5 ms·
Amateur astronomers tracking the world’s spy satellites
- sandworm101 8y ago"Northernmost canadian provinces" Um.. they are not provinces. They are territories. Most all the provinces start at the us boarder and end well short of the arctic circle. It is like saying Guam is America's most western state. And bonus points for any american who can name the territories relevant to this article.
- Stratoscope 8y agoWest Coast native here (Oregon and California). I got Yukon, if it's relevant. Can my friends in the mysterious east fill in the others?
- sandworm101 8y agoYukon is one of the two. But they also made a third a few years ago that didnt exist at the time discussed in the article.
- naniwaduni 8y agoNone of the territories are actually in the east. The other territory in question is presumably the Northwest Territories, since Nunavut is the anachronism.
- Stratoscope 8y agoFor an Oregon boy like me, the "mysterious east" is everything from Idaho on. Just like how East Coast Americans charmingly call the east-central part of the continent the "Midwest".
- sandworm101 8y agoThe east starts at whatever point the mountains end. If you cannot see a treeless peak on the horizon, you are in 'the east'. Sorry texas.
- throwawaymath 8y agoI don't think I'm ever going to get used to the fact that people who live in Indiana call it the Midwest. If anything it should be called the Mideast...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- myself248 8y agoIf you think in terms of settlements on the east coast, considering expanding westward and buying land in the Louisiana Purchase to do so, the term "midwest" makes more sense.
- at-fates-hands 8y ago> Just like how East Coast Americans charmingly call the east-central part of the continent the "Midwest". Most New Yorkers couldn't show you where North Dakota is on a map, let alone most of the Midwest states like Michigan or Kansas. Most of the East Coast people I know refer to the Midwest as "fly over country".
- cobbzilla 8y agoa map of Canada’s provinces and territories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provinces_and_territories_of_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provinces_and_territories_of_C...
- Justin_K 8y agoYou are nitpicking an irrelevant part of the article. Who cares?
- Stratoscope 8y agoI cared. I had fun with the question, and it's not like it was detracting from all the other very relevant discussion on this page. But of course I would enjoy it, I grew up watching Sergeant Preston of the Yukon! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergeant_Preston_of_the_Yukon_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergeant_Preston_of_the_Yukon_...
- Waterluvian 8y agoIt can be offensive to residents, and embarrassing to yourself to say, "I care so little about your home that I don't even want to correct my ignorance of it."
- refurb 8y agoOne of those territories has a population of less than 40,000. If you live there, I'm not sure why you'd have an expectation that people actually know you exist. It's like a local from Illinois being offended people haven't heard of the town of Peoria. Why would they?
- duggan 8y agoI didn't realize Canada had such a heterogenous national composition. Thanks for highlighting, and the poster below who linked to the wikipedia article on the provinces and territories.
- aaronbrethorst 8y agoCheck out Trevor Paglen for more: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=paglen&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=paglen&sort=byPopularity&prefi...
- rollulus 8y agoI especially liked his CCC talk "Seeing The Secret State: Six Landscapes" [1] a lot. [1]: https://media.ccc.de/v/30C3_-_5604_-_en_-_saal_1_-_201312282300_-_seeing_the_secret_state_six_landscapes_-_trevor_paglen https://media.ccc.de/v/30C3_-_5604_-_en_-_saal_1_-_201312282...
- gmoore 8y agoi get file not found on any of the video downloads at this link? Anybody able to get it?
- kuroguro 8y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20151101062311im_/http://cdn.media.ccc.de/congress/2013/mp4-web/30c3-5604-en-Seeing_The_Secret_State_Six_Landscapes_h264-hq.mp4 https://web.archive.org/web/20151101062311im_/http://cdn.med...
- kuroguro 8y agoAlso: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j56s46e97Lo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j56s46e97Lo Just finished watching, amazing talk :)
- closeparen 8y agoDoing God’s Work with Other People’s Money.
- analogmemory 8y agoI really enjoyed the experimental layouts the various stories had. Had an art magazine feel to it.
- 3mm4 8y agoLove this - super well-researched and layouts feel different in a good way.
- callinyouin 8y ago> Atlantis lifted off from Kennedy Space Center to deliver a human skull What?! I don't have time right now to read the entire article, but I did read maybe 1/4th of it and didn't see any other mention of this payload. There's also no mention of the word "skull" anywhere else on the page. Why in hell would a human skull be shot into orbit??
- ASalazarMX 8y agoCalm down, it was part of the skeleton crew.
- azthecx 8y agoWhere they trying to create a skeleton key?
- jloughry 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-36 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-36 It was an experiment to test radiation effects; the In-flight Radiation Dose Distribution (IDRD) experiment: This joint NASA/DoD experiment was designed to examine the penetration of radiation into the human cranium during spaceflight. The female skull was seated in a plastic matrix, representative of tissue, and sliced into ten layers. Hundreds of thermo-luminescent dosimeters were mounted in the skull's layers to record radiation levels at multiple depths. This experiment, which also flew on STS-28 and STS-31, was located in the shuttle's mid-deck lockers on all three flights, recording radiation levels at different orbital inclinations.
- kulahan 8y agoI'm super late to the party here, but I thought this was an interesting story. I used to work on a space program, and one of the guys on my team had been in the industry for quite some time. He told me he hates these amateurs. Not because they're enjoying a hobby, but because they're so damn good. Without getting into specifics, his company had launched a spy satellite at one point that was fairly revolutionary in that it was able to perform its task without a formerly necessary (large and expensive) component. These amateurs noticed it and started talking about it online so fast that his company genuinely thought someone had broken their security clearance and told the public about the new development. They investigated a bunch of people at the company before finally being like "holy shit, these guys are just really good".