Saturday, February 25, 2017

SpaceCast Notes - 2/25/2017

Notez 2/25/2017
Linkz
SpaceX CRS-10 launch & landing
Landing video:
Technical Webcast:
Dragon docking to ISS:
TRAPPIST-1 system with 7 (7?!) exoplanets
  • 7 earth-sized terrestrial exoplanets discovered in the TRAPPIST-1 system
    • 3 of the planets are within the star’s habitable zone, which means they could harbor liquid water
  • The star is an ultra-cool red dwarf, only slightly larger than Jupiter
  • It is 40 light-years (12 parsecs) away from Earth in the constellation Aquarius
  • The exoplanets were discovered using NASA’s Spitzer space telescope, an infrared telescope in an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit
  • The method is explained pretty well in the video on the site
    • It involved measuring the brightness of the star to observe planetary transits
  • The James Webb Space Telescope (launching in 2018) will allow direct imaging of the star
    • By analyzing the spectrum of light during a transit, the presence of certain gases can be determined (i.e. oxygen, which could indicate life)
Actual paper published in Nature:
AMD reks the CPU market (Ryzen release)

  • AMD recently launched the new Ryzen lineup of CPU’s
  • Three CPU’s unveiled at their launch event with benchmarks and pricing
  • 1New lineup is highly competitive with price to performance
  • Three CPU’s
    • R7 1800x - $499
    • R7 1700x - $399
    • R7 1700 - $329
    • Launching on the new AM4 platform
  • Benchmarks show R7 1800x outperforms i7-6900k out of the box by 9% in multi-threaded workloads (identically in single threaded tests)
    • R7 1800x is the top Ryzen performer at ~$500 and is highly competitive even up against an Intel i7 6900k which retails at ~$1,100
  • R7 1700 is engineered for reduced power consumption and lower price but still is a highly competitive CPU
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Monday, February 20, 2017

SpaceCast Notes - 2/18/2017

Notez 2/18/2017
Linkz
Falcon 9 CRS-10 launch abort
SpaceX tweet
Elon Musk tweets
  • Launch aborted at T-13 seconds due to an “abundance of caution”
    • Possible issues/uncertainties with the Thrust Vectoring Control (TVC) of the F9 second stage
    • Unlikely to be related to the very small leak detected in the S2 helium system
    • Elon personally called the abort
  • Rescheduled for 9:38 am EST tomorrow (sunday) morning
  • F9/Dragon carrying 2490 kg of supplies & experiments to the ISS as part of the commercial resupply contract w/ NASA (this is the 10th launch)
    • The F9 first stage will attempt a RTLS, landing at CCAFS LZ-1
ISRO breaks record for satellites launched at once
  • Indian Space Research Organization launched a record 104 satellites on a single rocket
    • The previous record was 37, set by Russia’s space agency in 2014
  • India’s PSLV (polar satellite launch vehicle) carried the payload totaling 1378 kg
    • Included was India’s CARTOSAT-2, an earth observation satellite (714 kg)
    • Also aboard were 103 nano-satellites, most belonging to international customers
  • Most of the rocket’s payload were cubesats, which can be as small as 10 cm^3 and are often used by universities or other organizations as a cheap way to send stuff to space
Youtube to kill unskippable 30-sec ads
  • Google will eliminate unskippable 30-sec ads in 2018
    • The company says it wants to focus on formats “that work well for both users and advertisers”
  • Other formats will stick around, including 15 and 20 second ads, and 6 second bumper ads
Samsung patents contact lenses w/ camera

  • The technology is only theoretical at this point, which means this is probably a case of “patent hoarding”
  • The camera and storage would be embedded in the lens, and controlled via blinking
  • This is literally something out of Black Mirror (season 1 episode 4, “Entire History of You”), which means it could go terribly wrong
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Saturday, February 11, 2017

SpaceCast Notes - 2/11/2017

Notez 1/28/2017
Linkz
Tesla semi trucks in the works
  • Tesla announced last year that they will venture into the semi-truck business
  • Musk confirmed Tesla Model 3 is still the “overwhelming priority”; progress on a Tesla semi is still being made
    • over 400k orders for Model 3’s
  • The Tesla semi project is led by Jerome Guillen, the former manager of truck company Daimler’s Cascadia semi truck program
    • Daimler was working on “SuperTruck”, a DOE initiative to increase fuel economy
James’ notes:
Emailed FOIA requests no longer accepted
  • FBI will no longer accept Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by email starting in March
    • The bureau advised sending a fax or mailing requests instead
  • A small portion of requests can be sent via a web portal, but this requires a phone #, mailing address, and signing a service agreement
  • The shift is probably intended to restrict implementation of FOIA
    • The FOIA law requires that a search was “reasonably calculated to discover the requested documents”
  • The CIA also doesn’t accept digital FOIA requests
China becomes largest solar producer
Elon starts digging a tunnel in LA
  • Musk hinted last month that tunnel construction underneath LA could start by the end of February
  • A boring machine began to dig a tunnel at the Hyperloop pod competition last weekend
  • Musk hasn’t denied a connection between tunneling and Hyperloop, since it could function in both aboveground tubes or below-ground tunnels
  • Any tunnel-boring project would fit within Tesla’s mission to alleviate traffic, and could also help with emissions and fuel consumption
  • Tunnels could also be used on Mars to service underground habitats
ISS to get new cargo airlock in 2019
  • Houston based company Nanoracks is now developing the first commercial airlock for the ISS
    • Airlock is not the same as the adapter which was lost aboard the Dragon during the CRS-7 explosion
  • Airlock will be about 2 meters wide and 1.8 meters long
  • Will be the first permanent commercial asset to the station
  • Would be ~5x larger than current airlock (Kibo module managed by JAXA)
  • Will be berthed to Tranquility module
  • Also includes a “Haybale” system
    • Designed to deploy many cubesats at once (up to 192)
    • Airlock is configured for cubesat deploy and is then moved away from the station via Canadarm2 for deployment
  • Airlock will be delivered to ISS via the Dragon spacecraft
Pad 39a has a vertical rocket on it for the first time in 5 years
  • SpaceX has readied a Falcon 9 rocket on pad 39a in preparation for a static test fire

  • Static test will verify the pad for use in the upcoming February 18th launch
  • SpaceX is no longer able to use LC-40 due to Falcon explosion which severely damaged the pad
  • SpaceX has a 20 year lease on 39a from NASA
    • Pad will be used to launch Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets in the future
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Saturday, February 4, 2017

SpaceCast Notes - 1/28/2017

Notez 2/4/2017
Linkz
Firm that unlocked iPhone for FBI gets hacked
  • Cellebrite, the company which cracked the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone for the FBI, has had its own servers hacked
    • 900GB leaked
    • Documents relating to international business w/ Russia, Turkey, and UAE
    • Also included files related to iPhone
  • The information has been publicly released
  • Much of the code is similar to that used when jailbreaking
  • Most of the information relates to older iPhones (the San bernardino case involved an iPhone 5C)
Elon Musk to remain on Trump’s advisory council (hopefully not too political)
  • Musk stressed that he wants to help Trump make humans a multi-planet species
  • Musk indicated that he did not agree with the immigration ban
  • The full statement is at the bottom of the article
Chinese factory shifts to full automation, sees huge production increase
  • Factory in Dongguan, China replaced 90% of workers with robots
    • The factory produces mobile phones
    • Went from 650 to 60 employees, expected to drop to 20
  • 250% increase in product supplied
  • Automation is part of a growing trend, manufacturing jobs are especially at risk
The rest of this is my opinion
  • While an increase in quantity supplied leads to a decrease in price (basic economics) a decrease in wages will be a bigger problem
  • Could be solved by UBI funded by “automation tax”
Time Warner Cable sued in New York for fraud and lying to FCC (Warning: Rant)

  • New York State Attorney General has filed a lawsuit against TWC for lying to customers and the FCC
  • Suit alleges TWC “Systematically And Knowingly Failed To Deliver The Reliable And Fast Internet Access It Promised To Subscribers Across The State”
  • Seeks to compensate all NY state customers for their trouble
  • TWC promised high performance but leased incapable modems and routers
    • Modems that customers rented were not capable of pushing the speeds customers paid for
    • Caused bottlenecks in network speeds at the cost of the customer
    • Leased modems were of DOCSIS 1 and 2 specs but the TWC network requires DOCSIS 3 spec for full performance
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