• 0 Posts
  • 261 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

help-circle

  • Balloons are open. Most typically do not expand but the excess air just escapes out the bottom. Basically they will rise till the overall weight matches that if what they displace.

    There are more efficient balloons that do expand and can attain same great heights. Far more than conventional aircraft even. But that expansion is mostly due to excess material in the construction and little from stretching. Thus the pressure difference is minimal while the volume increase significantly with altitude.


  • Comments are correct here with one missing high level component for routers. That is the very top level routers are designed for tier 1. I started an internet company and we got large enough to decide to become a tier 1 provider. There is one big difference in this configuration is that we publish our own blocks of IPs and we listen for published IPs. We have routers that essentially maintained a list of where all the IPs or block of IPs worldwide needed to go. More importantly, I would send out a list of my IP blocks that would propagate across all the tier 1 routers across the world. That could take an hour but more likely minutes.

    Having this allowed me to essentially connect to the internet at zero cost. There is some cost to be assigned IPs but I was trusted. While I say zero cost, I still had to pay for large bandwidth dark fiber to new York or other major meet me points. I also had to pay rack space to put a tier1 router into these buildings. But what is really gives me is the ability to have multiple connections to the pipes and because I publish my own IPs, I can balance all the routes and other providers can find the best way to me thru a process called weighing. Also if I loose a connection which is rare at this level, I could rapidly and automatically republish my route on working connections and usually within 15 minutes, all the routers in the world would know. 15 minutes actually is likely long. These days 5 minutes.

    Now the interesting part of this, I publish my own IPs. I have to be extremely careful as with a single stroke, I could say I own all the IPs to China. Well likely a few strokes. I certainly could make a simple mistake and take control of a shit load of IPs. That means suddenly traffic could come to me that was destined for another country. More correct, because they are publishing, it would just make a mess and take some IPs down. If I publish a big block in China, I would essentially DOS myself because the pipe sizes I buy are factors smaller. Now this is a trusted system because we all connect together randomly. There is and can not be any central control as we all need to publish freely for this to work. But if I were to screw up and say divert a shit load of IPs destined to say Washington, it would rapidly be figured out and I would rapidly be determined to not be trusted. I would be shut down physically at some point.

    Essentially I have fairly normal routers with one feature that allows them to dynamically keep track of all the routes worldwide and to periodically publish all the IPs I own.






  • AWACS had parachute and some chut you could slide out at one time. Don’t quote me on that entirely. They simply were not worth it. First most accidents happen and have happened on takeoff and landing. No good in that situation. In a war environment, getting hit by a missile, pretty much the only weapon that will take down an AWAC or similar. Missiles likely won’t give crew time to escape. Plane will be doing some kind of tumble. Then you got training. It not simply train once and all good but every year. Sometimes it is better to use that money and time to provide better alternate training that will be more effective. Say for more escort aircraft or better alternate safety systems within the aircraft. You also have the space it takes up resulting in less functionality of your aircraft.

    In a large scale world war III scenario, AWACs and similar would be a dangerous plane to crew. Shot down rapidly. In our current warfare situation, they are one of the safer planes to be in. Unless you are Russian and incompetent.



  • That is such a lazy argument. More people then ever before are out of poverty in the history of mankind. Doesn’t mean there are not problems. In regards to COVID, we took millions of people out of the workforce while printing money and still paying many of them? Of course that will result in massive reduction of inventory levels that we will feel for a decade. That results in inflation as what do people expect when less items available to the same amount of people that want them.

    Regards to qualities etc. That varies. We have more access to products then at anytime in history as well. And many of these products have come down significantly in price. But that also means quality products and their prices get compared to shit products at lower prices. What do you think people buy? Secondary, people do far less informal work and that effects your perception of income. Our parents and grandparents maintained their own cars and houses for example and grew far more food. Now every hires that out and buys all their groceries at a store. That leaves you with far less money.

    Then there is one industry that has made gains but their costs has gone up ten fold. That is healthcare. You have access to some of the best medical procedures then at anytime in history. But some of those costs can be North of a million dollars. Our parents and grandparents simply did not access that and in some cases died. I am happy I have now options but this is coming at a huge cost of which much of it has to be paid for upfront before you retire.

    You could kill off every billionaire tomorrow but that won’t result in much more houses being built or available. Wealth inequality is an issue but if more cogs are not manufactured, our standard of living will not change much.