change the units of measure to the next higher one, thus days becomes weeks. 

    – one I’d never heard before, quoted here for truth.

    n

    It’s a bit like my rule for working with South Africans.

    If they are talking about how far away, or how expensive something is, halve the number.

    If they are talking about how close, or how cheap something is, double the number.

    FWIW it worked across my whole sample size of 3.5… and it may just apply to expats.

    n

  13. EdH says:

    I ordered a refurbished  Apple iPhone Plus with 256 GB of memory from Amazon for $600.

    Out of  curiosity, which model, the 14?

  14. lynn says:

    Except for the dry grass and drought conditions. Pretty sure things are getting dire for farmers and ranchers.

    It rained at my house last night at 630pm.  And 635pm.  And 640pm.  And 645pm.  About a minute each time while we were walking our 1.5 miles outside.

  15. Ray Thompson says:

    I wonder how long it will take me to set it up and make it useful.  My guess is several days

    I doubt it will take that long. Power up the device and follow the instructions on the screen. The most difficult part is probably setting up the WiFi under Settings. Installing the SIM is easy (iPhone 13 or earlier). Do that before powering up the device. If there is no SIM slot you will have to take the phone to the cellular provider as they will need some numbers from the phone to get an eSIM.

  16. Ken Mitchell says:

    Rain in San Antonio;  the sky looked like it was thinking about MAYBE raining a bit. Barely enough to get the pavement damp, but not even a “trace” in meteorological terms. But enough that the humidity went from “damp” to “unpleasant”. 

  17. MrAtoz says:

    DM lead story: Shrub’s daughter endorses the Kamel Humper.

    Nobody cares about the Bush RINO cabal.

  18. Ken Mitchell says:

    Nobody cares about the Bush RINO cabal.

    PREACH it, brother!   We need SERIOUS term limits!!!

    First, we need to limit how long people suck on the government teat. Starting from age 20, anybody who wants to run for public office needs to have spent at least half of their adult life working for a paycheck with a PRIVATE enterprise. By age 40, the candidate must have spent at least 10 years in the private sector. Government SERVICE isn’t supposed to be a lifetime career;  serve the nation for a FEW years, and then go back to the farm.
     

    Second, there are 330 million people in America; we shouldn’t keep electing the same losers. No candidate may run for ANY Federal office who is a close relative (spouse, partner, parent, grandparent, sibling, 1st or 2nd cousin, child or grandchild) of any President, VP, Governor or Senator. No more Kennedys or Shrubs or Clintons or Romneys or Cuomos. We need NEW “elites”!
     

    And finally, we need a maximum allowable tenancy in Washington, D.C. Every government official of ANY kind may reside within 100 miles of Washington D.C. for a maximum of 30 years. Work for the government for a SHORT WHILE and then GO HOME. 

  19. Lynn says:

    Over The Hedge: Dr. Hammy

       https://www.gocomics.com/overthehedge/2024/10/29

    Why do I think that Dr. Hammy is better than half of the doctors out there ?

  20. Greg Norton says:

    Nobody cares about the Bush RINO cabal.
     

    They are biding their time, waiting for Abbott to announce his retirement.

    In the meantime, the fish are always biting off Boca Grande.

  21. lpdbw says:

    Why do I think that Dr. Hammy is better than half of the doctors out there ?

    Because a cartoon animal in a white coat is more believable than over half the doctors out there?

    Because over half the doctors out there believe that Type II diabetes is a progressive disease that is hopeless to put in remission, and you’ll need more medications and more insulin injections, get fat, and die of heart disease, and there’s nothing else to be done about it.  Oh, and eating keto and carnivore is full of icky saturated fat.  Never mind the improved weight, BP, and labs.

    Because they belive the drug companies that LDL cholesterol  is a problem, and statins are the One True Answer.  In spite of studies showing high LDL is associated with longer life, and statins are associated with many problems, cognition and muscle pains foremost.

    Because they believe the vaccine mythology.  

  22. Lynn says:

    My Starlink goes up at my office and downlink to Dallas, Texas.  Kind of interesting how they keep the downlink relatively close to the uplink.  Maybe to minimize satellite traffic ?

    Does the router show this in an interactive display?

    tracert.exe in a Windows cmd shell.   Even shows my WAN Multiplexer box which I find incredibly interesting.

  23. Greg Norton says:

    Because they belive the drug companies that LDL cholesterol  is a problem, and statins are the One True Answer.  In spite of studies showing high LDL is associated with longer life, and statins are associated with many problems, cognition and muscle pains foremost.
     

    You forgot the endless pushing of Adderall.

    And T therapy.

    And we won’t even start on the prostate cancer industrial complex

  24. lynn says:

    Does the router show this in an interactive display?

    Btw, the only indicator on the Starlink router box is a very small power light on the bottom that also tells if the antenna has power through the cable.

  25. paul says:

    I discovered a set of DVDs called 50 SCI-FI Classics.  Five discs, five movies per side.  “”Over 62 hours!”.  This is going to take a while. At most a movie a night.

    With titles like The Wasp Woman and Robot Monsters it looks like Saturday afternoon TV “stuff” that, well, it’s better than golf, roller derby, or wrestling. 

    Should be fun.   There’s bound to be a few gems in the set. 

  26. lynn says:

    Starlink uses a mesh network in space, with optical links- tiny space lasers (would be called free space optics links on earth) doing at least some if not all of the backhaul, assuming they met the RFP for DoD.  I think there is a fair amount of brains in the spacecraft.   They maneuver in space, keep track of their neighbors and maintain targeting for their lasers, route traffic, etc. all while doing what must be a LOT of signal processing to pull the different subscriber uplinks out of the background noise.   They do geofencing or at least pass geo location data along (probably better to filter it at the source and keep the denied traffic off the net).  They do station keeping and attitude adjustments, and that HAS to be automated giving the numbers…and I wouldn’t be surprised if they do optical star field recognition to know where they are, as I don’t think GPS works on orbit.

    It is obvious to me that Starlink is changing the ipv4 address of the satellite to the next satellite as they hand you off every 90 seconds or so.

    And GPS works over Starlink but the protocol is way different.  The satellites know exactly where they are.  Some prof somewhere developed a working GPS on Starlink and published it.

  27. Bob Sprowl says:

    iPhone 14.

    Useful equals contracts loaded, selected photos copied, apps installed and working, documents copied with ability to edit documents.   Appointments and other calendar stuff copied.  I had MS Office and could open Word or Excel and do minor edits. 

    I had Color notes with notes about storage unit  keycodes, vehicles license numbers, long term to do and shopping lists with sizes other details.  Recreating all of that will not be done overnight.  I have all of my neighbor’s name in a list as I can’t remember them.  Gas taxes for the nearby states sop I knew which state to buy gas from, etc.  Medicine list so I could easily tell someone exactly what I as taking.  

  28. Greg Norton says:

    And GPS works over Starlink but the protocol is way different.  The satellites know exactly where they are.  Some prof somewhere developed a working GPS on Starlink and published it.

    The base stations probably have GPS and know their locations precisely. They may even have a Stratum-1 time server which the satellites reference to set their own clocks when overhead. From there, it is a question of triangulation using the NTP numbers and received RF signal strength.

    That reminds me – a Stratum-1 time server is on my list of things to do.

    Maybe accelerometer and magnetic field sensor data streams are in the mix too. The chips are cheap enough that most phones have those these days.

  29. Lynn says:

    DM lead story: Shrub’s daughter endorses the Kamel Humper.

    Nobody cares about the Bush RINO cabal.

    Which Bush daughter, the good twin or the evil twin ?

  30. Lynn says:

    Pearls Before Swine: Polling Intelligence Test

       https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2024/10/29

    I am with the “Part of me wants to lock Rat up, and part of me wants to shake his hand.” commenter.

  31. Greg Norton says:

    With titles like The Wasp Woman and Robot Monsters it looks like Saturday afternoon TV “stuff” that, well, it’s better than golf, roller derby, or wrestling. 

    “The Wasp Woman” was on MST3k and Svengoolie has it once in a while.

    Ooh. “Santa Claus Conquers The Martians”, one of the all time great MST3k flicks.

    It looks like a lot of public domain stuff on the list, but Canal Plus renewed the copyright on “Santa Claus Conquers The Martians and puts it in indie theaters around the country every Christmas season.

    I have this flick on DVD, but I believe it went public domain along with most of the rest of American International’s flicks except “I Was A Teenage Warewolf” – starring Michael Landon – and “I Was A Teenage Frankenstein”, the rights to both of which are held by the producer’s widow.

    “The Abominable Dr. Phibes” is a Vincent Price classic. The H264 *.mp4 would probably play from a flash drive in your living room BluRay player.

    https://archive.org/details/the-abominable-dr.-phibes

    We went to House on The Rock in Wisconsin last Fall, and the whole place has a creepy “Dr. Phibes” vibe.

    Highly recommended if you’re ever out that way, BTW.

  32. Greg Norton says:

    I early voted today. The big races were important, but I wanted to make sure my voice was heard about the one billion dollar school board bond initiatives.

    NO!

  33. Greg Norton says:

    Can we deport the Vindman twins first?

    Joe Rogan knows better than to go to One Observatory Circle for an interview, even if the magic earrings conspiracy theories aren’t true. They will feed her answers somehow.

    Go to Joe Rogan’s comedy club in Austin, and your phone goes into a metal mesh bag. Or, at least did.

    https://twitchy.com/brettt/2024/10/29/alexander-vindman-says-respect-for-the-vp-means-he-should-get-on-a-plane-n2402983

  34. Nightraker says:

    I’ve been to the House on the Rock several times, generally with several years in between.  The first time, before high school graduation, was just the House, Gate House, Guest House and the “Streets of Yesteryear”  Every successive time, they added more and more and more “collections” in themed room sized dioramas.  Those are kept in giant steel barns at ground level.  For some reason early on, they modded the House with almost opaque blue panels on the windows.  Not an improvement, to my eye.  The walk in fireplace in the Gate House is very cool.

  35. Greg Norton says:

    I’ve been to the House on the Rock several times, generally with several years in between.  The first time, before high school graduation, was just the House, Gate House, Guest House and the “Streets of Yesteryear”  Every successive time, they added more and more and more “collections” in themed room sized dioramas.

    The attraction really needs a full day to appreciate everything, and we were very pressed for time that weekend, hitting Taliesin on their last day of tours for 2023 and House on the Rock the next day, for the final normal operating hours before they switched to the Christmas schedule.

    When student loan payments resumed last year, the “weekend getaway” destinations within a few hours of Chicago all truncated their schedules suddenly at the beginning of November, shutting down for the Winter a few weeks early despite beautiful weather.

    This year, I noted that Taliesin is scheduled to be open through Dec. 1 again, but I wonder if that might change without warning like it did last year.

    We’ll go back again at some point in the near future. This year’s Fall trip is Boston, and we have conferences in Palm Springs and Nashville next year since board renewals are due.

    Maybe 2026.

    I wanted to do House on the Rock because it was featured in both the book and miniseries of “American Gods”.

    Taliesin wasn’t as high on the list, but I’m glad we took the time.

  36. paul says:

    “The Wasp Woman” was on MST3k and Svengoolie has it once in a while.

    I don’t stay up that late.  Never mind I haven’t  watched any over the air or Roku since last April.  I’m just stuffing close to a DVD a night in the player.

    The watched DVD goes onto the “keeper” pile or it goes onto the “Library Thrift Shop” pile because it’s a crap movie or a “yeah, saw it, meh” movie.

    I, being evil, put the Alien Covenant that came from Germany in the keeper pile.  Just to mess with someone down the road with a region 2 PAL DVD.  Because.

  37. paul says:

    Can we deport the Vindman twins first?

    After they wear a rope necklace? 

  38. paul says:

    Geesh.  7:30pm.  Pitch dark like going into a closet with no window dark.  It’s almost time to take the dogs for a walk.  Buddy tends to be regular…. so the later I can wait, the less likely he poops during the night.

    His house training is not great.  He is getting better but puppy habits are hard to change.

    Anyway.  Penny has gone to bed.  For now.  We are all about to Go For Walk!  🙂 

  39. Lynn says:

    “First in-depth look at Elon Musk’s 100,000 GPU AI cluster — xAI Colossus reveals its secrets”

       https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/servers/first-in-depth-look-at-elon-musks-100-000-gpu-ai-cluster-xai-colossus-reveals-its-secrets

    “Now, witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational AI supercluster”

    That is a lot of GPUs.  All liquid cooled of course.

    “Because of the high-bandwidth requirements of an AI supercluster constantly training models, xAI went beyond overkill for its networking interconnectivity. Each graphics card has a dedicated NIC (network interface controller) at 400GbE, with an extra 400Gb NIC per server. This means that each HGX H100 server has 3.6 Terabit per second ethernet. And yes, the entire cluster runs on Ethernet, rather than InfiniBand or other exotic connections which are standard in the supercomputing space.”

    I was wondering what the communications was.

  40. Nightraker says:

    Never got close to Taliesin East, although circled around it once long ago.  The now visitor center nearby used to be a chi chi restaurant.  That was fun.

    Managed to visit the AZ Taliesin twice.  That is worthwhile.  As is the Usonian “Wingspread” in Racine, WI along with Johnson Wax.  Used to be a walking tour of several of his Prairie Style houses in the Spring in Oak Park, IL and his studio there.  The Twin Rivers, WI Usonian has a rate for overnights that I never quite got around to.

  41. Lynn says:

    Geesh.  7:30pm.  Pitch dark like going into a closet with no window dark.  It’s almost time to take the dogs for a walk.  Buddy tends to be regular…. so the later I can wait, the less likely he poops during the night.

    Guess what happens Saturday night ?  Yup, you got it, FALL BACK.

    “’Lock the clock’: Sen. Rubio makes another bid to make daylight saving time permanent”

       https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/10/29/marco-rubio-daylight-saving-time-permanent/75915797007/

    Do it ! Do it ! Do it !

    We need to stop the crazy.

  42. Lynn says:

    RCP National Average   48.4   48.0   Trump +0.4
    Top Battlegrounds           48.6   47.6   Trump +1.0
    RCP Betting Average     62.8   36.0  

    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/

  43. MrAtoz says:

    My future State of residence:

    Marc Elias Celebrates That Nevada Will Count Non-Postmarked Ballots 3 Days After Election Day

    No chance to cheat there. Nope. No way. Postmark? We don’t need no stinkin’ postmark.

  44. nick flandrey says:

    Bob Thomas, a longtime Associated Press journalist who died in 2014, was the principal writer of this obituary. AP Entertainment Writer Mark Kennedy contributed to this report.

    Terri Garr has left the stage…

    10 years AFTER they wrote her “on file” obit…   Good for her.

     Always liked her.

    n

  45. Greg Norton says:

    I was wondering what the communications was.

    Each H100 server has eight GPUs plugged into multiplexed PCI-e bus slots and two high end Intel CPUs to coordinate everything. As the article points out, each GPU board also has an ethernet controller.

    Intel CPUs and chipsets. Even on the AMD MI300X servers.

    For now.

    No ARM CPUs either.

    Again, for now. An AMD CPU would be a much easier lift than ARM for reasons I can’t discuss, but the long knives are out for Intel and x86_64 at a lot of customers, regardless of objective reasons, because … Hot Skillz!

    Plus politics.

    Apple does not have an H100 play because it would require eating a heaping plate full of crow dinner with Nvidia and, to some extent, Intel. Instead, they buy lots of GPU time from Microsoft, but Azure has been Apple’s dirty secret on the back end for over 15 years.

  46. Greg Norton says:

    Terri Garr has left the stage…

    10 years AFTER they wrote her “on file” obit…   Good for her.

     Always liked her.

    Terri Garr did not show up for the final run of shows when Letterman was fired in 2015, which was really surprising to a lot of fans and probably triggered the writing of the obit packages. She did show up in a wheelchair for the 40th anniversary of “Young Frankenstein” around the same time, however, so my guess is that she was p*ssed at Dave over what happened with the mistress going so far out of control

    When Michael Cimino died, his obit packages at a lot of places featured lot of talk from him about Clint Eastwood, which made me wonder if the bulk of the video they had was from Eastwood’s obit package.

  47. Greg Norton says:

    Terri Garr’s last Letterman appearance, almost 17 years ago, starts at around the 1:00:00 mark.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6sIdHX1Wt4

  48. nick flandrey says:

    And GPS works over Starlink but the protocol is way different.   

    – pedantic, but I have a point…   GPS is the constellation of satellites designed to provide location to ground and air units.   What the guy did with Starlink was not a way to use GPS over it, or extend “The Global Positioning System” [full name] to it.   He figured out how to use the starlink space craft to figure out ones position.

    SpaceX Starlink satellites could provide U.S. military with an unjammable alternative to GPS navigation

    Oct. 7, 2020

    Researchers say a simple software upgrade to Starlink satellites to provide communications, position and navigation services similar to GPS.

    My point, other than the one on my head, is that there are several satellite based systems for position finding, and as aids to navigation and routefinding.

    All of them are subject to spoofing, and jamming.

    My milspec contractor magazines are all full of people who desperately desire  two things – how to fight back against drones, and how to provide position, navigation, and timing (PNT) in a “GPS denied environment”.

    collins has MAPS II

    https://www.militaryaerospace.com/sensors/article/14296414/pnt-armored-combat-vehicles-gps-threats 

    The MAPS Gen II system is composed of the Collins Aerospace NavHub-100 navigation system and Multi-Sensor Antenna System (MSAS-100), and is designed to boost protection against evolving GPS threats. It include Military Code (M-Code) capability and improved levels of reliability through modernized signal tracking to enhance GPS integrity, Collins officials say.

    NavHub-100 generates and distributes assured position, navigation and timing (APNT) information to all combat vehicle systems, and provides accurate navigation amid GPS threats by fusing data from several different sensors.

    Related: General Dynamics to upgrade Army AN/MLQ-44A Prophet-Enhanced SIGINT vetronics systems

    NavHub-100 offers modern signal tracking to ensure GPS integrity; supports the Defense Advanced GPS Receiver (DAGR) standard interface; includes an M-Code security-certified circuit card.

    The MSAS-100 offers additional protection by using the ground-based MSAS-100 anti-jam antenna. It also provides simultaneous GPS L1 and L2 protection; delivers anti-jamming capability; supports Y-Code and M-Code anti-jamming. It also includes the AltNav single-patch antenna and barometer and orientation sensor for assured PNT.

    DARPA want a magnetometer device that can refer to existing and new maps

    Experts in the DARPA Microsystems Technology Office want to improve their understanding of the state of the art and the emerging technologies available to meet magnetic navigation requirements for high-noise operational and environmental conditions.

    Magnetometers can measure the combination of Earth’s core magnetic field, space weather effects, human-made infrastructure, and the relatively small variations in Earth’s magnetic field due to mineral deposits and other geographic features of Earth’s crust.

    Related: Navy chooses Honeywell to provide combination GPS/INS navigation avionics for F/A-18 jet fighter bombers

    Comparing variations in Earth’s magnetic field to a stored local map helps enable accurate position determination, but is limited by platform noise and the quality of available maps.

    They have contracted for a new handheld system

    https://www.militaryaerospace.com/sensors/article/14292424/positioning-navigation-and-timing-pnt-gps-denied-infantry 

    Officials of the Army Contracting Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., announced a $402.5 million seven-year contract to TRX last month for Dismounted Assured Positioning, Navigation, and Timing System (DAPS) Generation II units.

    DAPS is replacing the Army’s legacy Defense Advanced GPS Receiver (DAGR) for infantry soldiers. It gives Army forces access to trusted PNT where Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite navigation signals may be limited or denied.

    Unlike the DAGR, DAPS incorporates a military code receiver, and its non-GPS capabilities give the user PNT information from several different sources.

    Related: IS4S to use open-systems standards like SOSA for battlefield positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT)

    Units equipped with DAPS will use their trusted PNT information to operate in GPS-denied conditions like dense vegetation, built-up urban and mountainous terrain, and in the presence of electromagnetic interference or enemy electronic warfare (EW) jamming and spoofing of GPS signals.

    There are existing implementations that use and extend GPS, the google maps app uses their maps of access points to improve accuracy above GPS when you are using their app on your phone.   Apple does the same or similar…

    Not gonna work in the desert or on the sea though.

    n

    And my guess was correct, starlink uses star tracking on the satellites themselves and automatically does collision avoidance.

    Starlink satellites autonomously maneuver to avoid collisions with orbital debris and other spacecraft.

    Starlink’s custom-built navigation sensors survey the stars to determine each satellite’s location, altitude, and orientation, enabling precise placement of broadband throughput.

    It’s like science fiction or something.

    n

  49. Nick Flandrey says:

    Ah, my point was that GPS is and should be called “The Global Positioning System”.   It was the first and only, for a while.

    n

    The russians, chinese, euros, and I think the japs have their own systems.   You can get receivers that work with more than one system.

  50. Greg Norton says:

    “’Lock the clock’: Sen. Rubio makes another bid to make daylight saving time permanent”

       https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/10/29/marco-rubio-daylight-saving-time-permanent/75915797007/

    Do it ! Do it ! Do it !

    We need to stop the crazy.

    Florida was serious about going with permanent UTC-4 for a while, but the storms have really done a number on the West Coast beach communities over the last few years. Once the businesses get wiped out, the replacements tend to be higher end, attracting fewer people with more money, but there is still a limit of what wealthy people will pay for the proverbial Cheeseburger in Paradise.*

    *According to legend, served at the Cabbage Key Inn, off the coast of Fort Myers. The burgers are pretty typical IMHO, but the black beans are spectacular. Florida isn’t exactly short on places serving black beans.

    The burgers and the boat ride out there used to run about $100 for a family, but Biden Bux have probably changed that price.

    The last time we went to Cabbage Key was 2021, at the height of the Wuxu Flu jab hysteria. *NO ONE* wore a friggin mask on the island.

  51. drwilliams says:

    Once the businesses get wiped out, the replacements tend to be higher end, attracting fewer people with more money, but there is still a limit of what wealthy people will pay for the proverbial Cheeseburger in Paradise.*

    Once the cheap living places get wiped out, the replacements are always higher end, fewer people for a lot more money. No workers, no service for the wealthy, be it serving the $35 lunch salads, washing the boats, or putting storm covers over the windows before the hurricane. 

  52. Greg Norton says:

    The russians, chinese, euros, and I think the japs have their own systems.   You can get receivers that work with more than one system.

    Samsung phones support multiple systems. SatStat, available from F-Droid, will display all of the satellites your phone receives.

  53. Greg Norton says:

    Once the cheap living places get wiped out, the replacements are always higher end, fewer people for a lot more money. No workers, no service for the wealthy, be it serving the $35 lunch salads, washing the boats, or putting storm covers over the windows before the hurricane.

    The mainland, where the workers typically live, takes a lot longer to rebuild after a storm. When we went to Sanibel/Captiva in 2021, Fort Myers was still hauling debris out from the 2017 storm. Now there have been two significant storms since DeSantis took office, and the last one even took out the Mucky Duck on Captiva.

    I never thought that place would be closed due to hurricane damage. Going all the way back to Charlie, The Duck simply shoveled the sand out of the dining room, rebuilt the dunes, and reopened.

    https://www.fox4now.com/captiva/beloved-mucky-duck-restaurant-sustains-significant-damage-in-hurricane-milton

  54. Nick Flandrey says:

    D2’s band concert was pretty good.   They lost some good players to graduation, and this year’s band has a bunch of first year students, but they did a very creditable job.  I didn’t cringe or cover my ears once.  

    The band director retired from a big school with a big band program, and our middle school is his retirement “hobby”.   He’s done incredible work to bring kids from nothing to where they are, and in only a couple of years.   There are fewer than 30 kids, so no percussion, and he’s filling in slots as he gets kids.   Still, they are playing well, and playing longer pieces.

    ———-

    I took a look at the sound board they have in the theater, and I’ll be watching videos and reading manuals… it’s an automated fader, digital board, and is WAY more than they need.  And there isn’t anyone to teach them.  Middle schoolers should have analog boards, with lots of knobs.  Then you can directly see the choices, and play with stuff to see and hear what it does.  No need to maintain a mental model of signal flow, dig thru menus, or wonder if there is stuff hidden from view but affecting your sound.  As a HMI (human machine interface) the analog sound mixing board has evolved to be superlative at allowing access, and being ‘discoverable.’   This digital thing, not so much.  It’s not even obvious that the display is a touchscreen, ffs.

    n

  55. Nick Flandrey says:

    And I need to call it a night.  Lots to do tomorrow.  

    n

  56. Lynn says:

    “’Disgusting’: Donald Trump, JD Vance Respond Accordingly to Biden’s ‘Garbage’ Swipe at Trump Supporters”

        https://redstate.com/sister-toldjah/2024/10/29/disgusting-donald-trump-jd-vance-respond-accordingly-to-bidens-garbage-swipe-at-trump-supporters-n2181269

    “I think people of all political persuasions would agree that there is never a dull moment in presidential election years, and that is especially the case when Donald Trump and his Trump Derangement Syndrome-suffering critics on the left/in the media are involved.”

    “As RedState reported earlier, President Joe Biden (deliberately?) sabotaged the biggest moment of Vice President Harris’ political career Tuesday by stating on a “Voto Latino” call as her speech was getting underway that Trump supporters were “garbage.””

    So I am deplorable and garbage.  I guess that one should consider the source of that statement before acknowledging it.  After all, the source is a thief, treasonous, and a child molester.

    Hat tip to:

       https://thelibertydaily.com/

  57. Lynn says:

    Why do I think that Dr. Hammy is better than half of the doctors out there ?

    Because a cartoon animal in a white coat is more believable than over half the doctors out there?

    Because over half the doctors out there believe that Type II diabetes is a progressive disease that is hopeless to put in remission, and you’ll need more medications and more insulin injections, get fat, and die of heart disease, and there’s nothing else to be done about it.  Oh, and eating keto and carnivore is full of icky saturated fat.  Never mind the improved weight, BP, and labs.

    Because they belive the drug companies that LDL cholesterol  is a problem, and statins are the One True Answer.  In spite of studies showing high LDL is associated with longer life, and statins are associated with many problems, cognition and muscle pains foremost.

    Because they believe the vaccine mythology.  

    You know, I get a bad feeling that my wife’s banana cake XXXX bread that she made over the weekend would not be allowable for your diet plan.  I love my wife’s banana bread but it is full of natural sugar (rotten bananas) and real sugar.  Something that I do not need at all but I am addicted to.

    I broke my sugar habit back in 2004 for six months and dropped forty pounds.  I need to do it again but the first two weeks are pure hell of sugar withdrawal.

  58. Brad says:

    You know, I get a bad feeling that my wife’s banana cake XXXX bread that she made over the weekend would not be allowable for your diet plan.

    Life is full of compromises. I try to reduce my carbohydrates in meals, but I also bake, and enjoy the results.

    The US campaigns have fully reached the ugly phase. One more week…

  59. Geoff Powell says:

    @brad:

    One more week…

    And then two more months of name-calling before Inauguration.

    Why does it take so long????? In UK, the active campaigning takes at most 2 months, votes are counted more-or-less overnight, and the newly-elected PM is installed at 10 Downing Street within days.

    Then it’s done.

    G.

  60. paul says:

    Why does it take so long?????

    Collecting campaign money.

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