I imagine it won't be long before we'll see the next gen from Starlink:

Starlink Standard (fixed) Starlink Mini (portable) Starlink Pocket (ultra-portable)

Starlink have over 11,000 satellites in orbit.

Globalstar have 24 satellites in orbit (at least according to Google).

How does this acquisition by Amazon meaningfully expand Leo to compete against Starlink?

Are those the iridium satellites? They are doing something completely different from starlink. For one thing, they are in much higher orbit, increasing both latency and coverage. They also have much less available bandwidth.

I'm not sure they are competitors. They could be, but these networks are serving different purposes.

Maybe spectrum.

Spectrum and IP, probably.

Pre-existing infra, designs and know-how?

Space and the enormity of it breaks your mind when you start thinking about it.

The star in the middle of the animation, is approximately 20AU (Astronomical Units) in size looking at the scale line. 20AU is approximately 1.8b miles/3b kilometres or approximately the distance from the Sun to Uranus.

If Google's correct, if everyone on Earth lived on that star - each and every one of us could have a backyard larger than the surface area of Earth ;p

I don't think you should infer the radius of the star from the blacked out region. I think they just do that because the luminosity of the star is so intense it would blow away the sensitivity needed to see the planets. So they set everything to zero for a certain zone on the lens/sensor. It's not the physical surface of the star.

There are a handful of known red supergiant stars around 15 AU in diameter, 20 AU would be pushing past the boundaries of what we believe would be possible.

The star in the video, HR 8799, is about 50% larger than the sun.

Good call!

It looks like HR8799 that the animation is based on is about 1.5x the radius of the sun.

That being said, my silly point still holds - there are stars that are truly massive. Stephenson 2-18 is approximately the size I mentioned, which is genuinely impossible to comprehend.

Yeah, but remember that those red supergiants' outer envelope is extremely sparse. The density is compared to the very upper layers of Earth's atmosphere - basically vacuum. Around 90% of a supergiants' radius is taken up by that ultra-thin gas envelope.

It's harder to comprehend smallness. The journey to planc constant is longer than the size of our observable universe.

It'd be incredible to have an SR-71 flying again, just simply __because__!

The Australian Government needs to sue OpenAI to make a point.

At this point, it feels like it is out of control and it is just a matter of time before something much more significant happens. Imagine they hack into FAA to disrupt air travel, utility companies for water/gas, a nuclear power station (ala Stuxnet), financial/banking systems, stock exchanges, etc?

that's adorable. what happens why a Chinese model hacks the australian govt?

Then there will be a new HN thread about that and you can get influencer points by posting "I told you so!".

How companies pay such low bounties for such a find is mind blowing to me.

The Berm Peak YouTube channel did a similar reverse engineering of a retro Tron style e-bike. It didn't require going to new firmware but it is a good video as well about how he could accomplish it, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPrtVGimBYs.

It's a thing for sure, maybe just not screamed about. If you run in a shoe that is 10mm+ and then go to a 0mm like an Altra - it is wild how different it feels.

Yup, Nike and Asics were like 10mm, while Hoka and other cool brands are lower. Back when I was running this was the main differentiator

The comments in the article about 'performance' are very real. When Nike was still in retail stores, 9/10 shoes were fashion sneakers and had nothing to do with athletics/running/performance.

By comparison, Hoka is positioned as a runners shoe. They have a variety of models based on the type of running you need (daily, long run, race), provide road/trail variants (their Speedgoat is amazing trail shoe), have large toe boxes to give your forefoot/toes the space needed to spread out on impact, also room to grow from swelling.

I'm sure Nike don't want to walk back from their fashionista offerings, but there are lessons in here for sure - maybe they need sub-branding like Nike Road, Nike Trail, Nike Casual or Nike Performance and Nike Casual.

I think they do have that - Nike SB for skate/street, Nike ACG for trail, etc. That said, I have twice gone to re-buy a trail-oriented shoe of theirs that I liked in the past, and found that it never stuck, and the new options in that space were garish or over-reliant on mesh which just lets in dirt and thorns.

What are you wearing for trail runners now?

I wear this category for hiking rather than running (prefer sneakers over boots - less weight). Current shoes are something waterproof from Columbia that I've worn in snow and desert trails and quite like. Bought on special in the US just before heading into snow, so didn't research much. Previously had Nike Wild Trail. And many years back, I think it was Nike Trail that I bought in NZ, but never saw that moniker again.

I was looking at Nike ACG stuff recently, but the colourways in AU are black (clodhopper!), neon blue, white with khaki, camo, or an odd light brown. And on the side it spells out "All Conditions Gear" like you're an idiot who can't remember what your shoes are for.

Nike are too narrow for me. I alternate between Inov-8 and Topo for trail shoes. I was really happy with an older pair of Adidas Terrex Pro, but haven't tried the new Agravic options in several years.

Trail running is highly dependent on the type of trails around you. I'm in the bay area and almost everything here is dry, dusty and hard. You can generally get by with structured road running shoes if you want to, and don't need much support beyond that. I would not recommend the same thing to east coast trail runners, or most northern Europeans.

If you want a recommendation I really like Merrell Agility Peak's or for something less run-y, the Moab.

Nike has Nike SB for skateboard and they are (were?) awesome, the last two pairs I bought lasted more than 5 years being worn everyday. For comparison Vans last at best 6 months for me.

It seemed like Nike went down a fairly narrow path of only really selling very expensive basketball shoes, to the exclusion of all other footwear.

The sitemap being hosted at /images/sitemaps/index.xml is a problem. Technically, that sitemap can only include URLs beginning with /images/sitemaps/. They should move that file to the root, like /sitemap_index.xml and reference /sitemap-1.xml, /sitemap-2.xml etc.