Month: December 2017

Enlarge / This is what a free space optics link looks like. The smaller disks on the left and right are laser transmitters, and the big center disk is the receptor. This one is rated for 1Gbit/s. (credit: Wikipedia)

Alphabet's X Lab has cooked up yet another Internet connectivity scheme, according to a report from Reuters. Past efforts have involved floating Internet balloons and laying lots of fiber optic cable, but this Internet delivery system sends data over laser beams! This isn't an experimental system like Project Loon; India’s Andhra Pradesh state government has signed an agreement with Alphabet to bring the technology to millions of people starting next year.

The technology is called "free space optical communication," and it works exactly the way it sounds: you aim two light beams at each other and communicate through blinking. "Free space" means you're not using any cable at all and are just communicating through the air over line of sight. Typically this is done with lasers, although for shorter distances it's possible to use LEDs.

Alphabet's rollout in India will involve fitting "2,000 boxes installed as far as 20 kilometers (12 miles) apart on posts and roofs" according to the report. The optical system is expected to hit 20 Gbit/s from box to box and would serve as a backbone, replacing more expensive technologies like fiber optics. The final connection to users would happen over Wi-Fi or cellular.

Netflix

Yesterday, Netflix quietly dropped a trailer (which is, for now, viewable only through the service) for an upcoming eight-part docuseries called The Toys That Made Us. Debuting on Friday, December 22, the project takes viewers back to perhaps the start of modern toy collecting—the 1980s.

The series comes from producer Brian Volk-Weiss, who has worked with Netflix on a bunch of comedy specials and notably did the 50 Years of Star Trek documentary for the History Channel. And it arrives at a time when obsessive nerd culture documentaries are seemingly being produced at an all-time high: Robert Kirkman has been taking viewers into the back stories of major comic characters on AMC, the My Life in Gaming guys continue churning out looks at historic games like Night Trap, and early 2018 will have more The Toys That Made Us alongside docs like the Midway arcade game-focused Insert Coin. Presumably, like many of the creators of such docu-content, Volk-Weiss grew up during the era of these toys and has himself become a collector over the years. (You can hear more of the backstory in this podcast where Volk-Weiss talks to the League of Geeks team.)

Enlarge / Time to blow this taco stand. (credit: Brandon Readman)

Thargoids. If you're a regular Elite Dangerous player, you know the name—they're the enigmatic insectoid Big Bad Guys of the Elite universe that series co-creator David Braben has been teasing us with for a few years now. As far back as early 2015, Braben has been answering our repeated questions of "Where are the Thargoids?!" with the same quiet refrain: "They are coming."

Folks, they're here. And they do not like us.

We don’t go to the Pleiades

2014's Elite Dangerous has its share of mysteries, and biggest among them are the Thargoids, who appear to focus their activities around the Pleiades cluster. First encountered in 1984's Elite in their massively powerful and difficult-to-kill hexagonal spacecraft, the series' lore says that humans were only able to defeat the technologically superior aliens via a biological weapon called the mycoid virus. But then, after a century of silence, the Thargoids crept back onto the stage. Almost a year ago, reports began to surface from players who had been ripped out of hyperspace by unknown enormous spacecraft that appeared impervious to all conventional attacks. A few months ago players learned that the unknown craft were indeed the Thargoids we'd been anticipating for so long and that the game's 2.4 update would focus on their return from wherever they'd gone.

Enlarge / This is SpaceX's 13 supply mission to the International Space Station. (credit: NASA)

SpaceX will attempt to send a cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station on Friday morning, with an instantaneous launch window that opens at 10:36am ET. There are some clouds at the launch site, but overall weather conditions appear favorable for a liftoff today.

Perhaps the bigger question is whether the technical problems with the launch have been solved. Originally targeted for Tuesday, SpaceX delayed a day to Wednesday for additional pre-launch ground systems checks. Then the company delayed until Friday because it had detected "particles" in the fuel system of the rocket's second stage. As a result, it needed to conduct "full inspections and cleanings."

The rocket did go vertical on Space Launch Complex-40 early on Friday, increasing confidence that a flight will occur today. The Dragon spacecraft atop the rocket will carry 4,800 pounds of crew supplies and payloads, as well as more than 250 science and research payloads. About eight minutes after launch, the Falcon 9's first stage will attempt to land at SpaceX’s Landing Zone 1.