What the damaged Svalbard cable looked like(nrk.no)
nrk.no
What the damaged Svalbard cable looked like
https://www.nrk.no/tromsogfinnmark/this-is-what-the-damaged-svalbard-cable-looked-like-when-it-came-up-from-the-depths-1.16895904
262 comments
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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”.
Outlaw ocean episode: https://music.amazon.ca/podcasts/9d669553-a9ee-4cf2-96fd-311...
the less you’ll understand why it’s still permitted in so many 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
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...
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.
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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.
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.
Cool. Will you pay the cost difference afterwards? I kinda don't like the taste of bugs.
> Will you pay the cost difference afterwards?
Are you asking if I would be willing to pay more money for goods that don't irreversibly destroy ocean ecosystems and that aren't made with slave labor?
I struggle to imagine the kind of person who would say no to such a question. Someone with no money in a country with no safety net on the verge of starvation? Someone with no moral comapass?
> I kinda don't like the taste of bugs.
I don't understand what bugs have to do with ocean trawling. Is this an unusual way of referring to lobster?
Are you asking if I would be willing to pay more money for goods that don't irreversibly destroy ocean ecosystems and that aren't made with slave labor?
I struggle to imagine the kind of person who would say no to such a question. Someone with no money in a country with no safety net on the verge of starvation? Someone with no moral comapass?
> I kinda don't like the taste of bugs.
I don't understand what bugs have to do with ocean trawling. Is this an unusual way of referring to lobster?
Allright, let's not do anything, ever.
Cool. How about you paying cost of the wildlife?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thx, that was a huge brain fart, I meant each revolution.
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.
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).
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).
I for one welcome our new Polar Bear Overlords. (Hope the Russians don´t forget their rifles when they move in.)
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...
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...
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/
https://ussnautilus.org/1014-2/
Time for a Starlink backup then
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.
Its the groundstation that needs backing up and the location is surrounded by the sea.
Which Starlink solves utilizing the laser links between satellites.
You're grossly underestimating the bandwidth needs of the site. You're not going to replace a cluster of fiber optic cables with Starlink.
10 Gbps in Ka and 100 in E band
We're talking backup vs. primary. Of course the backup is not going to be as good.
>> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That said apparently they do have a satellite backup, just not through Starlink.
For a consumer grade connection. Why on earth would an enterprise contract be limited to those speeds??
That's not how satellites work.
Starlink can act as a backup for the ground station utilizing the laser links.
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.
Starlink Ground Station Network is global, spread in many different countries and look more resilient than a single one.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.”
Again though, you can't do "Starlink from the satellites, so we don't rely on a specific ground station" unless all of the satellites support talking to Starlink, which they don't. That means they'd have to be replaced.
I feel like I'm missing something here.
As I understand it, the Starlink network has a number of ground stations, and an active inter-satellite "mesh," thanks to laser links, which would allow it to route around the loss of one or more ground stations? (although obviously it requires at least one ground station to be live in order to access the non-Starlink-connected Internet)
The lasers began being integrated between 2020 and 2021, so it's likely SpaceX has made decent progress equipping their network with this capability, although I can't find the latest figures for the proportion of satellites that have lasers.
It sounds like there's something I'm missing if we can't do "Starlink from the satellites, so we don't rely on a specific ground station"
Could you help me understand the limitation?
As I understand it, the Starlink network has a number of ground stations, and an active inter-satellite "mesh," thanks to laser links, which would allow it to route around the loss of one or more ground stations? (although obviously it requires at least one ground station to be live in order to access the non-Starlink-connected Internet)
The lasers began being integrated between 2020 and 2021, so it's likely SpaceX has made decent progress equipping their network with this capability, although I can't find the latest figures for the proportion of satellites that have lasers.
It sounds like there's something I'm missing if we can't do "Starlink from the satellites, so we don't rely on a specific ground station"
Could you help me understand the limitation?
Do you understand what the problem trying to be solved is?
There are satellites in orbit today that have nothing to do with Starlink. Some of these have been up for a long time. We're talking weather satellites and research satellites. The ones in a polar orbit can only use one of two ground stations to communicate back with the earth, simply due to their location. One of those ground stations has lost it's fiber optic connection so it can't be used at full bandwidth right now.
None of that so far has anything to do with Starlink. We're talking about a system os satellites that already exists and predates Starlink sometimes by decades.
The person that started this thread proposed: "Maybe just use Starlink from the satellites, so we don't rely on a specific ground station." In other words, have these already existing satellites integrate with the (relatively new) Starlink system.
So they're saying that we somehow make those old satellites, which are already in orbit and have their own communication systems designed to interface with ground stations, somehow stop using the ground station and start using Starlink instead.
There are satellites in orbit today that have nothing to do with Starlink. Some of these have been up for a long time. We're talking weather satellites and research satellites. The ones in a polar orbit can only use one of two ground stations to communicate back with the earth, simply due to their location. One of those ground stations has lost it's fiber optic connection so it can't be used at full bandwidth right now.
None of that so far has anything to do with Starlink. We're talking about a system os satellites that already exists and predates Starlink sometimes by decades.
The person that started this thread proposed: "Maybe just use Starlink from the satellites, so we don't rely on a specific ground station." In other words, have these already existing satellites integrate with the (relatively new) Starlink system.
So they're saying that we somehow make those old satellites, which are already in orbit and have their own communication systems designed to interface with ground stations, somehow stop using the ground station and start using Starlink instead.
I understand the point you were making, now. Thanks for explaining.
definitely not. volumes just aren't there and Elon Musk is openly in bed with dubious characters.
> 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
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
> 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...
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...
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.
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.
> 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...
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...
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.
The Shannon limit already accounts for any number of channels and any level of QAM.
Ah, here's but two interesting and well cited papers regarding an optical "shannon limit", both published in IEEE Journal of Lightwave Technology.
The old idea of a "Shannon Limit" has been split into many types, including linear (old tech) and non-linear (using more modern tech). Both these papers address the non-linear limit (which is not a limit, as both papers show, but more of an artfact of modern tech):
[1] "Approaching the non-linear Shannon Limit" : From the abstract "We also discuss the techniques which are promising to *increase* and/or approach the information capacity limit."
[2] "Scope and Limitations of the Nonlinear Shannon Limit" : "It is shown that this is a limit (if at all) holding only for conventional detection strategies. Indeed, it should only be considered as a limit to the information rate that can be achieved with a given modulation/detection scheme"
These are extensively cited, so use google scholar and read up to see that there is no "Shannon Limit" except for a particular channel technology. The concept has been split into a million directions depending on the underlying technology, each with a different value for "Shannon Limit".
[1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/5210179 [2] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7637002
The old idea of a "Shannon Limit" has been split into many types, including linear (old tech) and non-linear (using more modern tech). Both these papers address the non-linear limit (which is not a limit, as both papers show, but more of an artfact of modern tech):
[1] "Approaching the non-linear Shannon Limit" : From the abstract "We also discuss the techniques which are promising to *increase* and/or approach the information capacity limit."
[2] "Scope and Limitations of the Nonlinear Shannon Limit" : "It is shown that this is a limit (if at all) holding only for conventional detection strategies. Indeed, it should only be considered as a limit to the information rate that can be achieved with a given modulation/detection scheme"
These are extensively cited, so use google scholar and read up to see that there is no "Shannon Limit" except for a particular channel technology. The concept has been split into a million directions depending on the underlying technology, each with a different value for "Shannon Limit".
[1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/5210179 [2] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7637002
I just gave you a paper showing that is not the case. I even provided the quote.
There is no inherent limit from physics, only from engineering. History provides ample evidence were a given medium had it's "Shannon Limit" broken via new signaling methods over the same medium. The terms you used, "bandwidth" and "noise" are technological, not physical. "Bandwidth" increases each time we invent better methods to pack and decode it. Most of the old concepts are based on old Fourier Analysis, whereas a better modern framework is wavelets or even their successors. Fourier is a very simple way to think of signals, missing plenty of useful things, which is exactly what led to the development of wavelets, to enable more powerful signal analysis.
Note in particular there is no single "bandwidth" when dealing with photonics, since photons can be physically stacked arbitrarily without interference. Simply google for breakthroughs in photonics bandwidth to see decades of advances beyond what was previously thought to be "the bandwidth".
The Shannon limit is a *model* of the system. That model is necessarily incomplete, since there increasingly advanced technology. Those models almost always use simplifications to make the math tractable, such as gaussian noise, independent errors, and a host of other things that are not true physically. Even the concept of noise requires either a non=physical abstraction to math or some details of the engineering used to measure it. Simply saying there "is gaussian noise" is a gross model used to simplify math. It is non-physical.
A simple example that leveraging quantum has created a new field of quantum shannon theory, which has better bounds. Under shannon's theory and his understanding of information, quantum key distribution would not be possible, yet it is, and companies have offered commercial versions for 20+ years. I would not be surprised if more and more pieces of physics not currently used for communication get used in the future, changing the "limits" again and again.
Before MIMO transmission, single channel over the same medium had a shannon limit. MIMO surpassed it. Many channels, especially where light is used, allow stacking more and more information into the same medium, subject to technology ability to decode, which is an engineering feat, not a physical one.
The world of information theory has moved past shannon, just like orbital mechanics moved past Newton. Both Newton and Shannon have uses, but they're not valid for modern techniques.
Two of many such changes are compressed sensing, which was a major discovery, that routinely beats Shannon-Nyquist sampling theory, and the discovery of what is called generalized sampling developed around 2000-2010 (and still making it's way through image processing). Both are fundamental theory changes that allowed breaking previous "limits".
So please read the paper, and if you claim there is still some inherent limit, publish the paper countering the one above.
There is no inherent limit from physics, only from engineering. History provides ample evidence were a given medium had it's "Shannon Limit" broken via new signaling methods over the same medium. The terms you used, "bandwidth" and "noise" are technological, not physical. "Bandwidth" increases each time we invent better methods to pack and decode it. Most of the old concepts are based on old Fourier Analysis, whereas a better modern framework is wavelets or even their successors. Fourier is a very simple way to think of signals, missing plenty of useful things, which is exactly what led to the development of wavelets, to enable more powerful signal analysis.
Note in particular there is no single "bandwidth" when dealing with photonics, since photons can be physically stacked arbitrarily without interference. Simply google for breakthroughs in photonics bandwidth to see decades of advances beyond what was previously thought to be "the bandwidth".
The Shannon limit is a *model* of the system. That model is necessarily incomplete, since there increasingly advanced technology. Those models almost always use simplifications to make the math tractable, such as gaussian noise, independent errors, and a host of other things that are not true physically. Even the concept of noise requires either a non=physical abstraction to math or some details of the engineering used to measure it. Simply saying there "is gaussian noise" is a gross model used to simplify math. It is non-physical.
A simple example that leveraging quantum has created a new field of quantum shannon theory, which has better bounds. Under shannon's theory and his understanding of information, quantum key distribution would not be possible, yet it is, and companies have offered commercial versions for 20+ years. I would not be surprised if more and more pieces of physics not currently used for communication get used in the future, changing the "limits" again and again.
Before MIMO transmission, single channel over the same medium had a shannon limit. MIMO surpassed it. Many channels, especially where light is used, allow stacking more and more information into the same medium, subject to technology ability to decode, which is an engineering feat, not a physical one.
The world of information theory has moved past shannon, just like orbital mechanics moved past Newton. Both Newton and Shannon have uses, but they're not valid for modern techniques.
Two of many such changes are compressed sensing, which was a major discovery, that routinely beats Shannon-Nyquist sampling theory, and the discovery of what is called generalized sampling developed around 2000-2010 (and still making it's way through image processing). Both are fundamental theory changes that allowed breaking previous "limits".
So please read the paper, and if you claim there is still some inherent limit, publish the paper countering the one above.
Bandwidth does not increase based on packing methods. Bandwidth refers to analog signal bandwidth, something we can measure - not data rate. MIMO gets around the Shannon limit by creating more channels, like putting more fibers in a bundle.
MIMO added no "new fibers". - it's more throughout with no change in medium, a consequence of photons not cross interacting. Electrons cross interact, and end up with different physical properties. You're proving my point: the physics has major impact in practice. Shannon says zero about this, since his is a simple, outdated model.
Bandwidth is defined by the signal type. A signal is defined via the technology and model of communication. Change the tech or model, and you get different Shannon limits.
Take some time and read and understand the papers I gave you. Your claims are contradicted by each of those papers (and hundreds more).
How can you honestly ignore all those well cited papers that state exactly what I said? Post some evidence countering those papers or there's no more point replying to your opinions.
Bandwidth is defined by the signal type. A signal is defined via the technology and model of communication. Change the tech or model, and you get different Shannon limits.
Take some time and read and understand the papers I gave you. Your claims are contradicted by each of those papers (and hundreds more).
How can you honestly ignore all those well cited papers that state exactly what I said? Post some evidence countering those papers or there's no more point replying to your opinions.
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.
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?
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.
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.
But why stop at 10 years? If the theoretical bandwidth limit of SM Fiber is above 100 Gbit/s then there is simply no way that a household will need more internal bandwidth than that. Even for the next 20-30 years, because other technologies (like SATA) will be the limiting factor.
I believe this could be a case of future proofing that will actually last 30-40 years, no?
I believe this could be a case of future proofing that will actually last 30-40 years, no?
10 years is the guideline because you can't predict most of the future, but, you can predict the physical wear fairly well. It's likely that the plastic terminations will be iffy by that point basically, which means reterminating, or, running new fiber, and most of the time you'll just run new fiber.
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.
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.
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.
would the repeaters need to be replaced? if you are compressing the data differently or sending it faster or whatever, I'm not sure the repeaters care, they are just amplifying the signal, not decoding it and resending it.
Though surely the repeaters in a cable, such as the one in the article, presents hard limits?
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
> 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
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.
Reminds me of the early dialup to DSL communication over standard telephone lines evolution.
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.
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.
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?
Shannon bound. But it's very large. I don't think we're anywhere close with current DWDM emitter/detector technology.
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.
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.)
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).
Modern DWDM systems use a channel spacing of 75/100 GHz, so you easily fit more than 50 channel in a single fibre.
[deleted]
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).
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.
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.
Either the former is understated, or the latter is way overkill.
Or, I'm misunderstanding. Which is probably the most likely possibility.
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.
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.
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).
Before https anyone could put a proxy and cache content.
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)
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
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=5/77.504/13.008
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.
Russian trawlers going back and forth in that area…
https://x.com/PerErikSchulze/status/1794828268480438514
https://x.com/PerErikSchulze/status/1794828268480438514
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.
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!"
I think what had a big impact on me is they show both a healthy lung and a smoker's lung
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?crop...
https://www.scotsman.com/webimg/legacy_elm_28724349.jpg?crop...
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.
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.
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.
> There's one where the grim reaper spins a roulette wheel every time a driver makes a mistake at an intersection.
In my imagination, this one would end with the roulette wheel stopping on 0, but the result of 0 not being depicted.
In my imagination, this one would end with the roulette wheel stopping on 0, but the result of 0 not being depicted.
The wheel is labeled things like "near miss" and "death".
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
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
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...
https://www.c-span.org/video/?510467-1/derek-chauvin-trial-d...
He said that less than 10% of smokers HAVE lung issues, not “eventually get” lung issues. Big, big difference.
What was your takeaway? Any added insights/reading?
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.
Radon is scary, and surprisingly everywhere in some regions.
10% aren’t low odds when it comes to health issues.
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.
You can google for places to buy them.
I'm pretty sure there is some of automated brigading, every post I make gets modded down for no reason. Why mod this down? It's just a fact that is easily verifiable. It had been voted up to 2 or 3, then very quickly went to 0. Very odd.
https://www.fishersci.com/shop/products/smokers-lungs-kit-2/...
"These inflatable swine lungs have been stained realistically and then specially preserved in odorless, nontoxic solution that retains the texture and elasticity of fresh lungs."
https://www.fishersci.com/shop/products/smokers-lungs-kit-2/...
"These inflatable swine lungs have been stained realistically and then specially preserved in odorless, nontoxic solution that retains the texture and elasticity of fresh lungs."
mgoetzke(1)
That's what trawling is . . . it is completely normally for a trawler to go back and forth like that.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
You can, at least at that specific time that all other boats were not trawling over cables.
Is that boat trawling directly over the same area where the cables were damaged? Unclear from the tweet alone...
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-...
that part loads funny, i had to reload the article and click on the little globe picture before it loaded and then it still didn't load correctly.
I mean, clearly "lack of evidence"!
>After an inital investigation, the police dropped the case due to lack of evidence, and inadequate legislation.
>After an inital investigation, the police dropped the case due to lack of evidence, and inadequate legislation.
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...
[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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
<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.
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.
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-Optical_...
[0] https://fac.ksu.edu.sa/sites/default/files/06149809-Optical_...
Just tap a repeater and deal with encryption later.
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...
The "Get pumped" section of this page has an almost ELI5 overview: https://hackaday.com/2023/08/08/under-the-sea-optical-repeat...
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.
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.
> 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.
That's not true at all.
What, no mention that the Norwegian police use evidence markers with inches printed on them? That company sells them with CM markers.
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...
https://forensicssource.com/collections/evidence-markers/pro...
[deleted]
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.
It's more likely that they take photos with both measurements.
Some gun calibers are measured with inches, so maybe they have some imperial markers on hand to measure bullet casings?
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.
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.
Odd indeed. I would assume the salvage company was American?
rwmj(5)
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.
Perhaps they intended for the information to be shared with US intelligence.
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.
(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.
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.
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.
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
“Kill the chicken to scare the monkey
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.
Makes you wonder if those cables should (can) be insured against such problems instead of relying on a craber's insurance.
In most cases, when insurance covers a loss, they also subrogate the loss and pursue damages from the responsible party, if feasible...
It's reasonable for the responsible party to pay the damages. And yet, it's a risk, which is why it's common to carry insurance for your own liability (in which case, your insurance usually wouldn't subrogate and sue you)
It's reasonable for the responsible party to pay the damages. And yet, it's a risk, which is why it's common to carry insurance for your own liability (in which case, your insurance usually wouldn't subrogate and sue you)
Telus’ insurance would have a deductible, they can’t claim for every little thing
$1.2m is a drop in the bucket for Telus.
Not even a down payment on the fine?
There were no criminal penalties, this was a civil case.
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.
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.
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.
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."
"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."
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.
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’.
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’.
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.
Makes me wonder if car liability insurance covers the damages you can cause if you drive recklessly or even purposely hit someone's car
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.
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.
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”.
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”.
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…
But insurances' business is about finding reasons not to pay, so it's not surprising at all…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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(1)
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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
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalassophobia
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?
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.
Historically, there's been a lot of mischief with the cables.
https://asiatimes.com/2023/04/new-us-spy-sub-built-for-seabe...
https://asiatimes.com/2023/04/new-us-spy-sub-built-for-seabe...
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 :)
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 :)
"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.
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.
[deleted]
> 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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
Comments like this are why I love HN!
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.
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.
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
However I think there are also fully passive repeaters- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_amplifier
The optical signal repeaters that are part of the cable every N kilometers need power to do their job.
Ohh there’s physical electronic repeaters. Okay. I thought this was some sort of electromagnetism witchcraft.
They actually are witchcraft. They amplify the signal directly, without transforming it into electrical signal.
It’s all witchcraft anyway. I’m not sure what they use exactly, but even photodiodes are pure witchcraft.
There is still some witchcraft. Look up "optical pumping amplifier" for instance.
"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.
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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?
> 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
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
"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.
"Real" international law would require a sovereign international government that is more powerful than any singular nation.
You need to construct an entity that both the US and China make themselves fully subservient to.
Good luck.
You need to construct an entity that both the US and China make themselves fully subservient to.
Good luck.
TLDR; it probably wasn't the russians, most likely a trawler.
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
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.
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.
"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.
The norwegians seem to think it was a russian trawler and that trawler doesn't exclude the possiblity that russians did it.
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.
Trawler does not mean unintentional or not state related.
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?
For completeness: the US navy shot down an Iranian airliner.
The "full list" posted earlier has that one on it.
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.
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.
Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752
Siberia Airlines Flight 1812
Siberia Airlines Flight 1812
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...
...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...
Criss crossing is quite normal behavior btw. I see it all the time here at the North Sea near England.
Does taking corrections to better land over the cable look normal https://x.com/PerErikSchulze/status/1794828268480438514 ?
Sure, but that also makes it an ideal cover story too.
Why would the russians care to have a cover story? They're in an open hot war with the west.
Because West is week and easily manipulated. Its just a travler guys lol, we are just testing our radio transmitter in Królewiec 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.
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.
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.
If there was an open hot war, would US congress debate for months whether to approve the military package to Ukraine?
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!?"
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.
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.
They weren't at the time.
A trawler driven by the Russians?
Does the Russian part of Svalbard depend on the cable for Internet?
This was January 2022. Didn’t the alleged Russian interference happen later, during the invasion of Ukraine?
Maybe you're thinking about Nord Stream
What would the Russian motivation be for blowing that up? They could have just turned off the gas supply.
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.
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.
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...
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.
I don't know who did it, but it helped to increase gas prices and Russia is a seller.
doublepg23(2)
Ah excellent, fishermen not only destroying the ocean but also the infrastructure of countries. When will peoples appetite for destroying the ocean be qualled?
There might be things that point towards this not being totally by accident.
Despite people downvoting me I did read the article. I don't assume this is all fisherman since that Chinese boat mentioned seems to be conveniently taking out cables and the Chinese gov is not responding to their investigation requests. Still doesn't change the fact that fishing operations destroy the ocean floors, a simple amount of research can confirm this.
> 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!
> 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!
Whoever named the time-traveling, world-saving X-Man from the future "Cable" was oddly prescient.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_(character)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_(character)
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...