Month: February 2018

Photos posted by a Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) observer show what appears to be an electromagnetic railgun being affixed to a PLAN tank landing ship, the Haiyang Shan. The LST is being used to test the weapon because its tank deck can accommodate the containers for the gun's control system and power supply, according to comments from a former PLAN officer translated by "Dafeng Cao," the Twitter handle of the anonymous analyst.

For nearly a decade, the US Navy's Office of Naval Research (ONR) and various contractors worked to develop a railgun system for US ships. A prototype weapon was built by BAE Systems. Testing at the US Navy's Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia was deemed so successful that the Navy was planning to conduct more testing of the gun at sea aboard a Spearhead-class Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV).  The program promised to deliver a gun that could fire projectiles at speeds over Mach 7 with a range exceeding 100 miles. The 23-pound hypervelocity projectile designed for the railgun flying at Mach 7 has 32 megajoules of energy—roughly equivalent to the energy required to accelerate an object weighing 1,000 kilograms (1.1 US tons) to 252 meters per second (566 miles an hour).

Photos posted by a Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) observer show what appears to be an electromagnetic railgun being affixed to a PLAN tank landing ship, the Haiyang Shan. The LST is being used to test the weapon because its tank deck can accommodate the containers for the gun's control system and power supply, according to comments from a former PLAN officer translated by "Dafeng Cao," the Twitter handle of the anonymous analyst.

For nearly a decade, the US Navy's Office of Naval Research (ONR) and various contractors worked to develop a railgun system for US ships. A prototype weapon was built by BAE Systems. Testing at the US Navy's Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia was deemed so successful that the Navy was planning to conduct more testing of the gun at sea aboard a Spearhead-class Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV).  The program promised to deliver a gun that could fire projectiles at speeds over Mach 7 with a range exceeding 100 miles. The 23-pound hypervelocity projectile designed for the railgun flying at Mach 7 has 32 megajoules of energy—roughly equivalent to the energy required to accelerate an object weighing 1,000 kilograms (1.1 US tons) to 252 meters per second (566 miles an hour).

(credit: Comcast)

A cable company that competes against Comcast says it was forced "to pay a punitive ransom totaling nearly $3.5 million" in order to keep airing Comcast-owned TV programming.

Wave Broadband, which has about 455,000 customers in Washington, Oregon, and California, filed a complaint against Comcast-owned networks with the Federal Communications Commission in December. Comcast-owned NBCUniversal asked the FCC to dismiss the complaint, but Wave pressed forward in an official reply to Comcast yesterday.

Demands from Comcast-owned Regional Sports Networks (RSNs) "had the effect of withholding must-have regional sports programming from the largest cable competitor to Comcast Cable on the West Coast unless Wave agreed to pay a punitive ransom totaling nearly $3.5 million," Wave wrote yesterday. This violates Section 548(b) prohibitions on cable operators using deceptive or unfair acts and practices to hinder rivals' access to programming, Wave argued.

(credit: Comcast)

A cable company that competes against Comcast says it was forced "to pay a punitive ransom totaling nearly $3.5 million" in order to keep airing Comcast-owned TV programming.

Wave Broadband, which has about 455,000 customers in Washington, Oregon, and California, filed a complaint against Comcast-owned networks with the Federal Communications Commission in December. Comcast-owned NBCUniversal asked the FCC to dismiss the complaint, but Wave pressed forward in an official reply to Comcast yesterday.

Demands from Comcast-owned Regional Sports Networks (RSNs) "had the effect of withholding must-have regional sports programming from the largest cable competitor to Comcast Cable on the West Coast unless Wave agreed to pay a punitive ransom totaling nearly $3.5 million," Wave wrote yesterday. This violates Section 548(b) prohibitions on cable operators using deceptive or unfair acts and practices to hinder rivals' access to programming, Wave argued.

Enlarge / Sony CEO Kaz Hirai (credit: Sony)

Sony CEO Kaz Hirai will step down from his post on April 1, 2018—six years to the day after he first assumed the role. He will remain with the company as chairman, and the CEO seat will be filled by current CFO Kenichiro Yoshida.

Hirai is perhaps best known to the general public for his role in the PlayStation business, which is where the majority of his background with the company lies. He was involved in developing the PlayStation's software lineup in the late '90s, and Hirai famously unveiled the PlayStation 3 before he became CEO. That unveiling might better be described as infamous: he announced the console's launch models at the extremely steep prices of $499 and $599, leading to shock and ire in the gaming community. The cheaper of those two was almost a non-starter, lacking Wi-Fi and adequate hard drive storage.

That memorable blunder aside, investors in Sony have enjoyed significant gains in the six years since Hirai became CEO—though the company has only been regaining partial ground since it fell a long way from its peak back in 2000. He has kept Sony's efforts diversified across several markets and products, from computers to Hollywood movies.

Video shot by Joshua Ballinger, edited and produced by Jing Niu and David Minick. Click here for transcript. (video link)

We have two parts left in "The Greatest Leap," our celebration of 50 years of Apollo. Next Tuesday will bring us to one of the most important events in the history of human space flight: the triumph and near-tragedy of Apollo 13.

Easily the second-most famous flight after the Apollo 11 landing itself, Apollo 13 is often billed as both a "successful failure" and NASA's finest hour. The tale of the mission has been told and re-told—most notably in the form of a blockbuster 1995 film. But the deeply technical details behind the exact causes of the accident that nearly killed three astronauts on the way to the Moon, and the complex troubleshooting and analysis performed by controllers on the ground, defies easy and fast explanation.

Enlarge / Surface Laptop (credit: Justin Wolfson)

Perhaps in response to the lower volume of Surface systems sold, Microsoft today introduced two cut-price Surface models.

For $799, there's a new Surface Laptop. This has a Kaby Lake Core m3 processor, 4GB RAM, and 128GB storage. The previous cheapest model had the same RAM and storage with a Core i5 processor, and it sells for $999. This new system's a lot cheaper, and we'd suspect that most people, most of the time, won't notice the reduction in processor performance relative to the $999 version, making it much better value.

The big sticking point is the RAM; 4GB isn't much, and there is, of course, no provision to add any more later. If you can live with that amount of memory, the new cheap model is very compelling.