The Wagram (1810) – a first-rate 118-gun ship of the line of the French Navy, of the Ocean type. Illustration of the 19th century. Image couresy of Adobe Stock.
In addition to the agonizingly long time it took to cross the Atlantic Ocean in the time of sail, the journey carried risk of sickness, especially from scurvy caused by the lack of fresh vegetables.
Edward Lengel provides an illustration in his book, The 10 Key Campaigns of the American Revolution.
On May 2, 1780, the first wave of French troops left France, arriving in Newport Harbor on July 11, 1780. The trip took 70 days.
SpaceX is one of the companies working to get a constellation of sattelites in low-earth orbit which can provide high speed internet access across the planet. Tonight they launched 60 more sats into orbit, bringing their total to about 180.
The video on the launch was incredible. Amazing view from the ground, all the way to main engine cutoff at 50 kilometers altitude.
The rate of extreme poverty in the world has dropped from 60% when he was born to under 10% in this decade. If you ache to seek less people in dirt eating poverty that is a wonderful thing.
How’s this sound for another down side of technology?
Applying cutting edge technology to a video, changing the words said, altering the mouth movement to conform to the fabricated words, changing facial expressions, and thus fabricating a new video telling a story that doesn’t exist.
That is called deepfake.
Currently, the technology is at a level where a human watching a deepfake can tell it is fake. Inconsistencies in facial movement or lighting or pixelation will give away the fabrication. Several articles say the technology is advancing so fast that soon humans will not be able to detect a fake just by watching.
Special computer programs can detect the alterations.
Behind the Black has a series of posts linking to video of the astounding first trip to the moon. Today, July 20, 1969, marks 50 years since humans set foot on the moon. What an incredible accomplishment.
16 reasons US has been moving towards a net exporter of energy and finally hit that point. Well visible right of center with Missouri river in background. Williston, North Dakota. Photo by James Ulvog.
The changes in energy production over recent years is astounding.
My blogging has dropped off a lot over the last year or so due to distractions. Have a huge backlog of things to discuss, such as:
The US is a net oil exporter
Oil production in US is at all time record high
Sometime later this year the US will be exporting more oil product than Saudia Arabia
If you are planning to do something that our society says is a felony, or even thinking about it, please don’t.
Please change your plans. You won’t like the result.
If you are still pondering something that our society says is a felony, or even thinking about it, you might want to avoid using electronic devices that record your planning. Definitely don’t use your phone in commission of the actual crime.
Here are a few examples of what notto do, for amusement of people who are inclined to read my blog. People likely to go ahead with felonious plans probably are not in my audience.
A competitive distance runner who moon lighted as a contract hit man took along his fitbit watch as he conducted recon and planning runs for two different assassinations. Also wore it for one of the actual hits. Police looked at the recorded location information on the watch which showed him making recon runs and placed him at the scene of the hit.
Fun articles on technology change that caught my interest over the last few months:
Yes, your color printer may very well be marking every printed page as belonging to you
Not only are land lines disappearing, growing number of people won’t answer the doorbell unless you text first
Dropping oil prices are a worry for central bankers, even as that saves consumers bunches of money
Amazon is developing its own delivery system
IBM has fewer employees in the US than in India
Google drew a multi-billion dollar fine from the EU
6/7/17 – BBC – Why printers add secret tracking dots – A large portion of color laser printers add tiny yellow dots to the page in order to allow tracking of which specific printer was used to print a specific page.
This is handy for criminal or espionage investigations. A particular leaking case is in the news, with the perpetrator having been found using microdots.
Might be handy for tracking down whistle blowers.
The espionage angle isn’t of interest to anyone reading my blog.
If you every want to keep something you print really private, you might want to pay attention.
One measure of how radically life has improved over the centuries is how much nighttime illumination can be purchased from a certain amount of labor.
For example, George Washington calculated that it cost him £5 a year to provide himself five hours of reading light every evening. That is the equivalent of about $1,000 today.
Imagine spending $83 a month to light only one lamp in your entire house.
United will make a big deal of its final flight of a 747 on November 7 with retro uniforms for flight attendants, a stylized ‘70s menu, and entertainment fitting the era. Forbes reports on 9/19/17: The Boeing 747 Came In With a Bang And Now It Will Go Out With One.
Delta’s final international flight of a 747 was on September 7. Their final two domestic flights of the 747 were for evacuation of people in advance of Hurricane Irma.
Another post has a comment on how much the DC-3 shrank travel time to cross the country. Here is a description of how much that beautiful bird cut the time:
Amazing new services and products arising from the technology revolution are a delight every day. We are all benefiting from astounding stuff. Tons of entertainment options on the ‘net. Astounding capabilities for our smartphones.
The downside is companies that can’t keep up are getting swept away. The people and space involved in old stuff can be reused in new services. That is creative destruction.
5/31/17 – Fortune – RadioShack’s Tweets Offer a Bleak Look Into the Retailer’s Demise– Over Memorial Day weekend, RadioShack had a liquidation sale at over 1,000 of its retail stores. After closing those locations, there will only by 70 corporate owned stores and 500 dealer owned stores left.
Sales dropped from a peak of $6.3B in 1996 to only $3.5B last year, due to the company not being able to counter the shift to on-line sales.
Consider the missed opportunities, from a comment by Stephen Green at Instapundit:
Several intriguing articles on military forces using technology:
ISIS using larger drones with larger payloads
Marine Corps wants to experiment with giving an entire battalion suppressors for all their weapons
Pakistan developing second strike capability by putting nuke loaded cruise missiles on diesel subs
Lots of jobs in the US military will be replaced by robots
2/21 – Washington Post – Use of weaponized drones by ISIS spurs terrorism fears– In Iraq, Islamic State is working with drones above the quadcopter size. With wingspans of about 6 feet, the drone can carry a mortar round at about three pounds instead of a hand grenade.
IS has posted videos of multiple uses of the drones to drop explosives. The frequency of offensive use of the drones is high enough that Iraqi troops must scan the scansky for drones and take cover when one is spotted.
Captured documents indicate IS is doing research to develop new drones and modify off-the-shelf versions.
This is a significant step up from my previous discussion of ISIS’ drone usage. On January 30, I mentioned:
