[HN Gopher] What the damaged Svalbard cable looked like
___________________________________________________________________
What the damaged Svalbard cable looked like
Author : ingve
Score : 521 points
Date : 2024-05-26 19:12 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nrk.no)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nrk.no)
| jamesblonde wrote:
| TLDR; it probably wasn't the russians, most likely a trawler.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| This was January 2022. Didn't the alleged Russian interference
| happen later, during the invasion of Ukraine?
| defluct wrote:
| Maybe you're thinking about Nord Stream
| jhugo wrote:
| What would the Russian motivation be for blowing that up?
| They could have just turned off the gas supply.
| omnibrain wrote:
| They left one pipe of NS2. It would have been a political
| victory for Putin with humiliation of the German
| government if they had switched to this instead of
| stopping gas imports via NS1&2 completely.
| luuurker wrote:
| I don't know who did it, but it helped to increase gas
| prices and Russia is a seller.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| We'll have to wait 10+ years after this war ends before
| the talking heads admit it was clearly the USA govt.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| We had to wait 60 years for declassified docs from the
| iranian coup... so yeah.. this'll take a long time.
| lamontcg wrote:
| The Ukrainians are flying drones filled with explosives
| into Russian refineries and we still don't think it was
| just the Ukrainians taking out the Russian gas pipeline?
| austhrow743 wrote:
| That's a good reason to think it wasn't Ukraine not that
| it was.
|
| They're in open war with Russia, are openly attacking
| their resource infrastructure, and are frequently posting
| excellent high quality footage of it.
|
| Taking out the gas pipeline and then not using the attack
| for propaganda doesn't fit either their situation or
| their actions.
| lamontcg wrote:
| The pipeline had the additional complication that it was
| supplying heating fuel to Europe. Bragging about it to
| the Germans would have probably been a bad idea.
| generj wrote:
| The argument I remember goes something like this (and I
| could be remembering it wrong).
|
| They claimed technical problems prevented them from
| fulfilling the amount of gas required by their contract
| for NS1 and NS2. Due to sanctions they essentially had to
| provide gas for free - or at least in exchange for money
| they were unable to spend or access.
|
| The pipe blowing up potentially saved them from having to
| pay a penalty fee in the contract once the gas hadn't
| been moving for X number of days.
| gjs4786 wrote:
| Why would Russia be concerned about a contract? Reminds
| me of a story on something like Unsolved
| Mysteries....lady had her husband killed because she was
| a christian, and thus, didn't believe in getting a
| divorce, and wanted to be with another man (his best
| friend.) And his friend went through with it...
| cess11 wrote:
| "NRK has previously reported how a Russian trawler crossed the
| Svalbad cable more than 140 times, and more than a dozen times
| before the damage occurred in January 2022. The shipowners have
| denied having anything to do with the damage."
|
| The norwegians seem to think it was a russian trawler and that
| trawler doesn't exclude the possiblity that russians did it.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah the Russians also used "trawlers" to hide their recovery
| operations of KAL007 to hide their mass murder.
|
| Trawler does not mean unintentional or not state related.
| berkes wrote:
| Wow, the Russians shot down another plane. I never heard of
| KAL007 and thought MH17 was the first time this happened.
| Did any other nation states ever shoot down passenger
| airplanes?
| arprocter wrote:
| Full list:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_
| inc...
| yborg wrote:
| Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752
|
| Siberia Airlines Flight 1812
| dboreham wrote:
| For completeness: the US navy shot down an Iranian
| airliner.
| astro-throw wrote:
| The "full list" posted earlier has that one on it.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| And Iran shot down a Ukrainian plane.
|
| But yeah it's not unique. In this case it's really tough
| though because the Soviets knew it was a civilian
| airliner running with full lights.
| stanislavb wrote:
| A trawler driven by the Russians?
| lijok wrote:
| If by "the russians" you mean russian defence, I can guarantee
| they would use something as inconspicuous as a trawler for the
| job rather than a combat vehicle
| trhway wrote:
| For the curious - google "tanker Minerva Julie Nord Stream".
| While officially the tanker is Greek, it is tightly connected
| to Russia.
|
| I'd be looking for the key places in international waters and
| the likes needed to be cut simultaneously to say paralyze
| Europe banking and other infrastructure and would be checking
| whether there are Russian (and affiliated like that Minerva
| company) "trawlers" with a habit of hanging around those
| places.
| dagss wrote:
| This article details how certain russian trawlers criss-crossed
| a lot over another cable in Norway that broke some time
| before...
|
| ...and then the same trawlers were in the vicinity of this
| cable in Svalbard when another trawler criss-crossed over it
| until it broke
|
| (In Norwegian but hopefully Google Translate will do an OK job
| and mainly graphics)
|
| https://www.nrk.no/nordland/xl/russiske-tralere-krysset-kabl...
| holoduke wrote:
| Criss crossing is quite normal behavior btw. I see it all the
| time here at the North Sea near England.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| Sure, but that also makes it an ideal cover story too.
| staplers wrote:
| Why would the russians care to have a cover story?
| They're in an open hot war with the west.
| austhrow743 wrote:
| They weren't at the time.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/26/us/politics/russia-
| sabota...
|
| It's an open war with Ukraine only so far. And many are
| not aware of the wider geopolitics of it, they don't know
| their countries are at war with Russia. Open attacks
| would scare many of those people and make them more
| hostile towards the Russian side. As it stands many are
| more neutral and Putin even has a significant number of
| fans in the West.
| sgt wrote:
| Because they still want to keep a good relationship with
| Norway. There's trade and collaboration on fish. Russian
| fishing and transport vessels are using 3 major harbors
| in Norway.
| rasz wrote:
| Because West is week and easily manipulated. Its just a
| travler guys lol, we are just testing our radio
| transmitter in Krolewiec lol, oh we didnt know those
| buoys were yours Estonia oops. Shoot someone in broad
| daylight and there is no doubt you did it, take off
| military insignia before sending little green men and
| paid off morons in the West will call it a separatists
| revolution.
|
| russia wont openly invade Baltics/NATO, they will send
| little green men under the cover of some self
| manufactured crisis. A big forest fire, chemical spill,
| maybe an aircraft crash or terrorist attack. Then it will
| be "touch our guys and we Nuke you" like they keep saying
| in Ukraine, with West trembling to cross magical
| imaginary red lines.
| dagss wrote:
| If there was an open hot war, would US congress debate
| for months whether to approve the military package to
| Ukraine?
| everyone wrote:
| Maybe, the USA's governance system seems to be
| malfunctioning. The 6 month gap in supply to Ukraine has
| made all of the USA's defense partners around the world,
| (eg. asia pacific) go "what the fuck!?! The USA doesnt
| actually honor it's defence pacts!?"
| rasz wrote:
| Does taking corrections to better land over the cable look
| normal
| https://x.com/PerErikSchulze/status/1794828268480438514 ?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Does the Russian part of Svalbard depend on the cable for
| Internet?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| > The current is used to amplify the fibre optic signals that
| flow through the 1300km long cables between the peninsula and the
| Norwegian mainland.
|
| This is magic to me. Anyone have a search term I could use to
| better understand how electricity is used to boost a fibre optic
| signal?
| orlp wrote:
| The optical signal repeaters that are part of the cable every N
| kilometers need power to do their job.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Ohh there's physical electronic repeaters. Okay. I thought
| this was some sort of electromagnetism witchcraft.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It's all witchcraft anyway. I'm not sure what they use
| exactly, but even photodiodes are pure witchcraft.
| nbernard wrote:
| There is still some witchcraft. Look up "optical pumping
| amplifier" for instance.
| cyberax wrote:
| They actually are witchcraft. They amplify the signal
| directly, without transforming it into electrical signal.
| cricalix wrote:
| "Fiber optic amplifier undersea" should do the trick. It's not
| that the power supply wrapped around/alongside the fiber does
| anything directly; it's being delivered to amplifiers. There's
| a hackaday article that's got some history in it.
| dekhn wrote:
| It's a optic to electronic device that is embedded in the
| cable, which is powered by electricity (but I think the tech
| was improved, see my last link). It's mentioned here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable...
| with more detail here https://hackaday.com/2023/08/08/under-
| the-sea-optical-repeat... and pictures here:
| https://hackaday.com/2023/08/08/under-the-sea-optical-repeat...
| (IIUC those are inside of the ship laying or repairing the
| fiber,a nd they normally live on the ocean floor) and tons of
| photos of the process of laying cable:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/google-facebook-giant-unders...
|
| However I think there are also fully passive repeaters-
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_amplifier
| henrikeh wrote:
| I don't know about this cable specifically, but it can be done
| by transferring more power to the optical signal.
|
| Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers work by utilizing a nonlinear
| optical effect where energy is transferred from a pump laser to
| the signal. This is in principle possible in any optical
| (glass) fiber, but by doping with exotic elements, the
| amplification characteristics can be optimized. Erbium is
| suitable for the conventional communication wavelengths.
|
| For reference I have a PhD in information theory and signal
| processing for fiber channels.
| pseudosavant wrote:
| Comments like this are why I love HN!
| kaliszad wrote:
| This is still a good practical reference I like to point out,
| when people ask: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWqe8_5SUvk
| Richard A. Steenbergen has also other good talks, e.g. on
| traceroute. There are multiple versions of these talks that
| include more or less the same stuff with occasionally more
| information here and there.
| darkclouds wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_amplifier#Doped_fiber_.
| ..
|
| The crush to the cable could be a number of things but
| without knowing the terrain, and knowing these cables just
| lie on the sea floor, it could be caused by the cable sitting
| on some jagged rock and has been pulled tight elsewhere
| (perhaps by fisherman dredging the seabed) resulting in the
| cable being forced onto the jagged rock and it being crushed
| onto the rock.
|
| Likewise, but unlikely, some heavy object from above has some
| how landed on the cable, perhaps even a submarine of sorts
| resting on the seabed.
|
| Again knowledge of the terrain of the sea floor where the
| cable crush took place is key into gaining some idea of what
| might have happened, but I think its the first scenario, a
| fisherman dredging the sea floor elsewhere has caught and
| pulled the cable tight and the cable crush is the damage from
| it resting on rocks where its snagged and crushed itself from
| the tautness.
|
| Rock climbers and abseilers using ropes will see this with
| their ropes.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| > The critically important cable that connects Svalbard to the
| mainland is no thicker than a pinkie finger
|
| This is amazing. I wonder how much data per unit of time this is
| capable of transporting.
|
| Wikipedia says "Each segment has a speed of 10 gigabits per
| second (Gb/s), with a future potential capacity of 2,500 Gbit/s."
| [1]
|
| Wikipedia also notes that NASA helped fund this system.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Undersea_Cable_System
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I think NASA helped fund it because they wanted more (And more
| reliable) data to a groundstation on the island, not because
| this subsea cable is anything special.
|
| Fibre optic is great because you can usually add more bandwidth
| by lighting up another wavelength. The amplifiers don't need to
| be substituted if the wavelength is within its range.
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| I've wondered in the past: is there an actual theoretical
| upper limit based on the physicality of it on the bandwidth
| of a single fibre link?
| dboreham wrote:
| Shannon bound. But it's very large. I don't think we're
| anywhere close with current DWDM emitter/detector
| technology.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| OS2 single mode fibre is pretty future proof. The
| transceivers may change, but the underlying cable should
| last a looong time and can be sliced and diced
| considerably with WDM (16+ channels AFAIK).
| cycomanic wrote:
| Actually we know that a single mode fibre (there would
| typically quite a lot of them in a cable) can carry
| around 100 Tb/s in the C band (used by most systems due
| to amplifier availability) over about 100km. Research
| systems have reached that limit and commercial systems
| are not very far off.
| oh_my_goodness wrote:
| Is that right? The C band is only 4 or 5 THz wide, so
| that's impressive packing. (I'm way out of date, I know
| there is QAM and whatever.)
| pezezin wrote:
| Modern DWDM systems use a channel spacing of 75/100 GHz,
| so you easily fit more than 50 channel in a single fibre.
| cycomanic wrote:
| For the super high capacity demonstrations, 256 QAM
| and/or probabalistic/geometric shaping is typically used
| so we get to about 12 bit/s/Hz (accounting for FEC and
| pilot overheads). Interestingly, data rates are mainly
| limited by the transceivers (RF amplifiers, DAC/ADC
| ENOB... is not that great at 25-100GHz, which is required
| for the 50+Gbaud symbol rates).
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Locals liked to say they had the best internet connection in
| the worlds, idk about that. NASA is a customer of the satellite
| station there.
| varenc wrote:
| > I wonder how much data per unit of time this is capable of
| transporting.
|
| The max throughput of fiber optic cables isn't exactly
| constant. As fiber optic modem and DSP technology improves you
| can get much higher speeds on 15+ year-old cables than were
| ever possible when they were laid.
|
| Recently I saw an article about researchers getting 300,000
| Gbit/s over existing fiber optic cables (though I'm sure that's
| a long way from being a deployable technology):
| https://www.aston.ac.uk/latest-news/aston-university-researc...
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| This applies to single-mode cables, but much less to multi-
| mode cables. Of course long-distance cable like this is
| always single-mode, but it's worth keeping in mind if
| building a fiber network inside a building.
| a20eac1d wrote:
| Can you use single mode fiber in a house, or do the
| transceiver only work over much longer distances? Is
| transceiver burn out an issue?
| jtriangle wrote:
| You can use SM for short runs, you just have to match the
| optics to the cable/distance you're looking to use. Tons
| of very fast single mode optics out there that only
| expect <300m runs.
|
| That said, it's likely not worth it, given that cabling
| is typically viewed as a ~10 year investment, and if
| you're installing OM4 Multimode fiber in a house you're
| not likely to hit the limit of that fiber within 10 years
| even in extreme use cases.
| colmmacc wrote:
| The Shannon limit is constant if you assume reasonable but
| idealized SNR values for the medium, and gives you a real
| "law of physics" upper limit ... typically still many orders
| of magnitude beyond what we can transmit today.
|
| But it's amazing how effective DSP can be; trellis coding
| managed to get modems to squeeze right up to the Shannon
| limit of POTS telephone connections.
| SideQuark wrote:
| > The Shannon limit is constant if you assume reasonable
| but idealized SNR values for the medium
|
| The Shannon limit is changed by changing technology over
| the medium, not the other way around.
|
| If you signal with light on/off pulses, you get one limit.
| If you add polarization tricks (using different physical
| properties and tech), you get another limit. As you add QAM
| and a zillion other tricks, you get another channel limit.
| If you add quantum superdense coding, you get another
| channel limit. Each of those, until we learned there is yet
| another layer of physics and tech, would be "the Shannon
| Limit." All of these can be done on the same medium.
|
| The Shannon limit is a mathematical *model* of a channel.
| It's not a physical/technological limit.
|
| Here [1], for example, is a paper pointing this out for
| transoceanic undersea optical cables. "As pointed out in
| Section 9.3, the Shannon limit is only limiting if we
| assume there is no technical way to further improve the
| QoT..."
|
| Technology changes routinely change the "Shannon Limit,"
| since that limit has almost nothing to do with physics.
| Physics and the signaling technology define a Shannon Limit
| for that particular channel combination, nothing more.
|
| [1]
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/shannon-
| lim...
| immibis wrote:
| There is also a technology-independent Shannon limit for
| a cable. You can calculate Shannon limits based on the
| bandwidth and noise of your specific fiber-optic
| transceivers, which can improve, but you can also
| calculate one based on the cable itself.
|
| The Shannon limit already accounts for any number of
| channels and any level of QAM.
| tjoff wrote:
| Though surely the repeaters in a cable, such as the one in
| the article, presents hard limits?
| markonen wrote:
| They're probably amplifiers rather than repeaters. Optical
| amplifiers don't need to decode the signal to work. Here's
| Wikipedia on erbium-doped fiber amplifiers:
|
| > A relatively high-powered beam of light is mixed with the
| input signal using a wavelength selective coupler (WSC).
| The input signal and the excitation light must be at
| significantly different wavelengths. The mixed light is
| guided into a section of fiber with erbium ions included in
| the core. This high-powered light beam excites the erbium
| ions to their higher-energy state. When the photons
| belonging to the signal at a different wavelength from the
| pump light meet the excited erbium ions, the erbium ions
| give up some of their energy to the signal and return to
| their lower-energy state.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_amplifier
| wiml wrote:
| I think they're mostly laser amplifiers these days. So
| they're agnostic to modulation or WDM. But I assume there's
| still a noise/gain tradeoff.
| ductsurprise wrote:
| Reminds me of the early dialup to DSL communication over
| standard telephone lines evolution.
| nradov wrote:
| You're referring to single continuous fiber optic cables on
| land. Long undersea cables incorporate powered repeaters.
| Those can't be upgraded _in situ_ with improved technology.
| doikor wrote:
| They can just not really worth the hassle/money. You can
| pull the cable up and change them out if you want.
|
| Pulling a cable up, cutting a damaged part out of it and
| putting a new piece in is done all the time to fix damaged
| cables.
| mvkel wrote:
| Wait, an entire mainline for a country can do 10Gb/s and people
| somehow are paying for gigabit home Ethernet?
|
| Either the former is understated, or the latter is way
| overkill.
|
| Or, I'm misunderstanding. Which is probably the most likely
| possibility.
| EKS1 wrote:
| svalbard is a island, far away from mainland. Not many live
| there (3k people). But they likely have higher seasonal
| numbers (Tourists)
|
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=5/77.504/13.008
| saithound wrote:
| Svalbard is not a country, but a remote archipelago of
| Norway.
|
| The main island, Spitsbergen has a population of 2.5k people,
| they don't allvuse the Internet (certainly not all at the
| same time), and they do not pay for gigabit home internet,
| more like 75Mbps.
|
| For reference, the Southern Cross fiber network connecting
| Australia to the U.S. does more like 10+ Tbps.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| All of this but also even in the case of bigger lines, a
| lot of home Internet traffic is not routed globally if you
| can avoid it. CDNs cache content on the same physical
| continent as much as possible, things like Netflix are
| usually streamed from your local ISP. A lot of traffic over
| the Internet is extremely unexciting things like Windows
| updates as well, which are generally globally served by a
| CDN (or even peer to peer sharing from other Internet users
| nearby).
| guappa wrote:
| Before https anyone could put a proxy and cache content.
| svnt wrote:
| Each individual fiber, which is a fraction of a cubic mm in
| cross sectional area, can provide this much bandwidth in a
| fairly trivial low-cost configuration. Cables like the one
| pictured carry many of these fibers.
| Tor3 wrote:
| I'm not sure where they got that number from, but when the
| two cables were put there many years ago the stated capacity
| at that time was 40Gb/s for each of the cables (though that
| capacity was not meant to be used at full back then). Source:
| I worked on the network setup that was going to be used by
| NASA. (The main funding of this cable was not NASA, but in
| any case it was used by NASA to replace a much slower and
| more complicated satellite link)
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Had a case in Canada where a fisherman ignored the maps and kept
| picking up a fibre optic line with their fishing gear, and
| eventually cut it with a saw (twice):
|
| (I suspect it was a short-haul line, so carried no electricity
| for amplifiers)
|
| https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/fct/doc/2011/2011fc494/2011fc49...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peracomo_Inc_v_TELUS_Communica...
|
| > In 2005, however, he managed to pull up the Sunoque I. He did
| not know what it was but managed to free his anchor
|
| > The next year, he again hooked an anchor on the Sunoque I. This
| time he was able to haul it out of the water and secure it on
| deck. He made no effort to free it. He deliberately cut the cable
| in two with an electric saw. A few days later the same thing
| happened. This time it was much easier to haul the cable out, and
| he cut it again.
|
| > Some weeks later, after the fishing season, while on the dock
| at Baie-Comeau he noticed a strange looking ship in the area
| where he usually fished. Later, he saw a photo of the ship in the
| local newspaper. The accompanying article stated that the cable
| had been deliberately cut and a search was on for the culprit.
| resolutebat wrote:
| TL;DR of the court cases: the fisherman was guilty of damages
| to the tune of $1.2M, _and_ his insurance cover was voided
| because his act was so reckless.
|
| Funnily enough, the cable owners (Telus) tried to thread the
| needle of making the owner liable, but not so badly that
| insurance wouldn't pay for it. The judge didn't buy this, and
| obviously a sole operator crab boat can't pay over a million in
| damages (although he did lose his boat), so in the end
| everybody except the insurance company got screwed.
| cma wrote:
| Seems like the insurance would still pay but he loses his
| boat to the insurance company at that point, assuming
| carrying insurance was part of his fishing license.
| lazide wrote:
| Due to problems with moral hazard, insurance generally
| doesn't cover anything illegal done intentionally or due to
| extreme (willful) recklessness/negligence.
|
| Hard to argue that wasn't what the fisherman was doing at
| the point he was sawing a cable in half using a saw he's
| already dredged up several times.
| charles_f wrote:
| Makes me wonder if car liability insurance covers the
| damages you can cause if you drive recklessly or even
| purposely hit someone's car
| consp wrote:
| They do, they'll just come after you for the money and
| will not cover your costs since you acted reckless.
|
| Where I live this is the minimum you MUST insure yourself
| for and they pay out no matter what (to the other party).
| If you acted in bad faith they will come for your money.
| If it's an accident or out of your control they pay the
| damages you caused for you and you are fine. Since
| everyone is insured by law what usually happens is the
| companies involved all pay out and then afterwards figure
| out among themselves if and from whom they can collect.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Similar here: auto insurers lobbied to exclude coverage
| for damage to your vehicle if you were under the
| influence or alcohol or drugs.
|
| I guess people may ethically agree to that but did
| premiums go down? Of course not.
|
| A very profitable move for the insurance companies to
| provide less insurance without handing over the savings.
|
| And it even applies to "anyone you let drive your
| vehicle" so everyone is supposed to be a drug recognition
| expert, which is even controversial amongst those that
| are supposed to be the "experts".
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Mandatory insurances (that are mandatory to ensure
| victims get paid) are often required to pay even in such
| cases, but are then allowed to (try to) get the money
| back from the perpetrator. This protects the victim but
| not the perpetrator, eliminating the moral hazard.
| EnigmaFlare wrote:
| He apparently didn't realize that it was important:
|
| "is in his 60s, has fished since he was 15. The courts
| were told that he had no formal training but picked his
| fishing grounds by experience"
|
| "he saw a chart showing a line running through his
| fishing area with the handwritten notation "abandonne."
| He concluded his underwater nemesis was fair game and
| when he snagged it again in June of 2006, he pulled it up
| and sliced through it with an electric saw."
|
| "Vallee heard that police were looking for the culprit.
| He came forward and made a voluntary statement."
| iSnow wrote:
| Poor guy. He might be an idiot for just slicing some
| cable he dredged up, but possibly had neither the
| education nor the knowledge to understand what he was
| doing.
| lazide wrote:
| The willful negligence is not asking someone or saying
| something _before_ slicing into an expensive looking
| underwater cable with a saw - which would take some time,
| preparation, and persistence.
|
| And if it was actually abandoned, what was cutting it
| going to do for him anyway? Unless he removed the cable,
| he was going to keep snagging it in different areas.
|
| This isn't like cutting a corner pulling out of a parking
| lot and running over some flowers. This is like digging
| with a backhoe in front of your business to install some
| irrigation, and getting irritated at all those pesky
| cables and stuff underground. And rather than talking to
| someone about it, ripping them all out because 'it didn't
| look like anyone was using them'.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| The "moral hazard" argument is completely bullshit as
| usual, there's no moral hazard if there's consequences
| besides the damage, and it's always the case when doing
| something illegal (there's a fine, or jail time for
| instance).
|
| But insurances' business is about finding reasons not to
| pay, so it's not surprising at all...
| lazide wrote:
| Imagine a scenario - a restaurant owner is insured for $3
| million dollars for the business and structure (not
| atypical).
|
| Business isn't doing great. The place catches on fire and
| burns down. All the business assets and the structure are
| lost, so the business needs to shut down.
|
| If arson wasn't an exclusion;
|
| 1) why would anyone look closer to figure out if it was
| intentional or not? Assuming no one was injured. Who has
| the incentive to do all the investigation?
|
| 2) even if they got caught and convicted, in California
| the jail penalty is only 3 years for structure arson.
| $3mln is a hell of a payday for three years in jail, and
| without the exclusion, they'd still be entitled to the
| payout.
|
| 3) what if they had a buddy do it, and the evidence they
| conspired wasn't strong enough to get a criminal
| conviction - but enough for civil court. Or civil
| discovery would uncover evidence, where a criminal
| investigation may not.
|
| Same dynamic plays out for life insurance, vehicle,
| personal liability, home insurance, etc.
|
| Moral hazard is a real issue for any insurance, as
| knowledge that a payout can come due to a circumstance
| someone can intentionally trigger definitely changes the
| odds of those circumstances occurring. In some cases to
| the point of strongly encouraging or even outright
| warping the market so those circumstances occur
| regularly.
|
| Without insurance, the owner is the one who bears the
| costs directly no matter what, so we'd likely have a lot
| fewer buildings burning down!
|
| People would in general be a lot more careful, just like
| they'd be more careful driving if every car has a giant
| knife embedded in the center of the steering wheel
| instead of having airbags. A lot more lives would be
| ruined though when being careful isn't enough eh? Or
| people get overwhelmed.
|
| And of course insurance companies have a strong incentive
| to not pay out illegitimate claims. They'd go bankrupt if
| they did anything else!
|
| Sometimes (or often, depending on your POV) they try to
| not pay out legitimate claims, which is why documentation
| and legal representation is important too - and why it's
| such a heavily regulated industry pretty much everywhere.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| I don't understand your example because from your
| description I can't tell who set the place ablaze.
|
| If it's the owner, then it's insurance fraud, and it has
| nothing to do with moral hazard.
|
| If it's not the owner but say a random crackhead, then I
| also fail to see how it qualifies as moral hazard, and if
| the insurance doesn't not cover them nobody will (because
| the arsonist is insolvent and will never be able to pay
| $3M) and the business owner is screwed, which is a
| terrible outcome (and is exactly what happened here).
|
| In any case the answer to 1) clearly is "the insurance
| company" exactly as if arson is excluded.
|
| > Without insurance, the owner is the one who bears the
| costs directly no matter what,
|
| Which is exactly what he's trying to avoid when _paying
| for an insurance in the first place_.
|
| And like with health insurance, there's actually very
| little link between the fact that you're insured or not
| and the risk you're taking (Like nobody gets hurt because
| their injuries get reimbursed) because the harm goes far
| beyond the economic loss you're insuring yourself
| against.
| lazide wrote:
| All I can say is you clearly don't understand what moral
| hazard is, because my example is a textbook (literally)
| example of it. [https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/moral%20hazard][h...
|
| If the owner won't lose out on the payout from insurance
| by committing arson, or could plausibly get away with it
| without getting caught, he is experiencing a moral hazard
| to commit arson.
|
| It's only insurance fraud if he _lies to get a payout
| from insurance_. Which means the insurance policy would
| need to have an exclusion to not pay him out if he
| committed the arson, so he lied about it. If it _did not_
| have that exclusion, then he doesn't need to lie about
| it, hence no fraud.
|
| Either way, _that the insurance policy would pay him if
| he burnt his place down_ is literally the _moral hazard_.
| It's called a moral hazard because it creates an
| incentive for him to commit an immoral act that he
| otherwise would not. It's existence is a hazard to his
| morals.
|
| That they would exclude if he did it himself, and would
| investigate it, is what the company is doing to _attempt
| to mitigate that moral hazard_. But it always exists.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > All I can say is you clearly don't understand what
| moral hazard is, because my example is a textbook
| (literally) example of it. [https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/moral%20hazard][h...
|
| This random example is interestingly at odds with all the
| other definitions and example on that very web page!
|
| > If the owner won't lose out on the payout from
| insurance by committing arson, or could plausibly get
| away with it without getting caught, he is experiencing a
| moral hazard to commit arson.
|
| This makes zero sense, because in that line of reasoning,
| the moral hazard is always there no matter what the
| policy is about arson: "all the owner needs to do" is to
| commit arson without being caught, which is exactly the
| same thing whether or not arson is excluded from the
| policy, since committing arson on your own good to
| receive payment from insurance is insurance fraud anyway.
|
| The only thing that changes if arson is excluded is if
| the arson is committed by somebody else!
|
| > Either way, that the insurance policy would pay him if
| he burnt his place down is literally the moral hazard.
|
| But you are making things up! This particular moral
| hazard would only exist if insurance fraud was not a
| crime in itself, which it is already! And as such, there
| can be no such moral hazard, because no insurance company
| is to pay a dude that burns down his own place no matter
| if there's an exclusion about arson in their contract.
|
| > That they would exclude if he did it himself, and would
| investigate it, is what the company is doing to attempt
| to mitigate that moral hazard. But it always exists.
|
| The company would have to do no investigation and it
| would do no mitigation, as it would be the _police_
| investigating to protect _public order_.
|
| AS I said before, the moral hazard would only exist in a
| place where insurance fraud is not recognized as a fraud.
|
| Saying that this a moral hazard is like saying that bank
| robbery is a moral hazard on the perspective of banks,
| and that's clearly not what this phrase means.
| lazide wrote:
| Confirmed. You really don't understand. Ciao.
| refurb wrote:
| Despite not recovering any money, Telus may have seen some
| value in letting others know what the consequences can be.
|
| "Kill the chicken to scare the monkey
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I think they taught the value in letting others know to NOT
| put things together yourself that you cut an operational
| cable and report it to police yourself voluntarily.
| charles_f wrote:
| Makes you wonder if those cables should (can) be insured
| against such problems instead of relying on a craber's
| insurance.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| $1.2m is a drop in the bucket for Telus.
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| Not even a down payment on the fine?
| resolutebat wrote:
| There were no criminal penalties, this was a civil case.
| mk_stjames wrote:
| The idea of being way out on the open water, and pulling up
| your anchor and finding that it is bringing up some giant
| steel-wrapped black cable up out into view as you look over the
| edge of your boat, going off in either direction downward into
| the seemingly infinite deep water... brings up some crazy weird
| primal fear [1] in me. I wouldn't even want to touch it, let
| alone haul the cable onboard and cut it. I'd cut loose the
| anchor chain and hope to see the thing again.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalassophobia
| swader999 wrote:
| This has sea monster written all over it.
| mcswell wrote:
| _Alien_ sea monsters!
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Let's assume that these incidents actually were accidents,
| there's still a bigger question open: why is trawler fishing
| still allowed? Imagine it's not a fiber cable that ends up being
| crushed by a trawl door... but all the other marine life: Fish
| can swim away (or not, being the point of getting fished), but
| plants, corals, bugs?
|
| Trawler fishing is devastating for the local ecology, we just
| don't see the damage - to quote [1], page 16:
|
| > Seabed habitats are under significant pressure across European
| seas from the cumulative impacts of demersal fishing, coastal
| developments and other activities. Preliminary results from a
| study presented in SWD(2020) indicate that about 43% of Europe's
| shelf/slope area and 79% of the coastal seabed is considered to
| be physically disturbed, which is mainly caused by bottom
| trawling. A quarter of the EU's coastal area has probably lost
| its seabed habitats.
|
| Honestly I'm pretty much in favor of banning trawler fishing and
| the import of trawler-fished fish into the European Union, even
| if it's just to protect our fiber links.
|
| [1]
| https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/720778d4-bb17...
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I agree. The more you learn about trawling the less you'll
| understand why it's still permitted in so many places.
|
| Where I live it's cut back dramatically, but the bizarre thing
| is that it's strictly permitted in territories where we know
| rare deep sea glass sponge reefs exist, and once thrived. These
| reefs are islands of immense diversity and biomass which fed
| huge numbers of transient species moving through the deep. They
| were also nurseries for a large number of fish species we
| commonly fish for.
|
| We work so hard to regulate our fisheries yet do so little to
| properly protect the resources they extract from a holistic
| perspective.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > We work so hard to regulate our fisheries yet do so little
| to properly protect the resources they extract from a
| holistic perspective.
|
| Our fish industry is really well connected politically and
| the large players exactly know how to play the fiddle, and
| any attempt to hold the foreign ones accountable with
| actually working and appropriate measures (it's highly likely
| that it will take live ammunition or an intentional
| collision, at least in legally "open" seas) would likely
| result in WW3.
| BostonFern wrote:
| To add to that, the extent of slavery taking place on
| fishing vessels operating in international waters is
| enormous. The laws to board and free captive slaves have
| been in the books going back to the 1800s in the case of
| Britain, yet nothing is done about it globally. The media
| and researchers who detail it are hesitant to even use the
| term "slavery".
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Outlaw ocean episode: https://music.amazon.ca/podcasts/9d
| 669553-a9ee-4cf2-96fd-311...
| staplers wrote:
| the less you'll understand why it's still permitted in so
| many places.
|
| Financial "incentives" from fishing industry and political
| ramifications of raising food prices (seafood is a large
| portion in some places).
|
| It's absolutely an existential threat to the ecology of the
| entire Earth yet those are the reasons why. "Close to 90% of
| the world's marine fish stocks are fully exploited,
| overexploited or depleted."
|
| Source: https://www.unep.org/facts-about-nature-crisis
| azalemeth wrote:
| Fishing as carried out industrially is terrible for the
| environment as a whole, and really often also exploits those
| employed in it. The huge army of Asian fishing fleets that
| skirt the law and the ethics of both sides of this are the
| worst of the worst, however, and deep sea trawling is
| particularly awful. Then again, farmed fish isn't exactly
| ecologically brilliant either...
| BostonFern wrote:
| They do more than skirt laws and ethics. A large amount of
| fishing vessels operating in several regions around the world
| practice outright slavery. Working-age men are lured into
| debt-bonding to work at sea indefinitely for no wages up to
| 20 hours per day with little to no food until they succumb to
| exhaustion, injury, or disease, or if they show signs of
| resistance, are executed as an example to the other enslaved
| men. When someone dies, their remains are thrown overboard.
| Most accounts of this have only surfaced because people have
| bought the freedom of some of these men, who are seen as
| nothing but a labor resource, bought and paid for usually
| directly by the captain, in order to catch otherwise mostly
| unprofitable fish. If an industry is prepared to engage in
| slavery, playing fast and loose with international borders
| and environmental regulations is of course not a concern to
| that industry.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-trawling_device
|
| https://news.mongabay.com/2023/07/mud-muck-and-death-cambodi...
|
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8823369/Gree...
|
| https://www.huckmag.com/article/paolo-fanciulli-the-italian-...
| Grimburger wrote:
| Complete agree. The hidden damage we are doing to marine
| ecosystems is horrendous.
|
| I love eating seafood but have basically given it all up due to
| environmental concerns, there's very few fisheries left that
| are harvested sustainably and farmed fish as an alternative
| cause a host of other problems for marine wildlife in the area.
|
| Even the sustainable types of fish usually end up with huge
| amounts of bycatch that it's hard to justify eating them too.
|
| At this point the only seafood I can eat is something I've
| caught myself and isn't of concern for sustainability,
| Australia is lucky in that respect with quite a few species
| thriving but we still face a lot of illegal fishing in our
| waters that's incredibly hard to police.
| 0xedd wrote:
| Cool. Will you pay the cost difference afterwards? I kinda
| don't like the taste of bugs.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Allright, let's not do anything, ever.
| timeon wrote:
| Cool. How about you paying cost of the wildlife?
| adolph wrote:
| This reminds me of a story in "Blind Man's Bluff," summary:
|
| _[Capt James F. Bradley Jr.] was at his office in Naval
| Intelligence one day at 3 a.m. when the St. Louis native began
| reflecting on his boyhood life on the Mississippi River. As he
| later told the authors, he recalled that the river beach was
| dotted with signs warning, "Cable Crossing -- Do Not Anchor," so
| a boater would not foul the cable._
|
| _At that point, he wondered if the Soviets did not have similar
| signs along their Arctic coasts to prevent their critical cables,
| including those used by the KGB and the Soviet Northern Fleet,
| from being damaged._
|
| _As a result of these ponderings, in 1971 the American submarine
| Halibut, with its periscope up, slowly and secretly traced the
| Siberian coast looking for telltale warning signs. The cable
| signs were found, and American divers put a tap at the bottom of
| the Sea of Okhotsk on Soviet communications._
|
| https://stationhypo.com/2021/09/05/remembering-captain-james...
| fbdab103 wrote:
| Is it possible to tap fiber-optic cables without the owner
| getting wise? Even if you could tap modern cables, I assume
| everything is now encrypted and carries so much bandwidth that
| it becomes possible to sample the interesting intelligence.
| dooglius wrote:
| Normal fiber optic can be tapped surreptitiously[0]. There
| are a number of companies that sell anti-intrusion tech, but
| it's hard to say which side is winning with respect to what
| governments can do.
|
| [0] https://fac.ksu.edu.sa/sites/default/files/06149809-Optic
| al_...
| gravescale wrote:
| This is one of those ones where my instinct is "no": not only
| would you have to not cause an interruption or reflection
| that the break detection TDR systems could see, and crack any
| encryption, _and_ sample what you want from the Tbps, all
| from a small box under the sea, but also you have to somehow
| get that data out and back to base, again from under the
| (mostly radio-opaque) sea and halfway around the world, all
| without even a whisper of a clue to the tappees.
|
| Then I remember how far ahead the likes of the NSA and NRO
| are compared to what we're familiar with, and become rather
| less sure. The Orion satellites have 100m radio dishes, and
| were first launched in the 90s. Two Hubble-like telescopes
| were so old hat that they were donated to NASA in 2012.
| Considering that the NRO is so secrecy-oriented that its very
| existence was classified until 1992 (it went 11 years
| completely undetected, and leaked via a New York Times
| article in 1971 and an accidental entry in a budget report in
| 1973) and no mission since 1972 is declassified, this says a
| lot about how much further on they are.
|
| Then again, if unattended taps were installed on cables,
| you'd also expect them to occasionally be found when lifting
| cables for repair. And they'd be so advanced that it might be
| worth lifting an entire cable to check for and acquire such a
| tap. Which means the tappers would think twice about putting
| one in, if they could then lose it.
| fragmede wrote:
| even the metadata would be valuable though, so you wouldn't
| need to crack the encryption, and you don't have to have it
| be real-time, so you can just process and save the relevant
| data and pick it up later, so my instinct is that it's
| _possible_ there 's something there, but it would be really
| difficult, and we might hear about it in 50 years, just
| like we learned about Bletchley Park.
| bigiain wrote:
| > if unattended taps were installed on cables, you'd also
| expect them to occasionally be found when lifting cables
| for repair
|
| <conspiracy theory> An advanced enough attacker would build
| their cable taps in such a way that they automatically
| dropped off when they detected the cable being lifted - and
| would probably result in suspected but not provable "damage
| caused by human activity" that has broken through the cable
| armouring and exposed the fibre bundle inside. Now I'm
| wondering if the Svalbard cable damage was a software bug
| in the cable tap device.
| lobochrome wrote:
| Just tap a repeater and deal with encryption later.
| bigiain wrote:
| As I understand it (being nothing more than a Google expert
| on the subject), the repeaters aren't the sort of thing you
| can just "tap". They don't decode and re encode any data,
| they don't even "see" the raw encrypted data as such,
| they're just specially doped sections of fibre with pump
| lasers that amplify the optical signals.
|
| The "Get pumped" section of this page has an almost ELI5
| overview: https://hackaday.com/2023/08/08/under-the-sea-
| optical-repeat...
| dekhn wrote:
| It certainly has been the case in the past (when undersea
| fiber operators were much less careful) that cables have been
| tapped without the owner getting wise. IIUC the method used
| in the past was to bring the cable inside a submarine which
| has a specialized fiber cleaving and joining machine. Some
| amount of full transmission loss already occurs, so to the
| operator is just looks like blip.
|
| Here's a description of an early operation (which I think was
| actually on copper cables):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells
|
| When I worked at Google, Snowden and others showed that it
| was likely the US NSA was spying on Google fiber outside of
| US, I believe the speculation was that they tapped lines
| around UK, possibly underwater. There's nothing quite like
| seeing a packet trace containing an RPC between a frontend
| and backend and being able to recognize the communicating
| services, collected by a third party. Google greatly sped up
| its RPC encryption project after that revelation.
| ascorbic wrote:
| Google's Grace Hopper cable lands right next to GCHQ Bude,
| which has an NSA listening station. They don't even need to
| be subtle about it.
| 0xedd wrote:
| Private companies provide equipment and software to analyse
| all raw data going through an ISP. All the big names, from US
| and EU to some countries in Asia, bought this equipment and
| software.
|
| So, my guess is that a government's budget can enable
| sampling anything from "so much bandwidth". Regarding
| encryption, if you run the numbers, to brute force common
| encryption algorithms it would take Google's compute 1
| second. Image all Google service have an outage for 1 second.
| Google is just an example to imagine the sizing required. In
| other words, technically possible. And shouldn't be dismissed
| with "oh, there is encryption, so that door is closed for any
| threat actor".
|
| > Source: I worked on said analytical software.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| > if you run the numbers, to brute force common encryption
| algorithms it would take Google's compute 1 second
|
| That's not true at all.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| What, no mention that the Norwegian police use evidence markers
| with inches printed on them? That company sells them with CM
| markers.
| lobochrome wrote:
| Odd indeed. I would assume the salvage company was American?
| threeseed wrote:
| The bottom image has an evidence marker with cms on it as well.
|
| Perhaps they intended for the information to be shared with US
| intelligence.
| new23d wrote:
| Product appears to be an ID Tent from Evi-Paq. It has inches on
| the front 'leg' and cms on the rear.
|
| https://forensicssource.com/collections/evidence-markers/pro...
| Aurornis wrote:
| Scroll down to the lower images. They have both inch and
| centimeter measurements on other photos.
|
| It's more likely that they take photos with both measurements.
| alufers wrote:
| Some gun calibers are measured with inches, so maybe they have
| some imperial markers on hand to measure bullet casings?
| eru wrote:
| Many measuring devices used in eg Germany have both proper
| units and Freedom units printed on them. It's probably just
| easier to have one model that you can sell anyone on the
| globe. Economics of scale and all that.
| vidarh wrote:
| I'm Norwegian, and it's very common in Norway as well to
| have e.g. rulers and other measuring devices with both
| inches and metric units. It's if anything pretty rare to
| have just one or the other unless it's a "format" where
| displaying both affect usability - e.g. make the writing
| too small.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Historically, there's been a lot of mischief with the cables.
|
| https://asiatimes.com/2023/04/new-us-spy-sub-built-for-seabe...
| debo_ wrote:
| Whoever named the time-traveling, world-saving X-Man from the
| future "Cable" was oddly prescient.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_(character)
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> Initially, the police stated that they believed the damages
| were caused by human activity. Later on, the investigation was
| dropped, due to lack of evidence...._
|
| _> Several experts with extensive experience with submarine
| cables and installations have assessed the images for NRK. Their
| judgement is that the damage to the Svalbard fiber was due to the
| cables being crushed._
|
| Finally evidence that Godzilla is real!
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| I'm probably being really slow but I couldn't really work out
| what the pictures are actually showing. I see a bunch of yellow
| cables and some with steel sheathing - I'm not really sure what
| I'm looking at? Are all those cables laid together or are these
| photos of just one actual cable that has been fully pulled up and
| coiled?
| db48x wrote:
| Yes, that must be the coil of cable after they had started
| pulling it off of the seabed. The steel armoring is supposed to
| be a bunch of steel wires tightly wound around the cable, to
| protect it from damage.
| bimguy wrote:
| Ah excellent, fishermen not only destroying the ocean but also
| the infrastructure of countries. When will peoples appetite for
| destroying the ocean be qualled?
| bjornasm wrote:
| There might be things that point towards this not being totally
| by accident.
| jorisboris wrote:
| We once booked a night on Rebak Island, next to Langkawi,
| Malaysia.
|
| The day before our arrival I receive a call that a boat somehow
| broke the water pipe which lies on the bottom between Rebak and
| Langkawi, cutting the island off from fresh water, and whether I
| wanted to rebook to another hotel.
|
| Not sure what the moral of the story is, but it kinda fitted the
| context :)
| cjrp wrote:
| Russian trawlers going back and forth in that area...
|
| https://x.com/PerErikSchulze/status/1794828268480438514
| the_gipsy wrote:
| While this looks alarming and makes an engaging tweet, I have
| no idea how regular trawling patterns look like. They might
| circle around fishing spot.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Dave Barry made a similar observation about antismoking PSAs,
| objecting to one that had someone throw a diseased lung on a
| table. He pointed out that you could present any random
| internal organ and it would look just as bad: " _This_ is
| what will happen to you if you keep smoking. Look! A
| perfectly healthy goat kidney! "
| iopq wrote:
| I think what had a big impact on me is they show both a
| healthy lung and a smoker's lung
| Shrezzing wrote:
| This was the big one for me too. The juxtaposed healthy
| versus unhealthy lungs resemble an uncooked chicken
| versus a roast chicken which was left in the oven for 30
| minutes more than necessary.
|
| https://www.scotsman.com/webimg/legacy_elm_28724349.jpg?c
| rop...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| The antismoking PSA that made the strongest impression on
| me, by far, was the one that showed a grandfather
| encouraging a baby to take a step. Eventually, the baby
| starts walking, and rushes over to the grandfather.
|
| And through the grandfather, who fades to translucency.
|
| It wasn't just me; that PSA made enough of a splash that
| it was called out on _Friends_.
|
| I've tried to find that PSA in the past, but with no
| success. Once I asked a friend if they could find it, and
| the response was "Oh, I know exactly the one you're
| talking about. I won't help you look for it. I hate that
| commercial and I don't want to see it again."
|
| Looks like it's made it onto youtube by now in glorious
| 240p: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6pb6XxrbmE
|
| I note that the second comment is "This commercial was
| what made my father stop smoking." It's interesting to
| think about the balance between disturbing the smoking
| audience so strongly that they stop, and disturbing the
| non-smoking audience so strongly that they complain about
| being exposed to your traumatic imagery and imperil your
| funding.
| immibis wrote:
| There have been some Oceanic anti-speeding ads that had
| the same effect on people, apparently. There's one where
| time freezes right before a collision and the person at
| fault apologizes for the little boy he's about to murder.
| There's one where the driver is talking to the ghost of
| his friend who died in a car crash. There's one where the
| grim reaper spins a roulette wheel every time a driver
| makes a mistake at an intersection. There was one where
| they rewind time, nudge the speedometer slightly lower,
| and resume normal time, and a fatal accident (pedestrian
| hit by car) turns into a bruised leg.
| IndySun wrote:
| Related, I was struck by a comment made by the respiratory
| specialist doctor Martin Tobin, during the George Floyd
| murder court case. He said less than 10% of smokers
| actually go on to get 'issues'. He was pushing back on the
| line that as a smoker, George Floyd was more prone to react
| badly to 'having a knee on his windpipe...' you know the
| rest.
|
| I did rewind and listen again then look up what he was
| saying and indeed, my assumed knowledge of smoking was
| altered.
|
| Apologies for my vagueness with 'issues', I don't want to
| under or over state what he said and right now I can't
| locate the exact sentence within the days of testimony.
|
| This man... https://archive.is/x5MRY
| IndySun wrote:
| For anyone curious, I found the relevant sentence. An
| astonishingly counterintuitive almost throwaway remark by
| a world's expert sent me on a deep dive on what else can
| and does cause lung problems. Dr Martin Tobin says it at
| 3h 02m 40s...
|
| https://www.c-span.org/video/?510467-1/derek-chauvin-
| trial-d...
| alexeldeib wrote:
| What was your takeaway? Any added insights/reading?
| ikiris wrote:
| Radon is scary, and surprisingly everywhere in some
| regions.
| IndySun wrote:
| I am aware there is a lot of complexity (obviously) in
| why people develop lung cancer, or any illness for that
| matter, but within that assumption was smoking being far
| worse than it actually is. Reading further, and this may
| also seem obvious written out in this simple form, the
| cancer numbers for people in homes using coal burning for
| cooking food varies hugely depending on the coal. And
| that the incidence of lung cancers in 'never-smokers' is
| rising rapidly globally.
| exitb wrote:
| 10% aren't low odds when it comes to health issues.
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| Thats what they do. Those lungs are fake, sold by medical
| supply companies. They just take a healthy pig lung and dye
| it black and burn holes in it for "tumors".
|
| You can google for places to buy them.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| That's what trawling is . . . it is completely normally for a
| trawler to go back and forth like that.
| LysPJ wrote:
| But not over a cable.
|
| Submarine cables are clearly marked on nautical charts, and
| even recreational boaters know not to anchor in those areas.
|
| A professional trawler captain is not going to accidentally
| trawl over such an area.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Fishers are infamous for flaunting the rules though. I
| think we can only judge this if we see records of other
| ships in the area.
| giarc wrote:
| You can, at least at that specific time that all other
| boats were not trawling over cables.
| vidarh wrote:
| There's a big difference in seriousness between being able
| to show whether they were likely doing something they
| shouldn't be doing for the sake of making more money on the
| fishing, vs. if they were doing what they were doing with
| the intent of causing damage, though. But of course, that
| difficulty is also exactly why it'd also be a great way for
| an adversary to damage your cables.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| means motive opportunity -- 3 for 3
|
| given the use cases re: satellites on the island, and the
| continuing cold-yet-increasing tensions with Russia, it's
| absolutely reasonable to make that assumption
|
| maybe they'll try to blame this on Ukraine like they
| tried with the undersea pipelines that got blown up, too
| vidarh wrote:
| It's reasonable to assume. But it's wildly insufficient
| for either a prosecution or diplomatic consequences,
| especially given that all 3 also would apply to a trawler
| just intent on profiting from trawling.
|
| I agree the odds are reasonably high Russia arranged this
| on purpose. And that's fine for the purposes of a
| discussion that doesn't have consequences, but not for
| much more.
| rasz wrote:
| I mean, clearly "lack of evidence"!
|
| >After an inital investigation, the police dropped the case due
| to lack of evidence, and inadequate legislation.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| <https://archive.is/yZivT>
| csmpltn wrote:
| Is that boat trawling directly over the same area where the
| cables were damaged? Unclear from the tweet alone...
| silverlyra wrote:
| yes - the trawling pattern in the GIF is over (part of) the
| area marked as damaged in the NRK article:
| https://www.nrk.no/tromsogfinnmark/this-is-what-the-
| damaged-...
| bjornasm wrote:
| Just in case why people are wondering why cutting of internet for
| an arctic island is a big deal.
|
| What many might not know is that Svalbard is home to the
| northernmost satellite station in the world. It is just one of
| two stations that can communicate with polar orbiting satellites
| each day. ESA and NASA as well as other civilian organisations
| are present there, and the station communicates with well over a
| hundred satellites, and are pretty vital for much of the
| satellites that look back at us.
| mgoetzke wrote:
| Time for a Starlink backup then
| sunbum wrote:
| That's not how satellites work.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Starlink can act as a backup for the ground station
| utilizing the laser links.
| chtitux wrote:
| Maybe just use Starlink from the satellites, so we don't
| rely on a specific ground station.
|
| Starlink Ground Station Network is global, spread in many
| different countries and look more resilient than a single
| one.
| tedivm wrote:
| That would require replacing all the satellites with new
| ones capable of doing that, which doesn't seem feasible.
| Starlink also doesn't have great coverage of the polar
| regions.
| cbeach wrote:
| Starlink's laser system is already up and running. Back
| in January it was delivering over 42 petabytes per day:
|
| https://uk.pcmag.com/networking/150673/starlinks-laser-
| syste...
|
| "We're passing over terabits per second [of data] every
| day across 9,000 lasers," SpaceX engineer Travis
| Brashears said today at SPIE Photonics West, an event in
| San Francisco focused on the latest advancements in
| optics and light. "We actually serve over lasers all of
| our users on Starlink at a given time in like a two-hour
| window."
| amarant wrote:
| It's a good idea for future satellites, but upgrading
| existing satellites is probably not feasible.
|
| And these polar orbit satellite typically live a lot
| longer than the relatively short lived starlink
| satellites, potentially opening you to a (perhaps
| unlikely?) scenario where starlink moves to new and
| incompatible hardware for inter-satellite communications,
| and your satellite is then made obsolete.
|
| Vertical integration is not cheap, but it does have it's
| upsides.
| partomniscient wrote:
| Its the groundstation that needs backing up and the location
| is surrounded by the sea.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Which Starlink solves utilizing the laser links between
| satellites.
| tedivm wrote:
| You're grossly underestimating the bandwidth needs of the
| site. You're not going to replace a cluster of fiber
| optic cables with Starlink.
| inemesitaffia wrote:
| 10 Gbps in Ka and 100 in E band
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| We're talking backup vs. primary. Of course the backup is
| not going to be as good.
| tedivm wrote:
| Starlink has an upload speed between 5 and 20 Mbps. The
| Svalbard cable is a 10Gbps link. It's still a major
| difference.
|
| That said apparently they do have a satellite backup,
| just not through Starlink.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| For a consumer grade connection. Why on earth would an
| enterprise contract be limited to those speeds??
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> We're talking backup vs. primary. Of course the backup
| is not going to be as good.
|
| Then it isn't really a backup. A lower-bandwidth failover
| capacity is properly described as an _alternative_ or
| _degraded_ pathway. To be a proper "backup" a thing has
| to actually do the primary job at least temporarily.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| aye. Starlink could be, best case, an Out of Band (OOB)
| management interface.
|
| good for getting into the other side of a connection or
| doing some management tasks like back-up telemetry -- but
| we're talking SNMP, SSH connections to routers, etc, not
| GigE levels of data.
| onnimonni wrote:
| You can look at the https://satellitemap.space/ to see that
| starlink isn't (yet) too feasible in the northern/arctic
| areas. Even in the Nordic countries the connections are not
| that great.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| definitely not. volumes just aren't there and Elon Musk is
| openly in bed with dubious characters.
| Sanzig wrote:
| To be pedantic - most places on Earth can get a contact with a
| polar orbiting satellite at least once or twice per day,
| however the number of contacts per day increases the closer you
| get to the poles. Svalbard is far enough north that you get
| _lots_ of contacts per day. I forget the exact number and I don
| 't have STK open in front of me to simulate it, but from memory
| it's something like 15 or so contacts per day for a typical
| earth observation orbit. This gives you lots of data and
| relatively frequent contacts to maximize the freshness of the
| imagery.
|
| There are tons of commercial observation satellite operators
| that use Svalbard for downlink (downlinks at Svalbard can be
| procured commercially through a company called KSAT which
| operates the station). Ukraine has been purchasing a lot of
| imagery from these companies, including both optical and radar
| imagery. If I had to hazard a guess at a possible motive,
| that'd be it.
| bjornasm wrote:
| Thx, that was a huge brain fart, I meant each revolution.
| bjornasm wrote:
| Correction: not one per day, one per revolution. Since the
| satellites go from north to south pole while the earth is
| spinning, the polar areas is the inly the pass each time.
| paganel wrote:
| Most probably Russia will claim sovereignty over all of the
| Svalbards after the next big war and redrawing of borders,
| Stalin was too circumspect in not scaring the Americans into
| WW3 the first time when they had the chance to do it.
|
| All that because whoever controls the North Pole controls most
| of the Northern Hemisphere, it's actually one of the very few
| "ways in" inside North America and control of the continental
| United States (there were a few US geopoliticians/geographers
| who first became aware of that in the early 1940s).
| neffy wrote:
| I for one welcome our new Polar Bear Overlords. (Hope the
| Russians don't forget their rifles when they move in.)
| paganel wrote:
| I thought this forum still wanted to be on the serious
| side, so under that view look at the works of George T.
| Renner, in particular his _World Map for the Air Age_ ,
| published in 1942-1943. [1] [2]
|
| As air-power started to be taken seriously with the advent
| of WW2 (some) geographers started realising that one of the
| shortest ways of getting from Europe to North America is
| via the North Pole, or close to it, anyway. Hence those
| maps I've linked to, which had the North Pole at their
| center, and that is because Renner thought that the control
| of the North Pole was similar to the control of the
| Northern Hemisphere. Related, a little bit later on ICMBs
| were meant to take the same route, give or take, hence why
| NORAD became a thing.
|
| But, again, we can choose to take the "lol! lol! lol! The
| Russians and their shovels!" angle, which won't benefit
| anyone involved in this conversation, intellectually
| speaking.
|
| Later edit: Additional resource, this study [3] titled:
| "The Hot Struggle Over the Cold Waters: The Strategic
| Position of the Arctic Region During and After the Cold
| War"
|
| This paragraph there is a good start on how important were
| the views of people like Renner when it came to the Arctic,
| that is in the context of the US vs. the USSR/Russia
| (potential) confrontation:
|
| > The first to focus his interests on the significance of
| the strategic position of the Arctic was George T. Renner,
| when in the 1940s, based on a map with the North Pole at
| the center, he estimated the opportunities and threats
| associated with this new perspective. However, the increase
| of the Arctic'simportance is inextricably linked with the
| development of technology which allowed greater exploration
| of the region. Shortly after the outbreak of the Cold War,
| in the rhetoric of the United States, the High North began
| to be identified as a "mighty" and "important" region.44
| Hence, the geostrategic role of the Far North was fully
| revealed during of the Cold War, when it was possible to
| observe real military and political tensions on the polar
| waters and islands.
|
| [1] https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-renner-
| world-...
|
| [2] archive.org link that should work, but doesn't:
| https://archive.org/details/dr_rand-mcnally-world-map-for-
| th...
|
| [3] https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
| artic...
| chiph wrote:
| This is why when the USS Nautilus became the first
| submarine to transit the arctic entirely underwater,
| traveling from the Pacific to the Atlantic via the North
| Pole, it was such an important event in the Cold War. It
| gave credibility to the submarine fleet becoming part of
| the nuclear triad, the use of nuclear power for
| propulsion and life support, and long distance navigation
| without any external references (can't use a compass up
| there!)
|
| https://ussnautilus.org/1014-2/
| mortb wrote:
| What kind of international law can we expect in the future? A law
| that is constantly broken by various maleficent actors? Of course
| we've heard them complain that the current order is run by the
| west and harmful to others. What are the alternatives? A hundred
| cables?
| bell-cot wrote:
| "constantly broken by various maleficent actors" is a pretty
| good description of the _past_ of international law. There is
| no reason to expect the future to be any different.
| ThalesX wrote:
| > According to Johnson the US has never endorsed the ICC
| because it's a "direct affront to our own sovereignty. [...] We
| don't put any international body above American sovereignty and
| Israel doesn't do that either," he added.
|
| God I have developed such a distaste for political opinions.
| Everyone thinks they're right and everyone sees the various
| maleficent actors in others.
|
| [0] https://www.jpost.com/international/article-802290
| sschueller wrote:
| "anchor or a trawl is dragged across it"
|
| At this point this seems to be the most common cause of see cable
| damage.
|
| I guess the captains decide that it's worth dumping the anchor in
| a storm to protect the cargo even if the area "forbids" it.
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