Science!! Fucking magnets, how do they work?

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Cad

Cad

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iannis said:
That's actually a great question. I have always assumed that they're tethered to a ground station somehow, that we don't have truly autonomous communication satellites. It seems like you'd want some sort of tethering for the security of your investment. If you can be corporate espionaged out of a satellite you'll probably look for some way to prevent that. Direct control of some sort of mandatory ground hub seems like it would be an obvious hedge.

But maybe they're not actually tethered. That would impede performance. Maybe it's just something along the lines of windows in which certain communications must be recieved in order for the satellite to remain functional until the next window. Making your satellite ping home every now and then asking, "Am I still the property of so and so?" in order to continue function.

You're talking about that much money, there is going to be some control in place more direct than "It's in space, no one will ever be able to appropriate it!"

I actually think this is a thing that has evolved in our lifetimes. Remember back in the 90's? My uncle had a giant satellite dish. You -could- pirate signals off of communication satellites if you knew their orbits. You don't see those private satellite dishes anymore.

It may be nothing so direct and clumsy. It may just be that the encryption is enough. Unbreakable encryption is the holy grail of modern comp sci. Control the key, control the property.
Click to expand...

Yea c-band signals are encrypted now. You can still get some clear channels but a lot of them have subscriptions like directv.
 
pharmakos

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it didn't take very long for c-band signals to get encoded, my dad was into them when i was a kid, i remember nonsense with "descrambler boxes" and whatnot that he was bitching about needing all of a sudden after we got by without it for the first, idk, year or two of having one.

i used to manually search through signals/channels when i was a kid. used to find the feeds that networks used to send TV episodes to affiliates before they aired. probably could have found some really cool shit but i was mostly just watching Darkwing Duck a day early and shit like that lol.
 
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Picasso3

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Guy was telling me about listening to everyone's cell phone calls on a ham radio or some shit in the early 90s, that would be bonkers.
 
AngryGerbil

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jihodj said:
The roman gladius would be a great weapon for a zombie apocalypse tbh

Short, lightweight, can slash and stab but pull out clean and quickly.
Click to expand...

I'm killing zombies like this:

legionnaire.jpg
 
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Picasso3

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Someone did an analysis on buildings like that and it was pretty compelling that they were stupid.
 
Furry

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How could that be stupid. I mean it is going to absorb enough co2 over the course of a year to offset one coal plant for approximately 8 seconds of its yearly operating time. If they build a hundred thousand of them, they might offset one of the 2000~ coal power plants there.
 
Cad

Cad

scientia potentia est
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iannis said:
That's actually a great question. I have always assumed that they're tethered to a ground station somehow, that we don't have truly autonomous communication satellites. It seems like you'd want some sort of tethering for the security of your investment. If you can be corporate espionaged out of a satellite you'll probably look for some way to prevent that. Direct control of some sort of mandatory ground hub seems like it would be an obvious hedge.

But maybe they're not actually tethered. That would impede performance. Maybe it's just something along the lines of windows in which certain communications must be recieved in order for the satellite to remain functional until the next window. Making your satellite ping home every now and then asking, "Am I still the property of so and so?" in order to continue function.

You're talking about that much money, there is going to be some control in place more direct than "It's in space, no one will ever be able to appropriate it!"

I actually think this is a thing that has evolved in our lifetimes. Remember back in the 90's? My uncle had a giant satellite dish. You -could- pirate signals off of communication satellites if you knew their orbits. You don't see those private satellite dishes anymore.

It may be nothing so direct and clumsy. It may just be that the encryption is enough. Unbreakable encryption is the holy grail of modern comp sci. Control the key, control the property.
Click to expand...

According to the Iridium wiki the satellites do communicate directly with each other via microwave at 10Mbit/sec. So, it's likely that the iridium system would continue to work even in the event of a complete global catastrophe (at least for several years until too many satellites had failures for the system to work properly). Question would be - what fucking number would you dial to do direct iridium calls? Hmm. more investigation needed.

This could facilitate communication between spread out groups regardless of location.
 
BrutulTM

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Picasso3 said:
Guy was telling me about listening to everyone's cell phone calls on a ham radio or some shit in the early 90s, that would be bonkers.
Click to expand...

When cordless phones first came out you could actually tune them in on an old TV that had the UHF channels. We used to do that back in high school but never heard anything interesting.

Ham radio is definitely the most plausible communications mechanism after the breakdown of society. No infrastructure required except a little electricity which you can get from a solar panel, car battery, or even a crank generator and with a good antenna you can broadcast for hundreds of miles.

It almost seems like a 99% wipeout might be more survivable than a 50% one if agriculture becomes impossible just because existing durable food and gasoline will last a lot longer where if there are still millions of people around it will run out real quick. I imagine a family could live for years on a single supermarket if they had it to themselves. A lot of people would probably be fighting over what's in the supermarket but it would be smarter to head to an agricultural area and try to get your hands on a semi-load of corn/beans/grain or better yet a semi-load of canned food and get it as far from civilization as possible and try to defend it.
 
Jysin

Jysin

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Figured this thread would be the right place. I have backed the previous Edition 1 and Edition 2 Kickstarters for the Mini Museum and they are super cool. Probably the most fascinating purchases I have ever made in my life. Edition 3 Kickstarter launched less than an hour ago and is nearly sold out!!

Go take a look:

 
Ukerric

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Cad said:
This could facilitate communication between spread out groups regardless of location.
Click to expand...
That is, until your number is disconnected by the automatic account management for "failing to settle outstanding bills" because no one has access to the Iridium offices anymore.
 
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Picasso3

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Ukerric said:
That is, until your number is disconnected by the automatic account management for "failing to settle outstanding bills" because no one has access to the Iridium offices anymore.
Click to expand...

I'm sure they have an automated call in system for bill pay, human race saved.
 
pharmakos

pharmakos

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we should community brainstorm a sci fi novel sometime, you fucks have a great combination of science knowledge and sense of irony.
 
Deathwing

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It'd pretty much be the same as The Martian but instead of all that hard work and ingenuity going towards getting home, Matt Damon would finally be able to play P99 in peace.
 
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