[HN Gopher] Facebook building subsea cable that will encompass t...
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Facebook building subsea cable that will encompass the world
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 262 points
Date : 2024-11-04 14:00 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (subseacables.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (subseacables.blogspot.com)
| dpflan wrote:
| What other private companies have such cables? Google?
|
| How do they maintain them?
|
| At what point to these become considered "national security"
| assets (in the eyes of the owning company's nation)?
|
| Do they rent them out as business as well?
|
| (This blog looks like it could have many such answers, but
| looking for a HN-comment-sized answer.)
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > What other private companies have such cables? Google?
|
| Aren't most of them likely to be privately owned?
|
| Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are known to have undersea
| cables. I bet there are a bunch owned by companies that aren't
| generally known to regular people. For example, Tata, which
| AFAIK has the largest amount of undersea cables.
| samier-trellis wrote:
| Don't some big hedge funds/finance players also have such
| cables?
| buildbot wrote:
| Maybe, but these days, I believe microwave towers are
| preferred, lower latency and shorter paths.
| https://www.rec-usa.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/High-
| Freq...
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| What the hell does Tata need underseas cables for?
| placardloop wrote:
| Tata is one of the largest telecoms in India and is a Tier
| 1 network that forms the backbone of the modern internet.
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| Oh...so not the consultancy agency. Got it.
| paxys wrote:
| Same conglomerate, different company
| cryptica wrote:
| It's becoming apparent that many large tech companies
| were government-backed entities and their success was
| fueled by public money. Where else did they get the
| rights to do this kind of stuff? Surely the public owns
| these cables as they are built in public waters.
| eru wrote:
| That's why the public also owns all off-shore oil rigs
| and cruise ships currently at sea?
| ianburrell wrote:
| Does the government own your car cause you drive on
| public roads? It is possible to build on public land if
| pay the government land rent, the government doesn't own
| the building and isn't involved in funding.
|
| Also, international waters outside of the boundaries of
| countries aren't owned by anyone. They probably should be
| owned by UN to help with problems like overfishing.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Which nation owns a cable under international waters?
| _1 wrote:
| The ones that can hold onto them.
| lxgr wrote:
| I'd say the owner owns it, which these days is usually not a
| nation.
|
| What's probably more interesting is what law governs them,
| and it turns out they're regulated under several conventions,
| including a dedicated one from 1884 and the UNCLOS (United
| Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea).
|
| [1] has a pretty good summary if you're curious.
|
| [1] https://www.noaa.gov/general-counsel/gc-international-
| sectio...
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > What other private companies have such cables? Google
|
| Quite a few, mostly run by telecom companies, often with a few
| big users/governments in partnership (including
| Google/Meta/Amazon etc). A Meta supported Atlantic cable was
| completed last year.
|
| https://www.submarinecablemap.com/
| toast0 wrote:
| Traditionally, undersea cables were owned / maintained by
| telephone companies or partnerships of several. Over time, that
| morphed to telecoms companies, including dedicated networking
| companies. They'd run their own stuff on the cables and lease
| out excess capacity.
|
| As big tech has been concentrating and also doing more global
| networking, and running their own backbones and things, they
| became heavy users of these cables, and then partners, and now
| sometimes sole owners.
|
| I suspect the actual maritime operations are contracted out.
|
| I don't know how accurate this is, but it seems like a good
| start towards a list of cables where big tech is involved [1]
|
| [1] https://blog.telegeography.com/telegeographys-content-
| provid...
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| Lookup Tier 1 ISPs, they usually have them.
| jhalstead wrote:
| You can see some of the cables in
| https://cloud.google.com/about/locations#network
| DANmode wrote:
| > At what point to these become considered "national security"
| assets
|
| Decades ago.
| BrandonMarc wrote:
| I expect the company sees them as private, so that they'll only
| share capacity with competitors when they want to and for the
| right price, untilllllll ....
|
| Some other country decides to pull shenanigans and cut / hack
| the cable, in which case the company will insist the U.S. gov't
| get involved, maybe pay for the repair. Saying it's crucial for
| national security.
| fragmede wrote:
| > Do they rent them out as business as well?
|
| Microsoft/Google/AWS rent out this capacity in the form of
| networking capacity on their respective clouds. Your bits
| between their DCs likely doesn't traverse the public Internet
| (because that costs them more).
| godber wrote:
| There's an even more recent post
|
| https://subseacables.blogspot.com/2024/10/facebooks-semi-sec...
| cjaackie wrote:
| hyperscalers are amazing, it's hard to comprehend what's the
| inflection point financially for them to undergo such a massive
| investment. Just a matter of time I suppose given all the other
| things you do at that incredibe scale.
| toast0 wrote:
| Many of these cable projects are less about saving money on
| buy vs lease, and more about wanting to have more data
| transmission capacity between the points on the cable.
| mschild wrote:
| Highly recommend an article by The Verge on how these things are
| repaired and maintained.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/c/24070570/internet-cables-undersea...
| pier25 wrote:
| great article but man I hate all that scrolljacking
|
| who ever thought this was a good idea?
| svdr wrote:
| I think here it is bearable because the page is more like a
| presentation. The worst is when nothing special happens, and
| you only notice scrolling is off.
| qwertox wrote:
| Absolutely unreadable because of this. I often just read
| segments of a paragraph to see if it contains interesting
| information and scroll on - or back if I think I missed
| something - but this scrolljacking breaks everything. I've
| rarely seen a page as bad as this one.
|
| I was thinking: "They really should add two toggles to the
| top of the page: one which makes the images static so that
| the scroll-problem disappears and one where all the non-
| relevant, non-technical information is hidden."
| ignoramous wrote:
| For this reason, I usually default to reading text-heavy
| websites on archive.today (https://archive.today/IpfNq [0]).
| It disables javascript and statically renders even a dynamic
| page to the extent that it can.
|
| [0] mirrors: https://archive.is/IpfNq /
| https://archive.ph/IpfNq / https://archive.vn/IpfNq /
| https://archive.md/IpfNq / https://archive.fo/IpfNq
| johnisgood wrote:
| I cannot access the link, it times out.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Added mirror links.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Thank you!
| nickparker wrote:
| Also the GOAT of cable laying articles: Neal Stephenson doing
| gonzo journalism on the topic in the 90s
|
| https://euripides.dk/setebos/frx/matrix/ai/books/stephenson_...
| buildbot wrote:
| Oh, so that's why Cryptonomicon has so much detail/plot
| points about submarine cable laying!
| lelandfe wrote:
| Any time he goes off on some wild tangent in his books, I
| assume it's because he just recently learned a lot about it
| and feels compelled to put that info somewhere. I remember
| _Reamde_ spending a full two pages on the benefits of
| lashing tires to your fishing craft.
| lxgr wrote:
| Personally, that's exactly why I love his works!
| "Fictionalized Wikipedia" is an underappreciated genre :)
| bombcar wrote:
| This used to be relatively common, I think it's _Les
| Miserables_ that spends an inordinate amount of time
| discussing the Paris sewer system.
| gavindean90 wrote:
| Hundreds of pages
| privong wrote:
| > Any time he goes off on some wild tangent in his books,
| I assume it's because he just recently learned a lot
| about it and feels compelled to put that info somewhere.
|
| Stephenson discussed this a bit in the Long Now launch
| event[0] for "Polostan" and more or less confirmed what
| you suspect. He also went on to say that he has learned
| to reel that in and avoid those "rabbit holes". He avoids
| such digressions in Polostan, in my opinion to the
| detriment of the book.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTK1vuv96Rc
| typeofhuman wrote:
| Thank you!
| rasz wrote:
| I remember reading this and preceding 'In the Kingdom of Mao
| Bell' https://www.wired.com/1994/02/mao-bell/ and imagining
| making those articles went down like in 'Fear and Loathing in
| Las Vegas' book/movie :-)
| baxtr wrote:
| 56 pages on internet cables? Wow
| hannasm wrote:
| I really enjoyed the book > A Thread Across The
| Ocean by John Steele Gordon
|
| It's a historical account of the first transatlantic cable
| rasz wrote:
| The Digital Antiquarian has a great series of articles on
| communication, starting with telegraph and finishing on first
| Web Browser. Reminded me of James Burke Connections.
|
| A Web Around the World, Part 1: Signals Down a Wire January
| 7, 2022 https://www.filfre.net/2022/01/a-web-around-the-
| world-part-1...
| prettyStandard wrote:
| So do we sometimes lay cables on top of other cables down there?
|
| What governments do you have to go to to get approval to do this?
| Could I just run a string across the Atlantic Ocean?
|
| If we do lay cables on top of other cables how high do they get
| stacked? Are there challenges to bring the lower cables back up?
| Does that happen? Or do we just keep them down there forever
| basically and upgrade the hardware at the terminal?
| wmf wrote:
| They don't bring the cables up unless a repair is needed. It's
| probably much safer to leave decommissioned cables on the ocean
| floor so they don't disturb each other.
| staplung wrote:
| > So do we sometimes lay cables on top of other cables down
| there?
|
| I don't know exactly how often this has occurred but I'd guess
| it's relatively rare. The companies that operate in this space
| are very specialized and sophisticated. The locations of pretty
| much every cable laid in the last half century is very
| precisely tracked and one of the first things that has to
| happen when preparing a new cable route is to undertake a high
| resolution side-scan sonar survey of all or part of the planned
| route. In shallower water the cables are typically buried under
| several meters of the seabed.
|
| > What governments do you have to go to to get approval to do
| this? Could I just run a string across the Atlantic Ocean?
|
| At the very least you'll need to have landing agreements with
| the countries at the various endpoints. In international waters
| I believe there are some laws that apply but I gather that it's
| more about liability. You'd have a lot of difficulty running a
| string across the Atlantic. Controlling the amount of slack on
| a cable that's being played out is incredibly finicky work.
| Keep in mind that the point where your hypothetical string is
| touching down on the sea bed might be several miles behind
| where you are and that your ship is going to be bobbing around
| on the surface and you get an idea.
|
| > If we do lay cables on top of other cables how high do they
| get stacked? Are there challenges to bring the lower cables
| back up? Does that happen? Or do we just keep them down there
| forever basically and upgrade the hardware at the terminal?
|
| Cables are routinely brought up for repair or disposal. The
| ships that do this are called Agreement ships. In 1866 the
| second-ever transatlantic cable was grappled up to the surface
| and repaired (it snapped while laying it the previous year).
|
| Modern cables are fiberoptic and do not increase their
| bandwidth once laid.
| toast0 wrote:
| > The locations of pretty much every cable laid in the last
| half century is very precisely tracked and one of the first
| things that has to happen when preparing a new cable route is
| to undertake a high resolution side-scan sonar survey of all
| or part of the planned route.
|
| When the cables aren't well buried, they can migrate. No
| link, but earlier today I saw a description of a repair that
| was significantly delayed because the cable ends were 15 km
| away from where they were expected to be.
|
| That said, I think there's a lot of area on the sea, and not
| a lot of cables, so chances of overlapping are low;
| especially if a survey is done of the new route immediately
| before. Although if they're buried, maybe you can't see them
| so well. And a little overlap here and there probably isn't a
| big deal, because most of the time cables are brought up,
| it's because they were severed, so likely it doesn't disturb
| the other cable too much on its way up.
| lxgr wrote:
| Overlapping is guaranteed in at least every case where a
| new cable has a more southern/western terminal on one but a
| more northern/eastern terminal on the other continent as an
| existing one.
|
| No idea if specific care is taken to avoid that, or if it's
| even a problem, but I could imagine so for cables that are
| buried in the seabed - the act of burying the new one could
| damage the existing one.
|
| But cables are only buried in shallow waters, is my
| understanding (where there's high risk of an anchor
| destroying them), so as long as the point of overlap or
| intersection is in deep seas, I'd imagine it to not be a
| problem.
| dguest wrote:
| Yeah it's a 2d geometry, of course some of the cables
| will cross.
|
| The other reason that overlapping would be an issue is if
| they need to pull up a section to repair it and it's
| directly under another cable.
|
| But the ocean is really damn big and there are only
| O(100s) of submarine cables. In both the burying in
| shallow water case, and the deep water maintenance case,
| I'm guessing the chances of two cables being in the same
| place is very very small.
| eszed wrote:
| > Modern cables are fiberoptic and do not increase their
| bandwidth once laid.
|
| No kind of expert at all, but I understood that better
| control over / perception of narrower bandwidths of light
| have allowed fiber-optic cables to improve their data
| throughput _immensely_. Is that incorrect? Or are you using a
| narrower, technical definition of "bandwidth" that I've not
| understood?
| staplung wrote:
| I'm no expert either but a complicating factor for undersea
| fiber-optic cables is that they need amplifiers every N
| kilometers. So even if the cable itself could theoretically
| support more bandwidth, the amplifiers might not. The
| amplifiers contain lasers of their own that fire at very
| specific wavelengths.
| lucasban wrote:
| I never thought about it, but I'm assuming that means the
| cables also carry enough electricity to power the
| amplifiers?
| staplung wrote:
| Yeah, the amplifiers need 10,000 volts. The way the cable
| is constructed is to have the fiber pairs inside a copper
| tube (there's some other stuff in between too). The
| voltage is carried by the tube. The ocean itself serves
| as the ground.
| dfox wrote:
| In general the power to the amplifiers is series
| connected and the ocean does not come into the question
| at all. If it did you would have huge issues with
| corrosion even ignoring the effects on the ocean itself.
| So, along the cable there is a wire that carries small DC
| current that goes between the amplifiers, each amplifier
| places zener diode along this wire and gets its power
| from it. At each landing station there is a current
| source (that is capable of developing significant open-
| circuit voltage) that powers this (this scheme is the
| reason why the cables are laid not only in loops, but in
| "loops-of-loops").
| zacmps wrote:
| Correct
| dghughes wrote:
| I've read sharks see the cables as potential (ha!) prey
| due to slight EMF leakage. They chew on them damaging
| them. Not the fiber optic ones of course.
| lxgr wrote:
| All trans-oceanic cables carry an electric current in
| addition to light in fiber(s). Electricity is what powers
| the optical amplifiers of which there needs to be one
| every hundred or so kilometers.
|
| For short-ish cables (a couple hundred kilometers),
| driving the amplifiers via light (interestingly this can
| be done from both the data-sending and receiving end!) is
| possible, but not for trans-oceanic distances.
| staplung wrote:
| Okay, I did a little more digging and it seems you're
| right eszed! Even undersea cables can increase their
| bandwidth, at least in some cases; seems to be dependent
| on some modulation factors that I don't fully understand.
|
| If I'm reading this right, BPSK - used on the longest
| transpacific cables - can't really be upgraded to have
| higher bandwidth but QPSK and other modulation schemes
| used for shorter distances can be (?).
| lxgr wrote:
| BPSK and QPSK are modulation schemes, but the optical
| amplifiers used don't demodulate and re-modulate at all,
| so the modulation used is irrelevant.
| jiripospisil wrote:
| > undersea fiber-optic cables is that they need
| amplifiers every N kilometers
|
| Huh, I had no idea it needs to be done so frequently.
|
| > These days optical cable repeaters are photon
| amplifiers that operate at full gain at the bottom of the
| ocean for an anticipated service life of 25 years.
|
| > Repeaters are a significant cost component of the total
| cable cost, and there is a compromise between a 'close'
| spacing of repeaters, every 60km or so, or stretching the
| inter-repeater distance to 100km and making significant
| savings in the number of repeaters in the system. On
| balance it is the case that the more you are prepared to
| spend on the cable system the higher the cable carrying
| capacity.
|
| https://blog.apnic.net/2020/02/12/at-the-bottom-of-the-
| sea-a...
|
| https://www.rp-photonics.com/propagation_losses.html
|
| https://www.rp-photonics.com/fiber_amplifiers.html
| flakes wrote:
| When I was in school, I interned at a company that
| specializes in communication systems used to send data over
| these submarine cables. There is a huge market in terminal
| stations that send and receive over these cables. The
| terminal stations that communicate over the lines cost in
| the 50-100 million dollar range, but the cables themselves
| can cost upwards of a billion. Being able to maximize the
| efficiency of existing cables is a necessity.
|
| A large factor for the efficiency, is how "thin" you can
| make channels in the cable via frequency of the light.
| Multiple signals can be sent over a single fiber line if
| they use different frequencies. One system I was working on
| at the time was constructing 88 channels at 100gbs for a
| total throughput of 8.8tbs.
|
| Another very interesting aspect, is that service providers
| might share a lease of the same underwater cable, not
| actually owning the cable themselves. The companies enter
| an agreement on the frequency ranges assigned to them. Any
| mess ups in settings can cause disruption in your neighbor
| on the cable, resulting in millions of dollars of fines.
| positr0n wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42048358
|
| The levels of buying internet service simplified:
|
| 1. Pay for best effort traffic level. E.g. A residential
| user paying for 1gbps service
|
| 2. Pay for guaranteed traffic level. E.g. a business
| paying for guaranteed 10gbps. Often this maps to paying
| for a dedicated frequency on a cable, but that's hidden
| from you, you are just provided an Ethernet port or two.
|
| 3. Pay for a dedicated frequency on a cable. Also called
| "lease a wave". As you noted this is the most common way
| to go undersea. But it's common over terrestrial cables
| too. In this case the purchaser is often responsible for
| their own optical networking equipment, and the service
| provider muxes together all their customers. Sounds like
| you know more about this than me. The service provider's
| equipment doesn't have protection if your neighbor is
| accidentally stepping on your frequency range?
|
| 4. Pay for an entire cable. Also called leasing dark
| fiber. It's 100% your responsibility to "light" it. To
| make it worth it you're usually using optical networking
| equipment to mux together several different waves, just
| like the above scenario undersea, just all different
| waves belong to you. Commonly used by big tech companies
| and ISPs to connect their datacenters and points if
| presences in big cities. Lots of times the company you
| lease the cable from is also your contractor to repair
| cuts and maintain the amplifiers every ~50km.
| ta1243 wrote:
| > guaranteed traffic level
|
| You've got 3 types of use cases merged in one there.
|
| First, The generic business internet which gives you
| uncontended bandwidth usage as far as an internet
| exchange point and an ISP which ensures its peering and
| transit is not oversubscribed.
|
| Second, point to point ethernet connectivity. This
| morning I had an issue with a point-to-point connection I
| have from Beijing to the UK for example, where latency
| had jumped overnight from 215ms to 430ms. This is
| provided as point to point ethernet by I would assume
| something like MPLS or VXLAN over the providers network.
| I've had SDH and ATM backed ethernet services in the past
| too.
|
| Third, I have link with an optical service from, which
| does map to a dedicated frequency as in your 3rd option,
| although it's provided to me as a standard ethernet
| handoff.
|
| This is different to "pay for a dedicated frequency on a
| cable", as the service I have has an ethernet handoff. I
| couldn't put non-ethernet traffic on the frequency.
|
| I've also got dedicated cables with a service provision
| at an ethernet layer (the provider gives me an ADVA which
| they control). The actual light goes from the ADVA in my
| equipment box to another ADVA in another equipment box
|
| In none of these situations do I need to worry about
| frequencies, high power SFPs, etc, the handoff from the
| provider is always ethernet, they handle that.
|
| My company does have some leased fibre between campuses
| too, I tend not to get involved in that, but I know one
| department runs some 800G sfps over a leased fibre
| between cities about 200 miles long. I don't think we
| have any owned fibre other than between buildings on the
| same campus
| ay wrote:
| With DWDM one can increase the useful bandwidth of the cable;
| some useful links from a recent presentation that I had
| handy:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VKpAIx0zG-U
|
| https://nlnog.net/static/nlnogday2024/NLNOG2024-02-Yurii_Pol.
| ..
| lxgr wrote:
| > Modern cables are fiberoptic and do not increase their
| bandwidth once laid.
|
| That's not true: The amplifiers they use work at the analog
| (and in fact even optical, i.e. without conversion to
| electric and back) level, and it's possible to upgrade
| capacity by only modifying the endpoints, not the entire
| cable.
| dietr1ch wrote:
| Well, the usable capacity of the cable increases, but the
| cable itself has been doing it's job perfectly all the time
| :P
|
| I thought that endpoint upgrading of submarine cables was a
| sort of well known thing (at least amongst people that are
| aware their data goes and partly becomes a bunch of photons
| under the ocean, which I guess may be a lot of people here)
| ta1243 wrote:
| Case in point, SEA-ME-WE-3 launched with a capacity of
| 20gbit back in 2000. Today it's been upgraded to 4600
| gbit, a 200 fold increase.
| clown_strike wrote:
| > What governments do you have to go to to get approval to do
| this?
|
| It's a good question, the ocean being international waters and
| all.
|
| I dont know that answer but for [geosynchronous] satellites in
| orbit this is negotiated with affected countries via the ITU.
|
| (Create a mesh of undersea cables dense enough and you end up
| with a tripwire for submarines...)
| Angostura wrote:
| It's possible that the ITU might still be involved.
| https://www.itu.int/
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| If one is north south and another is east west, then they have
| to cross each other.
| h1fra wrote:
| I can't even imagine the price of the cable that will go from
| Australia to the east coast, that must be astronomical
| bastloing wrote:
| That's a ton of money from a free website.
| eru wrote:
| Some people pay for Facebook's services, especially the
| advertisers. (But also some users in the form of corporate in-
| house Facebook.)
| hedayet wrote:
| > Corporate in-house facebook
|
| Did you mean workplace? That's discontinued now.
| eru wrote:
| That's what I meant. I didn't know they discontinued it!
| drexlspivey wrote:
| Facebook already stole the "Metaverse" branding from Neal
| Stephenson and now they are trying to set up a data haven. They
| should put their hub in a southeast Asia island and name it The
| Sultanate of Kinakuta.
| buildbot wrote:
| I'm sure there are a few Neal Stephenson fans in the ranks of
| the Meta SysAdmin types! Hopefully there a few
| computers/systems/whatever named after things out of his books.
| lxgr wrote:
| Wrong Stephenson connection! This isn't a data center, it's a
| submarine fiberoptics cable - hence clearly a reference to
| Mother Earth Mother Board [1] :)
|
| [1] https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/
| stephen_g wrote:
| Interesting that they say this cable is "potentially for AI" - I
| really wonder to what end? The 'Ask Meta AI' thing they've put in
| Facebook and Instagram seems pretty useless, the comment
| summaries are potentially kind-of useful but surely actually
| reduces the engagement (if it makes people less likely to read
| the comments and therefore less likely to comment themselves, or
| like or reply to comments).
|
| So that mostly leaves "AI generated nonsense content" for
| Facebook and Instagram which surely people are going to get sick
| of fast...?
|
| Just really not actually seeing where they actually get a useful
| product out of AI here...
| thanksgiving wrote:
| > The 'Ask Meta AI' thing they've put in Facebook and Instagram
| seems pretty useless, the comment summaries are potentially
| kind-of useful but surely actually reduces the engagement (if
| it makes people less likely to read the comments and therefore
| less likely to comment themselves, or like or reply to
| comments).
|
| Your comment made me think... What if the idea is that Facebook
| (I refuse to call it meta) is afraid of the very same thing you
| outlined and therefore thinks that better to be in control of
| whatever does the cannibalizing with summaries as opposed to
| letting the OS vendor or potentially web browser vendors
| control the "AI"?
|
| I don't know the future but maybe it is possible that what we
| have now with AI slop is something like an uncanny valley and
| there is something better once we wade through this trash? Even
| if not, it is probably better for them to throw cash at this
| and it turns out to be a nothing burger than they miss it and
| now their whole business is in jeopardy.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| > Interesting that they say this cable is "potentially for AI"
|
| Where did you read that? It's certainly not in TFA. There's a
| second article from the same substack linked on the page that
| speculates it " may be heavily influenced by AI
| considerations", which is not really the same as "potentially
| for AI". https://subseacables.blogspot.com/2024/10/facebooks-
| semi-sec...
| stephen_g wrote:
| Yes sorry, it's from the second, more recent article which
| has more information about this cable.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Sure but you still made up a quote that isn't in that
| article either
| stephen_g wrote:
| It's a paraphrase, not worth getting so hung up about...
| qup wrote:
| Just don't put it in quotes if it's a paraphrase, problem
| solved
| crazygringo wrote:
| Quotes are for direct speech. _Never, ever, ever_ for
| paraphrasing. The _entire point_ of quotes is to indicate
| that the thing is _not_ paraphrased, but what was said
| verbatim.
|
| So it kind of _is_ worth getting hung up about. But hey,
| today you learned this! :)
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Also, AI doesn't seem that network-intensive to me. Chatting
| with a LLM is nothing, and image and voice
| processing/generation is not that much either, compute
| dominates the costs and latency is high no matter where you
| are. The models themselves are kind of big, so is training
| data, but you don't need to move them very often.
|
| I would understand better if it was for VR, or simply
| video/communication.
| dietr1ch wrote:
| How much does a cable like that cost?
|
| I feel like governments should be funding healthcare, housing and
| connectivity instead of missiles thousands of miles away from
| their borders.
| eru wrote:
| Why those specific things? Why not eg bread or circuses?
|
| The standard economic answer is that governments should at most
| finance public goods. But nothing of what you mentioned is a
| public good. (Well lobbing missiles at foreigners perhaps is a
| public good, but not one that's necessarily worth funding. Just
| like a light-house in the middle of nowhere might not be worth
| funding.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)
| bottom999mottob wrote:
| You're being a bit reductive lol. Also the parent comment
| doesn't seem to realize that a subsea cable would enable
| better connectivity for millions of people.
|
| 1. Herd immunity and clean air from that Wikipedia link fall
| under public goods. Both of those are a subset of healthcare.
|
| 2. Basic human needs: many people would argue healthcare,
| housing, and connectivity should be universally accessible as
| a moral imperative
|
| 3. Broader social benefits. If people have these 3 things,
| they can be more productive.
|
| 4. "bread and circuses" is drawing a false equivalence
| between basic needs and entertainment/luxury goods. That's
| just bad argumentation.
| dietr1ch wrote:
| I'm all in for connectivity, which is very needed all
| around the world. It's my 3rd spending only behind really
| pressing social issues, even before education because I
| think it boosts it so much that we might not need to spend
| so many resources on it (right now we devote people's lives
| to teach and pay them miserably), and communication also
| helps culture and reaching out to more niche interests
| groups that if you were to simply hang out in your local
| town.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| > Also the parent comment doesn't seem to realize that a
| subsea cable would enable better connectivity for millions
| of people.
|
| That comment specifically listed "connectivity" as
| something he thought governments should fund, and only
| complained about governments funding weapons.
| eru wrote:
| > 2. Basic human needs: many people would argue healthcare,
| housing, and connectivity should be universally accessible
| as a moral imperative
|
| Governments can give money to poor people. Poor people can
| use money to buy goods and services.
|
| (We don't need the government to provide housing etc to
| rich people. Rich people can help themselves, if we let
| them.)
| fragmede wrote:
| Would these poor people buy these goods and services via
| some sort of network of interconnected computers that
| talk to each other? Or the stores they buy them from also
| use this network of connected computers to buy goods and
| services to stock the store with and run credit card
| (read EDT) machines? It would have to be some sort of
| crazy network of interconnected computers.
|
| What should we call such a thing though? This
| interconnected network of computers. How about the Inter-
| Conn-Net-of-Computers. Maybe someone could help me
| shorten that name.
| eru wrote:
| Have you heard of a 'store'?
|
| (You can also buy stuff over the Internet these days,
| sure. And you can buy internet access with money, too.
| Isn't money wonderful?)
| fragmede wrote:
| How do poor people on food stamps (EBT) in this crazy
| made up "store" place pay for (approved) food goods? The
| card terminal that reads their card connects to their
| balance via the Internet. without that, they're not able
| to buy food.
|
| How do goods get to the store for purchase? Does any of
| that need the Internet? Like when the merchant pays for
| goods using a credit card?
|
| For better or worse the Internet is critical
| infrastructure for modern society these days, it's not
| just scrolling on TikTok.
| dietr1ch wrote:
| Why does the standard economic answer have any credibility
| yet?
|
| Standard economics are a simplistic model that fails hard to
| account for the effects of their own simplifications. No one
| sees physicists saying that a bouncy ball will bounce forever
| because it loses a negligible amount of energy in each
| bounce, but we see economists talk about a magical system
| where they get pretty much every assumption wrong and don't
| account for how it makes the model deviate from reality. (I
| had a list of aspects where the assumptions go wrong, but
| it's a bit too long to fit in the margin of this post)
| eru wrote:
| It sounds like those mythical economists you mention are
| men of straw?
| dietr1ch wrote:
| Today economists use things like GDP to understand the
| economy and you still hear about it and still guides
| decisions with big impact.
|
| Things like the Gini coefficient is over 100 years old
| and it showed that the economy could be doing great based
| on averages, despite it only being true for a few, yet
| there's still no push away from metrics that misrepresent
| how most people are doing.
|
| Well, maybe they are also ignored scientists that we all
| know have ideas on how to improve things, but are
| powerless too.
|
| Things obviously going downhill for 40+ years, but maybe
| working as intended, -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality
| eru wrote:
| GDP correlates really well with just about anything we
| value.
|
| > Things obviously going downhill for 40+ years, [...]
|
| Global economy inequality has decreased markedly over the
| last few decades. More and more people have it better
| than ever before.
| torginus wrote:
| Not it doesn't - capitalism has been off the rails for at
| least a decade or two. Not going to go into a rant here,
| but just observing the basic fact that capitalism cannot
| create certain resources we value - such as living space
| - which comprise a certain percentage (lets say a third)
| of things we value. This leads to these goods with
| inflexible supplies inflating in dollar value (see
| housing crisis).
|
| If housing price increase outpaces wage growth (which it
| does), with GDP growth being concentrated in very few
| pockets, this leads to decreasing living standards for
| most of the population, at least in this aspect.
| lazide wrote:
| Capitalism has no problems creating more living space -
| when it's not being strangled by building codes which
| specifically prohibit building more living space.
| bottom999mottob wrote:
| Yes but the problem isn't just more living space, but
| more affordable living space.
|
| Sure we have developers in Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, etc
| plopping down houses >$300-500k, but can the average
| person afford them? Yes I agree building codes in places
| like California make houses expensive, but the current
| market in the United States does not incentivize building
| affordable housing.
| lazide wrote:
| Uh, new housing has always been more expensive than older
| housing. That's normal.
|
| When more supply goes on the market, existing stock goes
| lower in price - when there is enough supply.
|
| That is how it always has been.
|
| Even old 'shotgun shacks' are too expensive because
| zoning restrictions (and too much easy money) has caused
| everyone to inflate _everything_.
| schnable wrote:
| > I agree building codes in places like California make
| houses expensive, but the current market in the United
| States does not incentivize building affordable housing
|
| Because the building codes drive up the costs!
| EasyMark wrote:
| If they don't call it Project Jormungandr then they're fools.
| Vosporos wrote:
| I came to say this, but also that would be creepy as hell!
| teddyh wrote:
| Where is Thor when we need him?
| october8140 wrote:
| Will this improve my ping in Counter Strike if I am playing with
| friends on the East Coast and I live in South East Asia?
| corint wrote:
| If & only if Facebook sell access to capacity on the cable
| publically (They might just keep it for their internal use),
| and then if any of the providers that the gaming traffic uses
| start to use capacity on that cable.
|
| However, fundamentally, even if fibre took the most direct
| route from your house, directly straight-line to the datacentre
| with the server in, and then straightline from there to your
| friends on the East Coast, the time taken to complete that
| journey and back is still going to be 150-200msec or so; so it
| won't be as snappy as if you all lived nearby, sadly.
| loudmax wrote:
| The speed of light through a vacuum is about 300,000 km/s. The
| speed of light over a fiber optic cable is about 200,000 km/s.
| The distance between, say Singapore and New York, is about
| 15,000 km. If we pretend the cable runs all the way to the East
| Coast, this gets us to 0.075 seconds for light to travel that
| distance around the Earth over fiber.
|
| So that's a theoretical minimum of 75 milliseconds additional
| lag in addition whatever network equipment exists in between
| you and your friends. Actually not too bad, even though we
| concede that the premise is slightly absurd.
| ksec wrote:
| What you want ( or what I really want ) is hollow cable running
| at near full speed of light. Currently fibre glass is only 2/3
| of light.
|
| This could potentially be 50ms latency saving from East Coast
| to SEA.
|
| Unfortunately the tech is so far away it likely won't happen
| for another 10 years.
| virtuallynathan wrote:
| FYI, this is NOT the cable Facebook is planning to build, this is
| the dream cable of a submarine cable... enthusiast? From
| LinkedIn: "To be clear, this is not Meta's plan or map. This is
| Ver "T" and T stands for Tagare. It's what I think is going to
| happen to this cable if I was designing it. This is my wish
| list."
|
| https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/map-metas-w-cable-sunil-tagar...
| crazygringo wrote:
| I'm confused.
|
| Are you saying the article is false?
|
| Or that the map illustration is false? Although the map
| illustration doesn't come from your post.
|
| How did you even find the LinkedIn post? Are they the same
| author? Is TFA based on the LinkedIn post? How do you know?
|
| And it seems like the TFA doesn't even have an author, nor can
| I find an author for their whole blog...
|
| Maybe you can clarify all of this, since you seem to have some
| context here?
| wrigby wrote:
| From the page header, it sounds like the author is Roderick
| Beck:
|
| "Roderick Beck worked as a sales contractor for Hibernia
| Atlantic and helps buyers procure capacity and providers make
| sales."
| crazygringo wrote:
| Oh thanks, I totally missed that, kind of hidden at the end
| of the paragraph. Kinda weird place to put the author but
| at least it's there!
| kuroguro wrote:
| Maybe he's confusing it with the other post?
| https://subseacables.blogspot.com/2024/10/facebooks-semi-
| sec...
| bbor wrote:
| The map is _current_ cables, for reference :)
| https://www.submarinecablemap.com/
|
| AFAICT this post isn't "false" as much as "speculation".
| Given the news that a cable will be spanning the Atlantic
| ocean with an end goal of South Asia, South Carolina ->
| Africa doesn't seem insane. Though it looks like there's no
| cables there right now...
|
| I was coming in here to complain about "encompass" vs
| "encircle", but now I'm fascinated by this map. Cool webdev,
| too!
|
| EDIT: My biggest takeaway is that we should conquer/buy/steal
| French Polynesia. Also, huge shoutout to the Leif Erikson
| cable, connecting Oslo with the absolute middle of nowhere[1]
| in Canada. Oil rig thing, maybe...?
|
| [1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/Z5CEWt16NzHP2QH3A
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The great circle route from Norway to the US passes through
| Canada. I wouldn't put too much stock in that.
|
| https://www.greatcirclemap.com/?routes=OSL-JFK
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| I hope we will never live in a world, where something so
| important is entrusted to such an untrustworthy company. Things
| like undersea cables are infrastructure and I would not want that
| controlled by some for profit company with abysmal reputation
| like Facebook.
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