High Maintenence

Stealth aircraft like the F-22 is high maintenance tech to the max. Just how high is truly astounding.

Much of what makes up and lies beneath the F-22 Raptor's silver skin remains a tightly guarded secret. The aircraft's outer mold-line is a mosaic of radar-absorbent coatings and radar transparent and radar defeating composite structures that combine to allow the Raptor to remain aerodynamically efficient while also largely invisible to fire control radars. All this takes a lot of work to maintain and many of these applications start degrading shortly after they are applied, with friction from high-speed flight, crushing G forces, and the elements accelerating that process. As such, one of the costliest aspects of operating F-22s—and flying this aircraft is extremely expensive with an average flight hour cost of about $60k—is keeping its stealthy skin up to par. This also is a major contributor to its fairly abysmal mission capable rate of around 50 percent.

High maintenance indeed.

I can see clearly now/rev II

An elegant solution to old guys like yours truly as seeing far away is not a problem but seeing close up surely is. :)

It sounds like a medical breakthrough straight out of science fiction, and for the time being, it kind of is. It will take years before the contact lens can function as promised directly on a human eye. The prototype only functions in a special rig using several components that will have to be dramatically miniaturized before a human could wear it, and the test subjects look less than comfortable with a series of electrodes placed on their skin around their eyes. But it demonstrates some fascinating uses of existing technology that could make contacts a viable alternative for more users.

The only problem is, what happens if the power craps out? For this rube, glasses with this tech would work without issue.

5000 data points

There is no privacy as our data is being monetized/weaponized 24/7 depending on the kind of entity who crunches our histories as said data harvesting & tailoring is a trillion-dollar business practiced by tech giants Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, along with some significant others, as information has become the most valuable commodity in the world thanks to the rise of the web.

To whit ...

But it’s hard to control a weapon you can’t see, and that's where The Great Hack offers even those very familiar with data tracking, and with the whole story of Cambridge Analytica, something powerful and new. It makes visible the normally invisible data of our everyday lives, and how it is harvested and weaponized against us. Through thoughtful narration and emoji-inspired animations, Amer and Noujaim reveal the digital detritus we leave in our wake whenever we send an email, look something up on a search engine, linger over an ad, make a purchase, or hit "like" on social media. And then, as alarming music swells in the background, the film uses that CGI to show how this data trail is being leveraged against us, every day: to sell us things, get us to vote or to stay home from the polls, to divide or unite us according to the whims of whoever has paid enough to take our digital threads and weave them into a web of their own desires.

Professor David Carroll fought to get his data back from Cambridge Analytica.

Interesting is it not?

75% ...

Habitat destruction combined with pesticide use, what could possibly go wrong?

The number of flying insects has plummeted by 75 percent in the last 25 years, according to a study that suggests we are approaching an “ecological Armageddon”. 

The implications for humanity are profound, with insects providing an essential role for life on earth as pollinators of plants and prey for larger animals.  

Although it was known species such as bees and butterflies were declining, scientists were left shocked by the drop in numbers across nature reserves in Germany.

While no single cause was identified, the widespread destruction of wild areas for agriculture and the use of pesticides are considered likely factors. Climate change was also cited as playing a potential role. 

Note: This data was garnered in 2017, which means the loss of insect populations could be even higher.

tears in rain ...

No words needed.

Ruger Hauer died, Friday, July 19, 2019.

108 ... Paris 7/25/2019

Earth does NOT NEED US, we need the earth. We have to change how we do business on this planet or Gaia will finish the job of getting rid of us without question. Stop thinking countries, think world, it might change how man faces this existential situation.

Thursday's high in Paris hit 108° F. — the highest ever recorded. And Europe's climate-crisis heat wave isn't over.

Any questions?

Deep Diver

Deep Diver doesn't fully describe the amazing Mariana Snailfish, the deepest dwelling fish known to man.

Researchers from the University of Washington collected 36 samples of the fish during two separate expeditions in 2014 and 2017, when free-falling baited traps were dropped almost 8,000 meters into the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the world’s oceans. Dubbed Pseudoliparis Swirei, scientists have opted to call the creature the slightly more pronounceable ‘Mariana snailfish’, after the underwater trench in which it lives.

A CT scan of the Mariana snailfish, showing the frontal head. 

© Adam Summers/University of Washington

Life finds a way, always.

In Transit :)

The ISS transiting a spotless sun, how cool is that? :)

Explanation: That's no sunspot. It's the International Space Station (ISS) caught passing in front of the Sun. Sunspots, individually, have a dark central umbra, a lighter surrounding penumbra, and no solar panels. By contrast, the ISS is a complex and multi-spired mechanism, one of the largest and most sophisticated machines ever created by humanity. Also, sunspots occur on the Sun, whereas the ISS orbits the Earth. Transiting the Sun is not very unusual for the ISS, which orbits the Earth about every 90 minutes, but getting one's timing and equipment just right for a great image is rare. Strangely, besides that fake spot, in this recent two-image composite, the Sun lacked any real sunspots. The featured picture combines two images -- one capturing the space station transiting the Sun -- and another taken consecutively capturing details of the Sun's surface. Sunspots have been rare on the Sun since the dawn of the current Solar Minimum, a period of low solar activity. For reasons not yet fully understood, the number of sunspots occurring during both the previous and current solar minima have been unusually low.

Stellar without question.

LIghts for Liberty/Redding, CT 07/12/2019

Lights for Liberty/Redding, CT | 07/12/2019 from Robert Moran on Vimeo.

Redding, CT does its share to support Lights for Liberty, a coalition of people, dedicated to human rights and the fundamental principle behind democracy that all human beings have a right to life, liberty and dignity.

The implosion begins ...

Hate to say it but yours truly guessed this would happen a few years ago, thanks to the net and to Amazon, as people, including myself, are lazy and ... if you can get said product cheaper and delivered to you without issue, the need to drive and get said product becomes moot. Additionally, the slow-motion impact of tariffs is beginning to show as per Zerohedge, a site that knows a bit about issues such as this.

Bankrupted Payless ShoeSource closed its remaining stores last week, accounts for 37% of the closing this year.

Coresight estimates closures could hit at least 12,000 stores by the end of 4Q19. The firm already tracked 5,864 closings in 2018, which included all Toys R Us, Kmart and Sears.

The retail apocalypse reared its ugly head in 2017 when a record 8,139 store closures were reported.

In a separate reported, noted by USA Today, UBS said 25% tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese products could jeopardize $40 billion of retail sales and puts 12,000 stores at risk of closing.

"The market does not realize how much brick & mortar retail is incrementally struggling and how new 25% tariffs could force widespread store closures," UBS analyst Jay Sole wrote in the May report. "We think the potential 25% tariffs on Chinese imports could accelerate pressure on these company's profit margins to the point where major store closures become a real possibility."

It'll take several months for the new round of tariffs to filter through the economy, raise retail prices, force consumers to shop online or not at all, and then lead to a new wave of closings in 1H20. As for the economy, growth rates are indeed declining as an industrial slowdown is spread to other sectors.

The implosion begins.

Entanglement ...

Engtanglement has never been photographed until now. Bell was right all along. :)

Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon that occurs when pairs or groups of particles are generated, interact, or share spatial proximity in ways such that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently of the state of the others, even when the particles are separated by a large distance.

Spontaneous parametric down-conversion process can split photons into type II photon pairs with mutually perpendicular polarization.

Click here for more blurbs on entanglement & quantum theory if you dare. :)

Addendum: One more pix and info from Physorg.

Full-frame images recording the violation of a Bell inequality in four images. (A) The four coincidence counting images are presented, which correspond to images of the phase circle acquired with the four phase filters with different orientations, θ2 = {0° , 45° , 90° , 135°}, necessary to perform the Bell test. Scale bars, 1 mm (in the plane of the object). (B to E) The coincidence counts graphs as a function of the orientation angle θ1 of the phase step along the object are presented. As shown, these results are obtained by unfolding the ROIs represented as red rings and are extracted from the images presented in (A). The blue dots in the graphs are the coincidence counts per angular region within the ROIs, and the red curves correspond to the best fits of the experimental data by a cosine-squared function. (B) to (E) correspond to phase filter orientations θ2 of 0°, 45°, 90°, and 135°, respectively. Credit: Science Advances (2019). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaw2563

For the first time ever, physicists have managed to take a photo of a strong form of quantum entanglement called Bell entanglement—capturing visual evidence of an elusive phenomenon which a baffled Albert Einstein once called 'spooky action at a distance'.

Two particles which interact with each other—like two photons passing through a beam splitter, for example—can sometimes remain connected, instantaneously sharing their physical states no matter how great the distance which separates them. This connection is known as quantum entanglement, and it underpins the field of quantum mechanics.

How cool is this? :)

The first salvo ...

Hurricane Barry, the slow-motion GW generated engine of destruction targeting Lousiana, reminds one of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes in terms of the kind of dread people feel when faced with entities possessing this kind of dark power.

The first salvo ...

5 + 1 :)

Amazing pix of 5 frogs hitching a ride on a croc. Awesome without question. 

A side view of these intrepid travelers. : ) Thx Jill for turning me onto this gem. :)

The sequence of pictures is truly stellar.

fp

A new, tiny full frame still and video camera from Signa comes complete with a very cool promo piece titled, you guessed it, fp. Stellar without question. :)

Credential Dumping explained ...

Yours truly learned a new term. credential dumping, a precise term describing how hackers grab our data by getting access to our logins and passwords via nefarious means. A truly excellent Wired piece tells one how this game works.

Despite all the cybersecurity industry’s talk of preventing “breaches,” a computer network in some ways is less like a fortress and more like a human body. And skillful hackers are like germs: They tend to get in via some orifice or another. Once inside, it’s whether they can thrive and multiply their infections—and what vital organs they can reach—that determines whether the outcome is a sneeze or a full-on catastrophic takeover.

In many modern hacking operations, the difference comes down to a technique known as “credential dumping.” The term refers to any means of extracting, or “dumping,” user authentication credentials like usernames and passwords from a victim computer, so that they can be used to reenter that computer at will and reach other computers on the network. Often credential dumping pulls multiple passwords from a single machine, each of which can offer the hacker access to other computers on the network, which in turn contain their own passwords ready to be extracted, turning a single foothold into a branching series of connected intrusions. And that’s made the technique at least as crucial to hackers’ work—and as dangerous for sensitive networks—as whatever phishing email or infected attachment let hackers find entry into the network in the first place.

Learning new stuff is awesome without question.

The Caretaker factor ...

Apple was, at times, a trillion dollar company but not now. Outside of the iPad Pros, the iMacs and the new Mac Pro, it seems, to this individual, that Apple has lost some of its mojo as Cook is not a visionary, like Jobs was, in any way shape or fashion.

Design issues ...

Attained via a Chinese supply chain source, Koroy admits “I had to buy about 100” to get access to them. But what the cases reveal are the cases fit perfectly inside molds from leaked schematics. So yes, the leaks were right, Apple is indeed going to give the iPhone 11 its most controversial redesign in a decade. That means the large notch stays in a notch-less, bezel-less era and the phones will still have the largest camera bulge in iPhone history - despite losing their cutting edge tech at the last minute.

Cook/Ive fallout ...

The Wall Street Journal took the lead by setting a narrative that focused on the Apple Watch as the point Ive started to step back from products - although the architectural design of the new Apple headquarters kept him engaged. Thomas Ricker picks up the highlights at The Verge:

Ive was “dispirited” by Tim Cook who “showed little interest in the product development process,” according to sources speaking to the WSJ. This helps explain why Cook, who comes from operations, sometimes appears to be seeing products for the first time in the hands-on area after Apple events

…Ive grew increasingly frustrated as Apple’s board was populated by directors with backgrounds unrelated to the company’s core business.

Apple's a  player without issue but cracks are beginning to show on this truly great company being run by a very capable caretaker as Apple moves further into the 21st century. The question to ask here is, is that enough to keep Apple ahead in a world where hardware is becoming a commodity driven by code. Something to consider don't you think?

Dragonfly

How cool is this? Hope yours truly gets to see Dragonfly's output starting in 2034. It's a stretch but it could happen ...

The Dragonfly mission, which will launch in 2026 and land in 2034, will send a rotorcraft to fly to dozens of locations across the icy moon, which has a substantial atmosphere and is viewed by scientists as an equivalent of very early-era Earth.

It is the only celestial body besides our planet known to have liquid rivers, lakes and seas on its surface, though these contain hydrocarbons like methane and ethane, not water.

"Visiting this mysterious ocean world could revolutionize what we know about life in the universe, " said NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine.

Yes indeed.

Had to do another  :)

Supermodels

Supermodels, a word describing highly paid people to show off designer threads, is a term yours truly thinks patently ridiculous given how the fashion industry is totally dedicated to image and profit based on providing fantasy to us rubes 24/7. With that being said, the advancement of digital representations of said clothe horses parallels what is happening in film and graphics where one cannot tell whether the image is synthetic or the real deal.

The kiss between Bella Hadid and Miquela Sousa, part of a Calvin Klein commercial last month, struck many viewers as unrealistic, even offensive.

Ms. Hadid, a supermodel, identifies as heterosexual, and the ad sparked complaints that Calvin Klein was deceiving customers with a sham lesbian encounter. The fashion company apologized for “queerbaiting” after the 30-second spot appeared online.

But Ms. Hadid, at least, is human. Everything about Ms. Sousa, better known as Lil Miquela, is manufactured: the straight-cut bangs, the Brazilian-Spanish heritage, the bevy of beautiful friends.

It gets "better".

Fable Studio, which bills itself as “the virtual beings company,” created Lucy, a cartoonish character able to read and respond to viewers’ reactions in real time. The company says it makes digital creations “with whom you can build a two-way emotional relationship.”

Xinhua, the Chinese government’s media outlet, introduced a virtual news anchor last year, saying it “can work 24 hours a day.” Coca-Cola and Louis Vuitton have used video game characters in their ads. Soul Machines, a company founded by the Oscar-winning digital animator Mark Sagar, produced computer-generated teachers that respond to human students. Last month, YouPorn got in on the trend with Jedy Vales, an avatar who promotes the site and interacts with its users.

Edward Saatchi, who started Fable, predicted that virtual beings would someday supplant digital home assistants and computer operating systems from companies like Amazon and Google.

“Eventually, it will be clear that the line between a Miquela and an Alexa is actually very slim,” he said.

Virtual influencers come with an advantage for the companies that use them: They are less regulated than their human counterparts. And the people controlling them aren’t required to disclose their presence.

& it's cheaper ...

KFC worked with Generic Versatility to develop the virtual version of Colonel Sanders,
here promoting Dr. Pepper.

Any questions & ... It's just a matter of time for Hollywood just as well.